Shopping Weirdness

 

Okay, I should stop being dumbfounded by Halloween displays in July, but I recently saw a couple of things in stores that left me scratching my head.

          I was standing in the check-out line at my grocery store when I spotted this:

          The Coinstar kiosk now apparently does more than turn those nickels from the couch cushions into folding money. Crypto coins! Maybe my problem is that I will never understand crypto money. At least wampum was tangible. And the shekel was valued based on its relation to a particular weight of barley. Tangible.

          Granted, as an English major whose College Board scores in math and English were more than 200 points apart, my finance skills are minimal at best, but money that floats through the ether without landing in anyone's hand makes no sense to me.

 

          In another shopping moment, I was standing in line at Marshalls when I saw this:

          I grew up surrounded by such a cloud of cigarette smoke that our dentist once asked me at 11 years old if I smoked. All the pictures from my grandparents had to be re-framed because the mattings were yellow. I did flirt with smoking myself for two years in college, but that was it for me. 

    My Uncle Sam did smoke a pipe, which was pleasant up to a point, but I doubt if I’m ever going to get so nostalgic that I’ll be spritzing the living room with this product.