If there's one thing that I've come to learn about myself, and at the same time know that I'm never going to be able to change, it's my annoyance with all things money. Sure, there are times where money makes me happy. But more times than not issues that concern money are disconcerting to me. Most of my annoyance with money comes from my perception as to whether or not things are worth spending money on.
For instance. I don't mind spending money on food, or electricity, or natural gas. In return for spending money on those items, I receive something to eat, light to cut through the darkness and heat to stem the cold of winter. To some extent, I don't even mind paying taxes. Just this week, my tax money paid for a man to take a large truck with a V-shaped blade on the front of it to clear the snow from the road in front of my house. Conversely, that same tax money paid the same man with the same truck to push a gigantic fucking ridge of snow in front of my driveway that I had to shovel away.
Then there are things that I consider complete wastes of money, and these things vex me to no end. Take my wife's minor accident in the Spring of 2007, resulting in a two hour visit to the emergency room at a local hospital. Due to a hateful spat at the time with my insurance company, this particular hospital would not take our insurance and charged us in full for two hours of "emergency" care, resulting in a three thousand dollar bill. The hospital subsequently went broke and was bought by another entity who had no quarrel at all with my insurance company and promptly became best buddies with them again. But as for picking up my wife's bill during the brief period of conflict ... tough luck! Pay up asshole. So I am ... 200 fucking dollars at a time. Sure, I could pay them in full at any time, but I want to make sure that they have to manually send me that bill every month, and if there is a supreme being in this universe, I hope whoever stuffs that bill in the envelope suffers massive paper cuts that get infected. So to all of you administrative people at Advocate Condell Hospital ... eat me.
Sorry, I've been wanting to say that for the longest time.
Anyway, tonight I was out doing some Christmas shopping and happened upon an intersection where they had installed one of those fancy array of gadgets designed primarily to waste peoples money and pad the pocketbooks of greedy municipalities everywhere. The Red Light Camera. I was turning left and just as I hit the white line, the arrow turned yellow. Rather than jam on the brakes and risk a rear end hit from the car behind me, I finished the turn just as the light turned red. Just then I saw a strobe flash through the back windscreen and knew I had been "tagged".
I imagine an envelope will arrive in the mail next week with a pretty picture of the rear of my car and a fine of 100 dollars, which I will have no choice but to pay. And this will annoy me greatly, because I will see nothing of any value for that one hundred dollars flying out of my bank account.
So, I will go to the bank and get 100 of the newest, crispest dollar bills I can procure. I'll stuff them in an envelope and hope whoever opens it on the other end gets so many paper cuts from the edges of those clean, crisp bills that they have to go to the emergency room at Advocate Condell Hospital, who will treat them and not take their insurance and send them a bill for three thousand dollars.
Karmic, poetic justice.
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