Yes, We Have No Bananas

During my recent trip to South Florida, see Hot, hot, hot, we stopped at a nearby Costco to pick up a few items. As we were leaving, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye that made me stop dead. If my end had literally occurred in that discount wonder, I (or, I should say, my surviving relatives) would have been in luck.

Passing the various displays lined up by the exit, my parents and I were chatting about life in Florida, when I noticed in the midst of the booths was a coffin display. I realize South Florida is retirement heaven, but caskets for sale at Costcos?? After I stopped laughing, I snapped a picture, since I was sure that no one would believe me:



Then, I happened upon this piece by Mark Morford, who always has an entertaining column in the San Francisco Gate, Your Shiny Happy Discount Death -- Amongst the bulk cheese and the plasma TVs, a slew of coffins, now at Costco. Bargain!

He too found the casket display at Costcos:

If you feel your life is just too boring, if you feel you are lacking sufficient gobs of wicked surreality and ironic humor and morbid perspective combined with a strange sense that this planet is actually some sort of warped dreamlike petri-dish experiment run by scaly hyperintelligent lizards possessing savage and incomprehensible senses of humor, well, I have a suggestion.

Simply march your happy overfed American butt over to Costco. Not just any Costco, mind you, but Costco out in, say, the Palm Desert region of California . . . .

Do this: Walk the massive air-conditioned aisles and ogle the giant slabs of meat and the enormous bins of imported Guatemalan fruit and the economy packs of adult diapers and the two-gallon bottles of vodka, much of it generally aimed at the happy retirement crowd that lives here six months out of the year.

And then notice, as you leave, your cart crammed with drums of olive oil and 10-foot plasma TVs and 80-packs of frozen cream puffs, that strange display you apparently didn't notice when you came in, the one right by the front door next to the tires and the lawn furniture and the hot-dog stand, the one you seem to have blocked out because it was just too weird and your mind couldn't really get around it.

Yes, they are coffins. They are enormous, shiny caskets for sale, at Costco. Would that I were making this up.

This is what you see: A seemingly innocuous, nondescript display featuring corner sample pieces of giant kitschy caskets (alas, there are no full-sized models to climb into to test for comfort/fit/sex/morbid humor), all made by something called the Universal Casket Company, and they apparently come in all manner of glossy finish and silky crepe linings and fake gothic handles and pink rose filigree and all available for immediate overnight delivery because, well, you just never know.

Yes, you can now buy a coffin at Costco. Six, actually, different styles and qualities and color schemes to match your lifestyle and your sofa and your love of mauve and fake lion's-head handles and it is, all at once, funny and disturbing and creepy and yet, somehow, entirely appropriate. You want shameless target marketing? You want life and death and commerce and capitalism and convenience all rolled into a little ball of gloomy consumer joy? Here is your nirvana.

~ ~ ~ ~
Yes! We have no bananas
We have no bananas today!
We have string beans and onions, cabBAges and scallions
And all kinds of fruit
and caskets at Costco but
Yes! We have no bananas
We have no bananas today!

Tags: Costco