Storytelling

A good storyteller is hard to find.

This has been true historically, but recent years have seen an even greater retraction of good storytelling.

The good news about a LCL (low cash lifestyle) is it provides good odds to find and experience a new story. The common elements of communal living, shit-tastic jobs, public transportation, nakedness, alcoholism, poverty, and proximity to the deranged generates a plentiful bounty of storymaking opportunities.

We are trying in our own little way to keep this storytelling tradition alive. I have a few personal stories I regularly drop that can keep a party alive: Old Charles, Schwarzenegger Kid, Manimal and the Gay Bar... the list goes on!

Now, about the stories. A good story usually entails a few common elements. They often include a crazy person, or some nakedness/dicks (as in dangly daddy parts). Usually there is a surprised person/victim, along with the use of drugs and alcohol. The really good ones include Arnold Schwarzenegger and accidental homoeroticism. They almost always embody something gross, and they generally embrace colorful descriptions.

To bring these concepts home, a short, 4 paragraph story entailing some of the above noted elements.

Last week (this was mid-December), myself and my heterosexual male life partner Brian went to Barbara Lee's for a late dinner. Barbara Lee's is a great little grease emporium dating to the 1890s. It's the place to go to get your face caved in, whether by the bacon or by the elbows of some drunk patrons. I mean, the place is old. The once-white walls are darkened by years of a grease and smoke that no paint can contain. The staff of ex-strippers and trailer dwellers give prompt service with a smile, albeit a toothless one. I ordered a "Mexican" breakfast, and Brian got the loaded omelet (the cook laughed with glee!). This is the kind of meal that would make Homer Simpson blush.

After gorging ourselves, we began to make our way back to Brian's place (we had carpooled). It was very cold and dark out; the roads had begun to ice over again. It resembled a painting of early industrial revolution London. For reaons lost to myself, I chose a route through our downtown. As we headed south on 1st street, we had to take a left due to a water-main break.

As we took the detour turn at a cautious five miles per hour, my headlights lit up Kentucky street. It was a dark street; the buildings, cars, and road all took the same dirty gray-brown hue. Everything was that color, with the exception of the dude poppin' a squat next to the road.

You know that, if you are fair skinned, your ass is going to be pretty white. In the wintertime, it somehow becomes reflective. So, there was myself and Brian, having just enjoyed a meal, seeing a homeless dude drop the deuce on the sidewalk. He was there, just a grinning, squeezing one out. There was something so shocking in seeing that bright, white, mysteriously hairless ass squatting on the side of the road. It was horrific!

Wasn't that just delightful?!?

You can expect additional entertaining and enlightening stories to be posted in due time.

Cheers!

Philosophy, Sans Pants

Allow me to reflect on the existence of this fine institution we call the Low Cash Lifestyle blog. We are here to appreciate that which has merit and yet goes unappreciated. J.S. Mill, the utilitarian philosopher who founded some of the first utopian socialist communities, stated that you cannot judge one pleasure against another until you have first known them both. To this end, we preach the Low Cost Lifestyle. Why? Because there is a whole world of people who have never engaged in its many diversions, and another world which knows nothing else and therefore makes no comparison.

We, my friends, have known both. The high and the low, the bottom shelf and the top. I have seen both Italian opera and Figure-8 School Bus Racing in person, and enjoyed both (although I'll give the edge to the school buses for knowing when enough was enough). I have translated French literature and dug ditches in the rain.

I have seen the grass on both sides of the fence, and lemme tell you, it needs cutting.

On that note, fellow pursuers of free fun, I shall write about the low-cost pleasures of life while indulging in one: I am not wearing pants.

Not only am I not wearing pants, but I am drinking. Whiskey, to be precise; a simple shot-and-a-half on the rocks to end a day of exceptional productivity in the world of mind-numbing data entry. At this point, the alcohol may actually sharpen my faculties rather than dull them.

Why no pants? Remove your own and you'll understand. I am hardly a master of pantslessness, but I have studied under the greatest: my younger brother. He has not worn pants voluntarily in his 20 years on this planet. Recently I visited our parents' house, and was standing in the kitchen talking when suddenly I caught a glimpse of boxer shorts.

"Dude, you don't even live here anymore!" I exclaimed. He just shrugged. My brother treats pants-wearing as a necessary evil, similar to paying taxes in that he only does it under threat of arrest. In his eyes, my Levi's (eight bucks from a secondhand, LCLers, have no fear) were the equivalent of filling out a 1040 for fun.

There's something to be said for it. Pants are constraining. Sure, you're out there right now thinking, "Oh, I love these pants!" Take 'em off. Trust me. You'll feel better. Too cold? Get under a blanket, turn on a space heater. Deal. After all, we wear clothes for three reasons: to protect ourselves from unpleasant temperatures, to likewise guard against light impacts and scratches, and finally to avoid social scorn. Inside your house, you've got heat (unless you're really serious about the low-cost thing), you're not doing any heavy-lifting, and freedom from social mores. So take your pants off.

(I recommend the above paragraph not be used as a pickup line.)

With that koan to ponder, the Pantless Whiskey Guru leaves you for the evening.

Projects

So... You should like projects.

Why should you like projects?  Because I like projects, that's why!

That and this is one of the few venues I have where I can issue edicts regarding lifestyle choices.

Projects are fan-tab-u-lus.  There are many projects that occupy the LCL (low cash lifestyle).  They keep you busy, and if you pick the right projects, they can help you reach that renaissance man ideal.  Far better than sitting around the house masturbating perpetually (albeit, a legitimate LCL pastime).

A few of my projects, past and present:
-learning how to play the drums.
-total house remodel... 3 times now...
-learning a new language.  Not that I have learned englishes good.
-solving water treatment issues facing the worlds poor in resourceless areas.
-non-working chainsaw collection.
-various get-rich-quick schemes.
-Motorcycle rebuild and repair.  I have a perpetually broken 1977 KZ1000 doomsday device I call the green machine that I am constantly tinkering with.  Its had more loose screws than a 50 year old prostitute.

As I have warned before, this is my bag.  After a day full of menial challenges, few things clear my head quite like getting buzzed from carb-cleaner fumes.  There is just something rejuvenating in turning screws or mutilating a foreign language.

On that note, I'm off to the garage to pretend I am a mechanic.

Till next time, or as they say in Mexico, el bano esta tapado!

Food is fud

Other than the sense of dread of knowing how you're ever going to make it to the next check (You usually do. Or worse case scenario your friends buy your beer.) is how terrible the state of affairs that is known as sustenance becomes.

One day you're dining on steak tartare, wining and dining women, driving fast cars and committing espionage (ok, really you're just on a bad date watching Quantum of Solace) and the next thing you know it's Taco Bell everyday. And you are very single.

Whatever your circumstances are you have now entered the dreaded state of "I AM HUNGRY AND ALL I HAVE IS CHEAP BEER."

Not that there was ever a problem with cheap beer, but breakfast with Colt45 is far more likely to toss you in the clink than help you get that promotion.

Now, the best case scenario is you have friends that will come over and everybody chips in for a delicious home-cooked meal. But how do you make it through the rest of the week, if you're even that lucky?

Time to go to the grocery store.

Forget having a healthy diet, just try to survive your meager means. In this case it might mean an Economy 100pk of ramen.

But if you have a sort of imagination, then actually this isn’t the WORST thing in the world. Or at least the most boring thing in the world. I was actually in the presence of someone who claimed that you can’t really do much with ramen. That kind of uninventive thought process is what’s flushing this country down the toilet (this is not what is flushing the country down the toilet.)

Sure if you cook ramen as is stated on the package, you’d probably kill yourself before the weekend. It only takes the merest of alterations to the... let’s just try to imagine that ramen isn’t the ultimate in design and function. That ramen can actually be... improved.. I know, I know. I’ll be here, while you try to catch your breath as your entire world view has been shattered.

To make up for this, here’s the world’s easiest alteration to regular package of ramen Noodles. 2nd, if you count simply not cooking the ramen at all and eating it dry with a light salting of the Flavor Packet^tm.

Boil Ramen.

Throw Flavor Packet^tm behind you into the trash can in some sort of sweet one shot basketball move.

Drain.

Pour in a can of Chilli into saucepan.

Add in the Ramen.

Behold.

For a mere $2 you have something more satisfying than a $6 meal at Taco Bell. You’ve not only fulfilled a sense of kitchen mastery, but you’ll be able to look yourself in the eye. Also the more you eat the more you toot.

So the next time someone says you can’t really do much with ramen, look them dead square in the eyes with a steely gaze and say “I can do at least this one thing.” Then, if party appropriate, Tiger Uppercut that bitch.

Human Interaction

One of the pro-cons of the Low Cash Lifestyle (LCL) is that you don't get to aquire too many tech gadgets.

This is caused by a combination of low discretionary funds, and an involved cost-benefit evaluation (I could have an ipod touch for $260, or I could have 17 fifths of Old Forester Sig. Is this even a question?)

Now, I am not saying it is a gadget free lifestyle; rather, the LCL leads to having greater selection/specificity in your gadgets.

Myself? I have a venerable arsenal of gadgets. However, most of these gadgets are oddball devices for home or vehicle repair. Easy to justify using that there cost-benefit whooder-dooder.

There is, however, a general shortage of tech gadgets amongst the LCL-yonaires. (Most likely caused by a cost-benefit analysis similar to the one provided above)

While a LCL-er generally lacks multiple tech devices (and in turn lacks some of their functionality), we learn to make up for it. We can read those old relics, maps. We have to ponder the universe without the rapid research abilities of google and wikipedia. We remember how to use a bookmark and how to troubleshoot a cd-player. Most importantly, we learn to interact with people... real flesh and blood people.

This last point was the real impetus for this posting. I feel that we as a culture are losing the skills of direct human interaction and replacing it with interaction with devices.

Last night I was out with some co-workers, and we ended up at a local restaurant. A cop, a firefighter, a chemist, and a drywaller oddly enough. As soon as we sat down, two of these people lost themselves into their smartphones, playing menial games or reading uninteresting blogs such as this one. The other two carried on a conversation.

The two talkers discussed things ranging from work to politics to economy, and had a very enlightening, informative, and enjoyable conversation.

Then they tried to bring one of the other guys into the conversation.
"How you doing Jim?"
"I'm OK..."
"Uk... ok... cool... So what do you do?"
"I don't really do anything. I just hang around the (professional facility) all day..."
"...So the only thing you do all day is hang around the (professional facility).... nothing else?"
"yep."
"Do you have any hobbies?"
"I locked up my four-wheeler the other day."
"That sucks!"
"Its ok. I was going to bore it out anyway"
"where were you four wheeling?
"just around. I am pretty boring" <-that is a god damned quote!!!

I don't know if you see it, but I do. This guy is defined by his job and his gadget. He has nothing to say, add, interject, do, etc. Just another god-damned-getting-in-the-way-looking-at-the-top-of-buildings-breathing-my-air-blocking-the-damn-sidewalk-MOVE-ON-mother-f%^*@#! To further paraphrase Bill Burr, "Jim" is another guy that shits into a river every morning, drives a big truck, and makes nothing. He is an environmental disaster.

On a similar note, at a recent party I complimented a lady on her attire, to which she replied with a blank stare. She further enlightened the evening by being quiet, retreating into her tech devices, and sitting in a corner. This more and more seems to be the rule as opposed to the exception.

This is not how people are supposed to interact, especially at a party! Don't fall into this trap! Don't be a painful bore! Interact with your fellow humans! I am not a reptilian! I am not hitting on you! It wasn't me that flashed you at the peanut stand in pic-pac!! That was Nemo!

Now, admittedly, I can't entirely blame tech devices for this (the interaction thing. not the flashing thing). It is very possible that boring people flock to tech devices to make up for their utter lack of imagination or to avoid developing any degree of functionality in a social setting.

I'm just saying turn them the fuck off at the dinner table.

Balanced Sleaze: A Counterpoint to the Preceding Arguments

My colleague and I differ on this particular issue. The strip club has never held any real attraction for me. My argument essentially boils down to this: I have seen nude women before, and while they can be quite a sight to behold, the idea of beholding them with a group of depressed and/or desperate strangers makes me want to slink toward the exits before I even get inside. That, and the fact that my current lady would drag me out to the pavement and turn me into beef jerky with a hammer if she ever found me in one. Which is part of why I like her, by the way.

That being said, sleaze has a value. What is it? I consider myself a strict traditionalist on the subject of vice, in that I prefer the traditional and time-honored vices: whiskey, general-ruckus-raising, and the company of hammer-wielding women. For a Christmas party I recently discovered something called Chatham Artillery Punch, a recipe dating to the 19th century that was apparently concocted by some dangerous Georgian artillerymen to spice up the banality of playing with explosives. It is essentially three bottles of hard liquor poured into two bottles of sparkling wine and then seasoned with a pound of sugar and all the lemon juice in the house. While not "cheap" in the true LCL sense, I was able to keep a houseful of veteran drinkers sated for approximately eight hours with one bowl of the stuff. It is roughly 60 proof, which sounds low until you consider the fact that people are drinking it in SOLO cups.

But back to sleaze. Cheap is good. That's the whole point of this blog. My colleague is right about the "middle path" approach: take, for example, Beam's Eight Star, which is the meth-head stripper of bourbons, so low in quality that it cannot legally be called by that name. I do not drink Eight Star, not because I consider myself above its furniture-polish flavor but because the additional fifty-nine cents buys me an equal volume of Old Crow and the vast improvement is absolutely worth it. If it were a dollar a fifth you might find me singing its praises. Everything, even in LCL, is a trade-off. Were the meth-head strippers paying me to watch them, I might reconsider.

So what sleaze is acceptable, then? Allow me to paint a picture of my perfect personal blend:

I'm in a room at a party. There's a dirty wood floor or some peeling linoleum or something equally hideous, surrounded by things that are not quite old enough to have come back in style. The table leans to one side because it's got a busted leg and no one remembers why. The only light is a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling, but the room is crowded as hell and loud as conversations fight for dominance. Sitting at the table, I've got a glass of Crow in one hand and my lovely lady sitting on my right knee, drunk and talking to my neck. We're playing Omaha High with a quarter buy-in and my colleague across the table is laughing because I'm losing so I flick a quarter at him that bounces off and hits an empty glass in the sink. Downstairs there's a riot of music so loud it blends together into an indiscriminate raucous mess, some crappy band beating their instruments with shovels. About this time an old friend of mine stumbles in in a ratty green dress, throws open the fridge door and demands to know where all the beer went, when some no-name crasher tells her he shot-gunned it she grabs a spent can from the countertop and throws it at him, my colleague lights up a cigarette and deals another round, and my lady bites my ear and says something unrepeatable.

Just my personal unwashed heaven.

Sleaze

Another way one could call this blog is a blog of the middle path.  A LCL (low cash lifestyle) forces one to appreciate, if not enjoy, the lesser things in life.  The value macrobrews, store brand snacks, and bottom shelf liquors fill and educate their palate.  And it is through this appreciation of these lesser things in life that one can truly enjoy the greater things in life. Further, to survive or even thrive in a LCL, you must occasionally splurge on the nicer things! The microbrews, five course meals, and more bottom shelf liquor.  All things are good in moderation.

Now, the idea expansion I am going to present here will be my most likely post to fall on deaf ears.  A little sleaze is good for the soul.

I know what your thinking.  I have jumped the shark.  You have just sighed and began rubbing your eyes in disbelief.  Well, hear me out!

Last night was the annual evening of sleaze I have enjoyed since I turned 21.  It is marked by doing a gauntlet of visiting multiple strip clubs in a single evening with like minded individuals.  And there is something profoundly enjoyable about it.  Part of it is seeing the occasional pretty lady, and part of it is the culture of sleaze that surrounds it: the bad drinks, shadowy figures, and neon lights.

We started out by going to some of the lesser local institutions, and the views were admittedly pretty grim.  This is the kind of place where the garbage truck driver doesn't take off his safety vest, glowing like an alien being under the black-lights, in-case an errant tow-truck finds its way inside.  Not to venture too deep into the inappropriate and blush-making comments, but there is something life-affirming in seeing or being approached by a horrifically unattractive dancer.  I'm talking about your mom's ugly sister with the meth hobby.  I was going to initially describe the emotional response as that endorphin release you have after eating some thai-hot curry, but really, this is more like a running-of-the-bulls endorphin release.  You feel the sweat on your brow and a tightening in your stomach as your reptilian brain decides between fight, flight, and playing dead.  This is followed by the huge sense of relief, and dare I say triumph, of leaving the bar unscathed (with the exception of the mental scaring that may wake you for years to come).

Then you go to the nicer, yet still unclassy, destinations with embarrassing or ironic names like "Bottoms Up" or  "The Classy Lady."  Here the ladies ARE nicer, but the locations are darker and filled with unsavory characters.  Women of all types dance in these places; white women, women of color, mixed girls, skinny, big, everything!  Some of the girls will admittedly set your heart aflutter, while others have you wondering how well triclosan works, and if your detergent has an anti-microbial agent in it.  Here, you will see pole tricks and a certain amount of a special sleaziness.  It is this special sleaziness that I find so enthralling.  Unlike the previously mentioned locations, patrons are not drowning in their beers.  Here, an estranged husband spends his children's inheritance on a girl with track-marks, all while wearing a frown on his face.  I hold dear a memory of a man in a wheelchair racing between an ATM and a private dance booth.  A girl yells from the stage to the bar "Mom!  I'm done."  Or, in another memory, a dancer hollers from the stage to the bar that she is getting tired.  The other dancer/barkeeper replies "wait a minute, I gotta piss!", jumps over the bar, runs to the bathroom, and then jumps onstage.

Now, I do want to emphasize the earlier statement of "all things are good in moderation."  I always feel pretty alive the day after this ritual, but doing this more than annually would quickly wear on my soul.  It is easy to see, just by looking around, the wear and tear these places can have on an individual.

Finally, you go to the nice places.  In the nice places, the girls are pretty, and the facilities are nicer, but it is lacking that certain sleaziness.  All the girls fit the same European mold of fake blonds with athletic builds, with an occasional token Asian.  For lack of a better term, there is no flavor!  As young professionals fill the chairs around you, you realize you'd rather be back in the sleazy places.  You'd rather be in the places without a bathroom attendant, drinking beer out of bottles because you know the taps are foul.

My favorite part of the LCL is having that realization.  Sometimes the best really isn't the best.  The dumps at the beginning and the classy places at the end lead you to that hallowed middle ground.  I found that I'd rather be at the sleazy places.

It is this finding that is so important to the LCL. 

So, I am saying to you faint of heart, pick up some store brand snacks and some crap macrobrews, and start finding your place.  I'll be at the laundry mat.

Balance

This Monday was the last day of my undergraduate degree.  You know how I celebrated ending years of formal education?  I picked up a hammer and helped out a behind schedule contractor friend.

There is something profoundly refreshing in doing something different.  More-so, it is important for me to remain in touch with both parts of my being.

A strange theme that often consumes the LCL (Low Cash Lifestyle) is a duality of lifestyles.  People rocking the LCL, at least those who are in the LCL by default, generally fall into three categories: students or scholars, laborers in the trades or food service, or those disengaged individuals trying to get back into one of those two categories.

The issue at hand with this duality of lifestyles, is that living one tends to exclude you from the other.  And there is something poisonous to the soul in being only a laborer or only a scholar.  We have all seen it before...  A visit to a lower-middle class gas station will give you a steady flow of laborers of all types: framers, drywallers, painters, line cooks, and fry cooks, all down on their luck.  Terrible examples of scholars gone wrong abound: anyone who has had to deal with an American English teacher can attest to that.

The real secret here, for me, is to not get stuck in one of these ruts.  Its not hard; I just remind myself of both sides of this coin.  I might install a piano hinge on a built-in storage bench after reading about proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (if you want some butt hurt, try a physical chemistry text).  It fulfills my puritan work ethic along with my need to try to understand the universe.

But that's my bag.

Snow

Snow is your friend.

This may be hard to swallow at seven A.M. when you're scraping the windshield with a credit card, but it's undeniably true. As I watch the first true snow of the winter drift down onto the grass, I'm already thinking about all that wonderful free fun, just falling from the heavens.

(Product Placement! Even you, Ms. or Mr. Low Cash, can get a scraper for under three bucks! Then you can scrape with gloves on! You'll want to scrape all the time! Scrape friends, neighbors, household pets! Scraper: cheaper than dropping your credit card into the storm drain because your fingers went numb.)

For starters, snow gives you a great excuse to do NOTHING, which is better than sex a lot of the time. And that's not meant to denigrate sex (another venerable low cash pastime). When it's 70 out and the sky is Disney blue, everyone thinks you're some kind of sick puppy if you choose not to finish a triathlon, but when it snows (at least in the temperate zones) it suddenly becomes acceptable to sit inside and drink hot things and watch TV that appeals primarily to the reptilian part of your brain.

But there's so much more than brain-stem TV. You can go outside. Just going for a walk is more pleasant when there's snow on the ground. Yes, I know, it's cold.... but it would be cold if the concrete was bare, too, and uglier. With snow, it somehow magically feels safe to walk to the Stop 'n' Rob and buy a 40 because everyone is either in some kind of jolly Santa Claus mood or at home, shivering. Especially new-fallen snow. Nobody ever gets robbed when snow is falling, unless you're in a select sub-genre of Mafia movies or Russian. You can look your fellow man confidently in the eye and share that knowing glance that says "DAMN ITS COLD". Indirectly, the chill warms your heart.

Now, in all likelihood we won't get enough tonight, but there's all kinds of low-cash snow sports. Sledding is first among them. The best part about sledding is that you don't need a sled. You just need a THING. Last year I had a great deal of success with some Lexan sheeting a friend "liberated" from a construction site. While it was certainly a hit, our thunder was stolen on the main hill in town by a dynamic duo who had brought along the most ancient non-sled of all: the car hood. Any car hood will do, although it's best to pick one of the classic block-long slabs of Detroit Iron - the hoods alone are the size of picnic tables, and weigh something like fifty pounds. That's fifty extra pounds of force plowing you into that delicious crash at the bottom of the hill. I can almost taste the blood on my lower lip...

Soon. Soon.