After several years of almost unexplainable rate hikes, one after another, the price of oil has finally settled to previous levels, and sub-two-dollar gasoline has returned. Of course, even as I type that sentence, I can hear the gas station attendants down the road getting out their reachy sticks and starting to hang up those number twos again. Indeed, thanks to factors like violence in the Middle East, the price of gas may very soon be on the rise.

Can we expect to be paying three or four dollars a gallon to fill up our cars again soon? Only time will tell, but I suspect that time is the only thing standing between us and a return to ridiculously high gas prices. The rise wasn’t so bad the first time around—people started driving smarter, combining trips, and helping to stretch their mileage as best as possible. But because everyone has gotten used to these gas-saving techniques, they’ve been reluctant to give them up. After all, carpooling and accelerating gently aren’t that hard to do, and they still save drivers money even when gas is only $1.80 a gallon.

But what will happen if and when gas spikes back up to $4.00 a gallon? If everyone is already doing all they can to conserve gas, there won’t be any room to scrimp and save once those historic highs return? That’s why, if you don’t want to feel completely hopeless later, you should return to the old ways of driving now. What do I mean by that? Well, starting immediately, you should re-incorporate the following into your daily driving habits:

1. Jackrabbit starts. If you bought a new 30+ MPG car recently in response to rising fuel prices, you’re going to want to do your best to knock that down to under 20 MPG now so you can revel in the savings of 30 MPG again later. The best way to do this is to apply maximum acceleration from all starting positions whenever possible, so-called “jackrabbit starts.” You’ll burn through three times as much gas just to get to the next red light five seconds sooner!
2. Speed limit inflation. It sounds much better than “speeding” (it sounds more legal and official too!), and it’ll help you shave precious pints off your gas gallon. You’ll see the best MPG drop when you do over 65 MPH on the highway… or in your favorite school zone!
3. Carpools are for wusses. Even if you and your three next-door neighbors work in the same office building, insist on driving to work alone. In fact, consider tying the steering wheels of your two cars together and driving them both to work each day.
4. Warm up your car in the morning. It’s 6:30am in the middle of a harsh winter, and you leave for work in 30 minutes. Run outside in your pajamas, start the car, and crank up the heat as high as possible. You’ll burn through a gallon or two of gas by 7am, and your ride to work will be at a balmy 115 degrees.
5. Manual drivers—first gear is your friend. If you drive a stick, now’s a great time to pretend you don’t! Leave your car in first all the time and burn through gas 40% faster than your lame friends who insist on shifting into second and higher.
6. Windows open, and lots of hood ornaments. Disrupt the efficiency of your car’s aerodynamic shape by always driving with the windows open. Tack on hood ornaments to every spare inch of your cars surface to increase wind resistance and lower your mileage even more!
7. Store crap in the trunk. Cancel your paid storage space now and shove all that useless crap in the back of your car. You’ll not only save money now not having to pay for the storage space, but you’ll lose that money right away with the lower MPG that extra weight will give you.
8. Take your car in for a misalignment. Find the dumbest mechanic in your town and ask him to align your wheels. Assuming your car still goes straight afterward, you’ll cut miles of your gallon in no time.
9. Forget the milk. Whenever possible, leave one item off your grocery list so you have to go back to get it on a separate trip later. Double the pleasure, double the mileage!
10. And for the hardcore gas guzzlers… travel in reverse whenever possible and watch your gas mileage hit rock bottom.

Then, once the price of gas jumps back up, you’ll be able to pull back on these bad driving habits and feel like you’re saving money. This way, while your friends and neighbors are contemplating trading in their cars for good walking shoes, you’ll be squeezing pennies off the gallon and riding the highway to savings all by yourself.

You know those tiny burgers you can get in some places that come on their own tiny little buns with tiny little hamburger patties and tiny little puddles of condiments? Yeah, I’m talking about sliders, and I purposely linked to the default Wikipedia article on “sliders” which is really about the 1990s sci-fi series and not the diminutive burger wannabe because sliders are stupid.

Why are sliders stupid? Well, because they are, virtually without exception, a big waste of money and almost always the epitome of deceptive advertising.

Consider, for example, the new Burger King Burger Shots (pretend I just linked to the appropriate page on the Burger King website which I could if the whole website weren’t just one big stupid Flash animation). The Burger Shots come in sets of two or six—but not four, as nobody would eat exactly four of them at once—and cost roughly 70-75 cents each, depending on how many you order. The Burger Shot consists of the following five components listed in approximate order of weight from heaviest to lightest:

1. Tiny plain bun
2. Pickle slice
3. Squirt of ketchup
4. Disappointment
5. Hamburger coin

I call it a “hamburger coin” as it is roughly the size and shape of some larger U.S. coin denominations I have seen. Unlike U.S. money coins, though, the hamburger coins sometimes come in conjoined pairs that resemble hamburger figure-eights.

So what is so wrong with these little burgerlets that I’ve decided to write about them after several months of not writing a damn thing? (Hi everyone!) The first problem with the Burger Shots is that they are a very bad deal. For $1.39, you get two Burger Shots that, when combined, don’t even form the substance of a single Burger King Jr. Whopper which only costs one dollar. What does the extra 39 cents get you for the Burger Shots? I looked at the ingredients list on the wrapper and found it hidden near the end: “…processed beef, and 2% or less of cheese, mayonnaise, bacon, and adorableness.” Indeed, you are paying nearly 40% more for a smaller burger because it is cuter. And also because Burger King thinks you suck at comparing two different items, which you do.

And that brings me to my other point: Have you seen the commercial for the Burger Shots? So that I don’t cut into your self-imposed 3-hour daily limit on YouTube watching, to summarize: the Burger Shots are at least the size of a grown nerdy man’s fist, and eating them will make several gorgeous women want to have sex with you in public.

Now when I went to Burger King last week and tried out a set of Burger Shots (at which time I also compared them side-by-side with a Jr. Whopper and kicked myself for wasting my money), I noticed the following differences between the commercial and real life:

• Each Burger Shot was only about the size of my thumb and index finger formed into an “O.”
• In addition to size, the Shots looked much sadder than their commercial counterparts.
• A total of zero women at the Burger King wanted to have sex with me, which I would say is a very good thing since there roughly negative three attractive women there.

After returning home, lamenting my wasted 39 cents, I went on the internet and researched other “slider” burger offerings. In nearly every case, I discovered that restaurants and fast food chains that offered mini-burgers either priced them higher to a comparable single burger or just made them a whole helluva lot smaller, or both as Burger King did with the Shots.

There are some people who would suggest that the BK Shots are not sliders at all, to which I would say “I can’t hear you, I’m eating six Big Macs so I don’t freaking starve to death which is what I would have done if I’d only eaten two Burger Shots.”

I don’t want to alarm anybody, but at this very moment, someone is trying to steal your money.

Let that statement soak in for a minute. Are you alarmed? You should be, even though I told you not to be. Now I bet you’re wondering what has transpired to cause me to issue such an alarming statement. Well, for starters, I had to write about something, and publishing alarming statements is a great way to get people’s attention. For instance: squirrels cause cancer if they get within 100 feet of you. See what I mean? I bet you’re checking the latest rodentia medical journals right now to verify my claim. Well, I’ll save you the trouble—squirrels do not cause cancer. At least I don’t think they do. Just to be safe, you should probably carry a gun with you all the time and shoot all the squirrels you see.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, everyone is trying to steal your money. And by everyone, I mean the following:

• The Federal government
• Your state and local governments
• Your school or alma mater’s student government
• Auto manufacturers
• The banking industry
• OPEC
• The United Nations
• The Washington Nationals
• The International House of Pancakes

Okay, so I may have embellished that list a little bit. But since I won’t tell you how I embellished it, you’re just going to have to believe me out of fear for now.

One notable entity on that list of groups stealing your money is the banking industry. You might be thinking, “Why would the banks try to steal my money when I’m just as happy to give it to them?” And if you’re not thinking that, then consider all the different ways you give money to the bank during your lifetime:

• Savings accounts and CDs
• Checking accounts
• Mortgage payments
• Credit card payments
• School loan payments
• ATM fees
• Safety deposit boxes

Of course, for most of those times you give your money to the bank, you expect to get something in return—possibly interest payments to you for your savings, or the right to continue living in your house for your mortgage payment. At the very least, you don’t expect a bank will just up and walk away with your hard-earned money. Even if you just stash tens of thousands of dollars into a safety deposit box, that money should still be there years down the road.

Unfortunately that’s not always how it works, as this story of auctioned-off safety deposit boxes reveals. Apparently these boxes aren’t always as “safe” as their name implies. The article describes how banks, believing some safety deposit boxes to be abandoned, turned over the contents to the state government which promptly proceeds to auction off the contents. In some cases, priceless family heirlooms have been sold at auction without the knowledge of the original owner.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the deposit boxes were genuinely abandoned, i.e. the owners had moved away without providing a new address. But in some instances, “abandoned” has simply meant that the owners of the boxes hadn’t visited the box in a few years. Sometimes the owners of the boxes still had active savings or checking accounts at the same bank! According to the article, while states require that banks attempt to contact the owners before drilling the box contents open for sale at auction, there is no law regulating how hard banks must try to contact the owners of “abandoned” safety deposit boxes, nor is there any punishment for not trying.

Now the article goes on to describe a few common sense ways to protect your safety deposit box such as ensuring your contact information is up to date and visiting the box once a year to check the contents. But that’s not going to do anything to stop banks from getting bored one day and deciding to auction off all the safety deposit boxes that are prime numbers. To do that, you’ll need to take serious preventative measures to protect your safety deposit box.

No, this doesn’t mean to set an explosive trap in your box that goes off when it’s opened. After all, how would you get into the box yourself? That, and we’re trying not to kill anyone here. Fortunately the geniuses over at the FatWallet forums have devised the perfect plan to protect your precious possessions from pesky pilferers—simply add a bag of cocaine to your safety deposit box.

You’re probably wondering how this works to stop your safety deposit box from being auctioned away. Well, it’s quite simple:

1. Bank drills open “abandoned” safety deposit box.
2. Bank finds cocaine.
3. Bank calls police.
4. Police find you in about 30 seconds, because they actually try.
5. You, the true owner of the safety deposit box, are successfully located.

Of course, step six of that sequence would be “you go to jail for possession of an illegal substance,” so one way around that would be to substitute a bag of baking powder or sugar labeled as your favorite powdery white narcotic. That said, some places will throw you in jail anyway for wasting their time, but at least your collection of ceramic roosters won’t be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Your best bet, then, might be to label that fake bag of drugs as “definitely not drugs.” This way, the police will get called in anyway, but you can simply tell them later “the bag said it wasn’t drugs!” You still may go to jail, but it would be under the dumbest charge ever—something like “possession of a not illegal substance.”

Hmm… I suppose this whole idea goes out the window if the bank personnel drilling your safety deposit box open decide to steal your drugs. But imagine the look on their faces when they try to use the stuff only to find out it’s cooking flour! That’ll teach ‘em to steal from you.

So in summary, drugs are bad, and stealing is bad, but one bad thing can be used to stop another bad thing from happening, and it might be okay.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not in any way condone stealing things that don’t belong to you. I do, however, thoroughly condone stretching the definition of “belonging to you” to include some things which don’t really belong to anyone, like love and air, but not things like national monuments (I’m talking to you, Carmen Sandiego).

There’s always a bit of a gray area when it comes to taking things that are “free.” Yes, those apartment guides in the grocery store say they’re free, but does that mean you should take all 47 of them? On the one hand, it would be kinda funny to do it, and you’d have a little less competition for apartments which might impact rental prices in the long run. On the other hand, don’t be a dumbass; just take five or six copies like everyone else.

There’s probably no grayer area in the “free stuff” world than in the workplace. After all, there’s just tons of stuff lying around, begging to be absconded with. And if you’re like me and you work for a large, faceless multinational corporation, none of that stuff really belongs to anybody per se. In fact, if you own stock in your own company, then technically some of those computers and light fixtures and floor tiles belong to you. And who would blame you for taking your fair share?

Well, apparently a lot of people would because stealing things from work is generally considered to be illegal. If you try to walk out the front door with a dozen desktop computers under your arms… your grotesque, inhumanly powerful arms… you’re probably going to get stopped by security. At the very least, when someone notices they’re gone, you’ll probably show up on no less than 28 surveillance cameras walking out with the stolen goods.

That said, there really are some workplace items you shouldn’t feel bad about walking away with on occasion either because they’re worth so little or because everyone else does it. Here’s a list of some of those things you practically have a duty to gank from your job.

1. Electricity. Are you still charging your cell phone at home like a stupid hobo? (No offense, hobos.) If so, and you use your phone to make even one work-related call a year, you should be charging it at your desk instead. In fact, I don’t think anyone will blame you if you just ran an extension cord a few miles down the road to your residence since you wouldn’t have all these electrical gadgets to begin with if your job didn’t pay you the money you used to buy them!
2. Water. If your workplace has free exercise facilities, chances are it also has showers. Even if exercising isn’t your cup of tea, you can still take advantage of workplace shower facilities to cut down on hot water consumption at home.
3. Housing. Still renting or paying a mortgage like a stupid hobo? (Really, I don’t mean to offend you hobos.) Why do that when you’ve got a perfectly good office or cubicle that just sits unoccupied each night while you’re at home in your so-called “comfy bed.”
4. Internet. Let me be totally clear here: internet surfing during work is a big no-no; internet browsing at work after hours might not be so bad. Now if you’re gonna be looking at the pornographies, do yourself a favor and use someone else’s computer in case your network admin logs that kind of stuff. Just be sure to clean up after you’re done. Clean up your browsing activity, that is. Ew.
5. Disk space. While we’re talking computers, I bet your work computer has gobs of unused disk space on it. After all, how much space can a few dozen spreadsheets take up? Assuming it’s not against company policy, you could use some of that extra space to backup your important personal files. It’s cheaper than using a commercial backup solution. But again, keep your dirty pictures somewhere else… like at my house.
6. Desk candy. Some of your co-workers may be nice enough to leave small dishes of candy on their desks for people who walk by to take a piece. If your company has you working until 9pm without giving you a break for dinner, those candies can serve as a handy substitute for real nutrition.
7. Storage. This doesn’t apply to those of you who actually use your office or cubicle’s space for storing work items. But I know plenty of you administrative types have nothing but empty lockable drawers that you like to pretend are full of important papers. Why not use some of that space to store books, old clothes, and other stuff you don’t want cluttering up your house? (Not that you even need a house if your office is that spacious…)
8. Scrap paper. If you have young, artistic kids, you probably have to buy them a ream or two of copy paper every other week to satisfy their scribbling habits. (You know: draw draw draw, throw paper away. Draw draw, erase, rip up paper.) Stop wasting perfectly good new paper on them and just bring home whatever you can fish out of the workplace recycling bins. Just be careful what scrap paper you decide to give to your kids as you wouldn’t want them showing off their doodles to classmates drawn on the other side of top secret engineering schematics.
9. Toilet paper. In general, you should be doing about 75% of your toileting at work anyway. You’ll find that doing so will really cut down on your household’s TP consumption. I’m pretty religious about my workplace potty break; stop by stall #2 on the third floor around 12:15 some day and say hi!
10. Old magazines. Sure, they’re a little used and out-of-date, but those three-week-old magazines sitting in your office building’s lobby or waiting room would just get thrown away eventually anyway. Take them home instead and catch up on world events with such first-class publications as Time, Newsweek, and Soap Opera Digest.
11. Expired holiday decorations. Does your workplace decorate for the holidays? And if so, does it throw out those decorations every year? A quick trip to the dumpster on December 26th could save you a boatload on Christmas decorations next year. Heck, stop by work early on December 25th and pick them up before someone else gets the same idea!
12. Landscape. You may not realize it, but that finely groomed campus landscaping you see outside your window at work probably costs more money each month than you make in a year. I think that entitles you to make off with some posies and maybe a few small bushes.

What, were you expecting me to say that it’s okay to walk out with reams of stationery and a truckload of LCD monitors? Sorry to disappoint you, but I bet you’ll still save a lot of money if you pilfer these items. Plus you probably won’t go to jail… unless you’ve got one of those psychotic bosses who constantly inventories the toilet paper in the restroom and chastises everyone for using too much. And if you have one of those bosses, you may want to quit and find a better job.

Oh, and don’t forget to steal everything that isn’t nailed down on your way out.

Bear with me for a second while I spout some nonsensical conspiracy theories.

As most of you already knew from reading so-called “reputable news sites,” Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, and various other retailers gave away freebies on Election Day to people bearing “I Voted” stickers. You might think such a move is a generous or perhaps foolish offer on the part of these companies, but in reality they’ll more than make up the loss from people who show up only for the freebie but end up purchasing something to go with it. However, these companies may have a more sinister agenda hidden deep in these promotions.

Think about it for a second. Who is most likely to take up Starbucks on the offer of a free cup of coffee? Rich people making more than $250,000 a year? No! It’s us retarded members of the lower and middle class who think that a $1.50 cup of coffee or an 89-cent doughnut is worth waiting in line for 20 minutes to get for free. And despite the fact that voting should be our proud patriotic duty, I’m sure there are a good number of folks who had no intention of voting until all of these freebie offers started popping up in the last week. Thus, thanks to companies like Starbucks and Krispy Kreme, there are more members of non-wealthy classes voting this election.

And while I won’t say something as scandalous as “Poorer, freebie-snatching people will tend to vote for Barack Obama,” I will say that there’s a small possibility that these promotions helped shape the course of history this election. At the very least, they helped make Election Day a little tastier.

I will gladly admit to partaking in as many Election Day freebies as was geographically possible, including stops to more than one Starbucks (even though I rarely drink coffee), and trips to Krispy Kreme, Ben & Jerry’s, and Chick-Fil-A. In the end, I spent over 2 hours driving and in line and used a gallon of $2.50 gasoline to net about $5 worth of free food and beverage. It was a horrible time investment unless you consider that I feel it’s my patriotic duty to screw big businesses out of profits however possible. After all, it’s the American way, or something.

Not satisfied with my haul of two coffees, a cup of ice cream, a doughnut, and a chicken sandwich, I decided to see if any other businesses not actively advertising Election Day giveaways would nonetheless give me something for free. Thus, I spent an extra two hours on Election Day visiting various shops, going up to the front counter and simply saying, “I voted. Will you give me something for free?” Proudly displaying my “I Voted! Yo Voté!” sticker, here’s what happened at the 20 places I visited on Election Day requesting unadvertised freebies.

• The employees at Bloom, a local supermarket chain, looked at me a little funny, suggested I go to the Starbucks down the street or down Aisle 1 for a free sample of cheese, but didn’t give me anything else.
• The Fantastic Sams hair salon just said they didn’t have any Election Day offers. They also pointed out that I don’t have enough hair to warrant a hair cut anyway.
• Aardvark Swim and Sport didn’t offer any freebies, but there was a hot lady there about to try on a swimsuit. I considered hanging around to help her decide if it was right for her, but I wouldn’t let myself be distracted from my mission!
• Dunkin Donuts didn’t match Starbuck’s free coffee offer or Krispy Kreme’s free doughnut offer. It was pretty busy at the time, so I left without much fuss.
• Blockbuster Video gave me a coupon for a free rental! I was the only person at the checkout counter at the time, and the cashier slipped it to me quietly, probably so that I would just go away. Too bad I don’t have a Blockbuster membership. I gave the coupon to my co-worker so he can rent all his favorite Hannah Montana episodes.
• Classic Beer & Wine gave me nothing. I was really sad. I bought a beer and drank it in the parking lot as I cried.
• And to local readers who recognize what shopping center I was in up to this point, yes, I hit the Forbidden Fruit adult goods shop. I’m sort of glad they turned down my request for freebies.
• Down the road a bit, those crazy folks at FedEx/Kinko’s offered me a free color photocopy! I asked if I could photocopy the doughnut I had just gotten from Krispy Kreme. They said no. P.S. The girl behind the counter was really hot.
• GameStop countered my request for a freebie with an offer to reserve the latest Guitar Hero title for just five dollars down. I countered with playing their Nintendo Wii demo station for free for ten minutes.
• Panera Bread pointed me to some free samples they normally offer. I asked for an entire loaf of bread for free. The cashier joked that even Obama and McCain wouldn’t get a freebie like that. I replied, “Oh, so Panera Bread supports third-party candidates. Good for you!” and left.
• Palm Beach Tan gave me nothing and tried to sell me a $300 tanning package. I jokingly replied, “What, I’m not dark-skinned enough for you?” The black saleslady didn’t really like that comment.
• Wing Stop gave me one free French fry. “Times are tough,” the chef commented. I thanked him kindly.
• The hostess at Cheeburger Cheeburger offered to buy me a free ice cream soda if I could name all five members of the Rockville City Council but said I’d have to buy her one if I was wrong. Apparently “John Britton, those three old ladies, and the crazy guy with the funny name” wasn’t good enough for her. I didn’t feel bad because three other people in line behind me couldn’t name them either.
• Chipotle, which is usually pretty good about giving free stuff away once in a while, gave me nothing. I suspect things would have been a little different if this were the Mexican presidential election…
• Long & Foster offered to provide me with a free market competitiveness thingy that included an approximate idea of the value of my home. Not wanting to know exactly how much value my house has lost since I bought it in 2006, I said thanks but no thanks.
• Krispy Kreme reminded me that I had just gotten a free doughnut from them 10 minutes earlier. I asked if I could get another free doughnut if I voted again. They said no.
• TownHouse Furniture indicated that they didn’t sell anything worth less than $50 in the whole store, but they said they’d throw in a free cup of coffee if I bought a thousand-dollar couch. I declined their offer.
• Art and Framing Depot offered 15% off a custom framing job! I asked if they had a frame small enough for my “I Voted!” sticker. They said yes but added that it would be a special offer and quoted me $72 for it. I passed.
• While I was hoping Bank of America would slip me a few Benjamins, they instead offered to set me up with a “free checking account.” When I said that I already had one, they pointed me to a dish of candy. I took eight pieces and left.
• And finally, the employee cafeteria where I work offered me nothing. The chef said he hoped I voted for Obama.

Please note that I didn’t expect that any of these places would actually give me freebies since they didn’t advertise any, so the fact that most of them refused is perfectly within their rights—and it’s probably for the best as giving one person something for free would have meant having to give something for free at least to everyone else in the store at the time. In fact, those few places that actually did give me something for free, while they could be commended for their excellent customer service, probably shouldn’t have.

So my thanks go to Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, Ben & Jerry’s, Chik-Fil-A, and the rest for helping me fill my belly on Election Day. And congratulations to Barack Obama for actually wanting to clean up the horrendous mess made by the current administration; you’re a much braver man than I.