Programming from the Ministry of Choice (Minichuz)

Patronizing Bed, Bath and Beyond, as I did this morning, makes me think about sex. Not because of the products sold there, but rather for the sensation of being expertly serviced by an experienced prostitute.

In New York City, you know something is wrong when everyone starts greeting you and smiling helpfully. This is not how things are done here—the teenagers only say hello to someone my age when they are rolling a joint and hope to distract me. (Instead, they give themselves away.)

The store itself is a model of scientific gigantism. It overwhelms you with the vastness of its consumables stacked from floor to ceiling in all directions like a Gothic cathedral built to praise domicilic, rather than celestial, bliss.

The cheery helpfulness, however, breaks down when you actually start to look for the product you think you want. Since there is no immediately apparent logic to the organization of the goods, you wander through the columns of housewares and bedclothing, tempted between the Scylla of table furnishings and the Charybdis of toiletries in multiple colors.

This is all calculated down to the last wrong turn into a dead end of shower curtains, no doubt, including the confused trek back to the cash registers, which would stump Hansel and Gretel even with breadcrumbs.

Breathing heavily, you eagerly seek to fork over your cash and escape intact, but now the computer Gorgons want your zip code and a few moments to browbeat you into more purchases before release.

The recently closed hardware store in my neighborhood wasn’t much to look at, and the ancient family of shopkeepers who stood guard over its merchandise was never a friendly presence. Still, we had our exchanges, both commercial and casual, and the experience was one of mutual satisfaction of needs.

Today, acquiring the necessities of life often entails an eerily programmed foray into a frozen world run by machines and mechanized bipeds. Ironic that the enormity of ‘choices’ presented to us, to select from an endless array of shiny packages mass produced by Chinese slaves, should occur in an environment so calculated and prearranged down to the last icy detail.