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The Edukatorz read the Internet daily (and not just TGRIOnline and Twitter), so we come upon a lot of crap, including this Wall Street Journal blogpost about living cheaply in a new city.* It’s clearly written by a marketing zombie and anyone with half a brain cell pretty much knows the ‘advice’ they’ve spewing off. With Fall approaching it seems like many are off moving to new cities so it seems appropriate to give some tips living cheaply in a new town or any town really.

1) Find a Neighborhood Bar

We realize not drinking is simply out of the question so we humbly suggest finding a neighborhood watering hole. Not only is it a great way to meet new people and make friends, but if you befriend the bartender a lot of those drinks are going to slide off the bill. Bonus points if you can find a neighborhood bar with wi-fi so you don’t have to pay for the Internet either.

2) Use the Interwebs**

Well use the Internet for more than just Twitter/FB, pr0n, Edukatorz and GChat. While hanging out at the neighborhood bar is awesome, you can’t do it all the time (well you can…) so you’ll have to figure out other things to do. If you don’t want to be antisocial in your off time we recommend finding a few local blogs that advertise events and read them. In any big city (and some smaller ones) there are bound to be at least a few free or inexpensive events.

3) Don’t be Boring

Look, you don’t have to spend money to have a good time or at least very little of it. Boring people are bored and bored people spend a lot of money on crap. Find a hobby or volunteer. At the very least go to the library and check out some books so you’ll be interesting. If you’re really strapped for cash you can still go to DJ nights and shows with small covers, just go sober that night or drink at home/your neighborhood watering hole. Whatever it is you’re in to, there’s a chance it can be done inexpensively, just figure out what it is you dig.

4) Eat Well

Eating out all the time is a huge drain on the old budget so we recommend finding Farmers Markets and small ethnic grocery stores to buy your food from. Not only do they have a better selection than crappy grocery stores and corner stores, but they’re often cheaper if you shop smart. If you make friends with a Farmer they’ll often throw in an extra tomato here and there. You can even finagle you’re way into a job at the Farmers Market and get paid while getting discount produce.

* We generally hate all MSM ‘advice’ and culture stories we read, but we just can’t quit them.
** While this is similar to #5 on their list, our point is to not be lame about it.

Let’s be serious: if you can’t get some at a wedding, you’re doing it wrong.

There’s something about weddings that just urges people to make out. Jealousy of the lucky soon-to-be-ravenously-screwing honeymooning couple? Biological clocks ticking? Open bar? Whatever it is, it’s a powerful force of nature akin to gravity that single persons seemingly can’t combat. We can call it the Marriage Magnetism.

That being said, there are a few pitfalls to watch out for when you’re trying to make out at a wedding as well as some practical things to think about.

First, and most important: beware incest. If either of the bridal couple is related to you, there’s a definite risk of awkward long-lost-family hookup. Make sure you know exactly how your makeout partner ended up with an invitation. If your family is particularly dysfunctional, you might want to avoid anyone from the same side of the wedding altogether, for fear of never having met your first cousin. And the possibilities there are just gross.

Once you’ve established that the object of your desire is not, in fact, related to you, there are some other things to think about at family weddings. For example, are your parents there? And would they particularly care if they found someone else in your hotel room in the morning?

So, hooking up at a family wedding can be a little trickier, but it can be done. Really, we can’t stress enough how easy it is to hook up at a wedding. Besides the Marriage Magnetism we already discussed, the circumstances are just so good. There’s probably an open bar. Part of the deal is looking like an idiot on the dance floor, so even if you can’t dance, your sense of humor will save the day (and if you need help geetting it started, check this out). Plus, either you or your potential hookup is probably staying upstairs or in a hotel nearby.

Considering all these factors contributing to the increased likelihood of making out during or after a wedding, you mainly just want to be prepared. Scope out the potential hookups during the ceremony and find out who they are. It’s not just family weddings that you need to be cautious about: that hottie at your frat brother’s wedding that seems single could be the wife of the bride’s brother who’s doing a tour in Afghanistan. You tap that, you’re probably not getting invited over to the happy newlyweds’ home for football on Sunday.

Lastly, be aware that there’s a lot of drinking going on at most weddings. Like, a LOT of drinking. You don’t want to be an accidental date rapist, and you don’t want to end up preggers because you forgot to wrap it up (see educational video below). Just because the Marriage Magnetism has you in its grip doesn’t mean that this isn’t like any other drunken hookup, and accordingly you should take the same precautions.

Dear Edukatorz,

I can’t drink for the next few months because of a medical condition (and no, it’s not called pregnancy). I hadn’t realized it before, but most of my social life involves going to bars or drinking in some capacity. I don’t want to be the loser who can’t go out to the bar with my friends because I can’t drink, but I also want to have a good time. What is a temporarily non-imbibing person supposed to do with their time?

Dear Sober Sally,

Really? To paraphrase Jermaine Stewart, you don’t have to drink to have a good time. In fact straight edge kids are some of the hardest partiers I know. You can still do everything you do already just sans booze and the new sober perspective might even enhance your evenings. Besides, seeing your friends drunk while you’re sober can be quite amusing. Actually remembering the night before has its benefits and you’ll be the one telling embarrassing stories about your friends and not the other way around.

If you don’t think you can go to a bar without drinking you might want to re-evaluate your relationship with alcohol. Maybe you have an addiction? I would have no clue, but a professional would so get in touch with your local mental health services and they’ll point you in the right direction.

Well, we cheated you out of one post this week, because this was a week of procrastination for the Edukatorz. But that means you deserve bonus material! From time to time we’ll post about some miscellaneous tidbits about partying and the weekend in this brand-new feature, Hangover Saturdays.

Immediate concerns first, then. If you’re out partying and drinking, you’re going to have to deal with a hangover at some point. This is not fun. Massive headaches, nausea, dizziness, cotton mouth, etc. all combine to make a bad hangover one of the most painful morning experiences you can have. We could tell you how to avoid them in the first place, but it’s Saturday and it’s too late to go back to Friday, so let’s talk about the morning after.

There isn’t any “cure” for a hangover, but understanding what it is can help. It’s basically your body processing too much alcohol and being dehydrated. Therefore, coffee isn’t going to fix anything – it’ll make you more dehydrated. Of course, if you’re a caffeine junkie, you may as well go for it because otherwise you’re going to be dealing with an entirely different kind of headache. Much better drinks for getting over a hangover are water, juice, or sports drinks like Gatorade.

Some people say that you have to pop some Advil or Tylenol before bed to cure a hangover. This is false. First off, those pills only last 4-6 hours, so they’re not going to be helping by the time you wake up. Also, taking acetaminophen (Tylenol) when you’ve been drinking makes your liver unhappy, and no drinker wants their liver being more unhappy than it has to be. The best idea with over-the-counter pain pills is to take ibuprofen or aspirin as soon as you wake up.

Other than that, time is pretty much the only other thing to help your hangover. A drink in the morning might ease the pace of your hangover, but that drink wears off and you just end up postponing the inevitable. Get back in bed, turn down the lights, turn on the TV (on a low volume, of course), and swear you’re never drinking again (until tonight). Good luck!

Seriously, watch this show.

Over here at Edukatorz HQ, we’ve been a little obsessed with the BBC show The Inbetweeners, a show about British teenage boys. While we won’t get into the specifics of the show now, the boys on the show rarely succeed in getting girls. Clearly teenage boys have absolutely no game whatsoever, but we can learn what not to do from them.

1) Don’t Be Awkward

We’ve covered this a little bit before and we’ll cover it more in the future, but try not to be awkward around the object of your affection. Teenage boys (well, teenagers in general really) can’t help but be awkward, it’s part of puberty, while you reader who we are assuming is an adult, can try to stop your awkwardness. Just relax and have confidence in yourself, easier said than done, but we think it’s doable.

2) Know What You’re Doing

Teenage boys have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to flirting and when it comes to matters in the bedroom. While the flirting will come with confidence and decreased awkwardness, there’s no excuse for an adult to be unaware of what to do in the bedroom. If you think you need some more instruction and don’t feel like using the rest of the Internet, let us know, we’ll try to help.

3) Communicate

This may be a function of teenage awkwardness, but teenage boys seem to have a lot of trouble telling girls/boys that they have a crush on that they in fact have a crush on them. Come to think of it, we know a lot of adults like this. People are not psychic, you will not get to make out with them unless you express your desire to make out with them. So instead of awkwardly having a crush and grunting one or two words to said crush, work up enough nerve to ask them out or at least test the waters to see if they’d be interested too.

4) Know What You Want

All teenage boys think about is girls (and in some cases boys) and whether or not they’ll get to have sex, or at least a little boob. It’s good to know what you want when getting into a sexual situation. Do you just want to make out with someone? Do you want to bone someone? Do you want to date AND bone someone? It’s good to know what you want before getting yourself into a sexy situation, it’ll prevent you from accidentally dating someone you don’t really want to date and it’ll help you focus on what you want (making out).

While educating you all on topics that we think are important is all well and good, we know that there are serious questions our readers have that need answers. We are here for you! In our new column, Dear Edukatorz, we’ll be answering your questions and concerns to the best of our abilities. If you need advice on something, please email us at weareedukatorz (at) gmail (dot) com and look for a response here!

Dear Edukatorz,

My boyfriend’s mustache is ruining our relationship. Please help! He started growing it about four months ago as a joke, and I thought it would be funny at first. But then it just stayed. He won’t shave it. It’s causing so many problems – I can’t introduce him to my parents looking like this! Let alone the fact that he doesn’t keep leftovers in the fridge anymore. He says he has plenty of bits of food in his mustache! We haven’t had sex in weeks, it’s just so unattractive I can barely bring myself to make out with him. And when we do kiss, it’s scratchy and gross. It’s like a furry uninvited pet has come between us. I never thought I was a Becky, but does my revulsion of his mustache mean I’m attracted to Chads? What should I do?

-Reluctant Becky

This is actually a problem sweeping the nation.

Dear RB,

You do NOT have to be a Becky to hate mustaches. Remember, your boyfriend’s mustache is not a reflection on you, and you can‘t blame yourself for thinking it was fun at first. A lot of people do. At least you’ve recognized the problem. The mustache pandemic is affecting men of the hipster scenes from LA to NYC.

To help your boyfriend, you have to understand his problem. At first the mustachioed think it’s just a bit of fun. It makes them feel energetic and powerful. As soon as they shave it off, however, they become depressed and edgy, and crave the mustache. When they grow it back, they just keep going, chasing that first mustache experience, until there’s no stopping them. What they don’t understand is that mustaches don’t affect only the wearer, but the ones around them, a problem you are grappling with now.

We just hope your boyfriend isn’t a full-on mustache junkie yet. Does he carry around a mustache comb? Does he constantly stroke it? Worse, does it have a name? If not, there is hope for him to come around with no lasting scars. You should consider staging an intervention with his mustache-free friends. Talk about how the mustache is hurting the ones he loves.

If he’s past reasoning, you can try to shave it off while he’s asleep. Be careful when he wakes up, though: the cold-turkey approach can send some into shock. The first few days are the hardest – keep him away from costume shops and make sure you can supply him with razors. Check whether that’s a 5 o’clock shadow or a day’s worth of stubble. And always give him positive reinforcement – he can’t do this without your support.

Good luck, and thanks for writing in.

-The Edukatorz