"4"^^ . . "8"^^ . "0"^^ . . "6"^^ . . "Ah, the courthouse. It evokes so many emotions.\n\nIf you are headed there to deal with a ticket of some kind, you are undoubtedly filled with dread.\n\nIf you are only going for jury duty - er, service - you are, well, also filled with dread.\n\nI would also imagine if you have to work there that you probably also have some amount of dread.\n\nSo perhaps this magnificent edifice to justice is simply a reflection of that one emotion, which one day will remind us of Sylvester Stallone and Armand Assante (or even Rob Schneider) in the send-up of the much-better-than-that UK comic Judge Dredd.\n\nUntil then, you get nothing. Except for a monstrous wait.\n\nIf you go to deal with the aforementioned ticket, you will wait. If you are lucky and don't have to actually go into the courtroom, you wait until the doors open, your ticket is signed off, and you either go or pay a fine and leave. If not, you wait until they call your name, see a DA and then pay the fine and leave (or perhaps fight the ticket and then, if you are lucky, leave).\n\nIf you are summoned for your jury service, you will wait even longer - perhaps as long as a full day, but at least you get wifi, a few computers you can use if you don't bring your own, vending machines and a couple of movies to watch if you aren't summoned to watch people wondering what will become of them if they lose their fight against the justice system.\n\nIf you are there for criminal reasons, then you may never leave. Tom Petty, eat your heart out.\n\nAnd if you happen to work in said system? As MercyMe puts it, \"I Can Only Imagine\", but I really don't want to. I just want to run the other way. The building isn't nearly as bad as the old one, but I really want to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Please?"^^ . "2010-09-02T00:00:00"^^ .