Make no mistake about it; THIS is a mug shot!

Recently, The State Of Rhode Island began to enforce some new guidelines at the Department of Motor Vehicles; the DMV. The first one on the list will be; smiling on your driver’s license picture will no longer be tolerated! That’s not all. Hair on the face, wearing glasses, open mouths, un-squared shoulders, and even excessive makeup will not be allowed, or the license will not be issued. Excessive makeup?  Well, it looks like the amount of grown woman riding bicycles in North Providence and Johnston is about to increase exponentially! Don’t scowl; nobody get teased more on this website than Zulu Delta himself. Besides, who do you think told me about the old makeup department in Douglass Drug on Mineral Spring Avenue in the first place?

These picture practices have been coming for a long time. United States passports have been enforcing these guidelines for a while. Rhode Island has some new cameras and new software. The changes are being mandated by the Federal Government, and it all has to do with facial recognition data bases. The idea is to crack down on fraud, crime and identity theft. States failing to comply with the facial recognition guideline could face penalties. One example; that state’s licence will not be allowed to be used as identification when boarding a plane. Really? I’m sure the now-infamous United Airlines Flight last week, when a man was beaten and taken off a plane could have used a few smiling people.

I know, I know, I’m a little cyclical today. We all want to be safe and sound and fight crime, so we tolerated not being able to smile. For those of us who not only like to smile, but go out of their way to do so because we think it improves the quality of life on the planet, being told not to smile aggravates us.

I mean after all, I not saying that living in the modern-day world has branded every living person a terrorist or criminal by the “ever-present, always seeing, always knowing” fascist government who has already started filling out the paperwork complete with pictures from the DMV, to charge us with a crime or act of terrorism “to be named later.” Like that could ever happen?

“ZULU……..”

I mean it’s blatantly obvious; in the future, all smiling, vision-impaired people are actually criminals and terrorist trying to deceive authorities by faking happiness and wearing glasses.

“ZULU…..STOP IT!!”

I’m only teasing. That would be ridiculous. Besides, they don’t really need those pictures, because in the near future, the government will be installing “identification chips” under the skin of every person alive ( and a few dead) anyway.

“ZULU!!!…….(sigh)……aw never mind…………”