IT'S GOT MY NAME ON IT

During lunch hour yesterday, after getting frisked for guns, knives, explosives and being specifically asked if I was carrying a: cellphone (the guard pointing at a chart depicting various hazardous items, a cellphone most prominent among them), I was given my new passport by the very helpful personnel at the US Consulate.

The new Patriot Act passport, though not yet directly employing my own DNA, is a very impressive piece of work and not easily forged, what with the quasiholographic laminations of Ben Franklin, the US eagle and other printing tracery trickery (visible only at certain angles) guarding the passport holder’s countenance.

Such that when outside I first looked at my new passport I thought they’d got the issue date wrong - it looked like 2006 - but when I held it at a sufficient angle it finally said 2005, which anomaly I do not see as a good thing in the hands of harried airport immigration officials in uncertain light confronted by an eccentric traveler in a hurry.

As to seeing the passport photo fully and clearly (as per the very stringent passport photo instructions), what with all the shiny hololamination and the eagle on my face, to say nothing of the blue wavy lines running across my features and the blue cloud of USA sitting atop my head or the red stars along my right ear, it’s hard to tell who that very faint, unwrinkled android is, exactly. But it’s all very patriotic, so I must be in there somewhere.