(no subject)

[camwyn]

The New Jersey Division of Motor Vehicles has been claiming for some time now that I apparently changed my name in some nefarious way back in 2003 or 2004 or something like that. Which is bollocks, 'cos if I changed anything it would be either my address or the use/lack of use of my middle initial, but enh. My license expires next week and the DMV here in Jersey City is open until noon today. I'm packing eight points' worth1 of identification, some knitting, and a copy of the Shah-Nahmah2 and heading for Summit Street.


1New Jersey has rules about how many forms of ID you can use and how valid they are. It's part of verifying identity for the sake of a digital driver's license. Four points for an existing digital driver's license, a birth certificate or certified copy (hospital copies/baptismal certificates not okay- government issue only), current valid military photo ID, adoption papers, naturalization/citizenship papers, refugee travel document, green card, or foreign passport with INS/USCIS verification and valid record of arrival and departure. THree points for a civil marriage certificate, divorce decree, court name change order, military dependent card, military photo retiree card, or NJ firearm purchaser card. Two points for your school or college photo ID if and only if accompanied by your transcript; also for state/federal/local photo identification, discharge papers, or a pilot's license. One point for any one of a bunch of other things, but you can only use up to two one-pointers, and you have to show at least one of the four-pointers. Long, messy, etc., but it does mean that at some point in his or her life, a licensed New Jersey driver had to pay attention to something.

2The Shah-Nahmah, or however you spell it, is the Persian national epic, the Book of the Kings. It's huge. It's something I've read one or two stories from in the past in a collection of horse stories, because one of the legendary heroes had a legendary horse - Roustam's horse Rakush. It is simultaneously the equivalent of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Shakespeare canon; the first two in terms of cultural significance, the latter in terms of how much influence it had on the language in which it was written. It's also part of my penance for having watched and enjoyed 300. If I can go to the length of reading real Greek historians' accounts of the time, I can certainly do the Persian side the same favour.