It all started out innocently enough . . .

As you may have noticed — and if you have not, then please put on this pointed cap with the large letter “D” and go to sit in the corner — I like to have some fun with my titles. This entire story actually began simply with a play on words that ran through my mind one day; which I quickly typed-up, and which then sat as an empty draft post for several weeks …

I had actually only planned to take one or two shots of my sandal-clad feet to illustrate this story, but the poses just kept rolling and the photo-shoot took on a life of its own.

I had to ask my web host to upload all of these photos for me because WordPress is still fellating donkeys, kicking puppies, and making babies cry.

Of course, he did not want to look at numerous provocative photos of me, but what choice did he have, he’s my web host and it’s his job!

His response to my remark about how many unplanned photos I had finally taken was “When it clicks, it just clicks!”. I have no idea whether he realised just how punny that remark was.

I believe there are two things about me upon which we can all emphatically agree [and by “we” I refer, of course, to my various personalities]. The first thing is that I am a rather assertive individual.

The second is that due to a lack of the embarassment gene, I have absolutely no problem with making an utter fool of myself.

Let’s look at an incident that happened at some random time too soon in the past for me to admit to having happened quite so recently.

In fact, let’s say that this incident actually happened to a friend of mine. Or another of my imaginary personalities.

Let’s say that my friend wanted a particular pair of sexy sandals for a photo-shoot. Let’s also say that she might have, hypothetically-speaking, ordered such a pair of sandals in two different colours from the website of a nationally well-known company that I shall refer to as Shameless Shoes . . . with full aforethought that she could potentially return the sandals to a local store for a full refund after the photo-shoot. Being a highly impatient person, my friend selected two-day shipping via the Oops ugly-brown-van-driving delivery company.

For the sake of brevity, let’s now refer to my friend as “me” or “I”.

Shameless Shoes promptly provided “me” with an order confirmation email together with a rather intricate tracking number that could have doubled as an encrypted offshore bank account number. As we all know, “I” have the patience span of a gnat and thus “I” instantly checked the tracking number and then re-checked it every oh, say, 15 minutes for the next six hours. Strangely, the Oops website repeatedly reported “Status: Unavailable”. “I” tried calling them and they had the nerve to tell me the self-same thing on the phone. “I” then played a game that I’ll call “Telephonic Ping-Pong” which consists of calling Company A [the Oops people] and being told to call Company B [the Shameless people] who instructed “me” to call Company A.

At this point I would like to share my basic Telephonic Communications Method with you. I realise this will leave you wondering why I never became an award-winning actress, but, I am not one to seek fame, I just [apparently] secretly enjoy an occasional bout of dramatics. My Method is somewhat akin to a one-woman performance art show and it involves several “characters” — all, of course, played by “me”.

Can you tell I was feeling a little crotchety while this story was unfolding?

Personality No. 1 starts out businesslike but firm . . . Personality No. 2 morphs into Angry Customer Mode . . .

Personality No. 3 launches DEFCON-2 with streams of nonsensical legalese and the tossing-around of such terms as “fraud” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress” and “I’ll OWN your company by this time next month!”

Unfortunately, none of the aforementioned personalities can hold their character for very long due to the sheer absurdity of behaviour and before too much time has elapsed my . . . uh, friend’s natural sense of humour starts to bubble out.

Eventually, after much hysterics on “my” part, it was ascertained that the Oops people thought that the Shameless people were a bunch of lying twits and that the Shameless folks had, in fact, “misplaced” my order.

The sandals in question, it miraculously turned out, were part of a one-time special order from some unimportant child labour-supportive fourth-world country and my lost order contained the last pair in my size of the black sandals.

After a number of increasingly funny phone calls between a Shameless supervisor [I’ll refer to this gentleman as “Shawn” which is not how he actually spells his name, but it is sufficient to falsely protect his identity], “I” was somehow given a full refund, guaranteed a replacement shipment of the red sandals to be shipped via overnight delivery at their expense . . .

. . . and, I think there might have been something additional about a human sacrifice in the Shipping Department.

All it cost me in return was the URL to my website and the words “Do YOU want to be responsible for a missed photo-shoot opportunity?”

These photos were shot by Yours Truly and OF Yours Truly last weekend on Sunday, 11 May, 2008. Below is the email I received on Wednesday, 14 May 2008 . . .

—–Original Message—–
From: Sxxx@Shameless.com
To: danjeruskurves@XXX.com
Sent: Wed, 14 May 2008 12:02 pm
Subject: Follow up on Shameless.com Order Problems
Unfortunately, after our recent audit we still do not have the other shoes that you were looking for available in a size 6.
Did the first order that you placed ever arrive? If it hasn’t, is there anything else that I can do to help rectify the situation?
Thank you for your patience and understanding,
P.S. I LOVE your website it’s very exciting, yet tasteful at the same time. Thank you for referring me to it. I’ll be sure and visit often.
P.S.S. With your incredible voice [and to die for accent] have you ever considered adding a podcast? You should.

My actual response:

Dear Sxxx,
Once upon a time there lived a princess who left her home land of England and traveled far away to a really awful place called Houston, Texass. One day, the princess ordered some new sandals only to have the sandals magically disappear! Nobody, not even the local wizard, could find the sandals!! Instead, the wizard cast a spell and two other pairs of sandals appeared at the princess’s home. Hypothetically-speaking, the mysteriously-vanished parcel may also have shown-up at the same time and the princess may have used one pair of sandals for a two-hour self-portrait photo-shoot then taken that pair to the local store and received a cash refund and then sold two of the remaining pairs to a coworker because they were very uncomfortable as it may have hypothetically turned-out and besides the princess *really* likes run-on sentences. But, as we all know, this is just a fairy tale . . . except for the part about the photo-shoot which is scheduled to be posted on 15 May 2008 along with a correspondingly funny story and quite possibly with the contents of this chain of emails woven in [minus your email address for protective purposes].
Speaking of fairy tales, did you just call me patient? AFTER our phone conversations? You have almost as good an imagination as I do!!!
I am genuinely happy to know that I have a new fan and reader! Always a pleasure. I usually update on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thank you for the compliments, always feel free to throw more in my direction. As far as adding a podcast, I rarely have stories that I think would translate verbally. As you have experienced, I can be very funny in person, but I think my writing has its own niche, so to speak. Well, that, and there are numerous technical issues with the software that powers my website since their latest “upgrade”.
Thanks for providing me with your extensive help, your patience [not mine], your sense of humour, the imaginary additional sandals, and especially the material for a splendid new story!

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Here are some thumbnails that show some of the photos in a bigger size [click your browser Back button to return to this page]:

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 8:40 am and is filed under Humour, Naughty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.