I feel like a new man

I had to go to the Virginia Division of Vital Records this morning to get a copy of my birth certificate. I accidentally let my driver's license expire last week and, in order to get it renewed, the DMV needs me to prove I'm a man born of woman, or something similar.

The interesting part is that in order to get a copy of your birth certificate you need to provide proof that you are who you say you are. Luckily for me, they'll accept an expired driver's license.

I hope this is making sense, because it's actually a quite brilliant money-making scheme. Instead of creating some strange, complex system which holds such arcane information as whether or not you were born, it was decided to be much more lucrative to keep all relevant and related information completely separate and priced just low enough to stop anyone writing their local representative.

So, off I went to pay $12 for proof I exist and then to the DMV to pay the $20 to replace the expired identification which, while good enough to prove who I am to the state of Virginia, is not good enough to prove who I am to the state of Virginia.

But it's not all bad; in fact, I can think of two good things that happened in order to counter-balance the trips I made around town. One, my new driver's license photo continues my run of 5 straight identification photos in which I look like a serial killer. And two, on the way to the DMV I saw a car with a license plate which read LICENSE and a bumper sticker which read BUMPER STICKER.

Moral of the story: I also need an oil change.