The Barefoot Chronicles.

So yeah. I've decided to make a completely pointless thread dedicated to my barefoot adventures in Republican suburbia.

This is copied from my blog page, I really don't feel like typing this all over again. Bear with me.

So, today I was bored. The kind of bored that makes you want to rip your eyes out and masturbate with them. Had a dentist appointment.. Breathing in the fumes of my Arab dentist while he tries to tell me (I think) that I need to brush my teeth more. Rachel calls. She's just as bored as I am, though I don't know if she was contemplating putting her eyeballs in her vagina.

Her mum won't let her come to my house, because I'll force pills and other drugs on her precious daughter. The only place I could think of... Cracker Park. I needed to get my Gigantour ticket, anyway. So off we headed.

Now I haven't gone in many stores barefoot. Borders and Circle K would be about it. I went in Giant Eagle.. No problem. Some funny looks, whatever. No more than I usually get.

We went to Wendy's. No problems until I get up to throw my stuff away. some guy that works there (I swear to god, he's at least seventy) tells me that I have to put some shoes on. I ignore him and continue on my way. Chances are, he died within five minutes of that, anyway.

Rachel says.. "Lena. You HAVE to go in Abercrombie barefoot." So we proceeded into the overperfumed, techno/dance ridden depths of Ambergrabbing At Crotch. I get attacked by a tree, make fun of the clothes, and leave.

Next store... Urban Outfitters. More making fun of clothes. It's amazing how somebody'll pay $80 for a t-shirt that looks like the shit I made in seventh grade. And to make it even funnier, people made fun of me for wearing stuff like that back then. Now, it's all the rage. Ironic.

Continuing down the line, we have Barnes and Noble. I walk in, immediately, the sales clerk says "You have to have shoes on if you're going to come in here." My reply was, "Well have a nice day". I turned around and left, 'cause that's gay as AIDS.

Next stop - The Gap. I asked for some help finding pants.. If you've kept up with my blogs, you know how difficult it is to find pants to cover my ass. This chick was HAPPY. I mean, "I-get-intravenous-prozac-drips" happy. She grabs me a pair of pants to try on, and asks "Where are your shoes, aren't your toes cold? It's freezing in here!" Then she giggles and runs off, with her flipped up hair and cheshire cat grin. I thought I had a huge mouth. I'm not even that happy when I get laid. Oh, if you were wondering, the pants didn't fit.

After that we got bored. The entire class of '09 was running around, being incredibly obnoxious. I went back into Giant Eagle to buy my mum pussy pads and then we went home.

And so goes my barefoot escapades. One of the many to come.

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Next stop - The mall.

 

I gave you the mall idea. Yay. =]

 

I have yet to venture into the mall sans shoes. There's really nothing to do there, but I'll post how things go after my next visit.

 

Hey TM, sounds like you had a really nice time! I'm anxious to hear how things went at Great Northern Mall, if that's where you went. I've always wanted to go barefoot there, but never did.

 

Brilliant - very well written. So where is this blog?

You could have said something like, "I wasn't planning to put my feet on the books, so what's the problem?"

 

I got Athlete's foot the last time I went into a store barefoot. That's actually a good thing though, because it means that someone else was in there barefoot.
I suppose I can pull off the hippie card when my hair grows a bit longer and I finally get the dreads I need.

 

A blob with your barefoot adventures, well done ToolMaggot!!!

Now, time for pics of you barefoot and close-ups of your bare feet and soles, don't you think?

Have a happy weekend and thanks a lot for posting your barefoot adventures here.

DG

PS: What's the link to the blog???

 

You are perpetuating a fallacy by implying that barefoot people generally have Athlete's foot. It is highly unlikely that you got your Athlete's foot from just walking into a store barefoot. Someone who had Athlete's foot would have to have just been there within a few moments of your walking in, and you would have to have walked exactly where that person walked. Even in the highly unlikely event that that is what happened, if you were a true barefooter, you still would not have gotten it, because it can only live and grow on feet that are enclosed in shoes for long periods of time.

So please don't blame your going barefoot into a store as the cause of your Athlete's foot. This is faulty logic. You may well have walked into a store barefoot, and then a short while later found you had Athlete's foot. That doesn't mean that one caused the other. Most people who wear closed shoes on a regular basis will develop Athlete's foot sooner or later. Going barefoot will prevent it, not cause it.

 

blog.myspace.com/industrialglitter

 

haha, those gap bitches are always way too bubbly. Like, damn, chill the hell out! But I don't shop there anymore, sweatshop products are a bummer.

 

I think expressions like "'cause that's gay as AIDS" is needlessly offensive and just plain wrong on so many levels.

 

Plain wrong, eh? Like saying "She was on that like a black woman on ribs".

Basically, I don't really care what's right or wrong. I'm not racist, but I'll call you a ******. Or a kike. Or a towelhead. Or a honky, faggot, wop, chink, whatever I want. If I want to say it's gay as AIDS, then it's gay as AIDS. It's an expression. Does that mean I hate gay people? No. Hell, that would be rather hypocritical of me.

Fucking relax and pull your head out of your ass. Learn to make fun of yourself.

 

toolmaggot you are a riot, I laughed out loud about 5 times reading your barefoot chronicles.

And congratulations on your barefoot escapade!! :0)

 

I can make fun of myself (or of you for that matter) with out denigrating the lives, suffering and experiences of other people.

I would hope that barefooting would lead to an opening up of the mind, learning tolerance, peace, love and respect.

But hey, you have a choice - you can petulantly use language that causes hurt and offense to other people and not care, or you can learn to care and appreciate sensitivities and question assumptions you make - even if its is "just an expression". If you can't learn to appreciate new senstitivies (to the earth, the environment, your world) from barefooting, and appreciate diversity and question assumptions (like we do about shoes, or the reactions of people to barefooters), then it is pretty damn sad.

We have another choice in life: When it is pointed out that something we've done or said has caused offence, we can get all defensive and shout out more insults and hurl more abuse, as you unfortunately have, but is it really that hard to pause for thought, to think about what we've said and how it affects other people, or is the world all about ourselves?

Why escalate conflict when you have the power to make peace?

 

If you're implying that I'm not tolerant of gay people, then you are terribly mistaken. I'm bisexual. I have both bisexual and gay friends. And frankly, none of us understand why people get so damn stand-offish when somebody says "dude, that's gay".

In fact, the only people I can't stand are people that are uptight like a four year old's twat and take everything entirely too literally.

 

I'm not implying you're intollerant. I'm saying that the expression "gay as aids" is very offensive as the expression implies that AIDS is a gay thing, that all/most gay people get AIDS, and it denigrates the experience of people all around the world who sufer because of the desease - most of them, actually heterosexual. In Africa, for example, there are hundreds of thousands of AIds-orphans. It just isn't a subject to be flipant about.

Expressions like "he tried to Jew me" meaning "he tried to cheat me out of money" may not necessarily mean the speaker is an antisemitic racist, but it does mean they are thoughtlessly perpetuating a harmful and hurful stereotype - which have unintended consequences. They dehumanise other people. This makes it easier of other forms of bigotry to take hold in society.

If you're too beligerant and immature to see that, then there's no point continuing to argue about it either.

 

Pan, where it lists toolmaggots' age, it says 15. I don't know if that's current, but take it into consideration. I, along with probably everyone else, acted the same way at that age.

And toolmaggot, I'm not coming down on you and trying to imply that you're immature because I don't think you are. I enjoy your posts, particularly for their acerbic wit. And I know you probably don't care if the things you say offend anyone else; I know I didn't either! ;-)

We can all get along here in this little corner of the internet, as long as we continue to respect (regardless of whether we agree or not) what each of us has to say.

 

Yes, Matthew, you're absolutely right.

 

Bahhh. Sorry about not writing about this week's adventure. Here goes.

Yesterday was school shopping day. I need pants DESPERATELY, considering my only pair of jeans isn't really jeans as much as random patches held together with duct tape and safety pins. They don't even have a crotch any more. So me, my mum, and my sisters frolicked out to Old Navy.

Now, you see, finding pants that fit is quite the chore. I'm shaped like a black woman. To say I have big thighs would be the equivalent of saying "Roseanne is chunky".

God dammit. I couldn't even get into the rest of my adventures.. we're leaving. I'll elaborate once I get to a computer again.

 

Alrighty. Anyway. Pants. Impossible to find. They're always at least two inches too big in the waist, so they fall off my ass, but if I get any size smaller then the thighs are too tight. And lots of stores don't like to make pants for fat people. (Don't go saying "oMg uR noT fat!11one!11". I know I'm not fat. It's just easier than saying "slightly disproportionate and somewhat overweight"). Pants shopping is not my favorite thing to do.

So we walk into Old Navy. I might as well say right now that my mum is not a very tolerant person. When I say intolerant, I mean if she doesn't understand or agree with it, then it's disgusting and immoral and ridiculous.

Next thing I hear.. "Lena, WHERE'S YOUR SHOES?! PUT THEM ON!"
Me: Mum, I haven't worn shoes in almost three months. I don't plan to start now.
Mum: Lena, put them on right now! You're in a store!
Me: And? I go in stores barefoot all the time. Nobody minds. (So this was a little white lie.. eh well.)
Mum: You're not allowed to! OH MY GOD LENA PEOPLE ARE STARING!
Me: Well that's because you're screaming at me and making a scene.
Mum: Lena, I raised you to be better than that, STOP EMBARASSING ME!
Me: You're embarassing you, by making a huge scene. How you raised me has nothing to do with whether I like to wear shoes or not. Ooh, these pants are cute.

I then proceeded to completely ignore her. She eventually shut up while we were in Old Navy, when I had talked to multiple sales clerks and not one of them even mentioned my lack of shoes.

Then we were walking around the plaza to different stores, and I'd hear the occasional "For god's sakes, Lena, put on shoes! What's wrong with you, were you born in afghanistan or something?" ... Now I don't know what being afghani has to do with not liking shoes, either.. Considering I'm Syrian, I'm not even afghani. Proves my point. My mother is a neurotic nutcase.

I went to a few other stores. Nothing interesting to say about that.

Except, if you were curious, I DID find pants. Two pairs, in fact.

So goes my adventure. I don't know how many more I'll be having.. I'm under parental house arrest.. but school's starting. This should be fun. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how my teachers take me not wearing shoes. It wasn't a problem in summer school, but then again, we rolled blunts and watched scarface during summer school.