Shit You Should Be Aspiring To: This guy's shoe collection.

Uhh, wow.  This is some random Japanese dude's shoe collection, which he posted on Flickr seemingly for not reason other to make us all feel bad about ourselves.  My kind of guy.  Check out his whole collection here (ya, that's right, this isn't even all of them; he's up to 200 pairs now), where you can see a larger HQ pic of each pair and its details.

Jealous ones envy.

source: The Bengal Stripe

Shit You Should Be Aspiring To: Ralph Lauren's car collection.

"They are like parts of me..."  In his soothing voice, Ralph Lauren narrates this short clip depicting some of the more than 70 cars in his collection.  The video is a promo for a special exhibit at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris called The Art of the Automobile: Masterpieces from the Ralph Lauren Collection, which will run from April 28 to August 28 and showcase many pieces from RL's collection.  Check out the video after the jump.

Good to see things are slowly getting back to normal...

The Survey of Affluence and Wealth, conducted by American Express Publishing and Harrison Group, has found that spending on luxuries is set to rise by about eight percent this year, reaching $359 billion in 2011.   The survey did not include travel and vehicles, and polled only the wealthiest ten percent of American families; those who enjoy a discretionary income of six figures or more.  Those ten percent account for about fifty percent of all consumer spending in the country.  

For more details, head over to Pursuitist.

Meet Donald Glover, "a regular black guy who likes the same stuff white people like—but just happens to be more talented than you."

File this one under "Shit Worth Checking Out" and "Shit You Should Be Aspiring To".  Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, somehow manages to be one of the most hyped and, simultaneously, one of the most slept-on artists today.  He's also one of the hardest working.  And did I mention he parties like an animal, drinks unhealthy quantities of whiskey, and doesn't shy away from objectifying women?  Ya, this post is long overdue.

Shit You Should Be Aspiring To: The entrepreneurial success of Tony Hsieh

There was a great article in the New York Times a couple of days back on Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer that grew to success under a business model of providing free shipping and free returns to its customers.  Hsieh sold Zappos.com to Amazon in 2009 for $1 billion, a tidy sum that he added to whatever stash he had left over from his first enterprise, LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft for $265 million when he was the tender age of 24.  Champ.

Head over to nytimes.com to check out the story; it's definitely worth a read.  Or, if you prefer, you can go right to the source; Hsieh wrote a book called Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose that spent almost six months on the NYT bestsellers list last year.  Get it here.

Shit You Should Be Aspiring To: A place in Monaco

Bloomberg has named Monaco the world's most expensive place to live for the third straight year.  If you want to buy an apartment or a house in Monaco, it'll cost you an average of over $65,000 per square meter.  London was the second most-expensive, at just over $56,000 per square meter.

Start saving up your ducats.