{"id":8956,"date":"2014-10-07T05:57:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T09:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/?p=8956"},"modified":"2014-10-07T05:57:27","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T09:57:27","slug":"hes-dead-jim-honest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/2014\/10\/07\/hes-dead-jim-honest\/","title":{"rendered":"He&#8217;s Dead, Jim. Honest."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About a year ago, I got a notice from the Town to renew the dog license for Siggy, who (as some of you may recall) unfortunately died back in 2012. So I checked the box for &#8220;deceased&#8221; and mailed it back in, only to get a second notice a few weeks later. This time, I called the Town Clerk&#8217;s office (they&#8217;re always very nice) and told them that I had sent the first notice back and that Siggy was no longer with us. You&#8217;d have thought that would be that, but no.<\/p>\n<p>A couple months later, I got a rather threatening form letter from Jim, the Dog Control Dude (DCD), saying that if I didn&#8217;t cough up the money for the license (and provide proof of an updated rabies vaccination), I might have to go to court.<\/p>\n<p>I had visions of having to waste an evening sitting in court with Siggy&#8217;s collar, ashes, and certificate of cremation (they don&#8217;t give you death certificate for a dog &#8211; at least, not around here) in order to prove that, yes, Siggy was dead. In fact, if it didn&#8217;t make me sad to think about him, I&#8217;d have even considered doing a version of Monty Pythons&#8217; &#8220;Dead Parrot&#8221; sketch for the just, indicating that poor Siggy &#8220;is no more, has ceased to be&#8221;, and is bereft of life.&#8221; Instead, I called the Dog Control Office, got voicemail and left a rather stern message. I followed that up the next day and spoke to Jim, the DCD explaining that Siggy was dead and I really didn&#8217;t want to have to go to Night Court over this.<\/p>\n<p>Jim, of course, was pleasant, the threats ended, and once again I thought that was that about that. Until last week, when I got yet another license renewal notice for Siggy, with the year+ expiration date highlighted in yellow.<\/p>\n<p>So I once again filled out the form, marked Siggy as deceased, highlighted <b><i>that<\/i><\/b> portion in orange, and added a letter explaining what I&#8217;d been through last year, indicating that Siggy was, sadly, still dead, and that I would gladly pay the six bucks if it would bring him back but as that seemed rather unlikely, I&#8217;d appreciate it if they could take him out of whatever system(s) he&#8217;s in so that I didn&#8217;t have to get an annual reminder of the fact that he&#8217;s no longer with us.  <\/p>\n<p>Hopefully this will be the end of this nonsense, though I&#8217;m not getting my hopes up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About a year ago, I got a notice from the Town to renew the dog license for Siggy, who (as some of you may recall) unfortunately died back in 2012. So I checked the box for &#8220;deceased&#8221; and mailed it back in, only to get a second notice a few weeks later. This time, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8957,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions\/8957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}