Cereal boxes are astounding market places. They hold the rapt attention of children for about ten minutes every morning. Over and over kids read about some special offer for some super special prize. All it takes is a few box tops (plus $4.95 shipping and handling...have your mom write a check) and you can get this month's version of the spy camera--for "free."

One of the guitarists in my band gave me the spy camera analogy, because he actually was one of the kids who got all the box tops and tried to get that x-ray camera (I always assume it was to see girl's breasts...because we all secretly wanted to be Scott Baio in Zapped!). So as most of us shop occasionally online for things, making boxes of goodies fly across the country to our doorstep, we eagerly await the next time a knock on the door signals a package.

Last week, he had a "spy camera" waiting to be opened, so we made him show us what was inside the box. It was a vintage Greedo doll, which also told an abbreviated history of said bounty hunter on the inside flap. According to the box, Greedo did not shoot first. And, after he was dispatched by Han Solo, his remains became an essential ingredient in a special drink at the Mos Eisley Cantina.

I've been waiting for a spy camera all week. In reality, it is the Buffy Box. The DVD set of the entire series run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (it's called "The Chosen" set or something like that, but I like calling it the Buffy Box). The last non-cartoon TV show I watched with religious intensity. This is a gift to myself for something I will do at a later date, but the date is coming up and the Buffy Box came out on the 15th of November. I pre-ordered it from a DVD dealer I've bought movies from quite a few times. It still hasn't shown up. Of course, I opted for free shipping, which means it gets sent around the world a few times before it shows up at my house. I may come home from work tomorrow and find it waiting for me. But I really thought I'd get it sometime last week.

While waiting for the Buffy Box to show up on my days off this extended weekend, I've been plowing through Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman. Or, as I sometimes refer to him, the guy who quoted me in his first book. I'll finish it today, probably after football. The book concerns a cross-country trip Klosterman took a few years ago to visit the physical places rock stars (or their girlfriends) died. But it's not really about that so much. Kind of like how this column isn't really about spy cameras.

I've been meaning to pick it up for a while, but hadn't made a big book purchase from Amazon since before the book was released in July. Fortune shined on me, though, as November 1st was the 6th anniversary of my employment. I got a $20 gift certificate to a local bookstore from the owners. This is a new thing for the owners. They started, sometime this year, sending people a $20 gift certificate on their anniversaries. Doesn't matter how long an employee has been working at the company, it's $20, and they're staying the course. I shop at the used bookstore owned by the same local store, but the new bookstore isn't a place I go much. Mostly because of this: Chuck's book would've cost me about $17 through Amazon (no tax, no shipping because I always get free shipping), but it cost me $25 at the local store with tax. That's a pretty big difference. I sometimes wonder how the bookstore stays in business--well, not really. They seem to have figured out something, and I buy new books online. That being said, paying $5 for a new book is cheaper--even though it's not free.

My online purchasing has hit a low note in the last month or so. I bought an FM transmitter to beam the music on my computer to my stereo, only to find out "up to 30 feet" actually means two feet as long as you hold onto the transmitter and use yourself as a big antenna. Modern technology is sometimes as useful as that damn spy camera (you can't actually see inside of girls' shirts with it).

I bought a small load of DVDs after the Buffy Box shipped a few weeks ago (there was a sale), and my credit card company rejected the request. Why? Because they were doing maintenance on their servers and apparently don't keep their operation going full speed when this is happening. My credit card company didn't really apologize for this, other than a quick "gee, sorry about that, hope it didn't inconvenience you." Of course it inconvenienced me, I had to fucking call you people.

And now the post office seems to have quarantined my Buffy Box because the digital vampires and werewolves inside are some kind of supernatural terrorist threat. Or maybe not. Maybe they're not delivering it in a timely fashion to justify the upcoming rate increase. They need more money for their "service."

By the way, why not up first class stamps to 40 cents rather than 39? Can't you make it easy for us to buy stamps? Is the post office singlehandedly trying to keep pennies an essential part of the money food chain?

I'm not really mad about any of these things, I just want my Buffy Box.

Matt Worley knows it's a little immature to be jonesing so hard for a DVD set to come in the mail, but so is going to war because of a bunch of bullshit, trumped-up, puffy-shirted evidence. So nyah nyah nyah!