Voila! C’est ca!

Sylvia Shawcross

Oh for heavens sakes! It took awhile but I finally figured it out. They have discombobulated their desires into a substitute agenda because they can’t face what they really really want. They are saying they want us to eat bugs but the truth is, they want us to “be” the bugs.

They’re building us insectariums in the desert, experimenting on us with mRNA technology, herding us into buzzing flocks at protests, possibly spraying us with things in the skies and watching us as we scatter and gather.

They’re even trying to grow us in tanks to sit on the coffee table as a conversation piece.

We are what we eat. We are their bugs. Whoever “they” are. But never mind all that.

The whole point of this new abnormal world is efficiency of herd rather than tolerance of eccentricity which is what they call individualism/sovereignty now.

It is said that the most horrifying phrase ever is “we’re here from the government and we’re here to help.” Well… that’s not true anymore. Now it’s “we’re here from your favourite corporation and we’re here to make your life easier.”

Admittedly it took me a while to figure this out because in the old days the corporations really DID want to help you in order to help themselves but nowadays they want to help themselves by “convincing” you they’re helping you when in fact they are not. They’re very good at it.

See, I thought I had a new friend.

Every time I logged into my bank account a lovely little note would come up to tell me how I spent my money that month. It was all very carefully categorized into things like shopping, groceries, recreation, entertainment etc. To help me of course. And who doesn’t need a friend like that?

At first.

Then it started turning into nagging. Then it actually just ended up tormenting me. And it still is. I’m being held hostage to a nasty little bank computer that is telling me that I’m spending too much on groceries.

Well… duh!

What does that damn bank friend expect from me? I did what here in Canada our Deputy Minister Chrystia Freeland said to do during such trying inflationary times and gave up my Disney+ account but that didn’t even cover the cost of two chicken boobs without skin. And that was non-organic even.

This is not to say we shouldn’t all be grateful to Freeland for her advice. When Prime Minister Trudeau announced new government bonds available to support the Ukraine, someone asked if the Ukraine tried giving up their Disney account. (We’re nothing if not helpful, the great unwashed masses. They should really listen to us. We wouldn’t be in this great mess if they did.)

So anyway, my bank friend taught me to buy beans instead of chicken, give up all entertainment and shopping and turn off the furnace and winnow down my prescription meds and I should be grateful.

I’ll either be healthier or dead I figure so what’s to lose given that if I’m dead I won’t be alive to miss Indian Chicken Curry Murgh Kari. And I really really miss Indian Chicken Curry Murgh Kari.

And I can’t complain now. They are banks. They have my money. They also know everything about me.

Then as fate would have it (or is it the WEF?) I made another friend. This new friend sort of snuck their way in over the last few years.

The grocery store about five miles north of me as the crow flies is a fairly new place but with familiar workers from the region. During the pandemic I got used to ordering my groceries online and having them delivered. A wonderful proposition particularly in winter.

And I would always get these calls when Hazel or someone else would say “Syl, we’re out of fenugreek but I heard you can use licorice extract and cardamon as a substitute” and I would happily agree and we’d chat about the weather and the latest local headlines. Then one day they called and said I couldn’t use them anymore.

Sadly, I’ll admit I was devastated. It’s not like you can find a person to talk about fenugreek and the weather with every day without someone going on about child labour and climate change.

As fate would have it, as it always does with me, I’m on the boundary line. I’m feeding deer in the backyard but I’m apparently in the city now.

I can no longer order my groceries from the new store 5 miles down the road. I can only order it from the new service which fills the orders in Montreal (102 miles away) and ships it to a place in Ottawa (21 miles away) which then ships across the provincial border to me. I’m not sure how but this is going to save the climate.

Because as it happens I live in the one province in Canada that unveiled this new concept to the usual online grocery shopping.**** They cleverly named it “Voila”.

So clever because it is that lovely word in English that gives you that feeling you get when you finally fold a fitted sheet and put it on the shelf and hands on hips say “There! Voila!” Or the word you use to comfort a child, “there there” you say. All those good feelings. Who wouldn’t want this as a friend?!

Well. I didn’t. Not at first. I was in mourning for my old grocery store. But then we got an ice storm and I wanted cocoa. And so I went online. And they told me what I was getting and when I was getting it and phoned me when they were 10 minutes away and arrived with a brand new truck with Voila written on it and in the back they had shelves with red bins and refrigerators and all sorts of fancy packaging.

And they brought the red bins to the door and they were filled with little brown bags. A lot of bags because none of them were very full even though you’d think they could fill them easily as they are half the size height wise of the usual brown bags. And the bags are made in Mexico and they’re very flimsy. That’s probably why they’re not full when you think of it. Or it was probably filled by a robot. A person wouldn’t pack that way methinks.

And so it was, just like that, the very next day I had my cocoa. And orange juice. And canned kidney beans. No fenugreek this time. All so very efficient.

But then… The machine started telling me what I could and couldn’t order. In the beginning just telling me it was out of stock. Then it started telling me I couldn’t order that. As if it was personal. “I” couldn’t order that but others could apparently is what I concluded although I haven’t tested that yet because I don’t know anybody else fool enough to be ordering Voila in a Voici world.

And this always happened with the red meat. They’d tell you you could buy a steak for $15.94 instead of $19.94 and you’d happily order it for the month thinking of cutting it into cubes for Sundays when they’d tell you you can’t have that. No alternatives. But it was right next to the veggie burger kielbasa. That was cheaper. Not much cheaper but cheaper nonetheless. They never seem to run out of that.

I’m just grateful at the end of the day to be able to buy food at all still.

But my new friend is very controlling. Tidy and efficient too. But very controlling. Just like my other banker friend. And the snow is coming. And I’m alone to cope with my two friends. And I can’t complain. They’ve got the goods on me.

Here’s an earworm courtesy of Matt from the chat:

Favourite quote from last week’s opinion comments: Tonyopmoc “Probably in the pub tomorrow, life goes on, I try not to cry – Tony”

Syl Shawcross lives in Quebec Canada.

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