So when I visited La Migra a couple of weeks ago to be processed for my final Scary Card, I was told that said card would arrive in a minimum of fifteen weeks, possibly as long as six months. This raised the possibility of all sorts of interesting and exciting change of address snafus. La Migra doesn’t allow its mail to be forwarded, so I anticipated long bureaucratic struggles and multiple visits to their LSM office following an inevitable misdelivery.  

To my surprise, however, my Scary Card arrived two days ago. It took two weeks. And, shocking as it is to say this, there’s nothing like amazing efficiency to make me feel good about this country. Now zillions of dollars are being pumped into the Department of Dystopia, things have improved drastically. But two weeks instead of four months? That’s just amazing…

So thank you, America!

The new Scary Card is even more scary than my old one, largely because of the prominent Department of Dystopia logo. Aside from this, there’s a hologram of Lady Liberty shining a beacon of light onto a map of these United States, plus a scary picture of yours truly and my fingerprint. On the reverse there’s some sort of data strip that’s an inch or so wide. It’s not magnetic, but rather some other data-retaining technology that no doubt holds a disturbing amount of information about me. Along the top of the strip are what looks like 43 tiny holes. On closer examination, they turn out to be tiny portraits of every president, from Washington to Dubbya, all less than a millimetre in diameter. Along the bottom are 50 more little pictures, this time of every state flag. There’s also a tiny hologram of my face.

The good news is that I don’t have to renew it until 2015. At which point it will be replaced by a chip implanted under my skin.

In honour of my new card, here are some things I love about America:

- Barbeque… Oh man, do I love barbeque. My heart will always be with North Carolina piedmont barbeque, but I love all the barbeques.
- The weather. In the South that is. Aside from the tornadoes. And the humidity. And when it’s really, really hot. Like it will be today.
- Having a written constitution. I’m sorry, but it’s good to have that shit written down.
- Not having a monarch. Seriously. Not having a monarch is a good thing.
- That elected upper house thing. I’m no fan of the Senate as a whole, but at least it’s not appointed. Or hereditary. So as much as I go on about the benefits of a parliamentary system, at least Americans can kick their senators out (in theory).

Alright… time to do some Lifestyle Coaching.

Posted by B. W. Ventril in Miscellanea

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 8:28 am and is filed under Miscellanea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Don’t worry about the government”

  1. very anonymous says:
    yeah, that whole UK unwritten constitution sounded like total bullshit to me when my 8th grade history teacher told us about it. i was like, “well where the hell *is* the constitution?”  

    actually, i haven’t learned much since then. where the hell is the constitution anyway? tattooed on the ass of the prince of wales?

    June 15th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
  2. dickumbrage says:
    actually, in the media-scape driven world of today, britain has not one but 198479887597436876 virtual constitutions, the majority of which are maintained by bloggers just like bw ventril. the rest are just links to porn sites.  

    June 15th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
  3. dickumbrage says:
    you can sometimes find these latter by their subject headers:  

    “the Chancellor of the Exchequer does it SALLY”
    “Expand the Proportion of your REPRESENTATION”
    “Real B1c@meral - 2 Hott Hauses!”

    June 15th, 2005 at 4:05 pm
  4. very anonymous says:
    Soon to be available in mega-bookstores everywhere: Elsacapuntas’ 1,000 Nights of Grrrreat Constitutions. A sampling:  

    “Many people agree that the start of a great constitution is the preamble. The preamble can take many forms, from softly spoken sweet nothings to caressing of the extremities of the political body, gradually building in intensity until one can hardly resist lauching into full-on, heated constitution making…”

    June 15th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
  5. dickumbrage says:
    “Judicial review — a practice that opens a constitution’s every nook and cranny to scrutiny — has fallen out of favor in some more conservative chambers. However, we prefer to savor each constitution, slowly allowing the national flavor to present itself through thorough examination.”  

    June 15th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
  6. B. W. Ventril says:
    You sick fucking bastards!