Little off topic, but I remember my college roommate and I watching a TV ad around '91 or so, “Oh no! Ground beef again? What will I tell my husband!?” We. Were. Screaming.

“Fuck you bitch! We’re on our last can of boiled carrots and frying flour in the last of our oil and topping it with the last of our ketchup!” We were picking pecans off the roof and frying them in the last of our butter and seasoning salt. (A fine meal!) We were scheming on swiping a duck while we picked black walnuts at the campus pond. I’d get dressed nicely and shoplift our Sunday meals.

Kids today: We. Are. Literally. Dying. McDonald’s is SO expensive!

It’s not that we olds think you deserve to suffer because we did, but… we did… Kinda hard to entertain modern complaints.

Don’t start me on rent though. That place was the attic of a 107-yo house that was literally tilting over, held together by wires in the basement. Landlord was not a smart man to begin with, utterly senile by the time we met him. As in, worse that Trump senile. Not even trying to be funny. Still, $250/mo.

$600 in 2025 money, exactly our Habitat for Humanity mortgage today. Please fucking call Habitat and merely ask when the next meeting is! It’s almost certainly not what you think. One phone call changed my life.

This will piss you off. I got turned down for a lease in the 90s because landlords wanted you to take home 3-4x the rent. If you couldn’t make rent in 7-11 days, you were a poor risk.