It's sardonically amusing that the most likely outcome of this whole mess is that I'll have to keep doing what I've been doing almost to the letter, but I'll have to tell some guy that I'm doing it -- and I consider this maddening.

Of course, given that this entire experience has been about proving that things go worse than I ever believed possible (and those who know me know exactly how powerful an imagination I have for conjecturing the worst-case scenario), I will probably get the death penalty under a new swift-execute no-appeal DC law.