allston

my efforts to avoid working on these papers reach new heights of creativity almost on a daily basis. today, i took a short run out into allston and discovered an abundance of ethnic produce. most of it was slavic, because i found an emporium dedicated to foods and beverages of the former soviet union (bazaar, if anyone's interested). it was the first time i'd ever seen 5-gallon jars of sour cherry compote or 24-packs of 2-gallon bottles of orange-flavoured kefir. the kefir pack was so heavy it had a label asking purchasers to alert a store employee to come by with a forklift. mystifyingly, there was an entire wall of assorted salts and sugars, all of which the nice (ukrainian) shelf-stocker said were the normal, unflavoured variety, as well as an entire section of milk imported from poland (i checked). the deli department also had sizeable pile of smoked sturgeon sitting in a chillcase next to a stack of salmon slabs. then i stopped in a dollar tree and was blown away (again) by the buying public's seemingly-limitless capacity to consume cheap crap. does anyone really want 10 pairs of giant plastic scissors that don't cut, in your choice of obnoxious neon colours? or a 100-pack of disposable christmas mantlepiece reindeer ornaments made of styrofoam covered in silver and pink glitter?