Yesterday once again solidified my belief that grocery stores are like those big giant magnets from the Looney Toons cartoons. Here goes nothing: Yesterday, my boy and I made our regular biweekly run to the local grocery store (at midday no less. Cause we roll like that. We’re both freelance writers). And twice mind you, TWICE, I was accosted (at least in my mind I guess) by two senseless men who took it upon themselves to thoroughly ruin my most awesome grocery shopping experience.

The first accostment happened in the frozen seafood section. I was shuffling through a bunch of different bags of frozen shrimp in a giant bin, searching for the perfect size shrimp to use for my parmesan-crusted shrimp recipe (which I did find, btw, in the 20-30 count “Tiger Shrimp” package), when all of a sudden a guy resembling Cheech from the “Cheech and Chong” movies asked if he could help me. I smiled and politely answered no (once again, do I really look that pathetic?!).

But no, he just stood there. I guess my polite reply wasn’t enough to shoo him away. I really didn’t need his help. I was doing fine on my own! He asked again, more urgingly, “You knooooow, I REALLY don’t mind helping.” I snapped my head up from the bin, looked at him dead center in his eyes as if Satan himself had entered my body, and said as polite-forcefully as socially acceptable without being called a bitch (This is a fine line to follow btw, folks). “Listen guy, I really don’t need your help (!). So please leave me alone, ok??” He looked at me like a 2×4 had just been smacked into his face, and walked away.

Round II: I was in the baking aisle searching for some sesame oil to make my Kung Pao Chicken (are you hungry yet?). But here in front of my eyes was a literal train of overweight seniors, coming my way on the Rent-a-Carts available by our beloved, over-eating encouraging grocery store. The guy in the front looked about 60ish. Definitely not old enough to be dismissed for the comment that was about to fly out of his mouth. “Oh. My. God,” he said. “When I look at you, I feel SO sorry for you!” That was it. I had had it. I answered quickly and severely, “Not as sorry as I must feel when I look at you. Move along, old man. I don’t need your pity!!”

I think I might start ordering my groceries through Simon Delivers.

If you’ve never heard of Pandora.com you’re really missing out. I don’t work them, heck, I wasn’t even introduced to them by a web ad. I googled “internet radio” one day while bored at work and stumbled upon it. Little did I know what I was in for when I loaded this seemingly “blah” website…

Pandora.com was founded by Tom Westergen and The Music Genome Project (a group of music lovers, who in 2000 began organizing every song that’s ever been professionally recorded into a free online music database; creating the smartest virtual DJ ever). The site makes accessing music so easy and for me (a C6 quad with paralyzed fingers), this is a huge reason my heart shines amore on it Now….all my flumsy CD cases do is sit and collect dust.

To use Pandora, just follow these 2 easy steps: 1) Register and 2) Start creating your “radio stations.” The idea is that you put in either your favorite artist or favorite song, and then Pandora instantly starts playing songs that are alike musically to whatever “radio station” you just created. Their database is vast and picking an artist or song it doesn’t know can prove difficult (a good thing). Pandora even knew who Utada was (a famous Japanese pop star), so I could play Pandora at a Japanese-themed party I threw last July.

And Pandora is especially great for parties. It plays song after song unendingly, becoming your “Slave DJ,” so you can busy yourself with your drunk guests and soon-to-be-empty margarita pitcher. I just plug in my $20.00 speakers (from Target) into my laptop in the party space, and then let this smarty-pants-site do all the work. And if you compile an extensive “radio station” list (I can guarantee this will happen), you can put Pandora on “Quick Mix,” where it shuffles from radio station to radio station (playing two songs from each radio station at a time).

I rarely, if ever, pimp out a website, but this site had made my life so much easier; giving me seamless access to a butt-load of music (saying sayonara to opening CD cases with my pearly whites), that I simply had to do a blog about it.

So, if you’ve tried Pandora before, what are your thoughts on it? 

I must confess a constant paranoia of mine: Being exterminated because the rest of the AB-world has deemed me as unworthy of life. I worry quite often over the following scenario where some grand counsel has decided that since I’m a drain on society and cost more than I’m worth, and then bam, they shoot me dead. Now, this ridiculous paranoia naturally stems from the evil Nazi-era, where they went through with my greatest fear.

In the late 1930’s after Hitler game into power, German citizens were asked by the Government to voluntarily give their disabled children over to them, to be euthanized (which they persuaded the Germans into thinking was for the best for their children). But the Government wasn’t happy with just the children. Soon, disabled Germans living in Government-run institutions were being murdered under falsified reasons (secretly dubbed the “T4 Program”). Thousands of German families began receiving letters explaining that their family member had died of Pneumonia or some other fatal disease of the time, along with an urn (containing fake ashes).

Doctors and nurses all working at these institutions were forced to carry out these murders. It was a horrible, horrific time for these poor disabled souls. People of a variety of disabilities, ranging from genetic disorders, to paralysis, to deaf and blindness, to mental retardation, were all deemed “life unworthy of life,” and put to death, being that they could never get better. Can you imagine how scary it would have been for a high-quad who’s bed-ridden, yet highly aware of what was going on, knowing he was going to be put to death but not being able to run-away, stuck in his bed as if were a jail? The horror must have been suicide-inducing.

Now, not all disabled citizens were killed. Only the ones in institutions were, as they were at the whimsy of the Government. If you were lucky enough to live at home with family who took it upon themselves to care for you, you couldn’t be killed. The Government was ruthless, but they didn’t go so far to barge down people’s house’s doors and whisk their disabled relatives away. But if they did, perhaps that would’ve been the final straw and the Germans might have actually risen up against Hitler? Who knows in the end.

The Government by the end of the war stopped the program altogether after German soldiers were returning home injured, and therefore disabled, and they realized they couldn’t very well kill these men too. Their argument against the disabled had finally revealed it’s biggest fallacy: We all become disabled by the end of our lives. We can’t kill everyone. Oh these moronic, short-sighted Germans. Hell, Joseph Goebbles had a club foot and it was rumored that even Hitler himself had a diagnosed mental condition. It is well documented of how the Government hid Goebbels’ disability, being that he was Hitler’s right-hand man.

It’s been over 60 years since that Hell on earth has come and gone, but it revealed a very dark side of human nature. If it happened once, it could happen again. Part of me wants to take gun safety classes, but even then, my trigger finger is paralyzed. Maybe I should be a guard dog to be at my side 24/7. Yes, I’ll make it be a German Shepard. How bittersweet that would be.