Tag Archives: money

Where Were You In… Uh, ’64?

“The 1964 NYC World’s Fair is legendary — birthplace of animatronics and Belgian waffles, the zenith of exuberant goofy corporate futurism and the beloved coming-of-age for millions who entered a modern world filled with promise. Documentarians are raising funds to produce ‘After the Fair,’ a doc featuring any amount of droolworthy archival footage of the great fair.” {From 1964 World’s Fair documentary raising funds on Kickstarter – Boing Boing.}

At last, we may finally learn who was at the DuPont Pavilion.

Scavengers Of Human Misery

Streaming rights to the Whitney Houston movie The Bodyguard were revoked at Netflix after her death. According to a Netflix rep quoted by Dan McDermott, the production company Warner Bros., per IMDB ‘saw an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies.’ {From: Whitney Houston movie yanked from Netflix streaming – Boing Boing}

Ghoulish? Maybe. Disrespectful? Probably. Capitalism? Definitely!

Love Is Money, World Without End

“Driving to work yesterday, I was feeling that Valentine’s Day depression that is wont to come upon me on February 14. It’s not just the cliche storyline of boy meets girl, boy buys girl stuff, boy and girl eat dinner, and so it is that love becomes incorporated into the market that gets me down. It is the sinking sense that there is no way to ever escape this story.” {From: Why Does Valentine’s Day Make Me Cry? – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education}

Did you spend any money on your sweetheart, yesterday? Are you sure your love is real, if you didn’t?

Old News: The Rich Are Fucking Us

“As always, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi is incandescent on the subject of high financial fraud and misdoings, and the government complicity in the vast criminal ripoffs engineered by the finance industry. In his latest feature, he looks at the way that the SEC, America’s financial regulator, has combined “self-policing” of criminal finance firms with a policy of destroying all records of previous investigations to produce an world in which no one has been punished for the vast financial crimes that brought the world to its knees.” {From: Matt Taibbi: Senior SEC investigators order routine destruction of records, promote “self policing,” take jobs with the companies they “investigate” – Boing Boing}

God bless journalists but, surprisingly, they sometimes come off as the least cynical people in the world. How else can we explain why they are perennially shocked (and they expect their readers to be shocked) by things the rest of us already know? Like, for example, how there are no consequences for the super rich. I mean, what’s the point of even having money if it can’t keep your ass out of jail.

Okay Taibbi, you’ve exposed the corruption and collusion between financial services and their regulators. Great.

Now, what are we supposed to do about it?

Broke Learning

I did not know this, but apparently it takes intense training to learn how not to inadvertently spend thousands of dollars every second that you’re alive. I guess normal people just sweat cash whenever they leave the house.

How else can we explain why we need lists of cheap, fun things to do that make you kind of want to die, that manage to somehow include things like going on road trips (gas is expensive), grilling new kinds of meat (which is expensive), and bowling (are fucking kidding me). Yes, I suppose compared to booking a last minute flight to Paris and paying a museum to let you smash priceless antiquities with a golden hammer, driving for hours to have a big-ass bar-b-que to feed the homeless and watch the sunset, is quite a frugal way to spend an afternoon.

It also seems that people can’t stay in a hotel without bankrupting themselves. People are spending $40 on breakfast? I just… Jesus, really?Last year I ended up staying at a hotel for a week on business, and I spent about $10 on food for the week. What was my AMAZING SECRET?

A jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.

YOU TOO CAN BE WEALTHY!!!!

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Penny Wise, Pound Foolish?

After spotting this article at The Art of Manliness, titled 10 Cheap Date Ideas She’ll Actually Love, I have to ask: If you are trying to save money, why on earth would you be dating? Romance is expensive, no matter how many pie-eating contests or weenie roasts you take your partner to in an effort to save cash. You dudes (pardon me, mans) still have to look somewhat presentable, which costs money–and what about the poor womenfolk who have to spend thousands of dollars on clothes, makeup, and parfoom, in order to correct their hideous, smelly bodies? Or will you both be going to the wine tasting in dirty tracksuits, like hobos?

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Love and companionship is a huge waste of time and money. Scrooge McDuck wasn’t married!

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Manic Sidewalk Miner

“43-year-old Raffi Stepanian makes money searching New York City streets, but it’s not loose change or soda cans he’s looking for, it’s gold. Stepanian says he can make almost $1000 a week scouring the diamond district’s streets for bits of gold, platinum, and precious gems. ‘Material falls off clothes, on the bottom of shoes, it drops off jewelry, and it falls in the dirt and sticks to the gum on the street.’” {From: Man Mines Midtown New York Sidewalks – Slashdot }

There are many things that I am unwilling to do, regardless of the payoff; digging bits of precious metal or gems out of sidewalk gum may be one of those things. That’s not to say that I don’t keep my eyes open when I’m out and about. While working in San Francisco, I stumbled across a twenty dollar bill AND a BART ticket with about thirty bucks still on it. Best week ever!

There’s Gold In Them There Guts!

“Now you can make your own Golden Poo trophies at home with the line of Gold Pills by Citizen:Citizen. For just $425, these 24k gold leaf filled capsules will ‘turn your innermost parts into chambers of wealth.’” {From: Gold Pills Makes You Poop Gold – The Consumerist}

Part of the appeal of being wealthy, I suppose, is the ability to spend vast amounts of money on pointless affectations, and golden turds may be the epitome of this phenomenon. I mean, what do you do with a 24k deuce? Probably the same thing you do with the normal sort (you pause to admire your fine work, and then you flush the damn thing).

In other words, you are literally shitting your money away.