Trying to renew my Driver’s License/California Permanent ID.

To do so, I need a copy of my birth certificate. Sure, that’s around here somewhere. Should be easy to find, since it’s heavy, carved in Cuneiform on a big rock.

Nope. Can’t find it.

I can get a copy from Kern County, though. $45.

It will get here a week after my license expires.

But it won’t get here at all unless I pay an extra $25 to get my true identity verified. (Secretly, my true identity is Don Diego de la Vega, aka “Zorro”). That okay. You can do that online, through a convenient online notary.

By the way, here’s an older Don Diego, about my age, played wonderfully by Anthony Hopkins.

Online Notaries ask a lot of questions—maybe it adds a little excitement to their dreary Bob Cratchity lives? Once they’re done being nosy, you submit a photo of your Driver’s License—mine’s the one that’s about to expire—front and back.

Okay.

To the photo submission page:

Take photo. Submit.

Failure.

Take photo. Submit.

Failure.

Take new photo. Submit.

Failure.

(I do this all the time when I make an online bank deposit, by the way, so I’m no newbie.)

Take new new photo. Submit.

Failure.

I submit heated a note to Mr./Ms. online notary. No cuss words, but it does include the adjective “absurd.”

Now I know why folks hate The Guvmint. Come to think of it, Zorro had a beef with the colonial Mexican guvmint of California, too.

Singing to self: Out of the night/When the full Moon is bright/Comes the horseman known as ‘Zorro’…