ShadowTwin Home

Site Links:
Arthur Witles
Who I am - Site info
Music Lost to History Archive
Horoscope Archive
Original Poetry
Pre-Blogger Archives
Stuff I Made
Vacation Photos
My coming of age story.
Programs I use for the site
Email me

It's fun to hate:
Shoe companies that name their shoes with different numbers than what they list on their website.

When Shadowtwin reigns supreme:
You, being a shoe company, will have to list the actual shoes that you sell on your website, in a way that it is easy to search for them, like, you know, using a single line name to define your shoes. regardless of whether you are online or at the store. Vote Shadowtwin!

Music lost to history:
Alice Cooper:
Roses on White Lace

Alice Cooper is basically what Marilyn Manson has become. He sang about really taboo subjects at a time when taboo actually was taboo. This particular tune is one that I began listening to after being dumped by the girl that I was supposed to marry back in the early nineties. It is actually one of three songs that play back to back on most albums. Those three songs are, if memory serves, "chop, chop, chop", "Gail" and "Roses on White Lace". I never really appreciated the other two quite as much as this one, but then I have never hacked anyone to death, so check back later...

This song stands alone as being pretty cool just because it states the anger that I was having at the time (back in the '90s). At the same time, it illustrates that Marilyn Manson is following the course of another very successful rocker. While Cooper's songs were not earth-shaking, they were provocative. That single fact is what has led to Manson's success. I have never heard or read Marilyn Manson say that Alice Cooper was an actual influence on his music, but here is an example of it from twenty years ago.

Yeti Sports-
A cute little game that I was turned onto by the BlackChampagne post. Quite addictive little sports, these. As long as you don't mind seeing mythical beasts whacking penguins with everything from clubs to flamingos.

Well, just a bit more shoe discussion today (dear random fluctuations of time and space, I hope I eventually come up with some actual content). The shoes that I bought on Sunday performed quite admirably in their first full day of use. Of course you can't judge a shoe by the first 'full day' of use, but I can certainly tell you that most of the downfalls of the other shoes were non-existant in these ones. So much so, in fact, that I think I may finally understand why I can never find a comfortable pair of shoes in any price range. It turns out that I have wide feet.

The latest pair of shoes that I purchased are in a 9 1/2 size, but they are 'extra wide'. It turns out that all of the foot discomfort that I had been getting from the other shoes might be directly related to the fact that I have wide feet. You see, your average Payless Shoe Source doesn't have any person working for them that actually cares about your shoe size. The only thing that those type of stores care about is selling the next pair of ten dollar shoes (of which maybe 3 cents per shoe go to the kids in the warehouse that built them). I mention this only because I found it a bit humorous that the women at the shoe store I went to seemed a bit, I will say, less than educated at their craft.

There is a thing called a Brannock Device that can be used to measure the foot, in length and in width. There is always at least one of the damn things in every shoe store. The unfortunate thing is that they never use them, even worse, they don't know how to use them. Using the device by myself, after I had already purchased the damn shoes, I found that I am actually a size 9 1/2. Beyond that, and not knowing how to use the device properly, I was not able to confirm this until I just googled up the link to the Brannock Device. It turns out that I really do have wide feet.

My usual shoe purchases are in the 10 1/2 to 11 range, and they seem to fit pretty well (after a week or so of expansion). The 9 1/2 extra wide shoes that I got, however, still seem to fit perfectly, no need for expansion or other weird shit to make them fit. The extra wide shoes just fit. If I had known that I had really wide feet when I was in high school, I may have been able to make my dad buy me shoes that actually fit onto my feet. Of course Dad was more 'old school' and would likely have told me to grin and bear it.

At least now I know that I have really wide feet and as such will make sure to mention that fact when I am trying to purchase shoes in the future. Honestly, today might be the first day in damn near a decade that I have not felt pain in my feet. Who knew that the pain could have been caused by the limited selection of shoes at the local Payless? Beyond that, who knew that if you wear a shoe that is a couple of sizes too big (if you have a wide foot) it will expand to fit the foot? This is all quite irritating to me, I am not blessed with a huge 'Johnson', I am not as tall as an 'NBA' player, I just have really wide feet. And you know what they say about people with really wide feet...They have short 'Johnson's'. Which is also not helpful.

If these shoes make it through the unloading of the truck tomorrow, then through the remainder of the day, I might call them the 'Perfect Shoes'. Of course the odds of that happening are about the same as my odds of getting a pulitzer prize for the writing on this website...Not likely, enough said.

At the very least, even if you hate me, my feet don't hurt and it was the discovery of extra wide shoes that made this all possible.

I don't have anything to put after that. In the interest of making more readers turn liberal, I offer you this; The Washington Monthly. This site will give you the democratic view of the issues, like them, hate them, this is how we/they think.