A description of my blog. http://www.my-site.com 1094109020017034122 Failure to Appear 2007/04/#1094109020017034122 2007-04-25 As a person who has no job, no schedule, and very few commitments of any kind, it's essential that I drive ridiculously fast so as not to waste any of the 11 waking hours at my disposal on any given day. I average around 40 miles per hour, but that number goes up considerably if I'm out for more than 20 minutes.

I live on a dead end road, so to go anywhere I have to first get on a road charmingly called I-99 Frontage. The speed limit on this road is 40 miles per hour, which I take to mean that I should drive no more than 40 miles per hour faster than the traffic on the highway next to me. After all, Einstein proved that all motion is relative, so who's to say how fast I'm "really" driving? And of course Heisenberg demonstrated that you can't know where you are and how fast you're traveling at the same time, which means that any cop who has pinpointed my velocity doesn't have a chance in hell of catching me.

I tried to explain this to the cop who pulled me over a few months ago. "Do you know how fast you were driving?" he asked. "No," I said cheerfully, "But I know exactly where I am!"*

He was kind enough not to ticket me for speeding, letting me off with a stern lecture about blind corners, stopping distances, and -- I think -- something about the Romulan neutral zone. Thank God they don't test you for ADD when they give you your driver's license. Anyway, he did that cop thing where they find some innocuous offense to give you a ticket for that you didn't even know was illegal, because they feel sorry for you and don't really feel like hauling your ass to jail for attempting to outrace the earth's rotation. They might, for example, give you a ticket for driving under the influence of 18th century romantic poetry, or having one eyelash too few. In my case, I got a "repair and report" ticket for not having a front license plate.

(Aside: Who knew you even needed a front license plate? I thought the front license plate was an optional thing, like voting or registering for Selective Service.)

In point of fact, I did have a front license plate. It was in the back of my car, under the carpet and a pile of 4" ABS pipe fittings, where admittedly it would be difficult to see from a distance. I didn't tell the nice cop about this because (1) I didn't want him to have to ticket me for something more egregious, such as Misuse of General Relativity for Personal Gain (I believe that's a "one-eight-niner" in police lingo); and (2) I had forgotten it was there.

I was given 30 days to "repair" the problem and "report" to the proper authorities. It took me roughly 29 days to repair the problem, the "repair" process consisting of the following steps:

Days 1-21 Denial
Day 22 "Where the hell is that license plate? Hey, I bet it's still in the back of my car!"
Days 23-25 Procrastination
Day 26 Attach license plate
Day 27-28 Procrastination
Day 29 Go to police station to have a cop sign the ticket

So you can see, I just made it under the wire. Then, unfortunately, I spent another 68 days in denial about the "report" part, which would have consisted of simply showing up at the court office to display the newly autographed ticket. During this period various "courtesy" notices began arriving in the mail, courteously informing me of the myriad fees, fines, levies and dams (as in, "dam, that's a big levy") that had been added to the original ticket amount of $10. Warren Buffet couldn't have turned $10 into $425 that fast. The main thing that had been added was a "Failure to Appear" charge, which makes it sound like there was a courtroom full of people with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs while they anxiously awaited for me to show up. "What time did he say he would be here?" they fret. "Should we call?"

So finally I went to the court office to pay the fines. A lady in a forest green blouse sat behind the window. As I began to explain my situation, she stood up and another woman in what appeared to be exactly the same blouse took her place. "We're switching," said the second woman.

"Ok, well you're wearing the same shirt, so this should be an easy transition," I said.

I got the feeling that I wasn't the first one to point this out to them that day. Note to self: Do not immediately alienate someone who may have discretion over whether you have to pay several hundred dollars in fines.

Anyway, I showed them my "courtesy notice" and there was some discussion about whether they could reduce the amount or not. It turned out that they could not, but I had the option of going to court to get the amount reduced. It sounded like all you had to do was show up and you were pretty much guaranteed to get the amount knocked down quite a bit. Evidently Woody Allen was right: 90% of life is just showing up. I thought for a moment. "How long does that usually take?" I asked. Because again, I'm a busy, busy man. Places to go, things to do. I can't be sitting around for 2 hours just to save a few hundred bucks.

I was assured that it usually went quite fast. So I said ok, and they said that I needed to show up at 8:30 next Wednesday to put my name on the list for the afternoon. I didn't ask why I couldn't just put my name on the list now, as it presumably had something to do with the fact that persons of my unsavory character couldn't be trusted to keep an appointment without being forced to physically drag our asses down there first thing in the morning to demonstrate that we were still alive and reasonably sober.

"At the very least, you should be able to clear up that Failure to Appear," said Ms. Greenshirt. Yes, I thought. One might think I had cleared it up already by in fact appearing. Whatever. I didn't mind appearing again. I'm pretty good at appearing. Sometimes I appear seven or eight times a day without even knowing it. I can even appear drunk or hungover if I need to. I believe that sort of thing is generally frowned upon in the courtroom, though, so I resolved to appear sober.

I went home and worked on my legal strategy. This consisted of falling on the mercy of the court, invoking the fifth commandment, and something about the Romulan neutral zone, I think. I was pretty hammered.

Wow, this is a long story. I've decided to grant your request for a continuation. See you on Friday.



I always appear sober on humor-blogs.com.


*I didn't actually say this. In fact, I didn't even make up this joke. It may seem odd to steal a joke that virtually no one will get, but isn't that the kind of shiftless irrationality that makes one truly original?

Labels: , ,

]]>