Consumatron.com - January Update - Consumer Resolution #1
Man, that was quick! We’re still here, though. Let’s be thankful for that!
Hello 2007! I hope you all made it okay. May all of your New Year’s hangovers be healed and may your perspective be renewed. If that isn’t the case, keep at it. These things take practice.
We had a little New Year’s party here at Consumatron central. About thirty people came through. Clean up was a cinch when compared to the 200+ bash we had last year. Only one person puked and one glass was smashed (I believe this is the bare minimum required to make any gathering a party). I hope you all had an equally exciting countdown.
Here’s what’s happening:
Those of you who saw the picture in last year’s final post may have thought that I was simply turning the site’s logo into a real life happening. Well, the truth is, I have been realizing the logo every day of my life for the last two and a half years (in a sense). No, I wasn’t burning cash, but I was burning some of the items I purchased… To no good end. The $30 I’m holding in the picture represents my weekly cigarette expense. Not only am I literally burning my money, but I’m also doing all of the bad things we all know about that are side effects of smoking and paying two of the biggest consumer death merchants in the world (Philip Morris & R.J. Reynolds) to kill me. Though I love smoking, and the ritual will be difficult for me to abandon, I am taking a stand.
No, I am not quitting smoking entirely. I believe in realistic resolutions (and feel awfully bad when I let myself down by breaking my resolutions), so I have resolved to stop purchasing cigarettes and tobacco. I can hear you now… You’re saying that I will simply become a bum, a mooch, an oral fixation opportunist… Maybe. We’ll see. What I am doing is cutting off my small portion of the funding of large corporations that only want to share our cash with the medical industry so they can keep us alive long enough to buy that one last pack of cigarettes.
I purchased my last pack of cigarettes on Dec. 23rd, when I was home for the holidays. My roommate purchased me a carton for Christmas. I currently have five packs left to smoke. After that, it is strictly smoking when people offer me a cigarette (with the occasional drunken plea for one) or when I get one of those free packs from the tobacco fairies that frequent bars.
I am a 3-4 pack a week smoker. Here in Chicago, packs of cigarettes sell for an average of $8.00. I have picked the nice even number of $30.00 to deposit into a PayPal account each Monday. You can watch the total savings climb in the sidebar. If I can keep this up, I will have saved over $1500 by New Year’s Eve this year. I don’t know about you, but I can stretch that much scratch quite a ways. Keep an eye on me, okay? Oh, and if you smoke, I’d surely appreciate you offering me one every now and again. I won’t ask, but I also won’t deny a friendly gesture.
How about your resolutions? What are they? What are you doing about them? What’s your plan of action? Tell us all about them in the Forum!
Dec. ‘06 Contest Winners
Well, there were three prizes and three entries. Them’s pretty good odds. Most bloggers would be upset that more people didn’t enter a contest so easy to enter. Me? I’m just happy that I get to send something to everyone who took the time to visit the forum and enter. Here are the winners:
chrishajer - Adam Fitz: Between The Incident And The Event CD
dinneratsizzler - Fractalspin.com $25 Gift Certificate
See that nifty animation at the top of the page? That was a Christmas present from my friends Vanessa and Steve. Thanks so much!
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