While I was outside of my apartment today, I checked my mail. Wacky, right? Mailboxes aren’t really that useful in these Internet Times, but I still check in there out of habit and to throw out flyers. It’s a boring chore. But not today! Today I got something of a surprise. I got something worth doing a post on this website!

Anyway. It’s like this. There’s a thing in the mail saying I had a month-old unpaid parking ticket. So far, this seems possible. I’m a delivery driver, I do a lot of illegal parking over the course of the night, but it was strange that I never got a ticket on my window. Then I notice that it says the ticket was issued at 9:27 am! What kind of PDR would I be if I were out and active at that ungodly hour? Certainly that’s not a time I’d be working. If anything, I’d be in bed, hiding from the sun.

But I can’t remember what I was doing on January 18th. What kind of sicko remembers things that far back? Well, I know that I send 75% of my errant thoughts to young Marq, so I open up our text conversation thread and scroll back a month to see what I was up to. It turns out that that was the very day I went out to get my Covid vaccine booster shot! Ah, so I had a reason to be out! It all makes sense again. BUT WAIT! I got my Booster at the Shoppers across the street from my apartment. I didn’t take the car. And anyway, the thing says the ticket was issued on University Avenue.

Still, I deserve a little comeuppance. And it’s only 35 dollars. My financial situation has been improving, this won’t crush me. I don’t worry about it while I work, though I do wonder if maybe I’d managed to get a ticket in my own parking space because someone didn’t know I lived there? And maybe some rebellious teens took the ticket away as a youthful prank? But that’s not on University Avenue. The contradictions are endless.

I figure that I can finally cease my wonderings when I get home from work and log onto the city’s website to look up the ticket. They have my plate number right there, sure, but the make and model shown are wrong. And to make things even more confusing, they’re showing the make and model and colour of my mother’s car. I wouldn’t have been driving her car a month ago, and even if I had it wouldn’t have had my plates on it.

Then I noticed they’ve got a picture. Obviously, I click that.

Sure enough, it shows a car of the same make and colour as my mother’s. And sure enough, it has a license plate one letter different from mine. Where one finds the letter “S” on my vehicle’s plate, there is, quite clearly, a “G” on this imposter.

Part of me wants to just ignore it. I’d love for them to take me to court when they have provided photographic proof that the car in question has a different make, model, and license plate than mine. But instead I’m probably gonna have to stay awake into normal business hours and talk to someone on the phone or something. Almost makes me want to just pay the $35.

The first car I ever owned is not functional any longer. Goodbye to a hard-working car.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but often people are surprised the first time they hear me say a swear. Somehow I cultivate a reputation for being someone who doesn’t swear. The thing is, I’m not Someone Who Doesn’t Swear, I just happen to not swear that often. So I got to thinking about why that might be.

I do, of course, often swear casually just for what I consider comedic effect. Dropping a horrendous curse for little reason is always amusing to me. But that’s not the same thing as actually swearing. So then I got to thinking about the situation in which I am most likely to swear non-ironically: driving my car and hitting an unexpected pothole. When that happens I have noticed that I am equally likely to exclaim “fuck!” as I am to exclaim “eff!” and there is an equal amount of vitriol involved whichever I say. Both of those words are equal to me.

I think the problem is that I never got an adequate explanation for why swearing is supposed to be bad. I am not shocked when I hear a swear on television (in fact I have often not noticed). As such, I don’t get a giddy thrill from it the way, apparently, the masses do. It doesn’t feel rebellious for me to swear. They really are just words to me.

Some might think I’m missing out, but I don’t really feel like I am. You all are just too easily amused. What a bunch of cockbrains.

Hey, it’s PDR! The PDR from now, in 2017, not the PDR from 2016 who scheduled all those posts this month. 2016 PDR left November 30th blank with a note that told me-now-PDR to put a PDR Update here.

Well, the main thing on my plate right now is some seemingly expensive car repairs. It seems my shift motor has corroded. That’s punching my wallet right in the nuts, that’s for sure. Apart from that, things are as they have been all year for me. 2017 has not been a great year for me, but neither has it been for the world at large, so at least I’m not alone in that.

Haiku!

Twenty-Seventeen.
My finances remain poor.
Not been a great year.

It’s not all been a bad year, though. I’ve been listening to the Superman radio show from the 40s as I drive, and during the serial “Is There Another Superman” there was a scene in which Batman and Robin were investigating and Robin got kinda bored, noticed it was snowing out, and sung a few bars of “White Christmas” only for Batman to reply: “I’ll Christmas you unless you pipe down” so now I know the best Batman line that has ever been written.

So anyway, we now go back to not having a new Super Sunday post every day. The site will probably feel pretty empty. I do still miss my Twitter posts manifesting here. That was nice.

Today I got my first parking ticket! And oddly, for someone currently employed in the food delivery industry and therefore making several illegal park jobs every night, this happened on my own time. I went into a store for roughly three minutes, only for the store guy to point out the person writing me a ticket. The ticket was issued at 4:21 pm and apparently at 4:00 pm that space becomes a no parking zone. I assume this is a thing to help out in rush hour. Rush hour is one of the many reasons people who go out in daytime on a regular basis are idiots.

Anyway, this is all fair enough. I get away with plenty of parking I shouldn’t at night, so I can take a hit, especially since it was only $25. But as I continued on my way, I noticed that one of the places at which I can pay off the ticked was on my route. I could stop off there and get the ticket paid a mere ten minutes after it had been issued! That would be fun!

I got to the place. There was no parking. There was, however, a truck parked in a No Parking zone. “Hey, if it’s good enough for that guy” I say to myself…

I run inside, but the place has apparently closed about half an hour earlier, so I run back to the car. Parking officials are there already writing me another ticket. Luckily for me, when they see me coming they decide to let me off the hook, so I avoided the humiliation of getting a parking ticket while paying for a parking ticket. But just barely.

Anyway, I don’t have these problem at night. All you diurnal people have too many rules. I paid the thing online and we’re all good now.

(Also, I’m counting this as a post worthy of the PDR vs The Police tag. It’s my site so I can do that if I want to.)