In hearsay news (not fit to print, but just dandy for blogging): alleged class war going down at my local supermarket. I had come by on Saturday to pick up some rice and some Red Bull when I noticed that the enormous makeshift nursery that adjoins the supermarket’s parking lot was trashed.
The nursery wasn't big business: subsistence level merchants usually just sat in the sun and offered people flowers, bulbs, carrots, and other other assorted chotchke. Merchants' dogs would run back and forth and bark at cars. But Saturday morning pots were shattered, plants are uprooted, and even the medium sized trees looked machete'd.
I came back on Sunday to get some PB and some J. I was sitting shotgun in a friend's car, looking for an open parking spot when we noticed a very a minor ruckus down the road: some people marching with the eviscerated branches held over their heads, some other people yelling at them.
My reporter instincts kick in (a full day hours after first noticing the vandalism—you can’t teach that kind of instinct) and I asked an enormous Kenyan standing nearby what was going on.
“The supermarket wants to extend parking lot, so they sent some men to destroy the plants Friday night.”
“No [expletive]ing [expletive]?” The big guy glanced down at me quizzically. The tiny confrontation quickly dissolved, and we wealthy whiteys resumed shopping.
Got home, and saw Roman the safari coordinator from Slovakia sitting on the couch. Just this morning, Roman had sent his wife and freakishly cute 7-month old daughter back to the coast. He now appeared to be bored out of his skull. I offered him my computer and summarized the DVDs he's wasn't familiar with.
“You want to watch ey movie too?”
“No, I'm going to just read.”
“What day hail you reading?” Enter my full-time housemate: “John ez reading. I em watching one awf his DVDs. You want to watch?”
Housemate: “Which one?”
“Pee.”
Me: “Pi.”
Roman: “It’s a science fiction movie. About a man obsessed with pee.”
“Pi.” It’s a freaking episode of Perfect Strangers over here.
