Devouring TV: Extreme Couponing

One of the most astute things that my dad (and maybe anyone) has ever said about me is that I only watch really really good or really really bad TV. It's so incredibly true that I couldn't even say anything about it, just nod in agreement because, yeah. Absolutely. I can't explain this paradox, but the fact is that I want to watch Breaking Bad and I want to watch Hoarders, and I don't want anything in between. The best or the worst, that's all I want.

One thing that no one has ever said about me, but which I know to be true about myself, is that I like to mix the highbrow with the lowbrow- talking about parts of pop culture in a ridiculously over-analytical way for what they are. And that's what you're going to get here, so I can try to justify watching all the Extreme Couponing Netflix has to show, except for the stupid episodes where they've messed with the format and made couponers compete against each other for some reason... That, apparently, is where I draw the line. Weirdly.

So, Extreme Couponing. It's an American reality show wherein people who coupon basically for a living get huge amounts of shopping worth hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of dollars for about $5. It is RIDICULOUS, and so much more exciting than it should be, and it's a shameful yet excellent thing to watch. There are quite a few reasons I suspect I'm so into it, not least of which is that you literally can't do this kind of thing in the UK. We don't have nearly as many coupons, there's no such thing as 'doubling coupons' (Americans: Your shops really do that?!) and most money off vouchers have small print that say 'cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer'. So, there's no possible way for me to ever be, say, paid to take things out of shops, so I have to live vicariously through these people.

A weird and unexpected side effect of watching Extreme Couponing has been that I've started to see the logic in doing what these people do. I mean, don't get me wrong- mostly I watched it because it's completely compulsive and also slides down so easily after a day of unpacking, but, of course, I've thought about it a bit more than that. At first I had a lot of criticisms, like 'whyyy are these people doing this in their free time?' and 'Do they really need that?' and 'Well, they can't get anything healthy with those coupons, anyway.' and it was like the programme had anticipated each of my criticisms and had an answer for all of them.

Like, 'whyyyy are these people doing this in their spare time?' Well, they're doing it so that they can save money. Or so they can support their extended family. Or because their husband lost his job (yeah, it's mostly women who do it...). I'm not saying there's not some kind of compulsion involved, but frankly, I think that if someone wants to do couponing instead of, say, a full time job, then I think that's an equally effective use of one time and also it's kiiind of the opposite of Capitalism, to which I say YAY. I have slightly more of a 'whaaaat?' reaction when people have a full time job, and in their spare time they coupon, because when do you start living, people?!

And 'do they really need that?' Well, they sort of do. Obviously no one needs a fifty year supply of toothpaste all at once, or an entire room for sweets (I actually do need an entire room for sweets, so) but on the whole, the people featured on Extreme Couponing kind of buy things they at least like (apart from this one woman who made her son eat cereal he didn't even like because it was free, which seems a bit against everything I'm trying to say here) and if they don't like them, or won't use them, then they donate them. And you can't really argue with that. Couponing for the good of humanity? That's cool.

'Well, they can't get anything healthy with those coupons anyway.' Well, for the most part, this is pretty true. I've seen people buy many many bottles of vitamin water, packs of oreo cookies, this same brand of noodles over and over again (there must always be coupons for them!), but, as the narration constantly reinforces, coupons for things like meat and produce and basically raw ingredients of all meals are pretty much like unicorns. So, I could watch with the smug belief that, well, at least I eat better than these people. BUT THEN I watched this episode with a vegan couponer, and well. I mean, what can you do with that? She must be pretty healthy AND she saves money. So, my conclusion is that you can be an unhealthy couponer, but you don't have to be.

Obviously, I've overthought this a LOT. But it's fun to do and I like it, so leave me alone! Here are a few random side effects I've experienced watching Extreme Couponing:

• I've wanted to smack the voiceover person so much whenever he says 'a x% savings.' NO. It's either 'a x% saving' OR 'x% savings'. NOT BOTH.
• They almost always get tons of vitamin water and it makes me crave vitamin water so badly. This wouldn't be a problem, but vitamin water is SO EXPENSIVE over here. It's not just a little bit more expensive, it's like the same as the dollar price, only in pounds but also with more money added to that? I can't afford that shit, someone find me a coupon!
• Extreme Couponing is the only thing I've ever watched that makes me kind of want to live in one of the crappier states* in the US because they have better coupons. This is RIDICULOUS, and yet.

So basically. You probably shouldn't watch Extreme Couponing because MY GOD the amount of time you'll spend doing so, but if you feel a compulsion to watch really bad TV (I can't be the only one...) then you couldn't do much better, or in fact worse, than this. I love it, really.

*By crappier, I basically just mean not California or New York. Their couponing deals suuuuuck.

Sunday Sundries: I have not eaten meat for 18 months so let's discuss that

It's Sunday AGAIN?

Not that I have anything against Sundays, of course, but they do seem to come up awfully frequently. *Regards Sunday with some suspicion*.

Anyway! I was going to skip Sunday Sundries (I always want to call it SS but then I'm like 'NO! Nazis. Bad.) this week since I've been updating things every day on this post right here, and, you know, that's pretty much my week neatly laid out in little paragraphs and page counts. I was also going to skip it because, you know, LAZY, but but but did you see in the title that it's kind of my not-eating-meat birthday and a half (which is a thing now, apparently) so I'll ramble about that for a bit and then let you be on your way.

Oh, ALSO, it's this dude's actual birthday. It's worth a mention.

Anyway! Meat. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Let's see... It's weird when you choose to do a certain thing (or, choose NOT to do a certain thing) and people have all these questions about it, which I do choose to take as interest rather than, you know, horror and aghastness (which I fear they actually are). The most common questions, though, are without a doubt: 1) Why don't you eat meat? Don't you like it? 2) Don't you miss meat? and 3) What do you eat?

Well, that seems as good a structure as any for a post! (See what I did there?) Why don't I eat meat? I mean, I feel like I've probably covered this enough already, but I'm always stumped for an answer when someone asks me in real life because what were those moral things again? Basically, I guess in the most simple terms, I don't really think that other beings should have to die so I can eat when there are plentiful sources of other foods and also meat is so gross. Like... Really really gross. Antibiotic abuse and standing in their own shit and never seeing daylight and just no. Nope. Can't.

And don't I like meat? I love it. I think it's delicious. But I also think there are things more important than tasty things (I know, whut?) and for me, personally, it's more important that I not be involved in, you know, killing animals and stuff than to have a really good burger. But I still willingly acknowledge that burgers taste good! I feel like other people feel like I judge them for eating meat, and I don't. At all. Just because I've made this choice doesn't mean that I look down on people for not having made it, but I sometimes feel like I am being judged for not eating meat, which is pretty weird.

Don't I miss meat? I don't. I really truly don't. I mean, sure, whenever I smell bacon cooking, all of my senses go into overdrive, but bacon smells way better than it tastes anyway, and nobody ever said anything about not being able to sniff meat. But really and truly, it's not like I spend my days fantasising about burgers and then sadly go and eat some falafels or something- I just don't even consider meat as a thing I eat. It's kind of on a mental list of foods I'm just not interested in, along with peppers and mushrooms and cauliflower. And this isn't the same thing as pretending that I don't like meat, it's just not a thing that I think about because I know that I don't want to eat it. If anything, that would be my number one tip to converting to vegetarianness- as long as you know you don't want to eat it, then you won't eat it. It's really that simple.

What do I eat?

Well, this is my favourite question because MY GOD I eat so many different foods now. Seriously, as long as there was meat, I was the least adventurous eater in the whole world. I would have been happy just with some chicken and noodles and beansprouts and, you know, not much flavour. But now? You have to do something to replace meat, and flavour is the answer. I can cook a lot more things than I ever used to be able to, and I like SO many more vegetables than I ever did (asparagus is probably my favourite. Asparagus makes all the burgers in the world irrelevant to me. And aubergine is reaaaaally meaty!) The answer to the question then, really, is (apart from cakeballs) so many more things than I used to eat, and all of them are doing better things for me than meat, I suspect.

Having said that, I'll never get used to asparagus pee. NEVER.

So basically, the update is this: It's all going well, I still don't miss meat and the smell of bacon cooking is still good. The thing I probably miss the most, actually, is jelly sweets, but when you think about all the crap that goes in them anyway... It's definitely a good thing that I don't eat them. I don't really have a definitive ending here because, I don't know, nothing's over, it's just getting started, but basically a meatless life? It's not as bad as you might think, and it's much easier than I ever thought it would be. Expect another update in about six months, I guess!