Victory Soap v. 2.0

You would have to have a heart of stone to read the account of pResident Chimplerburton and the Evil Reporter-Crushing Tractor without laughing.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Well, in all fairness, I have no idea what the difference is between "unique visits" and "page views" either, but then again I'm not a professional pontificator trying to make a living off telling people how to blog.

You can block referrals from a website that criticizes your nasty little diatribe against supporters of the war in Iraq as well as deleting dissenting comments and threatening to go to the commenter's employer and attack his hard drive. Nuanced!

The site was down last night for about six hours due to a fiber cut taking out the backbone. Cause: apparently an ice storm in Atlanta did bad, bad things. Tons of sites all over the place, not just mine, were cut off. But we're back! You can't keep a bad woman down.

End-of-day(s) Update: well, turns out that little storm was able to wreak more direct havoc on my neck of the woods as well. Don't worry, though -- nothing much happened in my neighborhood. Other people in the next counties over weren't so lucky though.

Iowahawk posits a question: "Should Washington Post Military Analyst William Arkin Be Beaten Like the Repulsive Sack of Shit He Is?" Needless to say, I come down on the "yes" side, though there is the danger you might get splattered. Then again, you can always take a bath -- but a repulsive sack of shit will always be a repulsive sack of shit.

Update: he's also a bully. These squidgy, squirmy, soft-boned mannikins usually are.

Their willful ignorance is going to get us killed.

Update: nobody said a word about how I misspelled "ignorance" as "ingorance" and didn't catch it until now. Maybe I should apply a stylesheet that has a larger font.

Hm: poet of ancient Rome or blog commenter? It's hard to tell the difference. All I know is I'm going to use "Mrs. Fist and her five lusty daughters" the next time I have to slap a troll somewhere.

Addendum: Martial would fit in great on the Friday Fuck Off threads here too.

(Via Ghost of a Flea.)

From Tim Blair:

In a recent Guardian column Monbiot suggested a replacement pastime for all these wretched, excessive, maddeningly popular sports he'd get rid of.

It was something called ultimate frisbee, which sounds promising - kind of like ultimate fighting - but it turns out not to involve people flinging 10-inch circular saw blades at each other instead of dinky plastic discs, as you might hope. It's just like regular frisbee, except even gayer.

I don't give a rat's ass about the Superbowl or football in general but I admit that this made me laugh.

What the hell is wrong with me? All I have been able to do for almost the whole weekend is sit at this desk and click click click the stupid mouse. Oh yeah, and roll the scroll button. The inevitable is starting to happen: my hand feels like it's going to pop off my wrist. I have to turn this thing off before my right arm tendons start to burst into flame. So. BYE.

Doin' the laundreeee update: I'm back but I find it difficult to type around a cat. Note: I think that if I get the apartment I want I will be much better off financially and clutterwise as I will not have several second-hand junk stores across the street anymore. However, Ebay is still quite the danger.

If I change my blog's tagline this post's title will make no sense... Hi kids! Just me here, ah, sitting at the laptop again, clicking and stuff. I'm not tired, what I am is actually ACHING IN EVERY GODDAMN BONE.

Ahem. Well that feels -- not better, but anyway. I also have itchy eyes. I wish whatever I am coming down with would just get here already. I seem to have felt this way all freaking year. Today's weather didn't help -- imported straight from the Algore's cold armpit or something, it was cold and dank and damp and dark, just the sort of weather to get right into your bones and make you feel like hell. It wasn't even really that cold -- I've endured, and enjoyed, colder weather. I'm not used to this -- in South Florida cold weather is dry weather. The climate changes above Lake Okeechobee and the rest of Florida is as different as another planet. And it wasn't just me -- the office was almost as cold as the outdoors, and everyone was complaining about sore muscles and aches and wearing their outdoor coats indoors.

On the other hand one of my coworkers who knows about my little typewriter obsession brought me a late-Fifties era Smith Corona Galaxie manual with a script typeface. It was jammed in its case but when I got it home a little jimmying got the thing out. The ribbon is mostly dried up but I know where to get new ones. Tonight I typed on my new toy to test it out. (Verdict: needs cleaning, no surprise there.) Now, where to put it...

Things that go rrrrRRRRVOOM!

Silly boys. A car's just an extra purse, everyone knows that.

So I guess good Muslims can't do anything except sit very quietly and twiddle their thumbs towards Mecca? All we have to do is give a little shove, people...

Offended people in a town in my state, Atlantic Beach, have caused the proprietors of a theater to change the name of their current offering on their marquee. The play in question is the notorious (a word I prefer in this instance to "famous") twat-fest "The Vagina Monologues." The word "vagina" has been replaced by "Hoohah." Which word describes the contents of the play better than any review.

(Via dustbury.)

Whilst perusing the various blogs, I had a realization. You know that "Snap" thing that some people have on their blogs, that when you hover over a link opens a miniature picture of the website the link goes to? I don't like it. In fact, I hate it. I'm reading a blog, and my mouse cursor (which has a tendency to drift by itself, don't ask) skims over a link, and suddenly there's this block of crap covering the words I'm reading. It's no better than pop-up ads -- and more dishonest, at least pop-up ads are openly trying to sell you something. This Snap crap is pretending to render a service unto us needy readers, but you know what? If I wanted to see what the fucking webpage some link leads to looked like I would click on the fucking link. Get rid of this stupid thing on your websites, bloggers.

This is funny: some organization condemning the use of music in "torture" (as opposed to things like thumbscrews and shredders -- I guess they leave that to some other group to worry about) is being interviewed by Hugh Hewitt:

HH: (Macarthur Park music playing) Welcome back, America. It’s Hugh Hewitt with Professor Philip Bohlman, president of the Society For Ethnomusicologists. Professor, at the University of Chicago, I think I’m with you, Professor, on Richard Harris and Macarthur Park. Is that torturous?

PB: (pause) Excuse me?

HH: What do you think of that song?

PB: (longer pause) Well, I don’t completely understand what you’re asking me.

HH: Well, we’re trying to figure out which music…is it because the music is louder, or is it the particular music that you’re objecting to being played to the jihadists?

PB: First of all, I don’t think the question is one of jihadi. I don’t…I think using that term is very misleading, and I’m afraid that it’s not a line of questioning that I find productive at all.

HH: Well, why is it misleading to use jihadi?

PB: Well, what is your definition of that term?

HH: Someone engaged in global jihad, in an effort to use violence to advance the return of the caliphate.

PB: Well, I think that this is not what we’re talking about here.

HH: Well, would you agree Zarqawi is a jihadi? Zawahiri?

PB: I don’t know how you’re using the term, and I don’t want to be baited into this sort of …

HH: I don’t want to bait you. But I’m trying to get to the key question, which is let’s say we’ve got Osama and Zawahiri in a room. Can we play music to upset them?

PB: There is no point in doing it.

HH: But if the professional psyops interrogators think there is, could we?

PB: You’ve moved the conversation away from the discussion of this particular position statement, and I think that I…that it’s only appropriate...what I think about, the conversation here is not what I think might happen if Osama is in a room. This is not…this has nothing to do with the position statement that the Society For Ethnomusicology put up on its website.

HH: Well, actually, I think it’s a concrete hypothetical example, or we could use Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Are you familiar with him?

PB: This…the hypothetical, we’re not talking about hypotheticals.

HH: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in custody. He’s actually…are you familiar with him?

PB: I am, yes.

HH: Could we use the Barney song on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

PB: No.

HH: Could we use any music on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

PB: What would be the point?

HH: I don’t know. Richard Harris could destabilize a lot of people.

It's true. Just ask Professor Snape.

Yes, I really can't think of a better title than that lame thing. Maybe I'll set up my blog to not show titles -- after all, Glenn Reynolds does it, and he gets fifty kajillion hits an hour, which I gather is important in the bloggerverse.

Okay, that was Thought Number 1. Thoughts Number 2 through whatever are prompted by some posts on Kathy Shaidle's site. I'll start with these guys:

Blah blah blah blah Kathy's not funny blah blah blah blah I've got the Logical Fallacies website at the top of my "favorites" list blah blah blah blah mean bitch.

Okay, I'll admit that's a bit of a paraphrase. But it's pretty funny -- well, amusing -- to read accusations of non-funniness coming from people who probably have to keep sites like this one bookmarked right underneath that Logical Fallacies site.

Thought number 3: I never really got into Dick Cavett. I'm not sure if it was because he was over my head (this is a possibility -- I was not a precociously ironic and self-aware teenager), or because his show was on at a time I couldn't watch it. I think it was on in the afternoon, when I was home from school but when I was too busy listening to my favorite rock radio station (album rock!) and reading science fiction and fantasy. I think, though, it was mainly because, unlike all my other adolescent peers, I was uninterested in the little people inside the tv. I quit watching tv altogether in the mid-seventies, and didn't go back to seriously watching anything until Quincey ME started airing. Well, there was The Rockford Files, but sad to say I preferred the gravel-voiced performer of autopsies for the people. I did watch The Late Show with Johnny Carson, but it was more of a habit thing, and occasionally they had a funny comedian. Of course, now I feel like adding all the available dvds of the above shows to my Netflix queue.

A final thought on the high crime rate among black people: I should think that it goes without saying that most black crime is not committed by blacks with good jobs, stable lifestyles, and an outlook not based on blaming everyone else but themselves for their problems. In other words, black criminals are like criminals everywhere: people with more energy than sense who combine an oversized sense of entitlement with a collective shoulder-chip the size of Manhattan. Despite this obvious fact, black criminals in America have champions willing to overlook all their faults because "their ancestors were dragged here as slaves." And of course, the white man still wants to keep the black man down, because, because... well, because it's just fun to have a seething, resentful, uneducated and underpaid underclass about the place.

One more thing: the aforementioned champions of the downtrodden and oppressed black criminal like to say things like how hard it is to "break free from the cycle" of poverty and criminal behavior and whatever else they can pull out of their grab-bag of clichés. But there's another population in a far country who are descended from people who had a hard time "breaking free" of anything, mostly because they were criminals who had been shipped away from their home countries. Yet the majority of the descendants of those crime-cycle-trapped thieves and so on seem to have broken free from their criminal past, and even prospered. I am of course talking about Australia. Their criminal ancestors were white instead of black, but I doubt mere skin pigmentation had anything to do with it. I note that I have never heard of an Australian claiming that the fact that his nth-times ancestor had been dragged to his country's shores in chains (and may even have been as innocent as the West African peasants who were nabbed and put on slave ships, because no justice system is perfect) is reason for Australians to wallow in self-pity, victimization, and blame-throwing. Could it have something to do with the lack of this sort of "he did it not me!" culture that made the difference?

So what should be done? I don't know -- maybe we should throw Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et al on a ship bound for Australia and leave them there. In the middle of the outback with a toothbrush and a spare change of underwear.

(Syntax note: I use the term "black" throughout because I am not going to type "African-American" ten thousand times. I grew up in the Seventies when "Black Is Beautiful" was the slogan, so the PC-tards can bite me.)

Update: hah hah, Steve and I have mind-melded! Oh wait -- I mean, gross, make it stop! Now I have this urge to make my own curry from scratch and buy a parrot. Won't my cats be surprised.

... that everything that is wrong with our country can be illustrated by the way Bob Seger's self-pitying saga "Turn the Page" has become his biggest hit, despite the existence of much better songs in his repertoire ("Travellin' Man," "Hollywood Nights," etc.) Come on, America, what the hell is the matter with you?

I really hate that song.

(Via Lilac Rose.)

Update: I decided to remove the image. I don't know what that model chick had to do with being a misanthrope. Besides, if the quiz people decide to move images around on their site, I'd get that stupid broken image tag.

I decided to stay home today so I called in sick. Really, though I feel (or felt) like cack -- I ached in every bone, and couldn't face the thought of going into the office. I don't think I'm coming down with anything, I just think I overdid it this weekend. Saturday I took a long bus trip to the fancy mall, because I took it into my head to go to Crate and Barrel. The trip to C&B proved inconclusive -- I didn't find exactly what I wanted. (I want a set of melamine dishes. I don't want to buy them one by one; I want a boxed set, preferably with coffee cups. Unfortunately these things tend to come out in the summer, when cold drinks are the fashion, and they come with those stupid Eazy-Skratch plastic glasses. This was the sort of thing the store had. I want melamine coffee cups like they used to make back in the old days. I may have to go on Ebay, or wander the thrift shops.)

As I was waiting for the bus I observed lots of construction sites around the mall. I believe that they are going to build the new Ikea in this area, though I could be wrong. But it is the place for "luxury" stores so it would be logical that they would build it there. Of course, undercutting this notion is the new Old Navy store that was almost finished. But then again, right next to it is the location of a new West Elm (I dote on their furniture -- someday....).

Well I'm sure this is all very fascinating to my readers. But the thing is Saturday I walked my legs off as well as getting bus-ass. And Sunday I decided to go the Altamonte Mall, which is the nearest mall to me, not for shopping but because I wanted to go to Crane's Roost Park, somewhere behind the mall. Of course, there is tons of construction, because this is the location of Altamonte's new "Uptown" area -- shops in fake "old town" format and high-rise condos that cost a million dollars as well as ridiculously overpriced apartments (they imagine that people will be willing to pay over $1200 for a one-bedroom with a view of the I-4; all I can say is those better be some amenities) -- so I got rather lost, and ended up walking myself nearly into a coma. I wanted to eat at Gina's, where I've never been, and I've still never been, because on Sunday they don't open until 4pm. I ended up eating at a nearby Chili's. By that time my back hurt so bad I ordered a margarita, which took away the pain but also nearly made me fall asleep on my quesadillas. I finally found the park, and walked around the lake in an effort to wake myself up. They have done it up nicely (I took photos, will post later maybe) but they have speakers all over the place which were piping out music. This is something they must have copied from Disney (the last time I went to Epcot -- a very long time ago -- we ended up staying there way after dark when almost everyone was gone. It was actually after the place closed up, but the friends I was with worked there, that was why. What was eerie was the way the music coming from the overhead speakers continued to play to the darkened, empty park. Anyway, the idea of music playing at me when I might not want to hear any was annoying, though I am not as sensitive as I used to be. (In my younger days I would have expended much energy being irritated by this sort of thing.)

My goth past... years ago (sometime in the early 90s, I think) I saw Diamanda Galas perform in a little barely-restored old theater on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. I think she did the "Plague Mass" -- I've shoved those concert-going days so far into the back of my mind that I can't remember. Anyway, there was this one performance she did just playing a grand piano and singing, and another where she came out in nothing but a long, flowing skirt, otherwise naked except for this bizarre glittery body paint that combined with the usual crap-goth "eerie" (translate: cheap) lighting made her look like a statue made of some weird, other- (or under-) worldly metal that was starting to rot and flake. I don't remember much else about the concert, except of course for her voice, and for the stunned respect of the crowd of local goth kidz, their studied irony and pretend vampirish lives for once confronted by the reality of what they thought they were trying to be.

Anyway, I got to see Diamanda Galas perform. I'm glad to also hear she's still alive and kicking -- considering how many people are dropping all over the place -- that poor trashy celebrity woman, a coworker at my job who went the way my grandpa did -- in for a "minor procedure" and the body just went "screw this, I'm outta here." I'd have gone to the viewing today if I had a car, and didn't have a cat to medicate waiting for me at home. Tomorrow's the funeral.

(Link to Right Wing Trash post via Kathy Shaidle.)

I haven't said anything on my blog about the Amanda Marcotte foofaraw, because I really didn't care all that much. But I don't want all my gentle readers to miss the comment I did make over at Charles G. Hills' site concerning a weirdly (and wrongly, I mean come on) sympathetic note of support from the Conservative Princess:

First, no one has silenced her. Second, no one has -- oh well, someone already said it. So, she's free to be herself again, but she's lost a cushy job putting out bland congrats for hairdo boy, and she's complaining? Let's just say that against all odds Edwards kept her, how free does anyone think that this woman would be to engage in her lubricious rantings? Talk about being censored -- she'd be turned into a bland nobody in no time and then forgotten like a housewife with 2.4 children -- something I thought was the chief fear of every progresso-feminist gal in the land. Proof that liberals can't think, and that righties who engage in sympathy for the devil experience a similar level of brain damage. I can't even seem to find my nano-violin, myself.

And this marks the first time in possibly history that I've agreed with the smarmy Jim Henley about anything. Chalk one up for the books.

Update: I forgot -- all this is to obscure the real question, which is: what on earth was Edwards thinking? I find it hard to believe that there aren't a jillion less disgustingly foul-mouthed liberal bloggers out there who would have served his campaign -- which whether he or anyone else likes it must play to the class that doesn't like naughty language as much as any rightwing campaign -- just as well if not better than this woman could have. From the few samples of her writing that I have been able to force myself to read before the boredom coma threatened to make me faceplant my keyboard, Marcotte is nothing special in the prose department. Heck, Edwards could have told any one of his employees -- or their kids -- to knock up a blog and copy-paste pabulum. A blog isn't anything special, after all -- it's just a form you fill out and press "submit." Obviously he is as surrounded by idiots as everyone else, which enabled the Kos/Pandagon crew to get their hooks in, however briefly and farcically.

Oh well -- it is all to the good, if by "good" you mean anything that makes the current crop of Dems and their supporters look like a bunch of morons. And I do mean that.

You know, sometimes I think it would be better if I turned off comments. Then I wouldn't have to know how many people don't actually read what I wrote. I get enough of that at work. "Didn't you get the email?" "Well, yeah..." "What you want to know is right there in the email." "Oh." Or better yet, this one: "I don't read all my emails."

People, my posts have beginnings and ends, and I rarely hide the bulk of them behind the "more" tag. RTWFT.

Well then, I'm not a woman.

And yes, I tried that "look up... and there he is." For various reasons, it turned out that sort of thing isn't for me. I'm sorry there are a lot of single females out there who were not cut out for singlehood and are now miserable, but I'm not one of them. Can we quit playing this "who has the right to keep their organs" bullshit, please?

And for what it's worth, I have nothing against the whole Valentine's Day fuss either. It doesn't mean anything to me one way or the other. It's nice to see people having fun. So this isn't an anti-2/14 post.

YES YES YES YES finally. Jesus. I thought I was the only one who didn't cry herself to sleep at night because she couldn't watch The Sopranos and so on because she doesn't have HBO. (Or whatever.) The existence of these things makes me want to rent old Banacek episodes on dvd from Netflix. If I'm going to be bored and irritated by a Cool, Hipster Hero who cracks wise as he saves the universe (or at least, the girl of the week), it might as well be George Peppard.

Thanks again, Fox Television, you assholes.

(Whether we like it or not, the ability to be funny, as opposed to being the butt of the joke, is essential for success in these here United States. As long as the general public -- no matter how conservative they actually are themselves -- think of "conservative" as being synonymous with words like "uptight" and "humorless," we can continue to expect liberals to run the show. I don't make up the facts, I just report them.)

And keep 'em running -- we must stop at nothing until this creep and all his little friends are drowned. Bring on the rising seas!

I resent it when I find myself unable to write my own "Americans are hopeless idiots" screed because some supercilious jerk has already stuck his foot in, and in order to not be -- if only in my own thought -- associated with his self-satisfied little point-making I find myself unable to summon the words to complain about the doltishness and cowardice affecting American culture.

By the way, bragging about how your reading habits makes you superior to the drooling horde is a favorite trick of Our Enlightened Progressive Betters. (Which brings me to another thing I resent: being unable to enjoy talk of "important" -- because good -- works of classic literature because so many smarmy liberal bullshit artists have used their copies of Mansfield Park to impress chicks.)

(Via the inexplicably impressed Kim Du Toit.)

Naturally this discussion on Ace of Spades on a column on Townhall.com about "porn addiction" affecting our troops in Iraq is completely focused on whether porn is good for you or not. It's a pretty good demonstration of how obsession destroys the ability to make distinctions, because they've all missed the most important incongruity in the article, which is illustrated by this quote:

"I don't think I've ever been confronted as much face-to-face with men and women - in and out of the confessional - saying, 'I'm addicted to porn and I don't know how to get out of it,'" Father Reilly said.

What kind of priest would reveal what he is being told in the confessional? Either this is a bogus "military chaplain" and bullshit can safely be called, or this is a real chaplain -- in which case he should be both defrocked and thrown out of the military.

Sorry, folks. One week out of every month I am just about useless, and this is that week.

I would like you to know what the news media considers important news:

ST. PETERSBURG - The notes under the door. The incessant phone calls. The impassioned pleas, all begging for a piece of the story.

It wasn't reporters in search of secret intelligence involving the war in Iraq.

The subject: St. Petersburg's Jennifer Mee, a 15-year-old who started hiccuping four weeks ago today and has yet to stop.

I kid you not:

Representatives from ABC's Good Morning America called Jennifer's home 57 times on Sunday and slipped notes under her hotel room door, her family said.

The article subtly makes the family look like a bunch of dumb hicks. Then again, they are from my state (Florida), so they may well be. Still, that doesn't make their plight any more interesting or vital to the fate of the nation, and is frankly not even a moderately interesting "human interest" page nine filler. Come on -- The Today Show? Ellen DeGeneres? Inside Edition? I can just imagine the scintillating wonder of the interview:

Matt Lauer or somebody: "So, Jennifer, tell us about yourself."

Jennifer Mee: "Well hic I'm from hic St. Petersburg Florihicda, and I can't stop hic hiccupping."

Matt Lauer or somebody: "Okay... tell me how it started."

Jennifer Mee: "Well hic um... they just hic starhicted one hic day."

Matt Lauer or somebody: "And they won't stop?"

Jennifer Mee: "hic No."

Matt Lauer or somebody: "How does that make you feel?"

Jennifer Mee: "I'd hic realhicly hic like hic them hic to sthicop."

I'm on the edge of my seat. You?

Excuse me, but isn't there something else kind of important going on somewhere? Like a war or something? I know "life goes on" and all that but this is ridiculous.

(Via Dave at Garfield Ridge.)

Oh Jesus, here's another one: "Hmm..." the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology observes, "British women in their 40s and 50s don't care much for sex! Now how can that be?"

British women in their 40s and 50s: "Englishmen our age are old, fat, and smelly."

DUH. Oh my God. I mean really, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA PUBLICATION FOR BRINGING US THAT EARTHSHATTERINGLY IMPORTANT NEWS THAT NO ONE EVER KNEW BEFORE. Christ on a bike, where is that fucking asteroid?

(Okay, I know that the Daily Mail is one of those cheesy boobs-on-page-three rags that they come out with over there, but lots of people on this side of the pond equate anything that comes from the British Isles as immediately respectable. I have seen the Daily Mail referred to as a regular news source by other newspapers over here more than once.)

(Via Ace of Spades HQ.)

Update: SOOPER-DOOPER VERY IMPORTANT NEWS UPDATE BREAKING NEWS THING! Oh dear lord -- bicycles!!! Run for your life!!!!!!!

No, I haven't registered Democrat again (if I do that you are welcome to take me out and shoot me as I will have become useless), I went and bought a cell phone. It occurred to me that all the wandering about town I do on buses and on foot -- and Orlando has become a large city, with a growing crime problem -- it might be a good idea to have a cell phone for emergencies. So I bought one of those prepaid plans and put some minutes on it. I can't believe how cheap cell phones have become -- I paid less than twenty dollars for the Virgin Mobile "Oyster," a pretty neat little clamshell thing. Sure, I can't take blurry pictures on it (no camera phone, like I need such a thing) but it has all the other things -- color screen, stupid ringtones, etc. The default ringtone is this weird lounge-y tune, but we are talking about Virgin here. Which mobile service is obviously geared towards teens who want to be trendy but are still under mama's and daddy's bank accounts; the website for the account features images of teenage girls sticking their tongues out, yuck. But on the whole, not bad for about sixty bucks (what it cost to buy the phone and add a nice amount of minutes on it.) And now I have another toy to lug around.

The Puerto Rican guys in my apartment building were having an argument. Now there is ominous silence. This morning they were wandering about setting off firecrackers -- casually, like it was a common physical gesture, the way you would turn your head and spit. Maybe they are all excited because it's Oscar night. You think?

Added: here's an Oscar comment thread if you're into that thing. (Very little Oscarmania, lots of Gore-bashing, so it's all good really.)

On a shelf among the other cheap shoes they sat, deceptively innocent and demure. There they were, thought I, the simple ballet-style flats that I had been looking for amid the fashionable avalanche of twelve-inch wedgies and spike-heeled backless mules. I am a person who likes her shoes to be understated, to in fact be almost invisible, with the only statement they could be said to be making to be that comfort doesn't mean you have to look like you cut off the bottom parts of an Apollo-era spacesuit and stuffed your feet into them. These shoes seemed to fit the criteria. They even seemed to be made of suede -- though the label said "all man-made materials," which should have been a warning sign. But they were only ten dollars, so I bought them.

I put them on this morning. On the way to the bus stop, their stiffness was annoying, but I put it off to their being new. At least they weren't so stiff that they flapped off my heel like two wooden boards, which has happened with other shoes.

Did I forget to add that I have narrow heels, very high arches -- the tops of my feet look like a pair of Roman noses -- and gigantic (in proportion to my other ones) big toes? This makes the fitting of shoes problematic -- when they fit my heel, they tend to be too small in the toes; when my toes have wiggle room, the back of the shoe flops around loosely. This is one of the many reasons I haven't been able to find a proper set of flats.

Anyway, back to shoe horror: by the end of the day my toes felt like they were being crushed in a vise; the shoes were made in China, apparently as a new kind of foot-binding technique. There was absolutely -- zero, none -- no cushioning in the sole; walking barefoot would have actually been more comfortable. Alas, that sort of thing is frowned upon at my office, so I had to hobble about all day in increasing "discomfort." At the end of the day I had hacked holes through the things, in an unsuccessful attempt to give my gigantic mutant (and now swollen and bruised) toes some freedom, and I wanted to hack off my own feet as well. When I made it to the mall via my first bus the first thing I did was go into Sears and spend fifty bucks I really couldn't afford (though the alternative being permanent crippling I figure it's money well spent) on some "comfort"-style leather sandals with cushioned soles. The moment I put them on I felt about ninety percent better. I wore the sandals out of the store after telling the saleslady to go ahead and throw the Chinese torture devices into the trash.

Don't buy cheap shoes.