I had a nice dinner with sooz in which we arrived very early like retirees and ate a reasonable amount of tasty food. It took me forever to find the place because it was in a hellish HB strip mall the size of a town, but I enjoyed my pasta carbonara.

After BSing with Bob for a bit, I went for an aimless drive. I do this a lot on weekend nights if I’m not reading or staring into space. As usual I ended up on Newport Coast Drive because it’s a nice pretty zoom up a hill. I needed a couple things and I went to the fancy people grocery store at the top of the grade.

This is a “Pavilions” supermarket, and it’s huge. Suburban supermarkets are big, but this one is gigantic. Two-story ceiling, too many square feet. They have all the normal stuff plus all the fancy stuff, with little islands of excess containing quick meals and luxuries strewn about. I’m only there late in the evening when it’s almost empty, and I am captivated by its perfect emptiness and luxury. It reminds me of the TRAINS OF THE FUTURE I rode in Paris as a kid, which went from nowhere to nowhere at high speed, silently, and only rose from the depths to bask under gigantic perfect skyscrapers.

I got a bottle of vodka, some pumpernickel bread, and some cold cuts.

The cold cuts were good Italian-style stuff: capicolla and real mortadella. They also had pancetta in the same rack, next to the smoked turkey and the pastrami and salami etc. Pancetta is different from the others. It’s bacon, and not ham, though it looks more like ham. Unlike everything else in that fridge box, it has to be cooked. Admittedly the package says it has to be cooked, but it’s not in huge type.

I wonder how many wealthy customers only know that “pancetta” means fancy and not that it’s cured but raw pork? Oops.

At the checkout, the workers were discussing a bad car wreck that had occurred earlier. Some high school kids had wiped out in front of the fire station next door and chopped their car in half. Discussion was had about the problems of children and horsepower. There had been another recent case where a kid had died on his 16th birthday because dad gave him a very fast sports car, and more recently an 18 year old girl had checked out after the Porsche she was piloting struck a fixed object at 100 mph.

Someone needs to talk to Dad. While he’s choking down his raw pork sandwich, Junior is out there being burned beyond recognition because Dad thinks it’s an awesome idea to buy Junior $75,000 worth of death. Who can blame the kids? They’re teenagers dying of their parents’ affluenza.

I’ll stick with the fully cooked carbonara, the salad and iced tea, and the Japanese-made sports coupé. Moderation, he died old.