I think it has been well-established that I will seriously consider buying things that I don't really need. I am a sucker for bargain finding sites. I love checking the daily deal from Amazon. I love checking ebay and woot.com. And I really love slickdeals.net, where it just shows random stuff that someone online is selling on the cheap.
You can only imagine the joy and rapture I felt when I was at slick deals and I found this:
Five pounds of pens for under $20.
I think what drew me to this is the fact that the volume of pens is measured in, well, volume. While the listing does say that this is about 265 pens, the selling point is obviously that five pounds is stupidly large amount of pens. So stupidly large, in fact, that I could, presumably, become king of the pens. I will rule over my minions with a iron fist (that is, a hand that, according to my elementary school principal, was holding the pencil incorrectly, but I kept writing that way anyways [at least when he wasn't looking]. I guess I showed him, huh? All the way to the bank. Wait, what?).
The second selling point for me, at least, is this:
"Here's the scoop on this deal. Each pen is a brand new click pen. Most pens would sell for $0.40 or more each if you bought them in bulk blank. but these aren't blank. They have logos, addresses, phone numbers and more from various businesses. They're misprints and overruns from companies looking to promote themselves."
I'm sorry? Are you telling me that I could have pens that give non-useful information? I could have a pen promoting Little Darlin's BBQ @ 858-264-864, or another pen promoting The American Dream as found on Route 65? Sign me up! Oh wait! I'll do that myself with the weight of FIVE POUNDS OF PENS to back me up!
Finally, the last point on the page says this:
"You will be pleased with the quality."
Will I? I think this selling point is actually detrimental, because it reminds me of this Mexican food restaurant in my home town where the owners didn't have a great grasp on English, and so their advertisements billed this restaurant's foods as "OK MEXICAN FOOD!" Or, at least I thought they didn't have a good grasp up until a friend ate some nachos from there and found it topped with non-melted slices of American cheese sliced in half. Her response was, of course, that the sign was correct; it was just okay Mexican food.
Nevertheless, I can't see any way out of buying these pens. Please share methods for how I should deal with this unreasonable aspect of my personality (other than handing all my money over to my adorable wifey: she'll just try to spend the money on obvious things like food and shelter, which is all well and good, but I just have one little question: how do you sign the rent check without a pen? Check and mate).
13 hours ago