(Or at least deal with)

1. It
2. Yourself

Midnight is a pretty silly concept. Personally, I would choose to change the date at dawn. But if you’re going to have the calendar flip at midnight, at least make it the proper solar midnight. The whole calendar and time system on this planet is batshit. Whatever. My point is this: I consider birthdays to be the 24 hour(ish) (a day is not 24 hours long) period surrounding someone’s time of birth. Probably. I’m not goofy enough to check into how different measurements of the concept of a “year” might affect things. I’m not sure I remember what time I was born. But I think it was 4:10am EST or something? Which means my birthday began at 4:10pm EST today, and I don’t have to wait until midnight for you to start buying me stuff and being nice to me.The end. Okay, I don’t expect you to buy me stuff. And you should be nice to me all the time. So what is my point? I don’t know, but it’s my birthday, so I don’t need one (as if I ever worry about that kind of thing).

Thinking yourself “lucky” is to deny credit for success. Thinking yourself “unlucky” is to deny responsibility for failure. Big duh right there. Common sense.

Of course, I don’t believe in common sense, either. I readily admit that much of my “common sense” comes from good ol’ book learnin’. Whatever I know about luck probably comes from some epistemological blather I can’t remember reading during grade school.

In any case, I’m clumsily expanding into words the above chunk of my “luck” gestalt for my own benefit, because I think it was losing integrity (,captain).

Concept and principle reestablished. Carry on as usual.

Most of the people I associate with online and off are college students, college dropouts, freelancers, or artists of various sorts. I fall into several of those categories, myself. None of us have a lot of much any money, so it is absolutely necessary to economize. Sometimes this means buying the cheapest available products. Buying the cheapest products requires determining exactly which products those are.

A small bottle (14 oz.) of mustard costs $1.89. A bigger bottle (20 oz.) of mustard costs $2.19. Which bottle of mustard is cheaper? Duh. The small one. Which mustard is cheaper? Duh. The mustard that comes in the bigger bottle. Which one do you buy? Well… a bottle of mustard doesn’t go bad for upwards of a year. Duh. Buy the bigger one. Hell, buy the biggest one (I took the prices from Peapod, and they don’t have many options to choose from). You’ll probably want to make sure you buy the least expensive brand, too. Because it’s freakin’ mustard. Seriously. The ingredients consist mainly of water, vinegar, and mustard. You’re not going to notice much of a difference.

Unless you’re buying something that goes bad quickly (bread, for instance, and even then, you could potentially freeze it — not that you can usually buy bread in bulk anyway), you should almost always buy the biggest size possible. Or whichever option has the lowest price per unit (the local Jewel has smallest sizes of antihistamines and aluminum foil priced lower per unit than the largest — I presume they must have some sort of logic behind that). This doesn’t even require math skills anymore. Most stores have unit cost on their labels these days.

But what do I see people doing time and time again? Buying the smallest, cheapest possible unit of things (and often the smallest option is a brand name, bumping the ppu up even more). What suckers! You could have been saving those extra pennies, or at least buying beer with them (maybe economizing = more beer^* will motivate you). Way to stay broke for the rest of your life! The usual excuse is “but I don’t have enough money to get everything I need, if I don’t buy the smallest one.” Okay. Fine. That works. For the tail end of one paycheque. Next time, think ahead. If you always go with the most cost effective option instead of the (momentarily) cheapest option, you won’t have to rebuy everything 12 times a month. You’ll just have to refill them as they run out, which will be much less frequently.

Now, times when you might want to consider buying things that are smaller or more expensive do pop up. Maybe you don’t have much storage space. Maybe the brand name of something is watered down. Maybe you don’t have a car and you can’t carry the largest fricken’ sack of potatoes home. Maybe when it comes to things other than groceries, it’s better to spend $150 on a pair of shoes that will last you 5 years than to buy a pair of $25 shoes every six months (plus, guys, better shoes will get you chicks). I’d tell you to work out the math, but if you can’t even figure out which bottle of mustard to buy, you’re a lost cause, anyway.

P.S. If you’re broke, stop buying bottled water. Seriously. You’re a moron.

P.P.S. 1-ply toilet paper won’t save you money. It’ll tear up your ass, and you’ll just use three times as much of it. 3 x 1-ply = 3-ply. It’s Cottonelle in bulk for my posterior.

^{* Not that you should be drinking beer, when it’s so much more cost and time effective if you buy the hard stuff.}