U-S-A! ... U-S-A! ... U-S-A! [repeat obnoxiously]

It feels like forever, but I finally got my passport application sent off via my local post office. So after a trip to the recorder office for my birth certificate, two trips to Costco to develop varying sizes of my own passport photo (on the second trip I noticed they offer passport photos for a mere $4.99 – d'oh!), three trips to the post office's passport room, a sworn statement (I had to raise my right hand and everything! Too bad there wasn't a Koran lying around, eh?), and two checks totaling $97.00, I have the pleasure of waiting at least 6 weeks for processing (that's only IF they don't find my huge cache of WMDs, enriched uranium, and cocaine which I hide underneath my global warming machine). Who knew leaving the country would be so involved? I actually would've preferred that they give me a Canadian passport all things considered. I wonder if I could convince the State Department to add a check box on the application...

On a completely unrelated but rant-lite note, I finally heard one of the more popular songs at the moment from some guy/band named Daughtry. Is it just me, or do we have enough bands that sound like Nickelback already?