Mentioned this to D.J. Kirkbride earlier but I tend to, every few years, spend a few days reading the Bible. Now there are a few things to keep in mind here:

1 – I went to a Catholic school from grades 1-8.

2 – I am in no way Catholic / Christian / etc. It just ain’t my bag. At all.

I’ve also read bit of a translated Koran (not like reading a bible in English ain’t a translation, of course), bunches of Buddhist stuff, most of Dianetics… I like reading religious texts, I guess. It’s funny when I was a kid I went to my father and said I wasn’t sure this religion stuff worked for me. I just wasn’t feeling it but wasn’t sure at all. And he took me to a shelf (more shelves of books than you can imagine where I grew up) and said “Well, read these and find one that does if you want.”

So I did. All sorts of mythologies and stuff just crammed into my brain. And I still do.

But somehow the Bible thing strikes me as almost odd. And I don’t know why. I have nothing against Catholics in general (the Church itself I have issues with but that’s a different thing), and yet it always makes me feel like… I’m cheating, maybe.

Also Bibles are fantastic bits of work. They’re often just pretty. The two I have (a study Bible and a non) aren’t really pretty at all, but they can be. I like pretty books.

I guess I’m also fascinated by religions, in general and mythologies in a larger scale. But yeah. Bible time. Still strikes my brain as odd. Just one of those things, I guess.

Talking to Laura and just made a peas in pod joke (about moving PODs, but anyway) and it made me flash to something I had to stop and write about.

When I was a kid, I got these stuffed peas.

And I remember once, being in school and being sick. I went to a Catholic school and the nuns were a wee bit strict. They assumed if you ever said you were sick that you had to be telling lies. Had to be. So they called my dad. Now, you need to understand my father wrote for a living, and did his writing in the middle of the night. His bedtime was while I was at school.

He would wake up, supposedly, in time to get my from school. Some days that worked with a margin or error less than two hours. But anyway! They called him. Which woke him up. And they told him I was supposedly sick and they weren’t sure if they believed me, but they had to call him to let him know.

He grumbled something at them and said he’d come get me.

I had bronchitis, I used to get it a bunch, so it’s a pretty sure bet that’s what it was. But I remember I felt so bad, so so bad. And as we walked home, I felt worse. We only lived a few blocks, like a 1/4 mile from the school, so we walked and I thought I would die.

So my father stopped because there was a new (doomed to be short-lived) toy store on the way home. He thought he could distract my death with a present. In reality he just thought it would shut me the hell up, of course, but hey.

The store had a bunch of things, stuffed toys and robots and space ships and I just wanted to curl up and die and then I saw these peas. I had to have them. I don’t know why but my love for them was simply immense. Truly immense. My father looked at me like I had a fever… oh wait I did have a fever, but he got me the peas:

And I loved them. So much. For years I kept them around because, hey, stuffed peas! There have been stuffed peas since but they aren’t as cool so to hell with them. Of course the stuffed peas I had go for hundreds of dollars or some shit on eBay now so… I guess I should’ve held onto my peas. But no, I lost them at some point I think. Or someone threw them out. What ever. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is, for a while there, I deeply loved a set of 5 stuffed peas in a tiny zipped pod.

I got my first Graze box. I’d heard about Graze and kinda whatever and then a friend mentioned it again and I checked it out more and needed an invitation. Which I was lucky enough to get. And so I got my first box.

Let me back up and explain what Graze is. Graze is a service that sends you a box of healthy snacks once every two weeks (by default, though it can do every week or every month) for the complete price of five bucks a box. That’s it. Five bucks gets you a box of healthy snacks. And there is variety. They have something over 90 snacks and you rate them and they send you different boxes each time. Their site, of course, is Graze.com and oddly they are a UK company. Why oddly? Because I’m in NY and my box came via Royal Mail.

It’s true I not only got a box of snacks, I got me a box of snacks that went over an ocean. Somehow I feel that makes it better. Anyway this is what my box looked like when opened:

Pretty, no? I mean this is part fo it for me. It’s just pretty. Also seems like it will be tasty. No I haven’t tried anything yet. It’s early. I’m still working on coffee. But here is what this box has:

blueberries, green raisins, goji berries and cranberries

rolled oat flapjack with apple and cinnamon

toffeesauce and granny smith apple slices

BBQ relish with tomato breadsticks

The other day I ordered some cat food from Amazon. It never showed up. So I called FedEx (the carrier used) and Amazon and back and forth and no one knew where it had been lost.

So Amazon offered to refund me. They couldn’t ship a replacement, they didn’t have any in stock just then. All right, fine, thanks. I’ll get the cat food at a different place (cat needs some diet food stuff and it can be annoying to find, but also isn’t 100% critical so whatever) and the world keeps spinning.

Except then FedEx calls me. They found the package. It would seem that Amazon slapped the label on in such a way as to block part of my address and so FedEx misplaced it. Still, they were sorry and rushing it out and insisted they would get it to me that same day.

Look – free cat food.

I thought about it a little bit and called Amazon back. I told them FedEx found the package so they should, you know, go ahead and charge me for that thing I bought.

And the service guy seemed confused. Seriously and honestly confused. He didn’t quite understand, I mean he got the words and general meaning but in a larger sense- no. Because I was not just taking something that I could get away with.

Amazon, mind, is good to me. They recently, when I ordered the wrong speakers for the new living room set-up, refunded my money and told me to just keep the wrong ones. Yeah, that was partly due to their odd shipping rules, but they did not have to give me my money back. At all. This was 100% user error and nothing more and I admitted to it, they knew it – but they went ahead and ate the cost anyway because it keeps people happy and in the long run it’s a drop in the bucket to them. But if we all take advantage as much as possible it won’t be a drop in the bucket.

So as much as doing the right thing, this helps, in a tiny way, ensure they get that I dig the way they do some of this stuff and it is worth it to me to see it continue.

If we all just take and take and take they without being honest and giving back and making sure that the whole system works both ways not just always in our favor – the system will break down and we end up far worse off.

And if that ain’t a ham handed metaphor for society…

Had a bit of a run in with medical bills recently. See, months ago I had some blood work done, as part of a whole thing and in-between getting the blood work done and them sending it to the lab my insurance changed the rule on if my doctor could use a certain lab. They went from yes to no.

So I got a bill for roughly $400 bucks and told the lab company no, they needed to send it to my insurance. Called my insurance who seemed confused and went about my day. So of course the lab company doesn’t do what they need to, the doctor’s office doesn’t do what they need to, and everything spirals out of control.

Which is when I get a call from some fucking bill collectors.

See they would like $400 please. I told them, flat out, I would pay them my $20 copay again, and that only under protest, to make this shut up and go away. They offered to let me pay them $200. I laughed. They offered to send me a bill, with my permission, to give to my insurance.

I refused, explaining I would not accept any paperwork from them that would manage to legally prove I admitted I even had this debt, because I didn’t. This shit needed to get worked out above my pay grade.

So I called my insurance company again today and braced for a fight. Surprisingly, I got actual, quick, help. They called the bill collectors and told them to send the bill back to the blood work company, and that they needed to then actually bother to submit it correctly and they would take care of it. Whoosh done.

But, me being me, I called back the bill collector people. I had a direct line and a name and all and I wanted to make sure we were done here.

I asked if we were done. I got told the same stuff my insurance told me. The stories matched up perfectly. Good so far. So I again stated that the debt was gone, not my problem.

And then it happened.

Bill collector: Yes sir, the debt will be resubmitted and paid by your insurance. However, I can, right now, offer you a deal where you only pay two hundred dollars.

Me: Did you just ask me to pay you for a debt you also said isn’t mine?

Bill collector: Well, if something went wrong…

Me: So you record these calls, this is being recorded right?

Bill collector: Yes, sir.

Me: Because I’m pretty sure this is now criminal. Is this criminal do you think or just morally skanky?

Bill collector: Well, uhm, we thank you for your call, and yes it is fine and thank you.

I mean really! They tried to get me to pay them for an imaginary debt! I’m dumb, but I ain’t stupid.

I am allergic to cats and dogs. Cats I get over after a few days in the same place with the same cats. Dogs… I don’t know. That’s because I am a totally irrational and fairly complete and rationality-shattering fear of them.

See growing up my mother was all allergic to both and hated them both, near as I can tell, and so we weren’t allowed to have pets. I mean I had fish and then a turtle but anyway… my dad loved cats. So I thought of cats as something possibly cool.

But one day while I was out with my sister, there was this dog. Now a few things to understand about this: I was a kid, like way short and tiny. The dog was (I think) a St. Bernard. It was, at the least, about as tall as I was, and fluffy.

So no problem, right? We were near the schoolyard that abutted our building. and it was just a dog, owner not far behind. Dog wasn’t on a leash, but who cares. Until the dog, wanting to say hi, innocently, moved toward me a bit quickly, barking hello.

I eek’d and ran into the schoolyard. I was a kid, I had exactly zero clue. The dog chased me. The dog thought this was a great thing! A tiny human who wanted to play chase! And yell! The dog barked, all happy and stuff, but I just heard big barking thing chasing me and kept running. He chased me in a circle for a good few minutes.

Until, at last, the owner of the dog, and my sister, stopped laughing long enough to decide to get the dog to stop. Right.

And since then my allergy to dogs has been worse and I am just incapable of being near a dog and relaxing. Dogs notice this so they can’t relax around me. It’s a cycle or a problem. And everyone always tells me “Oh my dog wouldn’t hurt anyone, here it’s fine” except my nerves set the dog off and the dog sets my nerves off and it’s a disaster. Every single time.

Every. Single. Time. For about thirty years now.

Luckily I adore cats.

And yet I have to admit, deep down, I desperately wish I owned a giant big lug of a dog. Like a full grown bloodhound, or a chow or something. A dog that clocks at a hundred pounds and up. Just a giant horse of a dog. Don’t know why. But I’ve always kinda wanted one.

Which poses a problem, really.

I’m not sure how to get over this dog thing, and most of my life I’ve just accepted it and been fine with it. Allergic anyway so what does it matter. But it annoys me, to have this big looming thing in my field of vision and not deal with it.

I dunno.

When I was much younger someone in my family got me a Star Trek Command Communications Console. Here’s a picture of one:

(click for larger)

So there were four buttons and a knob. The buttons were: Transmit, Code Key, Red Alert Stand By Alert. The knob was for power and volume. This thing was basically supposed to be a toy you got along with Star Trek communicators and would act as a base station. Except I’m pretty sure I never had the communicators.

So I would turn it on, and not hear anything and hit the “code button” that made beeping (the orange sticker had a Morse Code key, and watch the screen (it would kinda flash lights badly and slowly) and sometimes hit the alert buttons for various whooping and woooing noises.

But that was it. I mean maybe I’m wrong and there was a communicator or two but they were never used or lost or something, because I have no memory of them. So that was it, it was a blue plastic thing that made some noise.

Until one day.

One day I was wandering around with it, hoping for something to happen – when something totally happened. You see this base station was decent at receiving other radio signals and some bit of CB stuff. You couldn’t dial it or fine tune it, but you could – once in a blue moon – get a guy on a CB radio.

And then be a dick and hit the Red Alert and he’d curse and then you had no friends once more with your blue plastic box that made static and sadness.

I’m just saying that for a kid whose friends weren’t allowed to come over often (their family was odd and so was mine, hooray!) and who was often lost and bored inside his head this may not have been the best toy.

But those random flashes of another human reaching out from the void to say things full of static that weren’t meant for me and made no sense – well that was kinda cool.

Until I inevitably hit the Red Alert button. I really did just refuse to learn that lesson. And there are nights, still, I think I should get a real CB radio. I’ve thought that about once every three years ever since. And then I could dial in to folk and talk to them. But I’d need one with a Red Alert button for when they bored me, I guess.

Really I am why we can’t have nice things.

This morning on the walk to the day job I came across the saddest, and best, thing ever. I spotted it on the sidewalk, laying there, right-side-up just worshipping the sun. discarded and utterly alone in this world, it laid there, willing to accept its fate.

It was The Headless Love Bot.

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