Thoughts on toilet paper

I ran to the store to pick-up toilet paper recently. You would think this would be a simple task until faced with at least thirty choices for toilet paper: quilted, fluffy, extra strength, double ply, extra soft. I mean toilet paper? I spent almost a half an hour weighing my choices. (for toilet paper!?!) What is the difference between quilted and soft? Would I get a rash if I used one over the other? Should I get one with butterflies or seashells?

I do not need so many choices, it only complicates what otherwise could be such a simple decision. And who are these people who decide to market toilet paper? Do they sit around tables discussing the benefits to extra quilting? Do they do scientific studies and do they have photos?(eew) I find life’s decisions to be challenging enough as they are let alone having to face an entire aisle at a jumbo supermarket dedicated to products used to wipe waste from my behind.

What did people do fifty years ago when I am sure they did not have so many choices for such mundane things? Did my great grandmother sit around day after day and complain that her rear end hurt and that she wished they would invent something softer to wipe her derrier? Who decided it was time to graduate to a hundred million options? And when did it happen?

If the options are there to empower me and give me freedom I don’t find it empowering, I just find it annoying. If anything it is usually when I have forgotten to eat lunch and am on the verge of low-blood sugar hysteria, that I find myself faced with what was deceptively supposed to be a quick and easy decision. Easy?

Instead, I am almost in tears because the one thing I don’t want to have to think about with all of the other complications that occur in today's modern world and on a very empty stomach is toilet paper.

But the second I go to close my eyes and reach for the nearest roll on the wall, something small inside nags at me, what if extra quilted, fluffy, four ply, two hundred extra sheets, really is better? Is it worth two dollars more better? What if the cheaper stuff chaffes my behind and I have to walk around precise and stiff wincing if I shuffle my legs the wrong way and people keep asking me about my biking accident?

I get angry at the home paper product companies. Don't they have anything better to do with their time? Don't they know there are people starving? People dying? People hoping just to make it through a blistering hot day without getting blown to pieces? Wait a second, don't I?

I finally compromise and buy one of the middle to better options--of course a thousand rolls more than I will ever need, but it saves me some money, I can get the extra quilted soft kind and at least lay my fears (although never my outrage) to rest.

I can’t wait until it is time for me to buy Kleenex or better yet, paper towel. And I don't even want to think about the tougher choices--You know--Such as toothpaste...

Flower Fields Fortell Future Nightmare

In Carlsbad California there is a place called the Flower Fields. A half mile off the 5 freeway, across an expanse of some acres there are rolling hills of flowers after flowers after flowers as far as the eye can see until you hit the new housing development that sits right on the edge at the top of the hill or look to the left and see the top of the outlet shopping mall. There is an $8 entry fee to see the flowers which I am sure helps the cost of mainenance. People come from all over the world to see these flowers or at least they stop there because the guidebook says it is one of the things to do in the San Diego area.

I wonder if this is the life we are heading towards. If soon we will have to pay to see a make shift nature. If everything will be hacked up and carved out by shopping malls and fast food stores, walmarts and housing tracts. And we will want to have nature, thirst for it more and more. But the only way we will be able to get it is in small controlled patches sponsored by various corporations. Instead of the flower fields it will be Best Buy’s buds and we will have Pepsi Pond and Coke a Cola Canyon. The rocks we find along the way will be marked with the proper trademark. This bit of nature was brought to you by…We will have to squint our eyes to pretend we don’t see the Mc Donald’s golden arches rising above the billowing trees at Walmart’s forest wonderland. We will see the ads for our havens on our tv sets and read them on road signs and we will begin to travel first in drivels and then in droves until soon we will have to wait in line and then pay admission. Soon only upper middle class families will be able to afford to enjoy nature.

Walmart will put all of the small nature reserves as well as the Federal government's national parks out of business. They will outsource help from Mexico and send everyone back over the border at the end of the day so as to avoid having to provide benefits or pay that nasty minimum wage. (oh wait, doesn't something like that already happen)

When we finally get to enter we will say to ourselves, “I almost feel like I am in a flower field by myself if I just squint my eyes enough and pretend I did not hear that man next to me belch or feel that jarring pain because I just got elbowed by a woman speaking some other language smoking a cigarette. Still I feel it--I can smell the flowers and hear the birds and run for miles and miles, I can imagine it as soon as I finish taking a photograph for this family of eight who are all wearing matching hats shaped like oak trees with chain restaurant and strip mall store ornaments hanging from the branches.

The beach near my house is part of Leucadia and is one of several stretches of beach sandwhiched between Solana beach and Carlsbad. I go frequently and always run south as I am relieved to see only beach when I look in that direction. But when I look North towards Carlsbad my beautiful view is blocked by a towering gray metal power plant contraption. Let us pray to God in seriousness that the same kind of people who make decisions for the city of Carlsbad are not the same ones who will make decisions for the entire world.