PHOTOS IN IDs. ARE WE SUPPOSED TO LOOK BAD? So you know, I had this very nice pa

PHOTOS IN IDs. ARE WE SUPPOSED TO LOOK BAD?

So you know, I had this very nice passport photo for ten years. And a nicer one for ten years before that. And so on. And I had a very nice WA State drivers license for many years. And when I rec’d my Ukrainian passport the photo was OK. But they surprised me with the Ukrainian Drivers license photo and I look like I just rolled out of bed – because we’d just come out of the wind and rain. Don’t’ ask about my Russian passport. I can’t find it. I think it was in a duffel bag in a storage locker in Ukraine, and I’m almost certain it’s been ‘confiscated’ for personal use by someone by now. I ended up giving away my car for pennies to a young guy who really, really wanted it and to work on it, and the clothes I left have disappeared apparently too. 😉

So today, as I continue my year long trials and tribulations of trying to restore my US legal identity (what a nightmare) in no small part because they required me to formally change my name to include my alias (my passport was correct) – I made sure my hair was cut, and I looked ok, and I smiled, but the picture came out and I look like a Pirate. So I said “You made me look like a pirate!” to which the nice woman said, smiling “It’s a nice picture.” And well, I had to get twenty staff people involved in this conversation, all laughing, as usual, and all of them too kind to agree with me that I look like a pirate. But yes I look like a pirate.

Anyway, in two weeks I’ll have a RealID, then in two or three weeks I’ll have a Drivers License. And in GD knows how many months I’ll have a passport. And then I will apparently exist again. Despite having four names that take up more spaces than are allowed in most documentation. And with addresses on all of the id that will have to be updated when I move this year – repeating the process yet again. 😉

So what I’m saying is that I’m all in favor of lifetime implantable chips if it makes all this paperwork, soviet style negotiation and validation by multiple agences, and the related and nonsense go away. And sure that will lead to more scams and such. And the blackmarket in stolen chips will at least provide some cover and amusement once that happens.

But I’m sorta out of that game, so others can experience the joy of international nonsense too. 😉 Pretty sure the good old days of american hegemony, and easy travel, and relative anonymity are on the way out, and that if we don’t stop them the Chinese method of totalitarian surveillance will certainly end up here as a means of extraction of fines making even speech offenses costly. 😉

Cheers 😉