Beyonce' Creates Theme Song for Goodwill Campaign Against Exes

That's right, you've heard it  in your car and while shopping for holiday Peeps at Walgreens:
To the left, to the left

Everthing you own in the box to the left

In the closet, that's my stuff

Yes, if I bought it then please don't touch. 

To put the kibosh on all the treacle surrounding Valentine's Day, Goodwill Keystone Area did Beyonce' one better, and created the "Dump Your Exes Stuff" campaign.

     I love that Keystone Goodwill is clear that it will NOT accept your ex's weapons, dehumidifiers, kerosene lanterns or mattresses (ew). They must know their constutuency. And we all have exes. Exes are not limited to men and women and pet crocodiles who turned on us or failed to live up to our dreams (Mr. Hyde, could you just put me through to Dr. Jekyll  now?) , but also include lemon cars, tetchy computers and leather pants that let us down. If you have ever bought an outfit only because it was a bargain, you probably ended up with an an albatross that made your ass look like it was on an IMAX screen.  What you need to do is break up with that outfit, and breaking up is hard to do. Cue the Everly Bros... Bye, bye love...

     Allow me to serve as a cautionary tale for all my subjects. I have had multiple break-ups with purchases, and I'm here to share. Hello, my name is the Empress, and I'm a clothing slut, I buy 'em and I leave 'em. Here is an embarrassing photo of all the stuff I bought one time. I even put brand labels on cards on some items for the photo! (What next, scrapbooking? Save me!)  I made these things think I cared for them. I washed them, hung them, wore them. And within a year, I threw them over ...  into a Goodwill bag (even the Rainbow Brite MaxMara skirt). I was cold, callous and unfeeling, but I am the Empress, and sometimes heads must roll and pink mohair coats must find someone who cares: "It's not you, pink mohair coat, it's me."

Other broken-hearted rejects from my closet:

Be kind, if you don't love it, set it free.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantalones

  Hola'. There, now I have used up 2 of the 14 Spanish words I know. I am ashamed to live in California and not speak Spanish. But I took four years of Latin, and hand me some Ovid and I'm your girl. Not really, I only know one phrase in Latin, but it's a useful one: "Semper ubi sub ubi." Translation: "Always wear underwear." Good advice, the kind of advice a big sister might have given me in second grade before I launched myself on the monkey bars. Sisters are supposed to be good at that kind of thing, but here's the rub: I never had a sister. I had three brothers, so I spent a fair amount of time faking injuries and watching them get punished. Perhaps this is why I like the movie Reservoir Dogs so much. So much blood.

  But you don't need blood ties for a sister (and you don't need dorky make-believe traveling pants that fit all four friends even before America Ferrera lost all that weight and got Ugly Betty cancelled.) One of my brothers married the Duchess of Fort Bragg, and she is a master thrift shopper. Here is a belt she bought recently (the top and jeans are also thrift):

  Here's one thing I know for sure. If I had a sister, and she shopped with me at Goodwill, she NEVER would have let me buy this little wench number. My sister would have had a cool name like Laramie or Patti Smith, and she would have seen this number and laughed a throaty laugh and said, "Who do you think you ARE buying that thing? An Empress of a Second-Rate Renaissance Faire? A waitress at Gulliver's? A puppet in a It's a Small World ride? Stop embarrassing me and  put all that dachshund crap down before we get to the register. Ahhhhh, sisterhood.