They found his still-beating heart in the ash

[sovay]

In the same way that people are said to perceive the face of the Virgin Mary in the burnt parts of grilled cheese, I just reached for a small cheap paper cup with a pattern of iris flowers and saw a death's head.

This is not really surprising. I found out this afternoon that the driver's license I renewed online in September was sent to my old street address in New Haven.

I do not even understand how this happened. I am told it's my fault, for not updating my information when I moved. I never had my Connecticut address on my license. I never had a Connecticut license. (I've never had more than one Massachusetts license, once I turned twenty-one and could change over to the adult kind—I've been carrying the same card with terribly out-of-date photo for the past nine years.) I didn't have an online account with the DMV until September—I set it up from scratch with my current information—and even when I lived in New Haven, I didn't use that particular address for anything financial. The woman on the other end of the phone explained to me that since I didn't realize the mistake within thirty days of renewal, the mix-up is my fault, I will have to pay the same fees to renew my license again, there may be some additional penalty for giving the DMV the runaround and in any case I will now have to re-take my road test because the thirty-day receipt for renewal expired back in October and I've been walking around with no valid license at all between then and now.

I really don't think this one's me. I remember entering my current street address. If nothing else, it's where they send the bills. I haven't lived in New Haven for almost exactly five years—if my old address had been anywhere on display when I opened the account online, there is no way I'd have let it stand. This was not credible to the woman on the other end of the phone. She would not even connect me to the department that could have told me whether the license has been returned by the current resident or whether some stranger in New Haven is walking around using my identity to get into bars. (They're a paperwork department, she said, and don't use phones. In this day and age, bullshit.) So I'm sure I should be calling the DMV back and demanding to speak to the next level of management, but I just feel depressed and violent. I don't have the money to throw away on re-renewal. I do not want to re-take my road test. I don't like being treated as an idiot on top of a liar. And I am tired. I am incredibly tired.

I mean, it's nice that This Happy Breed (1944) is finally going to be available on Region 1 DVD. But it's really not helping.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

That is miserable. And not being the sort of person who relishes bureaucracy by way of volume (like my mother, who I have, in the past, referred obdurate functionaries for verbal abuse) either, I empathize with the choices you face.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I will send you some pirates soon.

[sovay]

And not being the sort of person who relishes bureaucracy by way of volume (like my mother, who I have, in the past, referred obdurate functionaries for verbal abuse) either, I empathize with the choices you face.

One of the things I have learned from occasionally being an editor: I don't like bureaucracy even when it's me.

I will send you some pirates soon.

Thanks.

*hugs*

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

One time I moved, one of my credit cards didnt change the billing address, and for over 6 months I would send them the correct address with my payment. After resorting to sending them a dollar payment and stapling the check to the bill (and we talking a LOT of staples) they never did. Those checks cleared my account too. When the post office stopped forwarding my old mail, they still didnt get the new address off the returned bills. When they turned it over to collections, who by the way, sent their notice to the right address did it ever get straightened out.

[sovay]

When they turned it over to collections, who by the way, sent their notice to the right address did it ever get straightened out.

Okay, at least a collection ageny isn't involved here . . .

(Yikes!)

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I'm so very sorry. That's appalling and bizarre. I can't imagine why they'd have sent it to New Haven, but certain it's them and not you. I wish I knew anything useful to say.

[sovay]

I can't imagine why they'd have sent it to New Haven, but certain it's them and not you.

I am willing to believe they had my old address for some reason: I did live in Connecticut for three years. I don't believe they should have sent the new license there.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I don't believe they should have sent the new license there.

Exactly. I wish you the best possible luck in getting the whole mess sorted.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I don't know what to say, except that the woman on the phone sounds like that power-abusing minion at paypal. (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013343.html#013343) Is there any way to get hold of someone else at the DMV, who might make more sense?

[sovay]

I don't know what to say, except that the woman on the phone sounds like that power-abusing minion at paypal.

I think that guy was worse!

The DMV is an abyss of Lovecraftian despair, so I assume that working for them sucks almost as much as trying to get them to hand a license over, but I would just have done better if she had not started straight from a stonewall of your problem, your fault.

Is there any way to get hold of someone else at the DMV, who might make more sense?

I need to call them back and I need to write letters. I'm just not looking forward to the process.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I also couldn't help thinking of the paypal thing when you described this villain (in the sense where "villain" means "crappy little bandit" as opposed to "mustache-twirling mastermind.")

I need to call them back and I need to write letters.

Ehhhh, yuck. I'm sorry to hear that. I hope they supply you with reasonable people on Monday.

{{{{{Sovay}}}}}

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

where "villain" means "crappy little bandit" as opposed to "mustache-twirling mastermind."

Villein? Or varlet?

Or just vile, i guess.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose if you go far back enough, it would be spelled "villeyn" or "villein," but I've had the good luck to hear a man use it in ordinary conversation. He was Danny Spooner, the renowned traditional singer. Right now he lives in Australia, but he grew up in London and environs, and when I last met him we had a great conversation about Henry Mayhew's work of social research London Labor and the London Poor. (This is compelling reading and contains masses of interviews with people in low-grade jobs in Victorian London--muck-gatherers for a tannery, prostitutes, petty thieves and pickpockets, beggars, crossing-sweepers.) I distinctly remember Danny saying something to the effect that nobody in Mayhew's day would have understood why Mayhew wanted to interview a bunch of villains. As in "grubby pickpocket," not as in "arch-criminal."

/language buff

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Dear DMV,
Kafka novels are not utopian tales or instruction manuals for how to run any kind of office or agency. So cut that shit out right now.
No Love,
kenjari.

[sovay]

Kafka novels are not utopian tales or instruction manuals for how to run any kind of office or agency. So cut that shit out right now.

Hell. I'm going to have to write something with Kafka now.

Thank you.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Bleah. I just went through something similar with my health insurance. I empathize.

I hope that many good things happen to you today in compensation and that sleep comes back soon and brings you flowers and a box of good films.

[sovay]

I hope that many good things happen to you today in compensation and that sleep comes back soon and brings you flowers and a box of good films.

Thank you. I'm sorry to hear about your health insurance!

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I wish I could offer you advice. So:

*hugs*

[sovay]

*hugs*

Appreciated!

[sovay]

Dear God, that sucks.

It was kind of completely unnecessary, really.

[zdenka]

Wow, that sounds idiotic on their part. I recommend waiting until you have more spoons (or recruiting a friend/family member who has more spoons) and then call back to try again. If you get someone equally obdurate, demand to speak to their supervisor. I utterly loathe bureaucracy myself, so I completely sympathize.

[sovay]

I recommend waiting until you have more spoons (or recruiting a friend/family member who has more spoons) and then call back to try again. If you get someone equally obdurate, demand to speak to their supervisor. I utterly loathe bureaucracy myself, so I completely sympathize.

Thanks. They won't be open again until Monday, but I will call then.

[gwynnega]

How utterly infuriating. It sounds like a scene from Brazil except, of course, for the important distinction of not being entertaining. Argh.

[sovay]

It sounds like a scene from Brazil except, of course, for the important distinction of not being entertaining. Argh.

I would have been a lot more cheerful if my day had included surprise Jonathan Pryce.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Oh, feh and sympathy. Bureaucracy gets no points.

[sovay]

Bureaucracy gets no points.

Seriously.

*hugs*

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Who wrote this damned play?

As for the DMV--execrations upon their miserable tinpot heads.

Nine

[sovay]

Who wrote this damned play?

Mikhail, don't think I can't see you hiding behind that plague doctor!

As for the DMV--execrations upon their miserable tinpot heads.

I'm calling them back on Monday.

[alison mcgurrin (from livejournal.com)]

Don't call back. Go to the Watertown branch. Get in line to renew your license- play dumb. Feign utter horror if and when they pull up the messed up info. Have any and all proof of anything you can collect with you beforehand. Get ready to be sent from window to window like a pinball. It will get solved, you probably won't have to do what the other person told you you'd have to do- but you need to go in person. It's easier for these power-crazed bureaucrats to go bananas if they aren't face-to-face with their prey, confronted with arched eyebrows and disapproving glares.

[sovay]

It will get solved, you probably won't have to do what the other person told you you'd have to do- but you need to go in person.

Is the Watertown branch less actively evil than others?

[gaudynight78.livejournal.com]

When I had my 12-week ultrasound with Peter, for some reason it was offsite at the building that used to house the medical clinic we went to when I was a kid. (It's still a medical building, but it now houses a bunch of different practices, rather than a single comprehensive one.)

I was covered by Yale Health at the time, yet somehow the computer managed to come up with (a) my maiden name, (b) my childhood address, (c) the health insurance I had been on when I was covered as a dependent on my father's state employee health plan, and send the bill there.

This was in 2007. I had not had that name since 2002, that address since 1999, or that health plan since 1996.

Thankfully, all I had to do was make one phone call and say, "You idiots, I'm on Yale Health and should not be being billed for this at all, let alone under the insurance I had eleven years ago". I mention it simply to offer further evidence that the Ghosts of Bureaucracy Past can be surprisingly persistent and astonishingly random.

[sovay]

I was covered by Yale Health at the time, yet somehow the computer managed to come up with (a) my maiden name, (b) my childhood address, (c) the health insurance I had been on when I was covered as a dependent on my father's state employee health plan, and send the bill there.

Okay; that's impressive.

I mention it simply to offer further evidence that the Ghosts of Bureaucracy Past can be surprisingly persistent and astonishingly random.

Thank you for bringing Dickens into this conversation; I was beginning to feel bad for Kafka.

[gaudynight78.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. :) And presumably the name/address/health insurance were all linked as part of the same record. Still, impressive.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

All the other junk you've had to deal with aside, your first paragraph sounds like a great opening to a short story or poem. :)