A few completely inconsequential things I'd like to get off my chest today

Dear Grocery Store Managers of Minnesota,

Do me a favor. Decide amongst yourselves where you want to stock the pita bread, and then put it in that same place consistently in each of your stores. Because really, I don’t buy the stuff all that often, but I’m rather sick of criss-crossing around the store to every logical location I can think of whenever I want to find it, wondering if yours is the store that puts it by the bread, or if you're the one who thinks it should be in the refrigerator case by the tortillas, or (logically enough, in my opinion) conveniently alongside the hummus (which is really the main reason for pita bread in the first place, isn’t it?) or if you've hidden it at the far end of the deli, facing the back wall of the store, where no one will ever, ever find it on their own, which could have something to do with why the stock of pita bread in your store is always stiff and near-moldy when a customer looks for it.

A little consistency; that’s all I’m asking for. Could you do that? Please? It would save me a lot of time.

Consider crackers, for example. Does anyone ever have to wonder where the crackers are? No. Because they’re always next to the cookies. On the off chance they’re not, then they’re by the chips and such. Oatmeal? Pop Tarts? Granola bars? Always in the cereal aisle. The same kind of predictability and reliability for the pita bread would be much appreciated. Thanks.

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Dear Ethan Hawke,

I wanted to like your first novel. Really I did. You’re just so... pretty. Slightly scruffy, yes--you do like to walk that fine line between ruggedly sexy and "I’d touch him if he took a shower first" skeevy, but still. Damn fine looking, for the most part. And deep. OK, maybe I just want to think that you're deep. And you seem like a decent person. Like in that GQ interview, sometime after your breakup with Uma, when you could have been all proud and assish, but instead you said all sorts of nice things about her, and you were entirely mature about it, saying that you still care about each other and she's such an amazing woman, but sometimes people just can't make things work? Classy, really. And despite a few missteps here and there, your acting work's been generally good. From the very beginning. Well, maybe not the very beginning, as I'm sorry to say I actually don't think I’ve ever really even seen Explorers (or whatever that movie was with you and River and the spaceship in your backyard). But after that... That scene in Dead Poet's Society? When you, the shy, quiet, reserved guy who'd been skulking in the edge of every frame for the entire movie suddenly burst into tears and let loose about how it was really Neil's father who made him blow his own brains out? How it was all his parents' fault for not appreciating the creative, wonderful spirit of Neil? Brilliant. My teenage self fell in love with you just a little bit, right there. O Captain my Captain indeed.

I don't get particularly gushy over a lot of famous people. I never hung a Kirk Cameron poster over my bed and kissed it goodnight at the end of each day. I didn't plaster the insides of my locker with cutouts from Bop! or Tiger Beat, memorizing what each of the Coreys' favorite foods were or what kind of girl Mackenzie Astin liked. No, the closest I came was cutting a small photo of you out of my Sassy magazine and taping it alongside the desk of my dorm room. It was subtle, really. It was my friends, not me, who made a dozen photocopies of that picture and plastered them all over the halls for me to find after class, wishing me Happy Birthday by writing captions above your face all over Towers Hall. "Can I kiss the birthday girl?" and "Guess who’s 19 today?" It was cute, really. You should have seen it.

But I digress. I wanted to like your book. Really I did. Unfortunately, however, the best I can do for my one-word review is an unenthusiastic and noncommittal "Eh."

Don't get me wrong; it didn't totally suck. I've definitely read worse. But the characters, the story, everything about it was just so utterly forgettable. And your protagonist? What was his name... Jesse? No, sorry; that's not it. That was your character in Before Sunrise. Forgive my confusion, but it must be because the unjustified pretension and delusions of interesting-ness were the same in both scenarios. I know you were an angst-ridden, probably intensely emotional 24-year-old yourself when you wrote this, and for that I can forgive some of the self-importance of this work. But really, you're not making me want to pick up Ash Wednesday with this.

You're still sexy, though. Totally. So good job on that.

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Dear lady who subbed for the cardio circuit class this week,

You know how when you're at the dentist, and the hygienist is scraping around on your teeth with the pointy metal thing, and despite the fact that she's holding your jaw and sticking the spit sucker in your mouth, she still thinks it's a good time to start asking if you saw Nanny 911 last night, or what your thoughts on the weather are today? You know how, even though you realize it's all just small talk and your answers really aren't important, you're still annoyed because she's asked you a question and you can't answer, and you don’t want to be rude, so you sort of grunt something probably indiscernible and just hope for the best? You know what I'm talking about? Well, you asking us about Oprah or telling us about your kid's karate test when you have the advantage of a microphone but we're being drowned out by the ceiling fans and the thumping bass and the voice of J-Lo or Kelis is kind of the same thing. You really don't need to make small talk while we're doing our lat rows. I’m just saying.

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Dear girl in the white Corolla in front of me on the way home tonight,

I used to think pretty much all bumper stickers were just stupid. I never really understood how or why one restaurant or campground was so special and meaningful that you needed to advertise it on your vehicle, and I never thought there was a message important enough that you needed everyone adjacent to you to see it every day. But then we somehow elected a drunken frat boy president, and suddenly there were all sorts of clever taglines surrounding me on the highways, and I started to forget why I had such an issue with bumper stickers in the first place.

But then I saw your car, with the sticker proudly bearing the inexplicably stupid message, "I’m so happy I could shit." And then it all came back to me. So thank you for that; I remember now.

Could you please just tell me what it was about that phrase that you so identified with that you felt compelled, nay, excited to adhere it to your car? Is shitting something you generally like to do whenever you feel happy? Is it sarcasm, and you are, in fact, not happy, and the unhappiness is what makes you want to defecate? 'Cause either way, I don't get it.

I'm just guessing you're also one of those people who uses the word "Hell" in entirely puzzling statements, such as "It's colder than Hell out there!" (to which my response, naturally, is, "Well, I should certainly HOPE so..."). You probably also attach the phrase "...that it's not even funny" behind statements that were never inherently amusing, such as "I'm so tired it's not even funny" or "That's so sad it's not even funny."

I don't understand you, and I really don't understand your bumper sticker. That's all I'm saying.