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Message-ID: <1eui4t5.2oxgnf1ymykx2N%jwgh@earthlink.net>
Subject: More tales of Rhode Island
From: "Jacob W. Haller" <jwgh at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 04:05:05 GMT

An anniversary of my birthday having passed recently, I decided to make my way to the department of motor vehicles to renew my driver's license. Based on past experience I decided to go to the DMV outlet at the mall in Warwick. I figured it would go quickly so I didn't bring a book or anything.

Sadly, I had miscalculated, and it turned out that there was a huge crowd of people waiting to do similar chores. I took a number and waited around for a little while, but some quick calculations told me that it would conservatively be half an hour or more before I got called. (In fact it turned out to be a couple of hours.)

So I went out into the rest of the mall to see what goods I could buy. There was a DVD/CD store where I bought "Shadow of the Vampire", a movie recommended by my sister. The CD selection was fairly pathetic so I went back to the tables in front of the DMV to open my DVD and see if there was any printed material in it that could occupy me. But the only thing inside the DVD case was a list of the chapters and that didn't do it.

I hung out with the other wannabe drivers there for a little while. I believe it was around this point that I realized that across from the DMV outlet there was a Rhode Island state police outlet. It had one of those LED message boards that Kibo makes fun of in one of his photoessays; the part of the message that I remember showed a gigantic jiggling cocktail glass filled with multicolored "liquid". Soon, a tiny car sped towards it, colliding with it. The cocktail glass smashed and the driver was thrown out of the front of the car by the force of the collision, landing on his head and wiggling his limbs in what could be called a comical fashion. Then big letters appeared saying "Don't Drink and Drive!" There was also an anti-domestic violence message but it wasn't as graphic. No word yet on whether other branches of Rhode Island's government plan to open offices in the mall, but I'll keep an eye out.

After a few minutes of this I went to the customer service desk, which was manned by a bored-looking teenager who was reading a book. I asked her if there was a book store in the mall. She looked up briefly, said, "No," and went back to her book. I said, "OK. Is there anywhere where I could buy a newspaper or anything like that?" She looked up for a longer period of time and said with a chuckle, "No, sorry." I may be reading too much into this, but I think that the chuckle was in recognition of the fact that the two of us were in the same situation (stuck at the mall and bored out of our minds) but that she had the upper hand in that she was intelligent enough to have brought reading material. Also she was getting paid and I wasn't. (Once again I am outwitted by mall employees.)

I went back out into the mall at large, found a dollar store, and bought a pad of paper and a pen. I figured since I was missing more work than I had intended I could at least work on some documentation I was supposed to be writing. This resolve lasted about thirty seconds, after which I covered two or three pages with random doodles.

Then I got my new license and went home. The end.

-jwgh

-- 
"Color blind individuals tend to have more acute rod cells on their
retinas, and can see better in partial-light situations than those
selected by nature to read graphical bloat on the web."
                        --Al Castanoli, alt.sysadmin.recovery 2/4/98