i can't find the words

So socialist Bolivian President Evo Morales halved his salary to keep his word on a campaign promise to hire more teachers. Say what you will about the rest of his agenda, but this is a pretty rockin’ move.

What’s even more rockin’, however, is that I now outearn a South American head of state. Sure, Evo probably doesn’t have to worry about rent or health insurance or electricity bills (or maybe even taxes, who knows) — and, let’s face it, Jacksonville’s cost of living is just slightly higher than Bolivia’s — but the fact still remains that he makes $1,875 a month and I make about $2,750.

What does this mean? Well, for starters, I can definitely afford one of those awesome alpaca wool sweaters he’s so fond of:

Three months later, I’ve managed to furnish the apartment:

A few more pictures are here.

My No. 1 fear in life is The Man. In any situation where I am dealing with a monolithic corporate front, or any entity that posses more resources and authority than do I (e.g., my father during my formative years, which surely is where the aforementioned fear stems from), I do not act normally. I become paranoid, untrusting. My choices and actions are often irrational. I resort to what is, at least in my head, considered “trickery.”

Point in case: This weekend (i.e., Tuesday and Wednesday — not a weekend in the normal sense but nevertheless my 48 work-free hours each week) my one goal, the one thing I actually had to do, was retrieve money from a mattress store. The mattress I bought a mere nine weeks ago for a cool grand was being advertised for cheaper, and I had a piece of paper that guaranteed me a refund plus $500 if they didn’t match the price. (Slippery advertising practices were noted, of course: There is absolutely no way any retailer will pay out that kind of guarantee — by paying back the difference, they’ve matched the price and saved themselves a great deal of money.) It was an open-and-shut case of someone definitely owing me money, and I was ready to take The Man down a notch.

The world of sleeping products is a confounding one, however. Sealy may only make a handful of ultra-plush pillowtop mattresses, but it makes them specifically for each retailer (different fabric, different stitching pattern), resulting in gobs of names for products that are essential the same. Knowing that people will not simply hand out money, that they in fact enjoy keeping it for themselves (after all, why else was I doing this?), I assumed that Mattress Firm would say, No, our Impress is actually better than Rooms To Go’s Pizzazz, so shut up and go away. (This hypothesis turned out to be true; I took the advertisement and my receipt to a store and was promptly ushered out.)

And so I determined that I would have to outwit (outplay, outlast) The Man. In order to get money rightfully belonging to me, I would have to first get indisputable evidence (i.e., that the mattresses in question were one and the same) from the retailers, both of whom would be unwilling participants (Mattress Firm for obvious reasons, Rooms To Go because they don’t want you to be able to compare with other sellers — one salesman, when I asked him for the mattress’ spec sheet (which, for the record, was in his hand) said, Sealy doesn’t let me give these out because it’s protected trade secrets. What a GODDAMN liar!). The obvious plan: I had to pretend I was shopping for mattresses; particularly, a queen ultra-plush pillowtop Sealy Posturepedic etc. etc. (This is actually a very difficult way to shop. Salesmen will invariably try to sell you something else.)

Of course, I couldn’t just be myself; the subterfuge called for more: In quick succession, I was a new CSX hire not yet moved to Jacksonville, a married man and a slightly retarded invalid. I am not kidding.

The stratagem worked. I managed to get a salesman from one store to write down the mattresses various attributes on the back of his business card, which I stapled that to a price tag I swiped. The people at Mattress Firm at first were reluctant (Anyone could just get a business card and write this stuff down, they said. I told you they were an ornery bunch.), but when I said, Go ahead, [make my day] call and confirm, they had no choice but to throw up the white flag and give me some money. Total winnings: $110 plus tax.

This entire situation made me wonder: Am I really just a horrible compulsive liar? The lengths to which I descended were quite awful, to be honest. But then I watched some “24″ and realized I was in the clear: Jack Bauer is a man of action. He believes some things very strongly, and he will do whatever he needs to do in any given situation. For Jack, the ends justify the means every time. And while overpaying for a mattress isn’t quite on the same level as, say, a nuclear warhead aimed at L.A., I did believe strongly that there was an injustice. Could I have gotten my money without resorting to such a drastic, over-the-top scheme? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly would’ve been difficult, and there’s no way I could just say things like, I’m trying to get a refund from another store; that’s why I want to know how thick the memory foam is, and reach the same outcome.

At the end of the day (well, the second day; such scheming takes time), I got the money. I may have been dishonest to a fault, but I’m content.

Once again, FOXNews has shown that it is not like the mainstream liberal media by ably telling both sides of a news story:

Ouch.

This, of course, is a very sad story, and it hits close to home — I used to have field trips to coal mines, and my dad worked at one (not so much in the mine, but very definitely at it). It just goes to show that, as much as I consider myself a Missourian through and through, West Virginia still has hold of a few of my heartstrings. Heck, I was probably the only person in Jacksonville cheering for WVU in the Sugar Bowl.