Tag Archives: shop

The Weirdness of Black Friday as a Detail-Oriented Person

28 Nov
Hey, it's a good point. (source)

Hey, it’s a good point. (source)

I will straight-up admit that I have never gone Black Friday shopping. The idea terrifies me. I already dislike shopping. So the idea of some day of mega-shopping-on-steroids-and-speed is rather unattractive. But as a detail-oriented person, the idea of this monster shopping is all the more repulsive. Why? Let’s discuss.

As a detail-oriented person, I take so frickin’ long to make decisions. My usual shopping strategy involves walking around the store, eyeing everything to make a mental list of what the store has to offer. Then, with an eye more to what caught my interest and what I’m looking for, I walk around the store again, looking at what things specifically fit that bill and discarding things from my mental list of available objects that aren’t relative. Then I walk around the store again, two to three more times, pausing to evaluate each of the items that I’ve decided I might buy, weigh the pro’s and con’s, double checking and triple checking my subjective analysis. I might carry an item with me for side-by-side comparison, or I might leave it behind to not bias my perception of the next prospective choice. Then, finally, if I’ve found something that fits what I’m looking for, is a price that I’ve deemed reasonable for this purchase, and actively makes me pleased when I think about having bought it, then I will probably buy it. Or I might just leave it and decide checking options online should happen before making any more purchases.

Detail-oriented. Neurotic. Indecisive. Deeply-fearful-of-making-“wrong”-choices-and-squandering-money-because-that’s-what-I’ve-had-beaten-into-me-since-childhood. They’re all basically the same thing, right?

But anyhoo. This whole decision-making purchasing process obviously takes a bit. Fifteen minutes. Fifty minutes. Something on that scale.

But my understanding is that on Black Friday, generally this whole shopping thing goes down something like Go! Go! Go! Storm the beaches! Claim your territory! Forge on with literal disregard for life and limb! TAKE NO PRISONERS BUT ALL THE ITEMS! QUALITY BE DAMNED! THIS IS A NUMBERS GAME, BOYS!!! 

Ahem.

Yeah, if I went Black Friday shopping, my likely outcomes are 1) obtaining zero items for purchase, 2) being trampled, and 3) freezing in a panic attack and blanching enough that someone assumes I’m a mannequin and attempts to purchase my clothes/me.

… that last one might be kind of hilarious, actually.

But… all those earliest-of-morning shoppers, aren’t they all some nerve-jittering combination of sleep-deprived and hyped up on caffeine? How do you even think in that state? Do you think, or do you just do some kind of weird muscle memory pattern of grab-buy-grab-buy-grab-guy?

I mean, I guess my aunt and grandmother are historically some of those early-morning shoppers. But they already get up early, so that, like, doesn’t count. Shhh. I can remember them planning out what they were going to purchase, knowing what to get and where to get it and for how much, based on the store’s coupons sent out earlier in the week. And my uber-planning-sensitivities are satisfied with that. But still, even if you walk into a store with a plan and studied, centered concentration, my general impression is that in this case you are the 1% and that the other 99 are all running around waving their hands in the air meme-style yelling WAAAAAH WHERE IS EVERYTHING WHAT IS THIS PLACE COUPONS COUPONS WHY DID WE FORGET THE COUPONS DO YOU HAVE THE COUPONS BILL RAAAAHWRWRWRWRWRWR! 

I dunno. Maybe it doesn’t go down quite that way. But still, even if you, with your plan and your coupons that you did remember to bring and tuck safely in your wallet and your thought-out idea of what you want, know what you’re doing, that’s a whole lot of chaos to deal with on your mission.

Wait.

Wait.

This… this could be excellent.

Guys, I am a detail-oriented person. I care about people. I value human life. I… I am also someone who kinda enjoys watching the world burn in chaos.

You know, in the controlled, nothing-too-tragic-is-happening kind of way.

Mostly.

Anyhoo. So Black Friday is chaos, right? What… what if stores capitalized on this show? Put up bleachers? Sold tickets to people who just wanted to come and watch? It would be like football! Americans like football! We’d have trainers on the side ready to rush out with water or bandages or whatever whenever one of the players got hurt. The audience could even root for individual shoppers. (“He’s comin’ down lane 1, George, will he make it to the end goal on time?” “I don’t know, Ted, that shopper with the Ninja legos seems to have shaped up since her last stretch and wants to add a few more scores to her basket.” “George, George! Did you see that move?! A swerve left, a dodge right, but no! Collision!!! We haven’t seen a toppled cart like that since the show down in aisle three back at opening time!”)

… I might actually really enjoy planning this.

Well then. Chaos as a spectator sport. I think that would be a Black Friday purchase I’d deem worth investing in.

You know. Because of details and shit.

Ahem.

This is totally where I planned to go with this blog post.

Yeah.

Details.

Advertisement

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Writing Scent

4 Feb

frostbeard old book smell candle

So, I’ve known for a while that there are lovely, wonderful candles out there that smell like books. Old books, usually. And why I don’t currently possess even one of these candles, I have no idea.

But to smell like “books” is one thing – “books” have a faaaaairly defined scent, since it’s usually the lignin breaking down in the pages that people associate with the smell of old books and libraries and secondhand story-purveying stores.

old book smell lignin quote

To smell like “writing,” on the hand, is something completely different. That, I would argue, is something astounding.

And today, while wandering around Eagle Rock with my friend Kim (she’s super cool and pretty, by the way) in a quest to escape campus and become properly caffeinated (and in my case also further ignore oh-god-all-the-work I’ve got to do), we stopped into a store with the wonderful name MediaNoche. There, in addition to a ridiculously affectionate cat called Luxe that snuggled me for at least the first 30 minutes we were there, I happened to notice a set of candles – made locally in LA, of course :p – branding themselves Wicked.

And they smell like writing.

Specifically, the writing of particular authors. Each of the candles, apparently categorized as “negative space” candles by Wicked, pulled out the contrasting undertones of famous authors’ writing and turned them into scents.

For example, Jane Austen’s candle is entitled “Lovely + Decay” and emphasizes the scent of lavender, lily, and black tea. Oscar Wilde’s candle, “Lethargic + Warmth” combined bergamot, oak, and vanilla.

Both of them smelled like the writing perfectly.

I’m so impressed by Wicked candles. To pull out writers with particular styles of writing, manage to find two contrasting words that describes almost the whole of the authors’ work, and then find what combination of scents actually conveys the sense of those two words together – that’s ridiculously good. That’s art and science and reflection and creation.

And oh hey, did I mention that the candles also come in really cool glass containers with yet another fitting characteristic – this time in an image – in the glass?

Wicked Austen Candle

If I weren’t a poor-college-student-starving-artist-almost-graduate-needing-a-post-ug-job, I totally would have spent the $30ish dollars right then and there to bring one home. Probably after deliberating for another half an hour or so over which particular candle to buy.

Of course, I am currently accepting tribute, too… 😉

Aaaaanyhoo. Finding the candles also made me wonder – what would my writing smell like? What two words would create the representative negative space of my words?

There are so many of them. Words, that is. There are the words I post here, in my blog. There are the words in my memoir. The words in my poetry collections, both already and to-be published. There are the words I write for others, in my freelance jobs. There are the words, tucked into neat 140-ish character statements and stories and poems on Twitter. There are the words in the fiction manuscripts still hiding in folders on my computer or neuronal connections in my brain. There are the words in my journals and 750words.com entries. There are the words I write on post-it notes, some of which I keep and bring with me through move after move after move, while others I throw in the trash a month or a year or a college-education-span later. The words others know I’ve said. The words I’ll never let anyone ever know I’ve thought, that I’ll hide away in the dark recesses of pages or hard drive storage space.

What would my words smell like? What would my candle be?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,