RANT: You can rent WHAT?

Okay.

I am long past due for an eye check-up. The reason I know this is
because even with my glasses on I can't see myself clearly in the mirror.
Which is kind of cool in a way. I just visualize a gorgeous twenty-year-old
with a perky breasts (and a discernable waistline) peering back at me...and
grin stupidly, giving myself a big thumbs up.

But reality is fast approaching. Come 1 p.m. tomorrow, I will no longer be
able to perpetuate this fantasy. Yes, 20/20 vision awaits me which is good
because I think I read something on the internet today that had to be
a figment of my very fertile imagination. It was way beyond absurd, so
completely and embarrassingly obscene that I am positive I must have
misread it.

ab-'surd; adj. RIDICULOUS;
UNREASONABLE



ob-'scene; adj. DEEPLY
OFFENSIVE TO MORALITY
OR DECENCY

Uhhhhh.......did you know that you can rent designer purses? Those
really snooty ones with names like Gucci? (A word we only use around
here in the following context: "I tickled the baby saying gucci gucci
goo.")

You can rent a Jimmy Choo (and no, Jimmy Choo is not a cohort of
Thomas The Tank), or a Chanel which does not include a bottle of
perfume. Bummer.

The rental boutique's tagline says:

SHOW OFF. SEND BACK. SHOW OFF. SEND BACK.

Being a deep thinker, I have construed that you rent a purse, hang
it around your neck or fashion it into a trendy hat where it WILL
GET NOTICED, then ship it back and rent another. So, it all boils
down to showing off again and again, committing 1st degree accessory
fraud so that your friends, who hopefully do not have vision problems,
can get an eyeful of your Gucci or Jimmy Choo, your Louis Vuitton or
Kate Spade.

And the point is? Well, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is important for folks
who rent purses to "be seen with the right purse" the same way it is
important for others to hobnob "with the right people". But isn't such
pretentious behavior a sign that you do not fit, that you are not one of
the right people? That you have reduced yourself to a display of goods
that you evidently cannot afford to own, all in the name of belonging or
hoping to belong?

Why would anyone want to associate with folks who measure others
so severely that what they are wearing, right down to the accessories,
matters? Sounds to me like a cruel and unusual way to trifle with one's
own self-esteem.

I couldn't even begin to tell you what my friend's purses look like.
Mine is about three-years-old, I think it cost $24.99 which is a lot unless
you take into consideration it is large enough I could be buried in it. It is
fraying on the outside a bit - is a sort of a woven, tweedy-looking thing
with a couple of holes in the cheap lining.

I've eyeballed several of the designer purses and frankly, they look
like...purses; nothing more, nothing less. I see nothing unique, nothing
notable or particularly pleasing to the eye. Which means designer purse
renters and designer purse owners can evidently spot a desirable bag
a mile away; otherwise, why would there even be a phenomena such
as PURSE ENVY or the necessity for a RENT-A-PURSE agency?

This unique "spotting ability" could be used much more constructively
by say.........the United States Secret Service or the U.S. Coast Guard
Search & Rescue or those folks who look through telecopes searching the
universe for meteors or asteroids or those rascally satellites that are on
a direct collision course for planet purse.

I mean EARTH. Planet EARTH.

Okay. Enough on the subject. I've got to dig my registration papers for my
opthalmology appointment out of my cheap, poorly-constructed, embarras-
singly unnotable and entirely unrentable purse.