Government. Am I right?

I recently attempted to mail a standard, domestic mail package to a common acquaintance. The result was a two week wait to find out that the parcel was not able to be delivered and was therefore returned to me through a small metal flap next to my front door. A failure on all fronts but one on which I believe I stand exonerated of responsibility or guilt of any kind.

You cannot tell me that the 1.5 billion dollars (or more, surely) per year the Canadian people – not the government, it is not their money – bestows upon the CBC (which they use to undercut private news organizations in the advertising market) would not be better served on getting my goddamn packages where they goddamn need to be without all this goddamned rigmarole about weights and measures and stamping of bird pictures with piddling values in turn stamped upon them.

Granted, I did leave out the building number but the scribblings applied to the package in question at least hint at an attempt to determine said number. Are these blue khaki-shorted waterheads not aware of internet search engines? Through which they could determine where my brother in “law” could be easily located by his prolific postings of greasy coitus parties listing his full name and address? Is this beyond the “scope” of their duties? Hogwash.

Regardless of institutional ineptitude I have sent the unit again. Utilizing the oh-so-convenient flat rate bubble mailer those drooling pocket-riflers have provided to fleece me yet again. Or at least I was going to, if that pink-bellied crowd in Ottawa deigned to consider that an important thing to ensure all Canadians may access. No, they would prefer we spend 90 minutes a day watching the same two commercials from the same two stores about the same bleeding coffee and lawn rakes over and over again until our eyes bleed.

What a lark to be able to abuse my original postage thus rendering it unusable and then have the good fortune of selling me yet more to complete the process a second time. No one ever said the government was a laggard when it comes to drawing cash from the common man.

To summarize: governments are ruthless back alley thieves with the conscience of a syphilitic badger but if I must have my pockets turned out and shaken in the gutter I should at least be able to send sacks of poorly labelled commodities through the mail.

And if said mailed article fails to reach its destination yet again, through no fault of my own and instead totally and utterly through the now-commonplace ineptitude of a government-run institution, I will have but one option remaining to right this wrong:

I’d take a swing at one of those rampage deals but do you know how hard it is to get UPS to send restricted weapons across the border?