Comments on: Today’s RSS Zeitgeist: Cheapskates

By: Rana

Rana — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 03:35:00 +0000

Yup. They’re called axle boots, and they’re rubber and filled with nice clean grease.
I’m so glad I’m not in high school any more and thus don’t have to deal with snide looks at my clothing (I can be fashionable _when_ I want to — but I hate feeling _obliged_ to dress “well”). These days I get the “Whoa, she’s a hippy ain’t she?” vibe mostly when I talk about crafts and other leisure activities. Knitting’s trendy enough, as is yoga, but if you mention things like spinning, or making your own clothes, people get this really odd look in their eyes.
On good days it amuses me.

By: yami

yami — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 15:39:00 +0000

Work clothes have never bothered me as much as, say, the baffled response I get when I tell people I own a washer, but not a dryer. Or hubcaps - seriously, is there any reason to have hubcaps? I know they used to protect the hub from grime, but modern wheels, specifically mine, are supposed to have built-in doohickeys for that, aren’t they?

By: des von bladet

des von bladet — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 07:42:00 +0000

My professional life has been blissfully dresscodefree. I actually smartened up when I came back to university, because people kept reporting me to security as “suspicious”.
But the problem with the struggle between social norms and any given individual’s inclinations is that it is so very unequal. I’m certainly much less openly eccentric than I used to be (I’ve even learned foopball as a second langwidge), although this is happily a country where not having a car is still only a quirk.

By: Rana

Rana — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 06:45:00 +0000

Yeah, I don’t _really_ disagree. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to pick a nit.
In a better world we as a culture wouldn’t care so much about this sort of superficial crap. *sigh*
What I’d particularly love is if this attitude adjustment happened in the workplace. I’m lucky that I can get away with being “casual” but I miss the freedom of dress I had in college where if I was decent, all was good, no matter how creative and costumy I dressed, or if I came to class in pajamas.

By: yami

yami — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:52:00 +0000

Skill and ingenuity can work wonders - but how many people know how to give themselves a decent haircut and craft slick-looking gifts and pull together a wardrobe from Goodwill that doesn’t actually look like it came from Goodwill? And who has the time?
Certainly not all eccentrics are cheapskates! But very few people have what it takes to be cheaply mainstream for all occasions.

By: Rana

Rana — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:20:00 +0000

I am proud to be an eccentric oddball. And I agree that one can often have more fun on the cheap and for free than advertisers would like me to believe.
However, I am not convinced that being one is _necessarily_ cost-efficient. *grin* My “weird homemade gifts” are very much prized, and can be rather expensive when you factor in the materials and labor costs. Nor does cheap have to look weird or unclean.
It’s all about the framing. It’s not thrift-shop, it’s “retro”!