This is what you find if you’re Other People:
And if you’re me, what you find is a few crumpled up receipts, a WHOLE LOTTA empty candy wrappers, a pair of smelly gloves, and a single penny.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
I hope your Halloweekend was drier and better planned than mine. I took a little gander through a Halloween store 4 hours before I was scheduled to appear at a party. $50 for a trampy nurse costume? No thanks. My BFF is a nurse and she has to literally pull poop from people’s constipated bodies and there’s nothing sexy about that.
I went with a $4 pair of devil ears and my black dress from last Christmas. I know, I know. Maybe I didn’t win BEST COSTUME but I AM going to recycle those devil ears when I show up to Chipotle this evening for a $2 BOOrito. Those devil ears just paid for themselves. I am not a douchbag asshole, so I won’t type ‘hashtag/winning’ even though that’s TOTALLY what I’m thinking.
Onto the real point of this post. If you can’t afford to go to a real haunted house this Halloween (tickets to the top haunted attraction in Philadelphia are like $37, which, frankly, seems a little undemocratic), then I suggest you do as I do and watch Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video, on a loop, all day long.
An introduction: Basically, Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video is listed as one of the six things I could not live without on my online dating profile. That’s how much I love it. Since this is a blog about money, I’ll point out that the video cost $500,000 to make (according to my source for everything, Buzzfeed) and basically paid for itself by INVENTING a home video market. The government should charge taxes for watching this video, because I basically could have just saved the economy by watching it about 13 billion times.
Shall we watch it together?
0:00 “Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult. Michael Jackson”
0:37 Car runs out of gas. At this point, 50s era MJ and date have got to be more worried about being eaten by frogs AMIRIGHT.
0:50 “So, what are we gonna do now?” date asks, rather like a hussy. Her question is answered at 0:51 when they are forced to WALK. Because MJ is A) either really stand-up and won’t violate a lady in a car or 2) just really isn’t into violating ladies in cars.
0:55 Saddle shoes, never go out of style.
1:17 “I hope you like me, like I like you” aka I WANT TO EAT YOUR FACE.
1:45 “Now it’s official.” Now that I’ve put a ring on it, YOUR LIFE IS OVER. I think this is an apt metaphor.
2:16 He’s a werewolf! And not a hunky one.
2:38 MJ morphs, and date continues to stand there, screaming. Classic horror film move.
3:29 Oh it appears now he wants to do the violating!
3:34 CUT TO MOVIE THEATER. Real MJ and real date are in the theater, watching this 50s era horror movie featuring two characters that look SUSPICIOUSLY JUST LIKE THEM.
3:50 Date is NOT into watching her movie alter-ego get ripped to shreds. MJ is “enjoying this.”
4:07 THE MUSIC STARTS! AHHHHH. Instead of frogs, we now have howling wolves.
4:19 “It’s only a movie!” Michael proclaims. CHEA RIGHT AND THIS IS ONLY A MUSIC VIDEO.
4:34 Date was scared of the movie, so they decide to take a walk through a creepy abandoned city scene and graveyard instead. MJ taunts, sings, dances, looks fly. “It’s close to midnight, something evil’s lurking in the dark.” It’s called foreshadowing.
4:56 I have decided that if I’m ever coupled up on a Halloween, my future boyfriend and I are going as MJ and date, but I’m going to dress up as MJ because that red military jacket and red skinny pants and white socks and black shoes getup is SO amazing. Future boyfriend: you can wear the blue (questionably denim) leopard-print jacket and walk in a straight line down all streets while I dance around you. Okay potential suitors, form an orderly queue.
6:13 Musical interlude, they are withholding all the good stuff for later. I can’t contain my excitement.
6:22 NBD, just prancing through a graveyard.
6:33 “Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize your neighborhood…”
7:05 ZOMBIES. (before they were cool)
7:26 “The foulest stenches in the air, the funk of 40 thousand years…” I’m conjuring the smell of…. Philadelphia subway system.
7:52 “No mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller!” I CAN’T, I CAN’T RESIST!
8:00 I may or may not sell my soul to the devil for the chance to go back in time and be a backup dancer for this music video.
8:06 Sexy.
8:17 Don’t lie, you remember the first time you saw this video and were like “OHHHHHHHHHHH SNAP MICHAEL’s A ZOMBIE TOO!”
8:20-9:32 Sorry I went off the grid. I was entranced. ENTRANCED.
9:34 No longer a zombie, MJ belts out that this is the THRILLER. My heart is so happy.
9:53-9:58 I’ve practiced the Thriller dance COUNTLESS times, and unfortunately this is the only part I can really master.
10:12 Keep going MJ. Dance Dance DANCE UNTIL YOU DIE.
10:31 Wimpy date is running again. Into an old abandoned house. Classic. Don’t really understand her motivation. Worst case scenario is that she turns into a zombie too, and, I’m assuming, receives the gift of dance.
11:00 I’ll give her a pass for putting that chair in front of the door. This video came out in what? The 80s? The world was so much less aware of impending zombie apocalypses back then, or the protocol necessary to protect yourself from them.
11:40 It was all a dream!
11:48 OR WAS IT.
My only problem with the Thriller video is the ending actually. Don’t you think it would have been so much cooler, if in the wake-up reveal, it was really 50s era MJ and date? He’d be waking her up to “take her home” meaning, they’d get in the car - the car we know will run out of gas in the werewolf movie. This would conceivably create an endless loop of Thriller, and justify my watching it ALL DAY LONG.
IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
Six (6) eggs [STATUS: fresh-ish]
One half (1/2) loaf wheat bread [STATUS: may the gods of food preservatives prevail, for I have owneth this bread since…. um….]
One (1) package of solid mozzarella cheese [STATUS: never opened, glares at me from its empty perch in the refrigerator, seems to say “you should have spent $6 on kale, instead”]
One (1) gallon of half chocolate/half vanilla Edy’s ice cream [STATUS: it was a buy one get one free situation, and empty calories are better than no calories]
One (1) can of lentil soup [STATUS: haha soup never goes bad. Does it? I should probably check since I didn’t buy it, I pillaged it from the house of a person who was trying to get rid of stuff before he moved {I shit you not}]
Two (2) beers [STATUS: for when things get really bad]
True fact: the last time I opened my fridge a tumbleweed blew out. Then the whole thing gasped like Clark Griswold’s turkey on Christmas.
Looks like I’ll be eating a lot of egg and cheese sandwiches with a side of soup this weekend. Good thing my mother invited me over to glare and judge me.
me neither.
Actually, that’s a lie. I did, but the whole time I was watching trying to prevent my contacts from committing suicide, I was thinking “I bet neither of these guys ever went to an ATM and felt too guilty to withdraw $20 so he went to the ‘other amount’ option and typed in $3** because all he really needed was to buy two subway tokens*.”
*Two subway tokens in Philadelphia cost $3.10. But ATMs do not dispense coins so I had to bum a dime off a coworker. LIVIN’ THE LIFE.
**Also, if you’re wondering WHAT ATM dispenses single dolla dolla bills yo, it’s the ATMS of PNC Bank. LYLAS, PNC.
Think about how much money I save by not being a smoker.
I think I’ve earned a beer or six.
Or this gigantic glass of wine.
The free food diet is showing up to work every day and hoping a coworker with a good soul and a generous heart brought these in for me everyone.
Fact: as little as 8 Munchkins can sustain you through the workday.*
*Scientifically tested, by me.
Rapunzel got that bitch/witch to cut her hair for FREE! All she had to do was act a hussy and get a prince to climb up it from time to time and then get caught by the aforementioned witch. That’s a world class scheme if I ever saw one. Because…
Consider this: the average price of a women’s haircut in this city cost $50 and you have to factor a tip, so add $10 to that. At least. Sometimes they charge more the longer your hair is; talk about a Catch-22. The more I can’t afford a haircut, the longer it grows, and the more expensive it will cost to get it cut.
This is why when my long lost friends or my mom or someone else I haven’t seen in a long time says “wow your hair is getting really long,” I just wink and say “I’m saving it for when I meet Prince Harry!” And then they give me a strange look because really the only thing climbing up it are split ends and actually I look terrible.
*by “only” I meant “one of the only” differences. Other differences between me and Rapunzel include but are not limited to: living in a tower, marrying a prince
When I heard how much money my cubicle-mate received in gift-checks from her wedding my mind almost exploded. We’re talking about multiple thousands of dollars and I’m not even including the Crock Pots and embroidered sheets.
She told me it was really tempting to spend it going out to lunch, and stuff, but really what she should be doing is saving it for a down payment on a house. Yawn.
Then I thought - what if I got fake married just for the presents!? Ignore the absurdity of it for a moment (people PAY YOU for falling in love?) and imagine the possibilities….
There I was thinking I was the smartest person in the world until I noticed this Melissa Joan Hart/Joey Lawrence gem in the “movies you may enjoy” section on my Netflix homepage. The plot? Two people decide to get fake married just for the presents.
Have you ever heard people use the term “DINK?” It means Double Income No Kids. It’s often used as a way of answering questions like “How can you afford to travel around the world?”
Here’s an example: How can you afford to travel around the world?
Smug couple: DINK!
For me, DINK represents all the possibilities of being able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the shitty city of Philadelphia.
Until then, I am, (you guessed it) OINK.
Last Friday when I was reading about all of the people lining up outside of Apple stores for their new iPhone 5s, I innocently Tweeted the following query: “What happens to all the iPhone 4s?” Imagining a vast Island of Misfit (read: outdated) iPhones. One of my Twitter friends replied that he was trying to sell his on eBay. Only then did it occur to me that maybe this would be my golden opportunity for an easy upgrade from my shitty Droid. Needless to say I otherwise cannot afford a new iPhone.
BTW I tried to screenshot this conversation from my Droid. But Droids don’t screenshot. Of course.
