A few months ago I put on my ear muffs and walked into the transport department. Needless to say it was a circus run by apes. There was a blood patch on the carpet. I can only imagine this blood belonged to a patient civilian who had a waiting period of over five hours and was overcome by cabin fever. I went in to see what I can do about getting my license. I was told I had to renew my learner’s license as it had expired a while ago…. That’s fine, let’s do that. Then I was given an inane package with lots of smiling faces, car keys and other annoying things on the cover.

I asked what the package was. The lady behind the counter explained that it’s the new learner logbook which I had to fill out to prove I’ve driven over a billion hours before I can even sit the test to test that I can drive….I said “but I’ve had my learner’s license for over 6 years, can’t you just change that L to a P on my license in the computer and I’ll be on my merry way?”. Apparently that’s not legal.

She comforted me with a judicious statement about how I can just write a letter stating that I’ve had my license for forever and to roughly provide an explanation of the driving I did during that time. I took one last punt at getting my license on that day by challenging the lady behind the counter to a drag race. She laughed approvingly but never told me a time and place so I think she wasn’t up for it.

I get home and leave it for a month or so before writing the letter to the transport department. I write a very short and sweet letter roughly stating:

To whom it may concern,
I’ve had my learner’s license for roughly 6 years in which I have done copious amounts of driving and gained far more experience than required by your new tedious policy. If I drove to the local food store once a week, I would still have enough experience to sit your test.

Anyway in case that didn’t work I even included some specific routes I used to drive, the registration of my car, the distance of travel etcetera. I thought I had it covered and sent off my logbook but alas I got a call telling me I did it wrong. After being turned down to yet another drag racing challenge, I waited for this logbook to come back to me via the mail so I could try again.

I get a letter with my logbook telling me all the things I left out…. this list was exceptional. I’m talking about… they wanted odometer readings and other useless information. The whole experience left me lugubrious (as dealings with the transport department usually do) so I wrote a letter back which had no relevance to the logbook or anything for that matter.

It went something like this:

Whoever sent me my logbook,
The numerous dot points you have collated describing my ‘lack of detail’ is asking quite a lot of me. I don’t really remember the odometer all those years ago. I do however collect and label my stool samples. I have been doing this since 1998. I can send these to you but I’m afraid this will not help anyone (nor will my odometer readings).

Sending the logbook simultaneously with my letter meant that I didn’t have to pay for postage. It also meant they had to respond by sending my book back. This was a loophole in the system which provided me with a ‘free abuse’ ticket. I got a call back from the same lady as before telling me what I had done earlier was ok but I had to just put all my driving routes into the logbook and all will be fine. The only oversight was that I had driving on there with an expired license. Once again they sent me back this damn logbook.

Having no clue of when my license was expired and when it was valid, I demanded to see a dissertation on the positive implications that the new logbook policy brings to the rudiments of driving. I once again received my logbook. I never received a dissertation.

Sad and frustrated I sent another letter to the transport department providing my driver’s license number. This time it didn’t have the logbook but the careful charming of the postage lady and a tiny white lie which told her it was an amendment letter which was supposed to be attached with my already-sent logbook got me yet another ‘free abuse’ ticket….

Hello,
I’m sure your elaborate governance and attention to detail within departmental records will provide a history of my battle with the new logbook policy for learner drivers. It appears that no matter what I do I cannot satisfy the needs of the transport department. While I understand the policy is written in stone and therefore personal discretion and common sense can’t be used, I’m dejectedly out of options.

Out of frustration I have burnt my learner logbook and therefore cannot provide you with the essential information you require. In the past, however, I have provided details of my driving which genuinely cover the required target presented by your stone policy. I plead that the department does the appropriate thing and deems me fit to sit the test.

The losers sent me a new bloody logbook! What assholes!
So now I have two….. because I didn’t really burn it.

I shall continue to tango with the transport department purely on principal and entertainment value.

It started off with a delicate phone call asking me to come and have a look at a computer that just doesn’t seem to be running well. I frustratingly dropped all the important things I was doing at the time (probably not important but far out I can do what I want because I’m not your freaking slave) and went to their place to check out this ‘unwell computer’. I get there and I’m greeted to a billion pop ups to online casinos and supposed competitions that had been won by me. Great… I felt like saying… “Oh guys, you have accessed some seriously illegal content. You need to stop using computers because you are just too useless at technology. Yeah… look it says here in this word document that you are banned from the internet….nothing I can do”. Instead I just smiled, deleted the useless crap off the computer and told them to use Firefox. Surprise surprise, the next day I get a phone call courteously telling me that I didn’t fix the problem properly and the problem is back. Angry by their attitude I decided to march over there and punch them in the face. Unfortunately I politely investigated and to my shock horror these retards used internet explorer and repeated their stupid behaviour (seriously who the hell falls for a flashing banner that says ‘you are a winner click here to download something dodgy!’. Get a clue! You fail at the internet!). If I had to make an estimated guess at how many times I have had to go over there because “my internet just stopped working” or “I can’t find my usb stick on the computer” or “my computer is turning pink” I would say I have been over there enough times, that if I provided an invoice for my time I would be able to buy a fairly appropriate sized 4WD which I would use for the sole purpose of running over their letterbox.

At the moment I am a slave to two separate households. I am collecting mail for one place who I hope are having a terrible holiday in Iraq (I don’t know where they are) and I am babysitting fish for another family because they too are hopefully lost in the Amazon somewhere (they have kids so I take this back, I hope they’re safe somewhere but not having fun). Now seriously, what kind of idiot brings over a fish tank and tells me to babysit (well this would be fishsit) their fish while they are away on holiday? They are goldfish! All I had to do was go to your place and throw turd balls into their tank every day. Why are you so stupid? You can tell they’re stupid because they actually trusted me with the fish. These guys actually saw what I did to my fish when I had them…

Ok I’ll explain… I had 3 fish that I bought from a pet store and I put them in this nice clean tank. I fed them and looked after them for at least a month… then they got boring. I thought it would be interesting if I could have mutated fish, so I decided to feed the fish Pringles, salami slices and put them under all kinds of dietary experiments. Unfortunately the fish died (but not before having babies). I’m telling you these baby fish were insanely mutated. They survived in dirty Pringle water for a very long time, then someone stole my tank and to this day don’t know what happened to them (and I don’t care, fish are stupid).

I feel a bit stressed out because I never really took note of how many fish the tank had in it when it was given to me for caretaking. The tank seems a little roomier these days even though the fish seem so much bigger. I may just be paranoid but seriously these things are supposed to be goldfish yet they are obese and look like giant mutated sea bass. They just look pregnant all the time…. and they are always hungry and looking for food. I feel bad because when I walk past they make their ‘I’m hungry faces’ at me and I fix them up with their turd balls around three or four times a day. How many times a day do you feed fat goldfish? As soon as the turd balls hit the water they go nuts (I swear pet food manufacturers drug our pets but this is another conspiracy that I may write about later if I remember).

The turd balls given to me by their owners is very much close to running out. When this runs out I am definitely not going to buy them new food. I will probably give them Pringles or share my noodles with them, but no way am I paying for fish food to keep someone else’s fish alive. Get stuffed.

I am highly contemplating the idea of creating an invoice for all my services. When these guys return from holidays I will provide them with 30 days to pay my bill or they will not get their fish and mail back:

Formal Invoice for my services

I would take a photo of the fish but I’m way too drunk to figure out how to do the whole photo taking, uploading mathemagics.