Wednesday, March 22, 2006

hassled by the man

Not one to pattyfoot around, I emphasize the following:
hey! yeah, you! leave a fucking comment! It's mandatory now! Thats right! House A' Pain, baby!

I had to appear in district court yesterday for a mitigation hearing. Remember back when I went dashing up to the Stainless Steel Amazons's house to pick up the Goonybird (out of the kindness and generosity of my heart and a genuine concern for the welfare of my grandson because I am a woman with a beautiful soul) and got stopped by the cop? Yeah. He was kind enough to drop the speeding ticket-and I was flying low- but he felt compelled to cite me for the expired tabs*. That, I'm assuming, had something to do with the fact they had been expired for nearly half a year.
So anyway I had to show up in court at 8:30 a fucking m.
At the vestibule I get wanded in and pass through the metal detectors; fine. Then recall that I'm carrying a pocketknife on my keyring. Back I go to the security guard like a good little citizen. She examines the knife (sharper than madonnas tits, too-I use it to purloin cuttings.) "Oh no," she says, handing it back. " You can keep it. It has to be a little longer than this." Now the thought occurs to me to point out that the human heart lies a mere two inches behind the sternum, a plate of gristle easily punctured with a determined blow- and anyway you can kill somebody by sticking a pencil in their eye, and here I am wandering around at large in a public building with a cranium full of prozac and a knife for the love of fuck, but I decide not to. I am smart like that.
When it comes my turn for judgement I run a quick wedgie check (nope!) and then step up to the bar.
"I'd like to see your license" the judge states.
I rummage around in my purse and pull out my wallet. And the fucking zipper sticks. Bad enough; but the pull is a stupid skull with a rose in it's teeth. I'm trying to keep the judge from seeing that since I'm disguised as a responsible adult and I'd like to maintain that impression as long as I'm in the hands of the law. I managed to wriggle the vinyl thing holding all my cards out of the side of the wallet. The vinyl tears, and as all my identification and photographs go sliding across the bench I present my license to the judge.
"Oh,' he says. "I didn't want to see your license. I meant your license."
I pause. A small blood vessel in my brain begins to swell.
"Did you get them? he asks."
"I have a license", I chirp helpfully.
"I don't want to see your license. I mean your license", he says.
I shuffle through my papers as though I know exactly what this smiling busload of rectums is trying to get at. But then-
'Aha,' I realize. 'Not license. Buckwheat means 'tabs.'
"Oh, yes. The expired tabs, yes. I had new ones on the car 45 minutes after I received the ticket" I reply.
"Oh. Then I'm reducing your fine to 60.00"
He smiles all crinkly, obviously about to deliver himself of a bon mot. "Oh, and, by the way, nice license."

Plumb fuckin' eludes me, too.

* 'Tabs' are reflective stickers with a date you have to attach to the license plates of your car. They're due every few years. It's a form of extortion.

4 comments:

  1. Omigod! You're such a rocker granny! And... Cool zipper. WTF license?

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  2. further proof that there is no correlation between licensing laws and logic. or between authority and inteligence for that matter.

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  3. Anonymous3:37 PM

    A fun thing the kids in my neighborhood do is steal tabs. People aren't even required to go to court or anything...just send in the 10 bucks to replace them AGAIN.

    Little fuckers.

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  4. noshit: it was like that movie where the guy keeps asking the man he's about to torture dentally 'is it safe yet?'
    CK: i suspect the judge was knocking a little something extra into his starbucks.
    whinger: that'd never fly here. they'd charge a theft fee. this is the most corrupt county in wa.

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