Milling around

A long, long time ago... but I can still remember... how the sight of a small pack of giggling Japanese tourists mobbing the butcher's counter as they pointed at the rows of chops and piles of sausages made me smile. They took what seemed like hundreds of photos while I looked on, bemused. No idea why. Maybe Japanese meat counters are unbearably sophisticated affairs compared to the rustic plastic-tray-embellished-with-fake-grass affair of your average Sainsbury's. Or maybe the arrangement of bacon spelled out something rude in hiragana.

But at last, I can finally announce that I too have tittered at a supermarket refrigerator full of cold cuts and even taken photos, although my own efforts were far more surreptitious. Well okay, furtive. What can I say? I felt weird. Besides, I was in one of the two subterranean supermarkets near Můstek metro station. The thing with these two stores is that the combination of cement floors, steel warehouse doors painted off-white and nasty fluorescent tube lighting makes me hideously aware that I am surrounded by concrete on all sides, and UNDERGROUND. And I'm not even claustrophobic.

To the cabin fever simmering gently in my subconscious, add the winteriness of the evening, presence of "interesting" characters that like to hang around public transportation and best of all, the heavy metal music in tongues that they blast from the speakers during the late-night shopping hours. Taking photos probably would have blended, come to think of it. If only I had thought to put on my very cheap new woolly hat that makes my head look pointy.

So I'm feeling weird, and taking photos of processed pig products. But why? Ahh… young love. Rebel love. (bear with me here - this isn't really a non sequitur. Oh. And come to think of it, I wasn't feeling that weird.) Where was I? Oh yes, Rebel love. So wild. So free. So rebellious. James Dean, spiky hair, leather jackets and maybe even the poetically tragic, doomed romance between the young idealistic revolutionary and the offspring of the corrupt local governor. But what of soft furnishings, long flowing hair, nicely-pressed linens and low-cost paté?

Well it would seem that at least one of Czechland's manufacturers of meat paste has taken this question to heart. And thus, they have decided to exploit this newly-discovered niche and entice customers to take advantage of their 2-for-1 deal by throwing in a free copy of this DVD.

Yup. "Zdarma" means free. All well and good you might think. But I have yet to penetrate the motives of the genius that came up with the strategy to offer this DVD as an alternative for those who might be able to spurn the temptations of "RebeLove".
That's Czech for "The Princess from the Mill", a famous comedy from the last decade.

But look. Teeth. Who needs teeth like this to chew paté?

And just in case anyone found it hard to believe that I found these DVDs in the supermarket stuck to plastic packs of scary pink mush, here are both of them together in the display that first attracted my attention.