I'd like to think it's the character, not the actress, but I wonder.

[kaigou]

I've watched Kichise Michiko in Bloody Monday and BOSS, and... bloody hell. I don't know whether it's the characters she chooses, or what, but the second the actress appears onscreen, I start fast-forwarding. She's just so smug. Strangely, it doesn't make me hate the character. It just makes me bored with her characters. There are some characters who simply never get taken down a notch like they deserve -- it seems to be a treatment endemic to television script-writing -- so I've learned not to hold out hope. Instead, I just want the other characters to stop paying attention to her. Then maybe the character will take the hint, or maybe the actress will start picking characters that don't make you want to smack that smug smile off her face.

Honestly, sometimes I don't know what I'd do without a fast-forward button.

---

Also: sometimes I cannot resist the urge to laugh, when looking at home storage ideas that other people have come up with. A way to store eighty-seven pairs of shoes? A way to store twenty-two lipsticks and thirty-four teeny jars of eyeshadow? We only have TWO FEET and ONE FACE. What the hell do you need eighty-seven pairs of shoes for? And don't even get me started on the notion of having an entire makeup counter stored in your bathroom vanity.

Seomday, I'm going to see an online house tour where the person throws open her closet and says, "here is where I store my six pairs of shoes." Or the woman-renovator opens her bathroom door and says, "here is the small five-by-five box where I keep ALL my makeup." That, I would really appreciate.

Maybe I just need to start a movement, or something.

Comments

[mongrelheart]

As a recovering pack rat, I couldn't agree with you more on the absurdity of organizing excessive amounts of personal items. My new motto is "Don't Organize. Eliminate." :)

[kaigou]

I'm not actually a packrat by nature... but I do lack the obtrusive switch that makes me notice things. Even what's right in front of me can be out-of-mind, because it's faded into the background. That means stuff can pile up, even though I dislike pack-ratting. I clean out as much as I can, on a regular basis -- books, clothes, various other things -- but still, some things will pile up anyway. Le sigh.

[nemonclature]

I will join that movement! One show box for make up, two shoe boxes for shoes. That's it, full stop, the end.

Of course, then there'd be the scene where I throw open the door and say: "Here is my SECOND HOUSE, full of BOOKS and DVDs! BOOKS AND DVDS! YAY!" And then I run in and am never heard from again.

[kaigou]

Ahahahaha, you and I are obviously kindred spirits. AN ENTIRE SECOND HOUSE! When it comes to books & DVDs & CDs, we could really use an entire second house. Possibly with an attached three-car garage for the extras....

...and I would spend the REST OF MY LIFE building nothing but bookshelves.

[taithe]

Ahaha, I have three pairs of shoes: regular wear (sneakers), formal wear (short heel dress shoes), and exercise/heavy duty wear. It's crazy how some people have walk-in closets just full of shoes.

Efficient use of space + minimalism = awesome home. One day I will have bookcases/cabinets embedded in interior walls. I want to take advantage of vertical space as much as possible too.

People often come into my apartment room and are taken aback by how austere it is. It's weird for them to see absolutely no furniture. My room is tiny -- if you try to fit a mattress inside it would take up half of the room. IMO, the extra space is worth it. I've got a carry-on suitcase doubling as storage, a single file folder rack, laptop, two small plastic containers for school supplies, and in the corner a growing stack of books. All of my clothes hang, and the shelf above the open closet is for the second suitcase. The only things that take up space are kendo equipment.

Although I'll admit that I'm a digital pack rat. I'm halfway through a terabyte external drive, and my laptop is always being filled by eBooks, .pdf files, music, pictures, manga, and anime. Occasionally I'll download wikipedia (you never know when there's a power outage).

[kaigou]

We're all packrats in some way; we just differ in the details. The things I can't bear to throw away are old scraps of writing. I have pages and notebooks from, uhm, well. Long time ago. Hell, I have multiple drafts of the same story, sometimes! Printed out on old dot-matrix and saved... for no reason I can actually think of. But there it is.

[nagasvoice]

Ahh, well, on that shoe thing... I have about eight or nine pairs of very, very used New Balance shoes sitting out waiting to get worn. I swap them out every day, sometimes twice a day. Each pair hurts my feet, eventually, in different ways. If you are about to argue that obviously my shoes are broken down and should be discarded, or that I shouldn't try to wear any one pair for that long if they hurt me (nine hours, gawwd) please know that I completely agree with you. When they discontinued one of the lines that worked best for me, I just about cried.
I should have bought some new pairs over a year ago, but gee, they're not cheap, and Mr. Schwartzenneger's furloughs took care of that for some time.
They're better for me than anything else I've found--and I've worn the soles and uppers off Wolverine boots back when I worked in the local nursery and mowed lawns.
If I was capable these days of wearing something like actual fashion, that'd be a whole different layer of contradictory demands. I do like some of the steampunk boots I've seen... if they had the practical shape that allows me to walk in them more than half an hour!

[kaigou]

Some shoes just aren't worth the money we pay for them, it seems. I mean, I used to wear only Doc's, and they got broken in within a week, and were always Just Right after that. Then I went to get a new pair, few years back, only to learn that Doc's got sold and they're no longer quality, so I got the brand that's apparently replaced them. Stupid boots. I've worn them so many times, and it's like they've simply never broken in. They're comfortable for about a half-hour and then I get blisters, and my feet start aching. These are supposed to be workboots? In whose freaking world are these actually bearable?

Completely aggravating, considering they're far more expensive than any other boots I own -- and my twenty-year-old Docs are still far more comfortable. Ridiculous.

[nagasvoice]

Agree totally there, and I don't think the problem is that new shoes are built for younger-shaped feet, and us cranky old farts just gotta live with hurting. I think--from your description of blisters etc--the don't fit right and they don't support right!
I've thought about springing for custom-built boots, but I'm rather afraid it might take the bootmaker some time to work out the correct last shaping.

[kaigou]

What's strange is that the boots are supposedly done using the original Doc lasts, so that doesn't explain it. I'm suspecting it's because they're not men's boots -- nearly all the Docs I wore, were -- so they fit differently. With only a few exceptions (like one pair of sandals and a few dress shoes), nearly all my shoes are very small men's shoes. As someone who does spend a lot of time barefoot, I keep my toes splayed for balance, and women's shoes are designed to make your toes all pointy and crap. (For that matter, even when I wore shoes almost all the time, I still didn't like the pointy-toe nonsense, and even the women's Docs that I had were more snub-nosed.)

No, I don't think it's us. I think it's the morons designing these things.

[kathmandu]

Even if the new brand-owners are still using the original Doc lasts---which may not be true---maybe they're using inferior materials that don't stretch and soften when worn. That could lead to not-breaking-in.

[kaigou]

I suspect it's a different cause. The entire point of these boots is that the current Docs are using inferior materials (to reduce price, I gather), and this company took up the mantle of made-in-UK (higher price) to keep the higher quality. The boots are definitely well-made, of a calibre equivalent to my (much older) Docs... but they're also women's boots, and not men's boots. With the exception of maybe one pair of Docs from years ago, long since done in by a puppy, all my Docs were mens-boots. I think it's less a matter of breaking-in so much as it is a matter of simply not fitting my feet.

Unfortunately, that also makes it a vicious cycle -- they don't fit just perfectly, so I don't wear them as much, which means they haven't ever truly been broken in (not enough to make the leather really start to give/stretch and remold like leather will), so they keep hurting because they don't fit... and so on.

What's strangest is that these boots aren't that close-fitting around the ankles, which makes me wonder if it's also a matter of "women's boots are for really working, so there's no need to take the time to have them fit as proper work boots." Not being a total shoe fanatic, hell if I know, just a quiet suspicion on my part with so much of these boots looking like for show and very little for, y'know, actual boot-wearing-stuff. Sigh.

[maire]

I am a happy pack-rat. I've never quite understood the whole 'I have little stuff, so therefore I'm doing very well' thing that some people seem to have.

I get that it's nice not to feel too distressed when one's pretty toys break or get lost or stolen, but I've never found that having little stuff changes my reactions on that anyway.

And I like my crowded spaces full of pretty things and useful things and interesting things.

I will probably end up with way too many pairs of shoes. My oldest boots are now 18. I just keep getting them mended and patched. And every couple of years I find I buy another pair of shoes, for one reason or another. I probably get rid of about one pair every four years.

My makeup, OTOH, is pretty basic, given I wear the stuff almost every day. The whole lot, including the facepaints and greasesticks, fits into a single vanity case.

[kaigou]

It's not an issue of how much we have, for me. It's an issue of how much is out and must be dusted. (With the constant renovation and workshop goings-on, I generate a lot of dust.) I don't mind things being a little bit dirty, but I do mind terribly when it comes to visual clutter. If I could put everything in neat boxes and not have to see it all, that would be awesome!

(Which makes me wonder why I like open shelves in kitchens, but I guess I can't expect myself to always be rational.)

Now, once I figured out how to do a display case where it's all behind glass -- protect from dust! -- that helped a lot. Besides, when it's in the hallway, you just walk past, and it's not like you're looking at it for hours on end. In short-term spaces like hallways and bathrooms and guest rooms, I don't mind more visual clutter or more dramatic decor treatments.

Although the real crux of shoes & makeup is the decor assumptions that if the resident is female, she must automatically have like thirty-plus things of shoes and at least four drawers of makeup. Sheesh. Most of the year I'm actually barefoot -- shoes are only for when I leave the house, and telecommuting means I don't have to do that for hours on end daily.