Zemblan Grammar

I had a lot of time for reflection in the check-out line at Wal-Mart the other day.  I was behind three ladies with over-brimming shopping carts and wallets full of coupons, each of whom actually paid with a check!  A check, I tell you!  What is this, 1983?

Luckily, the impulse-buy items in the lane were all meat products.  “I will photograph these items,”  I thought to myself, “and then I will make fun of them on the internet.”

As you can see here, the ever-popular Slim Jims are represented (I guess they have about seventy different flavors by now), as well as various brands of beef jerky, beef strips, beef sticks, beef tips, beef steaks, beef flaps, and beef curtains.  Pretty much any dried, cured meat you desire is available for the low low price of actually entering Wal-Mart.

So which delicacy did I select?

That’s right, folks!  Microwavable pork rinds!  Hot and Spicy!  Straight out of the microwave!  I was transfixed by their porky enigma.  What recourse did I have but to buy them? I had to know them!  Had to discover what lay beneath the shiny, beckoning surface of their microwavable bag.  And now, there they sit, alone and untouched on the kitchen island.  We are all too scared to make them.

Other mysterious items have presented themselves at my parents’ house, as well.  This bottle of Scope, for example.

Looks fairly innocuous, right?  Well, I had found it sitting in the midst of several other hygiene-type products on the bathroom counter.  Nothing odd about that, surely, except that all of the items had a certain vintage look about them.  As I looked closer, I found most of them had expired.  Years ago.

In case you can’t read the date on the bottom of that label, that’s 1994.  Nearly twelve years ago!  That is how old this scope is.  I am forbidden, however, to throw it (or anything else) away.  My parents keep everything. Anyone need a copy of Time from 1989?  ‘Cause we’ve got that, too.

So, whether we eventually pop those pork rinds in the microwave doesn’t really matter. They’ll still be here next year.  In fact, they don’t expire till 2007, which means they’ll be here a good several years beyond that.  Just in case.