I went to Costco yesterday because it was my birthday and I needed to a) get myself a birthday present and b) get some stuff for the apartment, as it contained about fuckall since I moved in to it last week. I�d gone to the market, which is really close by, but when you can buy in bulk rather than in piecemeal retail, it�s usually better. For those of you in the UK and elsewhere, Costco is a wholesale warehouse store where you can get outrageous deals if you buy 5 gallons of mustard and the like.
As I said, it was my birthday, and I was hell-bent (for leather!) on buying a new speaker system for my iPod, since having extreme speaker envy thanks to my last roommate, Jeremy, in Kansas city. The little Altec-Lansing system I had was nice insofar as it was really portable, it folded to the size of a book, could run on batteries, and was very lightweight. Fuckin� thing has been with me everywhere too. I�ve taken it to Israel 3 times, Canada 4 times, Mexico 5 times, and it�s traveled all across the country with me too, on every job from San Diego, California to Madison, Wisconsin.
The thing is though, much of the music I listen too has some auditory depth to it, and the little 3cm speakers just don�t really have the spine to rock my world sometimes, nor can they reveal everything that my music has to offer. When you want to rock, you want to rock, right?. And if I want to try and play my guitar over the music, it�s impossible.
Alright, so after gathering all my goodies, and filling my basket with stuff that I need to fill the Mother Hubbard�s cupboards of this empty apartment that I moved into, I was heading for the checkout when I noticed a bundle of socks. 12-pair of socks! Yes! The socks that I have are getting right threadbare or just worn out in the elastic and ready to fall down. They don�t last forever, after all, and this lot was fairly inexpensive.
After I got back to my apartment and had to slog all this shite up 3 flights of stairs, which took about 7 trips, I think, I spent the next bit putting things away, but first things first, the speakers! After some ambiguous instructions about how to set the time zone on the fucking thing, I figured it out ( I had to use the remote control) and I�m happy to report that they worked as well as I hoped, but better than I expected, and now I can happily rock my new socks off. Oh, the socks.
So just about the last thing I ended up putting away were my new 24 socks. I think it�s a good thing i waited, because it would have changed the whole mood. First there was a thigh-thick band wrapped round the socks, strangling them like a medieval corset. I began to peel it off realized it was taped, found the scissors, cut the tape, then tore the band and started again. At this point I realized that the inside of the sock corset was itself, tape. And holy balls, was it sticky. After the pressure was off, I was hoping that socks would shoot everywhere like some cartoon where the dryer exploded, but it was not to be.
While peeling the socks off the tape, I noticed that every 2 pair (not to be confused with Tupac) was connected with those annoying plastic worm tags that are the scourge of fat fingers the world over. So after spending 5 minutes detaping my sock pairs, now I have to perform surgery with my poultry shears, and those are the only scissors that I have, so that I can separate my conjoined sock twins. Not only that, I have to find the little maggot-size ends of said worm tags, which are the same color as my socks (natural camouflage, very clever).
All told, I think it took me over 10 minutes to unpackage my dozen socks and I have to ask myself. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? Is all that packaging really necessary? Why? Is it to prevent someone from walking up and pulling a pair out of the middle of the bundle? Are you serious? The goddamn things are so cheap anyway, that I don�t think it�s a worthwhile consideration, and the cost of the machines to tag, the tags themselves, the QC checks, and the socks that the tags ruin (which is why the QC checks are required in the first place) are SO much more expensive than any theft prevention. The superglue tape is enough, believe me.