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once I turned twenty-one and could change over to the adult kind—I've been carrying the same card with terribly out-of-date photo for the past nine years.)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

[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