Bureaucratic Mysteries
I received a credit card in the mail today, which is kind of interesting because I haven’t applied for any credit cards lately. It was from Chase. I used to have a Chase credit card, which I layed off as soon I was able to pay off the balance that I had transferred to it to reduce my interest expenses. After puzzling over the enclosed literature, I determined that they were sending me a replacement credit card. Since MBNA yanked my Linux Fund MasterCard, because I’m a dirt broke po’ gangsta with no credit, I figured this $1,500 credit limit might be worth keeping anyway. I called them up to get the story straight that it just plain slipped their mind that I’d ever cancelled anything, and make sure they weren’t going to charge me any annual fees, then I called them again so I could pull the sticker off the front of the card and now I’m qualified to float an extra $1,500 short-term debt at 6.99% APR.
So I went downtown to file some paperwork for Mom to get the title to her old van which, along with Grandpa’s old van and Papa’s old pickup truck, have been rusting away in our backyard for many a year now. Once we get the title we can give it and the other rusting hulks in the backyard to charity, and we’ll look a little less like rednecks. Unfortunately, Ford still has the lien registered on the vehicle, so Mom gets to call them and they get to fax something over to staple to the application which we mail to Springfield with $60. When I brought the paperwork back, Mom sighed that she’d been through this before.
But I was able to feel her pain, because I had gone to get my driver’s license. Somewhere is my Social Security card, but it wasn’t on me, so I ran across the street through City Hall, where I stopped to register to vote, then go to the Eugene “Gene” Cook County Recorder of Deeds Office, and around the corner and down the stairs and down the hall to the microfilm archives section, where they pulled my DD 214s. What’s a DD 214, my civilian readers ask? DD 214 is the form issued by the Defense Department describing your discharge from military service. For $1.25, a stamped copy of your DD 214 can be retrieved, and constitute a bulky proof of your Social Security number.
So, I got through the DMV, and the lady asked for $10, and then her computer told her something, so she talked to her computer some more, and it told her that I still had something I need to clear up with the State of California. I could hear Arnold in my head grunting like a bull in heat “Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah it’s naht a toomah!!” As if I haven’t spent enough time on this crap. So, I’ll call them again tomorrow, several times, until I get through, without getting dropped, to find out have they still mysteriously not received the abstract that Angel mailed off to them weeks ago, or have they found a new reason to hate me. I wish I could terminate this issue already.
I spent $5 of my $10 on a slice of sausage pizza at S’barros. They gave me two for one, I think because they were closing, so I sprung for a pop to wash it down, else I’d have paid a bit less.
