#397 Holy Water Batman!

When they look back from some distant time they probably won’t notice but one of the most significant things about the 21st century is available right now at your local Costco. No, I’m not talking about frozen pizza mini-quiches or six mattresses bundled in one shrink-wrapped package. I’m talking about bottled water. I have here in my hand a coupon and it’s actually from Fred Meyer. It’s one of those coupons the cash registers automatically spit out at the end of a transaction. Usually for something you’ve just bought and don’t plan to buy again for a while. You know, you just purchased the mega half-yearly size of Windex refill and out comes a coupon for it that expires next month. Anyhow, this coupon was for bottled water—apparently the Fred Meyer brand, as the name was First Choice water. First Choice water and Costco water and Western Family water all taste pretty much the same to me, which is not necessarily good, but far better then the chlorinated stuff currently coming out of my faucet. Don’t get me started on that. Cause the bad thing about chlorination at the faucet is it also means chlorination at the tube that leads into my refrigerator, which means chlorinated ice, which means that even if I do use bottled water for drinking I still have to cool it with poison ice. All because the city is worried about a few coliforms. Well you know what? Coliforms make a lot better tasting ice. Anyhow this coupon for bottled water at Fred Meyer was for a whole dollar off any 35-pack of water. So setting aside for a moment whether that meant 1, 2, or 4 bottles free, why would anyone produce anything in a 35-pack? I don’t know of any other product that comes prepackaged that isn’t divisible by two or four. You got your dozens, your six packs, your 24 to a case. Why 35? Our country is not built to survive on items packaged in multiples of 5. Like the classic observational humor: Why do hot dogs come in packs of 6 and buns come in packs of 8? Are the 2 extra buns are for people who just want to have a sauerkraut sandwich and hold the dog? But at least somewhere down the line, say at 24, you can even the whole thing out. 3 packs of buns and 4 packs of hot dogs and voila, everyone gets to do the tubesteak boogie. There is something incredibly un-American about packaging things in a group of 35. In fact, it sounds almost French. Maybe even Canadian. Like they’re tired of that whole American cultural hegemony thing and they’re not only going to print their labels in French and English instead of Spanish and English like us, they’re going to use whatever multiple they want when they package the stuff too. Take that America. We’ve got curling and tundra and Anne Murray. We’ll pack our water any dang way we want. And we’ll fill it with the amount of fluid we want too. So this time you can follow the liter.
America, ya gotta love it.