off by one for 2005 March 11 (entry 0)

(1) Fri Mar 11 10:25:28 president's choice vs. safeway select:

I will miss Jewel grocery stores.

I won't miss Dominick's.

That's the truth, but it doesn't make much sense. Jewel and Dominick's are the two main grocery store chains in town (local brands now owned by Albertson's and Safeway, respectively). In my neighborhood, the Dominick's are not very nice compared to the Jewels, and Jewel was always where we'd go from NPU because it was the closest. But I'm sure in other hoods that situation is reversed. It really comes down to the luck of geography and many memories of grocery shopping at 1AM, chatting it up with Mel, the night cashier. She told me about how they get their music piped in via sattelite or cable or something -- which I had asked about after hearing a pretty obscure rock song on their in-house system twice (The Day Brings, by Brad) -- and how one morning at about 5AM somebody upstairs decided to start piping in classical music over the feed, and how cool she thought that was. I wish I could have been there to hear it. (It seems kind of Kubrickian to me, shopping in an empty grocery store in the middle of the night with classical music coming in over the PA.)

While we're on the subject of grocery stores, sometimes when I'm walking the aisles I would have a fantasy (this fantasy would strike me when I was grocery shopping at 1AM) where I would run down the aisles of the empty grocery store with my arms out scraping a swath of food down off the shelves making a huge mess. I would throw big bags of rice and flour and pasta up in the air so they would burst on the floors and generally wreak havoc. I'd go up and down all the aisles and then I would race out one of the exits. I wouldn't actually condone such an act, and I hope that no one actually does this. I also suppose that realistically, someone (probably the one-handed Osco night manager) would tackle me and I'd get arrested, but in my fantasy I run out into the cool night and walk home, laughing. I think this fantasy is related to the daydreams where I imagine things blowing up.

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