(Don't) Take a Number.

Need a passport and aren't overly fond of being herded like cattle, or of having to pull tiny tissue paper numbers like the ones you used to find at the deli counter? Try filling out the online version of your application before heading to the passport office. It gets assigned a bar code (no, not for entrance to a secret watering hole), which gives you preference when you have to set foot into those sterile government offices. And spares your back from those rickety wooden chairs. Bureaucrats that they are, it still cannot save you from the rickety, wooden passport agents. It's half the battle nonetheless -- a sort of 'Get out of jail free' card. You know, without the jail. Ironic, considering that bar codes tend to look like cells.

Actually, the online version is relatively painless, you don't have to worry about whether or not you used the right colour of ink and it's legible. The bar code, though, is the golden goose. Person after person came in at the same time as I today, having diligently inked their responses like a bad prison tattoo, and were told they'd have a couple hour wait. Bar code in hand, I waited about five minutes. It wasn't quite a golden aura that ushered me to the next agent, but getting out of a government office in less than a half-hour? It might as well have been. Folks looked at me askance as they were forced to trudge -- all the while, muttering like people who push their cats around town in a grocery cart -- over to the corral. Somehow, saying that I was 'with the band' didn't quite fit. This time.

Unfortunately, the bar code doesn't help with the price. Or with the passport photos, about which they have become increasingly picky. And yes, I had to have my nose powdered when I had mine taken because it was otherwise "too shiny". At least I'm secure. With the rush (no, not Limbaugh) to have passports in order to enter the land of Bush as of January 2007, passport offices will no doubt continue to get busier. Go ahead: turn your life into a series of vertical lines of varying lengths. It'll save you time. And back ache. The bars will make you free.