04 August 2020

Karen With the Multi-Colored Hair

Anyone who says the entire state of Washington is filled to the brim with tree-hugging lefties hasn't been shopping where I have, less than 120km from CHOP (and on the same side of the mountains). Such as when I went to BigBoxStore for BigBoxCommodities (like generic/store-brand multivitamins and such) today.

First, though, a preemptive aside. I shop in BigBoxStores on occasion. Many, perhaps even most, of the commodity items they carry simply are not made in the US any longer… and if they were, those making them would not be in "good factory jobs." For items in those stores, the "good factory jobs" simply ceased to exist around 1983; they became bad factory jobs with few safety precautions (located in depressed areas), and later minimum-wage factory jobs with no health benefits. Then, too, there's the hidden caste assumption behind "Buy Local": That the local merchant caste is populated entirely with, umm, better human beings than are the small investors in index funds that in turn own significant portions of the BigBoxStores. Certainly in Central Illinois and Oklahoma, that was ardently not true; in the Bay Area and around here, it's dubious.

In any event, there I was, at the front of the line waiting for the next self-check station. Karen with the Multi-Colored Hair (mostly grey, but Seahawk Rave Green and blue tips) was talking very loudly on her cell phone, pacing about, while her husband did all of the work at the check stand. KMCH was talking to some uncle or other about how it was a shame that their taxes were going to payments to blacks in Chicago who were just lazy and drug addicts.

No, I'm not joking. At all. I expected to see an NRA button or the stars-and-bars on her oversized denim purse. Well, not there… but wait for it.

A checkstand opened up, so I started to walk toward it. KMCH, paying no attention to her surroundings (and, naturally, with her mask hanging down so she can talk more clearly), almost backed into me while repeating her line about lazy black drug addicts in Chicago, not really louder but somehow shriller. Apparently, the only social distancing she understands is social distancing from social graces. Or from brains, but based on that phone conversation she "shared" with me, and everyone else in the checkout area — many of whom were either cringing or looking daggers — that would be antisocial distancing.

So I finished my small checkout task — I could both read the sign that says "Express Lane, 15 Items or Less" and count the number of items in my basket, unlike KMCH and her husband with their stuffed-full cart — and turned to walk away. And discovered that KMCH really is named "Karen" from that continuing phone conversation. I shook my head and started down the aisle toward the exit, only to be nearly run over by KMCH and her husband, now moving well above the posted speed limit with their very full shopping cart.

I continued out to the parking lot, and passed KMCH — still on the phone — and her husband — still doing all the "shoppin' work." They were unloading their cart into a white suburban uuuuhsault vehicle. And that's where the NRA badge and stars-and-bars were. (And the license-plate holder indicating they were from Lynden. Go ahead — figure out exactly where in Western Washington Drumpf managed to hold a campaign rally in 2016.) I was tempted to ask if they had just bought more white sheets and some rope, but that would have meant choosing to get less than two meters away. Besides, they might have seen the University of Illinois sticker on my car and thought I was from Chicago…

Remember this when you hear Fox (or the cretins currently occupying the Black-slave-built White House) bitching and whingeing and moaning about how liberal Washington is, especially as this state's primary election results start coming in in the next few hours.