Boxing Day Sale Shopping/Being a Decorum Dummy

I've recovered enough to at least arrive at a place to be of better humour. Recently, I was educated more about the Aboriginal shamanistic ceremony of "saging" a home. That involves the burning of a bundle of dried sage grass to produce a smoke smudge used to purify one's living space; to cleanse it of negative energy, and to drive out any unwelcome evil spirits. I learned about this by the way of someone I know, who chose this practice to close off this year: a more unfortunate one for her, and to prepare to open their home up and invite something better to come in the New Year. The Japanese also have a custom of welcoming the incoming New Year by cleaning their homes near the end of the old one: every room, from ceiling to floor. This is done to welcome the presence, and good favour and fortune of their kami, the god-spirits of the Shinto religion, into their dwellings. I have my own pre-New Year habit that is similar to that of the Japanese one. I've been cleaning in my own place as well: not so much to invite the right kind of benevolent spooks and divinities in here, but more to be mindfully organized, and to clear and set a stage for efficiency and order that will hopefully help to attract some form of prosperity, of any kind, in the New Year. Given my condition, I started today to break the process into modular phases. It should all end on New Year's Eve. I don't give much credence into stuff like conjuring up spirits, feng shui, or anything else that is as oogity-boogity. However, after this latest bout of events closing my last month and a half of this year, if rearranging furnishings and scrubbing things down coincidentally helps to rid this place of any lingering bad karma around here, I have no objections to it. I don't have any sage; I do have some sandalwood and musk incense though. I started to burn that too, just to cover my ass.

I also have another custom in my home as I organize stuff: not done so much out of superstition, but out of prudence and frugality. If I bring in a new furnishing, appliance, or technical fixture into my home, I'm relegated to clean at least the whole room where it will be stationed or stored, and then sell off/repurpose/donate/throw out the same volume of stuff (if not more). Such a ritual prevents me from accumulating clutter; and encourages me to be more thoughtful about balancing my living space, to avoid being wasteful, and to seek practical alternatives (if any). Knowing that there is ultimately an obligation (or penalty) of having to press myself into some distasteful task of cleaning later also psychologically prevents me from buying anything rashly and impulsively. Thus, to be effective and efficient, I tend to do my home furnishing shopping near the end of the year when the Boxing Day and Year End sales are on, when prices are slashed, and I'm when scheduled to clean anyway.

I looked in my living room, and said
 "I gotta have more cowbell!"
 However, that didn't happen.
Instead I did the next best thing
 and found more cowhide. Ella isn't yet
 sure if she likes it.

That past month and a half of being stuck in here and staring at my mostly naked walls has been a real sobering revelation as to how much my own condo really isn't my vision of what I would think of as a truly comfortable home. It's actually very devoid of any reflections or signatures of my true personality. Most of the time, it is just a glorified dog house, as it is in fact Ella who is the being that spends the most time inside here, strewing her chew toys all about. For me, because I spend the majority of my week at work, this place ordinarily is just utilitarian space where I sleep, bathe, do laundry, and cook and eat the occasional meal. With having all this time off, I was dumbstruck after realizing just how little time I actually spend living in here while I'm on my regular work schedule. The decorum, or rather the sad lack of it, is a true reflection of that. I realize that because of this I'm kind of reluctant to invite other people over. It's no wonder I've been staring at screens all this time, because I really don't consciously want to look at anything else around here. A few other things also prompted me to think that I should put more thought into making this a place more personalized with creature comforts, and less like a place where it looks like Value Village busted in here, drunk in the middle of the night, and vomited up random junk in every room. Things like, receiving some pictures of my brother's family in the mail, they deserve to be hung in special places. I made myself a promise to keep junk off my kitchen table and actually use it for eating my meals, instead of plunking down in front of the TV and eating mindlessly. I have a nice new(er) rug now to dissuade me from doing that, because I don't want to risk getting it soiled. Rather than collecting a new piece of technology, like I initially planned to do, I instead chose to go on the grand adventure of at least window shopping for decorum for my place.

So, I ended up taking a trip to HomeSense where, as per their moniker, I thought they would have a lot of obvious things to make a house even more homelike. To be honest, I was in a loopy/crazy disposition for much of the day, perhaps due to being (finally) hungry and having low blood sugar, right along with my already impaired uptake of blood oxygen, so my observations tended to get a little weird and skewed toward the realm of the right-brain. I made handy use of the camera on my cellphone to serve as a visual memory aide. I'll declare and affirm right now that I'm by no measure any kind of expert on home decorum, but I am wise enough to see and know what kind of crap is out there that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I found a lot of instances where the store should have been renamed HomeNonsense. The following paragraphs and pictures I've listed are the random observations, home utilities, objectives for my own place, fancies, and other home-oriented concepts that made me wonder what kind of dope various artisans and craftsperson were smoking after viewing some of the stuff I saw there.

Observation: The Mega-Pot – I stumbled across a kitchen pot that would be every hard core home brewer's wet dream. The damn thing must have had at least a 120 litre capacity, a larger capacity than the fuel tanks of many half ton trucks. Being shocked and surprised, I was being silly and flippant at the moment when a young girl of seven or so, and her mother walked up to stare with awe at this strange anomaly along with me. I like kids at that age because their questions and answers are imaginative and spontaneous. Just to see the reaction, I turned to the young girl and said out loud:
"I wonder how many babies you could pack into that sucker?" She began to laugh and giggle uncontrollably, and I chuckled along right with her. Her Mama however didn't seem to appreciate this moment of levity, and kind of began to usher her away from me. At least the daughter had a sense of humour. The presence of this thing begs me to question: what kind of home is out there in which the wholesale purchasers of HomeSense thought it would be a perfectly sensible move to market a friggin' 120 litre cooking pot? This thing was made of stainless steel, and already heavy by itself.

Filled to capacity with liquid, it would easily crush my average-sized stove, that is if I could have ever got it on the damn thing! I guess this thing must have been there for that exact instant when a Hudderite colony should wander into their store looking for something to adequately cook all their borsht for them (for a whole bloody month!), or if the Jolly Green Giant comes along looking for something to steam his peas. I was going to get the young girl to stand by it to get a sense of the scale of this thing when I took the picture, but she and her mother already left, probably looking for Security. HomeSense 0, HomeNonsense 1.

Objective: The far wall opposite of my entrance at the end of my hallway – Initially, I thought I would hang a mirror on this wall space, to give it an illusion of greater space and depth. Then I thought again about when I'll be arriving home after work at night, and how I really don't want to have an instant reminder in seeing just how ghastly, disheveled, and bedraggled I look after an eleven hour day when I come through the door. I would want something a hell of a lot more welcoming than that. I may have to get creative and try to paint my own picture to hang there, but I think so far I like this one. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 1.

Objective: a utility, Drink Coasters – How is it that I'm using a drink coaster all the time when I'm at the bar; and yet I'm not so civilized enough to have them handy around my own home? Lord knows I do most of my serious drinking here at my own abode. Maybe I just don't set my glass down long enough around here. Apparently, throughout all this time, I've been one of those innovative bachelors who has figured out that any corner of a newspaper, or a DVD case, or the open end of one of my socks to slip around a drinking vessel works well enough to keep condensation rings and dribbles off my coffee table.

As eccentric as I am, I don't really use this kind
of makeshift coaster, but I was curious as to
know what the visual actually would look like.

However, that just doesn't work if I'm endeavoring to attract and keep a more sophisticated ilk of company. So, I decided to get some coasters. After looking around there without any success, I finally approached one of the stock clerks at the store: a somewhat scrawny, yet strangely attractive and comely young blond woman.
"Excuse me, where would I find the drink coasters?" I asked plainly. The look on her face after my query was one of an attempt to stifle bemused astonishment.
"We have no drink coasters here." she replied with a thick Slavic accent, sort of almost half spitting the answer at me before she turned away. I couldn't help but to react like this was the stupidest thing I ever heard. How in the hell can an establishment, dedicated and devoted to decorating a home with ornaments; a place that sells seemingly endless varieties of stemware, cocktail glasses and coffee/tea cups; a place that sells a plethora of tablecloths, trivets, place mats, napkins, throws, slip covers and other surface protection paraphernalia not have a single goddamned set of drink coasters in its whole entire massive inventory?! I'm being led to believe that there are dinner parties out there in this town where even the more elite homes are having their guests using magazines or their own socks slipped on their wine glasses to protect the furniture because there were none to be found anywhere. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 2.

Observation: Ridiculous packaging – Selling bottled water here in Canada apparently wasn't already a stupid enough idea. Unless you were going to a place with an actual tainted water supply, there is no need to buy bottled water here. Now, I just found something that trumps even that for marketing imbecility. Yes, that is, A BOX OF WATER!!! . . . a 5 litre box of water,

They actually have to add the
word "Happy" on the label
to encourage the miserably
stupid people to buy this.

packaged like it was exotic bulk wine from Chile or Australia. It's not even imported from some exotic locale, it's from right here in Canada sitting on that shelf. . . WTF !!! I was tempted initially to pick it up and check and see how outrageous the price was for such a thing, but then that impulse was quickly halted by the self-conscious fear of having some onlookers watching me handle it, and thinking to themselves, "Look at that stupid fucker over there, he is actually thinking about buying that BOX OF WATER!!!
 
Another thing that pissed me off and made me think about how affluence is making us devolve into something that is so much stupider as a society is what is in this next picture. Look at it. Kinda pretty, isn't it? Is it some finely-crafted chocolate bon-bons from Switzerland? . . . Nooooo! Is it an intoxicating fragrance from some boutique in Paris? . . .Nooooo! Is it a package of high-quality rolled up silk handkerchiefs? . . . Again, Noooooo! This is actually a package of plastic bags for collecting DOG SHIT!!! Why is it packaged like this? Is it to give people a fleeting window of appearing superior to someone else when they whip one of these out and bend over to pick up after Rover? I began looking for some gold-leaf embossed toilet paper there after I saw this. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 4.

Objective: Decorative, yet manly – Adjectives for things that I will not have in here: frilly, ephemeral, sparkly, pink, yellow, lacy, chiffon, fluffy, sheer, silky; that already eliminates about 40% of the merchandise in HomeSense. There are some things there that would suit me, but would go out of style too quickly as I mature. There are some definitely non-feminine, testosterone-charged things that guys embrace a little too willingly to use as ornaments in their homes, like antique license plates, sports memorabilia, heads of antlered beasts, or even the more ridiculous collections of swords and battleaxes. Unless there is an impending attack by a horde of Visigoths over the hill, I really have no need to keep medieval weaponry around the place. The same goes the relic pieces of vehicles: if I don't want that crap cluttering up my garage, why would I then draw it into my actual living space?

The weird manly things I'd probably have around here are wood carvings and figurines of animals, mathematically complex sculptures, hand puzzles and classic board games, and signs in tasteful calligraphy that reflect a simple personal philosophy, like what is seen on this serving tray. HomeSense 2, HomeNonsense 4.
 
Observation: HUH?!?! – And finally there is home ornamentation there that I just have no words for, as it just boogles my mind as to what kind of home these things would actually belong in. HomeSense2, HomeNonsense 6.

The perfect something for the gay cowboy/cult leader in the family

I don't know what this thing is supposed to
represent, but I can think of a few people
I'd like to have sitting on it.

A house is just walls and a roof, but a home is defined by the characters in it, which in turn are often reflected by the objects and artifacts that they chose to include in it and collect. Sadly, today's shopping trip was a reminder that there will always be people stupid enough to buy water in a box in a nation where it's free on the tap, and others who are pretentious and idiotic enough to by dog shit bags designed by Gucci. I wish all it took to cleanse these sorts of people away from me was burning some sort of herb. If I had only one wish for the New Year, it would be to encounter fewer and fewer people with this degree of stupidity. If that happened, about 90% of my problems in life would probably disappear.

Addendum: I at least managed to find some bloody coasters. I went to Pier One (a place too dangerously close to the Future Shop) for them. This time, I was helped by a stunningly beautiful store worker . . . another one with a thick Slavic accent coincidentally, but this time with some very pleasing proportions. They are of a black alligator skin texture (the coasters I mean, not the physical assets of the woman I mentioned). Nothing too pretty, and yet nothing too corny and cheesy: something you'd expect to find in a more sophisticated man cave.