Posts Tagged ‘cash’

Five Foot Fix: iPod Farce

Monday, July 13th, 2009

What is it like walking down the street and seeing everyone else has a new-fangled iPod to play with? If you already own a kickin’ iPod, don’t even bother finishing this article. All you’ll do is laugh at mine (and perhaps other unfortunate people’s) expense.

You see, I don’t have an iPod. I did, several weeks ago, but it was straight up stolen from my house. No joke. So, I have been thinking about how to replace it. Well, since I don’t really have  $150 to blow on another one (just to see it stolen again), I’ve been considering some alternatives so that, from five feet away at least, I look as though I have money to burn. Here’s the ideas, most expensive to least:

See, even you took a double-take.

See, even you took a double-take.

1. The iPod Knock-Off:  Found at www.engadget.com, This may be your best choice in replacing it. At half the cost, you can look like a pro from even up close. Even the most investigative Apple aficionados will have trouble distinguishing it from the real thing.

Cost: $77 (or 4200 Phillipine Pesos)

The Downsides: A lack of memory, ease of use, warranty, functionability, or resale value. But you’ll look good, and isn’t that really the point?

 See how similar this is to...

...this?

See how similar they are (with plenty of imagination)?

2. Gameboy As An iPod Classic: The most brilliant point of this is that you don’t have to shell out much cash to get a hold of an old-skool gameboy, you look like you own a newer and more expensive electronic object, and you get to play some sweet Mario games. There are many ways to go about this. You could paint your Gameboy white and tape on some earbuds; that would make it a Ten Foot Fix. The best, but more difficult option, is convincing people you have this cover for your iPhone so that it just looks like an old-skool (yes, it is spelled that way) Gameboy. Besides, those Gameboys are a heck of a lot more resistant to bombing than iPods.

Cost: $10, when coupled with the earbuds, and paint. And then a few cents at any given yard sale for the games.

Downsides: Hardly any. You can still listen to music, albeit, only classic Nintendo game songs, but what is wrong with that? On the upside, you can play games for about the price of their iPhone app equivelants.

If this dude looks sad, it might be because he's not listening to any music.

If this dude looks sad, it might be because he's not listening to any music. Found here.

3. Headphones Running From Your Pants Pocket To Your Ears: By far the cheapest route in getting your friends to think you posess a decent mp3 player. iPods are so small now that no-one is really going to notice if you have anything in your pocket or not. Of course, to get the genuine Steve Jobs look, it takes genuine headphones. Then again, those things suck so bad that everyone replaces them with decent headphones or earbuds. It is really up to you which ones you get.

Cost: $3.50

Downsides: Yeah, you don’t really get to listen to music, and the original earbuds are so uncomfortable no one wants to wear them when they do get to listen to music. And if someone asks you what you are listening to, it is hard to make up stuff. It is even harder to show them the cover art.

I promise tomorrow’s post isn’t going to be a list! I just happen to be in the habit with lists right now. I’ll snap out of it. 1. I’ll start my blog. 2. I won’t write a list. 3. You all will be happy. Perhaps a review of a website will be in order.

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Rush to Start a Sorority or Fraternity

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
This is actually the fraternity crest.

This is actually the fraternity crest.

Look, it is brilliant. During ‘rush’ week at a local college, go set up your own tent to try to get people to join your ‘frat’ or ’sorority’. Once they have joined up (the fraternity that I started is called Alpha Beta Soup), you can start charging dues and a process that is like hazing, but you don’t call it hazing so you won’t get in trouble with the police.

You really don’t have to be in a college or university to start one of these things. Really, anyone can do it. If you feel strange about trying to get kids half your age to join, start an office fraternity. That is something I just made up, but is sounds great. You could all even live together and have fun events after office hours.

The main reason why you would want to try this, of course, is to get the money that the dues provide. I would say $400 a semester would be a decent start, more if you provide housing. You tell the ‘pledges’ this money is going to great activities. If you are in an office setting, $50 every paycheck would probably be sufficient. Unless you work for AIG, those bailout junkies can afford at least a grand a paycheck. Once you get enough people to join, you probably could even stop working. There is some frankly (tongue firmly in cheek) fantastic advice out there for keeping a great frat or sorority going, so I won’t get into that too much.

Besides getting people to pledge to your Greek organization, once you have some members, they will probably expect to be housed somewhere. If you don’t want to get into this, you can just say that the house is “under construction” and it will take at least 5 years to complete, then hand them a tent to pitch. If they give you a rough time about it, scold them for holding up brotherly or sisterly bonding.

The main priorities of frats and sororities are drinking, hazing, and promiscuous interpersonal relations. Well, even if that isn’t the main priority of most real Greeks, it could be for yours. Make sure there is plenty of alcohol on hand at all times for said activities. However, as you are in this venture to look good and save money, tell the ‘littles’ to pay for it as ‘initiation rites’. Remember, these new members have no idea how your organization runs, so you can make up whatever you want as you go along. Half of the fun of starting an organization such as this is creating slogans and t-shirts. Here is the slogan that I ran on Alpha Beta Soup’s most recent rush shirts:

Mm Mm Good! Get a taste of the good life: Alpha Beta Soup

Catchy and mouthwatering, no?

But, why stop there? There are many opportunities to make even more money by selling all that cheesy merchandise that Greeks have. License plates, shirts, bobble heads of the President (you).

I especially think a branded paddle is essential to any Greek organization.

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Cash In On Your Cowlick

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Because it is St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to talk about contributing to the profession of one of Obama’s Irish ancestors. By that, of course, I mean wigmakers! Now, I don’t expect you to go pick up the art of wigmaking, that would cost in the thousand dollar range, what I do expect you to do is to get some extra dough for selling your real live hair. I mean, follicles are all the rage! And, it is pretty darn lucrative, especially if you are dead and famous (interestingly, a large demographic among blog readers). To give you an idea, Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart’s lock of hair was sold for $44,812, and a lock of President Abraham Lincoln’s hair sold for $21,510. Using a simple method of supply and demand, either Honest Abe had a lot of hair and J.E.B. Stuart was practically bald, or we have some really weird values in this country.

We have weird values. Che Guevara, a socialist revolutionary, had a lock of his hair cut off that sold for $100,000. It was bought by a 61 year old Texan book-store owner. A good demographic to go for when selling your hair.

However, and this is new to me, you don’t have to be semi-famous or even dead to get some cash from your cowlick. There are sites out there whose sole purpose is to help people sell their strands. I especially like the descriptions, which could be construed at first as advertising for something other than hair: “13 to 14 inch thick, strong, black, beautiful…hair”. I won’t even get into the ads that talk about girth. I kid you not. Some even go as far as to describe their hair as “virgin”, which in hair-selling speak, means untouched by chemicals and the like.

You may be asking yourself where all this hair is going. Are there some really wacky people out there that want to make human hair Afghans? Probably, but most of this hair is going into wigs; apparently we could land on the moon forty years ago but we haven’t found out how to make decent fake hair. It can’t be from a lack of trying, with real people’s hair going for up to $2600. With that kind of dinero, you’d think they’d be pouring money into fake hair research, or at least hair growing research.

It doesn’t stop there, either. People are selling DVD’s of their hair being cut for upwards of $30 a piece. Who wants a video of that? “Hey hon, c’mere, I got a great video today, let’s watch.” These are the sorts fo things that cause divorce. However, as strange and creepy as this hair-selling business can get, I still can’t condone it.

Why? Because of my loyal blog readers. You need money, and you need to look good. Let your hair grow out for a few years, don’t use harsh chemicals on it, sell it for thousands of dollars, and then tell everyone you donated it to Locks of Love.

If you have a conscience, you could always actually donate your hair to that great organization. There’s always the DVD sales.

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Wanna Prada?

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

Knock-offs. In this digital age, they are better than ever. You can get knock-off purses, knock-off gamesystems, and even knock-off cars. Best of all, your neighbors probably won’t even know the difference. They might not even care to investigate. By now, if you have been following my tips and tricks, they think you are the CEO of Wal-Mart. If you actually are the CEO of Wal-Mart, feel free to send some of that cash my way.

Britain has had some TV ads floating around centered around “Knock-off Nigel”, meant to deter people from pirating movies from the internet. That would work fine if your name was Nigel. But I don’t think it is. I bet your something like a Frank or a Cindy. And, as a Frank or a Cindy, you are much more cool buying knock-offs and pirating movies than that Nigel character.

There are many advantages to buying fake stuffs. The obvious, it is cheap. Secondly, you are contributing to worthy causes. Who wants to support those richie riches down at the Prada plant? They’ve already got enough money, selling those over-priced cow-sacks. If you wanted to support the ultra-wealthy, you would pay your taxes.

No, you want to support the underdogs! Hey, they’re just trying to make a living, what are you going to do, swipe it out from underneath them? Knock-offs contribute to 7% of the world economy, that’s more than $350 Billion buckaroos. If you divide that $350 dollars per person in the world, that means there is $50 smackers per person on this planet in fakes. You can’t just pull that income out from underneath people! People gotta eat!

According to the International Chamber of Commerce Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau (I bet their Christmas parties are a blast!), the U.S. alone ‘loses’ $200 billion dollars a year to counterfeiters. For the U.S., that is roughly $666 per person! That may seem devilish and indicate some sort of ‘evil’ in buying counterfeit, but actually, it rounds up to $667 per person if we say the States have 300 million people. The point of all of this? I don’t know about you, but I haven’t spent nearly $700 dollars last year on fake products. I am not holding up my end of the bargain.

And, if you didn’t spend that much on fake Guccis or knock-off (I would consider the following link ’PG-13′ rated) Male Chastity Belts last year, you’re not doing your part to keep the International Chamber of Commerce Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau (the ICOCCIB) open. And it is a fine institution, so I hear. Also, every time you see a commercial asking you to sponser a child for $25 bucks a month, just remember: you could have been supporting those children with income they would recieve at the counterfeit plant. There is a chance that you are already buying counterfeit products and you don’t know it. However, you can’t count on this oversight to keep you from contributing at least $600 or $700 to actively seeking them out.

If for some reason your ‘concience’ keeps you from wanting to buy that bag, remember, the Japanese don’t have a problem with it. And, as you may recall, Sweden is in Japan. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but basically, Sweden is cool, counterfeits are cool, and you have to impress the neighbors somehow.

Support America (or whatever country your in), buy counterfeit.

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Whip Tip: Emblem Awareness!

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

What kind of car you drive says a lot about who you are and what you are all about. A new Volkswagen Beetle? You are hip, cool, sure of your self, and possibly homosexual. A Volvo wagon? You are safety conscious and practical. A Volvo wagon painted Lamborghini orange with metal-flake flames? Safety conscious and practical…and crazy awesome. So, granted, this is a blog that is ultimately about saving money, so I can’t expect you to go out and get a brand-new car to flaunt your inner self. You might have to make do with that hand-me-down beat-up Plymouth Acclaim.

However, there is an amazing way to flaunt what you’ve got. When they came out with your vehicle, they probably came out with several models. Often, the main way to distinguish between them is a letter or number combination after the name of your vehicle. The Dodge Neon SXT, the Toyota Yaris S, the Izuzu GIGA 20 Light Dump.

Whatever you’ve got, it could always be improved with a little alphabetical or numerical bling. Just go to a junkyard and find these emblems, and make up your own for your vehicle. You could add an S, an SE, an X, or any combination of these three letters easily to add some major alpha dog charm to your car. There is always the option of going to the dealership and actually finding a vehicular suffix that was available for your car when it was new, but the dealership is expensive, and they probably won’t let you leave the lot without selling you a new car anyway. Besides, it is always more fun to try and scrounge up your own endings so your car is very unique.

I’ll give you a personal example. My car is a 1996 Dodge Neon AWD. How did it become all-wheel drive? Simple, the letters used to be on a Volvo XC90. Now, I get to tell people that my Dodge Neon was a manufacturer prototype or a former rally car. Create your own backstory to why you have a Volkswagen Jetta 425 Turbo Super Sport! For even more giggles, create a game where you see how long you can keep a straight face while telling the tale of how you bought this car off of a former automotive employee and saved the little experimental gem from being crushed. Hey, if you can keep it up, they may even offer to buy it off you, and then your hard work will have really paid off.

See, doesn't it look able to go over snow and ice?

See, doesn't it look able to go over snow and ice?

Of course, if you want to make do with the emblems you already have, you can just make your car have the “appearance package”. This is fancy talk for taking all your existing emblems and painting them gold. Or blue, or green, or whatever strikes your fancy. The important part is your car is different, and your neighbors will think you got a raise or something.

So, for the cost of a trip to the junkyard or a can of paint, you can make it look like your car was bought for a couple grand more when it was new. And that is priceless. Or a couple thousand dollars, when it was new.

P.S. It is generally not a good idea to include “Light Dump” at the end of your vehicle’s model name. I know I put it as an example, but seriously. Gross.

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