At Home With The Failbox 360

The Microsoft XBox 360 is the most unreliable gaming system(30-50%), plaguing users with the Red Ring Of Death, scratched discs, poor license transfers, and many more maladies we aren't temporally aware of.  So why in the world would Das Bloggy Blog buy one?

The Future Will Be Full of Disgusting Cross-Contaminated Beverages

Recently The Consumerist had a fawning post about a new Coca Cola fountain beverage dispenser that has more than 100 flavors. We on the other hand were horrified. There is a lot to dislike here -- the slow touch screen interface sure to confound the technologically challenged, the loss of the time-honored childhood tradition of combining multiple flavors, the Skynet-esque computer ubiquity...

How to Defeat United Airlines' Kiosk Lies

We had a flight today going from LaGuardia to New Orleans, with a connection in Chicago. Upon our check-in, we were told that the flight had been delayed and I would miss my connection. The only available flight was one that connected in Denver, and took 11 hours to complete. A glance at the agent counter revealed an unmoving line full of frowny faces in the same situation as ourselves. So as to not get completely stranded, we accepted the Denver tickets and made our way back home. Of course, a simple Orbitz search showed many other United flights with much less Sisyphean connections. Changing our flight to one with a short layover in Philly, Charlotte, or DC should be taken care of by a simple phone call, right? Well, it did just take a phone call, but it was far from simple.

Have Some Human Dignity, For Free

Like a confrontation over a plush Mardi Gras throw coming to blows, Americans like nothing more than doggedly and irrationally pursuing a 'free' item. "Make some noise!" for a free, low thread count t-shirt that will never be worn? Shit, we'd stuff a lit M-80 into our trachea if that would catch the attention of the fluffy mascot with the shirt cannon.

Getting a Cellphone Abroad is Something You Should Do

As much as going to another country is a chance to experience another culture, it is often a chance to travel technologically back in time. This was a time, prior to this decade, when entire Seinfeld episodes could be written around the comical adventures that ensue when direct communication was not available. Cell phones did not exist, and any hypothetical meeting up between two separate entities involved meticulous planning and unparalleled trust. The exact place and time of meeting had to be specified hours in advance and several contingency plans had to be discussed. Now of course, when you get off the subway hoping to meet your friend in the village the convenience of technology allows you to get a comforting text message along the lines of "sup brah still in brooklyn c u n 30 sorry". If you are traveling abroad and hope to have the same stress-free, informal meet-ups that you are used to, you need to get your cellphone to work abroad.

Stop Sending Us So Many Fucking Catalogs

Living our agoraphobic life, seldom emerging from shelter, we buy many things online to save ourselves interactions with Humanity. However, when you buy one pair of shoes from Eastbay or one frog bra from Title Nine, you are inundated with monthly catalogs that never cease to arrive. Despite buying things online in order to avoid Humanity and enhance our flabby veal-like texture, getting catalogs we don't want forces us to call somebody and have actual interactions. We are then informed that we might still get 4 or 5 catalogs still before we are taken out of their system. Of course, they are just lying to us and we still get monthly catalogs no matter how often we call about it. Well, we couldn't just burn them on the stove and set off our Xtra-sensitive fire alarm, so we felt pretty helpless.

5 Totally Extreme Money Saving Tips That Will Never Backfire, Ever

So what, is Das Bloggy Blog just some kind of snarky know-it-all who stands in the corner and criticizes everyone else, without producing any viable, unique alternatives? Well, normally yes, but the blog is for fun, so we can make an exception here.

Here are 5 hott money saving tips that are guaranteed never to backfire.

1. Embrace Piracy: Trips to the movie theatre, cable, Netflix, and music CD's are expensive. Respectively, stop going, cancel, cancel, and stop buying. Download VLC media player, PeerGuardian, and microTorrent. Go to piratebay and steal what you need.
2. Make Michael Pollan Cry: Did you know that government-subsidized, processed, unhealthy foods not only taste awesome and are cheap, but also are the most calorie-dense? That is called value where we're from. If you are worried about getting a weird combination of scurvy and the rickets, stop whining and take a multivitamin. "But what about the increased health costs associated with that diet?", we mock you in a singsong voice. Don't worry, we'll get to that later.
3. Sterilize Yourself: You know what's expensive? Spending years trying to not have children, and then having them. A one time gettin-yrself-fixed procedure will free you from the burden of birth control. You won't have to worry about providing for another person in the future, thus saving $40 million for their likely college costs. Helping to free the earth from the scourge of more humanity is also a bold environmental statement. If you want to nurture something, start using your Tamagotchi unironically. It won't call you a bitch who doesn't understand before slamming the door and playing Avril Lavigne really loud.
4. Flask It: Drinks at bars and concerts are expensive. Next time your "friends" want to drop $40+, just order soft drinks and slip off somewhere private.
   
5. Let Yourself Go: Now that you are eating junk food all day, you should cancel your gym membership too and start packing on the pounds. Contrary to popular opinion, obese people have less health care costs than skinny people because they die sooner. By striving for every risk factor in the book, the odds of every artery in your body exploding violently at age 65 are really high. In the meantime, you will save by reclaiming your retirement savings with the confidence in knowing that you will expire the very moment your value to the American economy goes away. This may hurt your sex life, but your blood pressure will be too high to get it up anyway.
   

4 "Money-Saving" Tips That Could Very Well Backfire

In these dire economic times, in which we don't read Cormac McCarthy's The Road because we are already living in a post-apocalyptic nightmarescape of depravation, lists of so-called "money-saving" tips (MST) are thrown at us like crescents of fire from a certain Mega Man boss. (We won't make you guess which one, it is Fire Man)

Here are 4 of those tips that could very well backfire and leave you in an even deeper roadside ditch of poverty:

1. Make your own coffee: No list of MST is complete without this one. After all, if you get one of those crazy $5.19 lattes every day you go to work, that is like $1200 a year!! With that kind of money, you could buy one of those flat-screen HDTV that are becoming a default purchase nowadays. So, the obvious alternative is to make your own coffee at home and at work. But for some of us, and we're not naming names yet looking straight into the mirror, doing this just increases coffee consumption. Around NYC, stand coffee costs like $1.50. Downgrading your elitist tastes and controlling your coffee intake to when it is actually needed is the real way to save money here.
2. Do Everything Yourself: To really bump of the volume of tips, MST lists will have numerous entries of "Make/Do _______ Yourself". Besides the lower sticker price, presumptive health benefits from the exercise you will get by doing every goddamned task yourself are also inserted as fact. But, these tips often neglect capital costs and the arduous time spent perfecting a new trade. Here at Das Bloggy Blog HQ, we make our own beer(decent), laundry detergent(meh), and crystal meth(smelly, yet profitable); however much like the guy with the guitar, shaggy hair, and Converse All Stars, we aren't in it for the money. Unless you are getting some sort of innate pleasure from your Tyler Durden wet-dream, its best to leave the farming, seamstressing, and pad-thai making to the professionals.
3. Undermine Yourself: Most of us have better things to do than set traps and inconveniences to protect ourselves from a lack of willpower, such as treating your credit cards like Han Solo to make them less convenient. Seriously, if you have to resort to stuff like that, you might as well hire a trucker hatted douchebag to sit in a van and laugh at you while you fuck up your life.
4. Buy Gadgets: Let's face it, people like to buy stuff. But buying yuppie gadgets won't save you money (they actually cost money). Sure, energy efficient versions of things you already use, like CFLs, are a good idea. But you won't have many reasons to drive your fuel efficient Vespa if you are at home with your new your chromed-out espresso maker and Dance Dance Revolution machine. Most of these tips just lead to #2.
   

Discouraging Impulse Buys, One Casual Snark at a Time

We were buying a few sundry items at Marshalls, and while waiting in line noticed the array of generic iPod and Bluetooth accessories intended as Impulse Buys. We went on a mocking riff on them, just loud enough to be obnoxious. The woman in front of us sent a semi-glare back. A couple of minutes later she then discreetly discarded a car-charger from that display onto another Impulse Buy rack.

Your check-out line is pretty efficient, Marshalls, but not fast enough! We remember how you lost our credit card number a year ago, resulting in weight-loss supplements and Girls Gone Wild videos being shipped to our door. We will continue to guilt-trip your patrons in the check-out line until we get over it*!


*Das Bloggy Blog, a family company, reserves all rights, both explicit and implied, to hold a grudge until we are on our deathbed, at which point a dying request will be made to meet with the current Marshalls/TJMaxx CEO. At such meeting, a tender reconciliation will take place in which we acknowledge past mistakes and hope to move on because we really loved them all along, and -cough, cough- [eyes glaze over and body remains still. CEO shouts to heavens. End Scene.]

Consumer Affairs

Besides the opportunity to write in first person plural, we started Bloggy Blog as a forum to talk about Consumer Issues that we have faced. We here at Bloggy Blog are big fans of the Consumerist and have started our own blog instead of emailing them with every little thing. Plus, we won't have to read about iPhone rebates as much.

If you aren't aware, Bloggy Blog is very fashionable in terms of clothes, and is a big fan of buying clearance sctüffenzie from normally expensive clothing outlets. You get the premium quality at 'new at midrange store' price.

Anyway, to get to the point, Kenneth Cole's customer service sucks. Bloggy Blog ordered a shirt, pants, and shoes from their online clearance section, and the shirt and shoes arrived ~1 week later. Then an email arrived said that the $30 pants Bloggy Blog had ordered were canceled since they were not actually in stock. We wanted some of the shipping charges refunded, as for instance, if another pair were ordered, the shipping would be $7. Charging for shipping and then canceling the order without refunding an appropriate portion of shipping fees is like stealing, right? Well, Mr. Cole has not seen it fit to return Bloggy Blog's emails, customer service forms, or even answer the phone. And so Mr. Cole, shame on YOU. Bloggy Blog is thinking about complaining to the BBB, as this has worked well in the past with other companies.

While this has been said before, the salespeople at expensive New York stores are silently judging you. Upon entering Mr. Cole's store near Union Square, Bloggy Blog was quickly examined from head to toe by guy that stands at the front. We're guessing from the state of our decrepit Vans, this was not a favorable judging. For the record, Bloggy Blog is not outraged or surprised that this business practice exists -- but is disappointed that it is executed in such a transparent and unsophisticated manner. After all, if this is the level of subtlety required for the position, why not just hire bouncers from Duvet?

UPDATE
This isn't the first time this has happened...