Godammit, I’m Mad!

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.

Godammit, I got an email update from Pixie Market and stupidly went to the website. A spell came over me, you know the one.  It sounds like this in your head: buy it! no don’t! in an endless loop.

My shoe sponsor is somewhere in London, leaving me untethered to reality.

I’m blaming this purchse on Jill, who is a cold-blooded enabler. Don’t turn to Jill when your habit is triggered. And don’t talk to me about those fucking buckles, either. It could be a lot worse.

Just to make you feel bad, here’s a pair you can’t have, by Junya Watanabe, 2006.

Or, you can go look at you-know-who’s “Shoe Picks for Fall 09.” The comment thread will put you off shoes forever! If only I’d seen that sooner!

I am still only barely aware of who DJ AM was, but I’m very sorry to hear about his death.  I can’t understand why a man with 11 years of sobriety could throw it all away. Listen to him talking about his commitment to helping other addicts in their recovery.

He seems like a lovely guy. He was in a band that tortured me with one of the worst songs ever written but that was all in the past. It seems like he knew everything he needed to know about where drugs would lead him. And yet apparently he forgot all of it, the endless pointless misery of it, in one bleak evening alone.

No one should die with a crack pipe in their lap or a needle in their arm! In the last week or so, two people I care about came close. Fuckers.

See the necklace up there? I’ll bet some people who stumble across this picture will be going, “Um that is so rad, where can I buy that?” instead of thinking, “Why the fuck would anyone think a syringe would look cool as jewelry?”  I wish the designer had made a little dead guy with a syringe sticking out of an abscessed foot.

A whole year ago I wrote about addiction and intervention. I still urge everyone to fight hard against romanticising drug use, and to hold on to your loved ones who are struggling to stay sober. Beg them to stick around. Threaten to kill them if they use again.  If you hear someone glorifying dope addicts, punch them in the face.

For the last 24 hours, I have been acutely remorseful about watching Michael Jackson’s head on fire. I watched the video online, and now it’s being played on CNN, in an endless loop of mock horror and shock. Even Mark Geragos was disgusted, noting to Larry King that beheadings were available on video but weren’t appropriate for TV viewing.

It’s wrong to observe personal suffering in such a dispassionate context, and I feel debased by doing it. I’m so sorry! If only I could expunge it from the record of my sins.

Less sensationally, Dash Snow died this week, nearly a year after making me angry by his mere existence, and I’m sorry about that, too. I still think he was a pretentious, attention-seeking hipster, but I mourn his death all the same.

Dash Snow was 27, and probably knew it was the magic number for those who think “Live Fast, Die Young” is actually good advice.  His downtown hipster friends are shocked, even though he was a heroin addict. No Diprivan here, just the usual method of going out.

Why do people have to become drug addicts and create such misery for their loved ones and such devastation for those they leave behind? Why can’t anyone save them? Why do people enable them? Why do they want to escape their lives when it’s the only one they’ve got? Why stick that first needle in your arm, you motherfuckers?

It’s a terrible mystery to me but I still want everyone who knows a drug addict to do whatever they can to lead them to safety. Rat out your friends and co-workers and children and spouses and sisters and brothers.  They’ll be mad, but that’s okay. Make them mad.

A real artist and a fake artist, both dead now, dead as a doornail, no matter how the news media recycle their stories. I wish they’d let me rest in peace.

Even though I’m so happy with my little woolfie necklace from Her Amagingness Wendy Brandes there’s no such thing as enough jewelry (or anything else.)

This wolf pendent above, by dead ponies, is carrying his tail for some reason, and he’s saying “Hey, buy me and you’ll be on your way to collecting  wolf-themed jewelry!”

This “godless” necklace by brookadelphia is acrylic, not as nice as gold but much more affordable. I hear it saying “Buy me you idiot, I’m only $48!”

Look at these adorably sinister zodiac babies from Anomaly Jewelry. The conjoined twins is Gemini, the mermaid is Capricorn. The whole collection is great. Even when I factor in the Crypto-hipster aspect, I find it irresistible.  I hear it calling out, “Hey, admit how much you love retro-looking baby things!”

Are you hearing “BUY!” or are you hearing “Admit you are powerless over shopping, and your life has become unmanageable?”

QUICK!  DROP EVERTHING!

Opening Ceremony will let you pre-order your Chloe Sevigny buckle boots if you act now! There will be no returns or exchanges, but so what, you will do as you’re told and buy these damn shoes if you know what’s good for you.

$625, but too bad, you know you need them or you’ll be hopelessly fucked and un-Chloed and a total fucking loser. Seven buckles! They laugh  in the face of your Surface 2 Air shoes.

Don’t ever say you weren’t warned.