TheBanyanTree: The Division of Department of Departments, Part the 2nd

tobie at shpilchas.net tobie at shpilchas.net
Wed Jul 17 11:35:00 PDT 2019


Where’s the dog pic?  I feel snubbed.  No attachment.


Tobie

> On Jul 17, 2019, at 11:25 AM, Teague, Julie Anna <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:
> 
> Plus, I  doubt they'd let me take my dog along, even though she does have emotional support status for flying.  
> Gratuitous  photo attached of dog  who keeps me from chucking it all and becoming an international spy.  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com <mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com>> On Behalf Of tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2019 2:02 PM
> To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own *original* writings. <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com <mailto:thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com>>
> Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: The Division of Department of Departments, Part the 2nd
> 
> Julie?
> 
> 	From what I know of you ———— you don’t blend.
> 
> 		Too smart
> 		Too funny
> 		Not flat enough
> 		Good taste
> 		Too aware
> 		Too honest
> 
> 	So get that idea out of your head.  Besides, spying is high risk, low pay (considering), and the people you hang out with are unsavory.  Nothing in common with you.  Keep your day job.
> 
> 
> Love,
> 
> 
> Tobie
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jul 15, 2019, at 3:14 PM, Teague, Julie Anna <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I guess it depends  upon  whether you want to stand  out or blend in.   If I wanted  to blend in,  I  couldn't make up anything better than middle-aged, white, female computer  programmer from Indiana.  It just sounds too  perfectly boring, right? Someone exactly like  me would make the perfect international spy, able to travel anywhere  in the world inconspicuously.   Fortunately I send fifty-odd bucks to the city of Bloomington Utilities every month, which makes me totally legit, because an international spy wouldn't  shell  out that  kind of money to falsify an  identity.  Heh  heh. 
>> 
>> Julie
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From: TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com> on 
>> behalf of Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Monday, July 15, 2019 2:35 PM
>> To: Banyan Tree
>> Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: The Division of Department of Departments, 
>> Part the 2nd
>> 
>> Fine idea, but they don't trust us to tell them the truth. There's no 
>> telling what sort of crazy stories we'd come up with, especially since 
>> we have more creativity than they do.
>> 
>> Monique
>> 
>> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:27 AM <tobie at shpilchas.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> Annnnnnnnnnd it’s MONDAY!  July 15st, 2019
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The rest of it follows.  We are talking about the Department of Motor
>>> Vehicles, are we not?  Welll.   We are kind of talking about them and sort
>>> of talking about the state of the state in general.
>>> 
>>> Dear lot of splendid persons out there,
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>       At the DMV it is expected that there is much waiting.  As I 
>>> explained, you even wait to make an appointment (and in the global 
>>> sense, you wait years for the system to kick into place).  I came 
>>> equipped with reams of proof that I am indeed who I say I am.  The 
>>> documents are required to apply for the latest incursion into each 
>>> citizen’s privacy  —  the, "REAL ID".  I alluded to it before from 
>>> this very perch.  All I’ve got now is a fake ID, half the punch 
>>> necessary to get on a plane and go someplace else.  No.  From now on, 
>>> or from some date in 2020 on, you will need REAL ID to hightail it 
>>> out of here.  I just cannot believe that there is no shady 
>>> underhanded purpose for all this, if only that it’s one suspicious 
>>> step on the way to branding us all with a red hot iron when first we 
>>> squirt out the hatch.  They brand cattle, horses (not chickens — 
>>> yet).  Will each state have its special branding iron? There will be 
>>> a state-wide contest to come up with the design.  Get the citizenry 
>>> involved so they feel like a
>>> part(y) to it.  The Bar Code Ranch of California.  Best to have happy 
>>> participation  —  kind of like having Billy pick out the switch his 
>>> daddy'll whip him with.
>>> 
>>>       To earn my REALLY TRULY FOR SURE ID, I had to bring a 
>>> certified, "original," birth certificate, my social security card 
>>> (burned up in the fire of ’91; finally had to get a new one) and 
>>> physical evidence of correspondence from any of a number of 
>>> institutions bearing my name and
>>> address:  a bill from a utility company would do (but I don’t pay 
>>> those bills, my mother, the matriarch, owns the house and pays them).  
>>> But statements from an insurance company or a financial institution 
>>> would suffice.  I came with copious documentation: Statements from 
>>> the ugly life sucking brokerage where my nominal savings are saved, 
>>> one of the countless letters from Safeco Insurance Company, the 
>>> extortionists whom I pay to insure the personal property I have in 
>>> storage because it would clash with the mid-century Danish Modern, 
>>> and random pre-clashing shlock furnishings in this, the family manse  
>>> —  oh, and it wouldn’t fit.  Safeco, the aforementioned insurance 
>>> company also purports to insure my automobile as part of a bundled 
>>> insurance plan my long time insurance broker/consumer advocate found 
>>> (ever since after the 1991 fire when Transamerica turned out to be a 
>>> consumer predator  — the standard lie cheat and steal bundle). The 
>>> idea, according to my guy who protects me, was that it would save me 
>>> a fistful of hundred dollars a year in insurance premiums to bundle 
>>> the property and the auto.  Safeco has proven to be an incompetent 
>>> anxiety-attack sized pain in the tuchas because their computerized 
>>> client/company/parasite/host interface somehow managed to do a double 
>>> take and had me signed up for two separate policies for insuring my 
>>> same single Honda Odyssey.  Since signing on, I’ve received 
>>> triplicate e-mails  (I typed, "emauls," by mistake, but maybe it’s 
>>> more appropriate) demanding I send them the signed and dated form 
>>> exempting my 99 year old mother from the policy as a "NON-driver".  
>>> Of course, the form had been signed and dated many times over, mailed 
>>> to them, scanned and emailed to them, twice (or was it thrice?). Yet 
>>> just when I thought the NON-driver tape loop fiasco had been put to 
>>> rest, I’d get another letter or email reminding me that they require 
>>> that signed and dated form, OR ELSE, directing me to go online to 
>>> their Safeco site, log in and sign the form exempting my mother, 
>>> electronically.  This proved to be problematic, as to log in I had to 
>>> verify a passel of biographical facts, but not so fast! They insisted 
>>> my birthday was not my birthday. I’d enter my birthdate, and little 
>>> red scolding admonishments would pop up catching me in my error.  I 
>>> couldn’t log in to exempt my mother and kept getting triplicate 
>>> emails warning me that my policy would be cancelled if — .  This has 
>>> been a simplified narrative describing one of the honored 
>>> institutions my government would accept as a legitimate entity whose 
>>> correspondence with me could be used as proof that I am who I say I 
>>> am ands live where I say I live — not some poseur who’s stolen my 
>>> name and biographical data for nefarious purpose, perhaps so this 
>>> master mind could stage a coup, edge me out and make my mother’s 
>>> lunch.  And you can be sure this fiend with a birthdate at odds with 
>>> mine would take advantage of the position and have Mom driving the 
>>> car!  But the DMV didn't like the financial institution statements 
>>> (too
>>> long) or Safeco (it was in an envelope hence too much effort).  What 
>>> they did accept was the  monthly statement from the credit union 
>>> where a few hundred old bucks languishes in an all but legally 
>>> inactive account originally set up so the ex could be forced to pay 
>>> his monthly support on time.  But he retired just as I set up the 
>>> account and that terminated his monthly obligation.  It has lain 
>>> fallow.  Incidentally, my REALLY REALLY HONEST, GUYS, ID will, or is 
>>> supposed to, arrive in the mail in three to six weeks.  Yet my true identity persists through all this, unchanged.
>>> 
>>>       They could just have asked me who I am.  I would have told them.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> "Heal your enemy."     Meyshe Shapiro-Nygren, 2010
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Tobie Shapiro
>>> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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> 
> "Haste makes waste."   Old proverb
> 
> "He who hesitates is lost."    Old proverb
> 
> "Look before you leap."  Old proverb
> 
> "Man plans: and God laughs.  "Old Yiddish Proverb
> 
> Tobie Helene Shapiro
> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net> <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>>
> 
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"Out of sight; out of mind."   old proverb

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."  Old proverb

"Nothing to see here, folks! Keep moving!"   Anonymous to Anonymouses


Tobie Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>






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