Once...twice...three times at Wal*Mart.

I awoke last Saturday morning with a sensation of intense dread, as I imagine the sensation of waking up near the end of a stint on Death Row would be. Well, without the three hundred-fifty pound cellmate nicknamed "The Bone Dude", whose gigantic back tattoo of King Kong cornholing Godzilla expanded and contracted when he breathed, eerily animating the copulating mega-beasts.

No, I bit my lower lip and firmly resolved to be strong; with mist in my eyes I guided Orhan, my shag-me-now Ford Focus to the

BLOOMINGTON BUREAU OF MOTOR VEHICLES.

I'd blocked my whole day off because I knew, deep within my husk, that I would need that much time to be properly sodomized. Going to the BMV with only an hour or two to spend is simply inviting disaster on a "white Levis after a lunch of Indian and a dinner of Mexican" scale. The last time I went to the BMV, a year ago this August, I spent nearly three hours there, passed mostly "talking" immigrationese to the forty-five internationals who'd recognized me from the Front Desk and who'd descended upon me like carnivorous raptor-birds onto flyblown carrion. Nothin' beats sitting in a Delhi-hot BMV office whilst trying to dodge immigration questions. No, I don't know when your new I-20 will be ready. No, I don't know how the process of your H1B approval is going. No, I can't go to explain your situation to the nice BMV lady so that you can get your driver's permit. Nothing but horror surely awaited me.

I walked into the BMV with a crucifix, a cleverly concealed baling hook and a roast beef sandwich to ward off the Hindu contingent. I went to the checky-in place and spoke to a "woman" there, who listened "attentively" as I told her what I needed. Standing behind her was a lovely blonde lady who took the slip that was given to her by the beast at the reception area. "Could you come with me to station five?" she crooned. What? I didn't have to wait for twelve hours with nothing to do but watch the endless parade of "humanity" and read a magazine published six years ago by missionaries, who by now have erradicated the people they've gone to "serve" by giving them colds and then forcefully enculturating the rest into creepy mainstream identities? I said nothing as I went to station five, where an efficient, even pleasant exchange took place. I was prepared, she was prepared, and she was actually smiling. About ten minutes later, she had me sign a slip and then she said, "OK, you're done. It will be a couple of minutes for the cashier to ring you up. Have a great day."

All of this seemed more startling given the following, which I neglected to mention above. Whilst rooting around in my junk for one of the documents she requested, I found--wedged between two batches of paper--a butter knife. I don't have any earthly idea why it was there. I know I didn't put it there, at least intentionally, but there it was, gleaming harshly between my lien information and my insurance cards. I was horrified, and I began to stammer like a junkie coming down off smack. "I don't know...oh my God...uh...COMPLETELY INNOCUOUS BUTTER SPREADING OBJECT!...don't know why...don't rape me..." She looked at it and smiled. "You'd never believe what I find in my purse sometimes", she bubbled.

That was IT. I stood up in my chair. "I DEMAND to know why I am not being punished for possessing a potentially lethal object in your presence! Isn't there a small unventilated room that reeks of urea and tears that you'll bring me to out back wherein I'll be asked to take a boxcutter to my belly to carve a pound of my flesh off, and then you will feed said flesh to dozens of mewling distempered alley-cats while I try not to faint from the blood loss? Aren't you going to make me kneel on uncooked rice and broken shards of glass whilst spraying my loins with a tincture of Chinese five-spice, bleach and ammonia whilst offering my shrieks of mortal pain to your gore-soaked BMV goddesses? Aren't you going to make me remove one of my eyes with a melon-baller and then tie me down to allow a diseased wombat to skull-eff my socket? Or, perchance, get me drunk on grain alcohol, shave off my eyebrows with the top to a soup can and leave me for dead in a trailer park wearing nothing but a ballgown?" She smiled expansively. "We're trying to improve our image. If you'd wanted that, you should have been here six months ago." Again, the smile.

I drove home bewildered and terrified. The warp and weft of the universe had been altered. If I couldn't get punishment at the BMV, where could I expect to get it? Item number two on my list for the day provided me with the succor of knowing that some things will never change. After all, I was on the way to Wally World, and the day that it isn't filled to the brim with human detritus is the day I fly to Switzerland to have a gender reassignment without anaesthetic. I needed a cable that connected my new DVD player to my TV. Now, usually I am good with these kinds of things and I can figure out what I need, but when presented with dozens of wires, I found myself at a loss. So, I chose the wire that had the neato pretty colored prongs, and I paid for it and left. Once home, I found that the sound came through fine, but the picture was grainy and black and white, which simply wouldn't do. So I went back to exhange the cord for another. As I walked back through the spellbinding beauty that is the slidy-door thing at the Wal*Mart entrance, I saw the thing that would be "helping" me with my exchange. Greenish, mildewy scales covered her body, and her eyes were empty, dead, and the color of rancid milk. A brine hag! My day was looking up! I brought the cord and the sad remains of the shredded box. The sound of her talons on the cardboard brought me to a level of insanity I thought was reserved for the seventh level of hell. "What the eff's wrong with this?" she hissed; her breath smelled as though she'd been feasting on something bloated that you might find dead, bobbing on a lakeshore after a really heavy rain. I explained that it was ther wrong cable, and with a slimy hand she gave me my money back. "Go eff yourself", she murmured. So I went to get a new cable, which I brought home. To my horror, it too didn't work; this time I didn't even get a picture. So I got back in my car and went back. The hag was still at the counter, but she looked more pleased; a small pile of cleaned bones that surely belonged to a lost seven-year-old held court at her webbed feet, which were clad in thong sandals. I brought back the cable; she'd mercifully forgotten who I was in her post-kill euphoria. She rang me up with my new cable and looked pensive. "Some guy came in here a while ago and exchanged a cord like this . When I meet him again, I will mate with him and gnaw the flesh off his skull while I watch Law and Order." I laughed heartily with her while I evacuated my bowels. That cord worked, I am happy to report, and I spent the day watching the entire second season of Six Feet Under.

******

It's been a week since my last post, and I have to provide some sort of excuse so that I stop getting threatening emails. This week was my first week back as a full-time employee at my office, which merrily coincided with one of the most hellish weeks at the office. Hundreds of internationals need travel documents! And work authorization! And, if I may be frank, a good squirt from my clown bottle. I've actually started a nap regimen, which terrifies me. But next week should calm down some, and I will be posting regularly soon. And hey; whomever sent me that decomposing pigeon needs to calm the eff down, y'hear?

I remain, as ever,

Dom