GLOBADOM

Bumper sticker seen on the back of a Dodge Ram pickup. Note perfect match of the typeface, colour, and size of the original “ONE LESS CAR” sticker. Nicely done.
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Hum, hrm. Several local items that deserve assessment, and since this week, I’ve been laid up with a shoulder injury (which means that in the last few days all I have done is build a WiFi antenna, overhaul the discs on my parents’ truck, crafted some extremely tidy bicycle fender extensions, worked on the damnable Litter Maid, and done some random shopping).

Without much comment, something is afoot with the COPE party in Vancouver. In short, popular and populist mayor Larry Campbell is down to three councillors who actually like him, which makes five COPErs who don’t, and the NPA, who like the Olympics but not wards.

Local politics is pretty quiet at the moment, so the recurring theme in the local papers’ letters pages seems to be “dear jerks who stole stuff from me this week, why?”

That is all.

Somehow I’ve managed to avoid posting about this so far, but it’s time to share: my shoulder, which has been doing some sort of strange muscle-injury thing for a week, is driving me nuts. I’m in a fair amount of pain and discomfort all the time, and Tylenol-3s taken two at a time just barely make things any better.

i haven’t had to be on serious pain medication really ever. I had my wisdom teeth out about a decade ago, but it was complication-free. There have been a few moderate musculoskeletal injuries since then, but nothing worth complaining about. This is, as far as I can remember, the most persistent, distracting amount of pain I’ve endured in my life.

So here I am wondering what I can take to improve matters, when my mother points out that it’s a Cousineau family trait to be highly insensitive to painkillers. Nothing works on my father, dentists have a hard time freezing my aunt’s mouth, and so on. Hey, great! There’s an evolutionary advantage I could do without.

Meanwhile, the pain isn’t changing at all, and aside from the T3 prescription, the doctor could only suggest that it was probably just a muscle injury, but might be an early symptom of shingles!

Wired Cola was created as a branding exercise, and I still flatter myself that, along with the co-conspirators, I have a certain understanding of how to name a product.

Today, let’s talk about car branding.

There are car model names that have persisted for a very, very long time. Chevrolet Corvette. Sixty years, and a consistent concept from 1955 to today: 2-door sports car. It’s fairly easy, it seems, for prestige cars like the ‘Vette (or a Mercedes S-Class) to keep their identities. For one thing, these cars, though usually profitable in their own right, are also kept around in hopes their cachet will also reflect well the rest of the marque. The history and reputation of these models is excellent, and they have a good focus.

The real action is in mainstream cars, the kind of vehicles that sell annually in the hundreds of thousands per model, and compete in categories (mid-sized sedans, for example) that have existed recognizably pretty much since the 1950s. Down here, cars are competing in a niche where they are built to a price, and where virtually every manufacturer has one or more products.

Despite the competition, some makers have managed to maintain a high reputation for certain of their cars in these classes. Honda has called its small and mid-size vehicles “Civic” and “Accord” pretty much since their introduction. Those are two brand names with both name recognition and a favorable reputation, and they have survived for years. Toyota’s Corolla name has been around for about as long, though Camry seems to be a successor to the former Corona and Crown marques. Their Tercel became the Echo after a major redesign and direction shift a few years ago, and maybe that’s for the best, since a lot of commentators thought the Echo ended up being a worse car than its predecessor (the Echo is known as the Yaris in Europe, and the Vitz in Japan; it also took Toyota a couple of years to start selling the hatchback Echo in North America. It’s a far prettier car than the dumpy sedan version).

Mazda has had a sort-of consistent naming convention since the successor to the GLC became the 323. But in the last few years, they decided their mainstream models, formerly the 323, 626, and 929, would get actual names (Protege for the 323; the other names were even more forgettable) but they just reverted to a variation of the old convention: their cars are now simply the Mazda 3 and 6, and they have currently dropped their luxury sedan (for a while they actually had two slightly different luxury models, the Millenia and the 929) in this market.

The big German marques are semi-consistent. Both Mercedes and BMW have settled into consistent and generic car name conventions, based on letters for Mercedes and numbers for BMW. Both brands’ cars encode their engine size and other notable details in their nomenclature (e.g. “330td”: BMW 3-series car, 3.0 litre engine, turbo diesel). Volkswagen changed its main hatchback model name from Rabbit to Golf in the 1980s, and hasn’t changed a thing since, except when actually introducing new models (notably the bigger Passat and the even bigger Phaeton).

But for amazing wandering brand names, nothing can touch what the big 3 American-based brands have done with their mainstream North American models. I think the brand drift (if I may coin a phrase) has a lot to do with the fact that all three makers have spent time in the last few years trying to sell unlovable models.

Ford has had the least drift in some ways, if you just disregard their compact cars (Escort, Fiesta, Festiva, and the current, reasonably persistent Focus). The Taurus name has been borne by their mid-sized Accord competitor since the 1980s, when it was introduced as their first big front-wheel-drive car. The Crown Victoria name has graced their big rear-wheel-drive car for even longer, though that model seems to exist now primarily for fleet sales (it’s commonly used for police cars, taxis, and full-sized rental cars). But this year they introduced a new mid-large model, the Five Hundred, which seems to be an uneasy attempt to replace both of the other cars. The name references Ford’s history, specifically the Galaxie 500 of the 1960s. This fits with a slightly retro theme Ford has going right now in the styling of its GT and Mustang, both of which faithfully knock off their 1960s predecessors, though the Five Hundred itself is a styled in a generically contemporary fashion.

Chrysler has pretty much completely reinvented its mainstream sedans several times since the 1980s, when they introduced the K-cars, and each iteration seems to have had a new name, too. This year they brought out another all-new big sedan, and called it the 300. They’ve actually been using that name on slightly obscure models for several years, but now it’s on this flagship model. For history-minded fans of the brand, that name conjures up some very big, very fast cars from the 50s and 60s, and they have even continued the concept of “letter cars”, wherein the hottest (V8-powered) version has a letter appended to the name (300C this year: in the old nomenclature the particular letter was incremented each year, so next year’s hot rod should be the 300D).

In a lot of ways, these branding exercises suggest just how unimportant the name is. There’s still a Honda Accord because Honda wants you to think about the current car’s lineage of decades of class-leading, reliable cars. The new Ford is the Five Hundred because Ford opted to add it to their existing model lineup, but wanted a name that reflected a long history of much-loved family sedans.

And then there’s Chevrolet. What a mess. First of all, it must be said that most of Chevy’s cars have been pretty lacklustre for quite a long time. Not that I’m in the market, but the last sedan I would have considered from Chevrolet was the rear wheel drive Impala SS, long gone from the lineup.

Second, Chevrolet has a mess of mid-sized cars right now. They have introduced new Cobalt and Malibu models to replace the boring old Cavalier and Impala, but they haven’t cut the Cavalier or Impala yet. They also have a rather odd sort-of sports coupe called the Monte Carlo, but I think it’s just a two-door Impala.

The churn of GM’s mid-sized brand names is pretty amazing. The Cavalier name has been in the lineup since the early 80s, presumably because it has a good reputation for being really cheap, but after that it’s pure chaos. Off the top of my head, here’s a list of the model names that have graced a mid-sized Chevrolet sedan from the 1980s to the present: Corsica, Beretta, Lumina, Malibu, Impala. They have used some of those names more than once, the Impala name was (as mentioned above) recently used on a now-defunct full-sized rear-drive car, they got sued out of using Beretta by the firearms manufacturer, and the last two names are also echoes of brand names that have been used as far back as the 1960s. Indeed, the Malibu name has been used on many disparate cars for quite some time, though none of them are particularly famous.

Looking back, I see that I have been a lot harder on Chevrolet than Chrysler, despite similar numbers of names in recent years. But Chrysler’s names have mostly changed when their car models underwent major transformations. Chevrolet has called the same basic platform Malibu, Lumina, and Impala, while also using the Lumina name on a minivan at the same time (?) and using the Impala name on a full-size car, and the car currently called the Malibu is a new model based on a new chassis, unrelated to the current Impala, which has a pretty straight succession to the car previously called the Lumina and Malibu. Confused? I think GM wants it that way.

I think that of all the brands out there, Volkswagen and Honda are doing the best job of consistent branding. It’s sometimes hard to separate good branding from good products, though. BMW and Mercedes deliberately give their individual models generic names, probably figuring that the cachet of their marques is greater than that of any individual model.

If I ran the zoo, I would probably follow the Honda/Volkswagen model of model naming, but the hardest part is not so much finding a reasonable name (Golf? Accord? Jetta? Civic? Car names are forgettable, at best trying to suggest durability or speed) as building a car good enough that you want buyers to think next year’s model is of the same lineage.

the best car naming out there may be by Lotus. Their car models from the 1960s to the present day: Europa, Excel, Elan, Esprit, Elise.

We ‘re back! Yes, we’ve returned from The Great White North to greener pastures. I’m very happy to be back, but my thoughts are still full of our Ottawa experiences. So, I will hearken back to them for my sublime and ridiculous entry this week.

Two encounters with the sublime occurred last week and I must refer to both in this posting. The first took place at Rideau Hall, the governor general’s residence. It was there that we were escorted through the public areas of the building, but were also allowed to see into the semi-private areas. In one of these, we saw a beautiful piano. Our guide said that this piano, although an aesthetically pleasing object, was really notable because it had once belonged to Glenn Gould. I quietly gasped when I heard this. To give you an idea of how much of a fan I am, I would have been excited to see a napkin once used by Glenn Gould. However, seeing his piano in a place where I hadn’t expected to see it was an amazing surprise.

My next encounter happened in the National Gallery of Canada. I was very much looking forward to seeing the National Gallery, as I knew works of some of my favourite artists were on display there. I particularly like Van Gogh, Pollock, Degas, Rubens, and Monet. It was a painting by the last of these that caught me by surprise. It is entitled, “A Stormy Sea.” Now, other than his paintings of water lilies, I had never seen any Monet work with a depiction of water. I was impressed at how well he succeeded in showing the true “storminess” of the sea and then juxtaposing it against the blueness of the sky. I really felt that this demonstrated how two such disparate experiences could be occurring simultaneously, right next to each other. It made me think about watching large groups of people gathered at a bus stop or a train station. You can watch one couple behaving affectionately and another couple nearby arguing about their credit card bills.

Inevitably, we have reached the ridiculous phase of this posting. I will preface this by saying that there is a modern/contemporary art section in the National Gallery of Canada…..I remember the great philosopher Red Green once saying, “it’s not art, if I can do it.” I do find merit in modern art, where the composition may be seemingly simple, but the title of the piece displays some thought and depth in its creation. I find this to be true of Jackson Pollock. I liked both of his pieces at the gallery. Yet, in walking through the gallery I notice a large diagonal wire occupying a small alcove area. I thought this was a spot reserved for a future exhibit, so I did not investigate it further. Ryan later informed me that this was actually a piece of art. I dispute this. If “art” can be mistaken for an incomplete construction site and thereby causes individuals to ignore it as such, is it achieving any kind of goal or statement? I mean, art displayed in a gallery is, by its very placement there, desiring public viewing. Therefore, a piece of such apparent insignificance, that presumably cost actual money to acquire, is the epitome of a waste of space. What is it doing under the same cover as Van Gogh’s “Irises” or even Andy Warhol’s unapologetically commercial Brillo pad boxes? I leave you with this question, as I’m afraid I am at a loss for an answer.

[RjC here: the links in this entry are all courtesy the National Gallery’s excellent “Cybermuse” web site, which has details on most of the artists and works in the collection. It suffers from acute Flash-itis, though, so I recommend the Site Map as the most painless point of entry.]

Exterior of the Royal Mint, which we toured. for security reasons, no photos are permitted inside, not even in the gift shop. I am not making this up. It was one of the better tours, quite a lot of fun to see several million dollars worth of gold and silver, not to mention the assembly line where all 33 million poppy quarters were produced. Nowadays, the Ottawa mint mostly does specialty work, as the Winnipeg mint is responsible for most circulation coins. Another fun fact: there are only about 25 mints on the planet, and so Canada gets hired to coin the currencies of many other nations, and some odd specialty items, including the medal given at Graceland to the winner of their annual Elvis impersonation contest.
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Detail of the ceiling of the Senate chamber’s lobby. Hey, I can see my province from here!
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An aptly named spicy sauce shop in Ottawa.
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I’m back in Vancouver.

Our week in Ottawa was definitely the best vacation The Lovely One and I have taken since our honeymoon. Much of that was down to personal issues: our hosts, Sandy and Eddie, were incredibly accomodating, and Sandy and TLO pretty much planned out very day of the trip, much to the benefit of all involved. Everybody just got along very well, too.

Ottawa is a lovely town. Your tax dollars have made sure it’s a realy nice place to visit, with lots of interesting places to go, both public and private. The town itself has nice shopping districts like the Bytown market. I can understand why Sandy and Eddie like the place: if you can enjoy cross-country skiing, there’s a lot to recommend the city. I was impressed by the number of cyclists on the streets. There’s surely more in downtown Vancouver, but they were a regular presence on the roads, despite the ice and snow. I think the trick is that the roads are salted aggressively and the weather is consistently very cold, which avoids the sort of super-slick near-zero icing that you get too often in Vancouver, and which is the most treacherous surface on which to ride.

We went sledding one night, which was great fun. We missed skating on the Rideau Canal (not quite frozen enough), but the snow was lovely and put us in a highly Christmasy mood. Of course, we were there for a week, and got to come back to Vancouver (a shirtsleeve-friendly 7 C today!) after. I woke up on our third day there, looked out the window of our hosts’ 23rd-floor apartment, and commented to Sandy, “well, it’s still snow-covered out there!” She replied, “it will be until April.”

That might get a bit old.

The temperatures in Ottawa ranged around 0 to -15 C while we were there. I had experienced temperatures like that before, and I’m less sensitive to cold than TLO, but she was literally colder than she had ever been in her life. Her sheepskin jacket was a lifesaver.

I like to pack light on trips, and managed the same trick this time, getting a week of clothes and sundries into two lightly-packed carry-on bags. I have a superb piece of luggage, an MEC backpack which converts into a soft suitcase with shoulder strap, and also has a zip-off day-pack. When separated, the two pieces are both carry-on legal. It was a long-ago gift from my generous Auntie Gisele, and while the exact piece is no longer in the MEC catalog, this unit, looking rather different from mine, is its functional successor.

Of course, packing light still requires packing smart. I managed to bring four paperbacks but no boots (suede runners? What was I thinking?), which led to a trip to the shoe outlet store to pick up something suitable. I got a nice pair of heavy-soled shoes for $15. The Lovely One brought a bigger suitcase, but not that much bigger, and had two sets of boots. Smart girl.

Being tourists at this time of year was ideal: it was too early for the Christmas tourists, and at times we simply had the attractions to ourselves. I would gladly go for a seriously off-season vacation again.

Now to the stuff we saw, in no particular order.

The Aviation Museum, if you’re a wing nut like myself, is a must-see. Messerschmitt Komet? Spad VII? Twin Otter? The largest remaing piece of an Avro Arrow? About 100 other highly significant aircraft from the history of Canadian flight? Thank you, may I have another! I only wish we had had more time there.

Rideau Hall was an interesting tour, but it consists of seeing five front rooms of the Governor General’s residence. I’m not sure how to feel about this one: the grounds of the residence are vast. the house itself is nice, but not monstrous. Keeping in mind that this is the site of some of the grandest state dinners and receptions in Canada, I might even say the house is relatively modest. Canadian, even. That said, the main ballrom is reasonably fancy-looking. On the other, other hand, there’s something like 100 staff at Rideau Hall, everything from cooks to tour guides to a considerable security detail (perhaps as much for the visiting dignitaries as for Her Excellency, though Ms. Clarkson is hardly the most popular GG, what with the ongoing financial questions).

Parliament is interesting. We did the tour, which is nice, and I took some nice photos. The Library was closed for renovations (and covered outside with white plastic) which is too bad, because it’s supposed to be really nice. But the most moving room was the Memorial Chamber in the base of the Peace Tower. There’s a metaphor there.

The Museum of Civilization was fine, but not particularly impressive. I guess you have to go there, but at least they had a moderately interesting exhibition on the history of wine. I learned about the existence of Baby Bear, a Canadian sparkling red wine that was one of the other wines from the Baby Duck era. i’m not too disappointed about having missed that one.

The National Gallery was very nice, until 1955. My General Theory of Contemporary Art (and music) is that it looks worse than historical art because the crappy historical art is long gone. At one point, The Lovely One walked out of a small gallery saying “there’s nothing there”, not realizing that (according to the placard on the wall) the cable running diagonally through the room was the artwork. Compared to that, the trompe a l’oeil tractor trailer, and Attila Richard Lukacs (about who TLO said “you can’t unsee it!”) Voice of Fire looks like genius. But van Gogh, El Greco, and many more.

We took a day trip to Montreal, and did some shopping and lunch in Old Montreal, along with seeing the two most important churches in town, the Notre Dame Basilica and St. Joseph’s Oratory. Both are beautiful. St. Joseph’s also has a museum, which had a huge exhibit of nativity scenes. Photos of that to follow.

Back in Ottawa, we wrapped up our last day in town with a trip to the Chateau Laurier for the Afternoon Tea. It is a superb experience, at least the equal, and possibly superior to the Empress Afternoon Tea. But at the Chateau Laurier, the experience is considerably cheaper: $24 for the afternoon tea (though I opted for the pricier “Canadian Tea,” whcih added a cheese plate and upgraded the sandwiches and desserts with a Canadian theme (nanaimo bar, Alberta steak on toast, etc.) and both of us added a glass of sherry) versus $40 in Victoria. Maybe this is just the sherry talking, but highly recommended.

Like I said, I took over 200 photos, most of them bad. That’s normal. The good ones should start trickling onto this site over the next few days. The camera performed reasonably well, and sometimes very well indeed. Carrying such a compact camera is a good thing. it just comes with you everywhere, as it did in my case. I took over 250 full-res shots on one 256 MB memory card without filling it. The camera’s weaknesses? Mostly that I tried to use it in situations where I wouldn’t even try to use most other cameras. Low-light no-flash situations, and it would do its best. The on-board flash is fairly anemic, but adequate. I should buy a spare battery before my next trip. I think I need to practice holding the camera steadier, too. Other than that, more megapixels are always better (Future Shop did have a Canon A85 for $330 in a recent flyer, but that deal may have disappeared by now. This is the 4-megapixel version of the A75 which I think so highly of).

So, Ottawa. Go there. And if you can, stay with Sandy and Eddie. Also, get The Lovely One and Sandy to plan your trip.

Thursday was a funny day. At the risk of stealing Rebecca’s thunder, it ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime.

We got a late start to the day, and accompanied our hosts Sandy and Eddie to traffic court, where they sought to fight Ottawa’s arcane and mutable “interfering with snow removal” parking bylaw.

I have worked my way through the pettier ends of the court system many times, fighting moving violations, parking violations, and in one memorable case, suing a towing company in small-claims court (we settled out of court with terms highly in my favour). As such, I gave Sandy and Eddie considerable unsolicited advice regarding their ticket, of greater or lesser utility, but which probably went far in increasing their anxiety. After all, I was suggesting a Charter of Rights defence on a parking ticket.

No, really. I don’t know what Ontario precedents are like, but in BC the precedents suggest any traffic ticket older than 18 months will usually be tossed, if you assert your right to a speedy trial has been violated (I got this down to such a science the last time I fought a photo-radar ticket that I didn’t even have to show up at court; a call to the crown prosecutor took care of things).

In Sandy and Eddie’s case, they were towed to a nearby street in March, 2003, after their car was deemed to be in the way of a snow-clearing operation. Normally, they post little plastic signs in the snow when they are about to do this, but there were none. The bylaw is somewhat vague on what exactly is required of the city, notification-wise, in these cases. Eddie probably gave up more money by taking the time off from work than he stood to recoup by fighting a $65 parking ticket, but there was a principle at stake, and I think they both wanted some sort of clarification in front of the courts as to what the expectations were of them.

So, I looked over the law and prepared a rather impromptu point-form defense of their case, starting with the Charter defence and ending with an outline of how they hadn’t violated the snow-clearance bylaw. For her part, Sandy was nervous, and both Sandy and Eddie agreed they didn’t really want to fight the case on Charter grounds, because they really were here to find out how to obey the law. That said, my legal advice was probably worth what it cost.

In case you have any doubt, never go to the court seeking vindication. The best any court can do, on its best day, is justice, and courts don’t always have good days. The court docket we saw was filled with defendants deserving and otherwise, and the presiding justice was fair and consistent, and took several opportunities to create teachable moments using the shabby material of many defendants. It was a delightfully educational process, occasionally entertaining, and yet vindication was rare.

If you are going to court, it should be to beat the charge, or to get the penalty reduced. If the former, it’s okay to be guilty, but it helps a lot if you aren’t. In the latter case, keep in mind that in some crimes judicial discretion has been legislated away, as it was with photo-radar fines (and presumably red-light camera fines) in B.C.

I think few defendants on this day felt vindicated, a few felt burned, one was in the wrong venue, Sandy and Eddie definitely didn’t get vindication, and I’ll let you decide whether they got justice.

These court sessions are always cleared in order of quickest to slowest, so first was the brief matter of removing cases where the defendant had already paid or settled with the prosecution. Then came the long line of people pleading “guilty with an explanation,” by far the majority of cases on the day. In such a case, the defendant waives his or her right to a trial, admits guilt, and gets to work up their best excuse for their transgression in front of the judge. The dispensation of these cases was quite interesting. In a few cases, the circumstance were so extenuating that the judge discharged the defendants. One of these was a gentleman with a cane and a disabled parking permit who had parked in a place that wasn’t quite legal for him (some special privileges in certain No Parking zones are apparently extended to disabled permit vehicles), but there was some confusion about whether this had been legal, and he made an honest case for his confusion.

Most cases got a reduction in the fine. The judge was most hard on those parked in designated handicapped spots, except for one elderly lady who got her fine reduced by 50%, based on her semi-reasonable excuse and maybe because she had mobility issues that suggested she was nearly able to get a disabled permit herself. No pity was extended to the woman who used such a spot because she had to pee, or the woman who parked in one of these spots because she had some issue with her child (a diaper emergency, I think). The fine in Ottawa is $300 for handicapped spot violations, vastly more than any other parking crime. When in doubt, park in a No Parking zone instead. It’s a lot cheaper.

Some of the defendants were just stupid. A student came up fighting two tickets issued for the same illegal parking job over the course of a few hours, and admitted that in parking there he had “gambled and lost.” Never admit that to a judge, even if it’s true. Result was half off of the second ticket, but only because he was a full-time student (it’s common for people of reduced means to get fine reductions, and students are a favourite for this). Another, having heard the judge discourse earlier on the “mob mentality” (if other cars are parked illegally, maybe I can park there too), brought this up thinking it was a defense. The judge eventually convinced him to come up with a better excuse, and he got a reduction of his fine.

The strangest, most entertaining case was an older Chinese guy who, as his explanation, read a long and discursive statement describing how the no-stopping zone he had parked in was much larger than it needed to be, was probably a cash cow for the city, and described bylaw enforcement officers as “nitwits.” The statement went on for some time, and was a bit repetitive, but no less amusing for the sheer force of it.

The judge, I think gaining some entertainment (and trying visibly not to laugh) let the man say his peace, and then pointed out that technically, the court did not generally permit prepared statements to be read out. I believe he indulged this one as a moment of levity, for the educational value, and because he hoped it would give the man a sense of vindication. Then he pointed out that the entirety of the statement gave no excuse that mitigated the offense, and that the man’s complaints were properly directed at city council (to which the defendant replied that that would be “too much trouble.” But it might work! Unlike what he actually did…). No reduction in fine, and a not-very-expensive lesson in civics dispensed as well.

But a smaller version of this disease seemed present in other people in the courtroom, Sandy and Eddie included: the sense that they were there so that the court could make right whatever injustice existed in the law. The court can’t. Except in the very exceptional cases of a law that violates the Charter, the court isn’t going to change the law. The misunderstanding of where the creation of the law ends and the administration of the law begins seemed to be a cause of a certain amount of sorrow in the room. Here’s the quick summary: elected officials make laws, cops enforce laws, judges administer the proper enforcement of the law.

Moving on, the strangest case was a woman who pleaded not guilty, but there was a technical issue as she hadn’t requested the presence of the officer. The case itself dated to 1996, if I didn’t mis-hear, and she claimed not to have owned a car then or now. That case had to be adjourned to another day.

Then came the persons wanting to have a trial, Sandy and Eddie included. First, pleas were entered, and cases where the officer was present were held over for trial (which would commence right after these pleas). But in cases where the officer wasn’t present, the prosecutor simply said “no prosecution,” and the defendant was free to go.

And that’s what happened to Sandy, to her disappointment. That was it. No chance to speak to the charges, just a 90-minute wait to stand up, say “not guilty,” and go.

We eventually convinced Sandy that this was for the best. There can be many reasons for a failure to prosecute, but the most common are that the enforcement officer had something better to do, or recognized a technical issue with the ticket which made it impossible to prosecute. So it goes, and no, you don’t get a hearing. Given the facts, a just outcome, but not one with much vindication.