Choice

I’ve ventured into Costco territory once or twice on here in the past. It’s one of those places, a bit like/a lot like Ikea, which I kind of love and loath in equal measure.

I go to Costco about every ten days, on average, I’d say. I tend to dash in, grab what I want and dash out again, usually just after opening before the place fills with, well, people. I love the fact that I can buy 10,000 chicken breasts and a 67-inch flat-screen television under the same roof. The other week, I noted that I could even buy a surfboard. I bet they positively fly out of the doors. At least, I think they were surfbords. The boxes were about twice the length of my car. I hate the fact that other people are allowed to shop at the same time as me.

I know I’m going to lapse into full-on grumpy old man mode, but let me just get this off my chest. There is a chiller cabinet. It has about a billion cartons of milk awaiting customers. One certainty of a trip to Costco is that I always buy milk. Always. When I say a billion cartons, of course I mean a fucking shedload, all produced and packed on the same day, or (if I’m being realistic and reasonable) perhaps a day or two apart. The ‘use buy/best before’ date is invariably approximately a month away. Today’s cartons: 31st July 2020. See? Just what is it, then, that persuades every other purchaser of said white gold to stand around for five minutes, sorting through the boxes before finally selecting a pair of cartons that seems to fit their selection criteria? They are all the fucking same! “Just pick up the cartons and get out of my way, you imbeciles! Oh, and if you hurry, you might just be able to enjoy another free morsel of plastic American cheese, but you’ll have to queue for ten minutes. Fear not, you will make up the time on the way home when you ignore all the sodding red lights for which you can’t be bothered to wait!” That’s how it goes in my head. Thankfully, my Chinese has not yet advanced enough beyond the confident ordering of a cup of coffee in a 7-11, but the day will surely come when I can vent my spleen in tone perfect mandarin with gay abandon. Milk ditherers of Taiwan, you have been warned!

You know what? I think Gay Abandon would make a good name for a character in that novel I’m never going to write. She’s a down-at-heel journalist, just about to break a story that will change her fortunes. I’ve yet to figure out the story. You might want to check back in about three years. Gay’s got legs, I reckon.

Now, that has reminded me of something else. Back in my university days, there we were sat in a lecture about something. Well, it may have been about other. Yes, other. That was it. Either way, the lecturer made a comment/observation/assertion about the male gaze. Because I’m rather lazy, I’ve just half-inched this from Wikipedia, but it is kind of crucial to the anecdote:

“In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.”

My dear old (then young) mate, Tom, was on a different planet. There he was thinking, “what’s all this got to do with male gays?” Oh, how we laughed. English is such a brilliantly awkward language.