Today I received a rejection letter from the electoral commission. My application to change address had been denied because I’d failed to enter the digits, one, nine, at the beginning of my birth year. Omitting the exact century was a careless mistake; the form clearly indicated a need for all four numerals. But maybe I was born in the year 76 A.D. They’re the ones warped enough to believe I might be 140 years old; if we’re being ridiculous let’s at least push some boundaries. The way I see it, we had no issues with the Y2K bug, technology is such that even Word can assume 95% of common errors, and the likelihood that I might live into the next century is very slight. Surely the government’s need for precise information can be overlooked to save a little paper.