valentine’s b-side- loving love is dangerous.

so my real official valentine’s day post belongs to ophelia’s webb today, so you’ll have to go over there if you want to read that mess. but if you’re too lazy to click, the cliff’s notes version is that i love valentine’s day.

when was a little girl, i would spend weeks and weeks making home made valentines for everyone i cared about (long before romantic love could hover over me like a specter of death) and generally just thinkin about all the people i wanted to tell how awesome they are. as a teenager, i wasn’t always great at expressing my love for anyone or anything (picture it- 1992: black lipstick, kafka, ever present scowl), but for some reason, i let valentine’s day be the exception to that rule. and in fact, if i felt compelled to declare my affections to someone in particular, i would often wait until valentine’s day- and spend weeks or months thinking of just the right thing to say that would make them fall in love with me instantly.

this has had varying levels of effectiveness. and has, on rare occasion, gotten me into trouble.

say NO to the dress: why paying the rent should be a bigger priority than feeling like a princess.

anybody who follows me on twitter knows that i’ve been watching A LOT Of say yes to the dress (there are 78 episodes on netflix instant!). the thing is, it’s a TERRIBLE show. like the worst possible people that you can imagine whining, and crying, and hissy fitting all over the store until some poor frazzled family member agrees to spend $11,000 on a skin tight cacophony of beads, lace, tulle, crystals and bad taste (don’t even get me started on the whore-bride trend…). this dress will invariably made by a woman named pnina tornai. this woman must be stopped. but again, that’s a conversation for another day…

i can’t seem to stop myself from watching the show, but with each subsequent viewing, i become more and more furious.

as you will learn shortly, there are actually only 2 kinds of brides that shop at kleinfeld. they are both equally revolting. 

chasing the white whale.

so a while ago, you might have noticed a little red box pop up on the sidebar region right over there –> this box was gently urging you to consider nominating broke207 for the portland phoenix best of 2011 poll. now, i am not a particularly competitive person by nature (unless of course we’re playing scrabble, in which case I WILL CUT YOU), but all the nominees get to go to pretty kick ass party… and i do enjoy a good time.

now, you might have noticed that the red box has magically morphed into a blue box. this is not magic, nor is it the talents of my hard working special effects team… but yesterday i found out that i actually GOT NOMINATED. i almost peed all over myself at work. sure, i put up the red box (hello, PARTY), and i threw down a facebook post about it… but i really didn’t expect anyone to actually vote for me.

now don’t worry, i’m not gonna get all faux humble on your ass or anything. i’m just really surprised, and really excited, and really grateful. so if you clicked on that box in the last few weeks, thank you. thank you a bunch.

well, i’m not gonna do that thing where i tell you that you have to vote for me, but i would really like it if you voted period. the other nominees for best blog are pretty fucking fantastic, and totally worthy of your support. you can find all of them in my blogroll also over there —-> but for the sake of ease in pointing and clicking, here they are:

i spy- bargains and sadness.

this fucking economy. over the last 3 years, i have watched the streets of this town morph into something that i don’t recognize anymore. exchange street alone is a complete stranger with its consignment and discount shops mixed amongst the last few surviving high end stores. not that i don’t appreciate the bargains, but it feels like i notice a new STORE CLOSING! or GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! or maybe EVERYTHING MUST GO! sign pretty much every day. after having your business alive in this city for so long, i can’t even imagine what it must feel like to have to paste that sign up in your window. i assume that there’s a lot of shame and regret. a lot of wishing that they could go back and have that “it’s a wonderful life” chance to do it the right way this time… or maybe it’s just a relief to be done with it? struggling small businesses can be like large monsters in the way that they eat up time, resources, energy, and hope. whatever the case, shuttering those windows and signing over your lease to some dude who thinks he has a better idea has to be an emotionally pummeling experience. i know it breaks my heart every time, and i just shop there. well, i used to shop there.

this past week, 2 of my favorites made the casualty list.

the north star music cafe had such a benevolent purpose! delicious local (mostly veg & vegan) foodables! flexible performance and music space for all! a few months ago, the owner ran a small fundraising campaign to help pay off some mounting business related debts, and i think we were all really hoping that was the end of it. not so. thursday afternoon, the news broke on twitter that they were shutting down for good on sunday. goodbye adorable hippie girls serving me bagels. goodbye sweet vegan reuben. goodbye people in this town trying to do something with purpose, integrity, and love. maybe i’m being overdramatic, but i’m super bummed out.

second on the list (do we need to start making a dead pool for portland businesses?), is cunningham books in longfellow square.  always carefully organized and stuffed full of beautiful and pristine picture books, this was a regular stop on my local hunt for nancy drews and 80s art and fashion books. i spied the 30% OFF STORE CLOSING sign on sunday afternoon, and the excitement over possible vintage book bargains was totally clouded with the confusion and disappointment i felt to find out that they were closing. too pricey? too far from downtown?  not enough revenue to be had selling old books? i don’t know. it’s possible that they don’t even know. sometimes you can do everything right and still fail. small business is vicious, and i wholeheartedly admire anyone who has the iron cojones to actually give it a try.

anyway, sorry this post is such a bummer. consider it your “buy local” lecture of the day. if we don’t support the businesses that we love, they will disappear. it’s fucking crazy hard out there right now, so open those wallets and go get yourself some local whatever (might i suggest some gently used he-man figures, or possibly a chocolate covered twinkie?).

have you recently lost a favored local establishment to this crap economy? tell me about it. and let me be the first to offer my profound condolences.

blogging for dollars.

after the big week with the wordpress deluge and just the general positive growth of my little blog egg over the last year, a friend recently posed the question: why aren’t you monetizing? first of all, i hate the word monetize. it’s like one of those jargony crap words that everyone throws around when they’re talking about “important internet stuff”. second of all, i hate advertising cluttering up my favorite blogs. it’s ugly and distracting. on the other hand… i do like money. i do need money. as a writer of a blog with the word “broke” in the title, don’t i have a personal responsibility to scrape every penny off the sidewalk that i can?

well, when i first started this project, i promised myself that i wasn’t going to try any funny business like paying for a domain name, or advertising, or trying to make money until i had been successfully operational for at least one year. i have a bad track record with blogs (and a lot of other things)… i get so excited about things for a minute, and then someone jangles some keys in front of my face, and i’m off and running in the opposite direction. the internet is a virtual (pun intended) graveyard of my abandoned writing projects, and i wanted to make sure that this wasn’t just another one night stand before i made any big (potentially expensive) moves. well, i’m not quite at the 1 year finish line yet, but it’s looking good. in short, the patient is still alive, and it’s time to start thinking about what comes next.

but you know what, i have no fucking clue what comes next. how exactly do you take a blog to “the next level”, if you’re not ever sure what the next level is? i’m still really down on the idea of sidebar ads (primarily for aesthetic reasons) and according to copyblogger (one of the best blog resources out there), i probably wouldn’t make any money doing it anyway. so then what direction? do i try to figure out what the hell affiliate ads are (who wants to affiliate themselves with my financially inept ass)? do i try to sell ebooks where i speak in depth on the profundities of my financial ineptitude? do i try to get famous and get talking gigs where i can tell other people how they too can be profoundly financially inept? but seriously, at the end of the day, do i actually have anything worth monetizing?

whether i do or not, i feel like dream of making a living off of blogging is roughly akin to wanting to grow up to be a rockstar or an astronaut. sure, somebody gets to have that job… but the odds are less than stellar for big time success. the truth is that i love this. i don’t think i’d get so little sleep for something i was kind of meh about, and i’m scared about the possibility of losing that love in the process of trying to spin straw into gold. what happens if i try and make money and it doesn’t work? would that failure suck the joy out of the writing, and ruin the whole affair?

for now, i think i’m going to hold off with the blogging for cash schemes. although i can’t promise that there won’t be a few subtle surprise changes headed your way this summer. but if any of my seasoned blog peeps out there have some light to shed on the subject, it would be most sincerely appreciated. i have much to learn, and i’m just going to sit quietly right here until i’m well educated enough not to tear the whole system down in the process.

magic box.

fucking vocalpoint man. how did i live so long without you? i say this in all completely unpaid sincerity. not that i wouldn’t accept payment for my adoration… but you never call. regardless, i love you anyway. since we first met, you have showered me with free gifts and high value coupons, asking little or nothing in return. not only are you generous with the swag, but said swag is always wrapped up in the most exquisite high-concept packaging. expensive!

but today, today was something else. sure, i vaguely remember signing up for a pantene sample few weeks ago… but i was in no way emotionally prepared for what arrived at my doorstep via UPS. UPS!  full color… die cut 2 part box whose unfolding petals revealed a full sized bottle of shampoo and 3 $2/1 coupons.

*jizz* *jizz*

seriously vocalpoint, or pantene, or whoever. how exactly is it that you can afford to give this shit away?

stalking the wild handbag.

ok, technically it was a clutch. i first spotted it in the early 2000s in some vogue-y elle-y fashion-y magazine.  banana republic ad. it was love at first sight. i tore the page out of the magazine, and pinned it to the wall in my studio. randomly enough, i still have that ad, and it would later come to pass that i would also unknowingly purchase the sweater in that picture (apparently banana republic knows what i like). but that’s irrelevant.

at the time that ad arrived in my life, i had no money, and no access to a banana republic. as time went on, and clothing seasons  passed, i kept that ad pinned to my wall and continued to maintain my boner for the bag. i knew that someday, it would be mine. that’s because in 1999, i became a member of ebay (early enough that my handle doesn’t have to have numbers after it). along with being able to buy a bunch of crazy crap for low low prices, what ebay really means to me is that no coveted item is ever truly “sold out”, or even out of my price range. the key is patience. when i see something (anything) that i really love, even if i can afford to buy it at the moment, unless it is already at a once in a lifetime rock bottom price… i walk away. in a few days to a few weeks, i go back and visit. is it as sexy as i remember? can i still not picture my life without it? has the price dropped at all? do i have a coupon? at this point, the situation becomes a choose your own adventure book. if the answer is yes to all above questions, then i may buy the item and go home to make sweet love to it. if not, it’s wash, rinse, and repeat repeat repeat. then, one of 3 things happens: 1. in an ideal world, the price drops low enough that i let myself pull the trigger and buy it. 2. i tire of the stalking and forget about it all together (or more likely find a new love on an adjacent shelf). 3. the item is sold out before the price gets low enough for me to buy.

ebay time. the truth about the clutch is that i never actually saw it in person. it was online briefly at full price, but disappeared quickly. but then slowly, about a year and after the season had passed… it started to appear on ebay (and yes, i checked regularly for a year and a half). unfortunately, it appeared on ebay in PINK, and i would accept no subsitutions. boo-urns. another 6 months passed. eventually, a single yellow bag would arrive on the scene, and i would snag it for a mere $19.99 plus shipping. and even though i’ve had it for years and years now, that bag is still my ace in the hole. it automatically makes any outfit seem slightly dressier and more interesting. also, i have never carried it anywhere without it being lustfully molested by party guests or passers by. as far as i can tell, i have the only one in maine.

the moral of this story is that impulse buying at full price is for SUCKAHS! the internet means that if it’s worth even a few pennies, someone will be selling it. you just have to be tenacious and patient. the cliche is absolutely true. let it go, if it’s love, it will find its way back to you.

my next victim is the chanel 2005 bag. randomly enough, from the 1998 collection. it’s come down a bit in price from the original $1800, but i’m still going to need to sell a lot of plasma if i ever want this dream to come true. but don’t dare doubt it. i may be 97 when i get it, but it will be mine.

what are you stalking?