Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Welcome to your weekly Wednesday post

I took my driving theory test today. I passed with flying colours. Sorry to spoil the suspense (I bet you were all looking forward to a post full of dramatic tension... will he do it? Will he pass? Will he fail? Will he sneeze violently and expell all his nasal lining in an explosive and probably bloody blast of flying tissue?), but I don't really think that you deserve that much effort being poured into a blog for you. Plus, there would have been no real suspense anyway. We all knew that I was gonna pass. Duh.

The first thing to note in this story is that the test took place in Staines. Staines is a shithole. I mean, they have a statue devoted to some WORKERS IN A LINO FACTORY. For fuck's sake. It's also full of fat pikeys. This has no relevance to the rest of the tale, it's just an observation I made as I was walking through the town center. Lots. Of. Fat. Pikeys. Most of them were also ugly, short, eight years old and wearing synthetic white bodysuits. Being tall, handsome and rich, I quite feared for my life as they congragated like a bunch of lower class avians in a Hitchcock film, their small piggy eyes digging into my soul, possibly in search of drugs or chocolate. Fortunately, I managed to flee into the abandoned barn where my test was to take place before they could rip me limb from limb and feast on my no doubt yumsome organs.

The theory test is all done on touch screen computers (wow, the wonderous age of technology that we live in, eh?) split into two distinct, yet equally compelling, sections:

The Multiple Choice bit
Pretty straightforward. They give you a question and four or so possible answers, you click on the correct one(s), move to the next. 35 to do in 40 minutes.
This is possibly the easiest piece of piss test ever. A seven year old muslim prophet with learning problems could pass this thing without much thought. No matter how easy you think it may be, it's about fifteen times easier than that. It's easier than your mother on a hot day in June.
There's a standard practise for doing each question. First, you read the question. Then you laugh and read it again just to make sure it was as easy as you thought it was. Then you read the answers. The right answer should be pretty obvious; all you do is choose the one containing the words 'slow down' or 'give him plenty of room'. For some reason the DSA (Dog Segue Antibiotics) is obsessed with making their drivers slow down. I bet they'd be happier if we all just sat in our cars and PRETENDED to drive, giving each other lots of room. They love their safety at the DSA (Dry Scimitar Aphrodite). There's this one question where they ask what you'd do if your car breaks down on the train tracks and there appears to be no train coming. They advise 'Get out of the car safely and wait'. For some reason they count the safety of a couple of pointless passengers as being more important than my car and the front of the train and the entire British rail transport system. Fuck that, I'll be choosing 'Push your car off the tracks' as soon as possible. Dickheads.
If you don't know the correct answer straight away, just subract all the retarded 'wrong' answers. These are usually comically wrong (if you see horses on the road, honk your horn at them and accelerate round them ASAP), or contain the words 'accelerate' or 'as quickly as you can'. The DSA (Drum So And) hates the idea of accelerating even more than they love the idea of giving cyclists room.
If you STILL don't know, just take yourself to the woodshack out back and put a shotgun barrel in your mouth. There is obviously no hope for you.
Once you know the answer, just press the screen and it lights up. Then spend a few seconds giggling at the touchscreen technology and selecting every single button on the screen just for the fun of it. Cos touchscreen is C-O-O-L. Like in Star Trek. Is Star Trek cool? Ok, it's C-O-O-L like in one of those socially acceptable Sci-Fis that I actually watch. Like Star Wars? No. Gattaca? No. Shaun of the Dead. I know that it's not a Sci-Fi and it contains no slidy touch screen stuffs but, hey, it's a cool film.
Yeah.
I also decided to purposefully get one question wrong. This was definitely not a mistake on my part, I just didn't want the test setters to feel sad that I'd totally pwned them in my testage. I'm a kind guy. I repeat: I definitely didn't get the following question wrong on purpose. It was alllll intentional:

It is illegal to drive with tyres that...
1: have been bought second hand.
2: have a large deep cut on the side wall.
3: are of different makes.
4: are of different tread patterns.


I ticked answer '3'. Apparently it was 2. Yeah whatever who cares. Bothered?
I blasted through this 40 minute test in literally four and a half minutes. After checking every answer twice and stroking my enormous ego, I decided "Fuck yeah, time for Hazard Perception!" I whooped like an indian, threw on my headphones, and watched a very informative video with some man in a nice suit.

Hazard perception
Basically I had no fucking clue what I was doing with Hazard Perception. I had no idea beforehand so I gained myself a "teach yourself how to do the Hazard Perception test DVD". The first thing to point out about this DVD is that it was presented by the multi-talented SUZI PERRY, most beautiful woman on Earth:


Yes, she can ride motorbikes, be the lady on Treasure Hunt AND present driving videos, ALL AT ONCE. My heroine.

The second thing to note is that it contained very little information about the Hazard Perception test. Instead, it had FORTY FIVE FUCKING MINUTES of Suzi telling me how to not crash into things, and interviewing "Darren", some wanker with a silly haircut and a squeaky voice who was nervous about doing his theory test. Loser. When that was finished, the DVD spat me out into the opening page and said "HA HA, YOU WANT HELP? YOU'LL HAVE TO WATCH THE DVD AGAIN AND GET THE FOUR LETTER PASS CODE". Sigh. But eventually I beat the code out of the DVD by attaching electrodes to its nipples and massaging the tip of its urethra with a soldering iron, and I found out some interesting things about the Hazard Perception test:
  • You watch 14 clips, each showing the POV of a car driving down a road and having wild and crazy adventures.

  • Each clip shows a 'developing hazard' of some sort, be it a car pulling into the road, a child running into the road, a mounted suicide bomber charging you with a sword and grace of God, somebody signalling to cross your path, a bathtub full of geese falling from a high building into the path of a cyclist, etc.

  • It also shows numerous standard hazards, which means "Basically anything else on the road, be it other cars, pedestrians, walls, trees, signs, the road itself, the sky, a cow in a field far far off in the horizon, rain, a leaf blowing across the road, you know, whatever..."

  • You gain points for clicking the mousse in time for the "Developing hazards"

  • You can also click for the non-developing hazards. However, it's not explained whether or not you gain points for clicking these.

  • So basically you just click however much you like and hope to hell that you're correct.

  • If you click too many times, a screen will come up saying "You clicked too many times, you answered this test in an inccorect manner, you get no points for this clip, you fucking dickhead."

So honestly, all I'd found out was that I should click whenever I saw anything, but not to click too much. I was a bit confused, so I decided that the safest thing to do was to take up the tactic of "Just click everytime you see anything moving".

This turned out to be a good idea, and actually made the test jolly exciting. It was like that bit in Resident Evil 4 when I'm in a minecart and all the villagers keep leaping into it and every time I see one moving I gotta blast him outta the air but HOLY SHIT his head just turned into a mass of worms and FUUCK there's the chainsaw man... DUCK! FLASH GRENADE!!! Yeah, it was like that.

So I'm driving in my car and I'm like "HOLY SHIT, PEDESTRIAN!"
*Click*
"WATCH OUT, SIGNALLING CAR AT ONE O'CLOCK!"
*CLICK*
"Cyclist!*
*Click*
"HOLY FUCKING GOD, IT LOOKS LIKE THAT CAR WANTS TO PULL OUT, CLICK THE FUCKING MOUSE NOW IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!"
*CLICK*!!!!

"THERE'S A CAT! GET IT!!!!!!!"
*CLICKKY*
. And then the test finished and I fell to the floor. I then got up and filled in the customer service review thing. Everything was "Satisfactory". Excellent.

Phew. When it was over, I collapsed back in my seat, an exhausted and deadened man. But then it turned out that I'd passed, which makes me instantly more qualified at driving and life than anybody else who reads this blog. You hear that, you losers? I'M MORE QUALIFIED THAN YOU!!! I WIN AND YOU DON'T!

More shortly.

Comedy Mohammed No. 2:


I have made dozens of these pictures now. Prepare yourselves for the long haul.

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