Welcome new user

June 29, 2010 1:53 PM

savingadvice is a new user who showed up in response to Eating Well On $1 A Day. That's five days worth of food, folks.
posted by fixedgear to MetaFilter-Related at 1:53 PM (39 comments total)

BAN HIM!!

Oh, wait. I spoke too soon.
posted by Floydd at 2:04 PM on June 29, 2010

And he provided clarification on misconceptions, after reading all the comments in the thread. Cheers, and welcome to MetaFilter!
posted by filthy light thief at 2:05 PM on June 29, 2010

So far, every single person who's contributed to this MeTa thread has a handle that begins with the letter F.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:09 PM on June 29, 2010 [3 favorites]

alphabet username game?
posted by gman at 2:10 PM on June 29, 2010

No
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:11 PM on June 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

c-c-c-c-c-COMBO BREAKER!

Welcome to MeFi, savingadvice. Good work, much appreciated, and look forward to having you around.
posted by carsonb at 2:12 PM on June 29, 2010

oh, well that backfired.
posted by carsonb at 2:18 PM on June 29, 2010 [6 favorites]

Thanks for the welcome. Not sure how much help I have been, but enjoying finding my way around
posted by savingadvice at 2:20 PM on June 29, 2010

Yes but for being civil and sensible he got six dollars off, so his membership was free and he was able to pick up some filet mignon for a net total of twelve cents.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 2:20 PM on June 29, 2010 [40 favorites]

savingadvice, if all you're future comments are as relavent as the ones you provided today, you'll fit in fine around here.
posted by tayknight at 2:28 PM on June 29, 2010

Fuck.
posted by fourcheesemac at 2:29 PM on June 29, 2010

I did a post and the person I posted about signed up. That's a first for me.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:34 PM on June 29, 2010

And then you crashed her site, and her dreams.

Well, maybe just her site.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:39 PM on June 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

SELF LINK!!! BAN BAN BAN
posted by doublehappy at 2:51 PM on June 29, 2010

Most depressing post in weeks. I went from being proud of saving around 50% on my bill to thinking I was ripping myself off. If we take out the beer from the equation, I still only save about 60%.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 2:59 PM on June 29, 2010

I decided to go grocery shopping after my wife saw some minute maid juice boxes in a circular on special at target stores .. She did a search for printable coupons online ,and to my surprise she found some minute maid coupons for target stores. She printed ten coupons and got ten boxes of minute maid practically free ... (lol) . Why can't us men think of these things ? Lol
posted by porn in the woods at 3:01 PM on June 29, 2010 [5 favorites]

Because you're too busy lolling about?
posted by heyho at 3:02 PM on June 29, 2010 [12 favorites]

I'd read through a bunch of his postings a week ago - I was really pleased to see the posting here, and even happier to see him join up and participate.
posted by clicking the 'Post Comment' button at 3:06 PM on June 29, 2010

Savingadvice: Looks like we are neighbors and shop at the same safeway.

I live a mile away, near the high school
posted by special-k at 3:08 PM on June 29, 2010

Thanks for your saving advice, savingadvice. I've been clipping coupons for over 30 years but rarely make use of internet coupons. I may have to rethink that strategy. Welcome to Metafilter!
posted by Lynsey at 3:10 PM on June 29, 2010

savingadvice is my new hero.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:49 PM on June 29, 2010

Its always interesting to see someone who knows what they're talking about join a thread and put so many misconceptions to rest. Almost every one of his comments was correcting an assumption! Makes you wonder about all the rest of the threads that don't get fact checked.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 8:03 PM on June 29, 2010 [4 favorites]

Whoah. I just found out that
a.) Those red and white coupons that they print at checkout are called Catalina coupons.
b.) You can find out beforehand when those coupons print out!

I just farted in -- well, gassines, but also learning.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:45 PM on June 29, 2010

My handle begins with an invisible, silent "F."
posted by oddman at 9:10 PM on June 29, 2010

posted by clicking the 'Post Comment' button at 3:06 PM on June 29 [+] [!]

That username is so clever, it burns.
posted by idiopath at 10:05 PM on June 29, 2010 [18 favorites]

Man that thread is depressing. Not the coupon stuff. The people posting things like "Abusing the corporate system is a good thing" or "There's no shame whatsoever in working over the system. ". When did so many people turn in to 15 year olds who just listened to Rage Against the Machine for the first time? Jesus, you're not Nelson Mandela because you used 5 coupons when they say limit 1 per customer and you're not MLK because you download Arcade Swim off Pirate Bay. Grow up!
posted by Justinian at 11:20 PM on June 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Justinian:
Corporations pile indignities on everyday people every day. Corporations are designed to be narrowly self-serving and greedy entities, maximizing profit first and fuck all else. People are treated well only to the extent that profits will be improved; given a tradeoff between capital and humans, the corporation will choose the capital every time. We have an intricate system of laws in place to force corporations to not screw people over too badly, be they consumers or workers, because that is exactly what businesses did before the existence of these laws. While we're growing up, maybe you should go back and read the Jungle.

The second part of one of the comments you quote is important: It's ok to work over the system because the system works us over, constantly and without remorse. This is the grocery store offering you 'deals' on preservative-soaked wheat-balls that will go into the dumpster if someone doesn't buy them in two days. This is ending every price in .99, so that it looks as though it costs one (or one hundred or one thousand) dollars less. This is the credit card companies giving away free money along with a card that will sink you into years of debt. This is every real estate company in the country selling houses to people who can't afford them in order to maximize their profit sheets, trying to sell the debt before the market comes crashing down. This is telling a machine that we want to talk to a person now. This is the endless bleating of a hold signal while we wait to get our answers.

I find it entirely unsurprising that people are happy to extend a trifling middle finger to entities that view them as nothing but a wallet attached to an open, hungry mouth.
posted by kaibutsu at 3:03 AM on June 30, 2010 [16 favorites]

When I was a student it was all manifestos and molotov cocktails. If I were my younger self I'd be inclined to make some sort of dismissive remark about 'fucking coupon anarchists'.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 4:52 AM on June 30, 2010 [2 favorites]

The people posting things like "Abusing the corporate system is a good thing" or "There's no shame whatsoever in working over the system. ". When did so many people turn in to 15 year olds who just listened to Rage Against the Machine for the first time?

I would say, there's no shame in following the letter of the rules the corporations set up, even if you are doing so in a way that the corporation may not have intended when it set up those rules. In all but the most informal and congenial situations in life, you'll be held to the letter, not the spirit, of laws and rules, and it's fair to hold others to the same standard. (And I consider this a feature, not a bug, of modern society. To adopt any other standard would be to expect us to discern the intentions of people/organizations we barely know. To put it another way, he is technically correct—the best kind of correct.)
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:06 AM on June 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

i'm finding it hard to differentiate between human behavior & corporate behavior in this:

Corporations are designed to be narrowly self-serving and greedy entities, maximizing profit first and fuck all else.

especially when you seem to be advocating 'narrowly self-serving and greedy' behavior in humans as a justification of 'narrowly self-serving and greedy' behavior in corporations.
posted by msconduct at 8:59 AM on June 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

I find it entirely unsurprising that people are happy to extend a trifling middle finger to entities that view them as nothing but a wallet attached to an open, hungry mouth.

Commerce in and of itself has no morality. Never has, never will. If I (or those I love) were going hungry, I'd steal in a second. It's a position I believe most of us share deep down inside and, as such, it serves as corrective to THE SYSTEM. That is, absurd and arbitrary as it is, it never gets that absurd and arbitrary. Or when it does, you get chaos, insurrection, guillotines for the aristocracy, a lose-lose all around.

As for coupons, I remain firmly in the life's-too-short crowd and quietly HATE the person in line in front of me at the grocery store when he/she pulls one out. Not just because they're wasting my time but because they're playing to a SYSTEM that does, deep down inside, want to eat them.
posted by philip-random at 9:16 AM on June 30, 2010

...because they're playing to a SYSTEM that does, deep down inside, want to eat them.

While you, by standing in that same line, are doing....uhm, what noble thing, exactly?
posted by Floydd at 9:30 AM on June 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

While you, by standing in that same line, are doing....uhm, what noble thing, exactly?

Trying to get out of the damned store as fast as I can.
posted by philip-random at 10:34 AM on June 30, 2010

I love it when the guy from the link shows up, and this is one of the better instances of that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:10 PM on June 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

Me too. We should have a gold star next to FPPs that feature The Guy From The Link. And little gold hammers where there used to be an FPP posted by TGFTL.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:51 PM on June 30, 2010 [2 favorites]

This was one of the better ones, that's for sure. He responded to every comment and never rose to any bait. Good on ya!
posted by fixedgear at 12:59 PM on June 30, 2010

The second part of one of the comments you quote is important: It's ok to work over the system because the system works us over, constantly and without remorse.

The means matter. I'd prefer to circumnavigate the system entirely. I don't want your preservative-drenched wheat balls even if they're free, because free crap is still crap. I'd rather spend that coupon-juggling energy growing tomatoes and eggplant and greens and raspberries and grapes and plums and oranges in my back yard, going to the farmer's market, eating from CSA boxes, and showing up to community potlucks.
posted by aniola at 11:52 AM on July 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

Great! I'll live in a city.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:45 PM on July 2, 2010

Before I lived in a house that had a backyard in this city, I used a community garden plot. There's a lot of information on urban gardening. I know of a nice garden grown on an unused patch of city property on the side of a road that is otherwise ugly. I know of another garden that is being grown on a roof on campus. There are places to grow things even in densely-populated cities. Many cities have CSA box options available.

There are certainly food deserts and reasons not to grow your own produce or buy directly from a farm, but living in a city does not automatically preclude access to real food. There's also the option of creating the access to real food if there's none available in your neck of the city.
posted by aniola at 3:17 PM on July 2, 2010