Sunday, May 16, 2004
Shopping madness! Now, I like to brand various kinds of things "madness" - like my favourite restaurant in Chinatown is Camy Shanghai Dumpling House, which I like to refer to as Dumpling Madness. Although Wing Loong is starting to usurp it, cos they have $2.50 VB stubbies and enormous $6 meals... But anyway. This weekend has been real, certifiable shopping madness.
For months now I have been planning to buy a pair of high-top Converse All-Stars sneakers, which people cooler than me call by their proper name, Chuck Taylors, but I'll be sticking to what I called them in primary school, thankyou. This desire was heightened by the fact that Saige has just bought a pair of the really high-top ones, with the contrasting lining that you fold down. On Friday I confided this shoe desire to Chris, who told me to go to the Converse factory outlet on Smith Street. So that's what I did yesterday.
But God help me, they had this special! If you bought two pairs of shoes (excluding full-priced Chuck Taylors) then you got the second pair at half price! Now I had been tossing up between yellow and pink. On one hand, pink is my favourite colour, but on the other hand Shane has pink ones and I don't want to be a copycat. And yellow would be really cheery. But I love pink! Anyway, this already bad dilemma got much worse when I realised that pink was full-priced and thus was not included in the deal. Full priced sneakers were $80 and reduced ones were $50, which meant that I could get the yellow and another pair for less than the price of the pink.
Now a normal person here would cut their losses, get the yellow for $50 and be happy. But oh! not Mel! I was determined to take advantage of this dumb false economy they had going. And to make things much worse, the store was playing all my favourite homie hits! They played "Yeah" by Usher et al, "Let's Get Married" by Jagged Edge, "Got Your Money" by Ol' Dirty Bastard and Kelis, etc etc. So this put me in even more of a frenzy. So I called up Gemma ("Can you hear, they're playing 'What's Love' by Ashanti and Fat Joe!" I said excitedly into the phone). Her verdict was that the yellow would be "really Uma Thurman".
In the end, I bought THREE PAIRS of NEARLY IDENTICAL SNEAKERS!!!!!!!!!! Like Paris Hilton or something! I bought yellow and purple with the deal, and then on top of that I decided I couldn't let the pink ones go and I bought them too! I staggered out of the shop into Smith Street thinking crazily to myself "You had another article published today, you can justify this..." I even stopped myself going into all the trashy Hong Kong teenwear shops, even though I really wanted to. But I just couldn't stop! I went to the Holeproof factory outlet and bought two Bonds singlets, black and grey. Then I went into the city and went to Target, where I bought three pairs of knee socks (silver lurex and pink striped, black, and black and red vertically striped) and three pairs of underpants (aqua, black and pink satin with black lace trim). I already own 100-odd pairs of underpants. I know, it's a sickness.
Last night I went out with Mandy to see Troy, a deeply silly movie that used the bits of The Iliad that suited it and discarded the rest - kind of like that New Yorker parody of the script meeting for The Passion of the Christ. But anyway, I wore the pink sneakers, and I was dancing around going "Look at my shoes!" especially when we passed this bubble-tea stand in an arcade and they were playing "Tipsy" by J-Kwon.
And then today I went to the Camberwell market with my parents, which was great fun in itself. Like, my dad was wearing a navy jumper with red and green argyle, and he tried on a red cardigan with navy and green argyle and I started laughing hysterically and saying "It's an argyle twinset!" And I have this joke with my mum dating from a couple of years ago when she used to seek out 'Depression glass' which is this crappy green cut-glassware made during the Depression. I was mocking her for seeking increasingly arbitrary objects to fetishise, so as a joke I told her I was starting to collect those incredibly ugly black glass cats with the elongated necks. So today I was saying "Hey look, there's a black cat with a basket on its back! Hey, there's one with its glass eye hanging out!"
Anyway, so here is what I bought from the market:
a black jumper with gold lurex argyle pattern = $5
a gold glomesh backless top (for Incredible Melk photo shoot) = $5
a double-stranded necklace of cream-coloured beads from 1930s = $1 (My mother appropriated this as payback for me appropriating her "M" letter necklace)
And best of all, CDs totalling $24...
Hit Machine Vol 8 (1995), including such gems as "Short Dick Man" by Gillette, "Turn the Beat Around" by Gloria Estefan and "Dead Eyes Opened" by Severed Heads
100% Hits Vol 2 (1991), including "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark, "Pump It (Nice'n'Hard)" by Icy Blu and "Lovesick" by Gang Starr
Spiceworld by the Spice Girls
Under Construction by Missy Elliott
Unit by Regurgitator
Original Pirate Material by The Streets
I am gorged on consumerism. I think I've had enough. I also think this may go towards solving my fashion crisis. Although I'm just fooling myself - I'll be out and spending again soon.
For months now I have been planning to buy a pair of high-top Converse All-Stars sneakers, which people cooler than me call by their proper name, Chuck Taylors, but I'll be sticking to what I called them in primary school, thankyou. This desire was heightened by the fact that Saige has just bought a pair of the really high-top ones, with the contrasting lining that you fold down. On Friday I confided this shoe desire to Chris, who told me to go to the Converse factory outlet on Smith Street. So that's what I did yesterday.
But God help me, they had this special! If you bought two pairs of shoes (excluding full-priced Chuck Taylors) then you got the second pair at half price! Now I had been tossing up between yellow and pink. On one hand, pink is my favourite colour, but on the other hand Shane has pink ones and I don't want to be a copycat. And yellow would be really cheery. But I love pink! Anyway, this already bad dilemma got much worse when I realised that pink was full-priced and thus was not included in the deal. Full priced sneakers were $80 and reduced ones were $50, which meant that I could get the yellow and another pair for less than the price of the pink.
Now a normal person here would cut their losses, get the yellow for $50 and be happy. But oh! not Mel! I was determined to take advantage of this dumb false economy they had going. And to make things much worse, the store was playing all my favourite homie hits! They played "Yeah" by Usher et al, "Let's Get Married" by Jagged Edge, "Got Your Money" by Ol' Dirty Bastard and Kelis, etc etc. So this put me in even more of a frenzy. So I called up Gemma ("Can you hear, they're playing 'What's Love' by Ashanti and Fat Joe!" I said excitedly into the phone). Her verdict was that the yellow would be "really Uma Thurman".
In the end, I bought THREE PAIRS of NEARLY IDENTICAL SNEAKERS!!!!!!!!!! Like Paris Hilton or something! I bought yellow and purple with the deal, and then on top of that I decided I couldn't let the pink ones go and I bought them too! I staggered out of the shop into Smith Street thinking crazily to myself "You had another article published today, you can justify this..." I even stopped myself going into all the trashy Hong Kong teenwear shops, even though I really wanted to. But I just couldn't stop! I went to the Holeproof factory outlet and bought two Bonds singlets, black and grey. Then I went into the city and went to Target, where I bought three pairs of knee socks (silver lurex and pink striped, black, and black and red vertically striped) and three pairs of underpants (aqua, black and pink satin with black lace trim). I already own 100-odd pairs of underpants. I know, it's a sickness.
Last night I went out with Mandy to see Troy, a deeply silly movie that used the bits of The Iliad that suited it and discarded the rest - kind of like that New Yorker parody of the script meeting for The Passion of the Christ. But anyway, I wore the pink sneakers, and I was dancing around going "Look at my shoes!" especially when we passed this bubble-tea stand in an arcade and they were playing "Tipsy" by J-Kwon.
And then today I went to the Camberwell market with my parents, which was great fun in itself. Like, my dad was wearing a navy jumper with red and green argyle, and he tried on a red cardigan with navy and green argyle and I started laughing hysterically and saying "It's an argyle twinset!" And I have this joke with my mum dating from a couple of years ago when she used to seek out 'Depression glass' which is this crappy green cut-glassware made during the Depression. I was mocking her for seeking increasingly arbitrary objects to fetishise, so as a joke I told her I was starting to collect those incredibly ugly black glass cats with the elongated necks. So today I was saying "Hey look, there's a black cat with a basket on its back! Hey, there's one with its glass eye hanging out!"
Anyway, so here is what I bought from the market:
a black jumper with gold lurex argyle pattern = $5
a gold glomesh backless top (for Incredible Melk photo shoot) = $5
a double-stranded necklace of cream-coloured beads from 1930s = $1 (My mother appropriated this as payback for me appropriating her "M" letter necklace)
And best of all, CDs totalling $24...
Hit Machine Vol 8 (1995), including such gems as "Short Dick Man" by Gillette, "Turn the Beat Around" by Gloria Estefan and "Dead Eyes Opened" by Severed Heads
100% Hits Vol 2 (1991), including "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark, "Pump It (Nice'n'Hard)" by Icy Blu and "Lovesick" by Gang Starr
Spiceworld by the Spice Girls
Under Construction by Missy Elliott
Unit by Regurgitator
Original Pirate Material by The Streets
I am gorged on consumerism. I think I've had enough. I also think this may go towards solving my fashion crisis. Although I'm just fooling myself - I'll be out and spending again soon.
