7 Dumbest Things People Buy

A Bed

Thanks to bedmaker propaganda (Mattress Giant, Sleep Number, etc.), everyone’s under the impression that beds are an essential part of a bedroom, as essential as walls or a floor. But guess what: contrary to popular belief/common sense, the human spinal cord is incredibly resilient, able to tolerate significant long-term strain and abuse like, say, sleeping on a couch, a stone slab, or newspaper. Personally, I’ve slept in a sleeping bag on an air mattress for two years now, and yes, it is anathema to girls, and yes, it can be uncomfortable, and yes, I am much more intimate with the roaches and centipedes on the floor, and yes, it does makes my room look like a backroom brothel, but on the bright side, it rolls up fast if I need to move.

Pillows

Once again, Corporate America tries to sell us on the notion you need a specific item to fulfill a given function when you can use practically anything soft to substitute for a pillow: a pile of grocery bags, pumpkin guts, leaves, even your own arm. No need for memory foam; the world is brimming with soft things to exploit for pillow purposes if you use your imagination. For example, I use Ziploc bags full of old ground hamburger meat, and it’s like sleeping on a cloud made of rotten hamburger meat. You can also use old lady wigs, mashed up peas, or dryer lint for pillows. Sure, you may have guests who balk at your creative bedding, those who think you have to buy pillows full of exotic Egyptian duck feathers, but that’s why I never invite people to my home.

A Desk

Why restrict your workspace to one tiny desk? The floor’s so much larger than any fancy desk from Office Depot, and it encompasses the whole room, allowing for maximum space utilization. Scatter your documents, books, pens, notepads, and miscellaneous refuse across the floor and you’ll be able to survey all your resources simultaneously. If you put items in desk drawers, who knows what might happen once they’re out of sight and out of mind? You could forget important documents, urgently necessary documents. If you absolutely have to conceal your documents from prying eyes, just slip them inside an old pizza box—boom, filed.

Dishes

Dishes cost money, take up tons of cabinet space, and require washing after every use; such inefficiency is intolerable. Instead, why not use an alternative eating surface like a paper towel, a napkin, a t-shirt, a cardboard box, or even eat off the floor. I mean, what’s down there besides dead skin cells and fossilized syrup puddles. Sit on the floor and scoop up noodles with your hands while you peruse important business reports scattered around you so as to increase productivity. Multifunction, efficiency, professionalism—this is how you fulfill your potential, not wanton consumerism.

A Stove and Oven

These pinnacles of obsolescence have been replaced by the smaller, more efficient microwave, and yet they linger on into the 21^st century alongside other anachronisms like wristwatches and answering machines. This senseless adherence to traditional cooking methods has to go, for the sake of practicality. Though cooking zealots would disagree, if a food can’t be heated in the microwave, it can easily be replaced with a prepackaged microwaveable equivalent (no dishes!). And why split the heating process between two separate devices? That’s just a waste of money and space. Who needs a stove or an oven when you can simply heat up a can of microwavable chili, pour it on the floor, and scoop it up with overdue utility bills?

A Car

Ancient Aztecs, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Neanderthals all made do without cars, and so can you. While the media would have you believe you need one of these expensive, gas guzzling vehicles to get to work, school, and faraway relatives, you can easily survive without a car by restricting your activities to a three mile radius and walking everywhere. Apply for jobs within this radius, even if the only business is a combination Indian restaurant/gas station or a junkyard. And forget friends, family, or romantic prospects who live outside the bubble because they might as well be dead, cremated, dust blowing through your desolate psyche. Better yet, stop going outside entirely because 98% of unnecessary expenditures occur outside the home, in that lurid wonderland of commercial excess.

A Television

Entertainment can be generated in countless ways, many of them exhilarating as well as free, so there’s no compulsory obligation to purchase this expensive appliance which only necessitates a monthly leeching by a cable company, an electric company, and then pay-per-view, Blu-rays, Playstations, and so forth. No, you can stimulate your mind just by staring out the window at real things, a whole world already in HD for no extra cost: people, dogs, kids, trees, sky, dirt, pavement, birds. Look at them out there. Just look at them, driving to restaurants, talking on their expensive smartphones, accumulating new experiences via lavish expenditures, an entire nation of Marie Antoinettes squandering their fortunes.

Sometimes when I peer out at them, I feel less like a person than a ghost haunting my own life. I spend my days drifting from room to room, staring into empty space, watching my body melt away into a skeletal husk. And when I sleep, I have no dreams. That’s when you know you’re truly fiscally responsible.