After 30 days, warrants will be issued for those who fail to contact the court. In addition to possible incarceration, defendants may also be required to pay costs associated with serving the warrant, according to Mr. Billotte.

Holy crap, you say, I don’t want to go to jail. Can’t I just pay someone off?

Yes, of course you can. Make sure the check is made out to the city, not to the police officer who cited you. The first is called a “fine.” The second is called a “bribe,” which, while effective, is technically illegal. To see if there is a summary offense pending against you, go to the web site and search your name. If it appears, there is a telephone number to call.

I went, reassured myself that the government isn’t after me, and immediately left the site, never to return.

Of course I didn’t do that. I looked up local luminaries, to see who was scoffing at the law. I didn’t find many, but City Councilor Darlene Harris is in there. So is Lawrenceville anti-crime crusader Tony Ceoffe, who was no doubt too busy crusading against quality-of-life crimes to avoid committing them. Twanda Carlisle, despite her mounting troubles with the law, managed to avoid this specific legal thicket.

I recommend everyone use this resource to first make sure that they are not in danger of imprisonment, then to joyously embarrass friends, enemies, and people you see in the newspaper.

The Post-Gazette reported yesterday that WDUQ, the only radio station I listen to, was pressured by their Catholic masters to refuse underwriting from Planned Parenthood of Western PA:

Duquesne ordered WDUQ (90.5) to stop airing a series of underwritten messages from the reproductive rights and health-care education group, saying that Planned Parenthood isn’t aligned with the university’s Catholic mission and that the station isn’t required to accept donations.

That is, of course, true. It is also true that I am not required to continue sending WDUQ the ten dollars a month I have been giving them for years.

Much of this is personal to me. Not in the sense that I have ever directly used Planned Parenthood’s services; I never have. They refuse no one help, but I have never needed it.

I was raised Catholic, and spent kindergarten through eighth grade in Catholic school. I was not in a position to do much thinking about what we were being told until second grade, but from then on it was a hell. I spent six years being told that it was sinful to believe the conclusions my mind reached and the directions of my conscience. It was self-evident to me that there was no God watching us, that prayer was a waste, and that the dogmatic positions of the church, especially on the sorts of things they argue with Planned Parenthood about, were idiotic. Saying this meant punishment, not saying it meant feeling cowardly: was it any surprise I trouble for my teachers?

In the midst of writing this it seems ironic that my greatest blow-out with the higher-ups at my school (I will not give the name, except to say that it was called the Carlow College Campus School, and sending your children there should be considered child abuse) put WDUQ more or less on my side.

When I was in eighth grade I heard on Morning Edition one day as I was getting ready for school that it was National Condom Week. This was the early nineties, when the public had finally started to catch on to AIDS, perhaps thanks to the HIV awareness episode of Mr. Belvedere several years prior. I went in to school and shared this information with everyone, as I was in eighth grade and thought that the idea of a week for condoms was pretty awesome.

This was the event that ultimately, after some escalation, led to my somewhat early exit from Catholic education. I thank WDUQ for that gift, and for years of great radio programming. I am even appearing on an already taped program on DUQ later this month.

However, I support the mission of Planned Parenthood, and they and I support similar ends in politics and in society. My friends support Planned Parenthood, and some have gotten help there that they could not have gotten anywhere else. I dislike the people who oppose Planned Parenthood, especially the most vocal of them, the psychopaths who picket their headquarters.

So, WDUQ, which has given me a great deal while asking for little in return, takes the side of the Catholic Church, which I have every reason to hate. Doing so, they run up against an organization that does a difficult and necessary job.

On my way to work yesterday I saw a group of people standing at the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Allegheny River Boulevard with giant signs featuring photos of fake dead babies, liberally spattered with blood and gore, and I was pushed off the fence. I am unable to support anyone who takes the side of those people.

I canceled my WDUQ membership this morning.

I guess Luke Ravenstahl doesn’t have enough experience to be corrupt and cover his tracks like experienced leaders. Was President Bush supposedly an experienced leader whom you voted for in 2004? With the lifestyle of Mr. Bush at Mr. Ravenstahl’s age, you would have not given Mr. Bush a passing glance.

I find all this outrage over a golf outing and an SUV amusing. Where is the outrage over paying for the war in Iraq and the human cost of our youth?

I wish to assure Carol Badgley of Hempfield that I, for one, am able to contain outrage over the Iraq war while at the same time being upset by Luke’s misbehavior. Perhaps in Hempfield it is common to only be able to hold one opinion at any given time. If so, I blame the THC.

I never really thought that the brazenness of Speedy’s corruption would be considered a point in his favor.

Another writer who, I am happy to report, lives in a place where he is not able to vote for Luke says that the problem is that old people are mean:

The reason for this treatment is an obvious case of age discrimination. Pittsburgh has been a dying city for years, with the worn-out politicians and older stubborn people preventing any changes from occurring. College graduates leave the city in waves for more vibrant, youthful towns. Finally a leader comes along who has the city on the brink of a renaissance, and all those same rigid people who have held Pittsburgh down for years try to discredit Mr. Ravenstahl.

Yes, it is no doubt my advanced age that is at the root of all my problems with the mayor. He wasn’t even alive for the Steelers triumph in Super Bowl XIV, which I am sure I found very exciting but cannot remember due to having watched it at the age of five months. Nonetheless, I can smugly say that it happened a good seventeen days before the birth of our mayor.

Letter writer Armand Buzzelli Jr., being no doubt a modest fellow, doesn’t mention that he is a buddy of Luke’s from college and that his dad was one of Luke’s gym teachers.

In both of these cases we see the Ravenstahl and supporters method of argument, which is built on red herrings and lies about anyone who dislikes Speedy’s laziness and bizarre sense of entitlement. First, pretend that the thing you are being criticized for is something other than what it really is: flip-flops on the plane (which no one but me seems to recognize is absolutely disgusting), the war in Iraq, going to a concert, or hot dog receipts. Then pretend the critics are something they are not: Republicans, out-of-touch fogies, or crouching masturbators. Then claim that Speedy is doing a great job. Do not give any specific examples of what he is doing that is great, because masturbating Republican fogies might actually check and find that the Mayor didn’t actually do whatever it is you are claiming he did. Just say he is great.

I have not yet listened to the debate from last night, but the buzz is that Ravenstahl didn’t embarrass himself, which is a triumph, I suppose; DeSantis came off as lame, which is no surprise, as he is a lameass; and Ryan Scott is totally insane, which is not really a big surprise either.

1. He looks like a doofus in pictures. Luke tends to look like a doofus too, but at least he has the sense to pick and choose the least doofusy photos for his campaign website. The DeSantis site is chockablock with photos like the one you see here.

2. He is a Republican, and doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

3. He is a dilettante who didn’t take this race seriously enough to start running in May when he became the nominee.

4. When he got into this race I sat down for coffee with him and he wore short pants. Perhaps he was trying to youth himself up in comparison to the mayor, but dressing up as a child is not the way to go about it. In his defense, though, his sartorial sins are far from as bad as wearing flip-flops on an airplane.

5. He will lose, but he could win some combination of the seventh, fourteenth and eleventh wards. Next year will be an extremely divisive national election, which will leave dedicated Democrats even more dedicated. The year after that, Speedy Ravenstahl will face what will, if he keeps screwing up, be a tough race for the Democratic nomination. Old school Democrats will remember that the base of any likely progressive leaning candidate (Peduto, Lamb, Shields, Dowd) went over to the side that gave us George W. Bush, Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, and who knows what other creeps and liars who arise between now and then. You can be sure that Ravenstahl will remind them. Kleptocratic, nepotistic, anti-choice councilman Len Bodack tried to use the “my opponent is a Republican in disguise” argument without any basis at all in the last primary, and he came close to winning.

6. He spends too much time talking about his opponent, which gives little sense of what he will do once he is the guy in the big chair.

7. If you are going to vote for someone who can’t win, why not go with the guy with the balls to run as a Socialist Worker?

The Post-Gazette is kind enough to allay the fears of the nonagenarians who make up their core readership and believe that young people can perform magic with their computers and such:

Street View is not, as some might fear, real-time video. Pulling up a view of Downtown will not show people walking down Smithfield Street — the “Simpsons” episode in which Marge Simpson accidentally spies a naked Homer on a hammock got it wrong.

I want naked people on hammocks! Get to work, Google nerds!

Brief Update: As I looked more closely at this picture, I realized that the Post-Gazette graphics department seems to think that the opposite of west is also west. I guess that explains how they ended up doing newspaper art: once you fail out of cartography school, there are few other options.

Tomorrow night at the Regional History Center: Post-Gazette Mayoral Debate. The theme for most participants will no doubt be “Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” which may be a tough sell in Geriatricburgh. The ages of the participants, in the order they appear above: 48, 27, 27, 24. As someone of approximately the age of these three young jugheads, I am shocked that these young fellows are all willing to miss out on the Smashing Pumpkins show tomorrow night. In fact, given the Mayor’s track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if he forgets to show at the debate in favor of the A. J. Palumbo Center.

The extremely brief descriptions of the candidates, which were pretty clearly written by the candidates themselves or their campaigns, include this note about Luke Ravenstahl:

Pushing fresh leadership and a better city.

I know that Speedy has given up his Blackberry, but here is a note from me to him, in case he looks at the internet as, I believe, normal 27-year-olds do. Please avert your eyes for the next paragraph, if you are not the mayor.

Hey idiot: you are the incumbent. Follow that link if you are not familiar with the word. You don’t get to be they guy who has squandered his time in office on silly perks and initiatives you don’t ever intend to pay for and also run as the face of “fresh leadership.”

Those who have questions for any of the jugheads or the old geezer, e-mail Susan Manella of the Post-Gazette. I would hurry. I imagine she will not want to add anything at the very last minute.

“I like him because the city runs,” said Eliza Wiles, 54, waiting for a bus several blocks from City Hall. Ms. Wiles added that she could not care less that the mayor was younger than her son or that Mr. Ravenstahl wore flip-flops on a plane to Los Angeles — an episode that drew criticism.

Somehow I didn’t hear about this airplane thing, but I am one hundred percent in favor of summary capital punishment for the wearing of flip-flops in public, and being an idiot frat boy is no excuse, The mayor’s punishment is worse than death, though:

For a mayor of this city, not attending Steelers games is like a Southern grandmother skipping church. But that is exactly what Mayor Luke Ravenstahl says he plans to do until the mayoral election on Nov. 5.

He says he can’t stand being “hounded by the press,” by which he must mean this episode, as I can’t imagine comfortable plebeian Rich Lord is following him around while he drinks beer with girls in Hines Ward jerseys. Whatever person the “press” takes in this instance, they are asking the important questions:

“I have a thicker skin now, but I’m also more careful now,” [Ravenstahl] said. Shaking his head, he added, “But asking whether I paid for my own seats at the Steelers game and requesting for me to show the hot dog receipts still seems ridiculous to me.”

While I have no idea who was asking Luke about hot dogs, if that person is a reader of this weblog, you can find more information on hot dogs here.

It was clever what Luke did here, by implicitly equating asking for hot dog receipts to asking who pays for the Mayor’s many perks, thus making his critics seem absurd to anyone who isn’t paying close attention.

There was also some insight into the Mayor’s excellent performance in the Great Race:

Instead of drinking coffee, he keeps his energy up with help from 12 Diet Pepsis a day. “That might be catching up with my nerves,” he said, pointing to a pile of bottle caps on the floor of his car. To clear his head he has taken up running three times a week, he said.

Nothing like a little training and a blood-stimulant concentration that rivals Studio 54 in 1982. Go “Speedy” Ravenstahl!

Not appearing were quote machine Bill Peduto or, oddly, any of the people running for mayor against Speedy. Former Steelers mascot Doug Shields pops up to share some mild criticism and snarky bastard John McIntire makes the impertinent request that the Mayor of Pittsburgh be expected to “act like an adult,” which, coming from McIntire, I think also qualifies as mild criticism.

One of the the people who did much better than me: the winner, Daniel Mazzocco, who defended Pittsburgh’s honor by beating the second place guy, some jag from West Virginia, by nearly a minute.

Another: Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who came in at a very respectable forty-nine odd minutes.

Apparently not running were any of the mayoral challengers. Now, I understand why Ryan Scott might skip it, as he is exhausted from packing meat all week. I am a bit surprised that Mark DeSantis didn’t show. This is a pretty cheap and easy way to meet thousands of voters at once. My guess is that he couldn’t take being beaten twice by Luke Ravenstahl this year.

Presumably Tony Olivia did not participate in a principled Libertarian protest against the use of tax money to pay to pave the streets we ran on.

You can search for friends and enemies on the results page.

New Bishop David Zubik wants Catholics to “be excited about our faith, and how we live it.” Traditionally Catholics are excited about faith in the same way that Americans are excited about soccer: we pretend when the kids are young, but once the brats are off to college we get to relax and care about what really matters, the Steelers. The only difference is that when Americans age and begin to feel the cold breath of death on the backs of their necks, few turn to David Beckham (some Brits do).

Meanwhile Pittsburgh’s Episcopalian Bishop Robert Duncan, seen here hating fags, was busy making our fair city look bad by starting his own church dedicated to being Episcopalians who hate fags. Post-Gazette:

Bishop Duncan said that forming a separate North American church structure for conservatives is “necessary because of the drift of the church in the West.”

The partnership will include the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a network of Episcopal parishes that have split from the U.S. denomination and have aligned with Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, an outspoken critic of Episcopal acceptance of gay relationships.

The original Reformation was about personal closeness to your deity and the proper relationship of spirituality to secular concerns, with Protestant reformers asking hard questions about how to best serve Christianity’s promise of universal love. Catholic traditionalists responded by digging in their heels and hewing closely to doctrine.

Sadly, Bishop Duncan probably thinks that he is the Martin Luther in this new “reformation” rather than the Grand Inquisitor.

While freshman state Rep. Lisa Bennington, D-Morningside, deserves credit for trying creatively with HB 1839 to fund the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Fund, this flawed proposal should be canned if not bottled up.

Only one awful pun per sentence, please. For instance: “:Not a prayer: Religion can’t justify harmful acts under the law,” the hilarious headline to an editorial about the rape of a 14-year old girl. Now that is a good use of meaningless reflexive wordplay.