Double Flee A

Well, I had a birthday yesterday, and it was a great day. I wasn't online at all. I got a lot of nice stuff, and if anyone reading this gave me any of it, thanks. What I really wanted was an oven mitt with a picture of a celebrity on it, any celebrity, as long as they're very, very famous. I can't think of anything tackier at the moment, but it has been over a year since I received a fingerhut catalog.

I spent the better part of the morning today at the courthouse, not getting grilled by the defense attorney, which I had every reason to expect I would. I was going to be a witness for a friend who picked up a DUI while I was in the car. Our strategy was to convince the court that the stop leading to the arrest was itself illegal, and I thought our chances were good of making it happen. But lo and behold, mandatory training today for the arresting officer, and the state's case went straight to shit. I didn't have to say anything, and actually was helping by being there. The D.A. saw that we were ready to go and bumped the charge down to careless driving, which, ironically, was exactly what didn't happen. My friend took the deal, and since the D.A. was a woman, I believe that there is somewhere a man whose wife will be bitchy this evening.

Another time, the same friend wanted to get some money out of the bank. This was about two days after the aforementioned arrest, during which they had clipped his license, making it invalid. The bank wouldn't take his identification and he was upset, so he broke their door on the way out. (Eventually, he took a pair of nail clippers to the clipped corner to make it look like a cat had got hold of it, and no one ever gave him crap about it again.) He had gone to the extent of asking the people at the bank to call the cops to verify his identity but they wouldn't, because you can't get the cops to show up without somebody breaking the law. I think it's pretty obvious what you do in a situation like that, but he didn't agree, hence a door was broken. What you do is, you say :"One way or another I'm leaving this bank with some money. Now you can call the police now, or later." The brilliance of this plan is that the threat to rob is implicit only on the condition that the police are NOT called. 1) Company policy is bound to be fuzzy on this issue so they might just take your ID and forget about it, or 2) They'd probably arrest you, but any court in the land should throw that one out for extreme cleverness. At least that's how it works in Dale's fantasy world.

posted by dale @ 4:10 PM