Over some inferior tom yam goong last night (I swear, is Villa Thai in Tallinn the only good Thai place on earth?!) Rochelle and I came to the conclusion that I needed new pants. She's a shopping fiend, so it was sort of my turn. I buy clothes once every year or two, as you might have gathered from my never, ever, ever having discussed here buying much of anything.

So we went to the mall. The confluence of all that drives me insane about Florida: the suburbs, snotty teenagers, muzak. But for the first time I found all the tackiness a little comforting, a little relaxing.

"So where do you think we should look?"

"I think maybe... American Eagle? They always have corduroys." They didn't.

We went into Burdine's and caught a clerk just as she was starting to cuss at a coworker in Russian. She told me to come back in a month when cords were in season. I told her spacebo; she said do svedanya.

"Every time I go to the Gap," I said to Rochelle, "I imagine hundreds of thousands of Malaysian or Laotian kids or something, sitting there with their fingers bleeding from pinpricks, cursing my name for creating a market for the clothes they make."

Rochelle, ever practical: "Yeah, but they make really nice clothes. Well-cut."

"Unfortunately, they do. Maybe I should just ask the cashier if they still pay their sweatshop workers $0.05 a day, or if they're doing better now."

"If you're going to do that, I'm going to wait outside."

So we went into the Gap, and I swear to god, if there hadn't been a bigger-than-life-size poster of Michael Vartan against one wall, I would've walked right out. Rochelle and I both gravitated toward it.

"Damn," she said.

"Dammit," I said.

I bought a new fleece hoody and some boot-cut grey pants that feel like silk, but are actually some kind of denim.