Snausages

There are other corn dog spots, but Fletcher's is the king. Or it used to be the king before it opened the most grandiose stand ever in Valley View Mall, a place where there is no valley and no view. It was a day for rejoicing when they opened; after that, hot corn dogs were available year 'round.

I think I liked them better when I thought of corn dogs as a treat.

~~~~~

I went to the DMV today; all told, it wasn't so bad. Let me qualify that by saying that I was prepared for all kinds of hell. The only hell I had was that the woman who helped me in Line Number One told me that the cashier would call my number and then I could give the DC Treasurer close to $500 in fees and taxes for the pleasure of titling and registering my used Saturn.

I sat for about ten minutes before approaching the information fortress to reassure myself that I was sitting in the right place. For once, I got useful information from the keepers of said fortress. They told me to go to the cashier's window and pay. Apparently I didn't have to wait any more.

I admit that the gum-smackin' girl who served as cashier was a little difficult. She wouldn't take my check because I didn't have a District-issued ID and she couldn't process a credit card payment for whatever reason. (If she knew the reason, she wasn't sharing it with me.) So I asked her where the nearest post office was located. She told me, and wonder of wonders, I managed to find the building.

"I"--meaning me--and "managed to find the building" don't often belong in the same sentence.

I got a money order, went back, stood in line again, paid gum-smackin' cashier woman who stamped my receipt. Then I went to stand in Line Number Three. I was worried, because the man waiting at that window had been there since my initial approach to the cashier.

Turns out there was no need to worry. Seems that the guy was a friend of the man behind the window number 14, and they had just been yammering at one another for 15 minutes. Man Behind Window Number 14 handed me my title, tags, parking sticker, registration and plates and I walked back out into the nice afternoon more or less unscathed.

I say "more or less" because I was left with an incredibly unpleasant image. As entertainment down in Room 1157, there's a news crawl on one of those light boards. A couple of the headers were amusing in a Sick, Sad World kind of way. News from Canada was that a drunk American soldier blamed it on the Canadian beer he had been drinking. Apparently Canadian Beer has higher alcohol content than Bud Light, but then, so does Sprite.

The News from India was far weirder. The header read "Toilet Butcher," which is unpleasant enough on its own, but it gets worse. The story goes that a guy sets up a sausage shop in a public restroom, that he is arrested for this activity and released on bail, and that he has threatened to throw pig entrails out into the street unless "they" allow him to continue his business.

I'm left with two questions: One, what kind of medication is the sausage guy on, and how long has it been withheld? Two, why is this making news in the DC DMV?

You may be wondering exactly what I was expecting that makes me describe this experience as "not so bad." Honestly, I couldn't tell you. I guess I'm wondering, too.

before - after