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Nothing majorly exciting has been going on here as of late. Perhaps being in the nether-realm between foot-FREAKIN-ball season and St. Alcohol Poisoning's Day where classes wind down with no major party activities has something to do with it?
I haven't had anyone go Chernobyl on me lately, or even Fukushima, or Three Mile Island, or even glow-in-the-dark-watch-face on me.
CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!
So, to belabor the radiological metaphor, the most I've had lately is people chirping at me. Short, annoying chirps of shrill aggravation, like the kind you get when the battery in your smoke alarm gets near the end of it's life.
Behold the following snappy responses/excuses I've gotten from the public this month, when they realize they've run afoul of local parking regulations:
"BUT I WAS IN A HURRY!!"
Haste makes waste, angelkins. Or at least that's what "they" say. "They" also say if you keep making faces, yours will freeze that way.... and that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.... and that cheaters never prosper, so, well, okay, you have a point, "they" have a rather dubious track record on being right.
But in this case? They were totally spot on! Pay up!
"HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?!"
Just fine, it's like, I just lie in bed, and it happens, all by itself. Considering you parked in a fire lane and then went shopping and didn't see a problem with it, I think the more prescient question is how do YOU get up in the morning? Without pressing a button that summons third-party help, that is.
"GET A REAL JOB!"
My response:
"This is a real job, I get real money for it, just did my taxes a couple weeks ago in fact"
And that's where the conversation took a PG-13 turn, the rest of it was swearing, lots and lots and lots of it. Spoiler alert: That doesn't make me more receptive to cutting you break, why so many people try it I have no idea.
"BUT I DIDN'T HAVE ANY QUARTERS!!"
Well, go and GET some, and THEN come back and put them IN THE METER. I'm sure that will keep you from being ticketed/towed for hogging an expired meter. Do I have to think of everything?
BUT I PUT, LIKE, A DIME IN
Well, like, I hate to be, like, condescending to you dude, but, it, like says "QUARTERS ONLY" right on the front of the meter.... and you didn't, like, notice it didn't give you any time when you did that? Well, on the, like, bright side... I'm pretty sure you can write that 10 cents off next years taxes as a charitable donation.
WELL, WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED' TA PARK? THE LOT IS FULL!
Much like the bartender's anthem of "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" when shop closes for the night, mine might be "You don't have to stay home, but you can't park here" Why? Because it's NOT EVEN A SPACE!!! It's a TRAVEL LANE, a ROW in the parking lot. When the lot is full, that means it's full, it doesn't mean you have to get creative with your parking, it means you have to FIND SOMEPLACE LEGAL to park. I'd like to point out that where you've "parked" means there are 2 legally parked people who now cannot GET OUT of their spaces. You can see that right? And yet you don't see the problem?
Alas, I was dealing with "The Brittany Herd" on this one, a trio of just barely post-prepubescent girls who, well, even as you're talking to them and trying to explain why they shouldn't do what they're doing, you can just SEE your own words going in one of their ears and out the other and dribbling onto the pavement.
No matter what words or tones you use, they've already decided to ignore you because you're "mean" for not letting them do something. You can try to explain it, you can try to reason with them, you can try to educate them, but it's futile.
You just KNOW based on the faces and gestures they're making that when they get home tonight, they'll be making a beeline for their Facebook page and ranting about the mean ol' tow truck guy who was hassling them today "FOR NO REASON AT ALL!!!!!" and pretty soon the "likes" are going to come rolling in from all the other IP addresses around the cul de sac agreeing that it was sooooooooo unfair that people would treat their BBF like that.... The Brittany herd tents to cross-pollinate, I seen it happen ya know!
Or maybe I'm just being jaded and cynical again? Hard to say.
"BUT I DON'T USUALLY DO THIS!"
I assume you mean illegally park?
Well, I don't usually round up small woodland mammals, lock them in cages in my basement, and then inject various home-brewed cocktails of household cleaners and industrial acids into their brains in the hopes of eventually creating an army of mindless homicidal revenants that will do my bidding...... USUALLY.
I said "usually" Okay? Everyone makes mistakes.....
But you'll note, that the elements of crime are always listed as means, motive and opportunity. "Frequency" doesn't play into it.
So wether this is your first rodeo, or you've done it so much that it's practically your hobby, is irrelevant.
You did it NOW, you got caught NOW and you'll pay the penalty NOW.
Thanks For the Input, Captain Obvious!
To the "bro" who noticed me working down in the parking lot of his building the other day, and decided to offer his "constructive" critique on not only my physiology, but sexuality as well, all via his building's front door intercom...
Are you getting a degree in Stating the Obvious this year? Because I can assure you, I'm well aware I'm fat. It's not like I can hide it.
If I was trying to, I'm doing a lousy job as my physician AND the DOT saw right through it and put me on 25mgs of HCTZ anyway...
It's not a secret that I'm fat
5' 5'' guy, 40 inch waist.... do the math, it's not hard.
Anyone with two eyes can see that I'm fat.
In fact, a person with only one functioning eye left, dangling by a shred of optic nerve, because he just got punched in the face by Optimus Prime* in the mother of all barfights, yes, even THEY could probably still see enough of me to tell that I'm fat.
*(He's an okay dude, most of the time. But when he starts in on the hard energon shots, that's the only warning you're going to get.)
I'm more amazed at your tenacity, sir, seeing as you kept it up for at least a couple minutes, even though I didn't react to it, and apparently wasn't even towing your car, or the car of anyone you knew, since you never came out and showed yourself. Maybe you just wanted to impress me with your dizzying intellectual ability to call a fat person, well fat.
And YOU'RE the one your family decided to send to college? Wow. You must've been the first of your clan to reach maturity and NOT try to eat your own shoes.
And for the record, bro, "Faggot" is not a class of sexuality. "Homosexual" was probably the word you were looking for, but, I know, 5 whole syllables? Like you could do that? What was I thinking?
Larceny is Hard Work
Property owner at 300 Daisy St. calls up and asks if we can get them a new "Private Parking" sign, seems that at some point last night, someone yanked theirs out of the ground, post and all, and absconded with it.
We make a note to get it replaced.
Later in the day, I'm down at 500 Diasy St on an unrelated call when I happen to see something familiar in the bushes along the alley.
It's the missing sign from the 300 lot.
Looks like whoever took it decided that, after schlepping it for two blocks, it just wasn't worth it, and dropped it.
Took it back to the garage, we'll get it reinstalled soon enough.
Can't say I'm surprised, those posts go fairly deep into the ground, you're only seeing the upper 2/3rds of it when you decide to steal one. And after all the grunting and straining to get it out, well, if you don't have a buddy to help you pull, and then carry it away (those posts are solid steel) then I can see how you'd run out of inspiration after two blocks.
Believe me, I've handled enough of them myself.
And then add the fact that unless you have tools to remove the sign part, not only is it horribly unbalanced, but those sheet metal signs, well, to deter theft, we don't round off the corners... they're not sharp enough to draw blood, but they are sharp enough to slash open shirt sleeves...
They're one of those things that you can easily pick up and for the first 10 seconds think "Man, this is easy!" and then, for seconds 10+n, you think "Isn't there a Constitutional Amendment against this!??!!"
Sometimes, the crime is it's OWN punishment, innit?
On a related note, had a bunch of stolen signs turned in to us by the maintenance man at Global Domination Reality. He responded to a complaint of a water leaking through the ceiling at one of his buildings and found the cause was the 3 or 4 Friendly Neighborhood Towing signs on posts that someone had stashed in the attic had tipped over and hit one of the pipes, knocking it loose and causing the leak.
Surprisingly, nobody came forward to claim ownership of said signs as they were carted off.
Times They Are a Changin'
In fact, they've changed twice.
Permits for that lot haven't been green like that for TWO YEARS. They went blue last year, and are maroon now. So putting up a green one in your friend's car, even if it was a "real" one once upon a time, was not your finest moment. Also, consider the fact that at 10 spaces, that's one of the SMALLEST lots we tow from, so after a week or two once the semester starts, I have all the cars committed to memory. Seeing one that I've never seen before, with a permit over 2 years stale in it? C'mon, that's insulting. CHALLENGE me! COME AT ME BRO!
And bring something more than that weaksauce next time.
I haven't had anyone go Chernobyl on me lately, or even Fukushima, or Three Mile Island, or even glow-in-the-dark-watch-face on me.
CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!
So, to belabor the radiological metaphor, the most I've had lately is people chirping at me. Short, annoying chirps of shrill aggravation, like the kind you get when the battery in your smoke alarm gets near the end of it's life.
Behold the following snappy responses/excuses I've gotten from the public this month, when they realize they've run afoul of local parking regulations:
"BUT I WAS IN A HURRY!!"
Haste makes waste, angelkins. Or at least that's what "they" say. "They" also say if you keep making faces, yours will freeze that way.... and that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.... and that cheaters never prosper, so, well, okay, you have a point, "they" have a rather dubious track record on being right.
But in this case? They were totally spot on! Pay up!
"HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?!"
Just fine, it's like, I just lie in bed, and it happens, all by itself. Considering you parked in a fire lane and then went shopping and didn't see a problem with it, I think the more prescient question is how do YOU get up in the morning? Without pressing a button that summons third-party help, that is.
"GET A REAL JOB!"
My response:
"This is a real job, I get real money for it, just did my taxes a couple weeks ago in fact"
And that's where the conversation took a PG-13 turn, the rest of it was swearing, lots and lots and lots of it. Spoiler alert: That doesn't make me more receptive to cutting you break, why so many people try it I have no idea.
"BUT I DIDN'T HAVE ANY QUARTERS!!"
Well, go and GET some, and THEN come back and put them IN THE METER. I'm sure that will keep you from being ticketed/towed for hogging an expired meter. Do I have to think of everything?
BUT I PUT, LIKE, A DIME IN
Well, like, I hate to be, like, condescending to you dude, but, it, like says "QUARTERS ONLY" right on the front of the meter.... and you didn't, like, notice it didn't give you any time when you did that? Well, on the, like, bright side... I'm pretty sure you can write that 10 cents off next years taxes as a charitable donation.
WELL, WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED' TA PARK? THE LOT IS FULL!
Much like the bartender's anthem of "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" when shop closes for the night, mine might be "You don't have to stay home, but you can't park here" Why? Because it's NOT EVEN A SPACE!!! It's a TRAVEL LANE, a ROW in the parking lot. When the lot is full, that means it's full, it doesn't mean you have to get creative with your parking, it means you have to FIND SOMEPLACE LEGAL to park. I'd like to point out that where you've "parked" means there are 2 legally parked people who now cannot GET OUT of their spaces. You can see that right? And yet you don't see the problem?
Alas, I was dealing with "The Brittany Herd" on this one, a trio of just barely post-prepubescent girls who, well, even as you're talking to them and trying to explain why they shouldn't do what they're doing, you can just SEE your own words going in one of their ears and out the other and dribbling onto the pavement.
No matter what words or tones you use, they've already decided to ignore you because you're "mean" for not letting them do something. You can try to explain it, you can try to reason with them, you can try to educate them, but it's futile.
You just KNOW based on the faces and gestures they're making that when they get home tonight, they'll be making a beeline for their Facebook page and ranting about the mean ol' tow truck guy who was hassling them today "FOR NO REASON AT ALL!!!!!" and pretty soon the "likes" are going to come rolling in from all the other IP addresses around the cul de sac agreeing that it was sooooooooo unfair that people would treat their BBF like that.... The Brittany herd tents to cross-pollinate, I seen it happen ya know!
Or maybe I'm just being jaded and cynical again? Hard to say.
"BUT I DON'T USUALLY DO THIS!"
I assume you mean illegally park?
Well, I don't usually round up small woodland mammals, lock them in cages in my basement, and then inject various home-brewed cocktails of household cleaners and industrial acids into their brains in the hopes of eventually creating an army of mindless homicidal revenants that will do my bidding...... USUALLY.
I said "usually" Okay? Everyone makes mistakes.....
But you'll note, that the elements of crime are always listed as means, motive and opportunity. "Frequency" doesn't play into it.
So wether this is your first rodeo, or you've done it so much that it's practically your hobby, is irrelevant.
You did it NOW, you got caught NOW and you'll pay the penalty NOW.
Thanks For the Input, Captain Obvious!
To the "bro" who noticed me working down in the parking lot of his building the other day, and decided to offer his "constructive" critique on not only my physiology, but sexuality as well, all via his building's front door intercom...
Are you getting a degree in Stating the Obvious this year? Because I can assure you, I'm well aware I'm fat. It's not like I can hide it.
If I was trying to, I'm doing a lousy job as my physician AND the DOT saw right through it and put me on 25mgs of HCTZ anyway...
It's not a secret that I'm fat
5' 5'' guy, 40 inch waist.... do the math, it's not hard.
Anyone with two eyes can see that I'm fat.
In fact, a person with only one functioning eye left, dangling by a shred of optic nerve, because he just got punched in the face by Optimus Prime* in the mother of all barfights, yes, even THEY could probably still see enough of me to tell that I'm fat.
*(He's an okay dude, most of the time. But when he starts in on the hard energon shots, that's the only warning you're going to get.)
I'm more amazed at your tenacity, sir, seeing as you kept it up for at least a couple minutes, even though I didn't react to it, and apparently wasn't even towing your car, or the car of anyone you knew, since you never came out and showed yourself. Maybe you just wanted to impress me with your dizzying intellectual ability to call a fat person, well fat.
And YOU'RE the one your family decided to send to college? Wow. You must've been the first of your clan to reach maturity and NOT try to eat your own shoes.
And for the record, bro, "Faggot" is not a class of sexuality. "Homosexual" was probably the word you were looking for, but, I know, 5 whole syllables? Like you could do that? What was I thinking?
Larceny is Hard Work
Property owner at 300 Daisy St. calls up and asks if we can get them a new "Private Parking" sign, seems that at some point last night, someone yanked theirs out of the ground, post and all, and absconded with it.
We make a note to get it replaced.
Later in the day, I'm down at 500 Diasy St on an unrelated call when I happen to see something familiar in the bushes along the alley.
It's the missing sign from the 300 lot.
Looks like whoever took it decided that, after schlepping it for two blocks, it just wasn't worth it, and dropped it.
Took it back to the garage, we'll get it reinstalled soon enough.
Can't say I'm surprised, those posts go fairly deep into the ground, you're only seeing the upper 2/3rds of it when you decide to steal one. And after all the grunting and straining to get it out, well, if you don't have a buddy to help you pull, and then carry it away (those posts are solid steel) then I can see how you'd run out of inspiration after two blocks.
Believe me, I've handled enough of them myself.
And then add the fact that unless you have tools to remove the sign part, not only is it horribly unbalanced, but those sheet metal signs, well, to deter theft, we don't round off the corners... they're not sharp enough to draw blood, but they are sharp enough to slash open shirt sleeves...
They're one of those things that you can easily pick up and for the first 10 seconds think "Man, this is easy!" and then, for seconds 10+n, you think "Isn't there a Constitutional Amendment against this!??!!"
Sometimes, the crime is it's OWN punishment, innit?
On a related note, had a bunch of stolen signs turned in to us by the maintenance man at Global Domination Reality. He responded to a complaint of a water leaking through the ceiling at one of his buildings and found the cause was the 3 or 4 Friendly Neighborhood Towing signs on posts that someone had stashed in the attic had tipped over and hit one of the pipes, knocking it loose and causing the leak.
Surprisingly, nobody came forward to claim ownership of said signs as they were carted off.
Times They Are a Changin'
In fact, they've changed twice.
Permits for that lot haven't been green like that for TWO YEARS. They went blue last year, and are maroon now. So putting up a green one in your friend's car, even if it was a "real" one once upon a time, was not your finest moment. Also, consider the fact that at 10 spaces, that's one of the SMALLEST lots we tow from, so after a week or two once the semester starts, I have all the cars committed to memory. Seeing one that I've never seen before, with a permit over 2 years stale in it? C'mon, that's insulting. CHALLENGE me! COME AT ME BRO!
And bring something more than that weaksauce next time.
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