It is a good idea to get in a nice workout prior to the meal as well. This is a great way to get your metabolism running at full speed and burn off some calories that you'll surely be adding right back up. I recommend a large amount of cardio exercise preferably running, biking or swimming....

It is acceptable to go around slow diners as long as there is room on the other side and you will not be needing to reach back towards the skipped individual. A powerful technique here can be the "accidental" elbow bump in order to encourage them to move on. It is also important to steel yourself from others use of this maneuver....

I try to allot a large portion of my meal to high cost items, while sampling things that look tasty and also making sure that I get to those items that I know and love....

You'll want to be sure that you have to further commitments for at least 3 hours and preferably the remainder of the day....

Are you an all you can eat aficionado? What tactics and etiquettes do you follow to get the most out of your smorgasboard?

The All-Inclusive All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Guide [Eating The Road] (Photo: Bryan Maleszyk)

It's a parody of personal finance books, and full of all sorts of naughty chicanery that is probably best left laughed about rather than actually done. But perhaps you can get some mileage out of this comedic take on slashing your grocery bills through a mix of extreme price-matching and checkout counter bum-rushing:

Nearly every supermarket nowadays runs a price-matching program meant to satisfy customers' nagging suspicion that they're charging more than the competition for a lot of their stuff. The policy is present more as a security blanket than anything else, set in place by corporate bigwigs who figure not enough customers will actually go through the labor-intensive process to save a few cents off their pinto beans and slash into their stores' profit margins.

This way of thinking makes a lot of sense. To make sure you're saving the maximum amount, you need to jot down an ironclad shopping list, obsessively scan every newspaper ad, and then set up a spreadsheet that helps you annotate the ads with the pertinent low prices at each store. Do all that, and you're rewarded with the opportunity to make everyone standing in line behind you want to shoot you in the back of the head because you're holding things up by making the cashier verify each price.

But, there is another way: a way that skips several of the steps and saves you more money than even the most anal-retentive, price-match maven.

Here's what you'll need: a stack of sticky notes, a pen, and an armful of glossy grocery store ads. Lug all that into the shopping cart and you're in business. Affix one of your Post-its to every non-store-brand item you come across, then name your own price, making sure to deduct a substantial but not-quite-insane amount from the price tag. You use the pen to jot down the "price-matched" figure you're willing to pay for each item, and you can even go the extra mile for feigned authenticity by adding in a random competing store name to each sticky note.

As you approach the front of the checkout line, the checkout lady will immediately attempt to head out on break. But she'll warm to you once she sees how organized you are, and will happily tap your savings into the register. In most cases, the checkout clerk will be so confounded with the hassle she'll approve of all your prices just to keep the line moving.

Only the most bored or crazy checkout folk will sort through that unwieldy stack of ads to verify your sales notations are accurate, or compare your prices with their online database of competitors' sales, but it's still wise to avoid shopping during off-hours in order to avoid empty lines. The busier the store is, the better.

The book also tells you how to save big on engagement rings (buy a cubic zirconium ring and pass it off as a family heirloom), make your milk last longer (after you're done with your cereal, poor it back into the carton) and cut down on your tobacco and lung cancer budget (don't smoke).

If that kind of thing is your bag, I won't stop you from joining the book's Facebook group.

Does anyone out there have any funny, obscenely frugal tips that are too embarrassing to use in real life?

Required reading [New York Post]

(Thanks to Chris!)

What is your idea for the most disgustingly delicious pizza?

Domino's Tests Limits Of What Humans Will Eat [The Onion]

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less[The Onion]

What's so poignant about this time is the uncertainty. When you get to Blockbuster are they going to have your video? Did someone else rent it? Is there going to be a line? Are the alarms going to sound when you walk out the front door? It was very difficult for the people that lived during this era.

Difficult indeed.

Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past [The Onion]

Warning: the characters are intentionally portrayed as casually racist "rich white banker" types, so if you're offended by politically incorrect satire, before you start a comment war you might want to head over to the YouTube page and read what's already been written there, as it's pretty much all been covered.

Oh, and a second note, from a Metafilter reader who takes issue with the whole concept of tracing the meltdown back to loans made to the poor, whether black or white:

And to get even more nitpicky, one can also say that it's wrong to keep blaming the whole mortgage/credit crisis on dodgy subprime mortgage lending, period. In other words, it's not just the racial overtones of who they were fingering as an obviously bad credit risk, it's the class overtones too, and both are equally wrong assumptions to make. "Subprime" has been overused and misused as a term to make the rich and supposedly-middle-class feel snooty and superior to "those" kinds of people, whose loans have caused the trouble, when really many of those "rich" people may have high incomes, but are also highly in debt (credit cards, cars) and using equally shady mortgage products to "own" their McMansions and to keep their posh lifestyles going. It's just that their motgage products don't always get lumped in as subprime, but rather get broken out into Option ARM's or even just regular old ARM's, not to mention their HELOCS (home equity lines of credit) which use their (perceived) home values as a piggy bank.

The husband and wife team behind the "musical on a mission" have cited the books "Nickel and Dimed" and "Selling Women Short" as sources, but it might just be better to read the books, based on reactions to the show, which include descriptions like "ham-handed satire" and "bland and witless."

As far as effective agitprop goes, it looks like South Park still holds the award for most entertaining spin on the pleasures and dangers of the super-mega-corporation. Or, as one review puts it, "Bad art never helped anyone's cause."

Resources:
"Selling Women Short" at Amazon
"Nickel and Dimed" at Amazon
walmartopia.com

"Attention, Shoppers: Anguish in Aisle 4" [New York Times]
"Creators Of 'Walmartopia' Discuss Show's Success" [ny1.com (video)]
"Walmartopia" [Theatermania.com]

(Photo: Carol Rosegg)

[The Onion via Credit Slips]

This entrant satirizes the SUV industry. With their own tools.

Irony, you are mistress most fetching.

View it here quick, before Chevy gets wise and takes it down.

UPDATE: Link is down. Posting screenshots shortly...

UPDATE: Screenshots posted after the jump.

UPDATE: A preserved version of the parody in question made it to YouTube:

(Thanks to KevinQ for the YouTube catch!)

Less than two hours after getting posted here and on CBCNews, a user-generated Chevy Tahoe ad, an entrant in the "Make a Chevy Tahoe Ad and Win a Free Trip" contest, is down. The ad mocked SUVs, gas guzzling, planet raping, and inane car ads. For some reason, Chevy didn't want that on their site.

Whoddathinkit.

Good thing we had the foresight to take screen shots.

Guess Chevy's definition of the American Revolution doesn't include the freedom of speech.

Consumer-Made Ads Backfires for Chevy [CBCnews]