Hello, all. Tami, the One True butting in YET AGAIN.

I am once again going to point you over to Blanton’s and Ashton’s for a fine post about voting that includes the word “Shenaningans”, which I love. And, of course, a plea to sign the petition.

Please sign the petition

Technorati tags for this posting are:
HR 550,Votes,Elections,Verified
Voting,Rush Holt

I am so upset about this I can’t even speak. Some people with no shame want us all to live in theirs.

There’s no excuse for this girl’s prosecution. None at all.

Tata: Whatcha doin’?
Siobhan: Working!
Tata: Oh God! It’s like a million voices cried out and were silent!
Siobhan: It’s OK! I’ve moved on to filing my nails!
Tata: And now they’re making dinner plans…
Siobhan: Whew! That was close! I’d hate to be the destroyer of Alderaan inadvertently.
Tata: Right. You want your genocides to be deliberate and bloody. None of this pussified, nobody-noticed slaughters of innocents. Especially not at work! How will your enemies fear you properly?
Siobhan: My boss stopped by my cube a little while ago. He hasn’t done that in a month.
Tata: Did you snap your fingers a few times trying to remember where you’d seen that face before?
Siobhan: No, no. I’ve seen him, just not at my desk.
Tata: The snapping would have given you time to organize context clues. I believe he would appreciate that kind of logical thinking in his employee.

I can’t think or act like most other people. It’s a miracle I’m employed, really. Thus, I understand why Deborah Davis did what she did. I have questions, of course, about how any story is reported, about the facts of the case as I’ve read them, particularly about why a commuter bus drives through a federal facility on the way to other people’s jobs. Even so, I wouldn’t provide my ID in that situation either. The only point in asking for it is intimidation, and I want to offer as little assistance as possible in my own subjugation.

So yes, I have to go to Motor Vehicle Services Monday evening with all my documents and demonstrate I am who I say I am. I should bring the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) to testify that in fact, we are good and divorced. He would find that funny. I wonder if they’d stamp his forehead like deranged notaries. I’ve had two fights with the agency this week, and I’m sick of their “Because We Said So” and “After September 11th, We Can Make You Dance” attitude. They only get away with it because we let them.

So no. Don’t produce ID. Being law-abiding doesn’t make you a pussy. And being a pussy doesn’t make you safe.

Hello, Tami, the One True busting right on in again. Tata says that she plainly hasn’t mastered things like paying attention, so I should post these blogswarm thingies, and yet, she’s paying enough attention to know that the petition support HR 550 is very important, and you should go sign it.

Need supporting arguments? Check out Blanton’s and Ashton’s, or any of these Technorati Tags:

HR 550,Votes,Elections,Verified Voting,Rush Holt

Daria and Tyler gave me a car. They had a spare. I don’t know how you have a spare, except I now have two cars. One is My Mechanical Nemesis, which has been trying to die. I’ve mentioned this sleek disaster on wheels enough that people write to ask what new trick I’ve taught my pet convertible. A few months ago, the car began emitting the your-seatbelt’s-off-and-the-door’s-open bell every morning as I passed Johnson & Johnson’s interplanetary headquarters. This is the Clown Car Noise. This is the noise a car makes as Seth Green leans out the driver’s side, wails, “Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaa!” and steers an English sports car with his feet. These are someone else’s sound effects. Then the muffler came a little loose. During my environmentally hostile 1.2 mile commute, I’ve been making such a racket that singing Little Pink Houses at the top of my lungs along with Jack Radio is less shiver-inducing than listening to the symphony of omens my car’s been playing. I made Paulie start the car so we could both lie down in a parking lot to laugh hard enough.

I didn’t want to say anything in the blog because I hate to jinx my further involvement with Motor Vehicle Services, which I jinxed more than a decade ago by getting divorced. An employee of Hell On Earth then told me, “No, you get to change your name once.” This did not stop me from choosing a series of names for myself and using them legally. My passport and every other bit of ID I possess has my fancypants last name. Attempts to get my driver license to match failed. Before Thanksgiving, my plan was to stay home, lock the door and talk to nobody. I enjoy talking to nobody, with the lovely exception of Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul. He’s witty and urbane.

Tata: I’m not coming to your house.
Daria: You’re coming to my house!
Tata: I’m not coming to your house.
Daria: Come to Thanksgiving and get A NEW CAR!
Tata: Do you lack…pie?

As I put on my coat to leave their house, Tyler puts documents and a set of keys in my hands. He’s an Allstate agent. He says, “Don’t hit a deer until after it’s on your insurance. Also: your aunt borrowed the car and still has the papers.”

Someday, a doctor will step forward and say, “That’s when I knew, officer. I should have reached into my authoritative-looking medical bag and pulled out a prescription pad. I should have written her scrip for an All You Can Eat Valium Buffet. But I’m only human.”

The next morning, which is to say the Friday after Thanksgiving, I called NJCure because it didn’t seem strange that a business might be open for business on a business day. After six attempts to navigate the phone tree and leaving progressively more frustrated messages, I accepted the idea that my insurance company’s employees were all out increasing the Gross National Product, and I should suck it up for America and go get the paperwork. Auntie InExcelsisDeo promised to put everything in her mailbox, in case she left the house before I got there. I drove down Route 27 to South Brunswick, toward her very old home in the very old woods on Old Road. Where I turn, I found a detour sign and no recognizable detour. About a mile later on Route 27, I pulled over and called her house. The machine picked up.

Tata: Oh Auntie! Is there…maybe…something you neglected to tell me? Your street doesn’t seem to be where I left it. Did your street move and leave your house behind?

When I turned around, which is the polite way of saying when I took my life in my hands by crossing two lanes of traffic in a vehicle SUV drivers don’t stop to pick out of their grilles, I found a strange bald pre-construction spot, and Auntie’s house no longer surrounded by woods hundreds of years old. I felt sick. I collected the documents from the mailbox, rang the doorbell, got no answer and couldn’t leave fast enough.

Calls to NJCure on Saturday didn’t help either. Monday morning, I finally got a human on the phone. The human asked lots of questions I mostly couldn’t answer, like how many cylinders my new car has. I did not offer to go outside and count, but after that conversation, I could now make a beeline for Motor Vehicles, and I did.

Their system was down. I registered my car and got new plates. I could not change my address. I was given a slip of paper with a phone number on it, like MVS was selling me a used washer/dryer. Reasonably victorious, I went to the university’s parking department, where I paid $4 for a new parking sticker. While I was there, I thought I might pay for my 2006 parking “privileges” – which in New Brunswick is a viable defense in a homicide case, and if someone steals your parking space, no jury will convict you of assaulting him with a crowbar, and the jurors would know because they had to do the same thing on the way in. The nice man at the counter said that went on sale on 1 December. I said, “You charged me $4 for a new sticker I can use for 3 days before I need to buy another?” He giggled nervously.

In the meantime, I discovered Daria and Tyler hadn’t renewed the registration after July, so with or without the paperwork, I’d been driving around in a forest of moving violation tickets, if caught. Perhaps that’s where the woods went. It is extremely important to note that driving the new car is a pleasure compared to driving the car that was trying to die. My stomach is not in knots. I arrive at my destinations without a hint of Mellencampiness. There’s no frost on the inside of my windshield. Okay, it took me two days to figure out how to turn off the windshield wipers but since I know Daria never reads manuals I bet they were on the whole time she drove it.

I have two remaining issues:

1. It’s white. I – forgive me – am Frau Blue Car. [Lightning strike, thunder cracks, horses whinny, yeah yeah.]

Siobhan: Except for the fact that it’s white, it is a very stylish car.
Tata: Paulie says we should take it into the shop and make it all artistic by gluing stuff to it. I laughed so hard I snorted when I thought of pulling into Tyler’s driveway with my car covered with art.
Siobhan: Oh, yeah, stuff glued to a car. That’s not tacky. Well, unless it’s elbow macaroni painted gold. That’s very elegant.

While I contemplate the idea that one good rainstorm might transform my automobile into a shiny side dish or a pedophile’s dream ride, my other problem is terminology.

2. I’m a Jersey chick.

Trout: What kind of car is that? A Trans Am?
Tata: A Grand Am.
Trout: It’s a Trans Am! Admit it!
Tata: …Grand Am…

I’m telling!
Tata: Trout keeps saying Daria gave me a Trans Am. I say it’s a Grand Am, because if it were a Trans Am I would have to buy hairspray and crack my gum.
Siobhan: Can’t we call it a Trans Am? That would probably drive Paulie nuts. You can’t chew gum – you have braces.
Tata: Ergo, it must be a Grand Am. Did I just say “ergo”?

Johnny and his hot veterinarian wife would have been living the high life in New Mexico all this time were it not for one wriggling fly in the financial ointment: the old house, it would not sell!

I.

Accursed New Hampshire house to close tomorrow. All pieces seem to be in place. Seems too good to be true. LIke the other three times we thought we had a buyer. Crossing fingers. Gobbling tranquilizers. Praying. Actually honest to God praying. I don’t even know to whom, but I’m praying.

Don’t worry, sweetheart. God wants you to wear silk bowling shirts to work! Well…? Is that fucking house sold or what?

II.

The round table assembles at one your time, three our time. These things can be time-consuming, so who knows when we’ll get word. The wife’s dad Big A, the ex-Marine, is there on our behalf to kill some people if need be. This is going to be a long day. The Longest Day, you might say. That had Marines in it, too. I feel pretty sure that the wife’s dad could beat up my dad, a milktoast MP in Japan after the war was already over, and not even man enough to come home with a tattoo. Jesus. What time was it again?

Darling, three my time is one your time. So is it three my time or your time?

III.

It’s like the survey where they ask the young guy do you think the problem with youth today is ignorance or apathy, and he says I don’t know, and I don’t care. I never was good at math.

Don’t kid yourself, sister. We all know that ONE LESS house = MORE Armani for Johnny. That’s all the math a pretty girl like you needs.

IV.

THe[sic] house back East sold. It will be nice to see what paying one mortgage is like. As God is my witness, I didn’t know what I was going to do if this sale didn’t go through. NOw[sic] I don’t konw[sic] what I’m goign[sic] to do now that it has. But I must say, I prefer the second problem. GOd[sic] help me.

A triumph of the American pharmaceutical industry: the house sells and Our Hero lives to make crosseyed typos another day!

Monday, Siobhan told me I’d make an excellent real estate agent. I don’t need another job. No, I think what I need is a more accommodating doctor with a chemical bent.

Yes, I said bent. You heard me!

Siobhan: …remember back when I wanted to be a webmistress in 1996? When it was all new? And I told my manager that I knew how to make a web page?

S: I can do it, here’s a URL for my personal web page “All Siobhan, All the Time.” Just don’t click on the word “Somewhere,” that’s a link to the naked women.
Manager: OK, I’ll check it out.
(Five minutes later, Manager, with a face the same shade as a ripe tomato comes rushing over.)
Manager: I thought you were kidding!

Tata: That NEVER gets old!
Siobhan: I know! And it’s 9 years ago, already!
Tata: Now tell me the one where we sat in cribs in a punk poetry club and almost died on the Pulaski Skyway!
Siobhan: Can’t I instead tell you the one about where you protested at a cable station and played kickball while wearing a clown nose? It’d be funny if I told you about it because I wasn’t there!
Tata: Will Medicare pay for visiting nurses and a therapeutic raconteur?