Pressure is trying to pass for four when you just turned seven, at the “Miss Toddler Panama city” pageant.
You’re crammed into the same five-inch heels you wore the year before, blood pooling in your toes.
But you know if you don’t win, mom can’t fix the hole in the gator fence, so you’ll be up all night, s*ab gators.
Pressure is performing on a party boat that catches on fire, your throat burning from the smoke.
You still sing so beautifully that it calms the passengers, so that you and the crew can escape.
Pressure is singing the Yemeni national anthem while a handsome but ruthless general pushes a scimitar into your neck, Kristin Chenoweth’s corpse at your feet.
That’s pressure. – Jenna Maroney
Pressure is trying to finish the New Yorker magazine before the next issue arrives.
There was a mattress store near my apartment in Providence which never had people in it. Since it lies between where I lived and a popular local taquería, the storefront was actually quite familiar to me. There would always be a sign reminiscent of Word’s Pop Art announcing a sale, and several mattresses lied in the darkness through the dusty panes of glass.
Not once did I notice the lights turned on. All this convinced me that this was in fact a front for the notorious mafia in Providence. After all, Providence was renounced for their intimate ties with organized crime, College Hill was not the cheapest real estate, and, most importantly, there were no, nil, nada, zip customers.
For four years of my time in PVD, it just sat there. Seemingly abandoned. I don’t know if I preferred it to be a barren storefront, or just one with no character. But eventually an electric bike company peddling (get it?) their wares took over the lease.
But perhaps, I misunderstand the economics of a quality mattress. Maybe selling one a week was enough to go even, with its high prices justified by the substantial mass of a mattress.
After all, a mattress should be hefty in weight, able to withstand the tossing and turning of the, sadly, probably overweight sleeper for years on end. The mattress might even increase in weight as the various dandruff, hair and dust mites bury themselves into the seams and folds of the mattress.
This means that a mattress flying through the air would be surprising…
… which is exactly what happened today when a mattress nearly landed on the hood of my car tonight while commuting back home.
Moral of the story: don’t buy mattresses which can fly when blown by gusts of air, but if you do, please dispose of it properly.
Given a set of positive integers $\{q_i\}_{i=1}^n$, describe the set $s_t \in S$ of positive integers such that there exists only one linear combination of $\sum_{i=1}^n a_i q_i = s_t$.
In the comic above, it’s pretty obvious with the amount of money given, that Calvin was hoping to get four “D”s. In fact, all integers from 1 to 9 can only be expressed in one permutation.
A satisfying answer to all sets of integers might be less trivial.
