Aldi as a Bizarre Parody of our own Consumption Habits

I find supermarkets absolutely fascinating. In a free market society we largely end up determining and reinforcing our own purchasing habits. When we step into a supermarket everything is custom-tailored to catch your eye, to make you want to buy it, to lay out in concise terms through clever packaging and branding just why you want it.

This is why Aldi is so interesting. Many supermarkets have a store brand, but it makes up such a small fraction of their sales that it doesn't really factor into the larger picture. While most supermarkets are filled with brand-name products, Aldi only has their own brand.

Now, if you are shopping at Aldi, you only have one reason to really be there... everything is dirt cheap. Why you're there and what you buy are pretty much predetermined by the time you walk in. So you won't be considering what particular brand or type of cheese you want, you get what they have: Happy Farms "Brand" Cheese. Everything sold in Aldi is distributed by Aldi, but nothing bears a giant Aldi logo like a Wegmans-brand food would. Instead, all the labels are poor mimicries of why somebody might purchase this item. For instance, their low-fat cream cheese has a "Fit & Active" brand. Anything that can be deemed even slightly Mexican food, it is under the brand "La Mas Rica!" The bread is labeled under the brand "L'oven Fresh."

To try and sum up what I'm saying, Aldi has these strange brand names not out of necessity but out of precedent. We expect to see so many varied brands at our supermarkets that if everything had a giant Aldi logo front and center on it people would be unnerved by it to the point where they would be uncomfortable buying it. So, all their food has to have fake branding and feign the desire to impress people into purchasing them. So their entire branding scheme is a parody of what we want to hear, but don't necessarily need to because we have to buy it anyway 'cause its so damn cheap.

This Nonsense I Noticed at the New Business School

You can't hear the administration talk about the new business school without hearing the words "green" or "beautiful." The school is meant to be a recruiting tool as well as make the campus look nicer over the course of the next few years. Many people debate whether or not we need new buildings, I personally believe that we need more academic buildings since we're so strapped for space as it is (with the exception of the frivolous athletics center... we're DIVISION THREE for chrissake). Yet with all these new wonderous buildings I have to ask myself, how much fiscal responsibility is the school excercising... and how much of this is really just a facade to attract new students?

I walked into the business school yesterday to see the most blatantly offensive use of money by this institution to date. Everything that is done has a reason to some extent, but not this. The coffee counter at the business school uses three HDTV plasma screens to display the menu options, and nothing else. Are they serious? I can't really wrap my head around this hypocritical joke of a display. This is wrong on two levels.

One: Why the hell would they spend $1500+ dollars for a screen, let alone three, to display how much my cheese danish is going to cost? The school has plenty of useless HDTV screens everywhere, but at least they run dynamic powerpoint presentations that must be informative to someone... this is just nonsense. Our tuition is going up every year, and in return we can look at televisions instead of a giant plastic menu billboard.

Two: This is green? This building that is supposed to be so energy efficient as if under the foundation its making love the earth with its giant recycled-steel appendage! So we're going to waste energy on powering three televisions. Never mind the fact that we're running low on iridium (a crucial ingredient in the world of computing), or the carbon emissions associated with producing more of these things... this looks ritzy for students entering the school. What a load of bullshit.

Oh, and these televisions won't last long. Since their background is white, and they never change, and they are on all day, they'll likely start to color-burn very quickly, branding an outline of the words "Cheese Danish $1.39" on it for all eternity.

I think we all deserve an answer as to why in the sam hell anyone would spend this kind of money and waste energy on this nonsense.

Reflections on my alcoholism at the dawn of a new age.

This Tuesday I turn 21. It is the magical arbitrary age where society-at-large deems me fit to drink. Lately I'll walk into a store purveying beer and just stare at the selection that will soon be more readily available. I can cut out the illustrious middlemen that I've brown-nosed for the last three years of my life. Soon I will truly be in control of my own destiny in regards to alcoholism. The thought made me ponder my personal history of various ethanols, and what it has brought me to.

I remember the first time I was smashed, I was 17. It was no ordinary night in any sense. Never much of a social animal, I never accumulated friends of the glorious age I will soon know. Nobody even "taught" me how to drink, I was only familiar with the concept of being drunk. Being me, I decided to make my own alcohol in the basement. I bought honey, a large pot to cook it in, and bread yeast. As a nutrient, I added one of my father's multi-B vitamins. It worked, I had alcohol, mead to be exact. I remember that smell radiating from the jug I used for fermentation, I'll never forget the sense of accomplishment I felt. I put the finished product in mason jars and brought it to my friend Eryk. We drank in his backyard at 2 AM, stumbling around enjoying each other's company and speaking of the pathetic women in our lives, unconcerned with the fact that the mead tasted like shit. I woke up on the floor of his room, I had the option of using the guest bedroom but I insisted on the floor.

I would brew mead several more times before I gave up during freshman year of college. I tried to make a four-gallon batch and let it ferment over winter break. While I was gone the fermentation froze (I'm assuming they turned the heat down to the point where it killed the yeast), and it was all worthless. By this point, I had suppliers of hard liquor, but I haven't reached this chapter yet.

The first time I blacked out was during a ski trip with various schoolmates. I was shooting hard liquor since 1 PM, and by 11 PM I was hugging a toilet. Between 9 and 11 PM they couldn't find me, I was sleeping under the beer pong table. Apparently, they forced me to vomit by making me shotgun a beer, that part I remember well (i took it in stride, btw). Eventually I vomited and they put me to sleep. When I woke up I was wearing a different shirt and the first person to greet me asked if I was alright. Not knowing what had happened, I started doing jumping jacks and smiling. He was horrified.

Okay, now I'm at this chapter. Once I got to college, I kept relationships with certain people solely to purchase liquor through them. This was the time in my life where I would get smashed on the weekends and wake up the next morning chugging water to stave off the dehydration. One economical poison was the illustrious Devil's Springs. I've had several great memories and some truly terrible ones with that particular drink. My worst being the loss of a new friend, we had too much and I woke up the next morning naked in her bed (oh I wonder how that happened and why!). The situation following that I handled so poorly, and that I didn't know what to make of the night's events, that we never really spoke again. She left the college and I haven't seen her since, I still think about her whenever I see someone reading J.D. Sallinger.

According to the law, I cannot drink until I'm 21. Well, I've been drinking since I was 17 and it has brought me the best of times singing Bohemian Rhapsody and dancing like I've never known. Along with this, it has brought me tremendous physical and emotional hardship. I have said things to friends I'll always regret. I have made a fool out of myself in more ways than I can count. I have tormented my body in the name of excess. There are so many stories I've left out of this post, all interesting but I can't type all of them. I must ask myself, would I have been any better if I could buy alcohol when I was 17? Would I have been better if I had someone around to teach me how to drink? I don't know, I don't even know how to feel about being the middleman for friends and a new generation of drinkers.

This Tuesday, everything will change.