Atomictumor

Had good times last night
Celebrating a birthday
Out at Cemestos

Family is great
Even if blood’s not involved
Tight bonds of friendship

Her presence was felt
Celebrating alongside
Where she’s always been

Think of yesteryear
When Bos spoke of bonds and love
And I saw Beauty

Bos is pretty cool
And he’s a hella speaker
Glad he did the job

Watched the video
Archaic, magnetic tape
Artifacts from then

—

Strange how things happen
Wedding renewal last year
A whole different age

I’m back at the farm
Baptize Bonnaroo Baby
Didn’t plan to come

But its just a day
And the place is beautiful
And good company

BJ smiles down
At her happy baby boys
And her sweet husband

Who’s smiling too
Its neat how the heart has room
To have love, again

It amazes me
How my love for her’s unchanged
While the new love grows

—

It should be harder
Like back in February
But I won’t complain.

Way to, uh, have another birthday!

Sincerely,
The last sub-30 AT.com writer.

Finally, that Nobel Prize for inventing the internet!

…

wait, peace prize? Global warming?

Oh.

never mind.

So, I’ll admit it. I’ve been hella fortunate to have the insurance company that I had, or the coverage that I had, or whatever.

Its an HMO through Cariten, and I’ve always thought HMOs were crap, but when I started getting all the big money “Explanation of Benefits” papers, with anywhere between $120,000 and $15 bucks, with a big old goose egg next to “Total Patient Responsibility”, it sure helped. I couldn’t imagine losing BJ to this freaky ass sick, and then going bankrupt paying for the bills.

But thats another conversation.

No, I’ve been fortunate. Cariten had my back.

So I was surprised to open my mail the other day and find a bill addressed to BJ for a catheter inserted on Nov. 17th, in the total amount of (get this) $666.00.

Wow.

Anyway, I called the insurance company and spoke with a lady there who said that the claim was denied due to a screw up on the submitting party’s end, and apparently the submitting party didn’t own up to the fact that they’ve been notified about this.  She called them, and left me a voicemail this morning saying that it was all taken care of.

But $666?  WTF?

Most of the time, doing IT support for Europe kinda sucks.  Early hours, staticy phone lines, indecipherable accents, and other problems can make it a bit of a bear.

But not this morning.

Because Radiohead released the download link for their new record “early this morning UK time”, and I was already awake and up for that beep.

And the record freakin rocks.

I’m not going to do a review of it, because I kinda suck at that stuff, but to say that Thom Yorke is actually singing songs with soul, the music is minimal, with a bit of an 80s pop thing to it, and I’ve listened to it for 3 straight hours.

When the ladyfriend came over this morning laden with pancakes and breakfast biscuits, she said that the radio talk show thing was having a discussion on how releasing the album online is going to change the record industry.  Citing that them, Nine Inch Nails, and (heh) Oasis were all planning on doing the direct online release thing, its representing a shift in the paradigm that has been in place for a long time.

Lord knows it needs to happen. The recording industry has managed to get itself portrayed as a soulless, evil, money hungry corporate bastard machine, what with its price fixing, its marketing tactics, and its terrorist campaign against file-trading.

It tickles me that a band as popular and big as Radiohead is seeing fit to tell these big companies to bugger off, and still finding a good way to get music out to the public.  Truth is, the paradigm shifted a long time ago, and people are just now picking up on it.