Big-ass link roundup

7 awesome links, just for you — exploding tacos, sandwich puzzles, butt sniffers and more!

My List, My Life

Here’s something new: An essay by a guest bogger!

Shopping etiquette — in Saudi grocery stores and elsewhere

Here’s a quick roundup of highly sophisticated thoughts on grocery store etiquette.

Chuck Yarborough learns respect for the shopping cart

Fix shopping carts, or use them to do crime? That is the question.

He fits the bill

“A Huntington Beach man is part of the secret army of federal workers who check on goods that make up the Consumer Price Index.”

Just the Thing To Carry Your Conscience In

“If you are reading this anytime after dawn on Wednesday, you are probably too late to make a fashion statement and simultaneously keep the world safe from plastic bags. At 8 this morning, 15 Whole Foods stores in the New York area were to start selling $15 cotton bags by Anya Hindmarch, a London designer [...]

A Long Line for a Shorter Wait at the Supermarket

“Show New Yorkers a checkout line and they’ll tell you whether it’s worth the wait.
Starbucks at 9 a.m.? Eight minutes, head to the next one down the street. Duane Reade at 6 p.m.? Twelve minutes, come back in the morning.
But now a relative newcomer to Manhattan is trying to teach the locals a new rule [...]

The Best Supermarkets in the World

“American supermarkets take notice! This is what a supermarket SHOULD look like! MPRIES is a family owned Austrian supermarket chain that employs up and coming architects to design the most amazing supermarkets I think I’ve ever seen. They use interesting materials, exciting and unique lighting, and each store has its own site specific design. Attention [...]

Presenting milkeggsvodka.com!

Hey everyone, I made a little web site to help promote the release of my new book, Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost & Found. The book is basically the analog version of this site, featuring hundreds of hilarious discarded grocery lists (along with my even more hilarious commentary). Click here for more info.

Anyway, the [...]

If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?

“The Japanese are sentimental about their noodle soup – it’s the working-class food that nourished the nation in the bleak days after World War Two. Ramen chefs are TV celebs, in a country that devotes more broadcast time to cookery than even we do. I asked the young pilgrims just what they valued above all [...]

A grocery store nightmare

“I would think there are certain rules that apply to grocery shopping. Not doing it naked would be one of them. Stealing someone’s cart would be another.”

Our shopping trolley shame

“Does this scenario sound at all familiar? You go haring off to the supermarket because ‘there’s nothing to eat’. You pile your trolley satisfyingly high — after all, who goes to the supermarket to buy three carrots and a carton of soup? You notice a couple of new lines — something photogenic and organic looking [...]

Grocery stores: Living hell or masochist’s heaven?

“Grocery shopping gives me agita. Right after I select a shopping cart I have to pop a handful of Tums. The worst is when you hit the supermarket for one item — the egg that completes your chocolate cookies or a loaf of bread for your lasagna. ‘I’ll be right back,’ you say to your [...]

Memories of grocery stores are all that remain from years ago

“Everyone has to eat and it seems that most people have stories about where their food came from, especially stories from many years ago when both Denison and Sherman were a lot different. Almost none of the grocery stores of the earlier days still are around and memories of where they were located are all [...]

February is Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month

“Most grocery stores have seen it: a forlorn shopping cart miles away from the store, complemented by a shrinking supply of carts. Often, stores count their losses and move on, knowing a missing cart here and there is expected, but perhaps that trend will reverse this month and people will actually return stranded carts they’ve [...]

Be It Ever So Homespun, There’s Nothing Like Spin

“After shopping for dozens of products in places as varied as food co-ops and convenience stores, I’ve uncovered the essential elements of a greenwashed product. Start with a gentle image of a field or a farm to suggest an ample harvest gathered by an honest, hard-working family. To that end, strangely oversize vegetables or fruits [...]

The youngest grocer in America

Holy crap!

The Systematic Inefficiencies of Grocery Paths

“…researchers visited stores and calculated the ‘optimal paths’ among products, the most efficient routes necessary to acquire these items and then leave the store. They then studied how 1,000 shoppers adhered to these routes. Even allowing for customers’ lack of knowledge about the exact location of specific products, shoppers tended to spend more time in [...]

Kids, Sufjan, elves and XMAS

It’s Christmas morning and here at GLC HQ we’re waiting for the kids to wake up, listening to the Sufjan Stevens “Songs For Christmas” box set and wondering what we’d look like if we Elfed ourself. Merry Christmas!

Words of wit and wisdom

GLC visitor Shelley wrote a while back and shared this story that I thought was good enough to share with all y’all…
Bill, I’m groovin’ on the shopping lists, and felt moved to share this story:
When I was in college, I went to a poetry reading by William Stafford, one of my favorite poets. It was [...]