Airport Disasters

I am glad I don't fly anymore, that's for damn sure. I would have little patience for dicking around with the dumbass security procedures they've come up with since I last went up.

If not for being mongered by propagating so much irrational fear, I'd like to think most would find much of our security setup now either laughable or intolerable, depending upon one's frequent flyer status.

When Richard Reid botched his shoe thing, I honestly thought it was a joke when, with a jerk of the knee, it was mandated that the shoes come off before stepping foot on an airplane. Even at the time, I distinctly remember thinking that if I were going to blow up a plane still, hypothetically of course, I'd just cram it in down there with my private parts instead. Worthless ridiculous procedure, the shoe rule.

Unpleasant thought there, but if you are willing to blow apart yourself, this bit is really no better off than that at the finish. Then there was that terrorist alert scare later on, the impetus for having the Visine and the Dippity-do and the Evian and all liquid and gel whatnots getting confiscated.

With the exceptions of baby formula and meds, which would lightbulb me as the pretended would-be terrorist, how then I might could sneak on whatever nefarious concoction to cinch my and the rest of the passengers' end with a doctor's note.

That was smartly short-lived, dropped practically overnight for the more fair three ounce limit in a plastic baggie or whatever. But how the hell can something deemed absolute necessity for national security one day be dismissed practically the next tomorrow? It was stupid from the get go, again with that jerky knee acting up. Still dopey the x-ounce order but at least you might manage having an in-flight sip of water from time to time.

Of course even the real stuff of security that has been around forever, the metal detecting and conveyor belt screening and wanding and such, has been tested innumerable times and proven over and over again their doubtful worth given so much ineptness at doing the most basics of the job.

So now the underwear guy synched up with my way of post-Reid thinking and went packing his munition alongside his twig and berries, and straightaway it's all back and forth about calling for or no-way-in-hell full body imaging, making sure that what lies beneath is really all just you. Give me a break.

Why it is invariably said by proponents that this is cool because the watchers would not know who is the passenger, I don't understand. I heard one guy spouting that maybe it would not necessarily even be someone on site doing the peeping, rather somebody possibly halfway around the globe taking a peek, so that would make it all better.

He seemed perplexed that anyone might have a problem with that, like the person pointing and giggling being a world away rather than in the next room really makes so much of a difference.

As the pretended terrorist, I'd go with full on up the poop chute the next time trying again. But what then the aftermath, a obligatory pre-boarding sigmoidoscopy? With all this security shambles going on one should be reluctant flying anymore if perhaps personal hygiene issues might be a bit on the questionable side.

And this nonsense about no messing around with your carry-on stuff, no books nor magazines and no bathroom breaks the last hour of the flight staying seated. Why is no one laughing at this? Come on.

Endless hours on an international flight with the intent to leave nothing behind but broke up plane parts (except for the tail... they always find the tail) and the rules for stopping that are for only in the last sixty minutes?

I reckon if this underpants dude had been caught diddling around with himself midway from Amsterdam to Detroit instead, these new directives might rather be enforced the sixty minute interval equidistant betwixt and between takeoff and landing.

The reasons why the powers-that-be running things around here are so flat out dumbasses are beyond me, unless they simply believe that we are all morons buying into the absurdity of it all. They could have a valid point there, I suppose, which is quite disturbing if true.

But then there's this puzzler from today. Michael Yon of MichaelYon-Online.com, the one been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan for the past five years, on his Facebook page posted today how he got cuffed at the Seattle airport because he clearly did not recognize the consequence of what his income might have to do with national security. "Got arrested at the Seattle airport for refusing to say how much money I make," he wrote.

That's weird judging by our own standards, I think. More weird even than the story shared by the woman caller I heard on NPR'sTalk of the Nation last week following the whole underwear affair.

She had brought to the states some vanilla from a trip to Mexico, put it in her carry-on and then at customs in Houston caused so much ruckus over that and having it taken away, that she afterward managed through unaccountable for the knife she also had in her purse.

And so it goes, our security-as-priority imbecilic goings-on. Kind of makes you want to jab sharp pointy objects into your eyes and ears to make stop the being witness to so much national embarrassment.