Oh how does the DMV suck? Let us count the ways.....

We all know the DMV sucks. That is no surprise.

The surprise is that the DMV doesn’t seem to know that everyone knows it sucks. Or they don’t care. I like to pretend it’s the former, for at least the removes vindictiveness from the process. And that makes me feel better. Somehow.

So the story starts at 1 a.m. in a town called Wilton. Wilton, for those of you not from Connecticut, is Native American for “So rich I live where you can actually see stars and, sometimes, a bear.” It’s rich. Not much happens. Except for rampant teenage drug use and aldutery. But we don’t talk about those things here. And the cops there don’t have much to do. Except, apparently, harass motorists and supply them with misinformation.

Here's the quick story: Family party. Few drinks. Not severe. 1 a.m. Sirens. Sir you’re speeding. Whatever. License. Registration. Wait. Wait more. Sir, your license is supended. Officer that’s impossible. Have you been drinking? Sobriety test? Suspended you say? Tell me more.

Yes my license was suspended, but I didn’t know. Stemmed from a year old seat-belt ticket in New York City. A seat belt violation! There’s no hate crime or crane collapse to worry about? Grrrr. Anyway, I couldn’t pay that ticket online due to a misspelling of my name by the cops. But no, they are not dumb.

So while I awaited my court date and settled up the suspension question (8 business days, handled by mail. Went seamlessly - Only the postal system can shine in the shadow of the DMV) I needed to obtain a non-driver state ID, also issued at DMV. Ug.

Line 1: Information line. Which turned out to be the lack-of-information-but-heres-the-form-you –need line. Okay, at least I’m moving forward

Line 2: Type your name onto this touch-screen computer that 15,000 Connecticut residents have touched since the last time Windex was in the budget. Okay, that’s cool, the picture part is done.

Line 3: Find out you don’t have the proper documentation by an unforgiving DMV employee. (But if you can go get a copy of your birth certificate today, you can bypass lines 1 and 2. Uh, what part of I don’t have my license don’t you understand)

(Go get my birth certificate; return hours later to line 3)

Line 3, Part II: Welcome back honey, what do we have here. Two copies of birth certificate. Excellent. Give me all your papers, and go to the license renewal line. I’m gonna give them all your documents. Huh? You’re keeping my birth certificate? Thank God I got two!

Line 4: License renewal line. With 45 of my closest friends. Hmm, that girl is cute. Yeah….you get your license at age 16… Well, her mom is cute. 45 friends, 75 minutes. Could be worse. I’ll have my ID when I’m up there.

Line 4.5 License renewal discussion (by the way, the license renewal line irony has not escaped me). Okay, everything’s here. We got your birth certificate (but a ha, I have two!), forms are good. Take a seat, doll, and we’ll call you up to have your picture taken

Okay, this is the part I don’t get. I took my picture. It was on line 2, remember, earlier today. I see the copy of my picture there and, might I say, I look kind of dashing.

Baby doll, that’s for internal DMV purposes, so we know it’s you handing in your forms.

Uh, don’t you have like the last five drivers license photos of me? Look, it’s the freshman 15! Right there!

They’ll call your name when it’s your turn

Well, it’s my turn after 45 of my closest friends have their picture taken. That one’s kind of cute right? No, the mom!

Wait

Wait

Wait more

Sigh.

Wait.

Shit, was she before me or after me?

Who the hell is that guy? Where’s he been hiding

Wait

Mr. McFreeley?

Really? Where do you see the R in my last name. Just call McFeeley and smirk to suppress the laugh like everyone else. This is not Brett Favre where you can play games with the alphabet.

Behind the line. Look straight at the camera. No, honey, straight on. Not at an angle.

But. But that’s my good side. See, no wandering eye.

Straight on honey.

Grrrr.

Wait with my 45 closest friends. Maybe that girl is 18. I could ask to see her new license. Then mom would get pissed. Damn. Decisions, decisions

Wait

Wait

What time is sundown anyway. I’m so hungry I could eat that fat guy over there. Or maybe that pen chained to the desk over there.

McFreeley

Ug. But wait – that means I’m done!

Grab the non-license ID from the license renewal photographer/bureaucrat

Hey, I’m a handsome devil.

So that was it. Seven lines, and seven hours (not including the birth certificate side trip) later I had my loser-you-lost-your-license-because-New-York-AND-Connecticut-DMVs-fucked-up state ID

My question remains. Well two questions. DMV – don’t you know your reputation? Wait, don’t answer that. Second question – why take my picture twice in the SAME DAY when you could have saved me two and a half hours of my life (that will be 400 dollars in lost work please – ha!) because of your “procedure”

I swear I need to run the world. Then you couldn’t get your license til you were 18. Only thing worse than bureaucracy is ambiguity.

Of Course You Love Your Kids; Now Get The Hell Out of My Way

Anyone who knows me even a little knows that little tiny stupid things really annoy the crap out of me. Lie, cheat, abuse my pets – no problem. But a handmade sign that uses incorrect punctuation – that shit will have me muttering under my breath for days. Sometimes weeks.

So it’s with that backdrop I tell you about one of my biggest pet peeves. I’ve been walking a lot over the past week or so (another blog for another time) and I’ve noticed on more than one local street the sign that makes my blood boil every time.

“Please drive slowly We Love Our Children.”

This sign is wrong for so many reasons. Let us count them:

1. As you see, the sign never specifically says "love" but uses the heart symbol. Clearly the sign must have been created by an Irish Catholic family that couldn't use the actual word "love" to describe family members. But if Jesus was around the block, those four letters would have been in bold, capital letters, underlined two times.

2. You assume I’m driving too fast. Okay, that’s a fair assumption for me personally (another blog for another time). But you assume everyone who reads the sign is driving too fast.

3. If said driver is driving too fast, would you: a) hope he takes his eyes off the road to read a street sign with more words than almost any other sign you can imagine, or b) watch the road where your careless children might be carelessly riding their crappy scooters you bought them for Christmas at TJ Maxx.

4. The sign assumes the driver does not love his or her children, or perhaps nieces and nephews, but that the unique caring individuals who dwell on these particular streets have this loving commitment to their offspring that most parents do not share. Give me a break.

5. What if you don’t love your children equally? Or you realize the youngest one is a complete turd-on-a-stick? Will you trick that child into walking dead on into oncoming traffic? Will you put up a sign that says “If you see this loser child, step on it and have at it, Speed Racer?”

6. It’s not an official traffic sign and therefore is probably illegal. But loving your children is such a nice warm sentiment, we won’t ever blow the whistle.

7. It’s very limiting, suggesting only children are prone to automobile accident victimization? How about “We love our Depends-wearing, moth-ball-smelling, whisky-smellling grandparents who think they are walking down the Boulevard to the speakeasy before they take in a burlesque show?” Or “We got a retard on the block. He’s not technically a child but one day last week he bit a social worker, a neighbor and the head off a dead bird in the same day. Take it easy, okay?” Or “We are a bunch of newlyweds on this block and we don’t yet resent our spouses or ask ‘what if Jimmy Burke did kiss me at prom’ so could you keep our love whole by being careful on our street?”

8. And it’s just too damn passive-aggressive. And that might make the Catholic- or Jewish-guilt ridden child like myself (uh that would be Catholic; I never looked good in a yarmulke) unknowingly lead-footed on that skinny pedal. And the amount of guilt stored up could result in a crash involving not only your perfect children but both your white haired grandparents and Special Fred, especially if he’s hugging the tree into which my Pathfinder careens.

9. Oh yeah, and it absolves all parents on the street from being responsible and watching their children. It encourages “Gabby was out of work for two weeks and came back with killer bosooms” kind of gossip by neighborhood mothers; it allows 6 dads on the block to stand over one barbecue to supervise the intensity of a charcoal fire, work that requires a can of Pabst Piss Ribbon or whatever cheap swill that your neighbor Steve brings to your house while he stocks his fridge with Stella Artois. This sign allows people the false confidence that allows them to use “But I was in watching The View. Scott Peterson’s girlfriend was on” as an excuse for their beautiful shining child getting scraped off the grill of a Chevy Silverado.

So there you have it. Nine solid reasons to speed up in one of those " our children" neighborhoods. Good luck and Godspeed. Lots of Godspeed!

Fine, Don't be My Imaginary Friend! I'm Not Mad -- Really!

The world, it is safe to say, is a strange place. It is getting stranger by the day, even with the death of Michael Jackson (chimps and children DO breather easier however).

Technology is changing our lives before our very eyes. I, for one, have embraced the social media (sites like Facebook and Twitter). Why, you ask? Why, thank you for asking. Two reasons:

1. I crave attention
2. It's better than doing work.

(If you are a client of mine, I mean the work of other clients, of course)

But the social media can create some sticky situations, for sure.

My Facebook account was recently suspended indefinitely. I tried to find out but I got a canned email that said basically "It could be one of the reasons listed below, and we may or may not reply to tell you about your case."

Nice.

They didn't end up telling me, but I think it's because I blogged about feces. It is a mini-obsession of mine ("how many times do you go everyday?" "what color is your poo usually?" "It felt a lot bigger than it looked!").

Who knows where my account went. In any case, I had to start from scratch and build another profile. I had 450 "friends" on my account. I use the quotes around friends because none of them were Jennifer Aniston. Mmmmm, my best friend.

So...I found out when you start an account on Facebook, you can only send friend invites to a certain number of people before the vigilant Facebook police tell you literally "to slow down" or "face suspension."

See -- that's what I'm talking about -- a little warning. What a concept!

So people found themselves not on my friends list. Which means their walls no longer contained references to poop, retarded people (sorry handicapable?), midgets (sorry, little people), or dumb people (sorry - Yankee fans).

Quite frankly, their lives went dark.

So I kept getting these e-mails from very good friends.

"Uh, dude. I'm not sure if you're angry with me and my wife, but we noticed you un-friended us on Facebook. If there's something wrong, you know you can always call. Okay, you can text us and we'll have a two hour conversation instead of five minutes, but you know what I mean. Be in touch, love, Skippy."

Okay, I have no friends named Skippy. But I might just have a buddy Jif.

So I've been in this crazy holding pattern of remembering whom I had befriended on Facebook 1 and whom still awaits an invite on Facebook 2. Meanwhile I've been heavily Tweeting..... "Um, no Ma, tweeting is not a sin. Even if you're not married. You see, there are these things, called Tweets and they must be 140 characters long....No, not like Disney characters... Never mind. Want another Nilla wafer?"

So if you thought you were no longer my friend, well, you're better off keeping it that way. But if you don't see me on your Facebook page, look me up, send a request. Or if you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm at www.Twitter.com/TomMcFeeley.

You'll like me better on Twitter. You're limited to 140 characters (or 1 character -- Grumpy), so Twitter is ideal because people can only handle me in small doses anyway.

And, no I'm not mad at you. Unless you don't laugh at my jokes. Then I'll have to inundate you with Lil' Green Patch requests.

No ma, I'm not giving away lilypads....It's this thing -- Oh never mind....

R.I.P Gloria -- Now Can I Turn off the Heat in This Foyer??

I've shared this with many of you, and I mentioned it in my last blog, but it does deserve its own post.

My neighbor, Gloria, passed away in late May. She was 83.

You remember Gloria from my blog posts:

"Meet the Neighbors: The Golden Years" - http://tommymac71.blogspot.com/2008/09/meet-neighbors-golden-years.html

"Say It Ain't So: My Girl Gloria is Cheating On Me" - http://tommymac71.blogspot.com/2009/03/say-it-aint-so-glo-my-girl-gloria-is.html

"Love Notes from Gloria" -- http://tommymac71.blogspot.com/2009/04/love-notes-from-gloria.html

I cleaned her car off in the snow. I bought her cheap wine and made sure to give her the exact change. I "fixed" her answering machine, in reality erasing the messages when the inbox was full. I even mistakenly bought her a Christmas gift once, when it turns out the other old lady neighbor was the one who left me a snowflake pencil and what i think were bath beads.

She went into the hospital for a procedure (remember the note about hoping the doctor knew what he was doing) that I didn't care to ask about, for I feared knowing too much about this woman. The procedure went well, but she suffered a fatal heart attack 3 days later in the hospital.

I found out when a couple, which turned out to be her son and daughter in law, were taking grocery bags of food from Gloria's apartment to their mini-van. They had trash bags also which I assumed contained clothes and other possessions. I thought it was a bad sign, but that maybe she was in a rehab facility or nursing home. She was having a lot of trouble climbing the stairs to her unit lately.

When I introduced myself as the next door neighbor, the daughter in law said "Oh, you're the wine guy!" I told some neighbors about Gloria and I attended the wake. Some of the things I heard and learned:

* Neighbor: "Oh, you were her wine guy. I was the grocery girl. I think someone else was the mail guy but I can't be sure."
* Relative at the wake: "Oh, you're the wine guy. She loved you! Tom? Tom McSeeley, right? (Close enough)
* Gloria's birthday was September 11, 1925. I feel such a sadness for anyone born on that day. I hate being born on Dec 21, for selfish reasons, but Sept. 11 is worse, and far more sad.
* Gloria had some hot granddaughters and extended family. I stayed at the wake for about a half hour, despite not knowing anyone. During that time I wondered about the etiquette for flirting at a wake. Surely SOMEONE has met SOMEONE else while mourning, no?
* More than one person literally walked in an out of the funeral home in under 3 minutes! Sign the book, kiss a few cheeks, mutter a few "sorry for your losses" I'm sorry, this isn't speed waking. Pay a little respect and turn off the mini-van's engine.

My first memory of Gloria came before I even met her. I moved into my apartment two years ago on Memorial Day weekend. It was a good 85 muggy degrees outside. When I walked in the foyer leading to our units, the heat was on, full blast. It must have been 100 degrees.

I turned it down.
She turned it up
I turned it down.
She turned it up.
I turned it down.
She left a note to keep the heat on so she won't be cold while waiting for her rides.

Okay, sauna/foyer it is. I just hope I don't have to pay for that.

So the day she went in the hospital, it was a warm day. The foyer was about 4 degrees cooler than the sun. I turned the heat off, knowing she was gone for a few days.

It was the last time anyone touched the heat. And she's gone. Her note is still there.

Rest in Peace, Gloria.
And Rest in Warmth

May -- The Dryest Month of the Year. Well, THIS Year

I'm not the smartest guy going. I know this. Sometimes as soon as I say something, I immediately wish my words had a little string on the end of them, so I can pull them back in. (Never mind, the string on the end made me think of tampons and.....ew)

Anyway, my good friend Jeff was going to visit a brand new doctor in late April. Over our weekly breakfast, he tells me he wants to build good healthy habits, drop a few pounds and get reinvigorated. Sounded like a good idea to me.

So I made one of the dumbest suggestions. Ever.

"Well why don't we go on the wagon for the month of May," I said. "We'll give up drinking and try to build some good habits."

My egg-white ommelette tasted like crap that day, by the way. My mouth got dry, and not the way I like it to.

So we did. May came and we stopped drinking. A few days in Jeff asks "You meant getting drunk, right? Like we can have a couple of drinks, but no more getting tanked, for the month."

"Jeff," I began to reason with him with my new, clean mind. "if you're drinking you NEVER think you're tanked. Unless you've lost the feeling in your legs, and you'd probably blame that on your belt anyway."

Sure, drying out for a month sounds like a great idea. But picking THIS particular month didn't make much sense. Consider:

* May had five weekends. FIVE. That's like 10 percent of the weekends for the WHOLE year.
* I was invited to two birthday parties in May, including a 40th birthday barbecue. Ug.
* Mother's Day. Extended family time. I even babysat my two nieces for a whole day and didn't cave.
* Golf season. I'm not good when I'm focused. Lose a couple brain cells, lose a couple strokes.
* Memorial Day. I felt un-American by not honoring our fallen veterans by getting a little lubed up on imported beers.
* My next door neighbor Gloria died late in the month. I wanted to at least hoist a very cheap glass of read wine in her honor, but I settled on a few prayers.
* Baseball. I have about 18 lonely beers in my fridge. Every day another Met got hurt. It wasn't looking so good. I needed liquid company!

My cousin always goes dry in February. He says it's so he knows he CAN give it up for health reasons if someday he needed to. But, let's face it -- February is the softest month of the year. Shortest month, barely any sports (though the Super Bowl is now played in February, but still)

I didn't tell many people about this "experiment." Frankly, I got tired of hearing "YOU gave up DRINKING. For a MONTH!? Are you dying?"

Those who know both Jeff and I wondered who would crack first. We never even bet on it, we both decided to just do it, and believed we both could, so we never considered betting. Me not considering competing!! Can you believe it!

May came. May went. No alcoholic beverage touched my lips.

It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought. So what did I learn?

* Water is your friend. I feel like a freakin' fish I drank so many gallons of water;
* Hangovers suck. Most mornings I was rested, refreshed. It was weird. I almost liked it.
* Finishing something is way harder than starting it. The last week was hell. I think my Bombay Sapphire was literally calling my name. Oh, BS, I'll be there soon.
* My ADD is not solely attributable to Heineken. I still forgot stuff. Woo hoo! I think....
* Bars actually charge you to drink seltzer water? One place stuck me for $3.50. And no free refills!!! Hell for that kind of money, I should have been drinking a G&T at half the pace!
*Susan Boyle really is ugly. Drunk or sober.

So today is June 1. It's almost 2 p.m. No liquid lunch, no shakes, no hives (other than the one on the deck the bees built)

So cheers to me! Gifts of gin, Heineken mini-kegs and Advil are currently being accepted.

What is a "Road Game" and other pressing fecal matters....

Death, taxes and potty humor. They are the constants I'm finding out.

So I write about how full of it I am (yes, 1.68 pounds) and I get alllll sorts of feedback. Most of it came offline because people are still shy about talking about fecal matter publicly. Seems there are a lot of questions. So, let's get to it. This weeks edition of Tom Talks Shit.

Q: What exactly is a 'road game?'

A road game, as you might imagine, is when you relieve yourself away from home. At work, at a friend's house, on an airplane, at a Chuck E. Cheese. Hell, it could be in the woods.

Q: Is it natural to feel uncomfortable partaking in, um, a 'road game?'

While it is quite uncommon to feel some level of angst, guilt, discomfort or even shhh! (constipation), the act itself is among the most natural of human functions.

I have a friend we'll call Bean since, well, that's what we call him. He refuses to, under almost any circumstance, visit a foreign bowl. I'm not talking about letting fly in China or Italy. I'm talking about ANY road game. I think it's a germ issue, though there is clearly overall discomfort.

This guy will work a double shift and hold it all day just so he can make a home deposit. I think he's crazy. If you have a family heriloom that needs to be protected, Bean's your guy. He can tuck away anything in safety for an extended period.

Now I get that. There are some horribly disgusting places that are disguised as restrooms. I would have to be nearly dead to use a gas station toilet, for example. Airports are a tough call, especially if you are about to board a flight. What's worse -- a couple germs on the cheeks or having stomach cramps while sitting next to Jobba The Hut on a flight to Vegas? "Uh, no prune juice for me, thank you very much!"

Q: How long is too long to hold it? How many times a day should one 'drop the kids at the pool?'

Ah, one of life's big mysteries....One of the ongoing debates that Bean and I enjoy.

I think it's easy. "Three meals, three times," right? I mean you don't want your PB&J running up against your pork loin now do you? Or your brown rice and your egg whites. Then you get in a whole Rodney King situation in your colon and NOBODY wants that.

But because I don't know everything... (I'll pause while you get over your shock)... I turned to a professional nutritionist, whom we'll call Alison Held because, well that's her name. Here was Alison's take:

"2 or 3 times daily is optimal. Only once is not ideal at all."

There you have it. Three Meals, Three Times. Maybe I do know it all.

Q: What is the deal with corn?

I know!!! What IS the deal with corn? I don't really know (okay, I did look it up but it's too scientific for a humor blog. The only funny thing about science, in history, was Beaker the Muppet. But I DO know this. We should make houses and space shuttles out of kernels of corn.

I also stumbled upon this discovery/science project. I have imbibed an adult beverage or two in my day. I happen to really like Guinness. (I know, it's like tar. Take my friend Jimmy O's advice. Drink two pints and then tell me it sucks. You can't.) So one night I'm drinking Guinness at a barbecue where there is obviously corn on the cob. Now, when I say I was drinking Guinness, I mean you could line I-95 with the amount of tar I consumed.

So, next day, after a home game, I take a glance before the flush (Come on, you KNOW you do it too) and it was almost black and infused with corn. I call it the Bumble Bee, but I can never get the stripes of corn in a perfect row. But, like a Rubik's Cube, I know have something to try to solve, to form the perfect Bumble Bee.

Oh, I'm sorry, am I talking out loud? Oops. Maybe I've more than answered your questions.

Until next time, this is Dr. Feces -- signing off. I "gotta go" anyway!

How Full of (Sh)it is Tom Anyway????

So I've been told I'm full of it. Okay, I've been told I'm flat out full of shit. (Yes, it was probably YOU who said it.)

But recently, I wondered......hmmm. HOW full of it/shit am I? How does one measure this?

Then, in an awkward place, I found my answer.

I was a guest in someone's home and I had to urinate, or "tinkle" as we said as kids. I'm not sure why parents and kids make up cute words for pee. Just call it pee, right?

Anyway, I embarked on Mission Tinkle in someone else's home. I walked in their tastefully decorated bathroom. It was like a library with a toilet. Which, I thought, wouldn't be such a bad thing. We would all read more if the toilet was in the room where all the books were. At least we'd make it through the first chapter. And, let's face it, if you like the first chapter you're gonna read the rest of the book. I wonder if the Reading Is Fundamental people have thought of this approach. Is that group still around or is RIF RIP. (This is how my mind works. You wonder why I'm always tired?)

Mission Tinkle...Yes that's right. So I begin the fumbling around (zipper, raising the toilet seat, etc.) and something catches my eye which, of course, gets my brain to thinking.

A digital scale in the bathroom.

Now these scales are the devil. If you think you're 175 pounds it will tell you 175.8 and then you're forced to mentally round up, or to allow for your 5 pound jeans.

I remember 175 pounds. My junior year in high school was so much fun.

So the scale....I look at it, and realize I do need to do more than pee. I needed to do "Number Three" (I could never remember the numbers; which was number one, which was number two, so I created a number 3, for when you have to do both.)

But, of course the problem was I was a visitor in someone else's bathroom. A "road game" is either uncomfortable for the visitor or socially frowned upon by just about everyone. (Unless it's a relative's house, then you can let 'er fly anytime. And take great pleasure in doing so.)

I needed to know, I decided.

So I weighed myself before making the deposit. Then I read a chapter of whatever was available. Then I stepped on the digital scale again. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who's ever done this. If I owned a digital scale, I would do this every time I had a "home game.")

So what was the result? Drum roll please (there's a rim shot joke in there somewhere, right?)

1.68 pounds

So, if I were 175 pounds let's say, the 175.8 could have been (oh I shouldn't have had the cheesecake), but instead I would have REALLY been 174.12 pounds (look out bitches, I'm fit and trim).

So does 1.68 fecal pounds dictate "full of shit?" I don't really know because, I've never weighed other people's dumps. Nor have I asked about it. Kind of a delicate issue, and you need a digital scale. But the few friends I've told this story too seem to think it's a lot. But like the adage of your shit don't stink, I think people underestimate the bulkiness of their waste matter.

I'm sure there is a website where you can enter your weight. I guess I'm not THAT caught up in my ranking against the median weight of my personal dung that I would search for such a resource.

The long and the short of it (actually it was kind of dense, not particularly long or short) is that I STILL don't know how full of shit I am. I just know I left skidmarks in a really nice bathroom. I wonder if they noticed.....