Unemployed? Incompetent? Try the MDH!

Monday, 18 October 2010

I am happy to report that I have completed that wedding video that I was working on. I’m done with the editing of it, at least. It still needs to be dropped into a DVD burning program, a title page needs to be designed, I need to burn the disks and create and print a cover for the DVD packaging…but all in all, the toughest part is done.

So today  I have decided to immediately plunge back in to working on some videos I had been working on way back in July. I think I’ve complained about this before, but I swear there is never a time when I don’t have at least one video under construction. So, you know, I’m gonna finish up these three so that I can work on another video.

I actually have a few ideas for videos, too. One of them involves discussing some beautiful (or a better word) pieces of popular culture from the past decade. I want to basically just talk to the camera and say: “Hey, listed below are 11 magnificent (or a better word) creations from this millennium. Give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down depending on if you feel they’re worthy of the moniker “Modern Classic.”

So, how about some help with this one: Is there any book, film, song, album, play, painting, photograph, short story, or TV show from the past ten years that you think ranks among the best of the best?

Tuesday, 19 October 2010

On Monday, August 2nd, I called the Minnesota Department of Health requesting the necessary paperwork to get a birth certificate for Isla. I don’t really care about ‘registering’ my kid with the government, but I wanted her registered somewhere so that I could count her as a dependent on my insurance, and so that I could add her as a tax write-off this spring.

No one answered the phone, but I left a message. I called the next day, and left another message. I called again on Friday (Aug. 6th) and left another message.

On Monday the 9th, I decided I would just call there every hour until I got an answer. So, I called at 8:00, and left a message. Then I called again at 9:00, and a woman named Roxanne said: “Oh, yes, I have your paperwork right here, I just need to ask you a few questions.” (Not sure why she didn’t call to ask, but whatever…) She said she’d send the papers out right away.

On Monday the 23rd, I called asking why I hadn’t received the papers yet. Since they only had to travel about 3 miles, I felt for sure it wasn’t the postal service’s fault. No one answered, so I left a message.

On Wednesday, the 25th, the papers arrived. There were five sheets of paper: one gave instructions, two were to be filled out to register Isla so that she had a birth certificate on file, and two were to be filled out if I wanted a copy of the certificate. I filled out as much as I could, but I needed the midwife for some of the info, such as her license number.

Incidentally – the papers also asked for a lot of ridiculous things, such as if the mother had ever had an abortion (they didn’t have a box for “none of your goddam business,” so I left it blank). Another box asked if the child was still alive (not to be crass but, if she had died, why would I need a birth certificate?). They also wanted to know if Isla had any birth defects; I guess because cleft-palate kids must get a ‘special’ certificate. They also asked if Isla had any mental deficiencies. Well, I suppose there’s a chance that she won’t be a genius, but Jennifer and I prefer not to think of that as a deficiency.

Anyway, after our next midwife appointment, I dropped the papers in the mail. This was on Wednesday, September 15th.

This past Saturday – over a month later – we received a letter in the mail telling us that, though they searched high and low, they could find no record of anyone with our daughter’s name being born in Minnesota in July 2010. They charged our credit card $16.

Since phone calls don’t do any good with these nimwits, my wife drove down to their office today. Her 75 cents only gave her 30 minutes on the meter, so she knew she’d be worrying about that the whole time.

The front desk receptionist first took about five minutes just to locate the correct individual, and then she handed the phone to Jennifer. Not sure why Roxanne couldn’t just come downstairs, but there was my wife: speaking on the phone to someone in the same building. Finally, Roxanne said she’d come down. So Jennifer sat there and waited another 15 minutes, during which time the receptionist apologized for the bureaucracy and said: “No wonder why we have such a bad reputation.”

Then a police officer walked in a said he needed to deliver a summons to one of the employees, so Jennifer got to sit and watch as the receptionist spent another 10 minutes tracking down another employee.

Finally, Roxanne came down and said she would straighten everything out. She asked if Jennifer wanted to wait, but she said she couldn’t as the meter was running out.

This afternoon, I got a call from Roxanne, who thought she was calling Jennifer. She needed our credit card number again, and explained that she couldn’t read the number we had written down, as “it gets blacked out.” Oh, that’s brilliant.

Anyway, Isla is nearly three months old now and we’re still waiting on a birth certificate to be generated from a state agency that resides in the very same city that we do.

Go tax dollars, go!