The Plan

I’ve been involved in this long-running battle of wills with the DMV over the registration on my car. Originally it was almost entirely my fault, but a combination of hundreds of dollars in fines and unimaginable stupidity on their part left me feeling pretty self-righteous about the whole thing. Well, as self-righteous as one can be when one knows one doesn’t have any power and a giant bureaucracy keeps threatening to take one’s car, which also happens to be one’s home.

The whole thing took over a year and a half, and after a year they can pretty much swipe the car whenever they feel like it. The details are unimportant. At least, the corporeal details are - I asked my soul to describe the experience in it’s own words. Here’s what it gave me:

‘Since I’m eternal, it pretty much felt like one really long visit to me, as opposed to several thousand over eighteen months. It actually started pretty smoothly - I really like those little monitors they have that tell you when it’s your turn, and those little butcher number slips you get, and the pleasant lady telling you who’s next. It’s nice.

So I’m sitting there reading Good Omens, and finally they call my number. I go up to the counter, and things start getting bad really fast. The guy is basically screaming at me from the start: ‘Where’s the title? Where’s the FUCKING TITLE?!?!?!’ I said I didn’t know; that last I’d heard the DMV had it and didn’t know where it was.

“Are you blaming the DMV?”

“No, I’m not blaming you - I’m saying I sent it in to you and I can’t know what happened once you got it.”

“That sounds like blame to me.”

“Fine, I’m blaming the DMV.”

“ONE FOR MAE!!!!!”

That last bit wasn’t really directed at me, it was aimed at the entire building. All the DMV people said “MAE” with one voice as the poor saps on my side of the counter started wailing. This didn’t sound good.

I was grabbed by a Clive Barker version of the Ink n’ Paint bouncer from Who Framed Roger Rabbit and hustled into a little room. I didn’t even know the DMV had little rooms. The creature rumbled “wait for Mae,” and left me alone.

About three hours later, I heard the door open and a rather pleasant voice said “Hi, I’m Mae. How can I help you?” I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I saw. At least she was clean.

Mae

So I tell Mae the whole story and she starts asking me questions. Lots and lots of questions. They started out pretty normal (What year is the car?), became strange (How many babies could you fit in the carburetor?), and ended up just plain inappropriate for the DMV(If it happened while you were camping, does it still count as gay?)

Finally I asked her if all these questions were relevant, and she said we’d move on to the practical test. This involved playing that stupid slappy hand game. I had to get her three times in a row or else she wouldn’t let me leave.

She was wicked fast. AND, she had super bony hands. I finally got her, but it took half a day and I was covered in blood. When I won, I let out the softest of relieved sighs, and she instantly punched me in the jaw. I came to on the beach, covered in raw human sewage. I didn’t get my registration.’

Today wasn’t like that. I told the guy my story, he brought up my record, and made a scowly face. This broke my heart, until he said it wasn’t me and something about ‘who did that?’ Next thing I knew, he was handing me my card and sticker. You know how people in movies say ‘get outta here, before I change my mind’? He didn’t, but I actually ran across the parking lot to avoid that very outcome.

If nothing else, my soul is at peace. For a while.

*****************************************

Horse Lady

Everybody knows I love video games, and I sort of broke down a little bit and traded in most of my stuff for a little handheld to take the edge of the loneliness on those quiet nights when you dicks don’t call. I got a DS since it’s a little cheaper, and you can’t really cry with Mario around.

I’m not ready to stary writing reviews here, so this isn’t one. One of the games I picked up is Animal Crossing: Wild World, a handheld version of a game I had for the Gamecube. It’s a little hard to describe to non-gamers, mainly because you guys don’t really understand how complex these things are (and are expected to be by gamers.) Essentially, in Animal Crossing, you’re a guy in a town where everybody else is some sort of anthropomorphic beast. You have your little house which you decorate, and you garden and run errands for people and have little contests and design clothes and all sorts of goofy little things. You don’t win - it doesn’t work that way.

One of the weird (but, for us, relevant) aspects of the game is that it’s real time. If you play for an hour, an hour has passed in the game - the same hour, like from 2:15 to 3:15. If you quit and play again the next day, a day has passed in game. If you don’t play for a month, all your flowers die. Really.

So your little animal friends come around and talk to you and so on. Here’s where the thing’s been messing with me today. I was playing around while lounging at a park, and the Horse Lady (they have names, but I’m not even good with real people names) came over and said she wanted to visit my house. I said sure, come on over. She said she had to get ready, so when should she visit? I said five minutes. Then it got weird.

HL: “Come on, this is special, I need to get dressed.”

Me: “15 minutes.”

HL: “It’s not like we do this every day.”

Me: “6 o’ clock.”

HL: “Sounds good! Don’t forget!”

As I sit here typing, it’s 5:15. I have to turn on the game in 40 minutes or so or the Horse Lady will be upset. Do you understand what I’m saying? If you want to call me, don’t do it at 5:45, because I have to go wait at my FICTIONAL FUCKING HOUSE for the FICTIONAL FUCKING HORSE LADY to come by and laugh at my wallpaper.

You know the worst part? The worst part is that this is exponentially better than my actual social life. Some people have dry spells, but not me. I have the sort of droughts where the townspeople move on because they don’t think it will ever rain again, and wonder if God is angry because they stopped setting people on fire. I do dry runs at priesthood.

I would be over the moon if I knew a Horse Lady was stopping by later. Real Horse Ladies won’t give me the time of day. You can imagine how I do with primates.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Logistics, People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.