Godammit, I’m Mad!

If you don’t live in Los Angeles, you may not be familiar with Fred Segal, a retail establishment frequented by pop stars and wealthy anorexics. Long ago, I realized that Fred Segal is in league with Satan. But yesterday, I forgot.

Feeling bored and oppressed by existential malaise, I went to Fred Segal to look at earrings. I have been fixated on the idea of gold safety pin earrings and I knew Fred Segal would have some. It’s a knowledge based on the type of people who shop there and a dark intuition fostered by Satan Himself.

So there I was, in the full glory of unemployment, when the salesgirl said, “Yes, we do have gold saftey pin earrings!” She produced five pairs of earrings, one covered in tiny emeralds.  I tried on one earring and thought, Okay, got to have them.

I handed my credit card to the salesgirl, my heart pounding with excitement and guilt. The voices in my head argued about the purchase, with the Addict Voice taking the lead. “So what if you can’t afford them, so what!”

The salesgirl was having trouble with her computer. It wouldn’t recognize my card or anything else. She apologized and decided to reboot the computer.

As I waited, I felt the sense of deranged lust for the earrings start to wane. I could already predict the remorse. Maybe I didn’t even need to buy them. I told the salesgirl while she struggled, “If this goes on much longer, I will take it as a message from god that I don’t need these earrings.” She laughed and said, “No, it’s just a message from this computer, don’t worry, I’ll get it to work.”

She called a supervisor who tried to give her directions over the phone. Now I was sure: I didn’t give a shit about the earrings! Life would go on without them. In fact, life would be much, much better without them!

I reached over and grabbed my credit card and said. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go now. Too bad it didn’t work out.”

I marched out of there as fast as my wonky hip would allow, dizzy with the joy of missing a bullet. God was stronger than Satan and I owe Him one. If he would hide my fucking credit card, so much the better.

Oooooh, I love these boots, because I love boots and because theyr’e “nude” which is So Essential this season.

But they also come in black suede with gold embossed stuff.

I want these boots. They look like I MIGHT be able to walk in them, too. But I can’t have them because of the no money thing. I can’t buy either pair. Which pair should I not buy more? The nude or the gold?

The sight of this fake fur jacket triggered my shopping addiction, big time. To make things worse, it’s called the Wolf Jacket. It seemed like destiny, if destiny were a voice in my head saying “Buy it, put it on your credit card, do it, do it, do it!”

In a stroke of unwitting genius, I asked my kid webmaster to stick my head on the lookbook model.

VOILA!!! It looks stupid on me! I don’t need to buy it. Free at last!

How many times have you listened to a friend talk about her terrible relationship, only to realize that nothing you can say or do will get her to end it?

I never learn that these people are caught in a cycle of addiction and will crawl back for more abuse until circumstances intervene to break things off.

It should be easy for smart people to figure out that they’re playing a losing game. To everyone else, it’s all so obvious. Now there are 12 step groups for Love Addiction but try getting your friend to go to a meeting. I once got as far as showing someone the online questionnaire about Love Addiction. She answered Yes to nearly every question. But mostly what she really wanted was to talk about the horrible creep who was making her miserable and showed every intention of making her even more miserable.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I got caught up like this. A man who didn’t love me and treated me badly was ruining my life. When I broke up with him, he took it well. I felt proud of myself for ending it. Now I would be free! Within 48 hours, I’d call him and whine, “I miss you.” Thus would begin another round of the same pathetic cycle. I needed a fix of whatever it was he was dealing, and he was glad to give it to me. In retrospect, I am amazed at how patient my friends were when I ranted about what a bastard he was.

Feelings of inadequacy, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, buried rage, lack of self-identity are all characteristics of the Love Addict. Then there’s the dopamine issue once the game gets going.

It’s so painful to watch someone you care about waste their time and batter their own self-esteem through this irrational and obsessive behavior. I have three friends at present who are lost in addictive affairs that are dragging them down. I wish I could help, but I can’t. I’m glad it’s not me, though.

If you’ve broken free of a screwed up addictive relationship, what have you learned about yourself? What helped you to survive the withdrawal? Or how have you been able to lead a friend toward self-preservation?

Still suffering from the irrational and inappropriate longing for leather shorts, I was thrilled to find this hideous pair above, by Derek Lam, for $1,450 at Saks.com. It’s always nice when your unwholesome shopping fixation is chipped away by images or associations that ruin the whole idea of whatever it is you think you need.

Look at this atrocity below by YSL, also at Saks, for $1,950.

Horrible, aren’t they?

Here’s a pair by Juicy called “Moto Leather Shorts” that compounds the “Moto” problem with a ruffle at the hem. Yay!

My craving is starting to wane, but it’s still troubling. To make it even more tragic, the Huffington Post featured an article yesterday that asked: “Can Women Over 5o Look Great in Jeans?”

I resent this stupid question on every level. What the fuck does “great” even mean in this context? Do they actually mean “thin?” Maybe women over 50 should just kill themselves rather than be subjected to more critiques of this nature.

How about this: I have a pair of nothing leather pants that I could cut off to make shorts. Is this a viable plan? Or not?

1. Put your item in the shopping cart.
2. Open a new window and go to a news website
3. Take a few cleansing breaths
4. Think about all the things you own that are nearly EXACTLY like the thing in your cart.
5. Think about your unpaid bills.
6. Recall the last time you bought something that didn’t make you one bit happier.
7. Picture yourself ordering the item and feeling the inevitable remorse.
8. Now picture yourself feeling virtuous.
9. What a close call!
11. See? You can kick this habit: You are in control.
12. The next day, go back to your cart and buy your item because you really really want it.

*Photo by Jeongmee Yoon

For the first time in months, I went out to shop today! My BF took us to Neiman Marcus, where we saw LaToya Jackson in the men’s department wearing a red Santa hat and sporting a bubble butt that jiggled wildly but still looked fake.

In the shoe department, the sale racks were overflowing with eye-popping high-end monstrosities by the usual designers.  I thought it would be nice to try on some $1,500 alligator wedges. I would rather die than try to walk in shoes like this, since I clearly have trouble walking in flat athletic shoes.

I was transfixed by an awful woman trying on some high suede boots. She modeled them in different positions as though trying out for a contest of some kind. Her legs were as thin as my arms but her lips were inflated enough to save at least half of the passengers on the Titanic. I hope she bought the boots.

Upstairs in the clothing department, a woman who looked like Terry Hatcher kissed up to a woman with awful frizzy red hair, who revealed that she was up for a directing award. Terry gushed that she always saw Frizzy on Facebook, but Frizzy insisted that she rarely logged in.

It was a joyous day, and I achieved a dizzying level of shopping-endorphins without having to spend any money. Like any addict, I can’t wait to do it again.

leather jacket by Gar-de, ill-fitting old jeans by Wrangler, blue shoes by Adidas, Chanel bag, cane from Rite-Aid.

Because I’m an addict and an idiot, I’ve spent hours tonight staring like a zombie at crap online. I checked out these pointy-tied Dr. Martens and thought, Eh, they won’t fit and I’ll just have to send them back.

Later, I went to Facebook and to my horror, there was an ad for these Docs right there on my profile page! What the fuck is up with that??

Does Facebook know everything I do? How can Facebook stand me, if It knows what a stupid idiot I am? And how can I stand Facebook for getting all up in my business?

Fucking Facebook. I still can’t even figure out what people are supposed to do there. MySpace was great for pranks and causing trouble. Facebook? Who cares where you went for dinner! Not me.

However, I did have a reason for going to Facebook tonight: to snag a photo of this amazing six-layer rainbow cake that my friend Rose made. Ooooh!

Friendship and cake are blessings to cherish. Ice cream, too.

I know it’s a big surprise, since I’m not a waitress or porn star, but nonetheless I did have an affair with Tiger Woods, just like everyone else. Having a beautiful Swedish wife is no guarantee of happiness, it can finally be revealed. Tiger promised to “wear me out,” just like he told that other tramp, but he was a little put off when I admitted that I hate golf and I never liked his stupid name.

Here are some of the questions I’ve been mulling over:

What’s the difference between a guy who loves to cheat on his wife and a Sex Addict?
Does anyone really believe in Sex Addiction? Are all compulsive behaviors “addictions” or just some of them?
Do people who trust trashy gold diggers want to be caught or are they just stupid?
Does anyone believe that the woman on the far right in the top row was really a Tiger Woods mistress?

The woman has sold her story to the Daily Mail, a ridiculous British tabloid for those who don’t know. It quotes this woman as saying something like “Tiger especially loved my red panties.” Crap like this reminds me of my own career as a highly skilled tabloid journalist. I would NEVER have expected to be paid for such a generic quote! My shit was soooo much better, even if it was something about Jessica Simpson’s penchant for french fries, a fact that I made up and later saw on every online newspaper and gossip site for days.

I shouldn’t complain about Tiger Woods, since he is a gift from god to me and all who are struggling to cope with daily existence. I bless the day he crashed his car. My hard drive died yesterday morning, and I had only the promise of Tiger Woods shit on TV to pull me through this bleak period of unconnectivity.

Thank you Tiger, and all you dumb trashy whores!

This coat has been sealed in a big package, laying on my couch for nearly two weeks. My son’s accident brought my world to a halt, and I couldn’t bear the frivolity of opening a package.

Tonight, I felt it was time to check out my last impulsive and misguided internet purchase, so I tore the bag off the coat and squealed happily at the sight of this giant shaggy Kate Moss thing from Topshop.  I don’t have a full-length mirror, so my husband took a photo to help me see how great it looks. I may not be Carine Roitfeld but ha ha, now I can look like a Yeti too.