I only have two gripes today

I wrote a check for the parking ticket I got at the college in Mankato (nobody could google that...) last week. My gripe is that on the back of the ticket, there were some very threatening statements about being "autoclamped" if you don't pay promptly. No explanation of what exactly that means so you how do you decide if you want to risk it? It sounds like a made-up word. The least they could do is provide a definition. I found the parking regulations online and it's a 30-page book. Holy shit.

My other gripe is that I got a text message from Alltel thanking me for using their service. It said: Thank U for using our new services. We appreciate ur business. I replied: Bad spelling. Is that accepted now in the world of text messages? Like Kwik Mart and Pik & Pak are accepted in the world of convenience stores? I found a website that will translate your real English sentences into text. See if you can figure this out:

I dnt gt dis sp ting W txt msgs. S dis really gunA B acceptable? n 10 yrs we btr nt B blaming skool tchaz 4t shity sp habits of kids.

Makes the Alltel message look pretty good, eh?

Comments

deb said…
T,
Autoclamp is what we used to call "the boot". They put that thing on one of your wheels and you can't move it without damaging your car. They're common in big cities -- but Mankato?

Love the text message thing. Butler is into it because he uses IM all the time at work. He'll type things like "k" for ok and think he's hip. c u

btw, Mankato was listed as one of the top cities for retirement. I told Butler we should move there.
7:24 PM
Teresa Saum said…
We'd love to have you move there. Just don't get any tickets at MSU...you'll get the boot. Hahahhaa.
Tell Mr. Butler about the text translator. I suppose that would be awkward if you had to do it all the time.
8:55 PM
Jill said…
Several days after Thanksgiving a few years ago, we got a nasty letter from MSU's parking Nazis saying we were would be arrested and banished from driving on campus if we ever showed up there again. It seems that one of our cars had been identified racing around the campus on Thanksgiving evening. Funny thing was that we all were in Spring Valley at my dad's house, and the car in question was parked in our locked garage at home. At least we weren't threatened to be "autoclamped"!
9:49 PM
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