The other day, I got to act out a secret fantasy of mine… being the room-decorator person at Ikea.

I mean, have you not ever walked around those staged living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens and thought to yourself, man, that looks sooo nice! I could totally do that, and then when you get to the bottomless black hole that is the warehouse part, you realize that $50 bucks worth of empty white boxes, tea lights and those tiny square mirrors in wooden frames somehow just don’t give the same effect??

At our progressive-slash-wanna-be-Google office this week, we set up a lounge area that is supposed to look and feel like a living room. Of course, marketing was entrusted to the design and decor, with the presidential edict of “just don’t spend to much money”.

Still, we would be able to make purchases with more abandon than I had ever enjoyed in previous private shopping excursions.

So we gallivanted off to the happy smiley land of Ektorps, Blandas and Malms where we blithely filled our cart… make that two… with things that struck our fancy.

Shopping on a whim! How glorious!….?

Oddly, it was not nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.

It really is true: when you’re not making a sacrifice to purchase these things at which you will spend many hours lovingly gazing (and thinking about the all the bag lunches you survived in order to be able to gaze so lovingly), somehow, it’s just not the same.

Could this be what it’s like to be Paris Hilton? (substitute Ikea for Dior/Vuitton/Saks 5th Avenue, natch).

If so, I think I might indeed feel badly for her. For a moment, at least.

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On a different, but related note, if you should happen to be wondering where on earth you could get some books to fill up your brand new bookshelves and make you look smart to all and sundry, you are in luck my friends – for you of the relaxed purse strings and mushy cranial filling need look no further than the venerable Strand Books of New York City where you can buy books by the foot. That’s right, folks. Want sexy, smart-looking tall books bound in leather to match your decor? No problem. A mixture of taller and shorter books to make it look like you’re a wise scholar with a range of interests? We’ve got you covered! We’ve got books for everyone, from the loser who’s not only dumb but also cheap ($10 per foot) to the pedantic richie-rich who will probably has never even heard of half these books but hey, don’t they complement the colors of the Persian rug ($400 per foot)? Our website even features an asinine quote about books that sounds really good from some guy we don’t know but hey, who cares? It looks GOOD. (Aren’t we clever?)