12 Items or Less: A Grocery Shopping Zine

There’s something damn entertaining in hearing stories about rotten fruit, exotic foods, grocery stores like palaces, and cheese that smells like male genitals. This tiny zine is a hilarious and informative collection of 21 tales from grocery stores all over the world. Ranging anywhere from giant refrigerators crusted with a layer of spoiled, putrid smelling dairy products to grocery shopping tips and articles on the politics of grocery stores, this zine encapsulates just about every kind of grocery store story you could encounter. Hell, there’s even a little piece for the checkout-line romantic on falling for certain grocery store employees. In addition to all this, this compact little booklet includes five different comics dealing with various grocery-related stories. The zine allows for an interesting peak into some interesting obsessions (and repulsions) that people have about the grocery store. And considering the stories come from all over the world, the zine also acts as a strange little global grocery community. One other interesting thing: The zine includes some websites in the sidebars of the articles, my favourite being one where they post random, found grocery lists (www.keaggy.com/grocerylists) – you can’t help but start constructing these unknown people from what they include on their shopping list. I’d really like to know who needs “stay home or go somewhere / I act like my mom / my look or how I act / my look / go to Kentucky / underwear / lemon.” No, not a poem – this is a grocery list. (JK)

zine, 53 pages, A.J. Michel, $3 + postage, PO Box 2574, Champaign IL, USA 61825, [email protected], lowhug.blogspot.com

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