Have you noticed how this phrase is almost always the prelude to several 
hours of exasperation? ;-)

OK, so check it out. For my dance competition next week, I want to wear 
a black short-sleeved shirt. But apparently I don't possess one. I have 
several nice black shirts, but they are all either patterned or 
long-sleeved. A long-sleeved black shirt is OK as a fallback, but really 
it'll be far, far too hot to dance in.

It's not a problem though. I just need to buy a suitable shirt. How hard 
can it be?

Hah. Haha. Hahahahaha!

I started with one website. "Shop by brand" is going to be little or no 
help; I don't give a fig who makes it, I just want a black shirt. So I 
selected "shirts" and I selected "formal" and then I selected "black".

Of the 25 shirts shown, only three of them were actually, you know, *black*.

You would have thought showing only black shirts would be quite simple. 
How hard can it possibly be? But... well, there was a shirt that had 
bright orange and lime green stripes on a black background. There was a 
shirt which was vivid yellow with faint black lines. There was a shirt 
that was three shades of grey and white (but no pure black). In short, 
the website seems to be showing me "shirts that have black or something 
vaguely approaching black in their design", rather than "shirts which 
are ACTUALLY BLACK". :-O

So the three black shirts. Two of them are long-sleeved. But the 
short-sleeved one looks quite good. In fact, it looks like it might be 
quite appropriate. OK, this shop is quite expensive. Most of the shirts 

need one. So I-- WAH!! O_O I just noticed that the particular shirt that 


Yes, you read that correctly. Over a hundred pounds for *one shirt*. WTF?

Oh, I see. I says Armani on it. >facepalm<

[In case you're in the USA, that's apparently just over $200.]

Anyway, so there's one screwy website. So what? Well... every clothing 
website I've looked at, I've found the same problems:

- Asking for "black shirts" shows you every shirt in the entire 
catalogue that has a single stitch of black or grey in it.

- The cardinality of the set of /actually black/ shirts is very low.

- The cardinality of the set of "formal" shirts with short sleeves is 
also quite low.

- The intersection of these two sets is nearly empty.

Almost all the short-sleeved shirts are big baggy casual things for 
lounging around the house in. Almost all the formal shirts, especially 
the /black/ formal shirts, are designed like something you'd wear to a 
funeral. Thick, heavy fabric and fancy but inflexible tailoring.

My mother had a look around the physical shops in her lunch break and 
couldn't find anything either.

My dad jokingly suggested I should try Amazon. (?!) Bizarrely, they have 
the best range I've seen so far, by a mile...

They're coming to take me away, hehe, haha, hoho! :-D

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