Overzealous meter maids sap citizenry
 In the past two weeks I have twice been ticketed for allowing my car to overstay its welcome on city streets. The fines total $80. But both times I was the victim of Premature Ticketing Syndrome (PTS) an Axis II malady under consideration for the next release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
I was ticketed by emissaries of the Los Angeles and Glendale police departments long before my time ran out and, according to California law, the burden of proof is on me to show that I was ticketed unfairly.
Here are the shocking details:
July 21-downtown Los Angeles. I park in a free two-hour space at 12:30 p.m. and go to my office. I return at 2:15 - 15 minutes before my time is up - to find a ticket. The ticket was written at 1:05.
I file an appeal with the Parking Violations Bureau of the City of Los Angeles which, despite its name, is actually an independent company. I enclose a letter with dates and times. Alas, I had not thought to take a photo of my car, any signage, my watch showing the time, and the address of the building I parked in front of at 12:30 when I parked there.
The Parking Violations Bureau informs me three days later that "the review has determined that the citation is considered valid" and I can request an in-person hearing if I pay the $40 ticket beforehand. In that I mailed the appeal on July 22 and that the reply was dated the day the Bureau received the letter, I have a feeling there wasn't much of a review...
So California assumes the driver is guilty and requires him to prove his innocence. Taken a step further, it requires the vehicle owner to be prepared to document and defend his parking time and be prepared to show proof lest there be a meter maid with PTS lurking about.
I don't believe meter maids/men, telemarketers, and tax collectors should be tarred and feathered. People need jobs. So I don't not like them just for their choice of job; I've certainly taken jobs I don't like.
I just require that they don't like their jobs. I can't get behind someone who says, "I really dig being a meter maid; I work outside, it's a steady gig with the city, they're cool with my PTS..."
Lest you think that Los Angeles (which, according to professional fee fighter Paul Bezaire, makes in excess of $100 million a year in parking violation fees) is alone in this matter, consider this:
August 7-Glendale, CA: Still saddened after being informed that my appeal was rejected by L.A., I park in a 30-minute spot in front of a United States Post Office. It is 8:55 a.m. and I spend the next 20 minutes in the P.O. I return to find a ticket, but this time I take pictures showing my watch, the designation on the curb, and my car. I print the pictures, write a letter, affix a stamp, mail my letter, and hope for the best.
In rejecting my appeal, the other independent parking extortionist bureau might claim that I set my watch to 9:15, but I will maintain faith in the system, like I did with God, until it utterly leaves me.
In creating a system in which tickets can be issued without the burden of proof (unlike, say, traffic light-mounted cameras), that makes it hard for citizens to appeal, and that intrinsically believes meter maids over motorists, the only defense I can offer against such an unfavorable situation is built into the structure: should our cities just believe people who want to be meter maids?
NOTE: Since these were the only times I have been ticketed unfairly in a lifetime of creative parking, I am wondering if cities are beginning to depend on the difficulty of appeals in order to keep revenue, in the same way businesses will depend on the extra $2.23 on your Christmas gift card to go unredeemed, because Why Bother?
I'd be interested in hearing from people who have also been victims of PTS.Labels: car, crime, los angeles, vehicle
I reply to your spam
 It would be cruel to not acknowledge even one of the hundreds of spams I receive daily, especially since this one appears particularly poignant.
My replies to this wretched lonelyhearts lady are in italics.
Hi, gentleman
How did you know?
Where are you, the King of my Heart?
Actually, I am the Captain of Your Heart.
Where is your True Love to Me?
In a duffel bag at the bottom of the Missouri River, just above Oahe. It's that simple.
I wait for you into the big castle of Loneliness and I want you to break its
strong walls.
You sound like a lot of fun. How did you know I liked depressive women?
I am impatient, because I have been waiting for you for many
years, for many thousand lonely years.
And you're just now getting impatient?
I am young and pretty, but I am old inside without love and tenderness.
That's cool because I am cheap and shallow, but I am rich inside with mineral deposits.
My heart is crying every minute, every second without your love.
Yes, yes. Tell me more about your wet, thousand-year-old heart.
I can't find it here, and everything I meet is lonely echo of my crying
heart.
You really should move out of either North Adams, Massachusetts, or the Ukraine.
I wrote this romantic letter to you, because I think that such romantic
person like you will understand my wishes and desires and will get the reply
to me very soon http://www.meetlovegirls.net/8120/
Then the joke's on you, because my brain is the size of a philbert.
I hope that you will write to me about your life, that you will share
with me your feelings.
Well, I make and eat wax sculptures, I enjoy leaving soaps on people's pillows and mints in their tubs, I believe some dogs and cats are just bad, I know this guy whose breath smells awful and I am afraid to tell him except by way of oblique references on my websites, I once had a crush on Laurette Spang, I think Fritos smell like animal feet, and I feel that people who like Radiohead can't possibly like them as much as they say they do.
Looking forward to get a note from you
Not if Laurette writes me back, you won't.
Labels: geekery, spam
Kilometer 59.2 on Mexico 1
 I drove to Mexico this weekend for a wedding. If our nation organized its wars the way this wedding was organized, there would be friendly governments from Iraq to Iran (if one started from Baghdad and went west around the world to Tehran).
I didn't do any driving once I reached the resort where the wedding was held, but I will consider the following when I return to Baja California:
- I passed from the United States to Mexico merely by momentarily slowing down my car. The trip from L.A. to our destination between Rosarito and Ensenada took three hours on a weekday morning.
- The documents proving my Mexican car insurance were not checked or asked for at any time, but I still think the $90 I paid to AAA was a good investment.
- I crossed the border at San Ysidro into Mexico by momentarily slowing down. The drive through Tijuana was pleasant. When hookers would approach the car, I would point to the passenger seat and say "Tengo uno ya." Big laughs all around.
- Aside from Mari, the resort's head of housekeeping who babysat our tots splendidly and affectionately (all without knowing a word of English), I found the service pretty surly. I tip well, I order in Spanish, and I take a vacation once every five years. Why was I made to feel my business was not welcome in a place where the only money came from the north? That attitude would not fly at In 'n' Out Burger.
- The food was great, and despite the best efforts of Donald Trump to sully the coastline, the beaches were beautiful.
- Everyone takes dollars. I got dirty looks when I asked "Cuanta costa en pesos?"
- Crossing back at midday on Sunday, the line to get into the United States took two hours, and then there were stupid accident rubbernecking delays in the United States that consumed more time. It took six hours to get home. Next time I will return under cover of darkness.
- Churros sold on the road to U.S. Customs are the best churros.
- I handed the U.S. border guard my and my wife's passports and our tots' birth certificates. He then asked where my son and daughter were, and I pointed to them in the back seat. I was momentarily scared that, after waiting in line for two hours, we would be indefinitely delayed. All he would have had to ask my three-year-old is if we had kidnapped her at gunpoint and she would have said "Yes." Children are not reliable witnesses.
On the way home, we stopped at a McDonald's in San Ysidro that figures prominently in my memory. It was built a few hundred yards up the road from the site of the biggest mass murder in U.S. history (at the time), when a former welder named James Huberty opened fire at a McDonald's, killing 21 people. After the murders, that McDonald's was torn down and its replacement opened a few doors up San Ysidro Boulevard.
My father and I had been having a fight in July of 1984 when this happened, and as I left the room he returned to his paper, where he read the word "Huberty" aloud. I thought he'd said "Puberty" (I was 14) so I thought he was negating all my significant points by reducing them to a phase. So I responded "Senility." Then we figured it out. No big laughs all around. That's not how it worked back then.
See also: Bridget La FondaLabels: mexico, personal history, travel
Today in narcissistic photos (first in a series)
 I like this picture, despite the fact that each time I look at it I think how precious it is, the way noodly guitar players will demand you listen to each lick.
"Check it out, Bro," they'll say. "Listen to this hot lick."
The picture above says that I am a hard-drinking writer, and a three-fisted one at that, because I not only have to type on the computer and write with the pen but also find a way to drink. And one doesn't drink scotch through a straw.Labels: alcohol, literature, photos
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links below may, and often do, contain objectionable material. Go ahead.
Wreck your life.
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