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| Red sky at morning... |
Lords and ladies, hot dogs and hand bags, earth people around the
circle: welcome to the 100th episode of Cheap Dude. No, I didn’t count them;
Goggle listed the last one at 99 and I did the math.
If you thought those first 99 were bad, be grateful you didn’t
struggle through the forest of logorrhea that got the axe. Let us honor the
occasion by returning to the basic premise, which is something like “Be Happy
With Nothing.” More fun, less crap.
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| Verde Valley, AZ |
As always, for immediate revenge on a monstrous consumer culture, stop
spending money on shiny objects. Improvise. Here’s my cheap but true
breakfast/lunch routine for guidance:
First off, honor your body and available cash, skip the high-speed
food and pack your own grub.
Lunch pail: one dollar at a “garage sale” 19 years
ago. Repair knots in the handle add class and character. Do not wash, it’ll
only get dirty again.
Water bottles are free in lots of places. Or dig
an empty out of public trash and clean it. Fill and freeze to keep lunch cold
and drink later. By obeying the unbreakable laws of physics, you can reuse the
same bottle indefinitely.
Our culture is addicted to plastic packaging,
which directly supports financial terrorism by oil Owners. A simple daily
payback is to reuse plastic bags. This flower-seed bag has carried a daily
home-made “energy-bar” for weeks now, and the clear bags, “chips” from
gigantoeconomy size sacks.
(Secret plans for energy-bar development,
where art, science, and healthy intestines meet, courtesy of culinary
artist/scientist/editor Dudine.)
My tea is loose leaf from the “hippie store” brewed solar
in a pickle jar. (Nineteen sixty-sevenths of the cost of bubbly poison “pop”.)
Free plastic bottles, backpacking tested,
formerly “medical waste”.
Today’s “sandwich,” classic peanut butter
and jelly, on the last two beat-up, slightly moldy, bread slices. (Wasting food
is one of the few acts considered deeply sinful at Cheap Half-Acre.) With chips
and tea (how British!), deep cheap lunch satisfaction.
With lunch ready for workplace transport, it’s time to gag down some
morning food. A banana, about 37 cents. Have another if you actually work for a
living. Ex-smokers, think of the savings when you skip those wake-up drags you
still wish for. (*cough*)
Boil eggs eight minutes, less’n 25 cents each. Or, boil
a cup of water, add a half cup oatmeal, and boil some more--about 14 cents. Add
a few cents’ worth of sugar, too--if we quit eating everything that’s bad for
us life might not be worth living.
Not recommended are my several cups of dirt-flavor coffee, like Stardbucks but dirt cheap. Finally, you can do what I sadly do
after food’s in belly and lunch-box: get to work!
Total price for two meals? I ain’t doing that math, brothers and sisters,
let’s just say: Not Much. And if today’s lucky winners can save three bucks a
day, that’s $90 a month for electricity, frivolity, or charity—pick your prize!
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| Free: silver lining! |
%$#@!
Off the Road Again
Sometimes when people die in car accidents, surviving relatives and
friends erect roadside memorials.
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| SR89A, milepost 365 |
Every day cars kill more people than “terrorists” do. Common sense
thus dictates a war on cars.
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| Beaverhead Flat Road, west side |
Instead, like most cultures, we gawk at wrecks, breathe waste, and let
the gods sort it out.
What does this mean?
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| SR191 (formerly SR666), across from FR506 |
Cheer up, it wasn’t you or I.
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| SR89A, west Sedona city limit |
But, clearly, the automobilists are winning.
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| SR89A, south of Flagstaff |
%$#@!
Part I, Essay IV
OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF
GOVERNMENT
NOTHING appears more
surprizing to those,
who consider human affairs
with a philosophical eye,
than the easiness with which
the many are governed by the few;
and the implicit submission,
with which men resign their own sentiments and
passions to those of their rulers.
When we enquire by what means
this wonder is effected, we shall find,
that as FORCE is always on the
side of the governed,
the governors have nothing to
support them but opinion.
It is therefore, on opinion
only that government is founded;
and this maxim extends to the most despotic
and most military governments,
as well as to the most free and most popular.
David Hume, 1711-1776
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| SR87 north of Strawberry, AZ |
