Totally furked up

My experiences--sometimes indifferent, occasionally negative--with "alternative grocery stores" are one of several recurring themes here in Blogtucky, a theme that we'll turn to again as I present you, dear reader, with another close encounter of the texturized vegetable protein kind.

It went down like so:

I stopped in to the local alterna-mart to buy some of that Greek-styled yogurt I like to help soothe a savage stomach, all aflame and aflutter due to some antibiotics I'm currently taking . . . which involves a completely different set of events, which we may or may not get to at some point. Just not right now. While in the store, I also realized I needed some cash for a road trip occurring the next day.

Already it was 7:30 pm; I'd been at work since very early (for me, meaning before 10 am) and was quite tired from all the prep I'd done for the next day's travels and meetings. I just couldn't imagine making one more trip to the bank before heading home. So, instead, I thought, hey, I'll just use the alterna-mart's check-out for a quick cash transaction while paying for my groceries.

Or as I put it to the clerk at the counter, I would like to "kill two birds with one stone"--buying groceries and getting cash at the same time, model of efficiency that I am, with a devil-may-care attitude toward ATM withdrawal fees to boot.

"Killing two birds with one stone. Hmmm, that's an odd expression," said the clerk, one in a long-line of attractive, earnest alterna-boys and -girls who call the co-op their day job.

"An odd expression? Really, it's pretty common . . . ."

Oh, but wait. Where are you standing in the universe at this very moment, I thought. But of course. I'm at the alternative grocery store! In such an environment, I'm sure this act, the random (if figurative) stoning of birds for cash, is liable to offend, consternate, and/or provoke pensive musings--or, ferchrissakes, poetry--about the violence of language among the quinoa-and-kefir set. Using such language, in fact, probably ranks up there with the time I cluelessly wore my leather jacket into the store, receiving a reception so chilly among the organi-gentsia that it would have been pleasanter to stroll from my home to the store in a thong and tank top in the middle of a snowstorm.

Never mind the fact that the store does sell a limited amount of dead meat. Eat all you want--just don't wear any.

So, I thought, what should I have said? "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant adultresses! Ululululululululululululu . . . ," ending the conversation with a little shout-out to my peeps in Mesopotamia.

No? Offensive to the entire Middle East you say? May your favorite date palm develop a fungus at the height of ka'ak baking season.

Maybe instead I should have said, "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant tofurkeys!"

Hmmm, tofurkey. A meat so not-meat killing it certainly couldn't offend anyone. Except maybe a fructarian. And even they've got their consciences to live with. Slaughtering innocent apples and oranges, indeed.

But maybe it's the killing that's getting everyone into a Class-A bummer, prompting the flow of free verse to throb in the brain. Maybe there's a better way to put it, one that doesn't refer to the act of destruction. To rephrase things, though, I would need to know how one actually brings about the death . . . uh, demise . . . uh, denouement of a tofurkey.

Do you brine it, baste it, then burn it? Simmer it, soak it, and try to savor it? Goose it, gas it, and finally (and more likely) gross out over it?

Saying "I'm hoping to coordinate the preparation of two tofurkeys through the use of one energy-efficient heating source" (an Amish space heater, maybe?) hardly has the same metaphorical impact as the original. Then again, the "new and improved" tofurkeycide-is-painless approach offers a no more and no less clear testament to expediency and efficiency as does an old colloquial chestnut involving the simultaneous maiming of two examples of bird life.

Oh dude, I feel a poem coming on.