Howard and I took on Texting vs. Drinking while driving in the Perpetual Post.
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In the brief history of cell phones, has there ever been a critical text message? One which actually helped to avert a crisis? Not a ‘your ex is at the party!!’ crisis. I’m talking a genuine disaster, prevented by a buzzing cell phone with a postage-stamp-sized message of 160 characters or less? No. I’m pretty sure not. They don’t even use that shit on 24. If Jack Bauer needs to let someone know that a building is about to explode unless they cut the blue wire, he calls.
This is why I am unsympathetic toward texting while driving: because it’s never urgent. At the very least, it’s never more urgent than not crashing your car. Is there anything you might need to say via text message that can’t wait until you are no longer responsible for keeping a moving vehicle from hitting anything?
Or maybe you text in the car because you’re bored. Is just plain driving not interesting enough anymore? Watching the scenery hurtle past you at 60mph while other cars weave in and out of your way doesn’t hold your attention the way it used to? Then pull over. Maybe you’ll like walking better. Because you’ll be doing a more lot of that when you flip your car over a median because you were texting to let your friend know that you’ve been thinking of trying out for The Amazing Race. Actually, scratch that. At that point, you’ll be thrilled if you’re walking.
Before I continue to get my crabby geezer on, I would like to note that I am a huge fan of texting. I don’t really know what I like about it so much; but since I manage to send about nine million texts a month, there must be something about the format that appeals to me. Still, even when a blinding flash of brilliance strikes while I’m in traffic and I feel the overwhelming urge to express it to someone via text, I hold my thumbs.
I’m not saying it’s easy. We as a society are accustomed to multitasking to the point of utter uselessness, and we have conditioned ourselves to expect instant gratification. We want same day delivery and 24 hour customer service. We put pizza on a bagel so we can eat pizza anytime. Nobody listens to voicemails anymore; even text messaging is apparently beginning to fall by the wayside as people begin to IM each other through their phones.
But there are still some things you have to wait for, and texting, if you’re driving, is one of them. Just like you have to wait until you get out of the tub to use your hair dryer. Some things are just so dangerous that they’re not worth doing in the instant they occur to you. Unless it’s worth risking life and limb to let your old roommate know that it’s Shark Week, wait until you get where you’re going.
Zoe and I took on Google’s new search suggestions in this week’s Perpetual Post.
The ever-helpful folks at Google are at it again. Now when you go to Google.com and begin to search for a word or phase, a list of related suggestions automatically pops up to guide you in your search, or destroy your faith in humanity. Either way, it saves valuable time.
The concept makes sense in theory. As Google’s website explains, “Suggestions come in real-time, so typing [ great w ] and clicking ‘great wall of china’ is faster and easier than typing it out.” You’re right, Google. That probably does save me a few seconds. But you lose me when, while searching for a recommended local dentist, I begin to type in “good dentist in the Raleigh area” and before I’m halfway finished, I receive the suggestion “good death knight names”. I understand that you’re trying to help here, Google, but this seems like a shot in the dark. Aside from the distraction of being shown searches I don’t want, there’s the simple disappointment of being misunderstood. That is not what I meant at all, Google. That is not it, at all. I search for a certain playwright or a song lyric, and Google is ready with suggestions. Are you looking for Shakespeare, or maybe Shakira? Are you searching for information on “christ the king sausage fest” or wondering “why does poop float?” Why indeed, Google. I’m glad you asked! It’s about time I wondered that.
Which brings me to another alarming aspect of this search mechanism: the fact that the suggested searches are apparently based on other searches that are done, as Google says, “by users all over the world”. Now, I don’t have a whole lot of faith left in the anonymity of anything I do on the internet. I understand that the web is not my personal playground, where I can come and go as I please, secure in my privacy, researching the mating habits of burros and reading “Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman” fan-fiction. I’m aware that it is possible for someone to be tracking my web surfing habits at all times. I don’t like it, but I try not to think about it, because without the internet I am a husk of a human being. However, when Google starts throwing the searches of others back in my face, even though they’re couched as ‘suggestions’, it is an uncomfortable reminder that virtually everything on the internet is being collected, catalogued and stored somewhere—mostly by Google! I don’t like being reminded of this. Can’t we conduct our deepest, darkest Google searches in private?
Not only that, but Google saves your own past searches and helpfully provides them when they might be relevant to (that is, use some of the same letters as) later searches—and it helpfully distinguishes searches you’ve personally done from others by placing the word ‘remove’ next to those searches. So the next time I go on the home computer and begin to search for “scattergories online” and I see the search “scabies symptoms” with that little tell-tale ‘remove’ next to it, I know that it’s time to have a talk with my live-in boyfriend.
The search suggestions I’ve been coming across have also been a little disconcerting. I do my fair share of googling, but it’s usually to find pictures of muffins or determine David Caruso’s age (sadly, too old for me). Nothing too earth-shattering, rarely very deep or meaningful. Judging by the suggested search terms of users all over the world, I am in the minority here. Type in “why does my” and you come up with a veritable catalogue of maudlin questions. “Why does my husband not love me?” “Why does my wife lie to me?” “Why does my boyfriend not want to marry me?” Google has apparently set up shop as the Miss Lonelyhearts of the twenty-first century. The questions and problems that you would expect people to bring to their therapists, their parole officers—possibly even their friends; they are laying them upon the altar of Google instead. No wonder everyone feels more isolated than ever these days. We can’t even turn to one another and ask basic questions of each other—like, “why do men have nipples?” and “why aren’t dinosaurs in the bible?” Maybe before we ask Google one more thing, we should ask ourselves a profound and increasingly important question: “Who else uses this computer?”
Howard and I took on technology and relationships in this week’s Perpetual Post. Read his side too, it’s fantastic.
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As I type this, my boyfriend is on the couch, napping blissfully, his Blackberry nestled to his chest. I remember the distant days when I was the one who nestled there, my head resting lovingly against his shoulder, but apparently because I don’t vibrate like a buzz saw every ten minutes to let him know that he’s gotten an email from Sears.com with great deals for Fall savings, he’s traded up.
I remember when it was my shrill, piercing voice that delighted him, but no more. I’ve lost my favored status, displaced by a small, rectangular device that beeps incessantly at the most inopportune times—most of which are apparently no longer inopportune! God help me if I should turn to him while he’s engrossed in an episode of Two and a Half Men and say, “I forgot to tell you about this lady I saw in the Food Lion today who was wearing hilarious pants”—I would be judiciously shushed! But Blackberry gets to say whatever it’s thinking any time it wants! Blackberry can do no wrong! No matter what he’s in the middle of, no moment is too important to be interrupted by a text message from his Blackberry letting him know that 90% of American currency has tested positive for trace amounts of cocaine, according to CNN.com.
Should I be providing better content? Were I to turn to him while he’s watching TV and say, “MEEEP Thursday’s forecast calls for morning clouds with a chance of afternoon thundershowers,” would he smile receptively, or nod with interest? I doubt it. I also don’t see what’s so useful about the real-time updates his Blackberry provides on sports games and breaking news, when the information I provide is also in real-time—and personalized! Does his precious Blackberry nag him when he forgets to give the dog his heartworm medicine? Does it remind him that it’s unattractive to drink soda straight from the bottle and then just put it back in the fridge? Does his Blackberry’s angry rattle encourage him to start dinner right away because I’m going to be hungry when I get home?
All right, I know when I’m beat. It’s time for me to take this to the next level, before he realizes that when his Blackberry never has morning breath, steals the covers, or mocks his love of Entourage. So what do I have to do to win him back? Offer my services for a better monthly rate? Remind him of the convenience of his no-initial-fee, no-obligation contract with me? Ok, maybe there was an initial fee to join me, but I’m sure he’d say it was worth it. Or would he? After all, I can’t think of any new features I’ve added in the last few years, aside from a new haircut, or any upgrades to speak of—unless you count going up a pants size. Which I do. Possibly it’s time to fight fire with fire…or water. My boyfriend’s Blackberry does seem to be getting a little smudged, due to his constant, loving caresses and attention. Perhaps it needs a bath.
I’ve been yelled at by my share of angry people. After two years spent answering a customer assistance hotline for an online furniture store, I became accustomed to taking abuse from strangers and to apologizing for things that were not related to anything I could have ever done. During those two years, I found myself apologizing for bad weather in a remote part of the country that delayed someone’s package delivery. I apologized for the shoddy workmanship of products I’d never seen. I apologized for FedEx’s kicking some poor soul’s box down the stairs. Because I’m a sensitive soul, I did feel genuinely sorry for most of these callers and their frustrating situations. But the insanity of these apologies was not lost on me.
During the various calls I received, I was flirted with, called names, cursed out, threatened. I was screamed at by a woman whose daughter was going into labor in the next room. During the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, I spoke with someone who I became convinced was evil incarnate; after being told that the product he wanted to order was recently out of stock, he suggested that people in New Orleans who might have ordered that same product probably didn’t need it right now, so could one of theirs be re-routed to him? I ask you. I endured lengthy, exhausting phone calls during which I acted as a complete stranger’s therapist, tutor, confidante, or nemesis. It was a difficult, thankless job. Fortunately for my company, I was good at talking down extremely irate people so that by the end of our conversations, I had usually managed to gain their trust. If I had been working on commission based on how many people I coaxed out of psychotic rages, I could have retired in a year. As it was, I was not paid very much. But anyway. Best not to dwell on the past.
This afternoon I was on the other end of a call to customer service, which was bad enough. What made it worse was that I recognized the tricks of the trade as they were being used against me. “I know you’re just telling me that you understand my situation because that’s how you’re trained to respond to angry helpless people,” I wanted to snap. “I know you’re just putting me on hold because you can’t bear to talk to me right now and you want to go to the break room to grab a Danish. I know you’re telling me you’re going to go talk to someone about my situation, but really you’re just going to sit there for a few minutes because there’s nothing to be said on your end, and you just need me to think you’re trying to help. I know that the minute you hang up with me, you’ll immediately get another call from someone else just like me or worse and I know how much that sucks. I know!”
Finally, I couldn’t stand it. “I used to work in a call-center,” I started saying, as I was forced to call back again and again and representatives continued to transfer me back and forth before I managed to speak to a higher-up (and the higher up people get, the less easy it is to fluster them, and the better they are at repeating the party line, and the less likely they are to say things like, ‘I understand’). “I know that this situation is not your fault and that you’re doing your best to help me. I’m just getting frustrated and I’m sorry I’m taking it out on you.” Everything I said was a cliché that I could remember hearing; every response I got was just another calculated move on the customer service checkerboard, leading to an inevitable check-mate. Sometimes it’s helpful knowing how the process works from the other side, but sometimes it’s really not.
Howard and I took this topic on in Friday’s Perpetual Post:
I’ve spent countless carefree, enjoyable hours surfing the internet, but if there were a way to add all of that time up and show me exactly how much of my sweet life I’ve wasted reading gossip blogs and msn.com relationship advice, I would probably weep and throw myself off a cliff. I know that at this point I’ve spent months of my life playing around on the internet. Maybe even years. YEARS spent staring at a glowing screen and scrolling through photos of celebrities clambering out of limos. What have I really gained from all of that restless, pointless clicking and endless consumption of cheap news and useless information? Where did the time go? Can I have it back? If I could have it back, wouldn’t I just waste it in a similarly pointless, trivial manner? Or would I write the great American novel?
I guess the definition of a waste of time is different for everyone. However unlikely, there may be some who bemoan the years they frittered away reading Joyce, seeking spiritual enlightenment and spending time with their children. Still, my definition of a waste of time is unfortunately going to have to include the hours I’ve spent watching videos of cats playing with boxes, reading reviews of terrible 80s movies, and searching for pictures of Basking sharks (because have you seen those things?!). And I have the power of Google to thank for most of those experiences.
An article on The Atlantic.com called ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid’ suggested that the ease with which the internet allows us to move quickly from one thing to another is rewiring us to be less able to focus on one thing for long periods of time. I didn’t finish the article but it looked interesting. Anyway I’ll finish writing this in a minute. First I’m going to go check my bank balance online. While I’m doing that, I will remember that I wanted to buy this recipe book on Amazon, and once I’m on their website I will be sidetracked by a link to a fabulous quiche recipe. Then I’ll Google ‘quiche recipe’ to see if I can find a better one, which will remind me that I’ve always wondered how long it takes for eggs to go bad, which will lead me to a video of a dancing chicken, which will lead me to a video of a dancing robot, which will remind me of this website I used to visit that had comics about robots, and when I get to that website I will remember that I meant to email an old friend who likes robots. But before I get to that, I want to read a movie review of Tron, and I’m hoping that review will totally slam it, so I go to The Onion AV club, which reminds me that I haven’t read Dan Savage in awhile, so I’ll catch up on the last few months of his sex advice columns, at which point I look at the clock and realize I’ve spent three hours staring at the computer with very little to show for it. And I could have been playing with the dog, or making a quiche, or calling my grandmother just to say hi.
I’m not going to claim that the internet has never taught me anything. It is thanks to Google that I’ve learned how to grow windowbox herbs and discovered that Timothy Olyphant from “Die Hard 4” also played the drug dealer in “Go”. The internet is incredible in its real-time validation of the most insignificant of my urges and thoughts. The faintest blip of an idea can lead me to far-reaching websites and galaxies of discovery. The problem is, with all of this information at my fingertips, my mind seems to be turning into a colander, and surfing the internet is like dipping it into the ocean. When I re-emerge from my internet travels, all the glorious trivia and minutia I’ve gathered over the hours immediately drains out and I forget all of the wonderful knowledge I’ve spent hours skimming over. Occasionally a small silvery fish will be left flopping in the colander—a rare fact that I’ve actually managed to retain—and it’s usually either the day’s weather forecast or something about Britney Spears.
Recently I’ve been trying to finish doing one thing at a time online before I move on to the next. This seems simple, but somehow it’s become incredibly difficult, perhaps because my mind is trained at this point to expect the instant gratification of every random whim that occurs to me while I’m in the middle of something that’s maybe not holding my attention perfectly. Perhaps I’m apartment hunting online or researching credit scores. Suddenly it will occur to me that I want to see a picture of that dress whats-her-face wore to the Oscars that one year—and BAM! That is enough of an incentive for me to drop what I’m doing and kneel at the shrine of Google. And when I find that actress’s dress, it might lead me to one of my favorite fashion blogs, and before I know it, an hour’s gone by and all of the good apartments are taken. And my credit score is still in the toilet.
It’s not been easy making this change, and I haven’t done nearly as well as I would have liked (while writing this article I Googled several different unrelated subjects, including the goblin sharks and the history of the Sapphire) but I’m getting there. And someday, when I’m old and I’m the only one at the card table who can play more than one round of gin rummy without wandering off to watch breakdancing videos on YouTube or surf for pancake recipes, maybe my brain will thank me.
Howard and I debated Health Care in the Perpetual Post this week. See his side here!
Remember the good old days, when you didn’t need a ‘referral’ to pick up a ‘prescription’ at the local CVS? When the cure for myriad ills was no further than a trip to the root cellar or the apothecary for some tooth powder or a jar of leeches? Trust me; those were the best of times. If anyone from that era were still alive today, we might learn a thing or two from them.
I’m telling you, the Doctorization of America has been our downfall. Seeking the advice of a trained medical professional for every minor illness and injury is the knee-jerk response of weak, liberal America, and it’s made us all soft. Sustain a head injury during football practice? Throat closing up? Shin bone poking through your jeans? All anyone can ever say is, “Go see a doctor.” How about “Be a man”? When I was eleven, I got a two-foot splinter in my thigh while climbing a tree. Did my parents take me in to see a pediatric specialist or a plastic surgeon? Hell no. They took me in to see a pair of fireplace tongs and a mug of Jack Daniels. Most kids today are allergic to wheat gluten and peanut butter. Back then if your kid was allergic to something, you made him eat a whole plate of it at dinner just for having a smart mouth and an oversensitive immune system. Now, we bake them special cakes and have “Nut-Free” school zones. I wish they’d make this country a nut-free zone. All you sissy whiners would have to leave town. Then the rest of us could pave the streets with peanut brittle and amber waves of wheat gluten.
Now your latest liberal wheeze is that “the healthcare system is broken” and “we need to find a way to ensure adequate medical coverage for more Americans at a reasonable price”. Hogwash. The healthcare system is broken because it exists! Our first mistake was when doctors stopped treating both horses AND people. Back in my day the surgeon would come around the farm once a year or so. (Imagine, a doctor making house calls!) He would treat your knock-kneed mule, deliver your baby, castrate your pig and charge you two dollars. There would be no mention of ‘co-payments’ or ‘pain management’. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
I long for the day when Americans wake up and realize that the power to cure themselves used to be in their own hands—and it can be again. Feeling depressed? Try a rest cure! Move to the countryside and take in the bracing sea air. Suffering from dropsy, the grippe, gout or leprosy? Walk it off. Or let some blood. Or try a travelling salesman’s tonic. Good for what ails you! If you’re lucky, it might have a little cocaine in it, for pep!
Just the simple fact that we’re arguing over things like ‘end of life care’ shows how far we’ve fallen. ‘End of life care’ used to mean closing a man’s eyes after his horse threw him off a bridge at the ripe old age of thirty-nine, or pulling a blanket up over a young woman who died in childbirth. Now we’re dealing with doddering seniors who are well into their nineties. In my day they would have died long ago—falling off a ladder while re-thatching their roofs or choking on a chicken bone they were too senile to strain out of the soup—and good riddance! It’s the end of your life—who cares? THAT should be the name of that policy.
Well, I’m sick of it. But unlike most of you, I’m treating my sickness myself—with a dose of cod liver oil washed down with a tall glass of Buck Up. Take two pills and shut the hell up in the morning, America.
Akie and I faced off about the guiltily popular show in this week’s Perpetual Post– read his side of the story here.
My significant other is working and putting himself through school, which means that for ten months out of the year, he is madly busy. However, during these last six weeks, he found himself working only part-time (thanks, economy!) during his summer break. It was the perfect time for us to have lazy, lay-about weekends together. It was the perfect time for him to experiment with facial hair and practice napping on the couch with the dog. It was the perfect time for us to discover Heroes.
You see, now that we lack cable (thanks, economy!) but have Instant Netflix (it beams right into your home! You don’t even have to put on pants to go to the mailbox!) I’ve discovered that I really like watching television series in lieu of movies. You can watch them in bite-sized increments, so if you have only 40 minutes to kill, you watch one episode; if you have 4 hours to waste, you watch more. It’s easy to get hooked on a series and just as easy to forget about it and walk away when it’s over. Plus if you’re lucky, they’re still making new seasons of it, so you have something to look forward to. In this manner over the last few months we’ve put away every available season of Weeds, Mad Men, and Dexter, all with sexy results.
Having exhausted many of the shows that premium channels like HBO and Showtime have to offer (since I’m too much of a delicate flower to try Oz), it seemed only natural for us to move on to the lower-budget, commercial-break-riddled joys of basic cable shows.
When considering what to watch next, I toyed briefly with the idea of Lost, but I’d heard one too many horror stories of people who sat down to “just watch the beginning” of Lost. They tended to disappear for weeks at a time and reemerge pale, pudgy and pretentious. If I’m ever put on six months of bed rest, I will seek the abyss that will at that point be thirty seasons of Lost. This summer I was in the mood for much lighter fare. Heroes it was!
Now, at this point Heroes has been on for a few years, and is old news for most. I had also heard over and over that The First Season of Heroes Was Good but After That it Really Went Downhill. So I figured we’d watch Season 1 for a couple of weeks and then move on to something else.
In the beginning things went according to plan. The premise of the show was not particularly original, but it was fairly well-executed, and the many sub-plots drew us in. It was also fun to watch celebrities who have since become household names in the early stages of their careers. Plus there was time-travel, sexy people and super-powers. It was perfect summer junk TV!
But by the time the end of Season 1 rolled around, we couldn’t resist. Season 2 was right there in our queue! Thanks to the writer’s strike that had been going on at the time, it was only about ten episodes long! Maybe it wasn’t as bad as everyone said! After all, it had all the same characters, even if it did add some new annoying ones. And it was right there in our queue! We succumbed.
I stopped telling everyone I was still watching Heroes. Maybe it’s because I was ashamed that I had moved on to The Not As Good Season. The ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ Season of Heroes. And all right, all right, so Season 2 was not that good. It was still fun! Superheroes still flew around and time-traveled and ranted about saving the world! Sylar still went back and forth between thinking he was an irrevocably evil and a misunderstood soul who could change. Claire’s father continued being not quite a good guy but not quite a bad guy and saying, “I love you, Claire-Bear” every nine minutes because he thought he was about to die. Milo Ventimiglia continued to talk out of one side of his mouth like a blowfish after a stroke. The universe of Heroes was more or less unchanged. A little less well-written, a little more formulaic, but still—pure serial entertainment!
And Season 3? Hell yes, we sat there and watched all of Season 3 with the same attention we’d given to Seasons 1 & 2. And it was more of the same, just a little more not as good! Still not really living up to the promises made in Season 1; a bit more farfetched and still a little less well-written than either of the previous seasons, it was still a fun television experience.
I’m not going to come out and say that we shouldn’t expect quality in our shows. Of course we should. But is every series a Mad Men? Does every show have to be top-shelf? Can’t we have some fun with a guilty-pleasure series once in awhile? Everyone claimed they stopped watching Heroes after Season 1, and I’m here to tell you, I think everyone lied.
There is a small community of spiders living outside our front door (I guess it’s kind of a large community, if you’re me). There are about half a dozen webs of varying sizes, with spiders to match. The biggest one is pretty big, and she’s closest to our door. I swear that every evening when she emerges and I get a look at her, she’s grown a little larger. At this point, she’s pretty much reached critical unsquishable mass, and she’s been there for long enough that it feels like she more or less deserves to be there. Plus, I figure she’s eating all of the bugs that hang around outside our door at night. But still. I’d hate to run into her in a dark alley. I’ve taken to opening and closing the front door more gently than usual, so as not to disturb her.
I worry that one day, thedoorbell will ring, and I will open the door to someone dressed like a deliveryman in a cap and sunglasses.
“Special delivery,” they’ll say in a raspy voice, and when I reply that we aren’t expecting a special delivery, they’ll whisk off the hat and sunglasses and it will be THE SPIDER and she’ll eat my face off.
Ours is an uneasy truce.
Chris Pummer and I took on the Armstrong v. Contador Tour de France controversy in this week’s Perpetual Post.
My side is here:
Is it too much to ask for heroic and world-class athletes to spend three weeks participating in one of the most grueling races in the world without behaving as though they are appearing in an episode of Dynasty? One almost expects Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador to scratch each other’s eyes out, throw drinks in each other’s faces, and tumble down a spiral staircase in silken dressing gowns as the finale. (Actually, I would totally love that).
But really, Contador. Do you want to go down in history as “The Man Who Won The 2009 Tour de France”? Because the way you talk, you’re fast becoming “The Man Who Won The 2009 Tour de France, No Thanks To That Jerk Lance Armstrong, Seriously What Is With That Guy Anyway?” If that’s the way you’d like it to go down, so be it. But I would think you’d want to keep a little more of that sweet, sweet Tour-Winning publicity to yourself. Every time interviewers ask you about your experiences and you bring Armstrong into the picture, it takes the focus off of you.
Why not talk about how it felt to finally win? Mention your adoring fans and how their support meant everything to you. Discuss the steamy naked SmartWater billboard you’re in talks to shoot or the amusing cooking segment you just did on Good Morning America. Talk about anything but your overblown rivalry with Lance Armstrong. You know he’s just going to retort with a scathing Tweet!
Granted, both of you have great super-villain names. When you talk about each other, I picture each of you standing on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm shaking a fist skyward and howling:
“Arrrrrmstroooooong!”
“Contadooooorrr!”
But even that image is not amusing enough to stop me from losing patience with your childish antics. I may be a layman, but even I grasp that the Tour de France is a race in which each team of riders are supposed to work together toward the common goal of helping one of their own win. In this most recent race, Armstrong and Contador, on the same team, fought neck in neck for much of the time, jostling each other for the winning position and trying to take control of the race. How confusing this must have been for everyone involved; how frustrating for the other team members. That bad energy, coupled with the alleged sniping between the two champion riders throughout the race, must have made this Tour de France really, really, extra…hard.
See, that’s the thing. The Tour de France is HARD. Even when all of the teammates are working in tandem like a well-oiled, leg-muscled machine, they’re still biking umpteen miles through France, Spain and Italy, day after day for 3 weeks straight. This race is already one of the hardest competitions in the world. As someone who is winded and calls it a day after twenty minutes on a stationary bike, I am mentally incapable of imagining how hard the Tour de France has got to be even on a good day. So if you’re starting with an impossibly hard race, which everyone knows is impossibly hard to begin with, and you complain to the media that there was something going on that made it even HARDER this time, do you look like a hero? No. You look like a whiner.
So it was hard? Harder than you expected? A little more competitive than you’d bargained for? Of course it was hard! Of course it was competitive! It’s a competition! It’s not the Tour de Friendship and Holding Hands!
But suck it up! You won! Do a little dance! Loosen up, pull the bike seat out of your ass! Go hang out with Michael Phelps, if you know what I mean. The very notion of winning the Tour de France—for most people, it’s impossible to do. For Alberto Contador, it was just impossible to do gracefully.
I’m not sure exactly how or why my penchant for thrift shopping began, but it probably had something to with the extremely wealthy and high-powered Manhattan girls’ school I began attending in ninth grade. Suddenly I was thrown into the mix with girls who spent about as much on their wardrobes as I had received in scholarship money so that I would be able to attend the school. After a few months, something deep within me snapped. “Fuck it!” said my rebellious unconscious mind. “I can’t afford Prada, but I can afford these kickass army boots I found while rummaging through a bin at the thrift store around the corner. These boots make me feel invincible, and they were only $1.00. Put that in your Gucci pipe and smoke it, girls.” And so a hobby was born.
Over the years I’ve become something of a connoisseur of the second-hand. As many of you other thrift-shoppers probably know, there are several clues that the thrift store you’ve entered is a good one. They are, in no particular order:
-Good books!
Books are a thrift shop barometer. They’re the canary in the second-hand coal mine. If the books are good, it would follow that the clothes are probably going to be decent as well. If they’re lousy, beware the rest of the merchandise. Ten year old Zagat’s Guides, self-help books of any kind, and hardcover copies of Paul Reiser’s “Couplehood” are all warning signs. The Goodwill in my old neighborhood in Boston had mostly paperback romance novels. If someone has donated their books to Goodwill, they’ve probably also donated their clothes. I’m not going to judge the people who read scores of paperback romance novels, but I probably don’t share their taste in fashion. (Additionally, is it just me, or is there something a little unsavory about buying a used romance novel? It’s a little too close to buying a used copy of Playboy magazine. In other words, is the stain on that page from coffee, or passion? Let’s move on.)
-It knows it’s a thrift store.
How many promising thrift shops have you entered only to discover that they overvalue their own merchandise to a crippling extent? This tends to happen most glaringly in the furniture department. For the record, I love second-hand furniture. It’s usually made of actual wood, not pressboard, and it’s got history and it often already charmingly distressed. However, the thrift shop in question should know that since I’m in a thrift shop, I’m not looking to pay normal prices. If these items are valuable antiques, send them to an antique shop. Otherwise, keep them priced to move. Don’t play coy with me by offering $100 bookshelves and $75 cabinets. I will curse your name.
Likewise with clothes and shoes. If I wanted to pay $20 for a skirt, I’d buy it new. I’m in your shop because I don’t like shelling out more than $6 for a skirt, and I’m willing to buy a skirt that someone else has already owned. Many people find that concept unpleasant, but I don’t, and because of that, I am your main demographic. Work with me here.
I also take issue with so-called ‘Vintage’ clothing stores that jack up their prices. These stores thrive by scavenging the best clothing out of thrift stores and selling it at a high markup. This makes me mad on two accounts: One, because it means that there are fewer awesome finds left in normal thrift stores for people who like the thrill of the hunt, and two, because these stores cater to lazy individuals who want their 1950’s pinafores (which would be $3.49 in a regular thrift store) served to them on a silver platter for $39.00. I didn’t think it was possible to be a thrift shop snob, but there you have it, apparently I am. Or rather, a reverse snob. I really would rather find a beautiful vintage leather jacket for $5.99 by digging it out of a pile of other clothes than by having it served up on a rack full of similar leather jackets at a vintage store for $45.00. But that’s just me; I have a lot of free time, I enjoy the chase, and I’m cheap.
-The people running it are gossipy little old ladies.
Whenever I visited a certain Cape Cod thrift store, the little old ladies behind the counter always gave me an inadvertent earful about what was going on around town and with their little old lady friends and frenemies. I loved it. I got to overhear who was sick, whose husband was a good for nothing, who hadn’t been in church lately, the whole nine yards. Then when I brought my purchases to the front, the ladies always chatted with me about each item as they removed the price-tag that was safety-pinned to it, and recorded it in their ledgerbook with their loopy, old-fashioned little old lady scrawl. It was a part of the whole experience.
Little old lady-run thrift shops are also often meticulously well-ordered and free of stained and otherwise ruined clothing, which are two other warning signs of a sub-par thrift shop experience. Just because I’m shopping for used clothing doesn’t mean that I’ll overlook an inkblot on a blouse or a ripped hem. Thrift stores that don’t thoroughly sort their donated clothing and remove items that are clearly not sellable are also more likely to smell like homeless shelters, have spotty carpets, and be more or less extremely depressing, as are their employees. Little old lady clerks are rarely depressing, as they are usually having a great time.
-The people shopping at it are also gossipy little old ladies.
This means that the hipsters have not yet descended. The Cape Cod thrift shop above used to be filled to the brim with a treasure trove of adorable skirts and quirky sweaters; then the young and fashionable hoards discovered it and stripped it clean of all but the most boring and ill-fitting men’s golf shorts. It was a tragedy. I visited a thrift shop the other day in which I was the youngest person shopping in it, and I rejoiced. I found three adorable pairs of shoes that none of the older shoppers would have ever looked twice at.
Similarly, thrift stores in wealthy and dull neighborhoods like Manhattan’s Upper East Side tend to be goldmines. Wealthy socialites buy dresses, wear them once, and donate them immediately to make room in their closets for more dresses they will wear once. The children who are raised in those neighborhoods are too busy buying the latest fashions and wearing them once to consider entering a thrift shop. You and I reap the benefits.
If you’re not into thrift shopping, and you find the concept to be gross, by all means, continue to stay away. More practically new $4.00 Anne Taylor dresses for the rest of us. And if you’re a fellow thrift shopper, you can feel good about the fact that you are in effect recycling, by keeping more clothes out of landfills, and purchasing fewer brand new clothes that were probably made by exploited eight year olds.
(Speaking of brand-name clothes, has anyone else noticed that although Calvin Klein is supposed to be this fairly expensive, sexy clothing brand, every pair of Calvin Klein jeans I have ever found in a thrift shop has a tiny pinched waistline and weird sausage-stuffed saddlebagged legs and tapered ankles? I have yet to lay eyes on a single item of Calvin Klein clothing that was remotely fashionable. And don’t tell me it’s just the times they were made in, because I’m talking EVERY item I’ve ever found has been hideous. How did they manage to fool us all?)
I Heard Tell 