Free free free!

Ok, so by now if you are a regular reader, you would have figured out that I like Craigslist. A lot. If gay marriage were legal, I would marry Craig and the List would be our baby. If you have been living under a wifi-less rock for the past ten years, here’s the update. www.craigslist.com is the best thing since Sonny met Cher, and here is the number one reason why:

Free stuff. Where else can you power up your internets and find a 4000 gallon fish tank for free, in your neighborhood? That’s right! Imagine the social ramifications:

“Hey, want to go out sometime?”

“No.”

“I have a 4000 gallon fish tank.”

“What?”

“I have a 50 lb. koi.”

“If you let me see your koi, can I pay for dinner?”

See! It is like having a personal social training coach (a la “Hitch”) for free. And, I have to say, “let me see your koi” holds plenty of promise for how the date is going to go. Anyway, I found that fish tank after literally seconds of searching. If you put a little bit of effort into it, you might be able to find something even better, however unlikely that may seem.

Here’s my secret methods for cruising the free section:

• Ignore curb alerts. Contrary to popular opinion, you really CAN have too many slightly dog-eared fiberboard entertainment centers.

• Mattresses that are free are not a good deal. The risk of contracting a disease through the exchange of bodily fluids far outweighs the danger of acute sleep-deprivation from snoozing on the floor.

• If the entire title is in bold, or there are more than 1 “FREE” in the title, then they are trying to dispose of something that is illegal or worth less than nothing, or both.

• Don’t get free food. See “Mattresses”; replace “acute sleep-deprivation from snoozing on the floor” with “death by starvation”.

• If you have a smallish house and little willpower, it may be a good idea to avoid the free section altogether.

• Avoid any service that is promised to be performed for free. That is more fishy than a 4000 gallon fish tank. Just…don’t.

Well, enough with what not to do. Here are some more great things I found on the free section:

Free piano!

Intellivision II non-functional gaming console without cords!

Corded phone! For free, can you believe it?!?

1 lb. of Potatoes!

Alright! I think I can set you free out in to the Craigslist “Free Section” world without worrying too much about you! By the way…I saw that free fish tank first, so back off.

I would be lying if I told you this wasn’t my lawyer. Found at www.arkansastonight.com.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, suing can be a great way to raise funds without looking like a cheap chump. I mean, all it takes is a little imagination to get a case on your hands. A word of warning, don’t sue McDonald’s because you spilled coffee on yourself or you’re obese. It has been done before, and it will only bore the judge, and any potential lawyers looking for a quick buck.

Oh, don’t be fooled. Those crazy lawyers will suck the money right out of you, but here’s the best part: they can only do so if you win a case; once you win, you and the lawyer split the profits much like a lotto pool. Since you really can’t win a case without them, lawyers are a necessary evil. They’re like taxes, or mother-in-laws, in that sense. However, if you do get a lawyer to represent your case, you know you have a shot of winning. Remember, the only reason a lawyer will get involved is if they think they can win; otherwise they won’t receive any payment and will be working for free. The laws vary state-to-state, but in the case of suing, this is a general rule among lawyers.

Ok, so, what are you going to sue for? If something honestly drastic happened to you, I doubt you would be reading this site right now; you’d be too busy preparing a case. For the people who are reading, though, you will probably either have to think back to an event that you could consider suing for, or create an event that provides the opportunity for you to sue. You can pretty much sue for anything, like I said before, just use your imagination. Some woman dropped a 6-pack of beer on her foot and, although she didn’t break anything, “it hurt”. She won the case.

You don’t neccessarily have to sue for money, if that is not important to you. I know it is the basic topic of this blog, but if you are really big on apologies, you could do like this guy did, and sue for just that. He’s sueing Dreamworks Pictures because the kung-fu panda character in the movie Kung-Fu Panda has green eyes. Which apparently give off the feeling of evil. I’m not knocking Chinese culture, but I’m not sure that is what this is all about. First of all, all the guy wants is an apology (which I think Dreamworks should give him to get him off their back), and he carries a stuffed panda around with him all the time. I’m confused if the guy is either really into pandas, a wack-job, or a five-year-old.

So, that’s basically all. Set yourself up in precarious situations, and, if you are lucky, something will fall on you. In some cases, although you are slightly more likely to lose, you can actually do something bad and sue someone else for mental anguish, which is what this gal did when she went to a haunted house at Universal Orlando (the fourth story down).

Apparently it was too scary. I’m not joking. That’s what she said. If you don’t believe me, read that story.

 As a final word, I’m planning on a lawsuit against all my readers for not telling all their friends about my blog. It’s really starting to give me some major mental anguish.

Now let's not judge a movie by it's poster. This might actually turn out to be a bad B-movie. Found at www.dreadcentral.com!

There are about six ways to Sunday to get your movie fix nowadays. Here’s a short rundown: Netflix, Blockbuster, Hulu, Kazaa, Youtube, iTunes, TiVo, Pay-Per-View, HBO, TV movies, Redbox, DVD’s, Blu-Ray, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Torrents, and even the good ol’ fashioned VHS. Also, if you just have to watch a movie when it first comes out, and you do so under the strict assurance that I think it is highway robbery; by all means go watch it in the theater. Just to let you know, the John Tesh radio show said that theater popcorn is more expensive than filet mignon ounce for ounce. Just sayin’.

I guess the only thing you don’t have to worry about is HD DVD. Except, of course, if you actually bought a player. Now is the time to put it in storage right beside the Betamax.

So, what is a cash-strapped individual to do? You want, no, need to get that movie fix…I mean, they recently came out with a totally, completely Oscar-worthy direct-to-DVD movie starring Stephen Baldwin (yes, that Baldwin family) and Vanessa Johansson (yes, that Johansson family) called “Sharks in Venice”, so how are you gonna get your grimy hands on it? This is not a fictional film that I am making up. Truth is much stranger than fiction, my friend.

There are many ways to get a movie cheaply and, I suppose if it is important to you, legally. The absolute, number one way to get a free movie is this: bum one off of a friend. If you have no friends, then a co-worker or a member of your religious congregation of choice.

If you don’t have any friends, are out of work, and are an atheist, then there are other ways to get free movies. Hulu comes to mind. And let me tell you, we most certainly are not aliens that want to eat your, mmm, tasty rotting brain-flesh. If your not familiar with www.hulu.com, become familiar. It will become your sustenance for the next few days, I can guarantee it. You can watch free TV shows, and recently, they started adding somewhat decent older movies (like Robocop, for example). I must remind my loyal readers that most of the time, watching syndicated movies on Youtube, through Kazaa, in downloadable Torrents, and in other user-sharing applications are not really all that legal, or moral. But hey, if you like jail and hate God, be my guest.

Ok, so, you don’t have any friends and your internet connection is slow. I can still help you out, although you are running out of the cheaper options. Although Blockbuster is pretty much on the rocks, they still are offering some great deals. You can get an older movie for a buck a night, and new releases for two dollars the first night, followed by a dollar a night after that. However, if you don’t feel like signing up with a company that is on the verge of going down the tubes, there is always Redbox, if it is available in your town. For the unfamiliar, it is a system where you can get a movie out of a kiosk and keep it for as long as you want for $1 a day. Good if you plan on returning it the next day, bad if you lose the movie. Another great renting option, of course, is Netflix. If you don’t know what that is, let me tell you, we are in a deep recession and some guy with the middle name Hussein is our President. Welcome to the world.

Alright, so basically, what we have left for “cheap” options is watching movies on nights on your cable, or, free new digital television that you can get with a digital tuner. Remember, the digital transition was supposed to happen in February. But, to make it simple for the simpler folks, the deadline for all-digital transmission was changed to sometime in June, but some people are changing earlier, but you shouldn’t worry about it until June, unless you want to have some stations that are digital earlier, then you should get a coupon that takes 2 to 6 weeks to deliver and then you can go down to the store now and get one for $40 less and you can go home and plug in the standard TV, and you have to attach it to your antennae that you already have unless you want really good reception in which you’ll need a newfangled digital-optimized antennae, and if you have an HDTV or if you bought a regular TV of a certain size after sometime in 2006 you already have a digital tuner inside it, in which you won’t need another one, because you already have a tuner inside your television but don’t open it up and look ’cause there is a high risk for electric shock. Aren’t you glad they made it easier for us?

Ahem. I’m sorry for that little rant. I’m going back on topic now. You can watch movies for free on TV if you want, and even download them onto a DVR. The most popular example of a DVR that I know of is TiVo, but what most people don’t know is that, with the right software, you can turn your computer into a Digital Video Recorder for without a hefty monthly fee. So, now you can watch free movies any time you want. And nothing is sweeter than that, except if you had friends to bum some off of, of course.

Some coupons are more morbid than others.

Everybody knows if you get the Sunday paper (or steal it from your neighbor’s porch), you can find a ton of little coupons inside it for stuff you use everyday. Well, let me tell you, those really add up. I mean, over time, if you use them consistently, and don’t mind spending hours cutting them out for 25 cents here, 40 cents there.

Well, actually, that is a thing of the past. If you know what a blog is and realize your reading one right now, you probably know you can get coupons on the internet and print them out-no Sunday paper needed. That’s not to say there isn’t other reasons why you would want to read the paper (warning, mildly crude joke). However, in all seriousness, I didn’t really realize how easy or beneficial this can be. There’s this lady out there called the “Coupon Mom” who has an entire website devoted to coupons. I mean, it doesn’t really sound like I’d want to hang out with her on a regular basis, but you can’t beat saving money. Other, frankly better, sites that rocks my socks are www.retailmenot.com and www.smartsource.com. I found this great blog that has many resources, but she mentions a 6 good places to get coupons. If you can get coupons to buy stuff you already have to get, that’s more money for other stuff (like those backed up child support payments)!

Now, as geeky as it may sound to go around clippin’ digital coupons, it actually works. Right now is about the time I’d usually inform you of some outlandish tale of someone getting more back from their coupons than they actually have spent. Well, unfortunately, all I could find was this measly middle classer saving $1000 a month with coupons. I mean, it is no free car, but you can’t sneeze at a grand. Well, I can’t, because I’m not sure I have a grand. Nor is it dusty in here.

I think the main point I am trying to make is that although coupons may only save you fractions of a dollar, fractions of a dollar add up. I would rather save money than spend it, wouldn’t you? And hey, this is something you can really hide from the neighbors. How are they ever going to find out you (gasp!) use coupons? If they do find out, however, your social life is going down in flames. Nobody wants to be friends with a ‘clipper’. So, keep it on the down-low at all costs. Shred the newspaper after your done with it, and burn the remains. Erase your hard-drive and browsing history. And darn it, make sure you wipe down your scissors with alcohol after your done using them!

Actually, I collect money, which you will be able to help with that once I get my "Donate to Paypal" tag up.

“Everbody’s gotta have a hobby.” It isn’t true. But, if you already have been pulled into the trap of fishing, knitting, or even the trap of trapping, you know how expensive you can get. Fishing is a great example. It used to be you get a stick off the ol’ oak tree and some fishing line from your momma’s ol’ used floss and a lure from your momma’s ol’ heirloom drawer and go down to the ol’ fishing hole and fish ’til you get something or until some girls show up. Then, throw mud at/skinny dip with the girls, depending on your age.

Well, no longer. It’s all about using the right lure with the right pole and in the right spot to get that trophy bass or a Macropinna microstoma (also known as Barreleyes). What ever happened to just enjoying the afternoon and perhaps a cold adult beverage, again, depending on your age? Things are getting pretty ridiculous, I mean, a one million dollar lure? It’s just a publicity stunt, you would think, but the company MacDaddy has sold seven of them so far. With a name like MacDaddy, though, how could you blame them for creating a diamond-encrusted jewel of a lure?

C'mon, to Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies", sing it..."Million...dollar lu-ure!"

Buying diamond lures are really not the way to live largely on the cheap, unless you buy a knock-off, so what is a fisherman to do? Go back to using that stick and floss, of course. Now, your fishing buddies might laugh, but here’s the way to maintain your ultimate fisher status: “I’m doing this as an experiment for an article in Field & Stream.” There you go, you look even more like a guru than before. Follow that example with any hobby you have, and you’ll be well on your way to living largely on the cheap.

Of course, there is even a better way to keep an interesting hobby while actually making money off of it. Sweepstaking. What a great way to use your time to enter contests to win stuff. I mean, c’mon, if your going to have a hobby, why not make money at it? Besides, if you don’t want people to know that you are stretching your dollars, this is a hobby you can hide easily (unlike most drug addictions).

Speaking of drug addictions, let me talk about those for a moment. They do not make good hobbies. They are illegal. They cost a lot. They take up much of your time. Plus, the little green men always tend to be ‘out to get you’.

There are many, many other hobbies out there that probably cost less than the one you are involved with now. Spam sculpting, extreme ironing, collecting other people’s underwear. Start-up costs for these are fairly low. Lawyer fees could run high, though, for that last one.

The main point I have been trying to make here is that just because you have a hobby, doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. And just because it isn’t expensive, doesn’t mean you have to look bad doing it. Keep a balance between those, and you already are a hero in my eyes.

My barreleyes. (That fish is so weird!)

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.

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.

Whoa nelly! If you are thinking I’m leading you to buy a new car or keep the car you have with it’s payments, you are reading the completely wrong blog. You can afford it…but why try? Here you are, turning your ketchup bottles upside down for a month to get that last little bit, and you have a car payment?

Some simple math to put it in perspective:

$300 a month, every month, every year, until your 70, from when your 20.

By your 70th birthday (Congratulations, baldy!) you will have spent $300,000. And face it, in fifty years, due to inflation, $300 isn’t going to buy jack crap when it comes to cars. However, LLotC isn’t about living frugally, it is about living the high life without anyone knowing you aren’t spending that much.

So, you still want a bangin’ car, right? Here’s an idea. Get an awesome car new and drive the wheels off of it. This guy has a 1966 Volvo P1800 that has 2.6 million miles on it, and he is still tooling around in it. I can guess that he dislikes car payments. For giggles, I figured out that if you bought a new one for $3,970 and stretched the payments out from 1966 to 2009 (at 0%, because of your assumed excellent credit), you would be paying roughly $7.69 a month.

I’ll let that sink in. For less than your Netflix bill, for less than a bi-weekly meal at McDonald’s, for less than your damn monthly dog food allowance, you could be cruising around in your own classic car. Of course, you have to wait a long time in order for your new car to become a classic. You would have to endure those strange ‘between years’ when your car is too old to be new and too young to be classic, and everyone thinks you shop at the local Thriftko. The fact that you actually do shop at the local Thriftko has nothing to do with it.

Besides, do you really want to death-to-us-part with a car? What happens if the next year’s model gets two mpg’s better on the highway, or even, gasp, a soda-can Chill Zone? You’ll be left out in the cold (and your pop will be left inside in the warm) with your silly previous-year model. Or, even, what happens when the new lithium-powered hybrid-turbo’d diesel hydrogen heli-cars come out, and your stuck circling the city trying to find a Exxon-Mobil station without tree-hugging hippies out front protesting the last of the dead-dino sipping cars that are left on our sorry piece of planet?

This leads me to my next thought, and the one I adhere to religiously. Be sensible, try and find that car that apexes on quality, amount of miles, versatility, frugality, age, and because you are living largely, awesomeness. Example A, I have a 1996 Dodge Neon that had 108,000 miles on it when I scooped it up for $850 out the door. That has great value, but it is lacking in the awesomeness factor. So, I slapped on the AWD sign. While it will never be as cool as a new Lamborghini (which, strangly, doesn’t need a freakin’ “Chill Zone” to be desirable), I do try to keep it clean.

There are many more options out there if you are really looking to up the ante on the “awesomeness” factor. I will be telling them to you tomorrow on this two-part series.

Until then, I guess you could always walk.