February 23, 1995
Parking control officers are the spawn of pure evil; that's all there is to it.
My whole problem arose from trying to think of meter maids as fellow human beings. Big, big mistake. You see, there are, among members of our species, certain common bonds. Compassion, love and fellowship at some profound level connect us all.
Humans can at their worst be severely misguided, but even in the most violently deranged sociopath those vital human virtues still lay hidden deep beneath the surface.
Not so with the foul and the damned denizens of that cursed hell on Bryant Street called the Department of Parking and Traffic. They are, from their deepest core to their vile and suppurated exteriors, pure shrewish demon-like evil.
It seeps from their pores and spews forth in clouds of putrescence when they speak. Nothing in this world, or any other beyond the grave, could match in grotesque horror the insane machinations of their fantastically diseased minds.
I got a ticket the other day.
Not because my car proved a dangerous obstruction to a fire plug, or because I prevented a disabled person from parking near a hospital, nor even because I occupied one of the plethora of empty spaces in the administrative lot.
No, I got a ticket because -- shame on me -- I was in the way of street cleaning. Now if your brain is so tiny you need further proof that this is just an obscenely transparent money-making venture, I have an exercise for you.
Look at your favorite street before the cleaning machine passes by, and again after. You want to know what you'll see, I'll tell you what you'll see. Five minutes ago the street was dirty and dry; now, miracle of miracles ... IT'S DIRTY AND WET.
All in all I've paid the DPT nearly twice the value of my trusty Fiat war wagon. The horrid offenses I'm guilty of include obstructing street cleaning and parking for two hours and one minute in a two hour zone, among other ghastly crimes.
You know the tickets. If you drive and park in the city chances are pretty good you have a private collection of the increasingly expensive little buggers decorating your trash can.
The citations are stupid and cruel, imposed like an unfair tax on rich and poor drivers alike.
This brings me to my original point. No human, no matter how small their brain or cold their heart, could be so ignorant or so vicious as to daily inflict these little injustices on other humans.
The only answer that fits the facts is mine. That is, if I may repeat myself, parking control officers are pure evil.