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Archive for February, 2011

How TV Ruined Your Life

February 14th, 2011 at 04:09 am

That's actually the title to a TV show. I'm surprised I never heard of it before this weekend. If you want to explain how people waste so much money and then don't understand where it all went, this is it.

I watched one episode this weekend, and decided I needed to post it here. Its a BBC comedy of sorts, written like a documentary, but its oh so true. If you know anyone that watches too much TV (or even a "normal" amount of TV), this would be a great show for them to see. I can't recommend this one highly enough, though there are some spots that I am fairly sure are real TV shows, but they look so absurd you have to wonder what they were thinking. In any case, if you were on the fence about dropping a cable subscription, watching this should push you off the fence.

Text is "How TV Ruined Your Life" and Link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB4HAXDEGrg
"How TV Ruined Your Life"

Is doing things yourself out of vogue?

February 13th, 2011 at 03:09 am

This could be subtitled: Is the American man willing to do anything for himself any more?

WARNING: Sorta frugality / sorta rant ahead...

During a discussion a few days ago I mentioned how I had built from scratch / built from kits / refinished most of the furniture in my house. During this I remembered how it had been many years since I bought a solid wood kit to build (probably 6-7 years). I figured there would be more kits out there available now. I mean, there is the internet now, everything is more available if you search for it, right? But just about every link to a place selling kits was out of business, sold their items on Amazon at crazy expensive prices (they're kits for crying out loud!), or they sold only a few kits any more and now sold mostly finished items Frown

Now I don't think the companies have changed their focus on selling fully built items just because of higher markups. I'm sure its because so few people want to build their own items, while saving money in the process. When I was putting together my first collection of furniture, this is what I did. I refused to buy fiberboard junk. Now you can't do it, even if you wanted.

Sorry, it just bothers me you can't even get kits of good furniture any more. Considering how the economy is rough right now, I figured more people would want to do what I did to get good furniture for decent prices. But nope, it looks like the "I want it now, I don't want to have to do any work for it" philosophy is still going strong. Ugh