As I've mentioned before, I've turned the grocery shopping chore into a model of efficiency. From the sorted-by-aisle list, to the pre-shopping test-run of a shopping cart, I am the George Foreman Grill of grocery shoppers (except not really very mean).

This weekend, however, we required some gourmet items, so I was forced to visit the fancy-pants market and not my usual efficient, yet soul-sucking, corporate grocery store. I reluctantly pulled on my nicest slacks and drove there.

There are several things wrong with this market. First, the aisles are dangerously narrow. They are almost exactly two shopping carts wide. This means that if you want to pass by someone, both parties must hurl themselves against the shelves to perform the maneuver. Trying to get this level of cooperation with person after person in the market is a tiresome and annoying chore. I do so hate people. Each time I enter an aisle that has another shopper, I pray for a tiny rift in the space-time continuum that will allow me to pass them and their oblivious cart. But, as they say, there's never a wormhole when you need one.

The other thing wrong with this market is that the selection of goods is inadequate for my Madison-Avenue-tuned brain. Do you know how many kinds of roll-on deoderant they had for men? One. One!! And it was some crazy brand I had never heard of. They had like 8 different kinds of organic deoderant though.

Now, I like the environment. It's handy for things like breathing. I get that, but when it comes to reducing my underarm stank, I don't want an organic product. I want the full force of chemical technology and global-warming ingenuity generously slathered onto my armpits. Is that so much to ask? And I want it in a roll-on!

However, I resigned myself to choose from the various "stick" type dispensers (although I've noticed that my armpit pubes tend to accumulate in these). I perused the SpeedStick brand and was totally baffled by what I found. The scents that they came in had completely unidentifiable names. What does an "icy surge" smell like? What about "cool fusion" or "fresh rush"? I have no freakin' clue how these would make my armpits smell. Does fusion smell good? Better than fission I suppose.

I don't even remember which one I chose. It's all a blur. However, when I recounted this story to my wife, she said, "Why do you care what you smell like? You have no sense of smell! You should have ME pick it out. I'm the one who has to smell you."

That's the division of labor in my house. I do the shopping, she does the smelling.