Nothing much to say today. Except, if I had a Cheaplander Hall of Shame, the doofus who bought this piece of carbon for 24 million dingleberries would be first in line to get tossed in it.

Oh sure, CNN (and by extension, yours truly) is to blame for reporting on sensational crapola like this in a recession. Anything to get an audience, right?

But still, hasn’t the guy who bought it ever watched Secret Millionaire? You could do a whole lot of other things with that kinda of money than buy a rock. Like buy me a new ergonomic chair. Holy stupid idiots.

OK, here you go with the roundup. Sorry, expensive blue diamond rock not included with reviews.

Review Roundup - Week of Dec 12, 2008

Fast Food Critic - Rollity?

Japanese Snack Reviews - Crumbly?

The Impulsive Buy - Vampirey?

Heat Eat Review - Cheesily?

Iateapie - Tingly?

Editor’s Note: I loved the above reviews, I wish I could write as well as these people, and my new year’s resolution is to write more than a one word question when linking to other people’s reviews. Happy Phriday!

Oh, Jingle Balls.

So you’ve already put your holiday decorations right? Our tree and the usual indoor lights went up on the day after Thanksgiving, the minute the turkey carcass hit the soup pot.

We don’t have a whole lot of lights - it’s just the ones on the tree and then two strands around the window. Those are to show the neighbors we’re putting in at least SOME effort for the holidays season. We have standard incandescent xmas lights. They’re the typical ones that always have one light busted forcing you to search through the entire strand to find the bulb that’s the culprit.

Even though it probably wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference for us, I’ve been wondering how much of an improvement in energy savings it would make to use LED Christmas lights. Yes, yes, I’m behind on the whole Light Emitting Diode trend. Our motto is: “If it ain’t broken, then don’t buy any similar crap at Target even if it’s on sale.” So we’ve had the same holiday lights for ten years now.

But anyhow, I was reading a few articles about the LED lights and it turns out that there are some big advantages. Duh. I think these would be magnified greatly if you put up a lot of lights for the holidays. We don’t have a lot of lights, but if our current ones ever give out, I’d consider them.

A summary of some advantages: Energy efficiency of about 10 to 1 over incandescents, which seems pretty tremendous. They also don’t put out as much heat, which some people say reduces fire risk (Mythbusters showed how to set a tree on fire with lights, but I think they had to use a whole lot of strands). They’re more durable and (supposedly) have a longer life, because they use plastic instead of glass and don’t have filaments. Finally, if you want brighter colors LEDs might be the way to go.

At this point, I’m surreptitiously pocketing the bribe money that evil LED manufacturers have paid me and walking out the door… Oh, wait. Before I go, there’s no catch(es), right? Ah, yes. I would guess that the initial cost would be one. LEDs lights are usually more expensive in general. Also, what do you do when an LED burns out? The answer, if they’re the non-socket type, is EAT THE COST. There’s no way to change those - and if they are socketed, then I’ve heard they can be susceptible to rust if they’re used outside. Also, I read somewhere that there is a noticeable “flickering” for some types of LED lights.

If you have any experience with the Xmas LEDs, I’d like to know. Because I’m thinking of syncing some outdoor lights to stupid music like this. Holy jeebus.

[Editor’s Note: Can you just imagine the Pokemon seizures that the neighbor across the street from the house would have if that video was at real speed and the lights ran all night long?]

I thought this was a joke at first.

Apparently not. I actually went to the University Dodge site and sure enough they had a banner up about it. No, you’re not wearing beer goggles - that’s two trucks there.

Car dealerships are HURTING, and they’re throwing out all the stops in order to try and sell cars. Or rather, their marketing teams are scrambling to put together things like this: “Buy one car and get one free”.

I’m personally completely cool with having less eyesore car dealerships littering the landscape, not to mention less of those sleazy car salespeople working me over. Actually, I would rather go work as a greenhorn for free on the Cornelia Marie than debase myself as a car salesman. But this isn’t about my opinion. This is about getting a free car, isn’t it?

And then comes the fine print. Come on, this ain’t a free Jack in the Balpha ice cream shake or something. The catch is you have to buy the first Dodge truck at RETAIL, and then you get the second truck for free after all the usual goodies. The taxes and other crap add up to about 3Gs, my man, but hey you’ve got TWO trucks now.

What I would do with two trucks:

Film Hayley Mills driving around in one truck, and a double driving around in the other one. Call it The Truck Trap and make a million dollars.

And so on…

Source: various news

3 .. 2 .. 1 .. SURPRISE!

Did I catch you all of the sudden, preferably with your finger up your nose? Or maybe you were just performing your favorite piano concerto for the queen (Condoleezza Rice -style), when I interrupted your musical musings.

I hope so, because that was my intention. I was just trying to get into mood for writing about this Suddenly Pasta Salad from Betty Crocker. You see, apparently the best kind of pasta salad is the kind that appears suddenly. One minute, you’ve got a bowl of empty and the next You’ve Got Noodles™. BOING!

I’m actually a huge fan of homemade pasta salad - I think I probably posted about it on Cheap Eats several times in the past. You can make a really mean pasta salad with just plain Italian dressing and dry corkscrew pasta. Toss in kidney and garbanzo beans and sliced olives as well. Just remember to make it 1-2 days in advance and add the dressing, seasonings and salt in batches, like twice a day or so, since the noodles keep absorbing the dressing. If you make it in advance it tastes better because the noodles pick up lots of flavor - it also tends to be less oily.

Anyhow, back to the Suddenly Pasta Salad - since I usually make my own, the primary reason I got this was because of the funny title. Hm… that seems sorta un-Cheaplanderish. What can I say - I have many, many moments of weakness when it comes to the Dollar Store.

The pasta salad mix is basically noodles and a packet of dry seasoning mix. You boil and drain the noodles, and then you need to add the seasoning packet, 3 tbsp water and 2 tbsp of vegetable oil. I guess the dry mix may be handy if you’re not in your kitchen - maybe if you’re out camping. However, if I’m going to have oil on hand, it’s not that much harder to have a jar of balsamic vinegar. From there, adding your own spices will make the “convenience” of this package completely unnecessary.

To their credit, the picture on the front doesn’t show all sorts of “added” stuff to the package. The red bell peppers and parsley are dehydrated in the seasoning mixture. However, I wasn’t as honest as them - I just HAD to jazz it up a little with some sliced olivies and real parsley. It just seemed so boring and UNSURPRISING without it.

I followed the directions very closely, boiling the noodles first while adding together seasonings, cold water and oil in a separate bowl. I drained the pasta and then added the bowl of seasoning liquid. After mixing it together I added my extra olives and parsley.

Read more …

Oh, SNARF. It is too early on a Friday to be up and about. Here is your roundup:

Review Roundup - Week of Dec 5, 2008

Candy Blog - What to do when your babies are ugly: eat them. Or write Slaughterhouse Five.

Phoood - What to do if you have too many cats: name them after candy bars. I personally am going to name our next cat “Big Hunk.”

The Impulsive Buy - What to do if your company has an excess of creamy spinach artichoke spread: use it as a lubricant. For bread, you ninny.

Iateapie - What to do if you feel all tangled up inside: eat some Kelp Noodles. Ok, that doesn’t make any sense.

Gigi-Reviews - What to do if you eat pistachio jello that tastes like almonds: vomit, call 911 because it’s an emergency. Better yet, boycott almonds and all almond shaped items.

Editor’s Note: I loved the above reviews, I wish I could write as well as these people, and now I’m going to go write dirty limericks on all of our Xmas cards. Happy Phriday!