Killing Time in Suburbia

My eyes are strangely shaped. Most people who wear glasses can get new lenses at Lenscrafters in an hour. My lenses have to be made on the space station. Or somewhere else where it takes a week to get them.

Having gone to Lenscrafters for the fifth week in a row (I told you my eyes are strangely shaped), I had an hour to kill while they put the new lenses into the frames. So I wandered around, sampling the suburban retail delights. I browsed Williams Sonoma. I hit the three clothing stores that were conveniently placed right in a row: American Eagle, the Gap, and Banana Republic. It was like scaling the retail chain of being. The customer service scaled up too: At AE, every employee was busy folding clothes and talking on their cell phones. At the Gap, they were friendly but passive; they greeted me only when I entered their zone. At Banana Republic, the greeting came before the front door closed behind me. After I grabbed a couple pairs of pants, an employee swooped in to ask if she could start a fitting room for me.

I'm most comfortable with the Gap style of assistance. If I was actually going to spend money, I'd probably like the Banana Republic style, but as it is, it just makes me feel guilty. All that love and attention, and I'm just toying with them.

I tried on hats in the last two stores, too, under the inspiration of this article (HT: Joe Carter). Have you ever seen me in a hat? I look pretty darn goofy. It has something to do with my tiny head. I wear a child's baseball cap, for example, and my head still doesn't fill it right. According to this website, though, I should be looking for a porkpie or a trilby in green, gray, or brown. I'm more interested in the trilby, largely because I now think porkpie is the ugliest word in English. I mean, just say it a couple times. Porkpie. Porkpie. Ick.

Also, dadshats.com says that the porkpie is associated with ska, and I don't want to be associated with ska.

(But I can't help it. I love ska. I just don't want to be associated with it.)

Speaking of music I enjoy, this song makes me happy.



I find the video slightly disturbing, for reasons that aren't clear to me. Maybe it's the fact that the line "I give you my jelly" is played over the image of someone who looks like a preteen girl.

More than you wanted to know, probably.