Pocket Change - Shopping Blog

Good day. I’d like to make it clear upfront that I will only take questions about hairstyles.

So what’s up this week? First off, Grad Money Matters displays the tragic result of too much shopping and too little psychotherapy: houses filled to the gills with crap. I think this is mostly eBay’s fault. You know, if Pierre Omidyar really wanted to do something constructive with his money, he’d invest in the technology necessary for us to build large garbage barges we could fly into the Sun. Just because there’s a secondary market for those little trolls that you put on the end of pencils doesn’t mean that they should actually be bought and sold.

Katie at Aridni writes about how to buy your first house, and although her realtor-picking tip of “Hire the dumb guy” may seem counter-intuitive, I say: If it works for heart surgeons, it works for real estate agents.

The Digerati Life asks if you can tell the difference between useful products and costly crap that has been invented solely for the sake of selling it to you. Judging from your collection of Ronco products, I’d say no, you can’t.

Andrea at Wise Bread interviews designer Amy Doan, and I think I’ll have said enough by quoting Doan’s own description of her style: “Trashy Clothes for Classy Hos.”

Somewhere towards the other end of the likely-to-get-thrown-out-of-church spectrum, we find Omiru’s picks for the Top 5 Wearable Womenswear Trends. Speaking not as a fashion maven but as someone who has an illegal gin still in his basement, I can say only that I’m glad the flapper look is back.

And last but not least, Mad Kane seems to have experienced that joy that we all feel from time to time: learning that we’ve purchased a moldy lampshade that’s actually worth thousands of dollars.

Flipping you off as hard as I can,

Aram