In my constant search for comfortable travel shoes, I am amazed by the number of heinously ugly options out there. If these shoes were horses, they would be shot, immediately.

I once thought that I was immune to such ugliness. When searching for comfortable shoes online, there were so many options, I’d simply skip over the unappealing ones and straight to the cute. My brain has its own filter for this sort of thing. And yet, there are times when a shoe is so unsightly, it will not be ignored. It screams to be noticed. “LOOK AT ME!”, it shouts. “I WAS DESIGNED BY DRUNK KINDERGARTNERS!”

Some of these shoes are impractical. Others are baffling.

All of them are very, very ugly.

Here are the top twelve worst pairs I’ve encountered while digging through the bowels of Zappos. Enjoy.

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1. Arcopedico N42

Seriously? N42 is what you are going to call the shoe? Sweet Jesus. Put in a little effort. Give it a name. May I suggest “The Bertha”?

Also, they appear to melting.

Ugh. These look like what the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would wear when he wants to get laid.

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San Francisco is a weird town. Sometimes, I forget this. You visit enough times, and you begin to lose site of just how bizarre a place is. And my frame of reference is pretty good: I travel enough to where the occasional jacked-up hobo in old-timey pajamas doesn’t phase me. But San Francisco is in another category all its own. Stranger than Seattle. More bizarre than Boston. And possibly more neurotic than New York (if such a thing is possible). Take a look at ten of the crazier things I saw last week …

1. Well, there’s goes the marketing budget for the year. What the hell is this ad for? I have no idea. But it’s awful. I mean, you want to be smart right? And balls-less? Or stupid and virile? I just DON’T UNDERSTAND.

Stupid is also the one approving the marketing campaign.

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While we were down in San Francisco last week, we attended a charity event that a friend of ours was hosting. A lot of people in attendance at the event were from Rand’s industry.

I used to be petrified of these sort of social gatherings. Rand usually got swept up in conversation, leaving me in a room full of strangers (the real clincher: many of them knew who I was, and I knew no one. This meant that EVERYONE KNEW WHO THE LOSER STANDING ALONE IN THE CORNER WAS. I couldn’t even hide my social ineptness behind my anonymity). After a while, I realized I had to adapt to survive, and I started chatting people up like a bubbling moron. Someone would ask why I was at the party, and I’d explain my connection to Rand.

“Oh, you’re Mystery Guest!” they’d say, referring to the screen name that Rand had given me on his blog several years ago. I would smile and nod. They’d inevitably be his customers or clients (remember, the party was hosted by a friend of ours, and the guests were all people in the same industry as Rand). We’d chat a bit about his company or the industry as a whole. Run-off of my husband’s internet start-up fame. They’d look shocked when I explained I knew next to nothing about SEO.

But last weekend, at this particular party, something very peculiar happened.

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Folks, can I take a minute to praise the French? (Note: I have never been to France). They are responsible for such wonderful things as croissants, Pasteurization, and taking the entire month of August off for vacation.

A lovely people, indeed.

The French are also repsonsible for coining a term without which I would be seriously concerned for my mental well-being. But because the French have given something I experience on a near-daily basis a proper name I no longer feel alone in my crazy.

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A few weeks back Rand and I were having a conversation with our friend Rob, who happens to be from England. The exchange went something like this:

Rob: Bob’s your uncle! Codswallup! Bangers and mash! BLAH BLAH BLAH HOGWARTS.

Me: I have no idea what you’re talking about. Speak American, please.

Rob: Ahem … Did you know that up until the 1950s or 60s, the U.K. had non-decimal money? So we’d have coins for seemingly random amounts.

Me: (open-handedly slapping Rob across the face) Don’t lie to me, boy.

I swear, it happened just like that. Except for the parts that didn’t. Anyway, the important part is that Rob claimed the U.K. had non-decimal currency. Meaning that the values of coins weren’t based on the pound being divided into 100 equal parts. Instead, he explained, the pound had been divided into 240 pence.

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"Artist's" interpretation of Steven Slater exiting the plane.

Upon hearing about the Jet Blue fiasco of this week, I instantly began frothing at the mouth, as I usually do when travel-related Dick Moves! happen, and I have fodder for my blog.

I’ve since wiped away the foam from my chin, but have maintained a healthy state of righteous indignation.

Dick Move, Jet Blue Passenger.

Yup, that’s right, I said passenger (Didn’t expect that, did you? Yeah, my blog is full of surprises. Unless you read the titles of posts.)

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-I didn’t realize you could just walk into a drugstore and find them next to the panty shields.

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Taken at Rite-Aid, Portland, OR.

Rand and I were wandering around in L.A. last week (did I mention that nobody walks in L.A.? It’s because nothing is close by) looking for decent food near Venice Beach.

We did not find any. Instead, we ate at a restaurant so bad, that the vast majority of the food was left on the plates. The waiter asked if anything was wrong, and we just shrugged and said we weren’t hungry. This was woefully untrue. We were starving, but the food was crap. And it wasn’t crap as in “Good food prepared badly.” Instead, it was “bad food presented honestly.” There was little we could do, and telling the waiter it was awful would just risk him bringing us more food. Sometimes a chicken soft taco is simply a chicken soft taco. You can expect no more from it.

There’s a lesson there, somewhere.

As we walked back from our dismal and depressing meal (fear not our lack of sustenance – later, Alaska Airlines would serve us a mixed green salad topped with chicken, blue cheese, pecans, and dried cranberries. It made my heart sing) we saw the beginnings of what could only be an epic battle to the death.

Behold Contestant #1:

What can Lexus do for you?

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It’s a Lexus. Posing as a UPS truck. I’m not going to pretend I understand what’s going on here, but offhand, it looked like someone was trying to pass off a very expensive vehicle purchase on the company dime.

“That $60,000 charge on the corporate card? That was for shipping costs. Yeah.”

Either that, or the Lexus had just been cast as a UPS truck in an upcoming role. It was simply getting into character.

Rand joked that a real UPS truck was going to drive up and kick its ass. Moments later, we saw this roll by:

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Contestant #2:

It’s brown. And it’s pissed.

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Rand and I drove down to Portland a few weeks ago for his birthday. It’s a drive we do often, and one that’s so familiar to me, one that so rarely changes, even our jokes have become recycled.

And believe me, the jokes are terrible.

When we pass the exit labeled “Toledo / Vader” it always goes something like …

“That’s where Darth’s cousin from Ohio lives!”

What? I told you – the jokes are terrible.

And nothing ever changes, save for the messages on the billboard between exits 72 and 73. It will occasionally have a different message on it, though most of them lean heavily towards the right (and well beyond it, into no man’s land.). We’ve dubbed the gentleman who owned the billboard “The Fascist Farmer”. Here’s a brief analysis of the political spectrum and his location therein …

Please note: Michael Moore should be fully in the "Crazy" left-wing section, but I ran out of room.

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I recently asked my husband what my site was lacking, and his response was infographs. Lucky for you, I don’t really know what those are so instead, I drew pictures of hamsters. Unfortunately, I drew it on the back of some crappy scrap paper left over from a job I had, like, four years ago – meaning that you can occasionally see the writing on the other side. But anyway …

Living in the Pacific Northwest, you learn to live with some pretty insane weather. You can generally tell that the meteorologist on the evening news is guessing, at best, as to what the next few days will bring. Ultimately, I think their prediction method falls somewhere along these lines.

Step 1: Create iconography for different weather forecasts, and place them on the floor of a room.

I swear there's a documented case of it raining frogs, but Rand says that I made that up.

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