Ode to Costco seaweed as a CPI replacement

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Glistening and wavy, glittery and green

Harvested dried concepts of something marine

Costco seaweed, each package sold cheap

Neighboring instant ramen filled with promises to keep

Once bold was the wrapper, the count printed proud

Each sleeve held an ocean, each crunch rang aloud

For years in you my solace I’d take—

Now they quiver at a gaze, fracture and break

At first it was quantity — an indistinct retreat

Year over year, another vanishing sheet

Thirty-five became -four, and so on the descent

I blinked at the box, then blinked again

Then slyness took over, more subtle, more wry:

The seaweed grew skinny, the seaweed grew shy

They compressed and they shrank, with corporate finesse

Till each piece lost its Neptunian noblesse 

Economists fawn over the CPI

Debating percentages, and whatnot and oh my—

They point to their charts with smugness and glee

But no tables are needed: they should study me

I’ve witnessed the change and tasted the deceit

Measuring inflation by salt and sheet

By the ephemerality of a midnight snack

By the vanishing seaweed from the pantry rack

By 2030, I’m sure they’ll concede

That the product was never the seaweed indeed

They’ll sell the plastic in its shrink-wrapped pride

The essence of ocean, artificially implied. 

O Costco seaweed, marker of time

More honest than graphs, more faithful than rhyme

If prices rise and portions flee

Let me watch it, one lost sheet per Costco spending spree

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