laughing out loud in my office

I've added a new link to the side; thanks to Bookslut for linking to garfield minus garfield. It's funny in ways that I don't understand.

If I were rich (1): I'd be a cheese connoisseur

Let's do a new feature at WHMFASS called "If I were rich." We'll explore different things I would do if I were rich. No, not cliche things about what fancy car I'd buy or anything like that. We'll just talk about what I would do if I weren't living a non-frugal lifestyle, or I didn't have to think about money at all.

If I were rich, I'd be a cheese connoisseur.

I love cheese. I love trying different kinds of cheeses. And if I were rich, I'd really devote my time and resources to trying a lot of different kinds of cheese.

I don't think I'd be a globe-hopping cheese taster. I would just buy the expensive cheeses at a regular supermarket. Yesterday I was examining cheeses at the grocery store, and there was some cheese there that sold for between $.80 and $1.40 per ounce. Now, I don't own many items at all that cost $1.40 per ounce, so unless I get rich, I probably won't eat this cheese (except when the store offers free samples).

All these different cheeses from around the world look really exciting. I saw some cheese that was aged in a cave for a year. I saw some cheese that came from a goat. And if I were rich, I'd buy all sorts of this cheese and spend my time eating it.

On coupons

Coupons are only valuable if you use them on items you were going to purchase anyway. If you let a coupon (or a sale, for that matter) convince you to buy items you weren't otherwise going to buy, then you haven't saved money, you've spent extra money.

Oh, but can you resist the coupon? This is why there are always coupons attached to pizza boxes. I can't judge: sales and coupons are always swaying me. We need to put up conscious resistance.

In other news, the Little Caesar's a few blocks from my house opens tomorrow. All my concern for frugality and health must be pushed aside as I celebrate this fortuitous event.

Typo Fun: Texasm and Hisotiran

It will probably be fixed by the time you look, but at 10:11 p.m. this Star Tribune headline reads, "Clinton looks for win in Texasm but state's complicated, hybrid-primary-caucus may favor Obama." I'll leave it to you to define "Texasm," and try not to be lewd.

Earlier today on Kare 11, I'm fairly certain that a caption called a man a "Hisotiran." Maybe it was misspelled differently: that's so awkward that I almost don't believe I could have really seen it that way. I'll also leave you to define "Hisotiran," too.

It takes a really petty person to take pleasure in simple typos by professional journalists. An immature, petty person.

Didn't this blog used to be a little bit about Sven Sundgaard?

Here's basically what happened: My 29 put The Simpsons on at 10:00, and now there is rarely a time that I watch local news. Because local news isn't news in the real sense: it's a half hour of folksy entertainment with perhaps five minutes of meaningful news in there somewhere. As I can get real news elsewhere, I don't need the folksy entertainment for a half hour (just like I don't need a weather forecast that's about five minutes long). So I'm hardly ever watching Kare 11, because if I want entertainment, at 5:00 I'm watching Law & Order, at 6:00 I'm watching The Simpsons, and then of course at 10:00 there's The Simpsons again. But this is if I'm watching TV at these times, which I guess I usually am.

That is why this blog has recently focused more on frugal life than on local news: because local news is generally pointless and The Simpsons is better.

Pleasure of Frugality: Doing the Math

When you get a great savings deal, it's fun to figure out all the different mathematical ways to consider your savings. For example, at Target this weekend I bought ten packs of ten iced tea drop-ins for $1.89 each. The drop-ins were already half as expensive as bottles of iced tea: now on sale, they're much cheaper. The different ways to consider drop-ins versus bottles:

One drink costs me about 19 cents instead of 50 cents.

I got 100 drinks for just a bit more than 36 drinks would have cost me.

I saved about $31 on 100 drinks.

I can drink almost three drinks for the price of one bottle.

Of course, I have to have bottles around and I have to mix and shake my own tea. But to save 62% on tea, it's really worth it to have to stand around shaking a bottle around.

Cheapskate Nightmare

I have a coupon that would save me a dollar on a product. I go to the store intending to buy the product. I pick out the product. I pay for the product.

Later, I realize I forgot to give the cashier the coupon. And now a little piece of my soul is bleeding.

"Pretty thoughts didn't work."

The Star Tribune's Katherine Kersten makes fun of Keith Ellison for wanting peace in this world, suggesting that in the past, "Pretty thoughts didn't work."

For now, let's not even argue with her false assumption that violence/war does work. Let's just remember her words. "Pretty thoughts didn't work."

The next time Kersten opposes or mocks a practical measure because of her conservative ideology or her religious beliefs, let us remind her that pretty thoughts don't work.