Its almost ended, folks.

I've unleashed havoc on eBay the past few days, and (with great exaggeration) I'd like to think that the American trade deficit thanks me emphatically.

What will follow this paragraph is my paean to my shameless consumerism, which I hope to redeem myself of by learning French and reading lots of Marquez and tedious Nabakov (<3) and Banana Yoshimoto next year. Also, I shall try to read something wacky, like ... J.T. Leroy. After reading the first few chapters of a book on Practical Criticism for Poetry that was doled out for the s lit students after the prac crit paper, I got into Derek Walcott. He writes the sort of way I'd like to, with great attention to detail and an obsession with the sensory and metaphors that mix the beautiful and the painful quite adroitly. Yes, this is my random teenage fixation with brooding and sadness rearing its Manic-Panic dyed, eyeline-d head again. In other news, I caught an old episode of Judging Amy on cable that had Adam Brody as a goth in it. I told Christine and Winnie about it, and nearly fell out of my seat watching him pretend to be fifteen and convincing with white face makeup and Good Charlotte-esque boy eyeliner drawn on his face. I love the guy, but my love extends only as far as his tv alter egos Dave Rygalski, Seth Cohen and maybe even Coop on Once and Again do.

But I digress. Back to consumerism! I'm in the mood for a curiously funny and macabre NotKeren shirt from Blood Is the New Black. I placed a big honking order on Glarkware for shirts for Winnie, her sister and I. I feel vaguely pleased because we managed to evade shipping costs due to the presence of her friend in Canada who shall lug the shirts home for us. I was less pleased by the fact that we had to pay taxes, but I suppose its not half as bad as a US$40 shipping cost.

Tomorrow, Inhabit at the Palais Renaissance is having a 50-70% year-end sale! Not that I will really spend 200 dollars on a skirt (I'm not quite there ... yet. I hope not.) from an overexposed Californian brand, but I shall browse and hope for prettiness and affordability. The shop girl called me to inform me of this sale and I thought it was rather well timed, seeing as how I sort-of end my exams tomorrow. I will refrain from purchasing accessories in the wake of the October Frenzy over Earrings.

Probably the most exciting sort of shopping tomorrow : Christmas trees! My mom wants to have a gargantuan one, I think. We haven't put up a tree in years because we haven't held the Christmas party at our home for a while, and we've usually come home too close to Christmas to bother. But this year we'll have a big tree and free time (no exams for me! no army for my brother!), since we're only going to Vietnam in December for a handful of days and making the big American/European excursion (haha) in March/May/June instead.

Perhaps I will scale the tree to plant the overpriced plastic star on the top. I want to string happy christmas lights. Bernadette suggested we string lights on the coniferous Christmas tree-resembling real life specimens we have near the front gate, but ... somehow that's no fun when you don't really have a blanket of snow around it, and also when it rains so often you might just end up electrocuting the tree.