Mercury in retrograde?

Yesterday was a fine day. All was going well, and I'd even begun the process of applying for the Fulbright. I was gabbing with one of my co-workers downstairs and thought I'd snag a ride home, since Bizarro had the car for the day. At this point it was around 6:30 - 7:00. As we were leaving the building I noticed I had messages, so I checked and they were both from Bizarro - telling me he'd locked the keys in the car and wasn't sure what to do, but that we'd deal with it later. I wasn't sure where the car was at that point - so my kind co-worker drove me around the parking lot but it wasn't there, so then we headed to the store where Bizarro works.

Sure enough, there was my car, so I hopped out, and thanked my co-worker. As I was unlocking the door, he said "It IS your car, right?" "Oh yeah, it's mine!" I responded. Then he zoomed off in his freakish-but-still-very-cool-jalopy-like ex-army jeep-thing.

Yes, it was my car, but for some reason my key wasn't unlocking the door. I went to the driver-side door. Same thing. In fact, it felt and sounded like the lock was moving, but the doors wouldn't open. I tried a half dozen times, then realized that something was indeed very wrong. I could see Bizarro's keys in the ignition, and wondered if maybe something was left on and the battery was dead, thereby making the power locks inoperable. But that didn't make sense. I was keying it from the outside.

So I went into the store and had them page Bizarro. I wasn't in a particularly good mood at this point, as you might imagine. Bizarro was as perplexed as I was... then he informed me that he had tried to jimmy the locks earlier. Hmm...he'd tried to jimmy the electronic locks.

We went back out to the car and soon we had a bunch of folks, including his manager, a coworker, and an off-duty cop out in the parking lot trying to get my car open. We tried going through the trunk, but the back seat latch has to be operated from the inside (thanks to Nissan who built a break-in-proof car). The cop tried jimmying the locks again, to no avail. The manager fashioned this hook thing and squeezed it in through the door frame to try to open the lock mechanism from inside. Nothing worked.

Finally I called a lock smith who told me that what probably happened was that when they tried to jimmy the locks the first time they must have busted the "link" (whatever that is) thereby making the locks inoperative. A special tool is needed to jimmy electronic locks, apparently. Great.

Bizarro finally wormed his arm up through the back seat and pulled the latch (my back seat is now mangled) so we could get in and unlock the damn thing. But the locks are busted and apparently it's rather pricey to have the doors taken apart to fix the damned things.

So, to sum up, I will quote Worf from Next Generation :
"I am NOT a merry man." Or woman, in this case.