We can’t sell you nothin’

I am almost afraid to men­tion this. But in my undy­ing attempt to make sense of the world, I feel it nec­es­sary to involve oth­er con­spir­a­tors in my quest. I have myr­i­ad philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions about my day which test epis­te­mol­o­gy and metaphysics.

Help.

I went to the drug­store today to pick up med­i­cine. The task seemed sim­ple enough until the drive-through’s speak­er said: “Our pow­er is out. Our com­put­ers don’t work. We can’t sell you nothin’.”

I drove off with­out a harumph, exer­cis­ing my high­est Platonic ideals, but a twinge of absur­di­ty crow­barred its way into my psy­che. Indeed, it would be impos­si­ble for the phar­ma­cy to sell me “noth­ing.” The voice’s dou­ble neg­a­tive was, in fact, legit­i­mate. The retort would apply whether the pow­er was on or off, com­put­ers work­ing or not. I was shak­en by the injec­tion of exis­ten­tial pro­fun­di­ty into my day.

The encounter remind­ed me of the insan­i­ty of how to say “I do not know any­thing” in Russian:  “Я ничего не знаю,” lit­er­al­ly, “I noth­ing do not know.” Don’t ask me why I was sit­ting in a park­ing lot in Winchester, Kentucky, think­ing in Russian. I will have to install a micro­phone in your char­cu­terie board if you ques­tion me too persistently.

I car­ried my unre­al­ized (American) pre­scrip­tion aspi­ra­tions from the drug store park­ing lot to the gro­cery store, hop­ing the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of my intent would erase the pre­vi­ous dou­bly neg­a­tive musings.

A huge Class A motorhome with a Jeep Wrangler hitched to its bumper was parked across many lanes in the gro­cery lot. We have all seen numer­ous such con­fig­u­ra­tions threat­en­ing our high­ways. The con­found­ing fea­ture of today’s arrange­ment was the attach­ment of a trail­er-deck-boat-out­board-motor com­bi­na­tion to the Jeep’s rear. The scene was a triple neg­a­tive, test­ing the lim­its of physics, the rule of law, and Darwin himself.

I was hop­ing for relief from such an exis­ten­tial assault with some seri­ous cart-push­ing. All was fine until I fin­ished self-check­out. The screen flashed before me: “Help is on the way.” I hadn’t asked for help, but the prospect seemed invit­ing, giv­en the deep trau­ma inflict­ed by the dri­ve-through voice and the RV-car-boat-snake-hybrid.

“It thinks you didn’t scan the sign in the back of your shop­ping cart,” the pleas­ant gro­cery per­son informed me. “The cam­era sees a lot,” she said.

The encounter was the per­fect finale for my after­noon in the mag­ic the­ater with the Steppenwolf. “It thought,” I didn’t scan some­thing “it saw” in the back of my cart. The pic­ture in the back of the cart was an adver­tise­ment for a smil­ing real estate lady.

I hadn’t scanned her pic­ture for a pas­sel of rea­sons. She wasn’t cot­tage cheese. She didn’t have a bar code. I don’t need a real­tor (I’m not mov­ing). It would have been a might for­ward to point my scan­ner in the direc­tion of a com­plete stranger, etc. I insist­ed to the gro­cery per­son that I should blame the real estate lady for the camera’s mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion and elec­tron­ic rebut­tal. She seemed fright­ened by my sug­ges­tion and moved away quick­ly to help anoth­er customer.

On reflec­tion, it was per­fect­ly plau­si­ble that a con­spir­a­cy between store man­age­ment and the real estate com­pa­ny could have paused my check-out to help me notice an adver­tise­ment. “They” know you need gro­ceries and that you will need to sell or buy a house even­tu­al­ly. “They” can make the cam­era see what­ev­er they want it to see.

There is noth­ing meta­phys­i­cal about cor­po­rate attempts to fling com­merce into our lives. Too fre­quent­ly, they are experts at sell­ing us nothin’.