My partner Paula will dislike that I am writing this up, but I have to. I have no ability to resist the theater of the absurd.

Late last week I was walking back to my office from a mid-day appointment. It was freezing cold, I had my head down, and I was moving with purpose. But when I looked up on a pathway halfway through the Rose Kennedy Greenway here in Boston, my stride was interrupted by this:

The only people around were the 2-person staff (one of whom started packing up the generator while I asked my obvious questions of the poor young woman bundled up in the photo). I’d obviously missed whatever happened here. “It’s the Amazon Treasure Truck! ” she exclaimed while shivering steadily. I’d heard about it before, but fully admit I hadn’t really been paying attention amidst all the noise. And for both of our sakes I kept the questions to a minimum. If you haven’t seen one in your city yet, here’s the basic concept:

• Treasure Trucks live in about 25 US cities
• If you like deals on random items, you sign up at Amazon to be on their list
• A couple times a month, the truck will have deeply discounted deals on these items. They text you the deal that day, and if you buy within the Amazon app, you can pick up whatever it is you just bought at the truck

Think Groupon for “stuff ” instead of services, and with a mobile rolling DC.

The truck had already done a few stops in other parts of town. The featured deals had been a deeply discounted Vitamix at one locale, and at the other, “candy and pumpkins ” (a full week and a half after Halloween).

But here’s where it gets stranger still: the deal of the day that had just taken place here next to the Financial District? Beef ribs.

That’s right, lest we forget, Amazon is a grocer now. And the Amazon rep told me that they had just unloaded the 300 racks of ribs that had sold out in the app in 18 minutes from start til finish.

Welcome to the new normal.