We almost hit $1000!
I finally discovered how to see this site’s Blogathon sponsors, and in the process found some pledges that had gone unconfirmed until now. The final tally was 37 pledges for $964. Huge thanks to everyone who was able to sponsor:
Nathaniel Burbank
Sabino Arredondo (the best accountant in Canby, Oregon)
Vince at Investorial.com
Anthony Lewis
Dusty D.
PearBudget
Mom
Luneray [...]

I’m going to bed now.
Blogathon is over. I’m proud of the money that you pledged in support of First Book. Your 32 pledges raised $658 to buy books for needy children. (It’s not too late to contribute, by the way.)
I’m glad I tried this. I didn’t know if I could do it. And it was [...]

Here’s where I’ve spent the last 24 hours:

This is the dining room table. You can see my Powerbook open and ready for use. To its left are a couple of books that I referred today. There’s also an empty bag of chips. (The salsa bowl is to the right of the computer.) Both mugs contained [...]

Rob Cockerham at cockeyed.com (whom I’ve already mentioned twice today — he’s got lots of good funny money stuff), has a profile on the extraordinary price of dents.

In Early May, my friend Tim got into a car wreck. It wasn’t his fault. A gal popped out from between two stopped cars and put a large [...]

Fred Astaire - Puttin’ on the Ritz (1930)
Taco - Puttin’ on the Ritz (1982)

Puttin’ on the Ritz (annotations)
by Irving Berlin
Have you seen the well-to-do
Upon Lennox Avenue
On that famous thoroughfare
With their noses in the air
High hats and narrow collars
White spats and fifteen dollars
Spending every dime
For a wonderful time
If you’re blue
And you don’t know where to go [...]

Pennies get no respect. Their mineral composition fluctuates — they’re mostly zinc now, though they’ll return to bronze in 2009. People treat them like trash, often tossing them on the ground rather than keeping them. But some people know that pennies are treasures. Sure you can make spiders out of dollar bills, but you can [...]

Clarence Day wrote for the The New Yorker in the 1920s and 1930s. His most famous work is Life With Father, which was adapted successfully into a stage play, a film, and a television series. It’s a bittersweet look at childhood in New York City during the 1890s.
One of the joys of Day’s stories is [...]

My cousin Nick remembers:

My dad was so cheap that he once drilled a hole in a nickel so that he wouldn’t have to pay eight cents for a washer.
My first memory of gas prices is driving home from my grandparents. We drove into a gas station, and pulled up to the pump. The guy came [...]

Today, as I was posting to Blogathon, I received a 419 message, a Nigerian advance fee scam:

My reason for contacting you is to solicit for your assistance and to stand as my trustee in having this cash successfully moved to your country, where i will have to invest it in a good business or if [...]

Have you seen the shameless exaggeration, the tasteless products, and the pure hokum dispensed by all those infomercials that clog up the late night airwaves? Welcome to the Ridiculous Infomercial Review, the website that gleans laughs from the tacky world of television infomercials. All sorts of infomercials are featured here, old and new, famous and [...]