Good afternoon Athenians and students. Has anyone recently received one of the Athens Police Department's infamous $20 tickets? Or better yet, has anyone violated the parking ticket limit? You know, the one that forces your car into hiding or requires you to pay an expensive visit to one of the local towing facilities (which is another problem).

I wonder if the city has a code that makes sneezing in public, between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., while walking a dog, a violation and subjects you to a $20 fine.Even when you turn the knob on the parking meter, after depositing a quarter, in bold yellow it reads "VIOLATION." What the hell is anyone violating when they are feeding meter.

I get ticked off every time I blink, a little red and white headache is flapping on my windshield.

I especially get ticked off when I am trying to do my job, only to be greeted by a big-ass yellow envelope with an awe-inspiring $20 marked on it.

An event, just like the one in the above scenario, happened not too long ago.

Picture, if you will, a tired hard-working person busting out the finest newspaper in Athens. The deadline for getting the layout of the paper to the presses is 6 a.m. With computer crashes and other uncontrollable events, a process that usually takes a few hours took nearly eight hours.

You place your car strategically in front of Baker Center, knowing full well that between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. there is no parking allowed.

You are probably wondering, "If he knew, why did he park?" The lack of 24-hour parking on the main streets and the need to be near Baker Center in order to run the paper to the presses made parking there a necessity. Plus, when you are in the process of working, you do not think of where your car is parked.

After losing PRECIOUS hours of sleep, you go to your car. When you get to your car, the least funny of all possibly jokes is waving in your windshield wiper.

Now angered by the $20 ticket and the long layout process, you drive over to explain to the Police Department that you were working late at The Post and that your car was there for your job. So, you ask the department to void the ticket.

And then they say, in a pleasant but not-so-blunt way, SCREW OFF. The department tells you that between those hours, the city is sweeping the streets and that your car was in violation. In response, you walk out the door and swear loudly so that anyone awake at 7 a.m. can feel your pain.

You go back to The Post and look for that nicely cleaned street. But instead, the clean street looks like the Burrito Buggy threw up. Apparently, the only thing the car violated was an airstream.

This ticket is only representative of the increasing need to suck more money out of everyone, place more codes for us to violate and frankly, to piss me off.