CB Disaster!

Cheap Bastards are everywhere - you just have to keep your eyes open. En route to a cheap lunch buffet (lunch is ALWAYS cheaper) including all the sushi you can eat, I came across this poor fellow whose beat up old washing machine saw an opportunity for a better life and seized it, escaping from his pickup bed in the middle of a busy intersection. It was this gentleman's great misfortune that my friend Tim and I were both pinned in the back seat of a coupe behind two inanimate carbon rods...err females, since we'd have otherwise been happy to help. As the Code of the Cheap Bastard (Coming Soon) states, "A CB must always help another CB in distress - as long as it doesn't cost you anything".

Final Thought: Those $1 generic clearance tie-down straps sold at your local Ace Hardware are always a wise and worthwhile investment.

SHAKEDOWN!

I had originally intended to write a Valentine's Day entry delving into the machinations of the CB mind at this time of year, where Hallmark conspires with restaurants and teddy bear manufacturers in conjunction with Russell Stover and Fanny May to turn men upside down and give them a series of furtive shakes until there's nothing left but a Shake 'n' Bake coupon...you know, maybe I will continue with this train of thought - it's got some steam. We'll postpone my clearance bin gum diving for a subsequent entry.

There's a certain inescapability about Valentine's Day. For anyone who has a woman, there are expectations. If you are among those not so fortunate to know the approximate price range of these expecatations, you are doomed to overpay or pour an inadequate amount of money into a well of futility, never to come close to reaching what she had in mind.

Thus, I view Valentine's Day as the ultimate game of High-Low seven-card stud. Whatever you do, you want to make your determination quickly as to which way you'll be going, or you're doomed to spend money with no reasonable expectation of a reasonable return on your investment.

Sound confusing? It is. But thankfully, I've crafted The CB's Valentines Day Bible of Survival. It's a work in process, but some of the highlights are detailed below.

• First off, play a tactful game of inverse limbo. Find out how low she'll go by starting with the ultimate bare bones. I recommend starting by strategically placing a box of macaroni and cheese - generic store brands, such as Aldi's or a suitable equivalent - somewhere on the dashboard or center console of your car where it is readily visible to your significant other. If she doesn't object, then you know you're totally money. If you feel yourself being stabbed by eye-daggers emitted from her piercing glare - as was my fate when I tried this ploy - then it's time to abort mission on the limbo game. You, sir, are dealing with someone with standards. Time to play it off like you were joking and begrudgingly proceed to Phase II.
  
  
• Now that you know that this is going to hurt, try to play the damage control game. You know you're going to get hit for the majority of the expense, but at least try to salvage something. If you're paying for the hotel room, she's buying breakfast. Try to get by without dumping dough on flowers that'll be dead and forgotten in a week. There's no shame in holding out on this until she gets insistent - I'm living proof that you won't get kicked to the curb if you buy your woman flowers while she's waiting in the car outside the grocery store.
  
  
• Lastly, if you're still finding yourself fighting unreasonable expectations, use your "Alamo" option. This involves none other than guilt - something females are incredibly adept at using to their own advantage. Until recently, there hadn't been any way to turn the tables on women and ask them, "what have YOU done for ME lately?" Thankfully, the proliferation of Steak & BJ Day has provided a solution to this problem. For anyone whose girlfriend was around last March, try to recall how you spent last March 14. Chances are, at the least, you'll get some guarantees for this year in exchange for your Valentines Day outlay.
  
  
• If all else fails, remember: as the Big Mak says, you can always go the drunken monk route and pack your boys away on dry ice for safekeeping while they atrophy away.

So there it is. I'm interested to see how much I end up forking out this year, as Madame CB is rather adept at putting a check on my frugal proclivities. I promise not to hold out too long before publishing my clearance gum adventure.

* If anyone should come across this diatribe and take offense (most likely to be females), please bear in mind that these are the uncensored, unadulterated musings of a Certified CB. Please realize that while the CB may espouse such viewpoints, he very much serves at the pleasure of a lucky lady, and that she accordingly does hold a significant amount of sway as to compel him to engage in acts of a decidedly un-CB nature. In short, the woman regularly helps the CB open his wallet.

Now that February is upon us, my mind can't help turning to baseball. As with any subject, there await tales of CB to be told. The above picture came from a Marlins-Expos game played in Chicago in September of 2004. I unfortunately missed the one the previous day which featured Josh Beckett - instead I got stuck with Ismael Valdez vs Scott Downs. Nonetheless, I managed to get closer to the action than anyone in their right mind should be able to for $15 (and I got my friend to cover the $10 for parking in exchange for my driving). I even managed to score on sunblock - since it was late summer, my part-time employer of seven years (Jewel-Osco) had generic imitation coppertone on 40% off clearance. On top of that, since I bought generic, I got an extra 10 percent off of that. But the sunblock is beside the point.

The moral of the story here is that baseball is baseball - if it takes two teams coming to your town in the wake of a hurricane to bring the national pastime within your budget, so be it [CB's note: I religiously foresake my CB-ness every February and buy whatever Cubs tickets I can get hold of for the coming season...and no, I don't turn around and sell them]. This game was almost Cubs-Sox Lite, in a way - the Marlins had beaten the Cubs in the NLCS the previous year and were fighting them for the Wild Card at the time; thus, every Sox fan refused to leave without asking Miguel Cabrera to marry them and snapping a photo-op with Billy Marlin [someone conveniently posted a memento of this love affair for your viewing pleasure]. Meanwhile, the single ladies in Cubbie blue expressed their unrequited love for Alex Gonzalez, the Cubs' ex-shortstop who'd been jettisoned to Montreal for botching a double-play ball in the 2003 postseason. To the rest of Cubdom, the fact that Montreal wore Cub-esque colors and weren't the Marlins was reason enough to pull for them.

Ultimately, for $15 and a half tank of gas - back before gas cost more than my Tuesday night Guinness [$2 for a pint] I got to see a thrilling 8-6 Marlins win that came down to the wire, with Ryan Church lining out to right with the bases loaded to end it [Thanks, Retrosheet]. And I still have the clearance sunblock [that's not me, folks!].

* For those of you who are baseball fans, I'll have more meanderings on the subject as the weather warms up. For all who couldn't care less about baseball, don't worry - I'm sporadically cheap enough to have tons of non-sports CB stories, too.