Forty pages of disgusting filth go here. Just imagine you've been watching someone vomit into a gas station toilet for the past half-hour, that should set the atmosphere.

My license has been suspended, apparently. This particular saga began last october, when I drove to the airport to pick up my friend. On the way out, I was ticketed for going 35 mph in a 15 mph zone. This zone is the exit ramp heading towards the Ted Williams tunnel. It is a blind curve, and anyone going 15 mph on this ramp is in grave danger of being whacked by a taxi. 15 mph, don't you know, is incredibly slow. You could probably run this fast without too much trouble.^* Clearly a speed trap, placed there for no reason other than to generate revenue via speeding tickets.

So I earned a $190 moving violation fine. Argh.

This being my first offense, I determined to contest it in court; though I had sinned, my sin was not great, and maybe I could have pled my way out of it. I dutifully filled out my slip, requesting a hearing, and mailed it in.

I heard nothing from the RMV until I received notification in February that if I failed to pay the citation by the end of the month, my license would be revoked. I harumphed for a while; clearly the official machinery had hiccuped and my hearing request had gone unnoticed, lost on the mailroom floor. But in the end I paid the citation online, via the RMV website, now including a $35 late fee.

I heard nothing more and assumed the matter was closed. Until the other day, when I was at my parents' house. My father opened some mail from his insurance company, where it informed him that one of the people on his auto insurance (myself) had been removed for reason of suspension. "Wuzzah?" I said.

So I called the RMV. It seems the official machinery had burped AGAIN, and somehow my online payment had not gone through; there was no record of the transaction at all. My license had been suspended, and a $100 reinstatement fee would have to be paid as well. $330 in toto.

I summoned up a towering rage and turned into a demon. My eyes became bloodshot, and the grinding of my teeth was like thunder in the heavens. I bellowed and walls shook down; file cabinets containing records of hundreds of meaningless infractions dissolved into dust. Desks burst into flames and crumbled on top of their occupants. Some ran around screaming, their skin crackling away in black flakes and their vitreous humor frying in their eye sockets. Others scrambled through the rubble, desperate to escape, even as I swept them up into my gaping maw. Skulls popped, ribs snapped, fluids spurted across my tongue. I could hear the pitiful wails and shrieks of all the petty officials and state troopers, desk clerks and bureaucrats who were responsible for this dereliction, as I ground their flesh to a fine paste between my molars. Horror of horrors, injustice, sweet revenge.

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^* Okay, maybe not. But for an automobile it's terribly slow. Try driving that slow sometimes. Then try driving that slow on a highway and see what sort of response you get.