I went to the farmer’s market in Berkeley. Farmer’s markets are strange, because the places that have the most farmers generally don’t have farmer’s markets. I grew up in a state where every other person around me was a farmer, and they barely had vegetables. I think attempting to open a farmer’s market in my home town would get you thrown in prison for being a communist.
Berkeley can be weird sometimes. I think they’re the only city that banned nuclear weapons. And they changed the name of Columbus Day to “Indigenous Peoples Day” or something like that. I don’t give a shit either way, it’s just sometimes a bit much.
So next to the locally sourced organic vegan lard tent, there was an empathy booth. I don’t know if it cost money or not, but it said something about the people there listening to anything you told them, without judgment or offering any advice.
My thought was that I should go up to them and lay some heavy trip on them, to see what it would take for them to crack. You know, like “I’ve got this dude chained to the furnace in my basement. We’ve been waterboarding him for hours, but I’m thinking about cutting his head off now. It just makes more sense. I’m trying to find a Wal-Mart around here to buy a chainsaw, but I’m not having much luck. Maybe I’ll just use a butcher knife. Is that knife sharpening dude here today?”
But I really needed a diet coke. The closest thing I could find to diet coke was a place selling some kind of locally-brewed kombucha, so I left.