That is a fantastic magic trick. It’s like Back to the Future, except with fewer Deloreans, and more Pox Parrots.

Awesome. Maybe I’ll find myself there. Pimply, gangly. Tie-dye t-shirt. Camo pants. Hot.

As for bacon: I am always happy with New Bacon. I do have two excellent purveyors of the Bacon Goodness (Saylor’s in Hellertown, and Blooming Glen in, well, Blooming Glen), but Good Bacon Near is happymaking.

– c.

Here’s a fun trick, though. If you visit the Q-Mart after 6PM on a Friday night…you actually go back IN TIME!!!! I kid you not. The date becomes August 22nd, 1991. You will notice that the local children all wear the fashions associated with it. Waterfall hair styles are prominent on the women while the men seem to be quite comfortable in their Zubaz pants. Vanilla Ice or Michael Jackson echo heavily in the very air that surrounds you…seeping into your pores and invading your bloodstream.

The only haven from this mystical crack in the time-space continuum is the comic book store. It seems shielded against the effects that Friday nights bring.

I strongly urge you to visit at that time. Also make sure you buy your bacon from Frederick’s Meats. It’s the best. I think drown their pigs in a vat of pure joy while wrapping them in mystical blankets created by Native American shamans who imbue them with the spirit and energy of Fozzy Bear.

Josh: Yeah, it’s weird that you no longer have to interact with anybody anymore. Even the meat counter. At our Giant, you can just ring it up electronically and you don’t even have to have someone handing you the lunchmeat — you come back in 10 minutes, and it’ll be in a little Plexiglass cubicle for your antisocial needs.

Did you ever get up here to the State Farmers Market when you lived in Charlotte? My favorite herb nursery sells there.

When I take a solo hike to the Acme around the corner from our apartment, I tend to take my iShuffle. I usually don’t get much since I’m on my own, meaning I can use the self-checkout lane near the exit. This means I don’t even need to interact with the cashier. In a way, the music keeps me from falling into the seductive sterility of such places. And then there’s Buy-N-Large Wal*Mart, which is another story entirely.

Produce markets, little mom-and-pop stores, they have a very different atmosphere. They’re more organic, more dirty. They feel a bit more like places inhabited by living things.

– c.

I miss that Down South attitude. Though, they can kill you with kindness, too. And you can sometimes hear contempt in the voice. Up here, everyone’s angry, though they’re honest about it.

I think I’d rather just be lied to, though.

– c.

I went home to NJ one time and told the cashier to have a great day and he looked at me like I had 8 heads.

And sneered.

We use Food Lion for grocery store stuff, which is an NC company that tries to use local for as much as possible. Gone are the Food Lion days of meat scandal exposes on the evening news. They frigging rock now.

I found the local farm stand (because the only big farmers’ markets are a huge distance away), and it was closed for the season already.

Bummed doesn’t even cover it.