Like so many other witless blonde consumers weakened by the sight and smell of Italian leather, I suffer from the financially debiliating and almost exclusively female disease known as shoe consumption. I find it nearly impossible to drive by a Shoe Pavilion Shoe Outlet without stopping, parking illegally if necessary, and diving head first into brand-name-for-less ecstasy, snatching every pair of 8� sling-backs on display.

I become an entirely other beast when confronted with stacks of designer footware, as if possessed of some instinctual drive to fill my closet in preparation for a season of drought or blizzard. Food supply be damned! Have I got the requisite footware to survive the harsh conditions of a Southern Californian winter? Calvin Klein usually has the answer.

Reasoning with me during shoe shopping is about as effective as reasoning with a man once he's let loose in the aisles of Home Depot. Indeed, hardware stores are to men what the Bloomingdales One Day Only Blow Out Sale is to women, and each is equally dangerous to the hormonal balance of everyone involved.

When men see drill bits, adjustable brackets or threadlock screws en masse and organized by size and project, they become bloated with elephantine doses of testosterone and abandon all humanly decipherable communication. I've seen men, my new roommate included, drop to all fours and scamper through the electrical aisle, sniffing bulk packages of light sockets and scratching their armpits in a pitiable reversal of evolution.

Women in shoe stores, frankly, are no different; although, unlike our male counterparts, we rarely use our bladders to lay claim to a piece of merchandise. Where men bark at passing forklifts, women hiss and mangle any creature offensive enough to browse for shoes the same size as our own. And if a Kenneth Cole 'Pale Rider' Boot is somehow involved, I won't hesitate to draw blood.