So, there I was: Standing at the cash register in a technical book store in Portland, Oregon.

I had recently slid a copy of some nerdy book across the counter to the cashier. Several seconds later, she asked me to pay for it (which is reasonable), and I handed her my debit card.

She ran the card, handed me the receipt, and I signed it. She took the receipt, and compared my signature with the one on the card.

"Do you have any ID?" she asked.

The (apparent) problem, you see, is that my card has been run about forty thousand times, and the signature on the back is a little worn. Admittedly, it is a bit hard to see it. This shouldn't matter, though.

Why?

Because it's a photo card. It has my bloody-stinking photo on the front in addition to a permanently printed signature. It's all embedded in the plastic (or something). It's infinitely more reliable than the little crap surface we get on the back of these cards for our signatures. There's no question at all. Sure, my hair looks a little different, but it's due to a lighting issue (I call it my "shadow mullet"). It's close enough that it should be perfectly obvious that I really am the guy who owns the card.

In spite of all of this, there isn't a week that goes by where I am not asked for some additional piece of identification before a given cashier will agree to finalize a transaction. Am I the only one who thinks this is totally ridiculous?

The idea of the signature as a security device is about the dumbest thing to have followed us into the 21st century. Sure, we still have war, hunger, and disease, but this signature thing takes the cake.

I can see how signatures would have made a lot of sense before the transistor, but not now. Not at all. As anybody who ever forged a note in their youth to get out of gym class knows (my sister sure does - she forged several hundred before my mom found out and called her a "bitch"), signatures are easy to fake. My dad used to lend me his credit card when I needed to get food/clothing.

"Why, yes," I'd say. "That's me - Scott Blyth." As long as the signature was correct, nobody ever wanted to know why there was a fourteen year old boy in their store buying a stack of socks with a gold card. But, mess up on a letter in the signature, and all the warning bells go off. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

So, according to some old stupid bumper sticker, if I'm not part of the solution, then I'm part of the problem. While I think this is total crap, it does offer a nice little segue into my proposed therapy for this ongoing transactional leprosy:

Head implants.

Yeah. I want a chip soldered onto my brain. When it's time to pay for something, I want to be able to just stick my head in a spherical cage-like scanning device, and have the payment go through automatically. Don't even try to tell me that this wouldn't be easier than using a credit card.

Going through a toll gate? Just stick your head in the spherical cage-like scanning device at the side of the road. Voila: Magic a la Ali Baba.

Paying for dinner? Excuse yourself for a moment so that you can go stand in the line for the spherical cage-like scanning device. When you get there, remember that tons of people have gone before you, and use some of the provided disinfectant wipes to sanitize the thing before you easily and conveniently pay for your dinner.

We could install these things everywhere: Vending machines, ATMs, grocery stores. There would be consumer-level spherical cage-like scanning devices that could be quickly and easily attached to your home computer, allowing Amazon to scan your head for personal financial information.

We could get really fancy and wire the thing into the occipital lobes. Then, Amazon could beam those X-10 camera pop-up ads directly into your brain.

I think I'm onto something here.

There might be the slight problem of someone stealing your head so that they can use it to pay for Bon Jovi CDs online, but let's face it: They're just not going to get away with it. They'll get caught at some point, a few heads down the road. They always do.

Because I'm a bit of a visionary, I'll throw in one last little tidbit: It can also open your garage door. You'll have a spherical cage-like scanning device attached to the dashboard of your car. When you get home, instead of having to go through the cumbersome ritual of reaching for the remote, you can just stick your head in the spherical cage-like scanning device conveniently located in your own car, and this will cause your garage door to open.

I think I was put on this earth to make life easier for the rest of you. "Rory Blyth - Friend of Man." That's what they'll call me someday.