Remember that
music blog I was getting paid to write? No? Well, I'm not surprised, since not many people read it. It seems even the people who hired us to write it forgot about it, and now they're deep-sixing the whole project, along with the
entire New York office of the company. Merry fucking Christmas. Is there anyone not getting laid off these days? Are we on the edge of another dot.com bust? Will we all be wearing dirty diapers and eating garbage soon?
All I know is I'll be writing whatever farts come into my brain for the next couple weeks, so if you wanna listen/smell, come check it out.
In other annoying, money-sucking news, the Berkeley poo-poo stole April's car last Thursday. I guess stole is a little exaggeration, but it sure felt like it.
I had borrowed the car and parked it in Elmwood. When I went to move it, it was gone. No note, nothing. They should have to at least indicate when they take a car -- maybe leave a big cardboard cutout in its place.
Turns out April tags had expired six months ago. The woman at the DMV told her to smog the car and send the documents, and they would send the tags. They didn't tell her that she then had to call them to tell them she'd sent the documents.
Have you read Kafka's
The Trial? That's pretty much what it started to feel like.
So this painter yells, "You looking for your car? They just towed it away." Luckily, he remembered the name of the company, so I could find out where the car had been taken. And luckily Kathleen had just called to say she was near the Bean*ery and would like to have lunch. Little did she know that lunch would turn into a six hour odyssey of awfulness.
I called April, who immediately took off from work to go get her car info, so we could go and sit in the DMV for two and a half hours to get the tags. Then she and Kathleen went to the Berkeley police HQ, which had closed at 5 p.m., because of course crime stops then. They had to jump through some more hoops just to buy a release form ($75) that said she had actually registered the car ages ago. (Mind you, we'd been stopped by a cop, who let us go with a warning.)
Then they had to go to the impound lot to pay $160 for towing a car that shouldn't have been towed, and naturally the lot was closed (another $80 and 30 minute wait to get it out after hours, with a threat of $60 more a day if you leave it there).
So, let's add this up. A total payout of $315. Half a day's work lost. Friend's time and gas and pregnant tiredness expended. Tons of stress. All because some idiot made the system ridiculously labyrinthine.
I hate Berkeley. This would've never happened in Oakland (there they just give you fix it tickets). I want to boycott Berkeley or get Ralph Nader to change the system or have Michael Moore write a movie about parking scams. But I guess there are more important things to do. Which is just what the town and the towers want you to think.
