Am I back?

I came back here to find a writing sample for a job I am applying for and I was perusing my posts (intentional alliteration despite it's lack of popularity these days) and I feel bad for having abandoned this once oft-visited (by me at least) blog. It's funny now to read all that I had to say about the economy 4 years ago.

Now that all seems old hat.

I thought maybe I should find something fresh to say. Everyone is sick of hearing about how to save. So, I have decided to make this into a blog about luxury. I will do an iPhone app about how to spend all your money. Something like Gwynnie's app Goop--as hilariously summarized here on UPROXX. And big ups to The Cajun Boy for helping me to give a name to what I would like to become here at Nifty Thrifty. That's right, I now aspire to be a "possible white affluence performance artist" just like gp!

I mean, you gotta keep ahead in the world. With the "Occupy this and that" movement going on, what better way to rise above the crowd then to buck the trend and ignore all this talk of pay equality and health care. Keep that for yourself! I want luxury!

JK.

See you again soon.

Mabes.

Tut tut tut

I had to just post this piece from Huff Post about H&M and Walmart destroying clothing that doesn't sell. Right away. This is really shameful and not at all Thrifty. Don't act like this.

I think I will wear all the clothes I found in the garbage (or at least at the thrift store) today.

More thoughts later....

Blue Mountain's Got Me Seeing Red

So, I have been an angry young lady lately and I blame it on Blue Mountain State.

Lately some ads have been popping up on the subway platform for Spike TV's new show and they look like this:

Now, I don't have a T.V., so I don't know, I thought maybe I was just hypersensitive to the sexism that is rampant all over television and print media, but it turns out I am not the only one who is upset. Bowery Boogie points out that one of these posters on the LES was vandalized with the statement "This is what rape culture looks like."

I was struggling to find the words to say how this poster makes me feel, and that pretty much sums it up. Thanks, stranger with the Sharpie™.

What Bowery Boogie also tells us is that Spike TV got in touch to say that their poster was paying homage to the movie poster for M*A*S*H, the 1970 film about the Korean War.

Alright. M*A*S*H is pretty sexist, but let's linger for a moment on the differences:

M*A*S*H was made in the 1970s and it is about a war that took place in the 1950s. People were mad sexist in the 50s.

(case in point <--) That's right, years before Mad Men, and you see how mad sexist those guys are.

Blue Mountain State, on the other hand, is not a retrospective. And supposedly, we are less sexist than the 50s, or even, say, the 70s.

M*A*S*H is a Robert Altman film. Blue Mountain State is a Spike T.V. show. 'Nough said there.

The guys on M*A*S*H were surgeons who could get away with all those hijinx because they were saving soldiers injured fighting for the U.S.A., and no one else could do what they did.

Um, the guys on Blue Mountain State are college football players. Now, I love football (Steeler Nation, wooty woot), and I know sometimes it can feel like a game saves your life, but, well, you catch my drift.

Just sayin'.

Anyways, I said to myself, let me give this Blue Mountain thing a look-see, maybe it is not that bad.

You can watch the preview yourself, but if you don't have the stomach for it, let me point out some of the highlights:

• Where do you come from? YOUR FATHER'S BALLS!!
• What will you do with the other team? Crush them and use their VAGISIL AS LIP BALM
• What will you do? GO DEEP!
• Why is that girl giving you a blow job? Because she hates her father!
• What is the worst thing you can be called? GAY!

Where do we draw the line? I'm not sure exactly, but it is hard to see the line when it is yards behind you. Ahem, Spike, you are like at the wrong end zone.

So, this Blue Mountain State business had me so annoyed that I started talking with my husband--my self-identified "feminist" and "queer, but straight" husband with whom I can usually carry on a great conversation about such things. I was unable, however, to talk about it without wanting to repeatedly stab the chicken I was preparing. And no, I don't have my period. ha ha.

We took a breather from the conversation. I had to kick him out of the kitchen so I could cook dinner.

I know, right? How can I solve the world's problems, and look hot, and cook dinner, all while carrying on an intellectually stimulating and important conversation with my husband and preparing my womb for babies?

Well, that, folks, is what we are here to find out.

Lucky for me, when I went to check on the oven temperature for cooking the chicken, I also found guidance on dealing with my plumpy bod and my saggy, saggy eyes.

I am so glad that the internet consolidates these things.

Guys.

Okay guys, Listen up. I have been busy trying to make money. Yes, trying to make money. Don't worry, I still hate T.V. and advertising, but I am running outta bills and a girl's gotta eat...her Kentucky Fried Chicken. I don't know why, but the other day (in the future) I was (will be) driving through Chicago and I (will, hypothetically) drove (drive) over this very expertly repaired pothole and I (will) got (get) hungry for some KFC.

Oh, maybe this is why!

Where did I hear this little tidbit? Well, Brian Lehrer had Naomi Klein, author of NO LOGO on today. Good show. Worth a listen or two.

So, now I am going to shamelessly plug myself--but isn't that in conflict with your criticism of society Nifty? you say. No, guys, it's not. I don't like the massive brainwashing that is orchestrated by large powerful firms with access to psychological tools they can use to make you want things you really don't need. The SHAMPOO you've always been waiting for. The LOTION that will change your experience of life. The CAR that give you a euphoric happy feeling--you'll want to jump in the air! Nope, sorry, my pet portraits can't do that, but they can hang on your wall and look pretty and they can help me feed my dog (I prefer Catholic Guilt to mass marketing).

I have a recession special running now. Check it.

Oh the irony

Just a quick one folks.

In an effort to respond to a question from one of my professors about The Great Gatsby, I wanted to find out some of the history on women's suffrage.

I ended up on about.com on a timeline of Woman' s Suffrage (link coming in a sec, hold on). So Here is what I looked at.




You might see, on the right, a small picture of two girls in bikinis.

Interesting image to see next to Sojourner Truth's name isn't it?

Well, you can look for yourself at the page here, and you can watch that video of the ladies here.



My response is Ba-huh? Pasty white chicks need a chance to get a tan. Oh boy, we've come a long way baby.

Or not.

Shout-out to 'The Takeaway'

So, I got a call yesterday from The Takeaway, and they proposed a citizen "stress test" in which they would have listeners (me being one) talk about their financial situations with a financial advisor. Needless to say, I was really psyched about the opportunity, mostly because I love The Takeaway, and talking with them would be like talking with my friends with whom I spend every morning. (In fact, John Hockenberry, if you are looking for a co-host, I'm totally available.)

I had a great chat with a producer from the show. It did not work out for me alas, but I was happy to chat with some folks who produce a show that I really, really like. They did the segment with a couple other folks and it is worth a listen.

They talk with Gary Belsky, author and expert in Behavioral Economics, which is my favorite branch of the field, combining psychology and economics to get a bigger picture of economics (more on this later from Brian Lehrer too, check here. Oh, NPR, you are endlessly interesting and helpful). The Takeaway clip is quite short, but Mr. Belsky is reasonable and level-headed, so I'm intrigued. I'll bet it's worth it to check out his book with Thomas Gilovich Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes And How To Correct Them: Lessons From The New Science Of Behavioral Economics.

If you haven't listened to The Takeaway, I highly recommend it for your morning radio show. It's like getting the news from your friends. For me, The Takeaway does the best job I have seen yet, of using our technology to foster community in a big picture way.

Also, I directed my friends at The Takeaway here to the Nifty Thrifty, and I like to think it is not coincidence that they have also used Fantastic Voyage as a reference in another segment (in their case to swine flu, rather than traumatic sexual awakenings).

Next up I would like to do an episode of the Nifty Thrifty on how to budget time, but I suppose, in the interest of getting things done, I will write that later.

xoxo

The Nifty

P.S. In honor of The Takeaway, here's a Fantastic Remix

Fantastic Voyage

I don’t remember a lot of TV from when we lived in Ohio. We didn’t watch much. Sometimes at lunch when I ate and my mother folded laundry we would watch All My Children and on Tuesday nights the whole family would watch The Muppet Show. Otherwise most of my childhood memories are sitting in the living room, the fancy room without the TV, in the sun spot on the floor, listening to records, drawing or looking at books, while my mother sewed a dress or a curtain or whatever domestic art she had jotted down in her project book that week. Back then, in Ohio, I got my mother to myself for a bit. Jessica was in school in the afternoons and David took a nap. I wasn’t about to leave my spot by her feet to watch television.

Even if I did want to watch television, there were serious limitations. The Dukes of Hazard was a no-no because Daisy Duke was a bad role model for young women, Fraggle Rock was out because my mother believed it was about drug use somehow, and Emergency was too upsetting to my hypersensitive, over-imaginative mind. My mother saw very early in my life that images stayed with me, and I think she wanted to control them as long as she could. She gave me a very refined aesthetic this way, shielding me from what she called the “garbage,” that would broadcast over what she called “the boob tube.”

It was when we had a babysitter or even better when went to other people’s houses that the real television watching happened. Because I was so infrequently exposed to what could go on on a television, I remember the disturbing things to vividly. Fantastic Voyage gave me one of these psychic bruises.

I was five years old, and my parents had left us, my brother and my sister and me, with some friends of theirs while they travelled to New Jersey to find us a new house. To give you an idea of how spotty my memory is from this time, I have no idea who these people were. I know they were a man and a woman. I think they lived by a major thoroughfare in Troy Ohio, and I remember the sunny laundry room where there was a phone that I would use to talk to my parents every day that they called. I felt very alone there. Television seemed like a nice escape for an anxiety ridden five year old, waiting for the return of her parents, getting ready to do what they called “moving.”

But that afternoon, the movie that they were watching was not at all what I was used to seeing. Everyone was wearing tight suits with zippers, and the lady’s was particularly tight. They were on a ship. They were in outer space, I thought, but then it turned out not to be outer space, but inside a body. Then the girl got attacked by white blood cells and she was silently writhing and they were trying to tear them off of her. My eyes would not move away from the screen, even as my fingers inched to cover my face.

When my father called that day, I remember being particularly happy to hear from him. He sounded far away on the line, but I heard a tone in his voice I hadn’t heard before. I think it was excitement. Pleasure.

“We found a house,” he said, “There’s a big hole in the back yard.”

“Oh,” I said, “Will you have to fix it?”

“No, the big hole has water in it.”

I didn’t understand and in my child’s mind I saw a muddy ditch, brown water.

“Oh,” I said again, really unsure about this whole hole thing, “Well, that’s okay, I guess.”

I didn’t care so much, I was really more interested in us all being in the same house. I was really more interested in this “visit” to these family friends being over.

“It’s a pool!” he said.

I sat silently on the line. My mother was with my father on the phone, and when I didn’t say anything, when I didn’t shout “Yes!” she knew something was wrong.

“What’s the matter honey?” she asked, trying to sooth me and my father, who was likely disappointed not to have pleased me.

“Do I really have all those things inside of me?” I said.

“What things, honey?”

“The white blobs. Are they going to hurt me like they hurt the lady in the movie?”

“What movie honey?”

I didn’t know the name of the movie, I think I called it the Fancy Verge.

My father’s belly laugh, the one that normally brought a giggle up from my belly too, echoed over the phone.

“The Fantastic Voyage?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that garbage. Raquel Welch?” she sighed heavily and I was relieved immediately. I knew that as soon as we got to our new house, my mother would reinstate all the television rules, and I would never have to watch something that awful again.

But still, to this day that image of Raquel Welch covered in white blood cells, silenced by a scuba suit helmet, eyes wide in terror, writhing on the ground, lingers. Recently, to determine how close my memory is to that movie, I looked it up online. What I found was even more disturbing. I found the offending scene. It was indeed scary, or could at least be considered so by a five year old. She did indeed get covered with white blood cells. Her wetsuit was indeed tight. And then when the men saved her, they threw her on the ground, all knelt above her and groped at her body trying to get the monsters off of her. In the process I think I saw her boobs get grabbed at least twice. The scene is so thick with innuendo that it’s not a surprise to me that I once found it so frightening. I really didn’t know what was going on in that movie at all, and not just because I didn’t understand the inner workings of the human body, but because of the great mystery that it would take me another twenty years to even begin to understand. I guess in that way Fantastic Voyage was all it said it would be.

“Four men and a beautiful girl launch a journey you can never erase from your memory,” he 1966 trailer proclaimed, “When you come out you may never look at yourself in the same way again.”

Indeed.