Thursday, July 26, 2007
One Reason Not to Trust God
I won't be buying one of the new "In God We Trust" license plates, mainly because God created license branches. How trustworthy can He/She be?
This observation comes, you can probably guess, after a trip -- actually, two trips -- to the local license branch to renew our license registrations and change our address on our registrations and driver's licenses. It turns out that, if we had mailed the materials in for the new registrations, we could have changed our address by simply filling out the back of the form (and not providing any kind of verification). But, because we went into the license branch itself (which we had to do because we moved shortly after the deadline for mailing in the renewal forms), we were required to show documentation of our move, and our word and/or new checks from the bank weren't good enough.
So, the clueless clerk issued our new plate stickers, changing the address on one and not the other. When we pointed out the mistake, they changed the one with our new address back to the old address!
The clerk said we had to show her something with the new address that had come through the mail. My new issue of "Funny Times" magazine, which I had brought along to read during the usual interminable waiting period, didn't qualify, however. It had to be something like a bank statement (but not checks!), utility bills, or the like, that had been mailed to the new address.
That meant we had to drive home, get the kind of proof of moving they insisted upon (I decided to hit them with everything we had in the way of statements, utility bills, and the like), drive back to the branch and go through the whole process again, plus getting our address changed on our driver's licenses (including new police-booking-style mug shots -- welcome to the world of Nick Nolte).
What should have taken no more than twenty minutes took an hour and a half. And they had the nerve to ask us if we wanted the new "In God We Trust" plates instead of just getting another sticker for our old plates. I felt like saying to the clerk, "If this place is an example of God's trustworthiness, forget it!"
Maybe it was just divine punishment for my previous blog? I trust not.
This observation comes, you can probably guess, after a trip -- actually, two trips -- to the local license branch to renew our license registrations and change our address on our registrations and driver's licenses. It turns out that, if we had mailed the materials in for the new registrations, we could have changed our address by simply filling out the back of the form (and not providing any kind of verification). But, because we went into the license branch itself (which we had to do because we moved shortly after the deadline for mailing in the renewal forms), we were required to show documentation of our move, and our word and/or new checks from the bank weren't good enough.
So, the clueless clerk issued our new plate stickers, changing the address on one and not the other. When we pointed out the mistake, they changed the one with our new address back to the old address!
The clerk said we had to show her something with the new address that had come through the mail. My new issue of "Funny Times" magazine, which I had brought along to read during the usual interminable waiting period, didn't qualify, however. It had to be something like a bank statement (but not checks!), utility bills, or the like, that had been mailed to the new address.
That meant we had to drive home, get the kind of proof of moving they insisted upon (I decided to hit them with everything we had in the way of statements, utility bills, and the like), drive back to the branch and go through the whole process again, plus getting our address changed on our driver's licenses (including new police-booking-style mug shots -- welcome to the world of Nick Nolte).
What should have taken no more than twenty minutes took an hour and a half. And they had the nerve to ask us if we wanted the new "In God We Trust" plates instead of just getting another sticker for our old plates. I felt like saying to the clerk, "If this place is an example of God's trustworthiness, forget it!"
Maybe it was just divine punishment for my previous blog? I trust not.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
In God We . . . Crash!
It seems that, here in Indiana, all of the bad drivers have purchased the new "In God We Trust" license plates. Why not, it's cheaper (one of the speciality fees charged for secular plates isn't being charged -- I smell a lawsuit coming, don't you?) and could give them a little extra, divine protection out there on the highway. God (& Yahweh, & Allah, & Buddha, etc.) knows they need it.
