Another LA weekend Post, Effectively Punctuating How Pathetic Dave’s Life is Seeing as he’s Still Talking About It
On the drive down the 5 from the Bay Area to the LA Area, you go through parts of California that you forgot exist. They consist mostly of a whole lotta nothing, interspersed with random bits of absolutely zero. Little towns, created entirely out of fast-food joints, gas stations, and exactly one store named Mart do manage to randomly break up the monotony from time to time.
In one such Mart, there were the usual product offerings: sexist bumper-stickers, beef jerky (8 fun flavors), junk advertising the “city” you were now enjoying your afternoon in, and at the register was this: 
Yes, that’s an individually wrapped dill pickle. The repugnance that spread across Lara’s previously pretty face was palpable and she turned to me to say something in that too loud voice she usually uses when she’s confronted with something that simply should not exist. I was able to barely restrain her with a quiet “I know, they also have Dwight Yoakam…on tape.”
I can only imagine what sort of situations call for a soggy cucumber floating in it’s own fluid sac. I see the stereotypical white-trash 30-something. He’s dressed in ripped jeans, a stained wife-beater, sweat-stained hat advertising oil, and an oversized belt-buckle with his name on it. He stacks his pack o’ chaw and 6-pack on the counter, and then grabs the individually wrapped dill pickle on an impulse. He pays the bill in mostly change, lumbers out to his beat up Ford pickup with primer-paint doors, rotting plywood tailgate, and his mangy dog tied in the back with a length of frayed rope. He opens the driver’s-side door to let the air in to the non-A/C’d interior, and sits with one booted foot on the ground, and the other on the running board. He opens his pickle with his teeth, spilling the juice down his shirt unnoticed. He then squeezes the bottom of the package like toothpaste, popping the glistening vegetable up an inch. A big open maw with missing teeth chomps down, leaving an exaggerated Ruffles imprint in the now headless treat…
*sigh* In scouring the Net for a picture of these things, I also found this stuff. The doll is a must have.