Hippyism

We have Sundays off, so one of the events that occurs is a trip to town to the grocery store to buy needed things. Socorro, New Mexico reminds me a lot of a slightly more upscale Winnemucca (sp?), Nevada, or any one of those other completely nonunique, semi-urban strips that dot that state. In other words, there's not a lot of anything to do "in town". We had been planning on going to Smith's, a grocery store, to shop, but as it turns out, there is a Walmart that just opened in the town, and everyone wanted to go there instead. So, after some grumbling the TAs consented to take us there, rather than to Smith's. I've only been to a Walmart once or twice before in my life, and it was a particular store in Utah that happened to only sell food; my past Walmart experience really couldn't come close to capturing the full essence of the store. Walmarts don't actually exist within the city limits of Portland, or even within a couple miles outside of the city because they always get shot down by a combination of high land prices, little flat, open land, and massive opposition by citizens and neighborhood associations. Given their notorious business practices, I was admittedly a bit disappointed to being spending my money there, but after seeing inthe same tater tots recycled in the dining hall through two breakfasts, lunch, and dinner, both "raw" and in a very sketchy casserole, I couldn't pass up the chance of obtaining something that actually looked like it came from a plant. It reminded me all too much of that classic scene in "Napoleon Dynamite".

Upon seeing the store, my first impression was an overwhelming sense of disgust. It was an architectural eyesore, essentially a giant, grey, brick box with a big, blue pentagon for a facade. Talk about hideous. When I entered, I gravitated toward the produce, and was not particularly impressed by the selection or prices. I did find some excellent peaches for $0.88/pound, and I bought a bunch. Yet the other food wasn't any cheaper than what one would pay at my normal grocery store in Portland. In addition to the peaches, I bought some apples, dried apricots, a small bar of the only decent-looking bar of dark chocolate in the entire store, some wheat crackers, and a mechanical pencil. In total I paid about $14. Unimpressed by the average prices and relative lack of selection, I met up with everyone else. There's nothing to make you realize how much of a hippie you are like going to Walmart with a bunch of teenagers from a random sample of places throughout the US. The other students had purchased a wide variety of candy and soda pop (ironically also available in the dining hall...), and one student bought a Foreman grill and over a kilogram of beef. Even the Italian student was so amazed by Walmart that he spent $50 on soda and junk food so that he could take pictures of it an send it to his friends in Italy. It turns out that you can buy 48 cans of soda for $10 at Walmart (roughly 20.83 cents per can). Apparently the strategy behind Walmart is that they have low prices for every type of crappy, homogenous, boring, and unhealthy food, and then jack up the prices and have a terrible selection for all the good food. What a worthless store...

Speaking of me realizing how much of a hippie I am, I was looking in the recycling bin in the dorms the other day, and I discovered that it was filled solely with things that I had put in it. Apparently no one from anywhere else in the country recycles...