Am I just asking for too much? If I have to have a picture on a piece of ID then I want a decent photo of me on my photo ID. For some reason I always end up looking like some sort of goofball, even when I try to get a really nice image. All of these images were scanned to be as close to the actual document as possible.

Costco Membership Card

Costco Country Club member

This actual undoctored photo is the picture from the front of my warehouse club card. It actually looks better than it does on the card due the process I used to scan the image. The actual photo is much grainier. I used to have a picture of a dog on the card, but one day security got a bug up their ass and made me surrender the card. The reason? "Somebody just might use that card besides the member and we must take preventative measures to guarantee that only members have access to our facilities." Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize I joined some sort of discount country club.

If security was the reason for having the pictures on the card then why the heck was the picture secured to the card using tape? Anybody could peel off the photo and put a different one on the card. In fact, the bozos handed me the card without attaching a photo because the camera was broken, so I just added my own photo. The dog was named "Gilman" because the owner of the company I worked for found him on Gilman BLVD in Issaquah, Washington.

Now the store has switched to what should be a spankingly cool digital camera system that does away with the taped pictures. Instead it takes the photo and impregnates the image directly into the plastic membership card. After seeing this picture I offered to re calibrate the system for them so the pictures would look a little better. They told me the system was just fine and that there was no need for adjustment. Maybe if they cleaned all of the dust off the lens it might have helped, but they were not asking for my opinions.

My Major Cash Credit Card

Don't escape without it!

No this is not a photo of an escaped mental patient (well not yet at least), this is the actual photo from my bank charge card. I asked them to please re-shoot the image, but they do not retake the photos for vanity reasons. Every time a new card is sent to me they used the exact same photo!

It does have one side benefit though. When a cashier sees the photo, they usually laugh and say, "Yup, that's gotta be you." So at least they are looking at the photos and protecting me from the dangerous criminal element that could be stalking my every move in the hopes of jumping me, stealing my credit card, and retiring to the beaches of the Turks and Caicos Islands with my available credit limit of $37.62.

The eyeglasses were drawn in by a waiter when I was dining at the Deluxe bar & Grill up on Broadway in Seattle. My date told me that the waiter did that because he was trying to pick me up. Now I ask you, does this look like the face a good looking waiter that may or may not be gay is going to go after? Not unless he was into taking home lost puppies, and one look at me or my date should be enough to convince him that I settle for way less than he would ever stoop.

Costco Membership Card

Obviously high on goofballs Worker drone number OU812 Would you hire this man?

This was the first picture that was taken at work. Through some weird fluke the camera took a decent picture of me. I must have looked a bit too happy, friendly and upbeat (like I am most days), because for some reason the badge I was using malfunctioned and I had to go get another one. Naturally the good looking picture had been mysteriously purged so that I had to start sporting the picture with the big, fat, extra wide bulbous head. To think that I get a crappy looking picture worthy of a drivers license, and I didn't even have to pay extra for the photo.

The thing I love about the next picture is that it looks like I have a huge big fat extra wide bulbous head. In real life I have a big fat bulbous head, but it is not quite that flat or extra wide, or orange. I look like one of those babies with the really big head and tiny body that stayed like that. My skin actually has a fairly normal tint and not this ultra sexy carrot orange.

I tried to get the bulbous head shot re-taken, but they save the images in a database and they cannot re-shoot the image unless the image becomes corrupted or lost. I bet a lot of people at work considered sneaking in and deleting their image because there is a number of people at work that hate their photos. Next time I am going to wear a bikini. If I have to look like a freak I want to have some control over the process.

As you can see by the photo on the bottom, I was not able to wear a bikini. I picked out a really great shirt that was hunting orange, but Tony, the Security Badge photo guy) would not let me wear an ultra fun oh-look-I'm-shooting-wabbits kind of shirt. It had something to do with the head of Company Security breathing down his neck and spouting off how they need these images to be normal, which is why they would not let me make a face by sticking my hands on the side of my head like antlers or make a really goofy face. Who would have though the head of Security also worked for the Washington State Department of Licensing? (More to come on that subject very shortly)

Another interesting phenomenon about the bottom photo is the strange markings. It started fading out like this at about the same time I was sure my manager was coming to his senses and throwing me out the door. I thought maybe the badge photos had some extra cool feature that causes them to fade to oblivion when they fire an employee, but alas, it was just some freak of plastic. So I have to wonder what these strange marks mean. Is it the work of the ghosts of workers past trying to send the world of the living a message? Is it a message from UFO's? Is it as some have said, the image of the Madonna sending us a message from the heavens? Or is it due to the material of my wallet? Science has yet to answer these questions.

Department of Licensing

The people in the Department of Licensing and I need to have a little chat. I don't mind looking like I just stepped of the boat from Norway in the first picture, but I certainly do mind the second one on the right. It screams out one word,

GOMER!

I have tried to smile with a nice, friendly normal smile but to no avail. The people look at me and say something like, "We don't allow those types of poses here at the Department of Licensing." So what your saying is that you prefer us to look like a mental patient or a rape victim? Don't verbally ask them that question. Just trust me on that one. It only pisses them off even more, and by all accounts they lead pretty pathetic lives in the first place. I would say that the only reason the expression "going postal" caught on and "going License Bureau crazy" did not is the length of the phrase.

I was instructed to look like I did in these two awful photos. I complained but to no avail. The Department of Licensing does not do vanity pictures so they will not re-shoot them. Bastards!

G O M E R	Oh look, I have a bob.	No doughnut is safe!	Just in from Norway
Sadly, these photos are undoctored.

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