mlroseplant

20 hours ago, roundy said:

Another vote for almond toes here! Best of both worlds. I don’t mind a pointed toe but I do struggle to get a good fit vs a more round toe myself. Not a fan of really elongated pointed toes either though. 
 

Square fronted heels seem to be in fashion too atm. Can deal with it on a sandal but not shoes or boots. I didn’t mind it a decade or so when they seemed to taper a little more into a square toe but the ones I’ve seen lately seem to be cut square right at the end of the shoe.

Yes, this modrun super-square toe is just.  .  . ugly. Maybe that's the point, I don't know. Perhaps the reason why it's less objectionable on a sandal is because sandals are only two dimensionally square, whereas shoes add the third dimension of square. One might even call it cubism.

23 hours ago, Shyheels said:

I see your point, although in the case of China they do seem to have acquired a very poor reputation in terms of quality, workmanship and materials. And because of their dominance in world manufacturing, and the profit-at-all-costs mindset of the global brand names, they are leading the charge in the race to the bottom.

as for the philosophical reasoning behind not wanting to purchase Chinese made good, I suppose it’s like the vote. Nobody vote on its own is going to make a different, but collectively they certainly can.

 

 

We have a large number of electrical fittings at work, sold by a major brand name (Thomas & Betts). It seems that even they, with a longstanding reputation for quality, get the parts wherever it's cheapest at the time. We got in a large batch of supposedly identical fittings, and at least the boxes looked the same. About half the fittings were made in China, and half in India. Nominally and functionally, they were the same, but not interchangeable, mainly visually. If you just used them randomly, the finished product looked very odd and not uniform at all.

I have always wondered why pointy toed shoes get such a bad rap. I mean, it's not like any toes actually go into the pointy part, it's just kind of decorative dead space, kind of like the tail fins on late 1950s American automobiles.

I suppose there are two forks to this river: 1) Chinese made products are thought of in general as being poor quality. This is often true, but not universally true. I wonder if it will always be true. "Made in Taiwan" doesn't mean what it used to, and "Made in Japan" certainly doesn't mean what it used to, as far as poor quality goes. Conversely, "Made in USA" doesn't necessarily mean a product will be great. I don't know that it ever meant that, but it can be pretty dodgy these days.

2) China as a governmental/industrial entity bothers us for any number of philosophical or moral reasons, and we would they would cease to be a relevant player. The question then becomes, does avoiding Chinese products at a consumer level make any difference whatsoever, and furthermore, does it make the difference we want it to make? And then what sort of difference would that be, if we could do the choosing?

Yes, and the sad part is that when you can get non-Chinese products, they are made in Vietnam instead.

Oddly enough, I have been accumulating wooden heels lately. I'll have to get going and post some pictures. This is a style that I hope is coming back. Athough this particular JS model is on the chunkier side of what I personally like, I would wear them.

Either requirement is becoming increasingly rare as we move toward a more casual society, but we've beat that poor horse quite a bit already.

To be fair, I have never been required to wear high heels, and I don't think I should like to be for any reason. I can see where the notion of shackles comes from, and I can also see that I am either a freak of nature, or I am willing to go far beyond the normal effort to be able to wear my heels whenever possible.

I've said for years that 2 inch heels are not heels, and I don't see what the big fuss is about. Typical heel requirements for women have been about 2 inches minimum. I now know that for some people, desire or no desire, a 2 inch heel is almost an insurmountable hurdle for them to cross. For example, here is a woman who would love to be able to wear 2 inch heels, but simply cannot:

I would be curious to know how long the pattern would stay on the bottom.

Drinking and posting can end in tragedy.

I have noticed a huge increase lately of women who approach me and gush over my heels, while at the same time saying, "Oh I could never wear those, I'd break an ankle!" These largely tend to be Gen Z women and girls. You know, next time I get the chance, if someone seems particularly chatty, I'm going to ask, "If there were no comfort or practicality penalty at all, would you wear heels all the time? Would you wear heels to work?" And so on. I am truly curious to see what the answer would be.

I haven't really noticed a shortage of heels, but then I am quite willing to go used/non-current. What I have noticed around here is that the younger girls do recognize the niceness of a heel, but they only wear them for the dressiest of occasions, and then only a handful of them think they've got the physicality to do it. Otherwise, they wear trainers with jeans that are half-ripped away. And that's in the winter.

Ok, if Shyheels is going to bring it up, I will actually ask. What did you tell the machine to get it to write.  .  . THAT?

I lost my tailor several years ago. No, she didn't die, but I still need to find another one.

You realize, of course, that we're the only thing going on right now, and we're essentially talking about whether "Go Woke and Go Broke" is an accurate sentiment. Or maybe we haven't gotten there yet, but we will. After all, it's got to be better than just a plain horse and wagon on Mulberry Street.

I did see a woman in the grocery store the other day wearing red stiletto pumps with a pantsuit. Now there's something you don't see every day! At least not anymore.

I wouldn't take it personally. It's been very dead around here lately for some reason.

I suspect, though I don't know for sure, that this was a pretty easy decision for the Dr. Seuss Foundation, or whoever runs these things nowadays. After all, we're not talking about a cash cow like Green Eggs and Ham here. I mean, who has ever even heard of

On 4/26/2023 at 5:06 AM, Jkrenzer said:

I used to be an elephant but an orange faced baboon cured me of that problem. 

In N.C. undecided allows one to choose which primary you want to vote in. With a rule like that it's actually stupid to affiliate anyway.

I think I got autocorrected or something! I meant to say "elements," as in the Periodic Table of Elephants.

22 hours ago, Shyheels said:

Yes, believe it or not six Dr Seuss titles are no longer to be published, including And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street because of supposedly insensitive portrayals of other cultures eg: a Chinese character wearing a conical hat like millions of actual real life Chinese farmers really wear. 
 

Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie books are being cleaned of supposedly insensitive language - like referring to a character as “ugly” or “fat”

These are weird, weird times. I think some future generation is going to look back on this decade and wonder what kind of collective madness seized the West. One thinks of the Fall of Rome 

Oh! Well that's rather different from being banned, isn't it?

I have heard that all these terrible things are going on out there to ruin our fun. I haven't actually run into any of them yet, personally. They banned Dr. Seuss? I hadn't heard. I had heard that certain elephants had been in favor of, and in some cases had succeeded in, removing certain books from library shelves, but that's going a little far, don't you think?

Perhaps I am more optimistic than some of you, but I do not feel like I live in a draconian, humorless society. I am, however, living in a largely flat-heeled society. As far as people interacting with each other less and less, that was already happening. The pandemic merely accelerated the process. Naturally, my personal experience is different from many folks', as I work a job that cannot be done remotely, so I have to interact with people.

It may be that I am dramatizing things a bit for the sake of a good story, but only just a bit. I promise I am not making things up wholesale, Fox News style. It seems that there are a couple of clusters of three or four members each left this month, and if we don't reply to each other's stuff, there will be nobody left, unfortunately.

The thing with the Bib Man happened a week before I recounted it, so I no longer have a good sense of how that actually went down, but it seemed negative to me at the time, as he had been eyeing me at the meat counter for several minutes, and trying to appear as if he weren't. The lady at the other grocery store was not truly creepy, but her social distance was just a little too close for my taste, and her eyes did not waver from mine. It was not a conversation that I wanted to purposefully lengthen, let's put it that way. What I want to know is how come my wife always sees the interactions like the former, and never the ones like the latter?

I have no idea what is REALLY going on here, but I do know that if things don't pick up rather soon, it WILL be the death of this place. Even I am getting bored of it lately. Part of the problem is that I just don't have a lot of stories to tell. It has been kind of quiet being a guy in heels around here.

That being said, I was accosted twice in the last week, once positively, and once.  .  . errrrr.   .   . probably negatively, but it's unclear. The positive experience happened just yesterday, in which I was grocery shopping, and a woman approached me and wanted to know where I had gotten my shoes. Once again, I have to admit that I don't have a good picture of these shoes, my most worn pair to date, but I had to explain to this lady that I have had these shoes for over 10 years, and that they really weren't available anymore. Her stare and her questioning was quite disarming, and as we met again several times in the next few aisles I pretended not to see her. Yeah, that's right people--I wear my shoes for the attention.

My other experience in the past week I'm going to assume was negative. I happened to be in--wait for it--a grocery store at the time, and I was approached by an older man wearing bib overalls. I have to be careful when I describe somebody that way, because that could be me. At any rate, I had my face buried in my grocery list, which I make randomly, and has no relation to the layout of the actual supermarket, and this guy, without any introduction, asked me whether my shoes were comfortable. In the context at that moment, it seemed like the question was derisive, but I will never know for sure. Without looking up from my list, I told him that they were not really all that bad, which is true. He evidently did not want to engage me much, as he muttered something and walked away, never to be seen again. Once again, I do not have a good picture of me wearing what I was wearing, so I'll have to recycle a lame picture, but I wear these out and about quite often in the winter.

The first picture is of the shoes from the positive but creepy comment, and the second picture is of the shoes associated with the assumed negative comment. Again, these pictures are recycled. I'm not still wearing a mask out in public.

9 hours ago, Cali said:

Been waiting for these,  Still need to add some extra holes so I can wear them. But I have been down for two weeks and at least one more week before I have to go back to work.  

New sandals for this summer:  Jessica Simpson Therisa

That looks exactly like my cup of tea, as I am always looking for my next pair of wooden heeled sandals. I hope you are back on your feet soon, quite literally.

Here are a pair of boots that you never thought you'd see me in, but here I am. They are Unisa brand, model name unknown, and they have right at a 4 inch heel. Believe it or don't, I didn't measure any other dimensions, so I couldn't tell you what they are. They are substantial block heels, obviously. The uppers are made of a faux suede material, and do not have any stiffness to them above the part that actually goes around the foot. In other words, they fold up easily.

I have been reluctant in the past to even try higher than above the knee because my legs are so short that I don't need any more help dividing them up visually. That, and the very physical fact that what is a thigh boot for normal people is crotch high for me. I am pretty sure that the instant pair were intended to be over-the-knee, but on me they are thigh-ish. Not only that, they actually fit in every dimension, unless I were going for a stretch-tite look.

It was a cold and blustery day on their maiden voyage, and I was glad to have the extra layer. I have no idea what they would be like in warmer weather, and I doubt I'll ever find out. More images are presented on my Melrose Plant thread in the Guys section.

18 hours ago, Jkrenzer said:

 I always feel weird taking selfies in public.

Oh yeah. I feel foolish enough doing it in my own driveway. I probably wouldn't take any at all if it wasn't for this place.