So it is nice to know that in these troubled times SOMEONE is getting a leisurely weekend off. You know, the kind of weekend where you can hang out with friends, maybe fire up the grill and down some Margaritas while you burn some ribs. The trouble is that it is the DMV computers that are getting this time off.

I got this friend, Gordon, best friend ANYONE can have. Gordon has been helping me get out of this great burly hole that I have got myself into which includes getting my vehicles registered and insured and SMOGGED and all that. He's right, totally right. As another old friend, Mark Blattner, used to say "if you don't do what they want they come after you with guns". Fine, guns in that instance are bad so I want to be "legit".

Notice how the levels of bureaucracy in the world have me speaking like I am an ex-con when my only crime is that I AGED.

So this last Thursday I went to the DMV (AAA actually) and paid the state $647 to register a 1996 Subaru with 314,000 miles on it. Usually I would expect that for that amount of coin you would be registering something with "spinner" rims, a hot tub in the truck and a Driver named OTIS. The trouble is that when the engine on this car blew up and it was relegated to a parking lot for two years I failed to TELL DMV that it was not running (file a non-op) and continue to pay the state for the pleasure of owning an lump of inert Metal in California. I will Scan in and publish the list of AMAZING taxes I had to pay on top of everything else, man get some popcorn before you read it 'cause it is more entertaining than a lot of Mel Brooks movies (excluding YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN of course).

After I did that the nice lady told me I had to go to the DMV website and pay an additional $14 to REACTIVATE my registration with the state insurance commissioner. Guess he needed STARBUCKS MONEY that day! I did that on Thurday in the morning.

After that I had a GREAT WEEKEND jumping through hoops to get the car SMOGGED after I put the new engine in it. This involved driving around to reset computers, hanging out while the mechanic twiddle with stuff so it would pass (a lot of which I had to UNDO yesterday because it made the car un-driveable).

OK I did it all, paid my dough, got it smogged. I washed it and cleaned and adjusted and looked foreward to, after all this, being LEGIT (all the guys in my cell block told me that felt great!).

I go in today to get my tag. The smae nice lady asks me if I had re-registered it. I say yes, right after I left her on Thursday. I did it like a post 1984 prole!

"Well the automated system takes 24 BUSINESS HOURS to update"

I was absolutely dumbfounded. The ladies behind the counter would not look me in the eye. My heart fell into my socks and made a mess of my shoes, already speckled with the effluvia of a month of working on putting a new engine in this poor old Subaru. I was told I would have to wait for the computers until OH, say WEDNESDAY, because I did it DURING a day and it usually takes longer.

In the past few decades I have made my living with computers. I know what it takes for them to talk to each other. Less time than it took for you to read that last sentence. The only way I can think that the computers could be this slow is that the people who are running them have the intelligence of mollusks and the motivation to assist the people they are supose to be there to serve about on the same level.

I also have images of the purchasing department in Sacramento, in all their glory, gathering around the table in their black shirts with the white ties and their pinstriped suits, toking on a big ole' blunt and awarding the computer contract to Louie's nephew who has a Commodore 64. Additionally I see that the "Hunchback's union" has a rep there so they have to include an interface with vacuum tubes and a jokob's ladder manned by a UNION (can't forget that) hunchback that every Friday opens a great rusty door with a giant key so he can access a cobweb covered knife that could be used as a Guillotine and shut off the computers for the weekend. After that a bunch of dodo birds with lunch boxes walk out, punch the clock and mutter "It's a living".

So even though the State has bled me of most of my resources and I have jumped through their hoops for a month or more to get my poor little station wagon back on the road I head out into the daylight an outlaw.

Hope the computers had a nice weekend.