BACK TO BIZARRO ----WAY

Okay, back to the original point of this sorry excuse for an edgy, postironic log -- namely recording for all posterity the strange goings-on at our decidedly creepy neighborhood grocery store.

So it's Saturday night, a few minutes before close, and I'm wandering the aisles of the store. And I come upon one of the many life-size cardboard cutouts of pharmacists they've scattered throughout the Bizarro ----way. Presumably the idea is that when you're standing in the crackers aisle, trying to decide whether the Triscuits are worth 89 cents more than the house-brand Woven Wheat Thins(tm), you see the pharmacist cutout out of the corner of your eye and suddenly remember, "Oh! Almost forgot to pick up a spare refill of Prozac." It's what they call the "impulse buy" in the action-packed retail world, and let me tell you, nothing screams "impulse" more than federally regulated medications that require a prescription from a licensed medical professional.

But as always, I digress. So I catch the cutout out of the corner of my eye, and I notice one little thing, no big deal: It doesn't have a head. Okay, so maybe I'm a grownup and that shouldn't freak me out. But then, you haven't been in this particular store a few minutes before close when the only other person in the store is standing in front of the wine section, jaw agape, and hasn't moved in about 5 minutes.

All in all, it was about par for the course for a Saturday night.