Renee Rosenow

Dear Ask Anything,

Dear Hungry,

If you’re anything like me and my roommates, you probably have a George Foreman Lean Mean Grillin’ Machine in your house. An easy way to add some spice to your tuna and banana sandwich diet would be to collect all the fat that dripped into the grill’s catcher. Then, mold it all together and throw it back on the grill. That may sound gross at first, but the fat is also covered in Lowry’s and other hamburger or brat spices, so really it’s no different than ordering a burger from McDonald’s. Even if you don’t like it, there’s a high possibility that you’d get so sick you wouldn’t be able to eat anything for those last two weeks.

Judging from your reluctance to spend your money on what most people consider “necessities” for healthy living, I’d be willing to bet you’re saving that money for Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in order to maintain your sanity through the end of the semester. If that’s true, the liquid bread supplied for a small fee should at least keep you going calorie and carbohydrate-wise. I would also recommend a simple five-word phrase – Give me your cheapest beer. As someone concerned about their finances pretty much all semester, you save at least $5 every night you go out. Plus, it’s typically a tap beer with a precious extra four ounces of liquid carbs.

If you want to try and impress a significant other or possible mate, you could experiment with different mixtures of bananas and tunas. For example, fried bananas mixed with raw tuna au juice or fried tuna with mashed bananas are both simple suggestions that could possibly open the door to a culinary career. If you run out of ideas with these combos, just remember there’s always the dried fat waiting for you to include it in any dinner plans you may have.

The last possible solution, and possibly the easiest, is to take action in a Machiavellian vein. In short, “borrow” your roommates’ food. They might not like it, but since the ultimate goal is to survive, the ends justify the means. Not the happiest suggestion, but it would work.

Dear Ask Anything,

Dear Gift,

I think you’ve already either given the best gift of all. Or trampled all over it. I’m talking, of course, about the gift of apathetic shopping, or boycotting Black Friday. Think about it – what gift could you give that has the greatest good for the greatest number of people? I decided a long time ago that refusing to step foot in a retail store the Friday after Thanksgiving would at least marginally brighten a miserable employees day for a few minutes. There isn’t a thing you could do this holiday season to please more people than to refuse to wake up at 3 a.m. to get a $20 discount on a pair of frilled bed sheets for your aunt. So if you’re a retail worker, thank a smart person next time you see them. You’ll know who they are by the fact that they’ll be shopping a good two weeks after Black Friday and not pull a gun on someone who grabbed the last Turbo Man off the Toys R’ Us shelves like Sinbad did to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the perennial Christmas classic, “Jingle All the Way.” I won’t ruin the ending for you, but let’s just say a young Anakin Skywalker doesn’t Force choke his father.

Otherwise, if you did buy into the true meaning of Christmas, commercialism, there are still a few last-minute ideas that I’m adding to my list. First, the Chuck Norris-endorsed Total Body Gym, as seen on TV, is at the top. I’m just mystified by Chuck Norris’ insistence on wearing a squirrel on his upper lip. However, it tells me that I need that product if I want to look like a 68-year-old Evangelical martial arts expert. Nothing says “I love Jesus” like a roundhouse kick to the face.

Possibly the best gift ever would have to be the Sham-Wow, as seen on TV. I watched that five-minute infomercial for about two hours straight and am still trying to figure out the purpose of the spokesman’s headset. Either way, he knows how to sell a product that I plan on using to soak in a toilet and wring out over my passed out roommates next weekend. All I can say is Sham-Wow!