Japandamonium!!!

My friend Laura from Oberlin asked me to write a piece for a fledgling campus mag which she staffs for, called Sheer Mag. I have some issues with the publication itself (sorry L!), but hey, a writing opportunity is a writing opportunity. The theme of this issue is "Mischief," and I think she wanted me to write something racy, but I just wasn't inspired in that direction. All the same, I was still inspired to create and I've posted my product below. It is entitled: "Clawing Your Way to the Top of the Food Chain," but if anyone has any better titles in mind after reading it, then comment to your heart's content. It was the best (I'm not saying good) pun I could think of. Here we go -


I’m sure that there are plenty of good ways to get kicked out of the Giant Eagle in North Olmsted. To be precise, in my three years at Oberlin I have discovered no less than thirty-seven separate activities which will elicit an immediate expulsion from that fine establishment. Now, many a sordid foot has walked many a noble path toward the goal of supermarket turmoil, and these heels of mine have worn their own deep groove in the linoleum corridors of suburban disruption. And yet in all my heists and experiences one prize sits out of reach. From the beige metal shelves of an A&P in Blairstown, NJ, to the endless rows of canned soup, a Warhol streak of wrapped bouillion and aluminum, in a Stop&Shop in Duluth, MN, one goal has ever remained beyond my fingertips. It represents the Holy Grail of supermarket discord; we rioters, merely its hopeful knights errant, ever striving and failing to find a means to attain it.

There it sits, calling to you from the back of the store. Always watched, always monitored by the mustached men behind the fish counter, their white coats spattered with pink from the day’s filleting. Your eyes find it easily, a murky brick of a dark and uneasy color, foreboding and incongruous amongst the shining sterile surfaces surrounding it. Blue-black and massive, with a slash of rocky orange at its heart. There, in the bottom of the tank, can you see them moving? They’re still alive you know. They’ve probably been in there for months – maybe years. Press your nose up to the glass, get a good long look. For there they sit, those jewels in the fluorescent crown of supermarkana, those armored warriors of the long-ago ocean bed: lobsters.

You see, lobsters have never made it as a successful part of anyone’s supermarket schemes. For one thing, a successful crustaceous operation is one which requires obvious planning, and most good shenanigans spring from spontaneity. For another, it just seems like a great deal of work, and frankly this can be some easy business. There is plenty of mayhem for a gifted fiend to create without resorting to drastic measures. I once got kicked out of a Bread&Circus in Northampton, MA for having nothing more than a simple Renaissance-style duel with a friend and a small selection of display lipsticks (which I won, five long stripes to his three). There’s shopping cart races for the unimaginative, shopping cart and french-bread jousting for the more bold, and blindfolded shopping cart Tank Commander with kiwi fruit for the truly daring. A small-size George Foreman grill, the Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine (mine is named The Duke), can plug in and provide a handy means of sampling wares from the meat aisle, but do remember to bring your own spices. Many a vegetable-aisle vandal will experiment with eating different food in different quantities – I find that an assortment of olives, grapes, string beans and carrots will be both yummy and unmistakably incriminating, both of which are good qualities in that sort of endeavor. Apples or pears, while obvious, are bland and a waste of valuable time. Pizzazz is important, remember! And of course, there are condiment wars.
But lobsters – oh the possibilities!

There are, of course, several terrible things one could do to them. Two words: Immersion. Boiler. Cruel in a way, but also potentially amazing – think of all those lobsters cooking at once in that tank, and the bewilderment of the fishmongers behind the counter! And hey, maybe they’d start giving out the cooked lobster for free since they couldn’t sell them anymore. For the psychologically optimistic, and malicious, there’s the idea of continuously melting butter in a pan in front of the tank, right where all the lobsters can see it. Then of course there’s the lobsters’ natural environment to keep in mind – what happens when we introduce one of their natural predators to the tank? Like this eel!!!

Of course, that wouldn’t be a fair fight – the lobsters all have their claws bound with rubber bands. If there were only a way to get those bands off, what an arena of fun we could dive (figuratively) into. Imagine pouring a bucket of live crabs in with the lobsters. Boy what a fight! Or giving them some fish to attack. Big ones, or scary ones like blowfish. Oh, the possibilities. Bread&Circuses indeed.

Yet there’s another angle to consider – revenge. Here you are in the supermarket, a decadent palace of frozen dinners and second-rate children’s toys, and marked for death in the tank before you are the once-proud warriors of a noble species. Woe, the loss of pride and glory! Woe, the humiliation! Yet you can help these lobsters reclaim their honor! These rubber manacled kings of the underwater deep, brought low from their former grandeur – you can right the ancient wrongs! We, friends, can deliver the lobsters unto their long-awaited revenge!

A lobster sits on the checkout counter, humiliated and doomed, and watches his executioner reach into her purse for her credit card. Yet what’s this? She screams and stumbles back, tearing her hand out of the bag and shrieking in pain. A lobster was in the bag, and now digs into her fleshy paw with all the strength of his great ocean-toughened claws. Children wail from their inescapable safety-seats in carts, where they find lobsters suddenly dropped in beside them. Unable to get out, their castles have become their crypts! Men from the butchers’ counter tear their faces in terror as the armored monsters skitter towards them across countertops and cutting boards, pinching like demons. A boy in the cereal aisle takes a box down from the shelf; but it explodes in his hands as a massive, pinching lobster leaps out from his hiding place to gorge his warrior’s fury.

The supermarkets will be in upheaval. Chaos: women screaming, clerks fainting, lettuce heads rolling across the aisles like tumbleweed. And across all of it, the lobsters. Glorious in their vengeful savagery, still they are caught in an inexorable chain of defeat. See them struggle on the slippery linoleum now that their passion has abated; some lie still, pulped by fallen canned-goods or crushed under stiff heels of heavy shoes. Yet their brief moment of glory is your moment of triumph. Supermarket bedlam, with lobsters. It’ll be beautiful.