Any of you who live in the greater Chicagoland area and watch the news heard about the barricaded gunman in Lindenhurst IL. (Also find the article on http://www.nbc5.com for the footage of the 30 or so police cars on the scene.) Well, that’s just a good 4 iron away from where I live. The streets were blocked, I couldn’t get home. I ended up spending the night on a friend’s couch. Ugh.
Anyway, you’re this guy that shoots a couple of cops and you run into the store and forces everyone out. So now you’re in a grocery store, you have no hostages, but a lot of time. It’s a fairly standard grocery store, with a little coffee area, a small flower stand, a pharmacy… The only two ways you’re going to get out of the store are dead or in handcuffs. How do you kill time until the inevitable?
Here are some of the thing that I came up with:
[list=1]
[li]I would tell them that I was eating pickles so they’d think I was in the condiment aisle, but really I’d be in the refrigerated section next to the lunch meats. Those are better pickles.[/li][li]I would make a charcoal fire on the floor of the store and roast marshmallows and maybe a nice steak.[/li][li]The store has an electric pony, and you know DAMN well that the guy’s going to ride that. C’mon, are you going to tell me that if you’re all alone in a store, you’re not going to ride the pony?[/li][li]I’d grab jars of sauerkraut and throw them on the floor, yelling “wet spill on aisle seven!” and run away laughing.[/li][li]I’d do some REAL testing to see what feminine pad is REALLY most absorbant.[/li][li]I’d free the lobsters from the tank, let them run around a bit.[/li][li]“Choosy Gunmen Choose Jif!”[/li][li]I’d put some fish in the venting, because you know damn well they ain’t going to find that for a few weeks.[/li][li]I’d go frozen turkey bowling with a turkey (or chickens if you’d rather) and some two-liters.[/li][li]I’d wrap the pony in toilet paper when I was done riding it.[/li][li]I’d open all the cereal boxes to look for the prizes.[/li][li]I’d have a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.[/li][li]I’d see how dog food tastes.[/li][li]I’d make some Spam sculptures.[/li][li]I’d open all the registers and count the money, make it easier on the clerks for the next day.[/li][li]I’d rate all of the deli salads on a scale of 1 to 10.[/li][li]I’d decorate a cake to say “I barricaded myself in an Eagle market and all I got was a lousy cake”.[/li][li]I’d change their recipe for glazed donuts, just to see if they noticed. “2 cups sugar, 4 cups flour, 3 tablespoons urine, …”[/li][li]If I were choosing the jail option, I’d eat a heck-a-lotta raw pork so you can have a few cushy days in the infirmary.[/li][/list=1]
Can anyone else think of a way to spend your barracade time?
-Eat all the Ice Cream I possibly could. Whatever was left, I would take out of the cartons and pile up in front of the door. That’d give the SWAT team a nice surprise.
-Ride a shopping cart around the isles, giggling madly and knocking stuff of the shelves.
-Throw cream pies at the windows. Give the snipers out there something to look at.
-Make a man out of ground beef.
That’s all I can think of for now, but I’ll probably be back. There’s just a few things I need to…take care of at the moment.
<puts on ski mask, heads over to the nearest Grocery Store>
People already have to restrain me from juggling the contents of the produce aisle. To me, it would be Juggling Practice Paradise.
The following items would be treated to a spin:
Ketchup bottles
Large lumps of raw hamburger
Watermelons
Cookie Dough
12-packs of toilet paper
Really expensive cheese
They’d find me passed out in the ice cream aisle hours later, gorged on Blue Bunny and Ben and Jerry’s, watching The Emperor’s New Groove while sprawled across the mechanical pony.
I think i love you Joey Hemlock. I love you because you’d ride the pony.
I would:
[ul]
[li]Climb up the shelves and walk along the top of them, pretending i was a giant.[/li][li]Sit at the checkout, pretending i am Dolly Parton and singing Working nine to five in a ridiculous southern accent.[/li][li]Be a cowgirl by tucking the barcode scanner into my jeans and then whipping it out a random moments to scan items.[/li][li]Pour all the ketchup along one aisle and have a skidding competition with myself.[/li][li]Make condoms into finger puppets and play with them.[/li][li]Build a fort out of cereal boxes.[/li][/ul]
Fran
Shoot the cans of pudding and the melons and the milk. What a riot. I’ll bet laying waste to a bag of tortilla chips, or pretzels, with a shotgun would be fun. Of course, one could always do, uh, “ballistic testing” on a side of beef, too.
In the spirit of MacGuyver and the Home Alone movies. . .
[ul]
[li] Vinegar and baking soda fizz, as every basic science student knows. Just wait until you add the muriatic acid![/li][li] Assorted gumballs thrown on the floor can keep the police rolling for hours![/li][li] Your ammunition may be limited. Make sure you can huck large frozen turkeys at your oppressors. They hurt.[/li][li] Redi-Wip and Cheeze-in-a-Can make effective and comical fragmentation devices.[/li][li] By using lots of rolls of toilet paper, disguise yourself as an Egyptian mummy. Then awkwardly walk out of the store pretending you are an ancient royal hostage.[/li][li] In most stores, there is a seafood department. Make sure to unleash your horde of live lobsters on the SWAT team.[/li][li] It is not wise to hide in produce; Your head does not look like lettuce.[/li][li] Keep in mind that if you generate a list of demands, that you do not include such items that may be found in the store.[/li][/ul]
Just a few points to keep in mind.
Tripler
It’s not like I’ve ever done the Mummy thing before. . .
Something similar happened in my neighborhood a few years back. Just up the street was an adult bookstore, illicit creamery, whatever you care to call it (named “The Ballpark”), that was the subject of an attempted armed robbery by a low-rollin’ bandit who tried his luck when the place happened to be “patronized” by some cops who were there to arrest the clerk for selling dirty pictures. It wound up for a bit that everyone got out but the robber.
When I attempted to go home I was met by a barricade and advised to “go back to the bar” for awhile. They eventually persuaded His Confoundedness’ surrender by playing incredibly LOUD country music around the building; sans produce section, and considering what he had to console himself with, one can only imagine how he spent his hours alone in The Ballpark.
I’d put my hand on the little scanner in the check-out line. For my entire LIFE, that DAMNED SIGN has been TELLIN ME WHAT TO DO. I WANTED to touch the scanner, but NOO! Little mister Sign-Type-Boy wouldn’t let me!
Well, WHO’S IN CHARGE NOW, HUH?! WHO’S IN CHARGE NOW?!
If you’re gonna roast marshmallows, you might as well make S’MORES!!!
-another good idea would be to take all of the money out of the registers, throw it into a huge pile on the floor-well, the cash, not the coins, and roll around in it while naked.
('sept I wouldn’t have the nerve)
I would:
-see how much stuff I could fit into the toilets before they would overflow
-get a huge permanent smelly red marker, open all the pads and tampons and use the marker on them; leaving them for the cops to find
-fill condoms up with whipped cream and powdered sugar
-make a huge wall mural using liquid detergents
-sneak into the office computer and give all the grunt workers major raises
-make myself a bed out of toilet paper-Northern Quilted
-eat the Land O’Lakes American cheese without slicing it. (I will NOT eat the plastic wrapped crap-it must be from the Deli!)
-tear open the cat toys, break them, and spread catnip everywhere
Okay, I can’t believe that no one’s thought of this!
For the perfect response to the psych-warfare efforts that the cops would no doubt be doing outside of the grocery store, there’s really only one thing you can do!
Take all the money out of the store that you can find, pile it up somewhere you know the cops will see it, and torch it! Sounds stupid, but years ago my then-girlfriend and I were at a party, and when things got dull at one point, she pulled a brand new one dollar bill out of her pocket, took a pair of scizzors and cut paper dolls out of it. We were stunned!!! None of us could believe that she was desecrating the almighty dollar like that. Given the mentality of cops (not dissing cops, my grandfather was one, and I used to be a “bullet catcher” in a stop-n-rob, so I have a healthy respect for them), they’d no doubt be so freaked out you could spend days in the store doing whatever you wanted.
I’d personally raid the pharmacy and then gorge myself on the lobsters, before passing out.
I’d take some time to learn a little more about “potted meat”, because I usually just run right by it, afraid.
And let’s face it, the cops are going to get you. Might as well have your last meal.
I’d be eating all the full fat, fried Cheetos in the place, dip, pudding, chugging down Honey Brown, cookie dough, big f-ing sticks of pepperoni…just eating myself sick.
