Bringing Home the Groceries

  In today’s economic climate, budgeting your money is important. Setting firm limits on how much you can spend and on what will greatly help, because no one should be accruing debt with job loss a real possibility. I, for example, have a strict budget of how much can be spent on food. I may tend to go overboard, but for me, it’s been helpful to further break down my food allowance, setting amounts in categories like: fruits and vegetables; meats; cereal; beverages (non-alcoholic); and discretionary. It’s the discretionary category where I tend to get in trouble; this week, I’ve greatly exceeded my animal cracker budget.
  Perhaps I should rephrase that, since saying I have a set animal cracker budget kind of makes me sound like I’m eight years old. It’s not always animal crackers, that’s just what my spending was on this week. Sometimes it’s Goldfish crackers, other times it’s Teddy Grahams.
  The reason I overshoot my budget is that I can’t set boundaries. If I have a box of crackers sitting in front of me, I will eat most, if not all, of the box. (My dinner on Saturday was a bag of honey mustard and onion pretzel bits.) So if I gobble down all my discretionary funds two days after going to the store, I either can suck it up for the rest of the week, or give myself a budgetary exemption. Generally it’s the latter.
  To combat my habit of overeating, I’ve found it helpful to enforce the boundaries that ought to be in place. Using plastic sandwich bags, I divide the contents of each box by seven. Right now in my cupboard are seven bags evenly filled with Teddy Grahams. This way I know how much I am allowed to eat each day. I’ve also found this to be helpful with carrot sticks.
  With a continuing recession, it’s important to eat a nutritious and balanced diet, which might need to be done on an ever-shrinking budget. Now is not the time to waste food. And while having “treats” might seem frivolous, I prefer to think of my discretionaries as incentives. If I don’t finish my dinner, I don’t get any animal crackers. Or if I don’t eat all my vegetables, I won’t get to have Teddy Grahams. Self-imposing these rules allows me to stay healthy and make sure I’m not wasting my food money.
  And once I can put a stop to having my lunch money taken from me, I’ll be just a bit more financially secure.

What Did We Learn Today?

  That I need to grow my beard back.

  Recently I shaved my beard down to just a mustache, and after a month or so, shaved that down to a thinner mustache. A day later, I realized that wasn't working for me, and shaved my face naked. At work today, a woman in her mid-forties (who I've never spoken to before) said to me in passing, "You shaved your mustache." Caught off guard, I fumbled towards finally saying something like, "Yeah, I messed up on the mustache and had to shave it off." 

  I shouldn't have been surprised. If I learned one thing this past month, it's that older women love the mustache. I think it reminds them of a time when polyester shirts were hip, men had chest hair, and these women did close to their weight in jagermeister and poppers on a semi-regular basis. Those were the times...

  But tonight, meeting up with some friends, I almost wasn't let into a bar because my driver's license was thought to be fake. The guy looked at it, looked at me, held my license up, and finally said, "Uh, I'll accept it." Granted, I do look different in my license photo than I do now. I didn't think going from looking like a lumberjack in my photo to my current appearance of a cherub made me that unrecognizable. But I made my own bed when I had my photo taken looking like I did. So the only logical conclusion is to grow my beard back. Or get a second ID, in which I'm clean shaven, but I think that's illegal. Best to play it safe (and manly).

900 Calories a Day

  In case I’m ever kidnapped and dumped in the woods, it’s good to know that I’ll be able to survive for days, because I’m training myself to live on 900 calories a day. Now, I know what many people are thinking: “900 calories? That’s less than half the recommended daily caloric intake for a typical person. And it’s almost ten times less than the number of calories Michael Phelps ingests.” Well, true, but I’m not Michael Phelps, and neither are you. Nor should you be. That guy does drugs!
  Before I get in to the details of my diet, I should throw out a few disclaimers.
  First, this is not a good diet if you want to lose weight. This diet is solely to help you survive the apocalypse. If you’re looking for a weight loss plan, think about exercise. And lay off the Funyuns.
  Second, it’s easy to exceed the 900 calorie limit (all before 9 am), so pay strict attention to what you eat. You don’t want to survive a plane crash in the Andes Mountains only to develop hunger pangs two hours later because you splurged on a cinnamon roll the morning before.
  When approaching your diet, it’s a good idea to make a detailed record of everything you eat. Do this for a week to get an accurate reflection of your pre-rapture diet. You might be surprised just how many calories you take in each day. Your new diet is something you need to ease in to. It won’t do you any good to “shock” your system. I mean, what are the chances that tomorrow you’ll fall down the town well and no one will notice your disappearance for days? I’d say slim. But it might happen next week (and you’ll be ready for it!).
  The first thing you want to do is make small changes. How many Tic Tacs do you eat in a day? Maybe five? Well that’s seven-and-a-half calories right there. You didn’t think it would add up so quickly, did you? Once you’ve made all the minor changes you can without completely compromising your immune system, it’s time to consider your diet as a whole.
  Even though you’re eliminating so many calories from your diet, you still need to eat regular meals. If you don’t, your stomach acid will have nothing to break down and will eat away (and through) your stomach lining. And what good is that going to do you when the world’s oil supply runs out and we're living like people did before the Industrial Revolution and you can’t ride a bike (your only mode of transportation) because your abdomen hurts too much to pedal? So here’s what you need to do: eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat dinner. Do not snack in between meals.
  How you get your 900 calories is up to you. But I like to splurge for my lunch. Perhaps I’ll eat an apple or banana with my plain peanut butter on un-enriched white bread. What I add in a lunch, I have to take out at dinner. Remember, rice is a great friend to you.
  While the diet may be tough initially, you’ll be grateful the next time you pass out at a party in the slums of some South American country; because no one will want to harvest your organs when they realize that your kidneys are only functioning at half-capacity (if that) and it’s a small miracle you’re alive at all. What kind of money can someone get for half working kidneys? And you’ve just saved yourself a morning of an ice cube bath and fresh stitches. All thanks to your diet.

What Did We Learn Today?

  I’m too hairy to own white bed sheets.
  I was doing laundry today, and when I was ready to wash my sheets, I noticed just how much hair I shed in the course of a night. Holy crap!
  Eight times out of ten, being hairy is a good thing (the other time is when trying to get the “youth discount” at the public pool; trying telling people there you’re just an early bloomer). Perhaps I need to switch to darker sheets, ones where my nightly de-forestation won’t be as pronounced. Or I could take a lint roller to my bed every morning. I can’t decide which one is the easier solution?

Two Birds, One Fuel Efficient Stone

  What If I told you there was a simple way to put a dent in our greenhouse gas emissions and re-start the auto industry at the same time? You'd say, well, duh. We already know what we need to do: build more fuel efficient cars (hybrids, plug-ins, etc...). It's simple, and you're an idiot if you don't think anyone's thought of it yet. 

  Sure, but how do you sell those cars to people? When gas was approaching $4 a gallon, consumers were clamoring for fuel efficiency. But now that gas is hovering around $2, interest has waned. And other than telling people, "yes, this is what we need to do," no one's doing anything to excite the consumer. Until now. Pull your chairs up to the breakfast table, because I'm about to fry up some knowledge flapjacks for you to enjoy.

  Fact! 65% of American adults are overweight or obese. Seriously. This is a fat country. People do not like walking. It's a car culture, and we've got the bumper stickers to prove it.

  Fact! The average American has over $9,000 in credit card debt. We open credit cards to pay off other credit cards. How ridiculous is that? If it weren't for shopping, I think many of us wouldn't know how to spend our free time. Have an intelligent conversation with friends? Why do that when Old Navy's having a sale on cargo shorts?!

  Observation! While many economists feel this country is in the worst recession in seventy years, you wouldn't know it by being at the mall over the weekend. We still love our shopping.

  Opinion! Ever notice that in a large parking lot everyone tries to get a spot closest to the door? Drivers will pass up a spot ten feet back because there might be a spot just that much closer to the store. Even better is when a driver will wait for a person to get in their car and back out of the spot when there's a spot three spaces down wide open. Sure, I have to wait longer in my car, but I'd have to walk an extra twenty feet, so that extra distance equals out to the time I'm waiting for that woman to put her bags in the trunk, then load her daughter into her seat in the back, then for her to get in, start up her car, check her phone for messages, and let her car idle. It's absolutely worth the walking time I'll save when I leave the store.

  Solution! The first row of parking in front of every big box retailer will now be hybrid parking only. It's that simple. Keep the handicap parking spots where they are and make the rest of that row hybrid parking. Heck, you could even make some of the prime spots plug-in hybrid spaces with a charging station. You can "fill up" while you shop. In California, hybrids are allowed to drive in the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes. You don't think people would buy hybrids just so they'd have a guaranteed good parking spot the next time they go to the Pottery Barn? 

  No need to thank me. I'm here to satiate the masses.