I started a magical adventure with the Maryland MVA today.

And that’s old-school magical, which means all that stuff that occultists got into before the Victorians showed up and romanticized the whole thing into oblivion*.  Seriously, man: it’s downright amazing how those guys in the 19th Century utterly defanged the supernatural. It’s almost as if that was the intent… Continue reading I started a magical adventure with the Maryland MVA today.

Ah, the MVA.

Bad parking, nonexistent staff, insufficient helpful signage, no help on the automatic kiosks, and the usual miasma of subtle, bureaucratic despair*. I give the various motor vehicle agencies credit: customer service, when you can actually find a human being, has improved. But the workers clearly don’t want to be there any more than I did. Hell, I could at least leave.  Eventually… after the above conditions all conspired to turn a five minute errand into a sixty minute chore.

…I don’t even need to say it at this point, do I?  I don’t have to: you already know the point. Left, Right, Beyond Pluto: you can follow the political analogy in your sleep by now.  That’s prime agitprop right there: prime. Also completely true, but then nobody ever said that propaganda had to be a lie.

Moe Lane

*Also, a rainstorm and an easily-bored small child; but neither are actually the MVA’s fault, so it’s unfair to score them against the agency.

Ah, the Maryland MVA.

We’re trying to get a stolen license plate on the commuter car replaced; only they’ve held up my wife all morning over the fact that they’re listing the family car as uninsured. Despite the fact that they issued us license plates for said car when it was purchased six months ago, which they wouldn’t have been able to actually do if the car was uninsured. God knows that they came up with every other possible reason for not giving us plates. And now she has to go stand in line again.

But hey: the government will be absolutely stellar with managing your next kidney transplant for you.

So. I needed new tags for the car.

Getting them from the MVA of Maryland took one week, three physical visits by myself, multiple physical visits from the people who sold us the car, numerous telephone calls, at least two websearches, the procurement of widely diverse pieces of documentation, multiple amounts of shuffling from one desk to another, an angry conversation with a supervisor, and a signed letter from my wife permitting the staffers to even talk with me before I could get them. And why did this take so long? Because their computer system can’t update its records to handle the concept that people actually still get married, that’s why. The best part? Everybody involved knew this all along, but we had to go through it all anyway.

And that was for a new set of license plates. Imagine the glitches that will crop up to interfere with federal oversight over your emergency appendectomy.

Crossposted to RedState.

Ah, the joys of the Maryland MVA.

A government entity with:

  • Hours of operation designed to suit it, not its erstwhile customers;
  • Limitations on when services will and will not be offered, seemingly picked at random;
  • A remarkably flexible definition of ‘full service’;
  • And an institutionalized disinterest in mentioning any of this to people who call ahead to avoid problems.

Just what I need for my daily life – and, really, I need even more of it!  In fact, I cannot wait until I have to depend on the government to make sure that my next emergency dentist’s visit goes smoothly.

Cannot. Wait.

Moe Lane