Get Incensed

“Aaaaaahhhhhh! Too many choices!”

Previously, in Freedom of Choice ….
Everyone loves freedom of choice but there’s a fine line between freedom of choice and sensory overload.

Leave it to marketing people to screw up one of the world’s simplest snack foods: potato chips. Slivers of fried potatoes with salt.

By the time I differentiate between baked, fried, plain, ridged or stacked in a can, I shouldn’t have to take a multiple choice test to decide if I want the taste of barbecue, mesquite, jalapeno and cheese, chipotle and lime or bacon and crystal meth.

This is a snack food. It’s not a wine tasting. Most of the time when you’re eating potato chips you’re either so wasted or so distracted you could put salt on a Post-It note and you wouldn’t notice the difference until your lips stuck together.

So, after spending an hour and forty five minutes just reading through the choices I have in the deodorant and snack aisles … I have even more choices to make before I get out of the store. Still to decide … the choice between paper or plastic; cash, credit or debit; or whether you want to get in the checkout line staffed by the emo chick or the white dude with dreadlocks.

And one last note for the old guy in the express check-out line who is always ahead of me … CARRY SOME GODDAMN CASH!

You’re not impressing me with your credit rating when you buy a box of Polident and a newspaper with your Visa card.

Here’s the new MasterCard commercial … Pack of Dentyne Ice: $1.25. New York Times: $0.50. Me whacking you upside the head with the plastic divider used to separate groceries: Priceless.

With 100 different brands of everything, it’s only a matter of time before a single supermarket declares for statehood.

All these choices and only 24 hours in a day. Frankly, I just don’t know how Mormons do it…

potato chips, Mastercard, Mormons