Calling Shakespeare

I challenge the bard to come back and drop some pithy verses. I am specifically thinking "To be or not to be". Today he may well say "To shop or not to shop". Or as I have it "Shop or die". Damned if you do, damned if you don't.


Have you been lingerie shopping? Without admitting any guilt - I am learning from the banking industry - I will just say that it is a sure recipe for the doghouse. Date 1: "I don't want you to pay, I am a single, high-powered, ball-breaking executive". Fast forward: "Honey I like this thing in the La Perla catalog".

"Hmm", you think, using way too much brain power. "Is she trying to hint?", you think. If you do, your relationship is already doomed. You'll figure it out and buy it for her, only for her to parade it for her next beau after dumping you roughly 3 milli seconds (7 pints for the non-metric) later - the same amount of time lag before you cottoned on and said "yes" to buying it.

Then, the clever ones will figure it out and buy it pro-actvely, only to be eventually driven to suicide from being unable to find an acceptable answer to "Does this make me look fat?" Of course it will, it is roughly 3 micro-milli-meter squared, and will make Twiggy seem like she has too much flesh.

The right course of action is of course to swallow something classy (to avoid being featured on CSI: Moron), say a Godiva-coated walnut or an expensive diamond ring - I do *not* recommend a durian, lawyers please note - and necessitate the Heimlich. There is a *chance* of survival. Of your life, if not your dignity.

Now as a statistical representative of manhood, I can tell you "shop or die" applies to men too. It usually works like this. "My underwear has holes. All of it." In fact, it looks like the "after" recruiting commercial for the firing squad that misjudged gravity. Or is plain sadistic.

Grudgingly you go to the undies section where several female sales assistants will accost you and make disparaging remarks no matter what your size is: "So small?", "So fat?" etc. They were trained in North Korea, every single one of them. This is also why you find no help in any other section of a department store. They are all there to torture straight, non-metrosexua men shopping for their modesty.

Eventually, you furtively grab a six pack - a hangover from buying beer (haha, get it?). Next you think, "My collars look like they were hors d'ouevres for an upper-middle class family of rats. Let me buy some shirts".

Oh boy, are you screwed. The shirt section for men will present a vast array of colors belonging to the white and blue families, which are the Montagues and Capulets of the shirt mafia. You'll think you are color blind, but your rods and cones are doing just fine. Plain? Powder blue? Pinstripe? Something jaunty and oblique?

"Oxford"?!!! Did the fucking moron designer take the SAT? How can White, Powder Blue and Oxford even be comparable.

There's more: Aegean, Egyptian, cotton-rich or "Euro fabric"? You wish you'd paid attention in class - oh wait, nobody taught you this. Fat fucking lot of help your PhD does you now. You almost wish you'd answered the "Am I fat question", for if you had miraculously gotten it right - I estimate the same probability as virgin birth, but just remember that that actually flies with a lot of people - your woman could have helped you shop, proving forever that women *are* the firm and decisive sex. I truly mean this.

And then the pants - holy shit, you'd think simple enough, a dark color to mask beer stains. No! You have "fit" options ranging from "Bowling Balls" to "Nutcracker Suite". Apparently the store is afraid of being sued by men with hernias and undescended testicles. You proceed to hate political correctness with renewed vengeance.

But there you are alone and flummoxed. You finally use the sophisticated "Eeny meeny miney mo" method to pick your shirts and trousers, oblivous that you are on not-so-candid CCTV with a live feed to YouTube. You will have to quit your life the next day, take a vacation to Brazil for plastic surgery, get new papers in Ivory Coast and let your family cash in on the insurance in 7 years, when you will be legally presumed dead.

But the shame - it will live on in you. Forever.