The Problem With Extreme Couponing

In A Word: Liquidity

TLC has recently turned a one-off show into an ongoing series. And in the time between the first "Extreme Couponing" aired and this latest season, the problems with this behavior have really been brought home to me.

Last January, a family member died. And it turns out that he had been something of an extreme couponer and a hoarder of new items himself. I have been helping with the ongoing effort to clean out their home so that his wife can sell the house, and it has been a real eye-opening experience.

The problem with extreme couponing comes down to one word: liquidity.

I'm sure this family member thought he was providing for his family by buying (e.g.) 40 compact fluorescent light bulbs. He no doubt found them on sale, and bought as many as the terms of the sale allowed.

Then he died.

What do you do with 40 compact fluorescent light bulbs? Given that each bulb supposedly lasts for five years, that's 200 years' worth of light for one lamp. Or 20 years' worth of bulbs for one household with ten lamps. You get the picture: it's a lot of dang light bulbs.

Unfortunately, the sales market for light bulbs is, shall we say, a little weak. We may be able to sell them at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar. More likely they will end up being given away to various friends and family members, or donated to charity.

A charity deduction on the taxes is good, don't get me wrong. But you know what his widower would much rather have? Money.

It's become clear that he spent a whole lot of money on all of these purchases over the years. The cabinets and closets crammed full of "new in box" household items (toothpaste, laundry detergent, deodorant - the list goes on) represents thousands of dollars in cash. I can tell you that if his widower moved a pile of paint cans to find a few bundles of $20 bills, she would be ecstatic. Moving a pile of paint cans to find another hoard of hand lotion? Not so much.

The truth about life is that the unexpected happens. This kind of hoarding behavior is seen by the hoarder as a hedge against bad times. Unfortunately, it is just the opposite. If he had saved all that money in an interest-bearing savings account, it's possible that his widower might not need to be selling their house right now.

Even if you discount the possibility of a sudden death (car accident, heart attack, cancer), everyone can experience a sudden change in their situation. If you lose your job, or have to move across the country, or have a baby, or your house burns down, you would be sorry to have sunk all of your money in 50 boxes of Life cereal.

Liquidity - such as money in a savings account - can be used to buy groceries OR pay the rent. You never have to worry about how you're going to re-sell it. It's always there when you need it, and it's portable as all get-out.

Using coupons is great, and I wholeheartedly encourage it. But if you're stockpiling more than about six months' worth of something, you are making a big mistake.

FBI Document: Proof That UFOs Landed on Earth?

Not surprisingly, experts are denying that a 1950s memo confirming the landing of a UFO on earth is the real deal, claiming that it’s rubbish and a tactic used to push conspiracy theories. It’s definitely nothing new; the so-called “Hottel Memo” has been released to the public before, and has yet to be confirmed or proven by a reputable source.

Still, the fact that such a heated controversy surrounds the memo is enough fuel to fire the continued hope and faith that believers share—and even if it’s fake, it’s definitely not enough to disprove their theories.

New York Center for Extraterrestrial Research Michael Luckman says that these documents are definitely a step in the right direction, leading toward “full disclosure” of what the FBI really knows and perhaps what’s really going on at sites such as the one at Roswell, New Mexico. I, for one, would be happy enough knowing what’s going on at our local “mapmaking facility” that’s all fenced with electric wiring, myself… Every time we drive by, we try a new theory.

If these documents are indeed real, it’s doubtful that they will be proven any time soon. Still, with people like the Wikileaks folks running around, you never know.

Ghosts Towns Pop Up Around Florida, Elsewhere

As many politicians and economists might want us to believe that the economy is recovering, that the worst is over, and that we can all go back to endlessly spending money we don’t have, the truth isn’t so black and white in many towns across America. In fact, more ghost towns seem to be popping up like dandelions in the spring, making us wonder if they are somber harbingers of worse things to come

Several towns in Florida in particular have vacancy rates of 55%, 60%, or even higher. I can’t imagine that many people vacating the small town I live in, but I bet it’s a pretty scary sight. Osceola, Cape Coral, and Palm Coast have all experienced severe drops in residency numbers. Vacancy rates are high in many other cities across the country as well, from Lake County, Michigan, which is experiencing a vacancy rate of 66%, to Mono County, California, with a vacancy rate of 59%.

Having lived in a college town before, I know what it’s like to see people leave for the summer and return, and how empty everything feels for three months. But to witness all of your neighbors packing it up for good, never to return? I would image that to be a pretty desolate feeling.

Would You Buy Courtney Love's Old Clothes?

Everyone here in Seattle loves to hate Courtney Love. This is partially because she’s kind of nasty and partially because people in Seattle see Courtney Love as a Yoko Ono-type.  Some even blame Courtney Love for Kurt Cobain’s death.

Whatever the reason is that people in Seattle and elsewhere across the planet LOATHE Courtney Love, the clothing that she put on Ebay is not all that much more popular than she is. Perhaps people are worried about the high cost of laundering the clothes or are wondering what traces of coke or heroin can found be found on the clothes. (I'm guessing lots.) Or maybe they just don’t like her particular taste in clothing. (Look at the pics--this is entirely possible.) 

Take a look-see HERE and let me know what you think. Would you pay your hard-earned dollars for the right to wear Courtney Love’s clothes? Some of the clothes were worn by the star herself and other items of clothing just held a special (or not so-special) place in her heart. Of course, since many believe that she either has a heart of stone or has been on too many drugs throughout the years, that might not mean all that much.

Courtney Love might have a better chance of selling her clothing if she marketed it under the name of Kurt Cobain's associate--and no one would be any the wiser.

These shoes are going for around $268 at the time of writing and might have a better chance of selling than this Mrs. Santa dress which is entirely seasonal. 


Kurt Cobain: Murder or Suicide?

The dedication of a Kurt Cobain memorial in Aberdeen, WA this week has stirred up a lot of local conversations about the possible conspiracy surrounding Cobain's death. Speculating on whether or not Cobain was murdered practically counts as a hobby here in the Pacific Northwest, where a local public access talk show host was the first person to raise questions about the moments surrounding Cobain's death.

The Note
The speculation holds that Kurt was planning to quit the music business and leave his wife Courtney Love. She found his "Dear Jane" letter, and killed him instead - thus ensuring that she received the benefit of his estate. According to this theory, Courtney took Kurt's goodbye note and forged his handwriting to add a few more lines at the bottom, thus neatly converting it into a suicide note.

Undeniably, the last few lines of Kurt's final note look different from the rest of it. You don't have to be a handwriting expert to wonder if they were added on by someone else later. (Personally, I feel that this only adds to the veracity of the note. Why would Courtney forge his handwriting so BADLY? Surely one would at least try to make the lines match those above, at least a little bit.)

The Gun
Another item in the conspiracy is the shotgun which brought an end to Kurt's life. When it was dusted for prints, it had four sets - all of which were too smudged to be identified. However, there were NO prints on the trigger of the gun. Obviously if someone had shot Kurt, that person would either have worn gloves, or would have wiped their fingerprint off the trigger.

The Contract
When filmmaker Nick Broomfeld went digging through the Seattle music scene for his film Kurt & Courtney, Mentors frontman El Duce claimed that Courtney had offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt. El Duce later passed a polygraph test.

A few days after giving the interview where El Duce claimed to know who had killed Kurt, he was killed by a train after he passed out on the tracks. (Many have called his death "suspicious.")

The Heroin
Much of the evidence that was turned up in the years immediately following Kurt's death have proven inconclusive at best. For example, at the time, much was made of Kurt's blood heroin level. At 1.52 milligrams per liter, many people stated that Kurt could not possibly have been conscious at the time of his death. Conspiracy theorists believe that Kurt was injected with heroin in order to incapacitate him, so that he could be shot without a scuffle.

However, heroin tolerance levels vary widely. And if there is one thing everyone agrees on, it's that Kurt Cobain took a lot of heroin. In fact, many experts have come forward in the years since Kurt's death to testify that he could indeed have tolerated such a dose. Enough to line up the shotgun and pull the trigger, at any rate.

The Conclusion
Absent any new evidence in the decades to come, this is one mystery that will likely never be solved to everyone's satisfaction.

Photo credit: Flickr/Edi KUO

Atlantis Found?

When you talk about tsunamis today, there isn’t usually much mirth involved. There have been several devastating tsunamis in the past few years, leaving people homeless, hopeless, and ripping countries apart. We do know, however, that tsunamis have affected the earth long before we were able to hear about it, and it turns out that their massive power may extend to wiping out entire lands—potentially including legendary ones like Atlantis.

Researchers from the United States believe that they may have discovered the lost city, which may have been destroyed by a tsunami in Southern Spain. If so, the professor leading the team says that the disaster would have wiped out about 60 miles of land.

The sites that were discovered, which no one else has apparently ever discovered before, were found using deep-ground radar and other forms of technology.

I love the idea of Atlantis being a part of Spain. As tragic as the event would have been, if true, Spain is one of my favorite places, and a little more mystery makes it even more appealing. And if researchers are right in their theory that residents who fled the tsunami escaped to live in other parts of Southern Spain, imagine how cool it would be to discover that you are a descendent of an Atlantean!

More excavations are planned to discover whether or not this area is truly the remains of Atlantis, so hopefully we’ll be able to find out once and for all. The findings are also being aired on the show “Finding Atlantis,” which can be seen on the National Geographic Channel.

The Great Chain of Being

During the middle ages, the idea of a chain of existence reaching from the Earth to Heaven was popular. The lowest levels was the mineral realm followed, in ascending order, by plants, animals, humans, angelic beings and, finally, God. So we are suspended between Earth and Heaven, inanimate matter and God, himself. The picture above is one of many from Medieval times depicting the Great Chain of Being.

Peak Oil: Humanity's End?

Everyone knows that oil is made from dead dinosaurs (and the forests they grazed upon). But it's worth restating because the point is, they aren't making more dead dinosaurs. It shouldn't be a revolutionary theory that one day we will start to run out of oil. But it was for a lot of people, and the phrase "peak oil" has entered the popular lexicon with a clang of doom.

The strange thing is that the phrase "peak oil" has become conflated with "humanity degrades into a Road Warrior-style post-apocalyptic nightmare." With all the potential catastrophes humanity will undoubtedly face over the next few decades, a decline in oil production seems the least likely to create this scenario. And yet it is on the tip of every good survivalist's lips.

It's difficult to grasp how important oil is to our culture. Everything about our way of life depends on oil in one way or another. We use it to make plastics, and to ship those plastics to our stores, and to fuel the cars that drive us to the store to buy them. Oil is responsible for growing our food and delivering it to our table. There isn't a single thing you can point to in Western life that doesn't rely on oil.

And it's that very dependence which will save us.

No one wants to live a Road Warrior life. For one thing, there just aren't enough dune buggies to go around. For another thing, we are all pretty happy with our lives the way they are. We have strong motivation to keep it that way.

"Peak oil" means what it says. If you look at the curve of the original graph which coined the phrase, the peak production is where we are at now, more or less. The tail seems to drop off steeply - until you realize the time frame: 200 years.

I think most people would agree that, given 200 years to transition away from an oil-based economy, humanity will probably do fine.

Most survivalist fantasies involve a sudden end to the oil production. They conflate "peak oil" with "sucking the last drops." But this isn't about the actual volume of oil in the Earth. It's about how many billions of barrels of oil we draw out of it. Yes, that number will decline. But it's not like three years from now the Earth will suddenly run dry (forcing us all into our dune buggies wearing our best metal goalie's masks).

We already have several pretty good alternatives to oil. We just aren't motivated enough to use them. But as oil prices steadily rise, expect to see an increase in the deployment of solar, wind, tidal, and nuclear power. Not that these things don't come with their own difficulties (Fukushima, et al).

Just look around at your neighborhood, at all the roofs of all the houses that don't have solar panels. If you want to get the drop, look into installing solar at your home now, because prices for installation (not to mention the raw materials for the panels) will probably rise.

But post-apocalyptic nightmare? Unlikely.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

A Real Poltergeist Caught On Video?

Family 'film poltergeist in the bedroom'?

Now I remember that line from Shakespeare -- "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy ..."

This may be true if ones philosophy is science. Science exists to explain, and what it can't explain, there are some -- well, many, bad students of science who will swear to High Heaven that what they can't explain can not exist.

In Shakespeare's day, people thought ghosts were real, as real as a favorite uncle, who instead of going off to China somewhere and never returning or writing, passed over on the other side, and was a better relative than one who went off to China, because he returned and kept returning. Well, really he never left. There are a few -- well some, people who think that ghosts are with us, or with them, today.

A family from Coventry, England, have supposedly filmed what they claim is a ghost haunting their home. See the video.

Many -- well, most, people who watch this video will dismiss it as a dumb fake, and say that they have seen better tricks on TV. I don't know if what's happening in this video is legit. I don't know whether the door opened by itself and the chair was moved by an unseen, supernatural force.

I try to keep an open mind about everything, and have had some unexplained personal experiences with cold rooms and have sensed the presences of a person or two who have checked out of life. Yes, I'm being legit.

I haven't had a ghost in my house to my knowledge. I don't think I would complain if one came in now and then, and moved the sofa, so I could sweep and vacuum behind it. I could use some help sliding the heavy appliances. I haven't swept behind the refrigerator in years.

Worst UFO Video

UFO 'flying over Naples' ?

ITN has a video on the net. A video that looks to me to be the worst video of a supposed UFO that I have ever seen, and I've seen many videos of supposed, and what looks like unexplained, UFOs.

ITN is a United Kingdom news channel, and the footage of an erratic, jittery light over Naples, Italy, which it has posted on the net, footage that the ITN news announcer claims is of an orbiting light, that has led to speculation about extraterrestrial activity over Italy, is pathetic. The footage is pathetic. The claim is pathetic.

I wonder who put ITN up to this? It is two days before April Fools day. Maybe somebody forgot today's date and put this blurry thing out on the net early? The thing looks like something a mischievous middle school kid did using photo shop. It looks so fake that funny is falling off of it.

I do think that there is a strong possibility of intelligent alien life, and there is a possibility of the existence of alien travelers whom are capable of flying through space, and buzzing pass us, and for no other reason than because they can.

But please ITN! This is the 21st century and people are watching each other like never before. Camera are everywhere, taking pictures of everything. So why can't we get better pictures of UFOs? This blurry, jittery, jerky camera stuff is ridiculous. A few close ups, please, with steady cams?

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