part one
part two (sort of)
And now a third Shop Rite post! You only get one Star Wars movie this year but I have provided a whole trilogy. Unfortunately I got it at Shop Rite.

Good old African-American Friday. I actually meant to post this that day, but while you were taking a luxurious trip between now and midnight to save $800 on an ex-box, me, I was camping outside Shop Rite to “beat” the rush to save 30 cents on beets and pork and beans.

I commented on this situation previously but neglected to link to the video, which I think is very important.
The Shop Rite Can Can sale happens every year, sometimes twice, and people swear by it. The same recording of the song and the same animation have likewise been recycled, in increasingly edited form, as modern regulations for showing anything outside shoddily edited snippet form require it. According to recently declassified documents, my parents were once invited to spend a week with some let’s call them friends in a cabin in let’s say Maine. One, I will call him Pol, since his name was Paul and I am changing his name to protect his identity, learned that my mother was a vegetarian, but assured her not to worry, since Pol was going to do all the cooking, to “give the ladies a break,” having stocked up at the Shop Rite can-can sale. It should be a heartwarming story but it isn’t because I thought it was the funniest thing I ever heard once I heard it. Shop Rite made me laugh at kindness!

Also, the unseen announcer in this ad from 198x is the same person who still does it. I can only conclude that just IS Shop Rite talking. We do not need to get into the most recent advertising because the latest ends with the on-camera actor proclaiming “now that deserves a happy dance,” one of an ever-increasing number of recent ads inexplicably invoking “happy dance,” and many of them are not even for Shop Rite, possibly indicating a deeper conspiracy that is outside my present jurisdiction.

The “rite” in the name may not merely be “right” misspelled and misapplied… what a fool I have been! The answer is much simpler: Shop Rite refers to an aspect of a ceremony for a religion based on shopping. Without proper shop rites, we will be denied shop salvation.

Shop Rite is so cheap that it doesn’t even give you a chance to call bow tie pasta by its proper name, farfalle.

Shop Rite assumes if it calls the pasta farfalle, none of its intended customers will know the pasta is bow-tie shaped.

Consider that shoprite crumpetitor Shop & Shop has a rinkity dinkity store brand of pasta and a “fancy” brand that is exactly the same but costs more and has a picture of string on it so I’m supposed to think somebody actually giftwrapped this cardboard box of overpriced rinkity dinkety pasta. Imagine if it was your birthday and somebody gave this to you. Anyway, neither of these calls the stuff “bowties.” Also, even though almost everything at Shop Rite is denoted as being marked down, it is often more expensive than the same item at another store. The cheapo Shop Rite bow ties from my trip in 2012 cost 40 cents more than the same quantity box of cheapo Stop & Shop bowties with a less cheap name from this month, and the Stop & Shop is in Madison, the town where my neighbors react with disbelief when I answer no to “this is just your summer house, right?”

Back to bow ties, even knowing that, of course, we are supposed to associate bow ties with classiness, and shop rite is the LAST store you would want claiming responsibility for yours, it is worth observing that- oh deben, something awful just occurred to me. Would you let me see that sign again?

AW NAW! Get it away! Before…

There seems to be a deeper Shop Rite-Bow Tie connection than I ever suspected. I have lost the will to scream. One screams because one wants help and I think none can be forthcoming. This is most worrisome. I may have to go into hiding until next year.

Excuse me shouldn’t there be a spoiler alert in that ad? You have already told me that Frosty survives the first movie! Imagine watching Star Wars if you knew in advance that the Empire was going to Strike Back.

Everyone’s favorite snowman. I think that’s supposed to be Frosty also. But now that you mention it, I don’t know a whole lot of snow-men.

Ones that are eligible to be my favorite, I mean. Between this and the

creepy cartoon frog “Kandoo” that wipes itself in front of your children we as a nation have enough uninvited smilers sharing this space with us.

Okay buddy the facial expression was actually beside the point and in fact you are making this worse.

Back to snow-men, I used to not like them at all, but then I found out that Battletoads hated them and I decided they might be doing something right. Kandoo of course grew up to be a battle toad.
For favorite snowman I did consider Parson Brown, but I remembered I was only pretending that was who it was.

The only other one that comes immediately to my mind is Bad Mr. Frosty, presumably of no relation to regular “Mr. Frosty is my father” Frosty. But he is no good and is not my favorite. He is almost as bad as a bad-tle toad, despite them declaring genocide on his species. He is a traitor through and through. My source informs me that Bad Mr. Frosty’s buttons and facial features are made not from coal but from leftover Shop Rite logo pieces.

You know, those old stories about Santa Claus giving coal to naughty children are a lie. Coal was a valuable commodity in days of yore. You couldn’t heat your cold Victorian hovel without it. Shop Rite pieces are only good for bad. They will burn your house down without generating any warmth. Fire is a neutral force of nature, but the Shop Rite logo means to harm you, have no doubt. Consider that only the “hop ri” part of the logo is underlined. It deliberately omits S t and e just as an affront to notorious video game artist Ste Pickford. When Shop Rite is around nobody else is allowed to spell their name weird.

Or perhaps it holds a grudge since Ste-drawn Kuros was, historically, the first person to ever get kicked out of a Shop Rite.

part 1 of this investigative series on shop rite
part 3 and I’m not saying that twice

Why are you pouting? Did you not pay attention to what you put in your own cart? Until after you paid and walked out? Typical miply stupid animal.

NO! Do NOT act like you are doing me a favor! I did NOT ask you to buy that!
Actually, as dopey as that thing is I would not recommend walking inside a shop rite without waterproof boots since there is usually a spill in there somewhere with no employee for miles.

If you are not familiar with Shop Rite, good. It is like a Stop & Shop or a Kroger or a Food Lion except you get an uneasy feeling that you are trash when you are inside.

The drawing is of course inspired by the older shop rite logo. The one that it is impossible to find a photograph of that does not look like a crime scene. The current Shop Rite logo does not just have weird lumps floating over a coal black mine cart; it also has shards and scraps in the mix.

Also note that while they redrew the graphic they didn’t fix the glaring spelling and grammar error in the store’s title.
This Shop Rite is at the Railroad Salvage plaza, which in the absence of better data I will presume means all the groceries were illegally stolen from train wrecks that may or may not have been engineered by the

yet older logo’s sinister silhouette of Inspector Gadget beside some sort of death ray.

This person was created when the protagonist from the Apple Macintosh Trashic “Climber” bumped into the middle elevator too many times.

Ordinarily upon collision Climber will turn sideways, flop out its legs and have impotent rage while totally immobile for 5 to 40 seconds, however much time you have remaining, which was the perfect time to strike. I would like to get my own screen shot of this but emulating old macintosh games is the most arcane and arduous task on the planet. Forced, impregnable obsolescence on an Apple product is nothing new. This is harder than using an itunes gift card without installing iTunes (AND quicktime), which is impossible. It is even harder than coming out of a shop rite without crying.

What’s worse: that this isn’t enough Chef Boy ar Dee to satisfy the masses, or that they refer to this tinned glop as “supplies?”

This person is happy because the pertinent Shop Rite is clearly out of business.

the next part of this story that only mentions shop rite at the end
the part after that one which has far too much shop rite in it

I wrote this in 2010. I never posted it. Or so I say. Look, see, at the url. “http://bimshwel.com/?p=341.” Last week’s was 439. That PROVES that my website entries have numbers assigned to them. I reckon I could repost three solid years of old bimshwellians that I never found occasion to link back to at any point and say I hadn’t already posted them, when I had, but nobody would notice. Likewise if you were to hack into this (I doubt it’s hard) and repost them yourself I wouldn’t notice either.

What does RED mean to ME? I don’t know what it means. I don’t think about stuff that way. I can’t get punched in the nose at Shop Rite and then come home and fling paint angrily at a canvas for three hours and have something I think is great. Red, to me, is just a color which some things are. So I thought of some red things and made a picture with those in it. And then I added other irrelevant, distracting stuff that would confuse people. The person who sent the email said I didn’t have to deal with the THEME if I didn’t want to. Which meant I really had to, now, just to prove that I could. And like usual I figured it would take a lot less time than it did.

Not bad, but not great. I wished I had started sooner, but really the sooner I start working the sooner I start procrastinating. I thought I could pull off something this complicated because before this I made a pixelly version that I thought looked pretty nice.

Well I thought it did. Making computer stuff is considerably easier for me than real stuff. Hence why I did it there, first, but I figured I could copy it well enough. I also probably grossly overestimated how much time New Haven art enthusiasts spend watching the intro sequences to old Sega Genesis games.

Hmmmyes… fascinating.

Well maybe the picture isn’t ideal but it’s good enough. Anyway, this isn’t at the small space gallery like last time.
You remember the small space gallery, don’t you? Well I do. It’s a place that is not really an art gallery at all, it’s somebody’s office with a few pictures stuck to the [evidently incomplete] walls. THIS time, though, my object was going up in the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery. Things are getting a might bit fancy now.

Yaztaplazca! It’s the old switcheroo! I ought to have been fooled by nothing less than the new switcheroo!

Darth Snack Mix returns again. This may even be the same bowlful from last time and nobody dared to move it.

This is actually my third run-in with the snack mix. I didn’t tell you about the second because it must not have struck me as interesting at the time. It seems really exciting now, though.

I think I was the youngest person in there and the only one whose goals were in any way absurd or narrative-y. While it’s nice to not feel old, for once, if the only fellow ar teests who “get” what I do are kids I’d rather be around them than pretentious snobs who honestly think smearing red paint on a rectangle and taping newspaper headlines to it is worth charging $500 for.

I did like this red clock, even if there’s no apparent reason why it should be red as opposed to purple, periwinkle or a normal clock color. I think the label says Michael Johnson. I suppose I ought to have read it at some point. The title of the piece appears to be “Mullet Trap.” Alright so the guy’s name might not be Michael Johnson.

I thought since I had actually painted something and was offering the actual thing I’d made rather than a copy, I should have a proper frame for it, rather than look for a cheap one at walmart that the thing would fit within. The fancy frame would have cost $112 somehow. So I decided not to have a frame. This is but a matte and only cost $24. Much like with my digital prints the bottom edge was cut off, but unlike my prints that is because this is actually for a reason and the person who did it was conscious of where my signature was. I wouldn’t want to bring shame upon the famous E. Cunni by associating it with this anyhow.

That fool has some talent!

Beans that settles it. I’m going somehwere else to get my prints made.

And then I’m coming back again.

I saw this reflected on the inside doors of the elevation chamber when I went to drop this off (the elevator was shiny) and observed that the large figure’s head is incredibly lopsided. Not that it’s turned to one side; it actually appears to be melting. the ears and the eyes are both at different heights. The pine cone is tilted, to the left, the opposite direction that the other stuff seems to be going in. I was trying to compensate for the right shift without realizing it. I don’t have an easel, nor space for one. All “real” things that I do are seen almost exclusively flat on my desk. Distorted. Always. And this thing is going to hanging up until september. Urgik.

I called it “vegnarok” because the only other thing I could think of at the time was “vegarmageddon.” I didn’t realize that invoking ragnarok implied one side was evil. The point here is that both sides are victims. I later decided “Saladnarok” was a much better title and requested that the name be changed, but I apparently only succeeded in altering one letter.

None of these names, in fact, are accurate, because the stuff shown is actually produce; much of what is involved is fruit, but I was not thinking with efficiency, and in any event I couldn’t find some way to work in any part of the word in which it was evident that was the word I had used. “Warduce?” “Broduce vs broduce?” (this was the year before I declared war on “bro”) Nothing good. “Folic Heroics?” “The seeds of war?” Oh that one’s almost clever. “Salad Oppressing?” “You war what you eat” alright that one’s just stupid. I eventually thought of “Ragnarcrop,” but I didn’t like the way it sounded. Which doesn’t make any sense because “saladnarok” puts emphasis on the “lad” which one doesn’t do when pronouncing “salad” unless reciting a poem about fads and doodads (putting emphasis on the lad sounds illegaler than it is).

I also thought of “farmageddon” but a quick google search revealed two different things calling themselves that, one of them a non-existent yet perfectly hypey computer cartoon series based on a comic strip that ran somewhere, allegedly, for two years in the early 90s with a wikipedia page written by the authors four years ago, and I suddenly thought of myself as considerably less clever. The animals talk, though.

I was required to prepare a typed “artist’s statement” in order for the thing to be displayed. I didn’t know how to do that so I supplied this instead.

Hello! I am called Brendan Cunningham. I make pictures sometimes. Many of them can be found on bimshwel.com, which is a website.

I am fond of stupid things happening to stupid looking creatures. I don’t, in general, “understand” art beyond what I immediately see in it, so I avoid attempts at symbolism and “meaning” in my own output as best I know how. You are welcome to your own interpretation, naturally! My primary goal is the amusement of myself and potentially others.

I primarily deal with pixels and other digital nonsense, but I envy those who use paint and ink. I’m only allowed to display one piece here so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to misrepresent myself with a work in a medium I have no experience or comfort with.

In this scene the adherents of beets and the partisans of tomatoes have reached a moment of great potential conflict due to the vile trickery and sculduggery of Pinot Conio, the fiend whose upper portions float menacingly above, violating the laws of physics and perspective, as often occurs in uninspired film posters. My hope is that taking inspiration from the uninspired will overload the uninspiration meter and cause it to register a more favorable reading.

I think you’ll agree that this is incredibly stupid. However, despite it being the first serious thing I’ve ever attempted with this mysterious gouache substance, I am fond of the painting and have thus given it a ridiculous price to discourage any sensible person from purchasing it (I’m kidding, of course; no sensible person would take this for free!).

That’s done! My artist statement! It wasn’t so bad. I was worried I’d get myself in trouble. People are so easily offended in a dumpstervania like New Haven.

I didn’t include the last line.

I was trying to be as sincere as possible without seeming boring. The problem there is that in actuality I am both boring and insincere.
I discovered later that the artist’s statements were not displayed anywhere near the art or indeed anywhere near anything so it would not necessarily be clear what I was talking about when the time came for somebody to see this. So I was boring, insincere and irrelevant. I astound myself.

This is the best painting I have ever done, which would be a significant statement if I had ever made a good painting.

I should stick with acrylic paint, though, I think; that is the paint for indecisive mistake-makers who draw in pencil first. This is gouache. And after four days of looking at it I have a gou-ache.

^{And I know it’s not pronounced like that but it is spelled like that.}

I can’t believe I didn’t put a pumpkin in here. It would have been much more clear than the coconut-with-orange-slices-attached-to-it mace in the upper right quadrant.

Here’s another idea I almost had. I say almost because I never figured out what it potentially might mean. Unless… gah what a fool I’ve been! It all makes sense: the store deliberately priced the frames out of my range to cover-up that nemitz stole them all. Ironic, since it’s impossible to frame nemitz for a crime because anything bad you accuse it of it probably did. The fiend’s already started a war, for beet’s sakes. Alas beet didn’t realize that the war in fact did nothing to improve its own sake. For no obvious reason we have chosen to imprison nemitz inside both the windows 95 pipes and 3d maze screensavers at the same time. It’s good that nemitz is in jail but it never lasts and in any event the crime was still done.

on the positive side I now have one more thing I can do badly.

Over the years I have seen, plenty more than once, films or television program episodes advertised in which a character dances gleefully to trashy music / embarrassing self-recreation of trashy music while wearing only under-garment type clothing. I am personally of the belief that this does not happen. Or if it does, I doubt that this is with frequency approaching what is suggested to me that it is. I further believe that anyone who would do this would make sure itself was totally alone and lock any adjoining doors and cover any exposed windows. Regardless of whether the person is cornily and/or murderly interrupted, I think it looks stupid and I hate seeing it. Anybody who has personally witnessed or felt the impulse to do this… probably wouldn’t tell me, especially given my negative attitude toward it, so I will continue thinking as I have. …I’m not going to tell you what, if anything, provokes my chemicals, but it’s not underpant/”swimsuit” people and I’m sick of seeing them. I do not need more little triangles of taut rubbery fabrics in my life.

I don’t think fat or skinny or otherwise regarded as “unattractive” by popular media outhouses men dressed the same are instantly hilarious, either. Even if they are additionally wearing socks and sunglasses and singing that “bob bob baran” song.

Oh, and allegedly your dad is better than mine. I thought The Strike was ending. ? I’m still not watching the dumb olympics. I didn’t know they were on, but that’s the only logical reason for those stupid rings to be beneath the national broadcasting company logo at all times. Unless you would have me believe the ill-defined peacock is riding an ill-defined bicycle sideways.

I don’t understand pornography. I know that usually men like looking at pictures of naked women and occasionally women like looking at pictures of naked men. Fine. Ehhh…. but I don’t understand how they also like looking at men and women doing stuff together. Wouldn’t the sight of one of their own kind put them off the mental state they’re trying to create? Must research more (don’t wanna!). But perhaps you’ve guessed that though never wanting to I’ve encountered these pictures on the internet. You might wonder what I was looking for but I hope you don’t.
I also do not understand why anybody would want to see viscous white fluids doing whatever. I, prior to this undesired exposure, had I any concept of what was coming, would have assumed that part of a process to be an unfortunate side effect of the act that people just dealt with because they had to. Yet there it is, in that picture, which somebody drew, which somebody painted, as if somebody wanted to see it. Ew. We needn’t discuss how hair complicates things.

Yes, so, not just photographs, people draw this rabbage. Some people appear to draw nothing else. They can say “look (no!), this is a thing I do to amuse myself and my weird friends. This is not my job. I work on a boat.” Well I’m not criticizing them for that today. I’m just wondering how anyone likes it. Unnnnnnyihhhheah.

Sure, I’ve drawn them, naked people things, but never because I wanted to. I was there in the room to draw life, and at that particular point in time it just happened to be a part of life. I’m glad the models were clean and apparently dry. I wasn’t glad then because the alternative wasn’t making itself relevant and I wasn’t thinking about it.

There’s nothing worse than a self-righteous pervert. I’m not saying my “thing” is half-open soup cans, but if it was, I wouldn’t cover this page with them and act like I think everyone thinks it’s great and I’m doing them a favor. Though I probably would be, because it’s not like we can type a synonym for erotic imagery into google or the yahew and have that come up. We have to work for it. We should unite, pool our resources and findings, but to do that we’d need to “out” ourselves, and oh! the shame we feel.

I don’t get mass e-mail telling me where to get my hot can pix in exchange for simply running password stealing malware. Life is hard. Sometimes it seems like life is the only thing that’s hard. It’s not as hard as it was back when “can” was a popular synonym for human posteriors, however. I almost became a monk. Alas, I could not master spinning on my head in time for our Tonight Show appearance and consequently was not issued a pair of sacred white sneaker shoes. I resigned in disgrace.

And tins never get the job done. You’re probably wondering why I don’t like the Shop Rite Can-Can sale (featuring beets and pork & beans!). I just think it’s tasteless, that’s all. What I do with my cans is my own business and I don’t like to see a spectacle made of it. I’m no ho.

Hey, have you seen those new cans the kids are buying where you just pull the tab, and don’t need a can-opener or anything? What about foreplay? If I wanted to do it like that I’d just buy Spam, where the whole lid comes off at once. Yes, the reason I don’t buy Spam Luncheon Meat is out at last. That’s the real reason I stopped making jokes about it every single day of my life. We just didn’t have fun anymore. The magic was gone.