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I fought the law… it was a draw. “It was a draw?” you question. Oddly enough, yes. I had very specific goals for my trip to traffic court. These were, in this order.
Goal Number 1. Not get arrested for contempt of court due to yelling, screaming, and ultimately indiscriminately punching various and sundry magistrates.
Goal Number 2. Keep the “2 points” from getting on my license.
Goal Number 3. Pay less than the $110 that the officer trumped up for me.
I went to the court date assigned to me by my ticket. I even got there early. Unfortunately, in my naïveté, I did not realize that these court proceedings were “first come/first serve.” I got there not early enough to not spend 3 hours in a rather uncomfortable bench waiting on my name to be called. That’s a couple of difficult “nots.”
I get to the court house and wait in line for the security check point. I guess the people in front of me didn’t realize that they were in line for a metal detector, because they seemed to have no idea that you needed to remove all metal prior to going through the detector. At least 7 of the 9 people in front of me didn’t remove their keys and/or cell phones. It was at this point, I knew I was in for a long-long morning.
I find my way to the court room where I will be judged, and notice the severe lack of empty seats. I was at least 50th in line. Yippee. One of the clerks was prepping the cases prior to the judge hearing them. He would call out a name, and someone would stumble up to his chair. He would talk with them for about 3 minutes, they would say something. Then they would write something down and go sit back on the benches. He was doing his none too swift business when I arrived in the courtroom, and continued his slow processing of we unwashed masses even after the judge arrived 30 minutes late. The cases that the clerk had processed were the ones that the judge heard. It was not until the clerk gave you the once over that you could see the judge. It was tiring.
The clerk finally calls my name, around 2 hours into this fiasco of a day. I approach his table. He gives me this blah blah blah spiel in a dull monotonic voice where he read my ticket to me. He then asked me for my plea. I said in the most confident voice, “Umm.. not guilty.”
Clerk: “So, you are saying that you did not, in fact, run a red light?”
SRH: “That is correct, the light turned yellow for me, when I was only 15 feet from the entrance of the intersection. I was going 20 mph in a 25 mph zone, and could not have stopped within that space and not end up in the intersection.”
Clerk: “So you wish to fight this in court.”
SRH: “Yes.”
Clerk: “How about we reduce the ticket from a moving violation to a muffler violation?”
SRH: “Say again?”
Clerk: “We will reduce the charges from running a red-light to a muffler noise violation.”
SRH: “What will that do?”
Clerk: “It will be about the same cost, but there will be no points on your license, and you won’t have to set up a new court date to fight your current citation.”
SRH: “Ummm… Sure.”
I sat back down in the horribly uncomfortable benches and waited for the judge to tell me my final costs. Judge calls my name about 45 minutes later and tells me that in addition to the $75 for court costs, I owe $25 because I have a loud muffler. Justice, Baby! I asked the judge if anyone actually got a ticket for actually having a loud muffler, and he said for me to take my case to the clerk and pay my fine. We were tight like that.
I paid the $100 and went back to my car to go to work.
To Recap:
Goal Number 1: Check
Goal Number 2: Check
Goal Number 3: Check (but just barely)
Now my car’s muffler is officially loud
Oh, the injustice of it all
Best name of someone called before the judge: Johhny Cool
He wasn’t cool at all
Honestly, when you name yourself something like Johhny Cool, you have to be sooooo freakin cool that there is no question about your level of coolness
People shouldn’t look at you and think, “Meh, he ain’t that cool”
There were 7 mullets in that room
I haven’t seen that many mullets in one room since I was in 7th grade.
Best jacket: One man had a picture of himself airbrushed on his leather jacket smoking some weed
The smoke was outlined by silver rhinestones while the joint was studded with amber rhinestones
Classy
The judge was politely non-lenient to him
Goal Number 1. Not get arrested for contempt of court due to yelling, screaming, and ultimately indiscriminately punching various and sundry magistrates.
Goal Number 2. Keep the “2 points” from getting on my license.
Goal Number 3. Pay less than the $110 that the officer trumped up for me.
I went to the court date assigned to me by my ticket. I even got there early. Unfortunately, in my naïveté, I did not realize that these court proceedings were “first come/first serve.” I got there not early enough to not spend 3 hours in a rather uncomfortable bench waiting on my name to be called. That’s a couple of difficult “nots.”
I get to the court house and wait in line for the security check point. I guess the people in front of me didn’t realize that they were in line for a metal detector, because they seemed to have no idea that you needed to remove all metal prior to going through the detector. At least 7 of the 9 people in front of me didn’t remove their keys and/or cell phones. It was at this point, I knew I was in for a long-long morning.
I find my way to the court room where I will be judged, and notice the severe lack of empty seats. I was at least 50th in line. Yippee. One of the clerks was prepping the cases prior to the judge hearing them. He would call out a name, and someone would stumble up to his chair. He would talk with them for about 3 minutes, they would say something. Then they would write something down and go sit back on the benches. He was doing his none too swift business when I arrived in the courtroom, and continued his slow processing of we unwashed masses even after the judge arrived 30 minutes late. The cases that the clerk had processed were the ones that the judge heard. It was not until the clerk gave you the once over that you could see the judge. It was tiring.
The clerk finally calls my name, around 2 hours into this fiasco of a day. I approach his table. He gives me this blah blah blah spiel in a dull monotonic voice where he read my ticket to me. He then asked me for my plea. I said in the most confident voice, “Umm.. not guilty.”
Clerk: “So, you are saying that you did not, in fact, run a red light?”
SRH: “That is correct, the light turned yellow for me, when I was only 15 feet from the entrance of the intersection. I was going 20 mph in a 25 mph zone, and could not have stopped within that space and not end up in the intersection.”
Clerk: “So you wish to fight this in court.”
SRH: “Yes.”
Clerk: “How about we reduce the ticket from a moving violation to a muffler violation?”
SRH: “Say again?”
Clerk: “We will reduce the charges from running a red-light to a muffler noise violation.”
SRH: “What will that do?”
Clerk: “It will be about the same cost, but there will be no points on your license, and you won’t have to set up a new court date to fight your current citation.”
SRH: “Ummm… Sure.”
I sat back down in the horribly uncomfortable benches and waited for the judge to tell me my final costs. Judge calls my name about 45 minutes later and tells me that in addition to the $75 for court costs, I owe $25 because I have a loud muffler. Justice, Baby! I asked the judge if anyone actually got a ticket for actually having a loud muffler, and he said for me to take my case to the clerk and pay my fine. We were tight like that.
I paid the $100 and went back to my car to go to work.
To Recap:
Goal Number 1: Check
Goal Number 2: Check
Goal Number 3: Check (but just barely)
Now my car’s muffler is officially loud
Oh, the injustice of it all
Best name of someone called before the judge: Johhny Cool
He wasn’t cool at all
Honestly, when you name yourself something like Johhny Cool, you have to be sooooo freakin cool that there is no question about your level of coolness
People shouldn’t look at you and think, “Meh, he ain’t that cool”
There were 7 mullets in that room
I haven’t seen that many mullets in one room since I was in 7th grade.
Best jacket: One man had a picture of himself airbrushed on his leather jacket smoking some weed
The smoke was outlined by silver rhinestones while the joint was studded with amber rhinestones
Classy
The judge was politely non-lenient to him
16 Comments:
Did you just lose half a day in wages to save $10? Or is this one of those "stands of principal?"
(God, I HATE putting a question mark before an end-quote when the end-quote only serves to end a phrase and not a full interrogation, but as far as I know, that is the rule. Oh, the constant struggle I live.)
Peefer:
It was the points on my license, that I really went to fight. Insurance rates are determined by those damn things. Had the points been accrued, my rates could have gone up, and then the potential cost of $110 could have been much higher. That and the principle of it.
Write your own rules, man. If you want to put the question mark after the quotes, then by all means do it. Take a stand, Peefer. Take a stand.
"?
I feel sick.
Peefer:
Keep it up. It gets easier each time.
Sorry I wasn't in the courthouse today. I could have prepped you for exactly what you went through. It's amazing what the guards find in the big planters (the ones right before you get to the metal detectors). Tons of knives, scissors and the occasional gun. People really are stupid (wait, you already knew that).
I was in an accident 3 years ago, 5th in a row of rear-ends. Everyone else had hit the guy in front of them, but I got the ticket cause I was last (totalled my classic 1978 gran tornado btw). When I went to court, I did the same thing you did and pleaded down to a muffler violation. In my case the clerk asked what I wanted to do and I answered, well, after the accident, I had no muffler, how about we plead down to a muffler violation. He said, well, your insurance has already paid, so OK. At least my plead made some ironic sense :)
BTW, your damn lucky you got out with a $100 fine if you really made that "does anyone actually get a loud muffler" comment. Most of the time, a smartass remark results in the judge or magistrate telling the clerk to not accept the plea and schedule the trial. All the same, I love the comment :)
-Nadolny
is there really such a rule (the ?" vs. "?)? if there is, I join you, fellow victims, in your brave fight against orthographic injustice and incoherence!
guess you showed them huh?
was your muffler loud? that's what i wanna know....or was it like some charge she just threw in there? i love going to court to listen to what everyone else did..makes me feel better about the people i'm there with.
way to fight the man.
Can you protest now that you don't have a loud muffler. What would be lower on the municipal totem pole than a muffler???
How's about you claim guilty to driving with a tree hanging out of your trunk without it being properly marked for the drivers behind you?
Nadolny:
The magistrate actually found it amusing. I said it really conspiritorally.
Hey, I was following Johhny Cool and the guy with the picture of himself smoking weed. On top of that, I was able to pay the fine prior to leaving, and the guy who kept trrying to talk on his cell phone in court was not me either. My snarky question was not that bad.
Jude: (and Peefer)
Think about this question grammatically.
How do you use a question mark?
Now substiture the words "question mark" with "?" Now the sentence reads:
How do you use a "?"?
or is it
How do you use a "??"
Kimmyk:
The muffler is fine. The clerk was plea bargaining me down, so to speak. Now, though, in the public records, my car (actually Wifey's) is loud as shit.
Anon:
Clerk: Did you run the red light?
SRH: No, but the police officer might have thought I did because of the tree hanging out of my trunk without a red flag on it. /wink /wink /nudge /nudge
That is crazy enough it might just work.
Wait, you were in my car?! How come I didn't know this part of the story until just now?
Wifey:
Details Details. It didn't get impounded, quit yer belly-aching.
Punctuation and Quotation Marks.
In America, commas and periods go inside quotation marks, while semicolons and colons go outside, regardless of the punctuation in the original quotation. Question marks and exclamation points depend on whether the question or exclamation is part of the quotation, or part of the sentence containing the quotation. Some examples:
See the chapter entitled "The Conclusion, in which Nothing is Concluded." (Periods always go inside.)
The spokesman called it "shocking," and called immediately for a committee. (Commas always go inside.)
Have you read "Araby"? (The question mark is part of the outer sentence, not the quoted part, so it goes outside.)
He asked, "How are you?" (The question mark is part of the quoted material, so it goes inside.)
Note that in American usage, all quoted material goes in "double quotation marks," except for quotations within quotations, which get single quotation marks.
There are a few instances where it's wise to put the punctuation outside the quotation marks — cases where it's really important whether the punctuation mark is part of the quotation or not. A software manual, for instance, might have to make it very clear whether the period is part of a command or simply ends the sentence in which the command appears: getting it wrong means the command won't work. Bibliographers are concerned with the exact form of the punctuation in a book. In these cases, it makes sense. Most of the time, though — when lives don't depend on whether the comma is or isn't part of the quotation — stick with the general usage outlined above; it's what publishers expect. [Revised 3 Jan. 2005; revised 12 July 2005.]
From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch
Peefer:
Don't listen to Anal! Be your own grammatical hero! Run! Peefer! Run!!!
(the statement "Don't listen to Anal" is going to come back to haunt me, isn't it?
Anal:
That name is apropos. Oh, so apropos...
I think Anal's got it right, though. But of course, each should follow his/her own orthographic calling (doesn't sound too good either, now does it?).
I tend to put everything that does not belong in the quotation outside of it. I think it makes for clearer reading. For instance "Too late the phalarope", which I may read on my mini-vacation, is a book by Alan Paton, who also wrote "Cry, the beloved country".
See? That's where me and Anal don't see eye to eye. Or is it "eye-to-eye"?
OK I'll shut up now :)
Jude:
Yeah, I pretty much take grammar at face value. It is a system of suggestions, not hard and fast rules.
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