My parents were married 68 years ago today. Holy shit. That means my oldest brother is pretty damn old, what with him coming along nine months and nine weeks later. They didn’t waste a lot of time back then, right after the war. My folks had to get married in the rectory, what with my dad being “one of them.” Yeah, a Lutheran. A disciple of that dirty Kraut who screwed up the good thing the Catholic church had going back then. I mean, selling people shit that they won’t realize they’ve gotten swindled until after they die is one helluva scam. Just look at the size of those mega churches out there.

So I don’t’ know if you’ve heard this or not, but there’s a consortium of retailers (that include the likes of Walmart, Best Buy, 7-Eleven, and Rite Aid) that are planning an alternative payment system called CurrenC (not to be confused with CurrenC SF, which should totally sue). They want to bypass credit card companies (and processing fees), and some of them are shutting down their NFC card readers in order to thwart Apple Pay (not to mention Google Wallet and SoftCard – nee ISIS. They changed their name for obvious reasons – both of which were around for quite a long time before Apple “revolutionized” everything and adopted NFC).

Hmm. Greedy retailers like Wal-Mart vs. greedy credit card companies. Tough call there. The CurrenC app requires you to give direct access to your bank account to this “consortium,” which is a dealbreaker for me. With Wallet or Apple Pay, I can use a credit card complete with fraud protection, or I can give my bank info to a single company – Apple or Google – but only if I want to.

It’s pretty handy to be able to tap my phone to pay, but I don’t really use it much, because I have to pull my phone out, turn on NFC (which I don’t keep on all the time – they say it uses negligible battery, but I don’t buy it), and then make sure the app is turned on and available. Whereas with my credit card, I pretty much already have my wallet out because I need to show ID to buy beer (even at my advanced age), and if I’m in a store, I’m pretty much buying beer.

I checked a lot of prices online yesterday between BJs, Costco, and Amazon. Not really a lot of difference there. I would say that Costco sells a wider variety of shit than BJs (you can actually buy caskets from their website), but that’s about it.

UPDATE You can get caskets at BJs online, too. Amazing.

It did remind me I should get busy building a casket for myself. Though I’m kind of leaning toward cremation at this point. I always thought it would be a waste of energy to burn my carcass (I mean, decomposition is free), and I kind of thought a “natural” burial would be better (basically, toss me in a hole). With a coffin something like this (maybe a nice tie-dye one) filled with those cornstarch packing peanuts.

But as I get older, I’m thinking that’s all a lot more trouble than anybody wants to deal with as far as I’m concerned. Find a natural burial “park” (the closest one around here is a fair drive away), the casket or shroud (I guess I could pre-order that), and then scramble to get me in the ground in hurry before I get too stinky.

I mean, if I’m the last one standing (so to speak), by the time they find me I’ll probably be more of a pile of bones in a puddle of goo that they’ll have to use a Shop-Vac to clean up, or somebody I know will have to deal with everything at a time when they shoudl just be enjoying the insurance money. Who wants the bother?

Speaking of bother, I guess I better think about getting ready for work. It’s supposed to be 76° out there today, and a high of 38° with perhaps some snow by Saturday. Whoopie.