Monologues of Dissent: advice

Showing posts with label advice. Show all posts

How to Survive Without Money Using Scott Walker's "Tools"

25 July 2011

Dear friends of dissent,

If you've been paying attention, you've probably noticed Wisconsin governor Scott Walker often mentions the "tools" he's given us to "tighten our belts" and wondered what this meant, on account of he hasn't actually done anything that benefits anyone in this state except the very richest. Turns out, interestingly, that these "tools" are "helpful cuts to your pay and benefits" and the "tighten your belt" part really does mean "get skinnier," because you're starving now. Good thing for us, though, a little starving never hurt anyone, unless you get to the part where you "starve to death," which you should try to avoid at all costs. So here are some handy tips on how to get the most out of the tools Scott Walker was generous enough to provide you, but without actually dying:

Buying food

Pack a brown bag, plebe! Who do you think you are, eating in restaurants? Paul Ryan? Know your place.
Save money on food by not getting hungry.
If you must eat (since you leftists think you're entitled to everything!), save money by only eating food that is offered to you free of charge at parties, potlucks, and homeless shelters.
Consider going on a grocery strike (since you leftists love striking so much!) and just don't buy a single item of food until your cupboards are completely bare (or did you also think you were "entitled" to a stocked pantry?)
Clean out your fridge and pantry to surprise yourself with things you forgot you had and make a feast. What? After throwing out all the things that expired on or before 2005 you're left with only a box of baking soda, vinegar and some almost-stale tortillas? Wasteful ingrates like you don't deserve to eat. Make a volcano burrito. It might be good.
Raid the neighbor's vegetable garden in the dark of night (since you leftists love organic produce so much). The next day, be sure to go on and on about "all those damned raccoons" you've been seeing in her yard.
Swallow your pride. It's more filling than you'd think.

Buying other stuff

Only buy anything if it's on clearance AND you have a coupon. Start referring to your coupon folder as your "tool box."
Reduce! Measure shampoo into a thimble before washing your hair. Limit showers to 2 minutes or less. Only flush the toilet when company is coming over.
Reuse! Use old bills you can't pay as scratch paper for writing lists of all the things your kids aren't going to be able to do this summer because you're so broke.
Recycle! Sew last year's too-small winter coats together to make trendy ponchos for the kids to wear this year!
Who needs new clothes when you already have so much right here? Kids growing too fast? Just tell them capris and half-shirts are back in style. Shoes have too many holes in them? There's a name for that - sandals! Wardrobe needs a facelift? Give everything a whole new look by embroidering "Recall Walker" on it.
Redefine "essentials." Do you really "need" things like deodorant, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Take "window shopping" to the next level by just leaving your full cart of stuff at the store. Pretend you bought it, but later, when you go to wash the dishes and there's still no detergent, say "Boy, that went fast!" (repeat)
Buy a really fancy copier and just make your own money. The fancy copier just paid for itself! And now you're rich! You can buy anything! [Note: If it doesn't work out, this tip has the bonus advantage of providing potential free room and board in the form of jail time!]

Paying Bills
Unfortunately, even if you follow all of the advice above, your tools don't work on bills, which continue to go up, even though your pay has gone way down. Luckily, though, there are a couple of options for you:

Cancel everything and move into a cardboard box. Problem solved!
Move to a state with more jobs and fewer tools.
Recall Walker, or persuade him to resign, and elect politicians who are invested in Wisconsin families rather than their corporate funders.

I hope you find this invaluable advice useful and wish you the best surviving Scott Walker. Let me know how it goes.

Yours in poverty and dissent,

Heather DuBois Bourenane

Valuable Advice: How to Enjoy Your Summer Vacation (Part 1)

A reader asks....

Haven't seen any free advice lately. How about some advice on traveling out west? Do I need to say out west or is just plain west O.K? And do you have a must see and must avoid list? I am sure many of your readers are planning trips this summer and could use your help. Thanks. Love, Dad.

"Dad" poses an excellent question, and I applaud him on being the first reader to help me make the long-awaited leap from purveyor of complimentary and unsolicited advice to purveyor of solicited advice. I am happy to be of service.

"Dad's" question is a complicated one, and I can anticipate providing unlimited advice on this topic, so I've already narrowed this down to installments, the first of which, obviously, addresses what I think many of you have been lacking in the tour guides and promotional literature that is currently available. I've tentatively drafted these installments as follows, and am open to suggestions for additional topics on which my sage advice could prove useful:

Part 1: Getting started: Suggested Ground rules for your Roadtrip
Part 2: An Illustrated Guide to the Grand and Historic Restrooms of the American West
Part 3: So You Plan to Motor West? What you must see, and what you must avoid, made easy.
Part 4: Essential Travel Lies to Tell Your Children - Roadtrip Edition!
Part 5: Take Only Pictures, Leave Only Footprints
Part 6: How to Tell if You Should Have Paid a Little More for that Motel/Hotel/Cabin
Part 7: How Not to Get Killed in Yellowstone
Part 8: Kevin Costner's Black Hills (tm): An Illustrated Guide to the "Real" America

(+ more, I'm sure, tba)

That's a lot to look forward to. For now, please enjoy...

The 5th Most Valuable Advice You'll Ever Receive, Guaranteed, or Your Money Back:

How to Enjoy Your Summer Vacation, Even if You Travel With Others

Part 1: Getting started: 10 Time-Tested Ground Rules for a Fun & Death-free Roadtrip

In the summer of 2010, my husband and I, with our two kids - then five and three - enjoyed a two-week roadtrip from Wisconsin to Yellowstone and back via a double-dose of Black Hills. Oh, and we did it with my parents, and my sister and her 9-year-old son. And we all rode together. In one minivan. With 8 people. And it was the Best Vacation Ever. No one died, and we had fun all day, every day, with minimal grouchiness and squabbling and only one (if I recall) episode of barfing. This information, I believe, demonstrates my credentials in providing advice on the topic of How to Enjoy Your Summer Vacation, Even if You Travel With Others, as it is not particularly easy to enjoy 2 weeks of being in a minivan with eight people unless you are committed to having the Best Vacation Ever and have established a few ground rules for making sure things work out ok and no one gets hurt.

Here are some 10 basic groundrules to ensure fighting is restricted to the minimum, living to the maximum, and no one ends up hating anyone else on the trip:

1. Bring a map, or have GPS. Going unscripted is great for newlyweds and ne'er do wells, but if you're on a roadtrip with your husband and your kids and your parents and your sister and her kid, you need to know exactly where you are in relation to the place where you'll be able to get out of the car and find a few minutes of peace. Also, maps tell you what points of historic interest you should stop at, and are generally useful in marking out the distances between restrooms, which leads me to my next point:

2. Designate someone to be the bathroom police, or just be that person yourself. This person's job, for the duration of the trip, is to make sure that every single person uses the restroom every single time you stop the car, whether they "don't have to" or not. Adults included. At first, this person will seem bossy and rude, and over time, that person will seem domineering and detestable. But no one will be begging to go to the bathroom as soon as you get on the highway again, and for this you will thank that person one day, I promise.

3. If someone feels like barfing, pull the car over immediately and let that person out. The amount of fun you will have on your vacation is directly proportionate to the degree to which your vehicle does not smell like vomit. Do not fool around with this rule. Pull the car over. Now.

4. If there are children in your vehicle, be sure they have plenty of things to do while you're driving. Assuming they will simply enjoy the scenery like the rest of us is foolish and dangerous, as is evidenced in my nephew's famous response to entering the majestic Yellowstone National Park: "This is Yellowstone? A bunch of trees?" The most popular thing for kids to do in the car is eat snacks, so bring as many as you possibly can, but be mindful of tip #2 as you make your selections.

5. If someone in the car says "I'm getting hungry," this is your cue to start looking for a nice spot to have a picnic. This is not your cue to say "Really? We just ate a few hours ago. Let's stop when we hit the state line." Remember: part of being on vacation is having a good time. And no one's having a good time when one person is trying to make good time and the other people are thinking about how, when they finally stop to eat, they are going to drop that person's sandwich on the ground "by accident."

6. Plan ahead, and be spontaneous! If you have 8 people in your van, you need to know where you're spending the night. Because driving around some rinkydink town at midnight with hungry, whiny kids in the back isn't the funnest way to spend your time. So make reservations, or at least know your options ahead of time. Then you can spend your days idling about at Balls of Twine and World's Largest (I assume) Jolly Green Giants and so on.

7. Don't forget your camera, or anything else. You are going to forget a lot of things on this trip, and the tragedy of this is that you will learn, of necessity, that you can find a megastore in the unlikliest of places, whereever you go in the United States, and that they are all, tragically, the same. You will be forced to patronize Wal-Marts and Targets because there are no other choices, which will make you start to question your unrealistic preconceptions of the Grand American West. The more you travel, in fact, the more you will start to understand what they mean when they say this world is small, and you will start to feel a little melancholy. So make sure you pack everything you can think of so that you have to make this sort of stop as infrequently as possible as you travel.

Corn Palace isn't the only claim to fame of Mitchell, SD

8. Stop at every single place that has the words "Greatest" or "Only" or "First" or "Birthplace" or "Historic" in its title or on its sign. To avoid the melancholy anguish of #6, I suggest you find out what makes each place you visit unique. We must have seen 15 birthplaces and childhood homes of Laura Ingalls Wilder on one of our trips, each one more rustic and charming than the last. And don't even get me started on the World's Largest Walnut. You have to find it for yourself.

9. Warning: That place has a gift shop. Unless you plan to buy, or let your children waste their own money buying, a souvenir at every place you stop, you are advised that every single place you will stop has a gift shop. The home where Laura Ingalls Wilder spent her twilight years has a gift shop. Many of the opulent roadside rest areas in South Dakota have gift shops. Wall Drug is a gift shop. So either set a budget and stick with it, or get ready to do some clever lying (see Part 4: Essential Travel Lies to Tell Your Children - Roadtrip Edition!). You cannot avoid the gift shops. So get used to that right now. You're going to have to come up with some fun ways to make the most out of walking through these shops. One option: setting unrealistic souvenir goals ("I collect hand-painted portraits of locals from each place I've visited") will give you something to do while the others are milling about for hours deciding which bumper sticker to get. Or you could just get a coffee while you're waiting. As long as you don't wait in the car. You could wait in the car at home. And you're on vacation.

If bears are going to kill my kids, they'll die holding my hand.

10. Bottom line: safety first. If yours is a Wild West Adventure, you are going to visit many places at which you or your child could easily die of your own folly or be killed by outside sources. We had a code word for danger zones on our trip - I can't remember what it was! Sprinkles? Funyuns? Combination Unicorn and Pegasus? - and if we said that word it meant the kids had to hold our hands from the time we got out of the van until we re-entered it. It was very effective, as none of us died, or even got gored or anything, which I am happy I lived to report so I could pass on this valuable advice to you. If you don't want to hold hands with anyone, you might consider harnessing, or otherwise restraining, young children, or perhaps leaving them at home with a dear friend or family member. But plan to spend a good deal of time concerned for the mortal safety of your children. But look around you: this view was totally worth it. Just don't look down.

----------------------
25 June 2011. Update:
Code word: Mango.
Thanks, Mom!
----------------------

This has been The 5th Best Unsolicited Advice You'll Ever Receive, Guaranteed, or Your Money Back. Want more? Click away:

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Featuring...5 easy lies to tell your children to ensure your summer living is easy!

Valuable Advice: 5 easy lies to tell your children to make your summer living easy

If you have, or plan to be near, children this summer, there are a certain number of lies you should tell to ensure that things go smoothly, by which I mean to make sure those children do not ruin your summer, as kids are wont to do, bless their tiny little summer-loving hearts.

Ooh...those look fun! Too bad they don't exist.

Water balloons do not exist. Or, if it's too late for that, water balloons are extremely dangerous. Never, ever, let a child too young to fill and tie his/her own water balloons find out how absurdly, addictively fun those things are. Of all the fun things to do with kids in the summer, this is the worst. Partly because it's the most fun, and therefore the thing they beg for most, but mainly because it takes AGES to fill up all those balloons, and a matter of seconds for them to finish throwing them at your neighbor's car. Refill, repeat. Refill, repeat. And then YOU are going to have to keep filling up more until your fingers are bloody, and spend hours scouring the grass and driveway to destroy the evidence of their vandalism. The best way to avoid this scenario is, of course, lying. I recommend informing a curious toddler or preschooler that the balloons are "toxic" and "filled with a liquid that could burn your skin," like beer bottles. This should work. Older, smarter kids who can't tie yet should be told that water balloons aren't appropriate for kids 12 and under because some families can't play with them for religious reasons, so it's not nice of us to disrespect their beliefs by playing with them in front of them. And you know what it feels like to be left out. It's not nice, is it?
"Subject to change without notice" - I like that!

The public pool/beach is "closed" on cool/cloudy days. Unless your children are old enough to swim independently under the supervision of the lifeguards while you lounge about and read novels in paradise, I highly recommend this essential summertime lie, or you will spend your day shivering miserably in the water and/or carrying an cold, wet person all over the place. Then be sure that whatever you do that day, you do not drive past the pool/beach, or you'll have to come up with a new lie for why the pool/beach is now "open." WARNING: THIS ADVICE IS ONLY GOOD FOR CHILDREN WHO CANNOT READ YET!
If you don't hold still, you'll be blind. This is an extreme and potentially traumatizing lie, so normally I wouldn't endorse it, but it's preferable to the equally traumatizing screaming and running and chasing and forcing plus crying and wiping and rinsing and more screaming that comes with your child jerking his/her head around just in time to get an open eyeful of sunscreen.
It IS past your bedtime. Adjusting to long summer days can be very taxing, and trying to get your kids to bed at their normal time gets harder and harder as the days get longer. Fortunately for you, however, there's a pleasant side-effect of this in that your child no longer fully understands when he/she has to go to bed and is easier to trick as the summer goes on. This is a particularly helpful lie on camping trips, when there aren't a lot of clocks around, and you can put the kids down early and get to the adults-only business. They can have microwave s'mores when you get home. Don't feel guilty about it. Look what they just did to your tent.
If you don't/do [perform x thing you don't or do want them to do] then we will not/will go get ice cream. This is more of a threat/bribe than a lie, but let's face it: you're getting that ice cream either way. Because nothing can make a good summer go wrong faster than not getting ice cream. But this threat/bribe works wonders in the most dire of circumstances and is a proven cure for tantrums, rudeness, sibling fights, refusal to carry one's one beach crap back to the car, and much, much more. Just make sure the kids don't catch on. I'd suggest that you show you mean business by maybe now or then only getting a cone for yourself if they've been particularly troublesome, but that's going too far. No parent should really withhold ice cream from his/her child. That's just not right.


Time to fill up all those balloons: about 1 hour

Time to throw/pop them: 1 minute, give or take. But almost worth it.

Have a great summer!

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