{"id":1015,"date":"2010-01-21T06:54:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T14:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2010-01-21T06:54:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T14:54:11","slug":"deus-ex-machina-or-why-im-in-port-huron-twice-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1015","title":{"rendered":"Deus Ex Machina: or, Why I’m in Port Huron Twice This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, so. Kind of a schizoid crossing this time. The usual level of service was restored on the front lines, where my car was searched (as we all know, evildoers are most likely to smuggle contraband when entering the country for a court appearance<\/em>), all cell phones were confiscated, and I was berated by a littermate of last December’s Brotherhood of the Baton who, already in possession of the car keys, demanded my house keys as well \u2014 then told me he didn’t like my attitude when I pointed out they were, in fact, house<\/em> keys. So far, pretty much the kind of behavior you’d expect from a border that, by an empirical 2:1 margin, is the most unpleasant and belligerent boundary on the planet<\/a>1<\/sup>. On the other hand, the very nice blonde lady inside<\/em> asked me how my day was going, talked about the local restaurants, and even looked perplexed when Baton Boy dropped two sets of keys on her desk. “Were these, um, connected or something before? No? Why would he want your house<\/em> keys?”<\/p>\n

She would have been welcome to search my car any time. But I suppose that pleasant disposition is the very reason they’ve got her squirreled away in the back room to begin with.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it’s not the crossing I wanted to tell you about today. What I wanted to tell you about was the pretrial meeting. But I can’t do that because it, um, didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t actually watching at the moment fate intervened. We’d been sitting there for about an hour while the docket depleted around us: home invasions, petty thefts, some poor doofus with a teensy amount of blow in his pocket. My attention had wandered down to my right foot, where I was using the plastic doohickey on the end of my shoelace to clean goose shit from the treads of my cross-trainer. (There are a lot<\/em> of geese in Port Huron. I kind of like that about the place.) By this time the session had pretty much run its course; if we weren’t up next, we were probably second in line.<\/p>\n

And suddenly the room fills with an almost divine white noise (it’s not actually supernatural; they just use it to mask private conversations up at the bench). I glance up in time to see the judge stagger offstage, clutching his chest. I see defense and prosecuting attorneys all mysteriously migrating towards the court secretary. I hear the words “We’re going on a journey\u2026” which, decrypting around the interference, was more likely to be “We’re going to be adjourning\u2026” Someone used the phrase “medical emergency”.<\/p>\n

That’s right. The judge had some kind of heart attack right there on the bench, just before calling on The People v. Watts. Or maybe it was only a bad burrito. Whatever it was, it took the guy out. Which is why I now get to turn around and do the whole damn thing all over again tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Most of you know I don’t put much credence in Imaginary Friends. I’ve always found it curious that in a Court of Law \u2014 self-proclaimed bastion of empiricism and hard fact \u2014 you are expected to swear an oath on a book of fairy tales before testifying. But if I were one of those who do <\/em>believe in the Divine, I might wonder if I should read this as some kind of omen.<\/p>\n

I mean, really. What are the odds?
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

1<\/sup>Apparently it’s not just the passers-through who feel this way, either. I was recently gratified to discover that the citizens of Port Huron feel even less love for the Blue Water border patrol than the rest of us do. Which is saying something.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, so. Kind of a schizoid crossing this time. The usual level of service was restored on the front lines, where my car was searched (as we all know, evildoers are most likely to smuggle contraband when entering the country for a court appearance), all cell phones were confiscated, and I was berated by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-squidgate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}