For many of us, myself included, the month of September is back-to-school time. The idyll summer months, where whole weeks could be spent trying to organize and catalogue a comprehensive Buffy The Vampire Slayer collection, have come to an end. Energies once devoted to figuring out how to rent Spanish zombie movies over the internet must now be devoted to more scholarly pursuits, like figuring out how to incorporate Spanish zombie movies into a paper about the history of Italian neo-realism. And most importantly, it means that those of us who spent much of the summer months saving up money for the coming school year must turn our attentions to the pressing problem of spending all that money in the first two weeks of September. Once that daunting task is accomplished (I recommend finding your local comic shop and buying up as many novelty lunch boxes as you can carry), a new problem becomes apparent, namely how to feed yourself over the coming year, let alone keep yourself entertained. The former is fairly easily to solve, as cannibalism has become increasingly acceptable in today's secular, post-Hannibal society, and roommates are a dime a dozen, but the question of entertainment on a budget can be a tricky one. Once the money runs out, the standard university practice of drinking pints of Irish beer until you vomit leprechauns becomes somewhat infeasible. But since most university students have matured to the point that they only need substance abuse to have a good time at the odd party, get-together,, class, shopping trip, or Tuesday, this isn't really an issue. What's really important is what to do on those lonely Saturday nights when the rest of your chums have gone out for a soda pop but you don't have the cheese to join them without sacrificing laundry for the third week running. But don't despair. Uncle Ash, an expert in not having any friends I mean money, knows exactly what to do in such an emergency. Just follow some of these easy tips and have yourself a swell old time, on a budget.
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Prank phone calls. Sure, it's juvenile, but nothing beats the thrill of picking people with silly names out of the phone book, calling them up, and threatening to kill their children.
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Modeling glue. It's cheap, it's easy to find, and if you get huffed up enough on the fumes, you can watch the static on your non-cable TV and pretend it's Dark Angel. Trust me, it's better that the real thing.
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Bomb something. It seems to be all the rage nowadays. Pick whatever you want, like a bank as a symbol of the godless global capitalist military structure that depresses the disadvantaged the world over, or maybe a mosque because it represents an evil, animalistic society bent on destroying our precious way of life. Pretty much anything will do so long as you teach those innocent people a lesson.
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Mathemagics. With a little ingenuity, you can turn a simple calculator into a fun spelling tool, using mathematical equations to spell out charming words and phrases like 'boobies' and 'please God kill me'. Fun for hours.
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Pornography. You may be too broke to afford the steep rental fees, but those among you enterprising and imaginative enough might be able to squeak a good show out of the higher-level scrambled channels. Sure, it'll end up looking like distorted blue Muppets having possibly homosexual sex, but it's better than the radio, and you'll waste enough time trying to figure out if you're watching Jenna Jameson or a midget dressed up like Satan that'll you barely notice you're not having any fun.
So there you go. And that's just a starting point. Once you plow through these, you'll no doubt be stricken with enough cabin fever that your borderline psychotic mind will be able to come up with hundreds more cheap, exciting ways to have a good time, like screaming profanities at strangers on a street corner, or mime. But whatever you do, make sure it's something to fill the empty hours, because as Saturday Night Live Church Lady skits and Devin Sawa movies have taught us, idle hands do the devil's work, like vegetarian cuisine, and mime.
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