Talk About Convenience!

I was at a gas station this afternoon, and ducked into the convenience store of it to pick up some crackers for the Small One, who had been rather vociferously requesting a snack for what seemed to be a very long time. ( I say "seemed" because it couldn't possibly have been as long as it felt, but Atlanta traffic tends to have a lengthening affect on negative interaction.)

Anyway, I strolled into this store, suspecting nothing out of the ordinary, and BAM! Just inside the door is a display of porno dvds. They were in plain paper sleeves, soit wasn't a lurid display or anything, but still, it surprised me. The sleeves were labeled "Adult DVD- $5.99" and underneath that there were four categories: Black, White, Asian, and Latin, with the appropriate choice circled on each flick. For the record, I didn't notice any "White" ones in stock, and I was wondering if that means they are MORE popular, thus sold out, or LESS popular, thus not kept in stock? Also, (and it should be noted that I know VERY little about porn), it seems to me that race is an odd way to categorize. I mean, shouldn't the choices have been, say "backdoor, girl on girl, straight, threesomes" or something like that? Why the race thing?

But of course I was not there to peruse the adult dvds, so I headed back to find the crackers. Wandered around the wrong aisle, and Ka-ching! Ka-ching! A row of big haired women, playing slot machines. They all turned and looked at me with annoyance, as though I were interrupting, and I felt like maybe I'd fallen into some weird Tom Petty video, circa 1985. I beat a hasty retreat, grabbed the crackers, and headed towards the register...

...and in front of the register, there was a big glass case, full of hookahs, glass pipes, and other instruments in which to smoke "tobacco", including a gas mask bong ("tobacco pipe", my Oldest reminds me) that looked like this:


When I got back out to the car and told Oldest about it, he had to go back in and see for himself. "I'd heard of a gas mask bong," he said, "but I believed it was an urban legend."