I am writing this from the comfort of my newly sheeted bed.  I’d be feeling the heat from my laptop on my skin (which is being pampered by 800 thread count sheets, did I mention?), but the feathers of the Hungarian geese that make up the filling of my new down comforter seem to have a natural heat shielding effect. I am pretty much floating on a cloud of whipped butter, and you aren’t.

You may ask yourself why tonight is my first night with the new sheets when I clearly posted a few days ago about acquiring them?  The answer my friend, is deferred gratification.  Many Americans don’t know much about this concept, which is why they go out and buy tons of things they can’t afford on ‘credit’ (like sheets, or houses), and then a credit crisis triggers a whole collapse of a powerful nations economy.  There was once a famous experiment performed on children known as the ‘marshmallow experiment’ in which they were offered a marshmallow, but were told that if they waited to take it, they would later be given another marshmallow in addition to this first one.

Some of the children took the marshmallow right away, and others held out for the two.  The researchers followed-up with these kids once they had grown into adults and it turns out most of the adults who held out were successful in life and those that took the marshmallow right away went on to be the greedy fucks on Wall Street.  Oh wait, no they didn’t, but they were failures in other ways. So are you a taker or a waiter?

Most things in life are better if you have had to work or wait for them.  Like a microwaveable pork-chop t.v. dinner versus a boar that has been roasted on a spit for 10 hours and splashed with coconut water every so often. Or like a 20 second amusement park ride that you have had to wait 2 hours in in line for.  Without that anticipation, how good can the pay-off really be?  For those of you who are visual learners, I present you with a chart of the the last two weeks or so of traffic to sansyourpants.com:

Traffic Statistics

Ignore the dot on the right, that’s tomorrows traffic which is clearly zero since the day hasn’t taken place yet.  But notice the ever growing trend upwards.  If you make them wait, then they will come in consistently growing numbers.  It’s deferred gratification that they didn’t even know they were capable of.  NASDAQ wishes it could look this good.

I woke up at around 11:00AM, which unfortunately for me is late these days. It’s only 7:00PM as I write this.  Somewhere in the 8 hours of being awake, I managed to do quite a few things like visit my parents, visit my grandparents (separate activities), and spend $1000 on bedding.  That’s U.S. currency, with a 15% discount already applied.  Allow me to explain.

About a week ago, I noticed a tear down by the feet area of the sheets that were currently on my bed.  It was only 1 or 2 inches long, but a tear no less.  Around the same time a terrible cold front swept in from the North, and I found myself sleeping in two pairs of socks, sweatpants,  a sheet, blanket, and extra sheet on.  In Hawaii.  My pillowcases don’t match either, one is a neutral tan color, and the other is covered in some red flowers, like the pattern you would find on some Royal Doulton fine China from the 19th Century.  I wish I was kidding.

A Tear In The Fabric Of Our Lives

Over the last few days this tear has grown and grown.  I have placed the quarter there for size comparison, it didnt appear there on its own.  Clearly if I had a tear-fairy in my bed that left me money, I wouldn’t have felt the need to replace my sheets.  So a normal person might just switch out the sheets on his/her bed for one of the clean ones that are already in their closet, but not me.  I had had enough of living like you normal people do, content with your 600 Thread Count plebeian pillowcases, and your non-Hungarian Goose Down Comforter.  So I went to Macy’s.

Somewhere in the mix-up I decided that two pairs of sheets (800 and 700 Thread Counts), two pairs of pillowcases, a new comforter to keep me warm, and a duvet cover for the comforter was what I needed.  If the option to sleep like a king of a small-to-medium sized nation was available to me at the very store that I found myself in, then why shouldn’t I cease the opportunity?

A Bed Worth Bankruptcy

Behold, the bedding of your dreams, and also the bedding of my real life.  Sure I’m going to be in debt trying to pay it off, but it’s not like anyone has gotten into serious trouble buying things they couldn’t actually afford, right?  Imagine if the collapse of the housing market had happened like that!! HAHA!!