A visit to the DMV is really just about frame of mind. To walk in and expect a long boring wait filled with increasingly aggressive fellow-waiters slowly oozing towards their esteemed spot in the queue with a likewise assaulting worker will guarantee a terrible experience. But that approach and mindframe is to pass up on an amazing opportunity of social observation. Where else but the DMV will you ever get such an accurate pool of life? If you drive a Rolls-Royce or a beat up scooter that can go just  put-put-puttering over 50mph, you've got to go to the same place and sit in the same unupholstered plastic chairs whose undersides are a vibrant reminder to the truly competitive nature of the gum market. (I'll have bazooka joe please.[Let's see google monopolize that])

And all that opening paragraph accomplished was to suggest I very recently visited the DMV to wondrous results. Not only did I walk out with a comically attractive ID photo, but for the hour and a half wait I also was awarded the luxury to wade through the often-mysterious and murky waters of my fellow man's brain fluid. By the time my above-the-gum buttocks was numb to the point of worry, I'd already come up with a title to my upcoming dissertation on the matter: "Shit's boring."

This, a real life conversation: (read it to yourself with the most uninterested monotone you can muster, better yet, type it through one of the robotic internet voice applications)

"What'd you do when ya got home yesturday?"

"welllll. I put the laundry through. Then I went outside and watered them plants. I'd already done the dishes in the morning, so that was good. I guess I didn't do all that much. But, I did go to Walmart to get some things we was out of."

Now these are obviously worthy pursuits and we all do them. I know I do, except my dishes don't get done until the tower topples.  But it made me wonder about day-ins and day-outs. How many people out there must have no idea how to live passionately. And maybe to live passionately is a luxury and I am being an inconsiderate. But no, passion exists at every walk of life. And yet, for how many of us has it passed over? How many people buy the things they was out of and then consider that a highlight of the day?

Another conversation between a man and a woman presumably strangers. "What do you do, what do you do?" They're was so little human life in their voices I had to make it up for them from my chair by aiming funny faces at a baby across my sampling room. Now these faces were mostly intercepted by grave looking adults who probably had to get home and change their laundry.

Another: "fuck you need my real social security card for? i'm here ain't I? This moustached muthafucker just trying to move his line along. I'm standing right here right the fuck in front of em and he pretending I ain't exist cuz I ain't got some number. Shit, see me don't you? what you want from me? I filled out the 120-something. What the fuck else I gotta do?"

Now, that person knows how to live. I ask her what she did when she got home yesterday she more likely to flip her lid at me and then hit me with it than tell me about how she rearranged her closet. Now that's a liver. I'll take you angry and assaulting over vacant and uncaring. Might as well stay in line at the DMV your whole life if you ain't going to use that free time to feel anything at all.