Helpless at Kroger

And other meaningless thoughts on a snoozy news day

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We’re on the verge of Big Sports Things around here: The Reds are soon off summer vacation (did America’s Team go to DisneyWorld?) the Bengals resume their Super quest in a couple weeks, the futbol lads seek a return to their early-season phenomenal-ness.

But today’s another day standing in line at Kroger, waiting for the person with 500 items in their basket to finish at the self check-out. Which is where I was yesterday.

The older I get, the less I like dealing with inconsiderate people. That’d include Johnny Kroger, running a month’s worth of groceries through self check-out. One box of Froot Loops at a time.

While I’m on the fascinating subject of food shopping:

Why can’t Kroger have a means of telling me exactly where things are? Station a machine at a couple strategic spots in the store for supermarket losers like me, where we can type in “pepperoncini’’ and get its precise compass coordinates.

I spent, no lie, 13 minutes Tuesday wandering the desert seeking pepperoncini truth. I found it by the pickles. My wife owns Kroger the way the Bengals want to own the Chiefs. I’m not my wife. Give me a machine, please.

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At Kroger, I know where the beer is. I can find ground chuck and the checkout line. Anything else, I’m wandering the mayonnaise aisle 40 days and 40 nights, looking like Jack Nicholson, post-lobotomy, in Cuckoo’s Nest. Any of you nuts wanna look for the canned anchovies aisle?

Yum

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That said, I find that I Iearn new, fun things every time I grocery-shop. I’m like Adam in the Garden. (Organic apples to the right, just next to the shiitake mushrooms.) Everything’s new, all the time. Babies aren’t as curious as I am, wandering the aisles looking for arugula.

On Tuesday, I learned that arugula was not a Transylvanian vampire — Count Arugula!— but rather a leafy-green lettuce-y thing. Did you know that?

No, you didn’t. I mean, why would you?

Kroger, help a Mobster out. Give me a machine that tells me where the organic parsley is.

Now, then. . .

THE AIR IS PARALYZING. . . (Fie on!) those hosers from Canada. All they have up there are trees. I think their main export is bark. If anyone should know how to manage a tree fire, shouldn’t it be Canadians?

And yet here we, dealing with their smoke, still. And with high grass pollen and mold levels. Just stepping outside makes me cry. It really does.

Yesterday, all I was fully capable of doing was resting parallel to the grass. The mold knocks me out. Combine it with the other garbage, my lungs feel like Michael Spinks when he fought Mike Tyson.

Am I alone in this?

SPORTS? OH. A few singles up the middle:

REDS TRADES. Please no Michael Lorenzen. That’s a name that popped up in the local prints. I trust Nick Krall to resist the urge to Do Something as the deadline approaches. Pulling the trigger for the sake of it is bad business. Lorenzen was a very good dude, but he wouldn’t help the local rotation much.

The Reds don’t have the starters that Milwaukee or even the Cubs have. The Crew’s Five will get even better when Brandon Woodruff returns. That shouldn’t add itch to Nick’s trigger finger.

You’re going to have to relinquish a slice of young, cheap talent to get a good arm. Nobody’s taking Nick Senzel or Kevin Newman for a mid-rotation starting pitcher. Doing nothing would be better than giving into desperate temptation.

NO, RUN-DLC DID NOT DESERVE a spot on the all-star team. This was a popular sentiment in the past week or so, uttered by any number of baseball dignitaries. Their rationale was. . . he’s exciting! The world is awaiting his close-up!

No doubt.

So?

The Stars Game is already something of a personality contest. Let’s not make it more so. Allow it some small measure of cred and dignity. A month of a career doesn’t deserve starry recognition. End of discussion.

AND COREY DILLON IS A BENGALS FAMER. . . How silly the talk has been that has argued against this. Dillon isn’t a local HOFer because he said bad things about the Bengals. (Which were all true, by the way.)

He wasn’t a good soldier, the logic goes. So. . . no.

BS.

He was the best Bengals RB. Ever. He achieved that distinction while toiling for mostly terrible teams, behind mostly mediocre QBs. Back then, the Dillonator was a no-brainer for the Surly Hall of Fame. He was cantankerous and very difficult for a heathen media type to deal with. So?

To exclude your best-ever running back from your HOF because you didn’t like him would render farcical your HOF. Put him in yesterday.

BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING. . .

The people who rip Biden for what they see as his lousy economy are the same people waiting an hour to drop $120 for a family of four at Texas Roadhouse on a Tuesday night at 5:30.

I dunno ‘bout you, but I’ve never seen restaurants more crowded. I’ve never seen more 20-somethings buying more $8 beers at the numerous craft establishments around town. I’ve never seen more golfers willing to lay down 40 bucks and up for a round at a local public course. The course where I work, Hickory Woods, is packed just about every day, and has been since April.

If the economy stinks, give me more of the stink-age.

Fact is, the economy is doing well, certainly better than anyone else’s economy since COVID. Unemployment is 3.6 percent. The US economy has grown the most of any G7 nation since the beginning of the pandemic.

Thirteen months ago, the inflation rate was between 8.5 and 9 percent. Today’s it’s close to 4 percent. And all these victims of Biden’s economy are going out to eat.

I’M CUTTING THIS ONE SHORT, so I can concentrate on coming up with a new nickname/turn of phrase that Cincy Shirts can steal from me and put on a tee. . .

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Haven’t recycled this one in awhile. It’s pure, vintage Stones sleaze, from an album I don’t love (Beggar’s Banquet), but everyone else seems to.