Wonkette
Facial recognition software operates on the principle that people never make expressions ever, and just wander the earth looking like dead-eyed zombies. Thus the Virginia DMV, in order to make driver’s license pictures more compatible with the latest facial recognition techmologies, has decreed that you can’t smile in your photo.
As the very predictable joke goes, who wants to smile at the DMV anyhow? HAR HAR HAR do not laugh, if you are about to have your picture taken!
Now everybody’s license will have a photo that looks more like a mug shot, which should make processing go a little more smoothly down at the police station.
The new rule also benefits Virginia’s very large and historically oppressed population of people without teeth.
As if It Needed to, Virginia Bans Smiles at the DMV [Washington Post]
Darn, I was hoping that when I move to VA, I could do the “cockmongler smile pose” in my new license.
Can you still smile for your mugshot? Is there no better feeling?
Virginia is for Pouters.
“The new rule also benefits Virginia’s very large and historically oppressed population of people without teeth.”
Wait, I thought Virginia’s toothless population had historically formed the majority, and oppressed the tooth-having people, who only took over in 2006.
socialists.
Virginia is for unsmiling, hateful lovers.
What about this Virginia resident?
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1020051delay1.html
After waiting in line for 3 hours and dealing with the dropout morons working at VA DMV, I don’t know how anyone could be in the mood to muster a smile. When I lived in VA, one of my most dreaded tasks was doing ANYTHING at the DMV.
Wait ’til Toonces hears about this.
http://www.videovat.com/videos/2557/toonces-driving-cat.aspx
So if I walk around smiling I screw up the facial recognition software?
Too much work, screw it.
Why so serious?
O/T, but you gotta’ see this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/28/brenda-lee-reporter-dragg_n_208772.html
They do the same for Canada City Passport photos so we all look like someone told us that they banned Ice Hockey forever.
First they came for the happy people and I said nothing…
In other news, Maryland expects a population increase of 25% over the next several months.
Holy Cow!!: That’s pretty much any DMV in the country… Excecpt of course, Massachusetts, where they don’t have a DMV. Instead, you must deal with the RMV. They’re even worse.
I just saved time by checking the “terrorist” box on my license application.
Wait - people have driver’s license photos that don’t already look like mugshots?
Buttshots
mollymcguire: No License for You!
From now on everyone is going to have to look like this.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/nolte1.html
bitchincamaro: Now that’s what I call gonzo journalism. Fuck you, Hunter!
This is only going to end in tears. They wouldn’t let me smile for my passport (that’s right, I’ve been outside the country, which is where I caught “Teh Liberals”), and in the photo I look like I’m going to hijack everything, everywhere, forever.
Can I give them my “O” face?
So long as they keep giving out non-driver IDs to Mohammed Atta and his pals, everything will be okay.
Anybody else think it’s downright insane to let Patti and Selma Bouvier determine people’s official identities? Come one, give me the goddam RFID chip — I’m ready, particularly if I can get through airport security faster. It’s not like they’re not already listening to my conversations through the smoke detectors.
Wouldn’t we be easier to identify if we all had our social security numbers tattooed on our foreheads?
SayItWithWookies: Or the number of the beast? Aren’t we supposed to get that sometime soon?
@SayItWithWookies: Are you saying you don’t? Luddite.
Anyway, I gotta go get my credit card info tattooed on my penis, then head to the grocery store and try it out. Later!
1. This new rule is going to be pure hell for schizophrenics: http://innovexpo.itee.uq.edu.au/2002/projects/s358844/image1.jpg
2. At least Dick’s a shoe-in:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/cheney%20twn.jpg
Holy Cow!!: That’s pretty much the way it is in ANY state. I don’t live there anymore, but when I lived in California, it was bad. I can’t imagine how much worse it must be now, with all their budget issues…
SayItWithWookies: Despite the possibility of an increase in felonious beat-downs by Va. motor cops, I believe that a barcode on the butt is the way to go.
Holy Cow!!: The DMVs in Iowa are staffed by people who are efficient, competent, and friendly. Also, gay marriage is legal, and we have cows made of butter, not that all these things are related, maybe.
SayItWithWookies: Good idea. And maybe we should just stop wearing regular clothes and don the pink prison costumes in advance of our arrests to save time for Sheriff Arpaio.
Naked Bunny with a Whip: You Iowans should thank the Lord for your horrible winters. Otherwise we’d all move there and you’d be California.
Jukesgrrl: Naked Bunny with a Whip: Yeah, and what’s up with all those colleges (Grinnell, Cornell, Coe, Drake, and the enlightened Maharishi U there in Parsons)? How much book-learnin’ do you need to tassel the corn?
Jukesgrrl: I’d throw a snowball at you, but it’s almost June and the last snowbank melted weeks ago.
In the future, you will no longer need to carry a drivers license. You just Twitter your license to the cop. Actually, with Twitter there is no need to go anywhere, much less drive there. We will evolve into quivering blobs with tiny hands and fingers only big enough and strong enough to use Twitter.
V572625694: We need to educate the kiddies so they’ll leave Iowa once they discover we have no jobs for smart young’ins. Keeps the state nice and quiet-like.
@Johnny Zhivago: “Will” evolve?
bitchincamaro: Appropo nothing else in that story, the wingnut says “”I was afraid you could see under my clothes,” when she was removed from LAX.
Just, fucking, wow.
Naked Bunny with a Whip: I’d move back to Mt Vernono in minute if it weren’t for the winter and the absence of oceans and mountains and forests and deserts. Must be all them colleges and uny-versities that convinced people there’s nothing wrong with a coupla boys who want to get hitched.
Naked Bunny with a Whip: He’s speaking of non-Iowans. Most of the country is already quivering blobs with tiny hands ….
Nice pussy pic
Naked Bunny with a Whip: The only good thing to result from 9-11 was the DMV overhall in New Jersey. The agency was completely redone after it was determined that some of the hijackers were able to obtain NJ driver’s licenses. It is now super-efficent. Just about every service is provided quickly and hastle free. You will rarely get service with a smile, but I’ll trade friendliness for brisk efficency anyday. You have to give credit to the former ghey-American-in-chief, even if he was otherwise corrupt.
OK. Ready? Say “macaca.”
I last had my photo taken at the Texas DMV over ten years ago. I renew my license online and they send me a new one with the old photo. I haven’t visited the DMV this century. Don’t know when I might need to return. Probably when those secondary sexual characteristics kick in and my ears & nose expand exponentially while my peen & huevos turn to dust. My life…
V572625694: Don’t you de-tassle corn? I only know this because I took a job doing that one summer after I graduated from Purdue. I did it one day and said “fuck this.” Worst fucking job on the planet not involving feces, sex or garbage. You take a bus out to the middle of nowhere, wear long sleeves & pants in the hot summer and spend all day walking rows of corn. I’d rather stick needles in my eyes.
My DL photo couldn’t look any more like a mugshot, unless I went underwater so my hair resembled Nick Nolte’s tresses in his classic pose. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/nolte1.html
why did baby jesus put so much cute in pussy cats?
kentucky has had this rule for a while. centuries of bourbon, tobacco, fried chicken, and overt racism can really take a toll on smiles ratio.
Johnny Zhivago: OK, OK already. I’ll ride my bike to work tomorrow. Happy?
american mutt: Pussy cats are all that makes life worth living.
nugsybogues: Brak!!
Cape Clod: Apologies…I didn’t clicky yours before posting it myself. But that’s what’s great about the classics–you always see something new each time.
So you’re saying Virginia licenses will look like this:
http://www.muggn.com ?
Scary prospect …
american mutt: It’s because the soul of Karl Marx, Lucifer’s empathetic servant, now controls America’s puppy dogs. http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/features/mutts/blog/bo_obama_white_house3.jpg
Well, almost.
Poor Mr. Sardonicus. He’ll never get his VA driver’s license.
Have you see the new licenses too? I just got my husband’s renewed license in the mail and it’s all ghey purpley with sepia colored photographs and a hologram of your face on the one side.
It’s retarded looking!
Cape Clod: lotusflwr: All who noted the shiny happy people–and Nick Nolte–get the win.
Tom Delay was and probably is a threat to national security–nothing that 10 to 20 in the joint can’t fix.
Oh, and on that theme, here’s a DL photo/mug shot to brighten your day. Put on a happy face!
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/tampa14mug4.html
That is the hardest I have laughed at a picture in a while. I swear to God someone is squeezing that poor cat’s nuts.
chascates: Dude, I have to do that every single day at my job…so I can fool facial recognition software?!? I’m totally ditching Ho’wood and goin’ to work for the CIA. Of course, that’s not so much fun now that you can’t beat, torture and rape the shit out of people…
What if I get a lip tattoo? Does that throw of the racial facial recognition software?
I live in the Commonwealth, folks, and lemme tell you, it doesn’t matter if you smile; your pic will still make you look like an escapee from a Mississippi chain gang. Virginia has an uncanny knack for turning smiles upside down.
I like my DL picture! Do I really have to trade it in for my “coffee now!” face?
Damn it, my VA drivers’ license makes me look like an oompa loompa. I’m ORANGE. And no, I do not fake tan: I’m a pasty white girl — like “advanced degrees” pasty — and I’m working that look. Not like I was smiling anyway after several hours in the DMV, but I’m more than happy to trade this abomination in for something in a natural skin tone.
Ophelia Butts: The Arlington DMV on Four Mile Run? I have the same problem as do my husband and friends who went there
There’s not really a reason to smile if you live in Virginia, anyway.