-New York Mets pitcher Jeff Innis, commenting on a bad photograph taken of himself.

That's how I feel some days when I watch television ads that prey on gullible consumers.

Last week, Deborah and I began the search for a replacement mattress. I exhausted all rational arguments why a decent, expensive mattress was not a good investment. Not to mention the painfully sleepless nights we endured to reach that conclusion.

Fortunately, our search began and eventually ended in our hometown. The journey, however, took us on a trip through the fictional canyons and forests around Mattress Mountain and detoured through the mega store, Slumberland, located in Wichita.

In the television ad, an assuring voice croons, "One size, small size, big size-any size, one low price. And all of it's nice."

Yeah. For $99, you can get any size mattress to fit your needs. The question is, should you?

Our visit to Slumberland was enlightening, for sure. They seemed to have any quantity and size of mattress to fit the needs of an entire small town-like Hillsboro, in fact.

Not that I wanted to buy a low-quality mattress for a very low price. Within a month's worth of sleep, it would disintegrate into a worthless pile of cotton and cords, not to mention the imprint of my size-12 shoe on its backside.

I was curious and merely price shopping to compare quality and price. That mattress did not appear in any display I walked by. Perhaps it was in a display area, tucked away in a remote corner of the huge store.

Perhaps, one day, it will once again appear in the store, front and center, when $3 per gallon gas reduces the volume of customers to a trickle, or when the next economic downturn finds its way into Wichita's aircraft business.

I did find mattresses for sale at that price, times a factor of 43.43, however. Imagine this opportunity: for $4,300 and change, plus sales tax and other charges, you can have the finest steel coils and cotton/synthetic blend that money can buy.

If you prefer an air mattress instead, you can spend the same dollars on the best "Sleep Number Bed." Add another thousand dollars or more, and they will throw in a headboard of your choice for the bed of your choice.

"Loss leader" ads and the practice of "bait and switch," bring relevance to the comment by Mets pitcher Jeff Innis. Indeed, that picture was taken out of context.

* * *

On the lighter side, I recently visited on the Internet with a farmer from South Dakota. In response to my query of the status of the wheat harvest on the Northern Plains and the effects of the drought, he added the following list, reprinted with his permission.

Top 10 reasons to combine in central South Dakota:

(10) Used to recreational till, thought we would give recreational harvest a try.

(9) Ag fuel getting old and about empty-want to buy new fresh fuel.

(8) Want to prove the crop insurance adjuster wrong.

(7) It pencils-three-bushel wheat at $5.00... oops!... at $4.90... crud!... at $4.80. Still beats $3 fuel, if we sell on time.

(6) Don't want the hassle of collecting Dupont Ally at refund.

(5) New combine w/autosteer and G2 display-it's the only way we can tell where we've been.

(4) Heard the calls to Stellar Support are slowing down; wanted to give them folks something to work on.

(3) Cooler in the combine than outside-front-row seat to watch neighboring row crops burn up.

(2) Cheaper than honey-do projects.

(1) Needed to pick the rocks anyway.