Same Old Lang Syne

http://users.cis.net/sammy/syne.htm

Good ole Dan Fogleberg

woo-hoo!

I'd just like to go on record that that song is beautiful and I'm not ashamed to admit it can bring tears to my eyes.

Of course I'm also not ashamed to admit that I can name all the outer planes and their corresponding alignments either.

Of course I'm also not ashamed to admit that I can name all the outer planes and their corresponding alignments either.

Why should you be?

But that's not the song I'm thinking of. Or, if it is, it sounds little like the way I remember it.

I'm remembering a whiny alto-voiced eighties singer crooning about love in a supermarket, and (getting lost?) on a lonely highway...

something like that.

"Many have abandoned God, or at least "God" as He is generally understood, and yet that nagging desire for transcendence, for a deeper connection with the universe, remains.

With God not an option, it seems that some seek meaning and solace in four-dollar avacadoes",

Ace, that is a very insightful thought.

Could it be "Checking out the Checkout Girl"?

Well Ace, I usually agree with stuff on here, but as an Austin resident I have to take exception. Sure there are some silly people who shop at Whole Foods, and anyone who thinks they are special or better for shopping there is wacked out. But for most of us, Whole Foods is just a good supermarket with lots of yummy products - not exactly the same as a trip to Mecca.

I hope that these people aren't seriously scaring anyone away from Austin because it is truly a great place to live.

This is part of why the Left is so much more prone to moon battery. For the Right (speaking broadly) there is a respect for certain transcendent truths. The lifestyle choices, while important, are not part of those truths.

In contrast the Left (again speaking broadly) has allowed these lifestyle choices to become the transcendent truths. Whether it is veganism, feminism, environmentalism or whatever, the attachment to these choices is at a more fundamental, less rational level. It amounts to faith.

The outcome is predictable. When confronted with contrary evidence of, say, global warming, the tendency is for extremism, ad hominem attack and generalized hysteria. Go read the reviews on Amazon for either The Skeptical Environmentalist or State of Fear. You see about the same kind of reaction that you see from some quarters to The Da Vinci Code. All are charisteristic of challenges to dogma.

"Ayes" (good new nic)

On the DaVinci Code, I'll quibble. The reaction to the Code from orthodox Catholics stems from the same type of reaction to the challenging of faith, but it is not the same when you consider that environmentalism is supposed to be based on science. Your ultimate point is spot on, of course, the dirty hippies have replaced religios faith with "conciousness" dogma, but I would at least argue that when one is defending faith, there is an aspect of reasonalbleness in being unreasonable.

Whither the reason of Leftists who fail to see the "faith" of their cherished beliefs?

That said, good post.

Sure, religious people

"Lost in the Supermarket"

The Clash

[Chorus]
I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality

I wasn't born so much as I fell out
Nobody seemed to notice me
We had a hedge back home in the suburbs
Over which I never could see

I heard the people who lived on the ceiling
Scream and fight most scarily
Hearing that noise was my first ever feeling
That's how it's been all around me

[Chorus]

I'm all tuned in, I see all the programmes
I save coupons from packets of tea
I've got my giant hit discoteque album
I empty a bottle and I feel a bit free

The kids in the halls and the pipes in the walls
Make me noises for company
Long distance callers make long distance calls
And the silence makes me lonely

Sure religious people

The ad campaign Whole Foods ran when they first came to Los Angeles (primarily by buying out and converting the Mrs. Gooches' chain) was so smug and obnoxious in its NPR-style holier than thou-ness I swore I'd never give any business to that company.

Pay no attention to Matt -- nobody would want to live in Austin. Please pass this on to anyone who is considering it.

Jon,

No, that's not it. I used that title in the headline. That was all I could think of, but I'm trying to think of this other song. A whiny song.

I doubt this is it, but it's the first thing that came to mind. And I was able to find it without any difficulty thanks to the magic of INTERNET!

(from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/86/86cisawgod.phtml -- minorly edited by me)

"I was sitting in a coffee shop
staring at the Acropolis on the wall.
I heard a voice call out to me
it wasn't the waiter's call.

I saw God!
He told me to say what I really feel.
I saw God!
He told me to say what I really mean.
To cut my hair and dye it green.
I saw God!

I was trying to think what to think
so I closed my eyes trying to search my soul.
Muzak was playing the Rolling Stones
I want to be in rock and roll

I saw God!
He told me to say what I really mean.
I spoke to God!
He told me to feel what I really felt.
He told me to order the tuna melt.
I saw God!
I saw God!

I was touched by God
He told me art is everything.
Art is everywhere
In the cigarette, in the ash tray
and in the words we say.

I saw God!
I saw God!
I saw God!

He said, "I love you, my child."
I spoke to God.
He said, "My child, do as I say
Release your single on RCA."
I saw God!
I saw God!"

I live in Lago Vista Texas, small town 40 miles NW of Austin on Lake Travis, and the wife and I drive in once a week to shop at Whole Foods. The new store, open 2 weeks is the coolest grocery store I've ever seen.

The Founder and CEO of the company sits on the libertarian Reason Foundation Business Advisory Board

Also named Entrepreneur of the year by Ernst and Young

Also given credit for revolutionizingthe way corporate America handles employee health insurance.

Give it a rest Ace!

while I am a religious person I still find a deeper connection with the universe with wine, beer, cheese, and breads.

Sinful my a$$.

There's a current country hit out there by Joe Nichols, which is whiny and topical but not what you're thinking of...

Had an old man tell me: "Boy, if you were smart,
"You'd hit the produce aisle at the Super Walmart."
So I bumped into a pretty girl's shopping cart:
All I did was break her eggs and bruise her artichoke hearts.

What's a guy gotta do to get a girl in this town?
Don't wanna be alone when the sun goes down.
Just a sweet little somethin' to put my arms around.
What's a guy gotta do to get a girl in this town?
Yeah, what's a guy gotta do to get a girl in this town?

Sorry, Jim Bob, but the one near me has organic cat food.

ORGANIC CAT FOOD.

You've got to be the frickin' founder of the Heritage Foundation before I let that one slide.

It was the most profound speech on liberty I have ever heard

The song you want is "Shopping Cart of Love" by Christine Lavin. I'm ashamed to admit I know that.

Since when is "wine, beer, cheese and breads" sinful food? Medieval Europe, aka "Christendom," pretty much lived on such "sinful foods," and they were especially getting the poor through when the water was foul and the crops of all those healthy grains and foods failed.

But I know why it's "sinful." The religion that is the modern organic food cult is heavily influenced by ersatz versions of Eastern philosophies from lands where the main foods are rice and tea. Thus the Chinese-famine-style diet of the average Whole-Fooder. I used to shop in the local one -- I do like some of the products you can get there, like certain spices and honeys and so on -- and most of the regular shoppers made Ethiopian famine victims look -- well, not fat, but like close relatives. And the parking lot was full of Volvos and BMWs.

Whole Foods, bleah. Wish there were a Fairway near here though.

The Whole Foods at the Time Warner mall thingy does have a good wine selection.

Fairway?

Okay, so I'm shopping at Fairway. Buying onions or something. And there is this big pile of potatoes stacked on the floor in a bin.

And as I reach for an onion, a big-ass rat pokes its head out from between the potatoes.

I don't have a phobia about rats, but it froze me.

And I'm standing there, frozen, and a woman comes over and reaches down to get some potatoes out of the pile.

I tried to warn her, but first I was inarticulare. "Lady," I said. "Lady."

She didn't hear me.

Finally I reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. She turned as if I was going to mug her. But I had worse news. "There's a big rat in there." She recoiled.

The rat then escaped from the potatoes and went running across the floor until it disappeared somewhere under an aisle shelf.

I told the manager. Actually, I told two managers.

Neither one seemed particularly interested in my rate sighting. They took it about as seriously as if I'd told them that they had the wrong price marked for peaches.

So... sort of the end of Fairway shopping for me.

Did anyone else hear the role of Ace in the above Fairway story being played by a young Jerry "Hey Laaadyyy!" Lewis?

I agree with you a lot of times, but this time I think you may be jumping on someone else's bandwagon. I don't know where the $4 avocado comment came from, but that statement, from my experience with the local Whole Foods store, is total bullshit.

With a family of 6, buying good food at reasonable prices is important. The Whole Foods store in Winston-Salem has the best produce section in town and the prices are competitive. Their seafood is likewise the best around and priced competitively. They have a good bakery, decent wine and beer selections and the best milk prices in town. They have bulk spices and herbs that are a fraction of the cost of supermarket prepackaged. They have the best coffee selection around and a cheese section that puts everything else in the area to shame. The employees are friendly and knowledgeable and make it a fun place to shop. Maybe there is a reason they have been selected as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For by Fortune Magazine.

They also have stuff that I don't buy - but so do other stores. My family does part of its shopping at Whole Foods and the rest at our regular supermarket. My wife and I have four kids at home, so it's not yuppie heaven around here. but sometimes we splurge on food because we like to eat. Whole Foods is a good place to splurge. They have neat stuff, in addition to the just plain good food. Some of it is organic and some of it is not. They have house brands that are equivalent in price and better in quality than supermarket brands.

That's it for me. If it wasn't a decent place, I wouldn't shop there. And, oh yeah, they have free samples of stuff a lot. That makes it fun and I have, on a number of times, bought something I never would have thought of because it was just so damned good. Too bad more stores don't work at making shopping fun.

I responded via an update to the main post.

Whole Foods in NY/NJ is overpriced, has decent but not comprehensive selections of gourmet items (no pancetta -- wtf?), and lots of this faux-virtuous vibe that some people like.

On the one hand, the attitude's not nearly so smug as, say, the Park Slope Food Co-op.

On the other hand, Costco is cheaper and has some damn good produce... Outside of "no big box store" NYC, definitely one of the better choices. (Despite being Democrats.)

Speaking of dopey ace, most of your readers actually think George Bush is a conservative. A few of them think he walks on water.

You might want to check your spelling of avocado. It's not a-v-a-c-a-d-o . . . maybe if you were more genetically gifted, you could spell, dumbass. Vegetables don't need genetic modification, but some humans obviously do, but it takes generations to fix that. Old Macdonald had a farm a-o-a-o-a. And on his farm he had some chems a-o-a-o-a. With a bugless crop there and poisoned groundwater there . . . maybe you injested too much of the runoff growing up on a chemically and genetically enhanced farm? That's the only plausible explanation I can think of.

maybe you injested too much of the runoff

Normally, Darryl, blogs are considered a criticism-free zone when it comes to typos and such, considering the reader typically agrees to exchange freshness and authenticity for a roomful of editors.

So, when I say this, please understand that this is more about the hypocrisy than accuracy in spelling, syntax or grammar:

It's spelled "ingested," dumbass.

Old Macdonald had a farm, g-j-g-j-g ...
and on that farm he had a troll ...

JimBob,

When Central Market first opened in Austin, my wife and I got stuck behind a couple of career grad students blocking the French cheese aisle because they were standing there, having a loud conversation about cheese. In French.

It was at that point we knew we weren't in friendly territory. Not because they spoke French (I speak French). Because they were the kind of people who wanted others to see them speaking French in a French cheese aisle. Austin is full of these people.

And Central Market is considered right wing compared to Whole Foods. (Don't get me started about the Wheatsville Co-op). Now, the Whole Foods CEO's libertarian creds are certainly heartening, and redeem him immeasurably in my view.

As Ace said, my reaction has more to do with the zealous, wild-eyed, Woodstock-all-over-again attitude that the yammering reporters and psychologists were offering. This fits Austin to a T, of course.

But at the end of the day, if a man can be successful in business by identifying these broad cultural and psychological forces, then more power to him.

Just remember that Whole Foods is not about hawking tomatoes. It's about giving customers the feeling of being the kind of people who shop at Whole Foods. Convoluted, yes. But marketing brilliance.

As a former Austin resisdent, I agree with George's comment completely. I've seen similiar things at Central Market, where I went occasionally just for the break in the routine of the supermarket. Good analysis.

And Austin sucks

Even if there were "an avocado farmer giggling his ass off," he'd be drowned out by the gleeful chortles of televangelists ripping open envelopes to get at the checks inside.

And Austin sucks

Indeed it does.

Don't even get me started on Austinites fascination with frisbee golf, or how they think walking their dogs off-lead is somehow sticking it to the man.