The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: greenkoolayd on September 12, 2011, 04:08:42 pm
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i caught this show while flipping through the channels the other night:
the TLC show (http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/extreme-couponing)
are these people smarter than everyone else, or just really ill? will extreme couponing drive up prices? i can see the logic in these people spending all that time on something that can end up saving 10 of thousands of dollars a year, but i can also think of better ways to spend time.
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I have not seen the show, but my understanding is that, with the exception of those who use extreme couponing to cheaply acquire goods to donate to charity, a lot of these people are hoarders with a taste for games.
I use coupons, I even scope out sales and try to get items for as close to zero dollars as possible. It's kind of a rush when I get a couple packs of Go-Gurt for my kids for 1/3 of the normal retail price, or a year's worth or toothpaste for $2. I only spend maybe an hour a week on couponing, though, and I only use one copy of a coupon -- I don't go on coupon swapping sites or trade with friends or (people do this) swipe all the coupons out of other the newspapers in the box when I've only paid for one.
It's irritating when I go in with my single coupon and want to buy one item at [sale price] - [cents-off coupon] and the shelves are empty because "extremers" got there first. I've read on Consumerist that a lot of stores are cracking down on extreme couponers, limiting the number of coupons used per day and banning customers who abuse the system by using multiple copies of the same coupon to score dozens of bottles of shampoo or hundreds of rolls of TP.
JMHO.
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I have not seen the show, but my understanding is that, with the exception of those who use extreme couponing to cheaply acquire goods to donate to charity, a lot of these people are hoarders with a taste for games.
I've said the same thing! That show is just a really tidy "Hoarders". I think for a while they were scheduled back to back without any hint of irony. "These people are bad, and you should pity them! Disgusting! UP NEXT! Hildy buys 87 jars of mustard! THRIFTY!"
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I have considered signing up for that site, it would make the kind of couponing I already do almost completely automatic. It might save me more money, but I would need the $20/8 week plan for comparison shopping for that and I would need to make trips to multiple stores, and I don't think I'm quite ready to pony up $12/mo for the privelege
Perhaps when the kids are a bit older and I actually have time to grocery shop without dragging them along with me, I'll have the luxury of being able to go to more than one store in a week. 'Til then, though, it's the warehouse club once a month for stock-ups and Harris Teeter with double coupons in between.
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I am much like JL. I clip coupons, and I get a kick out of it when I get something for free or almost free. But yeah, it annoys the shit out of me when I go to the store and there's a big empty space on the shelf where the item I want to use a coupon on used to be. It was a lot more fun when it didn't get all this attention.
I agree that many people on the show are basically hoarders. There's not much point in a "stockpile" when you have more stuff than you can use in any reasonable period of time. Once I had three free bottles of mustard on the shelf, I figured that was enough mustard for a while.
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I have watched a couple episodes of that show, and mostly just end up swearing at the screen a lot.
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The episodes that I've seen all emphasize that these women spend 40 - 60 hours per week collecting and organizing their coupons and researching the stores. They could use that time to work a minimum wage job and bring home ~$1000/month.
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But, don't most of them have kids? In many cases, a minimum-wage job will not even pay for daycare for one child, let alone two or three. But you can coupon while your kids are playing independently (with one eye on them) or while they're sleeping (especially if they're young), and even if you arrange childcare so you can go to the grocery store alone, you can arrange it around your kids' and spouse's (or the kids' grandma's) schedule so it doesn't cost anything.
If I can spend an hour and save $20, it's worth more than $20 to me right now because if I got an outside-the-house job and earned that $20 I'd have to get child care for that hour, which (for two kids) would cost me about $14. And I'd have to pay taxes on it, to boot.
If one or more of them are in school for some part of the day, that frees up a little bit of time, but most jobs won't really let you only work between the hours of 9 and 3, Monday thru Friday, with no weekends or holidays.
Trust me, I've looked.
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I'm not sure if we don't really do grocery store coupons over here or if it's just something I've never done personally, pizza and so on yes, and more recently discount petrol vouchers (normally that you get when you buy a certain amount from a grocery store) but not coupons for actual food in general. The stores just have specials and everyone buys the cheap stuff. Which is doubly weird because my understanding is that food is significantly more expensive here than in the US.
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It's always been my experience that the store brand is cheaper than the name brand even with coupon.
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It's always been my experience that the store brand is cheaper than the name brand even with coupon.
Nope. Sometimes this is true, but my local store doubles coupons with a face value under $1 every day, so taking that into account, here's a real-life example:
Store-brand sour cream: $1.19
Daisy-brand sour cream: Regular price: $2.45
BUT, it's on sale this week for 2.19, and I have a 75 cents-off coupon, which doubles to $1.50. So I net the brand-name product for $0.69, about 43% off the retail price for the store brand.
Even without the base price on temporary reduction, I might do even better with a coupon on a name brand if it's one of the every-six-weeks special coupon weeks. They alternate between "super double coupons" (double anything under $2) and triple coupons ($0.50 becomes $1.50). So if it's triple-coupon week, even if Daisy sour cream isn't on sale, I still get it for $0.20. If it's on sale AND I have a good coupon, I might get it free.
Harris Teeter's store-brand products are cheaper than name-brands, but usually the margin isn't so large that a doubled coupon can't span it. Kroger, OTOH, has dirt-ass-cheap prices on their store brand, and since they don't double coupons except during select weeks, you'll usually do better on store brands there. But the nearest Kroger is a 15-minute drive, and I can walk to Harris Teeter, so guess where I end up most of the time?
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I'm sorry, you've made my head swim.
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I'm the one who should be sorry, then.
Coupons: Not for the faint of heart.
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Wait, can I return to the beginning of this?
There is a TV show about people who shop with a lot of coupons? Have people's standards for entertainment really fallen that low?
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Wait, can I return to the beginning of this?
There is a TV show about people who shop with a lot of coupons? Have people's standards for entertainment really fallen that low?
Yes.
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I remember when extreme couponing first started. It was on the news back then. In our next segment we visit with a local woman who saves 98 percent of her grocery bill with coupons. Or some variation on that theme. I had no idea that it had gotten to the point where it has it's own show, but I'm hardly surprised.
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Wait, can I return to the beginning of this?
There is a TV show about people who shop with a lot of coupons? Have people's standards for entertainment really fallen that low?
Yes. Every episode is a slow burn, where they show the person cutting the coupons... shopping, and then going through the checkout with like 7 carts. You watch the register tick the total amount up, and then slowly tick back down to $0 with the coupons.
Basically, if I could get you (the TV audience) to care about it, I could sit on camera, flipping over paper numbers, until I got to a really high number... make a scared face, and then slowly flip the numbers back over until I got to zero. I might stop some times and fret at the numbers. "OH NO! WHAT IF THEY DON'T GO ALL THE WAY TO ZERO? WHAT WILL HAPPEN? MAYBE THOSE NUMBERS JUST AREN'T IN THIS BOOK ANY MORE!" <flipflipflip> "YAY! THEY WERE! ZERO!
WE ALL WIN! YAY!"
In this instance, "winning" means a dude leaves the store with more deodorant than any man would use in their entire life. Winning also means proudly showing America that "under the kid's bed" is where all the excess paper products go.
There's also this rad trope where tension is built by the registers not being able to carry out some of these transactions. I'm pretty sure the crews are totally used to it after a season of filming. "Oh jeeze... That's an OCR 2342... it's only going to make it through 3 carts of pickles... be sure to get it breaking down from a couple angles."
Also once: High drama was a few of the coupons getting stuck together and getting missed. Oooh wee! Close one.
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We're not sending people to Mars but we are watching people save money on pickles they don't need.
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Wait, can I return to the beginning of this?
There is a TV show about people who shop with a lot of coupons? Have people's standards for entertainment really fallen that low?
Oh most certainly. Ever watch the show about who's the best storage auction scavenger/junk dealer in LA? Or the one about the guy who scrapes and paints things? Or the one about the two junk dealers who drive around and buy junk from other junk dealers/hoarders?
Hours of entertainment.
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Also once: High drama was a few of the coupons getting stuck together and getting missed. Oooh wee! Close one.
Oh lord, this is the worst. Luckily (?) for me there are very few people who use coupons at my store.
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There is a TV show about people who shop with a lot of coupons? Have people's standards for entertainment really fallen that low?
If you don't want to watch movies this is what you get.
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There is still plenty of good entertainment on TV. But as a fan of television, I fear for the future. I'm afraid there won't be much incentive to spend lots of money on good acting and writing and production when you can get more viewers and in turn advertising dollars by shoving a bunch of low-pay attention-sluts into a house with a few cameras.
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There is still plenty of good entertainment on TV. But as a fan of television, I fear for the future. I'm afraid there won't be much incentive to spend lots of money on good acting and writing and production when you can get more viewers and in turn advertising dollars by shoving a bunch of low-pay attention-sluts into a house with a few cameras.
QFT, have a can.
also, if TLC keeps taking cues from MTV, theyre going to have to change their name.
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They already did. It's been years since they used "the learning channel" spelled out. I believe that officially it doesn't stand for anything anymore.
I am of course aware that this sort of thing exists - it is impossible not to know about those housewives programs and someone I know is actually a producer on one of Discovery's hoarders shows. But I had no idea it had fallen as far as supermarket coupons and a guy who scrapes and paints things.
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a guy who scrapes and paints things.
Actually, that one's pretty good.
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In one episode he was literally scraping the bottom of the barrel. Ha ha ha...
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It's been years since they used "the learning channel" spelled out.
I missed a couple of words and read this as 'It's been years since the learning channel spelled out.' Which I thought was rather witty. A can from my dyslexia.
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Lots of serious dramas on TV these days, as well. It's just the splintering of the audience and the need to fill time. The future of TV won't just be this. It will be this and that and that other thing, too.
I don't watch TV except for sports.
Oh, and I wonder how many people on the show are Mormons. Only because I've heard that many Mormons think that you should have a year's worth of food/supplies and that Glenn Beck has been pushing this idea. And the only extreme couponer that I know happens to be Mormon, but she had the coupons before she had the Morminity.
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yes, I feel like TV is being split in half. On the one hand you have really successful great shows-- your Wire, Mad Men, Sopranos, whatever. On the other hand you have reality shows. No more middlebrow.
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Maybe it's just one night on NBC, but Community and Parks and Recreation are awesome. Those are middlebrow I think.
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Oh, and I wonder how many people on the show are Mormons. Only because I've heard that many Mormons think that you should have a year's worth of food/supplies and that Glenn Beck has been pushing this idea. And the only extreme couponer that I know happens to be Mormon, but she had the coupons before she had the Morminity.
Maybe this is an unknown method of recruitment. You get a coupon mailer for one free, saved soul, and well, who's going to pass that up, right?
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Maybe this is an unknown method of recruitment. You get a coupon mailer for one free, saved soul, and well, who's going to pass that up, right?
Oh how I laughed at that.
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Maybe it's just one night on NBC, but Community and Parks and Recreation are awesome. Those are middlebrow I think.
Community is terrific. Daughter 2 loves P&R.
Anybody watch Louie or Wilfred?
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I mostly watch Youtube.
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Anybody watch Louie or Wilfred?
I saw the first few episodes of Wilfred and was actually shocked at how good it was. It's a remake of an aussie show (starring the same guy as Wilfred) and I was sure they'd ruin it but it's really pretty good. Completely different tone to the original, but that's a good thing.
Community is obviously beyond reproach, I've never been able to watch a full episode of parks and rec. The average quirkiness per character is too high on that show, Community characters are slightly less quirky so I can enjoy them.
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Louie is so good it hurts. I'm pretty sure Louis C.K. wasn't always this funny. I wonder what happened.
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Community is obviously beyond reproach, I've never been able to watch a full episode of parks and rec. The average quirkiness per character is too high on that show, Community characters are slightly less quirky so I can enjoy them.
What?? We have very opposite impressions of these two shows. I couldn't handle watching a full episode of Community because of how annoying I found the characters.
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Perversely I think I like the community characters more because they're obviously stereotypes. The combination of faux documentary style and the down-to-earth but eccentric characters in P&R makes their weirdness that much harder for me to enjoy, whereas in Community everyone is a weird caricature in a weird caricature universe.
While we're getting things out in the open I'm not huge on the Office for pretty much the same reason.
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I used to dig it, and still watch it (mainly because it is on next to community and parks and rec), but that show hasn't been good in a few years at least. It's first year was pretty bad too. Years 2-4or5 are pretty darn good, though I get why you don't like it.
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I would watch the Office, but I really hate to turn on the television.
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Louie is so good it hurts. I'm pretty sure Louis C.K. wasn't always this funny. I wonder what happened.
i dont know, but here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU) he talks about how george carlin made him a better stand-up comedian.... at the dudes memorial service.
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Louie is so good it hurts.
This. The first one I ever saw was the one where he takes his daughters to visit his great-aunt. I was shocked (Shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!) by how good it was.
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Oh yeah. I haven't even seen Louis, but I'll believe it's so good.
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I have seen a bit of Season 1 on Netflix streaming. It's not at the top of my list -- I'm not a sitcommy person, generally -- but I enjoyed what I saw of it. Will probably watch later if I run out of Star Trek. I enjoy his stand-up, though. It speaks to me on a visceral level. He says out loud all those things a parent thinks but is afraid to admit.
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Louie is the best drama about comedy ever. His stand-up is riotous but his show is deeply introspective and often difficult. I can't get enough.
Community is a sitcom about sitcoms, manipulating and parodying the tropes other shows simply utilize, while honoring the best examples of the form (and becoming one at the same time). I think Dan Harmon is probably a genius, evidenced mainly by casting Don Glover and Danny Pudi. Those two are great together.
If anybody ain't watching Archer, you're missing out. FX shows [adult swim] what they could be doing if they didn't waste every night with reruns of ***** Chicken and Family Guy.
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Man, what to add to this thread.
I'm enjoying Wilfred... I wonder if the "Wilfred teaches a lesson by being awful..." formula is going to get old.
Louie... I love. I love Louis CK's stand up... his show is... An amazing labor of love. The man takes his life and his thoughts and fears, and hopes and dreams and puts them together for us in a stark, brutal and honest way.
Sometimes, it's funny.
He manages to distill his thoughts on the human condition down to 22 minutes and feed it to us. The episode on religion from the first season was UNBELIEVABLY GOOD. The USO episode from this season, ALSO amazingly good.
Honestly, it's some of the most brave, artistic television that I've ever seen.
ETA: I'd like to show you my pussy.
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I recently decided that I watch too much TV, but I don't know what to do about this. I'd like to cut back, but with the PVR, it's hard as there's always a long cue of good stuff I like to watch.
I think I might be done with watching Horders though. I've seen one too many flattened, mummified kitten being waved about at this point.
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I think I might be done with watching Horders though. I've seen one too many flattened, mummified kitten being waved about at this point.
For serious? That is something that happens on those shows? I'm interested now.
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Well, this is the first clip I found when I searched on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXNf7gGBpBY) and it's not even for an episode I've seen. Hilarity ensues? No.
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I'm surprised that cleanup crew wasn't wearing masks.
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I hated Parks & Rec at the beginning. It just screamed "Office knockoff" complete with the character so bad they make you mute the TV. Then something happened, I'm not sure what, and it became good. DJ Roomba and Ron Swanson's Pyramid of Greatness good.
I like Archer a lot but wish the creator would have finished up Frisky Dingo first. Plus for the 1st couple episodes I couldn't buy H. Jon Benjamin as Archer. His voice just didn't fit the character, I thought. Now I can't imagine it any other way.
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oh man do I hate Archer. Oh man. Make a few more jokes about how that chick wants rape-play, Archer. Just really go for it, make a few more jokes about how much she loves being choked during sex.
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you must mean cheryl aka carol aka karina. choking's her thing. that's that character. and ray's gay and woodhouse is addicted to heroin. it's a cartoon, and everything adverse isn't done as a reflection on or portrayal of a stereotype.
but, hey: whatever floats your boat.
STLA (Sorry To Love Archer)
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Archer's one of those shows where half the point is that normal expectations of how a character should be treated morally are mitigated by the fact that they are all complete amoral imaginary people deserving of deep suffering. Yes, if they were real people, it would be awful what they do and do to each other.
Also, if the Three Stooges were real, they'd all be dead of blunt head trauma long before they could hit the stuffy dowager with the creme pie as a sort of comeuppance.
I'm told that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is also like that but I don't watch that show because two dudes I knew once are on the writing staff and so I can't enjoy it out of a petty jealousy that I begrudgingly cop to.
For me, Archer's one of those shows that I like a good deal when I catch it but not enough to actively plan around trying to watch it.
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I saw Sunny... and thought I would hate it but I thought it was awesome. Not awesome enough to download or anything, but awesome.
I saw one Archer and remember thinking it was okay but never wanted to watch it again. There is a cool Australian living in my house for a month, and he is all about Frisky Dingo, but I probably won't watch that either.
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I'm told that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is also like that but I don't watch that show because two dudes I knew once are on the writing staff and so I can't enjoy it out of a petty jealousy that I begrudgingly cop to.
I was given a couple of seasons of IASIP to watch and yes it's like that. If it's any consolation to you and your jealousy the show is not really that good. That is to say, it was enjoyable at first, but the schtick got old fast.
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I'm told that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is also like that but I don't watch that show because two dudes I knew once are on the writing staff and so I can't enjoy it out of a petty jealousy that I begrudgingly cop to.
Oh, I totally get this. I have to tell you my story like this, but elsewhere, because it might Reveal Too Much if I had a very determined internet stalker. And you know, one likes to cling to the notion that one might be interesting enough that someone would care that much.
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"Elsewhere" has been popping up a lot in casual conversation.
If super secret squirrels, stop being super secret, they're just squirrels. Remember that.
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Oh, I totally get this. I have to tell you my story like this, but elsewhere, because it might Reveal Too Much if I had a very determined internet stalker. And you know, one likes to cling to the notion that one might be interesting enough that someone would care that much.
I like to think that I care that much, but i just have too much going on right now, and you know how tough it is to schedule things.
Right now we are watching the boxed set of Twilight Zone, and we just finished up Arrested Development. That was a very good show. I am looking forward to the movie. I also periodically watch Big Bang Theory on the airplane. It's apparently the most popular sit-com in the country right now, and the most popular ever in Canada.
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"Elsewhere" has been popping up a lot in casual conversation.
If super secret squirrels, stop being super secret, they're just squirrels. Remember that.
Oh great. Now I have to kill you.
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(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/3148215691_45efac6afb.jpg)
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Do you see Morocco Mole? No. Because he fuck*ng talked.
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While in Morocco, Morocco Mole is just called Mole.
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Carlos del Vaca con poqueño bebidas del pimiento médico!
Also:
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2433/3657942692_c5a22c3177.jpg)
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I also periodically watch Big Bang Theory on the airplane. It's apparently the most popular sit-com in the country right now, and the most popular ever in Canada.
I've only seen one episode of that. And the whole time I was just thinking how much I'd rather be watching The IT Crowd
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I've only seen one episode of that. And the whole time I was just thinking how much I'd rather be watching The IT Crowd
We TALKED about this.
If anything else had been on, I would have watched it. I did watch numbers 50 - 60 of the 100 greatest NFL players and High Sierra (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033717/) first.