The Cheap Dude: November 2014

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.

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!