The Drama of the Parking Ticket

So, I got a parking ticket last Tuesday. I was a little surprised at this, seeing as I had been parked in this spot in front of my building since the Monday before Thanksgiving and nothing had happened. The spot was very legal, my registration and emissions sticker don't expire until June, so why was there a ticket? The explanation was on a piece of paper, under my wiper, next to the ticket. This kind person explained that I had gotten a ticket (along with 35 other people in my neighborhood)-and had printed out from the Net the part of the DC Code that was cited on my ticket-I had gotten it because my wheels were not turned towards the curb as was required when parked on a grade.

So, I don't know if you know my neighborhood in DC, but let's just say...it's flat. Really flat. Yes, you have to go up a bit of a hill to get here, but once you do...anyway, there is no way I live on a grade, never minding the fact that I've lived in this neighborhood for over seven years and have never gotten a ticket like this. Parking tickets? Yes. Car broken into four times (and I don't know why ANYONE would break into a 1999 Jeep)? Yes. But ticket for not having my wheels turned in because of a grade? Please.

Sooooo, I lost my temper. I emailed the Mayor. I emailed a columnist at The Washington Post. I emailed my City Councilman, who lives in my area, and I put a notice up on the bulletin board in my building, telling my neighbors to email our Councilman about it if they had gotten a ticket. Honestly, all I wanted to do was NOT pay this ticket. Yes, it as only $20 but it was WRONG. I will freely pay a ticket if I deserved it. Maybe not happily, but I'll pay it. And yes, I wanted people to know about it-if police officers are doing this (and I really thought they had better things to do) and do several people who didn't deserve it-then people should know about it. And why weren't they tickets the people who come into my hood every weekend and leave their garbage everywhere and throw up on the sidewalk and take every spot available and park illegally all over? I never see tickets on those cars-ever.
First I heard from the Councilman, who told me he would look into it and I should contest it. So I took some pictures and sent the ticket off, contesting it. Then I heard from the police, said I needed to bring the ticket in that day (a week to the day after I got it) and he would look at it. Then I was on a mailing list of several other people-and one basically said that was unacceptable. Were we ALL to bring our tickets in because the police went on a rampage that Tuesday afternoon?
To give the police credit, they asked for name, ticket number, tags, violation and they would look into it. I sent off the info...and then I heard from The Post columnist, Marc Fisher. I talked to him on the phone for about 10 minutes or so, explaining what had happened-and the next day I got a notice from the police issuing a notice of cancellation for my ticket, which I forwarded to Marc Fisher. I wasn't sure I'd hear about anything else, until Thursday's Post. I'm not going to paste it here, but you can find it on the Post's site-but it was a great article. What seemed to have happened was that the residents of the next neighborhood over had asked the police to crack down on their people who parked illegally and took resident's reserved spots-all the things that happen in my area as well. So, the police said, they decided to crack down on it. Yes, on a Tuesday afternoon at 5:30, they cracked down on all the residents who were legally parked. Can you say ticket quota? I'm not buying the explanation, but my ticket is cleared (I guess I'll find out when I renew my registration if it's actually the case), someone in my building cut out the article and tacked it up to my note (which is still there), and someone else wrote on it "You go, Susan!" AND I got the last quote in the article.
It actually worked-for now, anyway.

And I saw a woman today wearing no stockings and peep-toe slingback pumps. Yes, it was raining and 35. Yes, we had snow and ice (in which I fell yesterday, but that's another story). I wanted to match her up with the girl I saw back in September who was wearing boots, a skirt and a heavy sweater when it was going to be 80 that day-neither of them knew how to dress for the weather that day.

No Country for Old Men.

Let me say right off the bat, this is a violent movie. If you can't take violence and can't get past it, this is not the movie for you. Which is a shame, because there are some very fine performances in this movie and it's worth it to see them. Josh Brolin (who is having a pretty good year and is terrific in this movie) comes across the aftermath of a shootout. Almost everyone is dead-but one man is still alive, barely. Josh looks around, doesn't see much...until he sees a case. A case full of money. He takes it, and thus his troubles begin. Javier Bardem is sent after him to recover the money and it's not pretty. We already know Javier is a killer (strangling a Sheriff's deputy on the floor of the police station proved that) and that he has one of the worst haircuts ever put on film. He's also one the scariest character's ever put on film and he leaves a trail of bodies behind him in his quest for the money. josh, for all his smarts (and he turns out to be much smarter than Javier bargained on) is still no match for someone willing to kill everyone in his way and even someone who wasn't, just because he promised he would. Tommy lee Jones is the Sheriff who is baffled about all the murders popping up in his jurisdiction-and while he gives a fine performance (I'm not sure anyone does bemusement better than Tommy Lee Jones), but to me, this character was the weak link in the story. He's never seen so many murders, he's never seen so many drugs...blah blah blah. I understood the character (and he's pretty much the title) but still, it baffled me. Do you not go into law enforcement knowing really bad stuff may happen? And is this part of the "things were better in the old days" thing? Because they weren't. The world has ALWAYS been a violent place-and until the past 100 years or so there were no real police forces to stop the bad guys. My mother told me a story once about her step-mother, who grew up on a farm in Alabama in the early 1900's. It was way out in the country-about as bucolic as it could be...and she always answered the door with a gun in her apron pocket because she never knew who was going to be at the door. A gun. Because she was scared-in a time we think of as being calm-and it wasn't.

I will say I saw the preview for There Will Be Blood and it scared the bejesus out of me. Daniel Day Lewis looked deeply frightening and no one you would want to run into, ever. He and Javier may have to fight it out for scariest character in a movie this year.

Thanksgiving

We had a little drama at Thanksgiving and my Dad ended up in the hospital. He was there just for a night and was diagnosed with a kidney/urinary tract infection. he's okay now, but it was a little scary. Okay, a lot scary. But he's much better now, so it's all good.

I did get a fair amount of reading done (especially while sitting at the hospital) so let's begin:

I re-read Declare. This may happen again at Christmas but I just love his prose-every time I read it, it makes me happy that someone can write this well.

I read the new Laurell Hamilton-the latest in the evil fairy saga, not Anita Blake, who I gave up on awhile ago. I think this may be her best book in the series since it began. There was actual character development and things happened that made sense that the author didn't seem to just pull out of the air (as in Merry gets a new power and saves everyone with it and than has rough sex with everyone). The third book in the series seemed to be a series of sex scenes with nothing actually happening-I think I went back and timed the book and the events in it took about 24 hours-and it seemed to be all sex. they were very well-written but I did want SOMETHING else to occur. That happens in this book and I liked it. I also read The Worth by Will Clarke I liked Lord Vishnu's Love Handles (his first book) and this one (which may actually be his first written book, if I understood the afterword correctly) and it was very good as well. of course I did-it makes fun of fraternity boys and how one of them is a certifiable psychopath who kills the narrator before the book begins. The story is told by his ghost-and the troubles he encounters in his afterlife. In ways, it's quite religious, although in a very funny way. Clarke has a similar sense of humor to Christopher Moore, so of course the narrator (Conrad) is a smartass who wants his life back, mainly to enjoy food and sex. he has a lot in common with Bif, the narrator of lamb, only without Bif's love for his friend, Josh. Or does Conrad lack that love for Jesus and God? He has to grow up in order to stop being a ghost and to move on in his afterlife but he seems okay with taking over other people's bodies and using them to have sex and eat, so there's a conflict there-and how it gets resloved is really the crux of the book. Clarke's portrayal of fraternity, life on campus and college in general is not only accurate but also pretty funny. And Conrad is engaging character-it's hard to not yell "grow up" at him but the people in the book do learn from their mistakes (mostly) and move on.

Monkeewrench by PJ Tracy was good too. Yes, it's a murder mystery but it's well-told, with engaging characters, a good sense of humor and a nice twisty plot. it's well worth the time. I brought a Richard K Morgan book with me but did not read it-maybe at Christmas.