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I don’t really have a nickname, but if I were to bestow one upon myself (because giving yourself a nickname is always a fine idea) I would likely be called Wart Boy. Unfortunately for Wart Boy the nickname isn’t clever or meaningful on any level. I am Wart Boy because of my propensity to host and grow warts (the boy part is fairly self-explanatory). Despite my portly appearance, I’d like to think I’m generally of good health. I rarely get sick or catch colds. But when it comes to defending myself against the virus that causes warts I’m 72-pound weakling with girlie arms.
All my life I’ve been prone to getting warts. About twice a year I’d have to see the doctor to get a wart or two frozen off. It was no big deal—I considered it part of my routine checkup. I’ve had so many warts removed from my body I consider myself to be an amateur dermatologist (or at least one who only works with warts). A wart here. A wart there. All in all: relatively no big deal.
One of my favorite wart stories (that’s right: I have more than one) occurred when my beloved cat scratched . . . . .
This is part two of a story I set out to tell the other day. Hopefully this time I’ll stay awake long enough to finish.
I recently moved into an apartment that put me in the ideal situation to steal cable. See, stealing cable is no easy task. You need to find the right conditions to make it work. By my rough (uneducated) statement, it can probably be done in most apartment buildings. Unfortunately, I haven’t lived in any of those apartment buildings until now.
The important thing to remember about stealing cable is that you can’t be picky. You might not get 200 channels. You might not get HD. You might not even get a perfect picture. Luckily for me, I’m willing to settle for what I can get (look at my car, my job, my wife, my life). I don’t need the finer things in life. I don’t need BET, Bravo, or HGTV. Heck, I don’t even need 50 channels. As long as I get ESPN, ESPN2, and Fox Sports I’m a happy man. Anything else is cake because the only reason I want cable is to watch baseball (that and the sheer joy of stealing cable).
Once . . . . .
One of my goals in life has been to steal cable (either I have low ambitions or I’m more morally ambiguous than I realized). Free Cable is like the Holy Grail to this cheapskate. I like the idea of having cable, but I can’t fiscally justify it. Cable bills run north of $60, and I simply can’t see getting $60 a month of entertainment out of television. If I had an extra $2 a day to spend on something, I would blow it on food. A supersize here. A soda there. Maybe even upgrade from London broil to rib eye. Mmmm….rib eye.
I also take great joy in the idea of stealing cable. I hate the pay-TV services. Satellite, fiber optics, cable–they’re all the same. They toy with packages and plans–trying to outdo each other and market the lowest price. But the truth is, they’re all the same. Because $19.99 might seem like a great deal for television. But then you need to add a $10 box rental fee, another $10 for HD–oh, and that $19.99 price only includes local channels (ya know–the free stuff you get with an antenna). If you want TBS, ESPN, or USA that’s a different . . . . .
Last week in soccer class, one of the girls kicked me in the shin. While that’s not an interesting story (actually, it’s a bit embarrassing), the aftermath that followed certainly worth telling. Besides the three-inch by one-inch scab, I also developed a large, yellowish-purple bruise on my leg that could be seen from outer space. My shin became incredibly sensitive to touch (I even hurt myself putting on socks) and on occasions it hurt to walk because I couldn’t put too much weight on it. Since the injury happened at school, I figured I ought to let the school’s health center check me out (that and I don’t have health insurance).
After being admitted, a youngish doctor entered the examining room carrying my chart and an iPhone. “How did you hurt yourself,” she asked me.
“Someone kicked me in the shin,” I told her as she looked at her iPhone. “Since it’s been a week and hasn’t shown any signs of healing, I figured I better get it checked out.”
There was a moment of silence as she typed something on her iPhone. “Uh-huh. What kind of pain do you feel?”
“Ungawdly, tremendous amounts of pain if I touch it . . . . .
Imagine going to the doctor with a broken leg. The first option is surgery. The second option is a cast. The third option is amputation. Which option would you choose?
My latest insurance battle went from bad to worse. It wasn’t enough for those bastards to make me suffer for three days without any medication, on top of that, those sleezeballs tried to pull a fast one. The pharmacist calls me up and tells me my prescription has been approved. But after getting home and taking the pills, I discover my prescription isn’t for what the doctor suggested last week. The insurance decided to swap out my doctor-prescribed medicine (approximate retail cost $150) for something else (exactly $83.99).
So for those keeping score at home, my doctor thinks the best medicine for me is Expensivcine. But since Expensivcine isn’t available as a generic, my insurance won’t cover it. I can’t afford paying $150 for the medicine, so my doctor suggested another medicine that is available as a generic; however, since it costs the insurance company $150, they won’t pay for it. Now I’m on a different medication–the third choice. How often in life do you opt for the third . . . . .
F@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ f@#$ .
I thought that would make me feel a little better but it does not.
My insurance tried to screwing me over (again) and I thought a good string of expletives would help me feel better. Unfortunately cursing is like bailing out GM–a lot of big words with little results. I can’t tell you how much I hate the insurance business–I must’ve written about it a dozen times now. Whenever I start talking about insurance at home, The Wife immediately tries to calm me in soothing voice because she knows I’m about to go off. That’s because insurance is a scam–a complete and total useless scam. You pay for services you never receive; you have to pay for the expensive stuff out of you pocket. It’s utterly useless. Either that or I have the world’s worst health insurance.
I’m on Expensivcine and my insurance won’t cover it. Well, they think they do–but in actuality, they don’t cover it. My insurance only covers generic medicine. If I opt to buy the brand-name version, I hafta buy it at full retail price until I reach $150. The insurance will . . . . .
With my car being about a thousand miles overdue for an oil change, I knew I needed to pick a place and pick it fast. I certainly wasn’t going to take it to a quick lube place again because they were just as much crooks as I thought they would be. My old standby use to be Wal-Mart but I noticed how they slowly creeped their prices up over the years and were getting to be just as expensive as the quick lube places. Armed with an overdue oil change and do place to go, I perused the Pennysaver in search of a decent oil change at a fair price.
I knew better than to take it to Purrfect Autocare because those guys were a more expensive rip-off version of Jip-U-Lube (instead of up-selling a $20 air filter, Purrfect pushes $300 brake jobs). I didn’t wanna walk into any mechanic with a coupon because I knew smaller mechanics would try to con me into unneeded, expensive services. I have no problem telling people “no”–I just didn’t want to deal with the hassle. On page 33 I found my answer: Meineke offered a $20 oil change (with coupon). I figured a . . . . .
I’m tempted to add the US Postal Service to my long list of banned businesses (including, but not limited to: Toys-R-Us, Purrfect Auto Care, the Walt Disney Corporation, Bank of America, Kevin Costner movies, and KFC–which has since been rescinded). That’s right: the Post Office will never get another dime out of me. Kramer was right ten years ago: the Post Office is simply an entity that outlived its time.
I was at the Post Office because I had to ship a package. When it came time to pay for the postage, the clerk refused my credit card because it wasn’t signed in the back. See, I like to think I’m smarter than the average bear. A signed credit card doesn’t protect you from fraud–hell, it just makes it easier for the criminals to pull off a heist. That’s because with a signed credit card, the deviants have an exact sample of your signature. All they gotta do is practice it at home and–viola!–a perfect forgery. But leaving a blank card is pretty foolish too because the criminal simply sign the card and make “your” signature look anyway he wants. So many years ago, I came up with a foolproof . . . . .
It’s official: The Wife is legally mine (I initially penned that line “The Girlfriend”–old habit do die hard). She received her new social security card this week with her new last name–mine. And since she has my name on her that makes her my property. That’s not chauvinistic–it’s life. Kinda like when you’re a kid and you write your name on your football. You do it so everyone knows it’s yours. I’m not going to take a Sharpie and write on The Wife’s forehead, but that doesn’t change the fact she has my name and is now my property.
I’m hardly an expert and there’s a good chance I don’t even know what I’m talking about–but that’s never stopped me from giving my opinion. With that in mind, I think I’m opposed to a potential government bailout of US automakers. It’s my taxes and I don’t wanna see it wasted. I know we’re talking about putting a lot of people out of work–but I don’t see why the US government has to save a company that pushes products no one wants. That’s all it really comes down to. Isn’t the whole point of capitalism and free markets about letting the . . . . .
When life gets too busy or I have nothing to complain about, I just reach back and find something I wrote earlier but never posted (usually because it was uninteresting or poorly written…or maybe even both). This is one of those stories.
I don’t mean to be a troublemaker–things just sorta happen to me. I think the reason why is because I’m a fighter–I simply don’t lay down when unjust situations arise. I don’t wanna inflate my own ego here, but I believe strongly in my convictions and I’m never going to back down. Some might call it stubborn, but I prefer ‘determined’–it puts a positive spin on things.
The Girlfriend and I went to Jack in the Box because she was craving one of their fruit smoothies. “Should I buy the small one for $2.69 or the large for 3.39,” she asked after studying the menu.
“Go with the small,” I told her. She rarely finished drinks like that and it didn’t make sense to spend the extra 70 cents on something she wasn’t going to drink. We went through the drive-thru and ordered the smoothie. The cashier didn’t tell us a total–only to pull up to the window.
. . . . .
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