Up Your Dolce Vita

DATELINE: Rome

Two old people, husband and wife, were found beaten silly in the streets of Rome.
No foul play is suspected as the wounds appear to be self-inflicted.

Witnesses interviewed at the scene observed the foreign couple leaving the Office
of the Questura, apparently having futilely attempted to renew their Permesso Di
Soggiorno (Permission to Stay) documents. They both were redfaced, sweaty and
cursing a blue streak, walking unsteadily and carrying wads of official documents,
with four copies of each, except those that required THREE copies, and the one that
required a special little colorful stamp purchased at the tobacco shop.

They seemed to be muttering to each other furiously. The muttering escalated to
shouting and one witness said he distinctly heard several expletives bantered back
and forth before the woman finally cried out, "I know you are, but what am I!"

Moments later, sticks were produced and the whacking began.

Emergency personnel were called to the scene and were attempting to disarm the
couple and tend to their bumps and bruises. Apparently, this was hampered by the
woman screaming over and over, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

She finally passed out, whimpering "There's no place like home...there's no place
like home..." and repeatedly clicking together the heels of her crocs.

The Man seemed more coherent. When asked if he was suffering any pain he displayed
his ten fingers and said, "My fingerprints haven't changed in the past two years
since you digitally fingerprinted me, you mother------s!" No one could make sense
of what he was saying and it was unanimously agreed that he had a head injury.

Tonight they are recovering in the psych ward reserved for foreigners who have the
audacity to think they can just march in to the office they marched into two years
ago, and just get their supposedly digitized, computerized Permesso's renewed.
They thought they could just breeze in and out, like they were in a first world
country instead of a medieval third world insane asylum running on corruption and
nepotism. They thought that perhaps with the advent of the computer in the last
century, the bureaucrats of Italy might have deigned to put into place systems to
actually assist people instead of running them into an early grave trying to comply
with archaic and undecipherable rules and regulations.

How ridiculous these foreigners are! Where do they think they are? Somewhere
culturally sophisticated? HA! This isn't CIVILIZATION! This is ITALIA!!

These foreigners must be taught a lesson! If they want employees who care (a
concept known as "customer service," which has no equivalent in this Godforsaken
country; if they want streamlined systems to expedite bureaucracy; if they want to
save the trees, instead of making endless/needless copies of documents that serve
absolutely NO purpose and will end up in some big dark storage room somewhere in
the depths of Rome; if they want to spend their days freely doing whatever it is
they do here, instead of traipsing all over the place, shuffling from one official
office to another, traveling in crowded, airless, filthy buses and trams, given the
runaround by polyester-uniformed sadistic lackies who got their job because their
daddy's friend worked there; if they want to make something as simple as a
stinkin' telephone call to an office to CHANGE their appointment date because
they're not going to be in this country on June whatever!...

then they should go to...Switzerland!