DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor,” said my doctor as she continued with the procedure involving sharp-bladed instruments. “When I was 17, Dr. Leibenkind used to let me practice installing stitches for patients whenever the scar would be hidden.”

(She didn’t say “installing,” but I like the sound of that better. Also I enjoy the hardware connotation. Certainly you can imagine how stitched-up human flesh takes on the appearance of an obscure cable connector, like something out of the Belkin catalog.)

I grimaced again, as I tend to do when I’m being burned, cut, sewn, etc. “17?” I grunted. “Was Dr. Leibenkind a friend of the family?” I wasn’t sure how else a 17-yr-old would get her hands on a set of sutures, much less a live patient and an open wound.

“No,” she explained, “I was his file clerk.”

I had to laugh, but I stifled it so as not to impale myself on a scalpel. “Did the patients know they were being stitched up by the file clerk?” Something about that just had a funny ring to it. The doctor laughed, too; I can tell because of the little jog in my scar.

She explained that the patients didn’t know, but that Dr. Leibenkind had supervised every stitch, mitigating the risk that my then-only-a-file-clerk doctor would accidentally sew someone’s earlobe onto their scapula, or something. I took this as good news, because if the file clerk was doing surgery, it follows that the surgeon might be out in the office putting correspondence into folders.

Here’s one for the therapists in the audience.

I rented a few movies the other night — something I hadn’t done in weeks. In a rush, I grabbed Requiem for a Dream from the “new releases” shelf (which is where our local video store keeps every title released in the past two years) and Ben Stiller’s Permanent Midnight, which I’d been meaning to see.

It wasn’t until the next day, after watching both films, that I realized that I’d rented two movies about heroin addiction.

Err, help?

Alta-Vista has taken an intriguing step; their Add URL page requires that users type in an alphanumeric “submission code” that appears in a GIF on the page. I guess this was done to foil site-submission bots…?

I had occasion to ship a small parcel the other day. Although I should have known better, I took the sealed box to the local “shipping center,” a Mailboxes ETC sort of place although not actually a franchise of that fine corporation. They stiffed me for $12 to ship the package via UPS Ground.

When I returned home, I checked the rate calculator at the UPS website. Turns out I could have had UPS come to my door and pick up the package for less money than it cost me to bring the same package to the shipping center. In other words, I paid a 15% premium, and the benefit to me was, urm, I got to listen to the radio for a few minutes? What’s up with that?

The UPS truck drives through my neighborhood every day anyway, so it actually seems the Earth-friendly approach to shipping is to leave my car in the garage and call UPS for a pickup. This saves time, saves money, and as a bonus I no longer have to slam my head against the doorframe asking why I patronize money-sucking valueless operations like my local “shipping center.”

Not that I’m bitter, or anything.

I was doing some research for a forthcoming rant on the “dribble box” container used for Vruit and a variety of rice and soy milks, because these containers, as far as I could tell, are not recyclable. Also: these boxes invariably deposit their contents somewhere other than where I’m aiming.

The official name for these doubly-loathed “drink box” or “juice box” containers is “aseptic packaging.” I was happy to learn, in the course of my research, that they can be recycled, and in some communities aseptic packages can actually be recycled within the local curbside recycling program. Here’s the official word on recycling aseptic containers from the Aseptic Packaging Council. See also their database of nationwide beverage-carton recyclers.

To be clear, I still think this form of packaging sucks, because it always squirts juice across my counter. But at least now I don’t have to feel bad about contributing to the landfill crisis.