Finally! We have a president!

Free at last!

God Bless America!

Well, somehow I dorked this post up, so I’m taking the path of least resistance: deleting the original and reposting. If you read the first part of it yesterday, scroll down a ways for updates on Tuesday’s carnivals.

Funny will be incommunicado for today and possibly for several days, as my computer visits the Apple Geniuses. GDU’s borrowed laptop doesn’t communicate with Cox’s modem, and so unless Apple can get finished with my computer quickly, it will be a while before I will be back at this site.

I’m very flattered to have a post featured on MSN’s money blog, Smart Spending. Welcome to all you readers who have come here from that site. Please make yourself at home. The pages listed on the left describe how and why Funny about Money came to be.

The blog originated on iWeb last December, but as it got larger I decided to migrate to WordPress. That move is still a work in progress: every archived post has to be individually copied & pasted, a time-consuming project. So check back occasionally to see if any “new old” material has come up.

I hope you enjoy Funny and will subscribe on your RSS feeder. —vh

So there I was, a creature from the Cretaceous, hanging out with a much newer model in the Sprint store. And what a scene it was for these prehistoric eyes: mobile doo-dads from here to the horizon!

Friend wanted a Blackberry. She had inquired across the street at Best Buy, where she was advised that because of the contract she had with Sprint the coveted gadget would not cost her a couple hundred bucks but something over $700. So it was away to the Sprint store, therein to ask if anything could be done about the expensive mobile phone that worthy corporation had sold her a few months before, which was already showing signs of decrepitude.

While we waited for her to be told what a joke that idea was, we overheard two conversations.

One woman stood at the counter and argued, ad INFINITELY nauseam, about some problem she had encountered with Sprint’s service. Unclear exactly what it was, but whatever: Sprint was having nothing of any schemes to accommodate her. She argued forever, always assuring them that paying the exorbitant charge they were trying to rip from her was no problem, but the point was that they could do better. She was agreeable and polite and endlessly persistent.

All the time she was dickering with the sales staff, another woman talked into the store’s land line, trying to explain the injustice of some rip she had been unfairly charged, or so she said. The Sprintoid on the other end of the line wasn’t budging. She, like her counterpart at the front desk, had been talking at the time we entered, and both women argued their cases for a good half-hour while we stood there waiting for service. No cooperation to speak of was forthcoming.

The cost of the gadgets on display was astonishing. And they do some astonishing things: not only do they let you make an idiot of yourself by yakking while driving or while walking around in public, they connect to the Internet and function like tiny PCs. My friend wanted the Blackberry for a single reason: she wanted a mobile computer that would connect to Outlook, so she could carry her electronically inscribed calendar with her at all times. Ultimately she ended up paying around $260 for this privilege, purchased off the Web since Sprint was no more helpful than Best Buy had been. Add to that the cost of connecting to Sprint, and on and on.

Think of that. Two hunnert and sixty bucks for a calendar. Electronic tethers that guarantee you will never be alone, no matter where you go…

We might say “that will never let you be alone.”

Now that we’re admitting the economy is sinking into “recession” (possibly misspelled with an r instead of a d), at least some of us will need to take stock and consider what costs we can cut. The whole array of mobile gadgets, IMHO, offer rich pickings for those who would like to enrich themselves by spending less on unnecessary stuff.

Where is it written that we have to be “connected” at all times? Hey. We do not live in the Borg! Resistance is NOT futile!

Nothing bad will happen if our friends, business colleagues, and family members have to wait to yak with us until we get to a phone at our office or home.

Little that we do in our daily lives will be changed if we read our e-mails in an hour instead of right this minute, or if we tweet when we reach our desktop instead of off our cell phones.

And who knows? Maybe we could keep track of our appointments in a pocket-sized spiral-bound notebook, overpriced at Target if it sells for a buck and a quarter.

How much electronic junk do any of us really need? And why should we feel we have to carry this stuff around with us everywhere we go? And…more to the point: how much is it costing you?

Fellow frugalists! Cheapskates of the world! Arise and throw off your leashes! Ask yourself how much you really need mobile phones, mobile Outlook calendars, mobile games, mobile computers. Live free! And save a few bucks on principle.

😀

Had a little kitchen fire earlier this evening…well, we could call it “last night,” the hour now coming onto 1:00 a.m. I managed to carbonize an entire potful of buttered popcorn by failing to notice that I’d turned on the burner. This is why old ladies shouldn’t be allowed around stoves.

At any rate, the ruined pan—my cool Ikea stockpot!—now resides in the backyard, awaiting the light of day to be carried out to the alley garbage can. The smoke saturated the cabinetry around the stovetop, not helped by my stupidly turning on the microwave exhaust fan without thinking that such a fan “exhausts” by recirculating the air (read “smoke”) right back into the room. Ugh!

It’s possible the microwave is ruined—nice timing, a couple weeks after I changed the insurance deductible from $250 to $2500 by way of saving all of nine bucks a month. I took apart the metal exhaust fan filters and put them in the dishwasher, but I couldn’t discombobulate the whole arrangement, so some very stinky parts are still in place and couldn’t be cleaned. Nor, of course, can the microwave’s innards.

Then I was faced with a mighty stink from the cabinetry itself. In just the few moments before I noticed the burning food, smoke soaked into the woodwork. I tried cleaning the cabinets with Murphy’s Oil Soap. Didn’t work. Tried rubbing them down with lemon oil. Nothing.

Then I remembered that some time back I discovered that the grease and dirt accumulated along the ledge created by the cabinet’s trim came off quickly and neatly with a Q-tip soaked in baby oil. Could it be?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained: the cabinets already appeared to be ruined. Couldn’t ruin them any worse. The stuff is really nothing more than mineral oil with some sort of stinkum added.

So I rubbed the smelly areas with a paper towel soaked in baby oil and then wiped them dry with a clean microfiber rag.

Well! It made quite a difference. Don’t know that it worked 100%…baby oil is pretty heavily perfumed, and it may be that Johnson’s industrial perfume just covered up the smoke stench. I don’t much care for the scent of baby oil, but I’d sure rather have the parfum de l’huile pour les derrières des enfants around me than l’aire du popcorn brulé.

[dambola! the dog just caught the grasshopper that invited itself into the house while I was trying to air the joint out and carried the critter into the bedroom. argh! can life get any more amusing?]

Anyway, a little acrid smoke odor lingers in the kitchen, but I think it’s mostly coming out of the microwave. The whole house stank for three hours after the fact, but after throwing open every window and door and running the house fan, all the overhead fans, and all the table fans, most of the rooms are cleared out.

Baby oil. Kitchen cabinetry. Good combination. It really cleans varnished woodwork and is neither poisonous nor carcinogenic.