Word count: 1094 | Reading time: 5 min read
Pretzel Logic
It’s new, expensive and secure — and works just as badly as the old one.
Don’t mind me.
My head is still throbbing. My eyes are all glassy. My stomach is gurgling. My hands are still shaking. And my knees are wobbling like old Uncle Willie’s.
It’s not the flu.
Not a touch of rheumatiz.
It’s PCJCTSS.
Post Criminal Justice Center Traumatic Shock Syndrome.
Picjictisses in Latin
I picked up this dreaded malady, which attacks the body like a cross between Epstein/Barr Syndrome and Legionnaire’s Disease, during a thoroughly miserable three-hour stint at the new building, which was designed by that noted architectural firm of Kafka and Escher, Inc.
Now, don’t feel sorry for me.
Like a lot of health problems, this one was totally preventable.
I went looking for trouble and found it.
I made the mistake of trying to find some criminal court records in a city that prides itself on only hiring graduates of the Nikita Khrushchev School of Public Information.
I think it may be time to contact the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Because I think picjictisses is on the verge of becoming an epidemic.
How do I know this?
I am, after all, no doctor. Nor do I play one on TV.
But the sense I get from the lawyers and judges and clerks and paper shufflers condemned to work in the Gulag CJC (which should be renamed the FUBAR CJC for obvious reasons) is that they are all exhibiting many of the same symptoms I have.
Out in the hallways, stuck behind desks, confined in the small spaces of the elevators (those that are working), I see one person after another wobbling around on weak knees, hands on head, muttering over and over again the same refrain.
“This place sucks. I liked the old place better.”
By far, the individual with the most advanced case of picjictisses appears to be Leonard Weinglass, attorney for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Weinglass, standing in front of a flock of camera- and notepad-bearing rakers of muck, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he suffers from the most advanced stage of picjictisses.
He keeps telling everyone that, sure, William Cook, the homeless brother of Abu-Jamal, would appear out of the ether with the real story behind the murder of police officer Danny Faulkner.
Sadly, it is clear that Weinglass — who probably spent entirely too much time sucking in the tainted air in one of the justice center’s bulletproof courtrooms — is in the nasty, delusional last stages of picjictisses.
Even those in the early stages of the disease know that the odds of William Cook testifying at his brother’s trial are about the same as Elvis admitting he was the shooter.
Still, there is a touch of truth behind Weinglass’ delirium.
I think there is some kind of government conspiracy.
Not necessarily having to do with Abu-Jamal.
I think that Post Criminal Justice Center Traumatic Shock Syndrome is the Rendell administration’s way to get around the prison cap. Afflicting mainly defense attorneys, reporters, process servers and others trying to find out what goes on in our system of justice, picjictisses is the administration’s way of keeping people out of the building.
By way of proof, let me introduce you to the chamber of horrors known as the Clerk of the Quartersession.
What is the Clerk of the Quartersession? What is a Quartersession? The only people who know the answers to those questions also know who really killed Kennedy and Hoffa.
But what the place is designed for is keeping and disbursing criminal records and issuing subpoenas.
Which is perfectly good in theory.
The only problem is that, 50 years after the advent of the computer, all records in the Clerk of the Quartersession’s new office on the third floor of the criminal justice center are kept on paper.
“We have no available computers,” says the harried woman behind the counter as a queue not seen this side of a Russian butcher shop forms in a futile effort to obtain information. “The only computers we have are being used for training. You need information, go to those books over there.”
With a wave of the hand, the downtrodden clerk, who has all the humor and warmth of a Dostoevsky character, shows me to a pile of tattered record books.
On one side is a pile of books containing information about municipal court cases.
Each book contains a year’s worth of cases. After an eternity of lifting the books, flipping through the worn pages, I find what I am looking for.
I get back into the queue. Wait like a babushka hoping to find a sausage to bring home, only to be told, when I finally reach the front, that I must go back to the pile of books.
“Oh, no,” says the woman, a glint of megalomania in her eyes. “You must go back to the other pile of books and get me the case number for Common Pleas Court.”
So, back I trudge. Heaving and flipping, I cross-reference the little numbers I found in the last set of books with little numbers in this set, dutifully transcribe said numbers and head back to the end of the line.
I wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Finally, I get to the front of the line. I give the woman the numbers. But a pained look creases her face.
“Oh, we are so short-handed,” she said, sympathetically. “This may take a while. Next?”
I am not alone in my misery.
In the corner, professional researcher Darlene Holroyd is here to do pre-employment screening for her clients to make sure that none of their job candidates ever resided at the house of corrections. She is griping loudly that “no one cares. No one wants to give out any information.”
Her frustration makes me think twice about sending back my overdone hamburger the next time I dine out. If Holroyd can’t get information to screen out the whack jobs, who knows if that nutty guy behind the broiler is apt to pull out an Uzi?
After another interminable wait, which allows me enough time to catch the latest episode of the Mumia Abu-Jamal show playing outside the courthouse, I come back.
The good news is that my files are ready.
The bad news?
There is no way to copy them.
“Oh, we don’t have a copy machine here,” says the woman behind the counter. “The one out there is broken.”
No wonder I’m still feeling woozy.
Is it too late for a quarantine?
