Someone is trying to bring Walmart down from the inside.
I was browsing TV stands the other day, trying to find something that would hold my incoming behemoth better than cinder blocks and 2x4s. As is always the case when I shop at the Hood River Walmart, I quickly became annoyed and irritable, and then claustrophobic. My knees buckled and I collapsed to the ground a weeping heap, convinced that the aisle was closing in on both sides and I was moments from being crushed beneath twenty stacked feet of veneered bookshelves and computer desks.
It was in this agonized mental state that I managed to drag myself into the candles (and clocks, as it were) aisle, on the off-chance that the scent of Good Things would bring me back from the brink of insanity. Really, I figured I could use something holiday-ish in nature, some cruel healing salve consisting of equal parts pine boughs, cinnamon and brown sugar. In anguish I grabbed the shelves and pulled myself upright, soon to a tottering standing position, where I could browse the candles at will.
And then I laughed until I couldn’t breathe.
You see, candle scents in this life enjoy the most luxurious of names. Gone are the bland staples like “vanilla” and “pine” and “smelly hippie patchouli,” instead replaced by such gems as “Mayan Mesoamerica Vanillan Delight” and “Spiritual Quest Across The Taiga” and “In Memory Of Eugene, Oregon, Back When It Was Still Neat And Interesting.”
It is within these constructs that I managed to stumble upon the most inappropriate scented candle ever put up for sale. How it passed through quality assurance is beyond me, and I’m convinced that someone somewhere along the line must have known how this name would be interpreted. The reference requires only the most rudimentary knowledge of popular culture, and the result is absolute hilarity. Long story short, someone at Walmart must have known what they were saying.
In an alternate universe, one devoid of the lexical bastardization committed by modern-day marketing, this scented candle would have simply been known as “Apple.” Completely lacking in discipline, this candle was given a different name, one with pop culture references that are, to no stretch of the imagination, completely inappropriate.
This candle scent is known as Warm Apple Pie.
Not Apple. Not even Apple Pie.
Warm Apple Pie.
