Last edited by The_Shooman (2012-01-07 16:15:25)

Shooey - If the Dalai Lama were to be up there on a higher level than the rest of us: maybe, just maybe, he should be galvanizing his nation from within, instead of sulking in some comfortable, foreign field. As for Mother Theresa - I'm inclined to agree with Christopher Hitchens - indeed, watching his balls-out stuff on youtube is to be commended. I'm just not into man-prescribed, 'religious' exegeses on 'levels of spirituality' and how to obtain a higher one. I thought that you were beyond such nonsense!

You should just do your duty, as well as  you can: by yourself; for your family; for your friends and then for the wider community of mankind. You, Shooey, put this Million git forward as a protagonist of fine footwear. In fact, he is a prat, who thinks mainly of himself and, as a venture capitalist, promotes his own commercial interests, at the expense of real inventors and innovators; by dint of money that he calls in from elsewhere, backed by his gambling on seeing a good market connexion in this ugly world. His main asset, in short, is not his shoe closet but his ability to appreciate what the greatest number of ugly souls will buy (I bet that it is cardboard housing). I suggest that he is just a shit of the first water, for the reasons already given! And an expensively and ill-chosen-shod-shit, at that.  But a big shit, nonetheless!

Last edited by NJS (2012-01-08 05:58:02)

Maybe the folks with the goodyear welted shoes (gemmed) who live in dry climates could try getting their soles stitched on by hand. Why? lt would save the outsole stitching machines mashing up the welt and make many more resoles possible. Hand construction is very very important, it keeps the integrity of the shoe. Machines are a brute. Minimise the damage done to a shoe...do no harm...stitch those soles on by hand, carve a feather and stitch that welt on by hand. Handwork serves a very important purpose with footwear.

l might get a persian rug so l can take shoo-pics for my blog.

Isshy shows his gunboats with a highly suspect hippy rug in background. A bit of a worry that boy.

In defense of Freds and iGents

I frequent road biking forums. They are full of snarky but well informed references to the witless and clueless "Fred" who shows up at the morning ride in full pro team regalia astride an $8,000 bike. They are full of faux pas in a ride, except that in a tight group ride at 26 mph a faux pas is not a  object of derisory comments regarding taste, but a compelling reason to fear fracturing your clavicle because Fred here nicked your front wheel.

So naturally, much like iGents, Freds are the object of scorn, derision, and outright apoplexy by those more knowledgeable and experienced.

And yet... Hooray for the Freds. They keep the bike paraphernalia industry alive, they expand the marketplace for me. Thanks to them I can buy equipment only available to pros in the golden age of cycling. Bespoke cycling (yes, there is such a thing) was only available to pros and a very select few before Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong brought in hordes of Freds into the world of cycling.

In this democratised age, tens of thousands of (substitute here whatever pejorative soothes your soul and satisfies your injured sense of decorum) Millons are what make bespoke shoes available not only to kings and potentates, but you dear fellow readers of this blog. So be thankful to Mr. Millon and those of his ilk. The select tribe of august cognoscenti truly worthy of stepping into these wearable works of art is not large enough to sustain the market that produces them.