{"id":14,"date":"2003-03-15T16:40:00","date_gmt":"2003-03-15T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=14"},"modified":"2005-12-03T14:15:37","modified_gmt":"2005-12-03T19:15:37","slug":"off-the-wracked-with-guilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/off-the-wracked-with-guilt","title":{"rendered":"Off the (w)rack(ed with guilt)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spent the early afternoon at a big, outdoor outlet mall up in New York state, where I spent money I probably shouldn’t have (since I’m supposed to be salting everything away for a number of reasons), on a variety of things:<\/p>\n

$20 on books (The September 11 Photo Project<\/a>, The Muse Asylum<\/a>, and Baby, I Don’t Care<\/a>);
$35 on t-shirts, underwear and a three-quarter-sleeve shirt at Jockey<\/a>;
$60 on a sportcoat at Claiborne for Men (so I’m a homo, alright?);
$25 on a hooded fleece overshirt at The North Face<\/a>.<\/p>\n

None of these purchases made me feel too guilty. The problem was at the end of the line, when I walked into the Hugo Boss<\/a> outlet. Now, I told myself I was going in just to browse around, maybe gawk at the Russians and Japanese who were filling up the place, get some ideas for neat looks (because my current one<\/a> probably isn’t that appealing).<\/p>\n

After all, I couldn’t possibly buy clothing from a company whose founder was renowned for designing dress uniforms for the SS<\/a>, and using slave labor to manufacture it, could I? Why, just a few days ago, walking through Garden State Plaza<\/a>, I saw some suits in the window of the Hugo Boss store, and thought, “Nice look. If only it wasn’t named after a guy who made the SS look so snappy.”<\/p>\n

And that got me reflecting on the intersection of fashion and fascism, which I really don’t need to get into right now.<\/p>\n

Why not? Because I found a sharp, $800 suit marked down to $100, that’s why. I tried it on. It fit wonderfully, looked great, and made me feel pretty bad. Until I thought, “Y’know, Gil, at this price, it’s actually hurting them more <\/i>than if you boycott the place.”<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spent the early afternoon at a big, outdoor outlet mall up in New York state, where I spent money I probably shouldn’t have (since I’m supposed to be salting everything away for a number of reasons), on a variety of things: $20 on books (The September 11 Photo Project, The Muse Asylum, and Baby, I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Off the (w)rack(ed with guilt)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-e","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2048,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/its-such-a-perfect-day-im-glad-i-spent-it-with-me","url_meta":{"origin":14,"position":0},"title":"It’s such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with me","author":"Gil","date":"May 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I decided to have lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, A Mano, an upscale Neapolitan pizza place in Ridgewood, NJ. I got there around 2pm, in the midst of a typhoon (nice day to start our Friday summer hours: 50 degrees and pouring). I opened the door, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1140,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lights-camera-caption","url_meta":{"origin":14,"position":1},"title":"Lights, Camera, Caption!","author":"Gil","date":"October 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Amy's spent the morning adding captions to her set of pix from our Paris trip (which are a bunch better than mine). I'll get around to that at some point.","rel":"","context":"In "Paris"","block_context":{"text":"Paris","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/paris"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1819,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/da-boom","url_meta":{"origin":14,"position":2},"title":"Da boom","author":"Gil","date":"December 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday was one of Those Days. I refer to them as \"Blow Up The Outside World Days,\" since I usually remark, \"I will kill everyone on the planet,\" at least three or four times. They don't happen very often; in this instance, it's a function of getting our annual year-end\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ouch","url_meta":{"origin":14,"position":3},"title":"Ouch","author":"Gil","date":"January 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"From the NYTimes:\"A large part of the European left spent a large part of the 20th century hating the United States not because it had economic inequality or Jim Crow but because it did not have show trials, labor camps and the other appurtenances of 'actually existing socialism.'\"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2180,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/way-down-in-the-hole","url_meta":{"origin":14,"position":4},"title":"Way Down in the Hole","author":"Gil","date":"August 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent Tuesday with my brother and his best pal down at Sea Bright, NJ, and environs. Here are a couple of pix from the beach (more to come from the aforementioned environs), and some video of my brother's exploits. He swears that this activity wasn't symbolic of anything:","rel":"","context":"In "travel"","block_context":{"text":"travel","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1636,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/darin-aaron-magoo","url_meta":{"origin":14,"position":5},"title":"Darin’ Aaron Magoo","author":"Gil","date":"August 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"So sorry for the lack of updates, dear readers, but my buddy Aaron (a.k.a. Fink) came to visit this weekend, and we spent much time . . . um, hanging out, watching movies, and eating very NJ food. Speaking of which, Fink may never eat solid food again, after back-to-back\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}