Episode One -- Let's Go Krogering and Microchips and Vacuuming Books

Let's Go Krogering

Yesterday was Friday, August 22nd, 2008. Next week my wife and I are moving from Ohio to Boston. She will be pursuing graduate work at a prestigious school in that city. I do not plan to divulge the name of the school, but I will tell you that it leans Jesuit. I do not plan to tell you the department she will be in, but I will say that it has nothing to do with processing or selling anything. I do not know what I will be doing for work. My search for a job will be part of the storyline of this journal. I have been pursuing my own graduate degree, a PhD in a field in the Humanities. I finished my comprehensive exams, but the dissertation birth pangs are killing. So I'm ABD. I feel like I have a disease. I have depression and perfectionism. I enjoy teaching much more than I enjoy writing. I hate having to be anywhere, and I have grown to accustomed to my fat guy pants. I have to wear grown up pants now and adjust my sleeping schedule to The Man. I will have to clean up after my dogs when they defecate every single time now. No more free-range woods shitting. My life is changing. Richard Nixon was kicked out of office and then managed to publish something like six books in the twenty years of life he had left. I bet I can wear grown up pants and set an alarm and clean up poop and work a job and still finish my dissertation. Frank Sinatra may have eaten my pancakes, but that's a good thing. Frank Sinatra can eat anything he wants out of my house. He's Frank Sinatra.

Our current local grocery store is called Kroger's. Their jingle used to be "Let's Go Krogering, Let's Go Krogering, For the Best of Everything, Let's Go Krogering." Now it's, "Please don't go to motherfucking Wal-Mart, Come on -- please don't go to motherfucking Wal-Mart." For years now they have offered their customers a "Kroger Plus Card," which is one of those cards you carry in your wallet or on your key chain that they scan when you cash out. I never wanted Dick Cheney to know how much beer I drink so I always refused to accept one. Did I mention my degree in the Humanities? I know all about how Frederick Taylor and rational production and Ford's assembly line quickly turned into a bastardization of Freud and Pavlov -- especially Pavlov -- and gave the world the concept of rational consumption. I'm a demographic, and the irony always was that my refusal to get a Kroger Plus Card was an act of my demographic. It was the epitome of my demographic. I am in my thirties and I'm poor kind of by choice and I have been a graduate student for too long and I have put off working for The Man. And I use phrases such as "The Man" and I think long complicated thoughts about Redd Foxx and KISS. I never wanted a file on my consumption habits and I was only partially kidding about the Dick Cheney thing. Yeah. The information infrastructure exploited by the Nazis was in place before Addy and Joe took over the Reich. This is not to say that Amazon doesn't have recommendations for me. I use my credit card online and I watch videos on YouTube. Still, the Kroger Plus card always bothered me, and I always liked how the cashiers who weren't part of the grocery clerk turnover knew that we were the ones who didn't have a card. I know that one cashier is a short stout bitchy lady who has seemed personally offended by the fact that we don't have a card. She is not too crazy about our canvas bag, either. I also know that a guy who works there likes baseball and thinks that the government is keeping track of everything that I do despite my Plus Card Rebellion. He told me one morning when I was some combination of stoned and hung over that they knew what books I'd checked out of the library and where I buy my gas. I know that newbie cashiers would ask if I had a Kroger Plus Card, and when I said no they would ask, per their training, if I wanted one. They would ask this as they reached for the form to sign me up. One time on the 700 Club Pat interviewed a woman who had died for a little while and been sucked into hell. As she plunged into the pit demons danced and chanted "we got another one, we got another one." She bumped into the guy who had led her astray before the doctors revived her. He told her that his philosophy had been wrong and that if she got the chance she should go back and denounce it. I wonder if he's still there? Every time a newbie reached for a form I would think of the pitchfork demons chanting "we got another one." Which I understand is kind of crazy. Still, that lady may have just had a bad dream, but she was really happy not to be in hell. She meant it, man. Still again, while he was interviewing her maybe Pat himself was thinking "we got another one, we got another one," but only God knows what he really meant when he was thinking that. And God's not talking.

So we're moving to Boston and it's expensive up there and we need money. They always told us when we rejected the Plus Card that we could hold onto our receipts and if we signed up for a card later, we could get the money back that we would have saved. So when we remembered we would come back from the store and put the receipts into a Steak and Shake cup that lived on the counter next to a couple of my plants. Our remembering tended toward the erratic, but still we had saved several over the last three years (when we first got the idea). So with a week to go here in Ohio I went over to the Customer Service Counter at Kroger yesterday with a handful of receipts clipped together with a total that my wife had added up. I turned them over and signed up for a Kroger Plus Card. My wife had already called the company and was informed after asking that no, there was no time limit on receipts. There was also no limit on the amount one could get back. Still, the lady at the counter told me that 2005 was too long ago, so I told her about the phone call my wife had made. The customer service lady knew I was right, so she reverted to shame tactics, which never worked on me, even in kindergarten. That's why I'm not catholic anymore. So she called -- I fucking shit you not -- the "loyalty office." When told that's who she was calling, I said that I have receipts from three years ago, how much more loyal could a guy be? I watched the disappointment cloud her countenance as the loyalty office told her the news. She would have to hand over the 150-plus dollars to me. She told the worker in the service booth with her to give me the money, and to be sure to destroy the receipts. She actually said "destroy," which made the whole event incredible and probably something that will make my deathbed slideshow. She was so put off by it she actually told an employee to be sure to destroy the receipts I had been saving up. What a fucking crackpot. So with a portion of that money I bought rubberbands and packing tape. After finding the needed items I cued up in the express lane. When I went through the line, the cashier asked if I had a Kroger Plus Card. Since neither the bands nor the tape had those yellow tags affixed to their prices, I knew I wouldn't be in for any savings. So I told her "no, I don't have one." She had worked there for a while, so she didn't bother to ask if I wanted to sign up for one. She didn't know that they already had another one.

Later that day we had microchips implanted in our dogs. If they ever get lost, and some kind soul knows to have them scanned, their (and our) information will come up. We are so in the system.

And we also packed out books. We had to vacuum them before we put them in the boxes.