You're on a long journey, maybe involving many flight connections, a couple of buses and a camel. You've listened to all the podcasts on your phone, your ears are numb with listening to music, you've finished the only book you brought with you and you've even read the in-flight magazine. This is when you should open your passport and read the short story, beautifully offset-litho printed in multicoloured pastel inks across multiple pages as one of the background security features. Every 5 years (in most countries) the passport design is refreshed to combat counterfeiters so that's when a new short story would be chosen.-- hippo, May 17 2023 Passport redesign from our glorious leader. https://www.thestar...s-hed-scrap-it.html [2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 18 2023] Approved! My latest passport (EU - hurrah) is just a credit card sized plastic card with a photograph and all sort of bio-metric gibberish. Can the short story in this case take the form of a micro print and be read by scanning it into an iPhone or iPad?-- xenzag, May 17 2023 [xen] I'm slightly surprised that you don't travel with a microfilm reader and a selection of different magnification lenses as a matter of course. Everyone else I know does.-- pocmloc, May 17 2023 I’m now also imagining the exact opposite of the idea…. a massive 1,000 page closely written tome with passport features.-- xenzag, May 17 2023 Mildred and the Oboe-- calum, May 17 2023 Story selection could be a somewhat thorny issue for the State department to work out, to avoid ruffling feathers in certain countries, but I like the idea. Imagine a country being offended by a story that vaguely seems supportive of capitalism or greater individual freedom than they allow.-- 21 Quest, May 17 2023 No use of a humourous story on the Chinese Passport of course (or for several other countries)-- xenzag, May 17 2023 I think that this is an infinitely better idea than the changes currently being made to our passports here. [link]
No more historical images, just pop-art.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 18 2023 Yes, it’s traditional for everyone, in every country in the world, to grumble about their country’s regular passport redesign and then, 5 or 10 years later, to grumble about the passport design they so hated before being replaced with another one.-- hippo, May 18 2023 //massive 1,000 page closely written tome with passport features// Now there's an idea! I've come close to filling all the pages of the passport, but not quite--do they just tape more pages in? Not very classy, or legal, probably. Staples might be legal.
[xen]'s idea would allow for never running out of a page to stamp on a 10-year passport! We could mark the voyage using the Librarian's trick of stamping the page that matches the end number of the year, month or day of travel, eg: processing a new book for shelving, the Librarian stamps 'Property of Unseen University*' at the bottom of page 23 for a book purchased in the year 2023.-- Sgt Teacup, May 18 2023 Will they quiz you on the story line? +-- xandram, May 18 2023 “Did anyone in this story ask anyone else in this story to take any prohibited articles on this flight?”-- hippo, May 18 2023 Define prohibited.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 19 2023 It's a metaphor from keeping something in front of something. So, for example, an airline employee might hope to keep your big bag of detcord in front of the check- in desk, and not let it into the hold of the aircraft which waits somewhere behind.-- pertinax, May 19 2023 Yes stupid to try carrying that on. Should have split it into two small bags.-- pocmloc, May 19 2023 Or maybe we could change the metaphor; maybe "inhibited" would be our friend: "exhibited" probably less so.-- pertinax, May 19 2023 random, halfbakery