Olio

• I go to the grocery at least once every three days, not counting the longer, once or twice weekly trip to the natural foods store. It occurred to me today that if I changed the schedule so I went every day I could start a grocery-shopping blog with no shortage of material, ever.

• Today: What is the deal with baggers? Is there some sort of industry-standard hand/eye coordination testing scale, and if you score above "Glacial" you're disqualified? I just don't get it. I've done plenty of menial labor in my life and it always seemed to me that the faster you worked the faster the hours flew by. And the "Paper or plastic?" tap dance, which has now become an attempt to intimidate you into taking plastic--"Is plastic okay?" "Only if you're making my eyeglass lenses, sonny."--has become, somehow, a separate transaction of its own. You express your preference, and there's something like a two minute delay before the actual bagging begins, like the kid has to fill out a form first. At least they don't introduce themselves by name. The one I drew today was the poster boy for inertia. I loaded the milk, laundry detergent, Pepsi, three bags of cat litter, and wrote the check and he's still working on the second bag (of two). And the cashier now gets impatient and starts ringing up the next customer, and sort of shunts her stuff to the inside rail, like that's gonna keep this kid from getting things mixed up. Naturally when I got to the car I found that 97% of the total weight was in one of the bags. Which, in fairness, at least he double-bagged.

• Preliminary word has it that the big Fair semi-edible food treat this year is creampuffs the size of WNBA basketballs.

• And Emperor Governor Mitch "Just Who Is That Comb-Over Supposed To Fool?" Daniels has got himself his own exhibit at this year's shindig: "Governor Daniels' Sports Spot" is located just east of the Dickies' FFA pavilion, and features rope jumpers, gymnasts, and that ilk. There will also be a celebrity basketball game which First Lady Cheri Daniels is scheduled to coach, assuming no one lets her know ahead of time she'll have to move to Indianapolis to do so.

• As usual, my deficit-reducing suggestion (have him sit over one of those water tank deals while people paid money to try to dunk him with baseballs) was ignored.

• Mitch, by the way, recently launched INShape Indiana, a program designed to encourage Hoosiers to eat healthier and improve their physical conditioning by providing web links. When Daniels is fresh out of photo ops we get shots of him jogging on an indoor track, prompting this irresponsible speculation from one observer (me): "That weenie-arm never did a day of athletics in his life, until sometime around 40 his internist suggested he'd be able to overcharge seniors for their Lily medications several years longer if he started working out."

• Oh, and speaking of Mitch, he also announced that he will no longer be taking RV One, the governor's mansion he does deign to live in, to partisan political gatherings, despite the fact that it was perfectly okay for him to do so two weeks ago and the Democrats are just a bunch of whiners. This blog apologizes if it got anyone's hopes up about getting to view the state's most popular tourist attraction.