Last week ended with a funeral, and this week ended with a frenzy of record reviewing passion. And the appropriation of a new web browser.
I really can't blame grandpa for all this. Plus, it was nice to see all the family folks. But the fact is that an unexpected trip to Kansas put off publication of my web zine for a week, and a big load of CDs, tapes and seven-inches awaited my return. But even before I got back, some friendly person appropriated my license plate.
That wasn't so bad. While they charge you a $100 "initial licensing fee" here in Florida, replacement tags are gratis, as long as you have an official police report. And the officer (sheriff's deputy, actually) who pointed out my lack of plateage was very nice. I got home, reported the theft and was told that I could pick up a report in a couple days. Until then, the desk officer told me I really shouldn't drive, though he said he thought other officers would understand.
So I fashioned a stolen plate sign on my computer (it read "stolen plate #VMZ 35M, report #97-7746, reported 2-12-97, St. Pete police"), printed the mess out and affixed it to my car. I was pulled over almost immediately. The officer wanted to know where I had gotten the sign, and so I told him I made it. He told me he could give me a ticket for driving without a license plate, added a small general harangue and went on. A pain in the butt, but not much else.
On my way home from essential errands (which I couldn't put off for a couple days), another officer stopped me. He immediately accused me of forging a state document.
"What document?" I asked.
"The stolen plate document you have on the back of your car," he said.
"There's no such thing," I said. "The officer that I reported the theft to told me there wasn't anything else I could do. I just decided that I shouldn't be inconvenienced by some guy stealing my license plate."
"You know I can give you a ticket," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"I really can."
"I know."
He walked around back and looked at my handiwork again. After a moment, he came back to my window.
"How'd you make that?"
"On my computer."
"Looks too good to be done on a computer."
"I have a laser printer."
"Those cost a lot, hunh?"
"Kinda," I said.
"So why are you driving such an old car?"
It is a matter of fact that my printer is worth more than my car. I didn't really want to get into the rest of my computer system.
"I work on computers."
"What kind?"
"I have a power Mac."
"Apple, hunh? Didn't they go out of business?"
I sighed. No use reasoning.
"Nope. I just bought my new computer last October."
"Stupid thing to do."
"Buying a computer?"
"Buying one of them Apple things. You gotta buy a Windows computer."
"Well, I do graphic stuff."
"What?"
"Like the thing I put on the back of my car."
"People pay you for that?"
"Yeah."
He scratched his head.
"I can give you a ticket, you know."
"Are you going to give me a ticket?"
"No."
"Can I go now?"
"Alright. But get this taken care of."
"Fine. Thank you."
I'm not a Microsoft fan, so this mention of Windows hacked me off a bit. And then just this afternoon, while trying to print out my latest issue of Aiding & Abetting to provide tearsheets of my reviews to labels who sent me music, Netscape fritzed, wasting huge amounts of paper, toner and most importantly, time.
As many folks know, Netscape doesn't print pages out perfectly. After diddling with the bug people, I finally gave up and downloaded the Microsoft Internet Explorer. This took an hour, and my first attempt got stopped by a friend with a phone call. Anyway, the Microsoft browser isn't nearly as good as Netscape, but at least it prints out my pages just as they appear. As much as it pains me, I will be printing out my tearsheets on IE from now on.
So now that it's time to settle down with a fifth of something southern, I remember that you can't buy liquor on Sundays in Florida.
Slitting my wrist, however, is still an option.
Jon Worley doesn't much like to deal with the problems of real life. He's put in for a waiver of such distractions. The state should respond any day now.