My presence in a mall is a sign of the apocalypse...

If you know anything about me, you'll know that I'm not a shopper.

 Actually, that's an understatement ... I'm perhaps the world's worst shopper.  I'm impatient, I lose my temper if I don't find what I want right off, and I've been known to make innocent little shop assistants cry with my sarcastic comments and temper tantrums.  I believe they still tell stories about me at some of the larger centres.

It's like I'm an urban legend!

The reason I bring this up (yes, there actually IS a reason) is because yesterday I found myself with a friend out shopping.  Don't ask me how I got there, I'm not completely certain. All I know is suddenly there I was, wandering through kitchen stores looking for a baking timer! This was completely unprecedented.  And even scarier, I didn't lose my temper once!

I'm starting to worry myself now. Kellie going shopping and not hating it? Kellie wandering around in a shopping centre for the better part of a day and not wanting to rip someone's lungs out through their nostrils? It's something that's never happened to me before and I'm sure how to deal with it. Am I becoming what I hate? Am I becoming a shopper?

I suppose it's possible. I wandered around that place like a pro. I meandered through shops and checked out prices like I was going to buy something, but without any real intention of buying anything. Isn't that what recreational shoppers do? Oh no, please tell me I'm not becoming a recreational shopper! I might as well go stake out a corner of the food court right now if that's what's happening!

No, it's got to be a one off occurrence. I couldn't become a shopper, not at this late date. Don't most shoppers start pretty young, like in their early teens? I'm not practised enough, I'd never make it into the shopper Olympics. Most of the time I can't make it through an hour's trip to pick up groceries.

Maybe it was just something in the air?  A random occurrence that will never happen again. I'll just go back to the way things were before where I'd perform hit-and-run missions on the shops when I needed anything and looked sulky when other people dragged me there. Yep, it's going to be fine.

... oh god, please don't let me be turning into a shopper!

It's a strange day indeed when you actually find a strait jacket cute...

I'm not a parent ... the closest I come to it is the occasional baby sitting stint for friends ... but for those of you out there who have managed to procreate I have a question.

Is it standard practice to put your kids in strait jackets?

Because a store in Brazil seems to think it is [link].  They're marketing a new range of toddler equipment called "control toys", which includes a teddy bear patterned strait jacket, a purple highchair with pink arm and leg shackles, and smiley face ball and chain with convenient ankle strap!

Hmm, well I suppose that's one way to make sure the kids don't mess up the house.

The kids in the pictures all look terrifyingly happy, even the one they've got strapped into the the disturbingly titled "Baby Trap Chair".  Colour me suspicious, but I don't think I've ever met a three year old that would have been happily and willingly shoved into a strait jacket, strapped to a chair or shackled to a giant grinning ball.

But then again, is it really any different to the kid leashes people sometimes use?   I recall my parents using them when I was a toddler, and I turned out okay.  I know there's a lot of criticism aimed at parents who use them, but I'm not sure I think it's a bad thing.  Is it really that different to making a child hold your hand?

But if we're being realistic I suppose we have to acknowledge that there's an enormous difference between hooking a curly plastic phone cord to the back of your kid's backpack and strapping a toddler's arms and legs to a chair.

Okay, okay, I'll admit it, they're not real products.  It was just a practical joke played by the store.  They set up the display and then recorded the reactions of the people who came in.  When the outraged shoppers picked up the boxes they found an advertising message on the back that said "There are better ways to discipline your child ... watch Super Nanny".

Well that's a bit harsh.  What could the kids have possibly done that would deserve having to watch Super Nanny?  That show is awful!

Erotica and the art of grocery shopping...

Like most people with a modicum of sense, I'm not overly fond of grocery shopping.  It's got to be one of the most boring chores out there, not even excluding folding laundry.

The supermarket is always crowded with people who don't seem to understand the concept of keep to the left, trolley's that are apparently possessed by some sort of directionally challenged demon, and sixteen year olds who really couldn't care less if the bottle of bleach spills all over the loaf of bread they just put into the same bag.  All in all, it takes up far too much time that I could otherwise use looking at cat videos on Youtube.

But I think I've finally found a way to make it a little more bearable.

It all started a little while back when I discovered you could put audio books on your iPhone.  I know, seems obvious now, but back then I was still a complete novice to the whole Apple Revolution.  Once I worked out how to do it however ... let's just say grocery shopping was never quite the same again.

Deli Guy:  So what can I get for you? 

... she gently took it in her hand, eyes widening at the unexpected weight... 

Me:  ... Um ... I need ... sausages? 

... looked up at him, pupils blown, gasping as she adjusted to the fulln... 

Deli Guy:  (waiting) And how many? 

... "So big!" she cried, writhing in ecstasy... 

Me:  ... uh ... twelve inches? 

... gasped as her nails bit into his flesh, leaving red trails... 

Deli Guy:  Excuse me? 

... "Please," she begged, "More... 

Me:  (blushing) Oh, sorry ... I meant twelve. 

... sunk his teeth into a white shoulder, thrilling to the whimper... 

Deli Guy:  (looking strangely)  Okay, here you go ma'am. 

... cried out as stars burst in front of her eyes, "Yes, oh God yes... 

Me:  (taking sausages and walking away, muttering)  Damn, when did Mills and Boon become so filthy ...

So, the next time you see some woman wandering around the supermarket with a pair of earphones firmly inserted and an enigmatic smirk on her face, you'll know what's really going on.

Lost at the mall: a tale of terror...

Day 1: "I think I'll go shopping" I said.  "It'll be fun" I said.  And now here I am, twelve hours later, and do you think I can find the way out?  Seriously, when did this place get so big?  And why the hell do I keep ending up in front of The Body Shop?  But I won't give up, the exit has to be around here somewhere.

Day 3:  The provisions ran out about half way through the first day.  I probably should have prepared better, but now I'm having to survive off vending machine snacks and half a Subway six inch I found abandoned on a bench.  But I'm not giving up, the exit has to be here somewhere!

Day 6:  It's been two days since I last saw a shop I recognise.  Oh, what I wouldn't give for a glimpse of and EB Games.  But no, I keep wandering past store after store with names I've never even heard of before.  How can there be so many shops I don't recognise?

Day 10:  I've now given up all hope of ever leaving this place.  If anyone finds this, use this log as a warning to others.  Sure you might think you're just popping into the shops for a quick half hour, but ten days later when you're resorting to drinking out of the decorative fountain in front of the information desk you'll realise just how wrong you were. 

Tell my family that I love them.

I'm used to being lost when I'm in the car, god knows I've spent enough time driving around in circles trying to work out how I got to where I was.  But  now I can't even find my way around in my local shopping complex?

I only popped in to check out a particular sale I was interested in, and if I'd stuck to going to that store and then back to my car I would have been just fine, but I had to get curious.  I had to decide to wander around a little to see if there were any other sales.  I had to go and get myself lost for three quarters of an hour!!!

Have any of you ever been lost in a shopping centre before?  You end up in this weird timeless zone, where it could be day or night or the zombie apocalypse out there and you'd never know.  I ended up wandering around, looking desperately for someone I could ask for directions, but the only person I found was a sales assistant in a clothing store who either didn't know how I could find the west entrance, or didn't care.

But eventually I found a familiar looking shop, which lead to another, which lead to the food court and to the exit closest to my car.  Thank god for that!  I don't think I could have survived on mall food for very long.

So learn from my experience, kiddies.  When you go to the mall, make sure you take a map ... or at least leave a trail of breadcrumbs so you can find your way out again.

What NOT to get the amateur farmer in your life for Christmas...

I'm all for spoiling one's pets.  God knows, Gypsy the Feline Dictator gets raw chicken and the expensive brand of dry food every day to eat, and her litter box is lined with the pricey flushable kind of litter.

Okay, so the litter is really for my benefit, not hers.  I don't want to be running out to the rubbish bin with a vaguely odorous plastic baggie every time she goes in for a scratch around.

But still, I like to think that as far as owners go, I'm a good one!  Hell, she even had her own couch up until the recent redecoration of my living room (and don't even get me started on the filthy looks I got for tossing it away).  So I think I'm justified in saying that Nieman Marcus have officially lost the plot if they think anyone is actually going to drop a hundred grand on a luxury chicken coop!

I know, right?

Call me crazy, but that seems a little exorbitant for something which could previously be made with some chicken wire and a couple of sheets of corrugated iron!  I'm all for ensuring our feathered friends are well cared for and comfy in their homes, but it seems to me that if it's going to actually cost more than a reasonably priced kit home for a family of four, it's probably too much.

Assuming that the average chicken lays 350 eggs in its lifetime, and that a dozen eggs would set you back about $4 in a supermarket, the poultry palace would have to home 857 chickens before it would have paid for itself!  And that's just to cover the cost of the coop, it doesn't take feed, time, vet costs, etc, into consideration.

Truth be told, I'm not even sure whether a chicken would want to live in that place.  It was apparently modelled after Le Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette's house in Versailles.  I can't help but think that the French of that era were a little too fond of chopping heads off for any self respecting chicken to feel completely comfortable in it.

By the way, don't forget to go enter my Silly Season Giveaway for an e-copy of Xanthe Walter's new novel "Ricochet"!

Voyeuristic thrift shopping...

I'm not much of a clothes shopper.  My shopping style tends to lean towards that of swat team ... plan your mission, get in and get out, try for as few fatalities as possible.  But there's one type of clothes shopping I'll always enjoy.  Vintage shopping.

Not just any vintage shopping though, oh no!  I'm not talking about trotting down to your local thrift store to see whether you can find a choice piece amongst the ratty eighties cardigans and the less than fresh looking leisure suits.  Lets be honest, no matter how much you might dream of finding a gem amongst the lumps of coal, it probably isn't going to happen.  It's much more sensible to stick to internet sites that specialise in that sort of thing.

Personally, I favour this website.  My theory is that if you're going to look at expensive frocks you can't afford, might as well go for the cream of the crop.

Their stuff is just gorgeous!  Expensive of course, but gorgeous.  Lets take a look at a few of them together, shall we?

Isn't this stunning?  A 1918 beaded lace dress with an absolutely beautiful sash.  It looks like the sort of thing Kate Winslet should have been wearing while she clung to the bow of the Titanic.  Now that's what I call vintage fashion, but at $1,400 I don't think I'll be buying it any time soon ...unfortunately.

Or for those that favour the mid 1800's, this plaid taffeta dress could be yours for the modest sum of $1,250.  Hmm, still a little out of my price range, but if I ever need to audition for a role in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers I'll know where to go.

Can you imagine going to a fancy dress wearing this?  Talk about the perfect Bonnie costume for a Bonnie & Clyde duo!  At almost $2,000 it's probably a little pricey, but doesn't it just make you want to do the Charleston?  Or shoot a tommy gun?  Or make some bathtub gin?

Yeah, sorry, my ideas of the 20's are pretty much taken straight from Bugsy Malone.

And lets not leave the kids out of this!  For $2,850 your little darling could own this early 1800's hand embroidered dress.  Of course after paying so much for it you'd never actually let the ankle biter wear it, they'd probably rip it or get mud on it or spit up on it.

Hmm, perhaps buying a dress for a kid that'll set you back somewhere in the four digits isn't the best idea ... unless you're Beyonce of course.








So, overlooking my sarcasm, I'm sure you can see why I like this site so much.  The clothes are just gorgeous and looking at them is a little like thinking you're going to win the lottery.  It's not likely to happen, but it's amazing while you're fantasizing about it.  But until that lottery ticket of mine starts living up to its reputation I'm just going to have to accept the fact that I can't afford any of them.

Still, it costs nothing to dream.

Sold to the lady with a weird sense of humour...

Tinkerbell hadn't aged well...

People certainly sell some weird shit on eBay.  Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that they do!  There's nothing more amusing than wandering through the eBay listings and finding everything from the quirky to the utterly bizarre.  I remember I once almost bought a tattoo gun on there once, for no other reason than it was sitting at $20 and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Thankfully, someone else stepped in and started bidding at the last minute so I never got it.  It's probably a good thing, with my propensity towards not thinking things through, having a tool that can permanently mark your body wouldn't have been the best idea.  Who knows what I would have doodled on my own arm just to see if it worked!

But I do love reading about the really strange auctions.  Like the guy who sold a mummified fairy corpse!  I have to admit, it certainly looked legit from the pictures ... you know, if I wasn't a grown up who knew that fairies don't actually exist (and somewhere Tinkerbell drops dead).  It turns out it was a model made by a prop maker for an April Fools prank a few years back.  He did a good job on it!

Here comes the ... bride?

Or there's the guy who sold his ex wife's wedding dress after what we can assume was a rather bitter divorce.  I actually remember when this one was happening, and I watched the updates the guy made to the auction as he made them.  There are claims that he was just hamming it up to sell the dress for a better price, and I've no doubt they're right, but it's still a hilarious read!  Go read them if you have the time, you won't regret it.

Then there was the person who was selling a dolphin that he'd supposedly caught while net fishing and was keeping in his swimming pool.  This one I'm assuming was a joke, but the questions prospective buyers posted and this guy's answers were snarky and fun to read.

That's one creepy girl!

But I think my favourite was the haunted painting.  It was just a creepy looking picture!  I remember reading the story and thinking how spooky it looked.  I wondered if anyone would actually bid on it, but I guess it was a pretty good marketing method because it ended up selling for over a thousand dollars.  Was it haunted?  Who knows!  But I don't remember ever reading about the new owners being found dead in mysterious circumstances or being driven to the point of insanity and having to be committed, so if it was we can assume they were friendly ghosts.

There seems to be a real market on eBay for selling wacky stuff to people who just buy it for the novelty factor.  Perhaps that should be my new hobby!  Selling cursed things!  I could buy a bunch of old second hand jewellery from the local op shop, make up some stories about how they used to belong to Lady Bothomthwaite who died mysteriously in a fox hunting accident, and who now haunts her long lost trinkets!  I'll make a mint!

Holes in the fabric of space/time...

Time travel.

Yeah, I went there.  I'm edgy like that.

The reason for my non sequitur, you ask?  Well, it's because I'm pretty sure I've discovered actual, honest to god proof that time travel exists.  Or at least that it's possible for pockets of one time to crop up in another.

It's kind of like that British show "Goodnight Sweetheart" about the guy who discovers a portal to WWII era London in an alleyway so he opens up a second hand shop right near it, thus providing the audience with charming wartime stories and his store with exceptionally cheap good quality antiques.  But the portal I've discovered isn't being used by a delightful cockney man, nor is it helping anyone sell 1940's era coins.

No, the portal I've found ... and got photographic proof of ... is in the Ralph Lauren in Sydney.

Yeah, I know, it's a pretty big claim.  I'm sure many of you are out there scoffing right now, thinking to yourselves "Oh Kellie, you silly person you!  Even if time travel did exist, why on earth would it be in the Ralph Lauren store?"  To that question, dear readers, I have no answer.  All I can do is present my evidence.

This is a photo I took while I was on holidays in Sydney back in March.  As you can quite clearly see, there is compelling evidence that a portal to 1987 has opened up, and the fashion from that era is seeping through into our time.

The distinctive colours, patterns, and styles of the items on display are clearly not from this time period.  In fact, I'm almost certain that I remember seeing Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air wearing something similar in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE!!!

As it's rather unlikely that Ralph Lauren would allow such monstrosities to appear in their displays unless there was some sort of space/time phenomenon, the natural conclusion is that a pocket of time from the late eighties has spontaneously appeared in the middle of their store.

Hopefully this isn't some sort of portent about the end of the world ... I always said I thought the whole Maya calendar bro-ha-ha was a crock and it'd be really embarrassing if it turned out to be right.  But if it is, and this turns out to be the beginning of the end, I just want you all to know that I love and value each and every one of you.

No, don't look at me, I don't want you to see me cry...

Adventures in online shoe shopping...

Despite the fact that I have a XX chromosome, I'm not really one for shoes.  I know, I may as well hand in my ovaries and relinquish my title of "Modern Woman".  Apparently it's a crime against nature to be female and not like shoes, at least that's the impression I've been given any time I've mentioned it to anyone.

I've stood strong on my bare feet, though.  I'm a proud, card carrying member of the Dirty Soul Society, and I'll continue to exert my right to feel the grass between my toes whenever I damn well please.

However, even those of us who aren't lured in by ridiculously expensive and exquisitely uncomfortable footwear have to occasionally go out in public, and going out with bare feet tends to be frowned upon in our society.  I'm not sure why, if anything I'd say it should be a mark of honour!  If you can go outside, walk around on rocks, hot bitumen, bindi-eye, and other abandoned obstacles, then I think that's something to be admired!

But, alas, it's not, and my friends have started to refuse to go to brunch with me unless I'm wearing shoes, so occasionally I have to abandon my principles (and my comfort) and buy new shoes.

My first plan was to go to the nearest department store and buy the first semi-respectable pair of sandals I could find.  But it all seemed a bit too much like work.  I'd have to get ready, go out in the car, drive all the way to the department store, find the shoes, try the shoes on, line up to pay for them, frown at the girl on the check-out when she takes ten minutes to ring up the guy in front of me who's buying a chocolate bar, and then come home again.  I was exhausted just considering it!

Then I realised I was missing the obvious answer.  Was I an internet junkie or not!  Online shopping!

So after a quick prayer to Our Lord Google, I discovered that the brand of shoes I wanted to buy had an online shop!  Excellent, I could buy a pair from the comfort of my own couch!  Bah, you shoe fascists, you might be able to make me go shoe shopping, but you can't make me leave my house to do it!

The site seemed easy to navigate, and had oodles and oodles of choices.  No doubt, even more choices than I'd have in the department store.  Take that, shoe fascists!  But on closer inspection I realised that the sizes were all in the American scale.

Well crap.

There was a handy little guide though, explaining how to work out what your shoe size should be.  The diagram explained that you needed to measure from the tip of your big toe to the back of your heel, and then around the widest part of the ball of your foot.  Okay, that didn't look too hard.

Ten minutes later I'd tripped over twice, flicked the tape measure up and hit myself in the face, and given myself a cramp in my calf.  Oh joy, this was totally making me want to buy shoes.

Eventually I got the measurements though, and through what I can only assume was a combination of advanced mathematics and black magic, they told me what my size was.  I was ready to go!

But there was one little thing I hadn't taken into consideration ... I'm a notorious spontaneous online shopper.  The plan was to pick a pair.  One pair. But as I scrolled down the options, I found myself adding more and more of them to my shopping basket.

Even after culling the choices, I still ended up buying eight pairs of shoes.  Eight pairs of shoes!  I've NEVER owned that many pairs of shoes at the same time!  I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to put them all!  I'll need to buy shoe racks.  That's what people who own shoes have, isn't it?

I'm so ashamed.  I'm sure I'll be drummed out of the Dirty Soul Society as soon as they find out.