Paperwork

I am applying for PR status now, and form-filling isn't the most entertaining, especially when you have to go back 10 years in time explaning what the heck you were doing between 8/2005 to 11/2005. Its very hard to find an alternative word to 'bumming and sleeping till 3PM'. 

There is also a section about where you've stayed in the past 10 years, and I have to account for the last four years of country hopping. How many hotels have I stayed in? Probably 30. "Please state your address, no matter how short the duration". Just great. 

I wonder how long it will take for the world to be just considered 'the world' and countries cease implementing all this border nonsense. It would probably take another millennium, or a nuclear armageddon. We are still as primitive as when we began walking upright, albeit more comfortable with our plasma screens and flushing toilets. "My hut! You stay away from my hut! I kill you if you come in my hut to work! Pay duty tax when you leave my hut! I shall segregate you because you haven't been born in my hut! I shall deny you the right to work to make an honest day's living, since this is my hut and I control how much scum like you should be paid! I don't care if you're hardworking, able-bodied, attractive, young and motivated. You can work if you pay an entry fee to my hut and meet certain criteria that my hut needs; otherwise I WILL strike you down with malevolent force and deport you to another hut 5 feet away. And stop breathing my air!" 

Aren't we a frendly lot? It seems to serve us right that humans are doomed to exist in paperwork. Spreadsheets, forms, credit slips, pay slips, birth certificates, passports, phone bills, subscriptions, bus tickets, newspapers, degrees, death certificates... its the only thing we can show about our understanding of existance.