Marko muses on the new airport scanners; lively discussion erupts in the comments. Some good points are made by both sides, and an appearance is put in by Marko's favorite troll, to boot.
My suggestion?
If you absolutely must fly, use those plastic Fisher-Price letters to make a placard that says "Do it to Julia!" and wear it under your shirt.
HAH! That would be worth a stay in a TSA holding cell, fer shur.
ReplyDeleteBut only if I get to keep the screen capture.
"TSA Sucks" loses style points, but is protected political speech.
ReplyDeleteOr "Like the view?" for extra snark.
;-)
Julia? Julia Roberts?
ReplyDeleteHmmm? Maybe, but her mouth is too wide for her face, throws my concentration off.
Shootin' Buddy
I recently re-read that book after you mentioned it. I don't think I'd want to quote that stupid prick of a protagonist. It would be too much like saying I want to be a poster boy for the banality of evil too.
ReplyDeleteI might prefer something like F&*( You Obrian.
The "Do it to Julia" is lost on me too.
ReplyDeleteDo you really think they'd understand it?
ReplyDelete1984, guys.
ReplyDeleteRead it. SRSLY.
Lost on the audience, natch.
ReplyDeleteI think of the regular readers here as being a bit more literate than the average. That horrible, horrible whooshing sound ... make it stop!
*sigh*
Those of you who don't get the Julia quote should go read 1984. It's about the internal discipline of a vicious ruling class of bureaucrats, every one of whom is a horrendous waste of skin. Kinda like the TSA aspires to be.
ReplyDeleteFR, understood, Tam just finished 1984 again. I just like to have fun too. Why let Tam do all the snarking?
ReplyDeleteShootin' Buddy
If you are going to mess with the TSA, you have to remember to keep your snark at the 5th grade level.
ReplyDeleteStick to stuff like:
- Up your nose with a rubber hose
- TSA is a doddy head
- Pervert!
- Mine's longer than yours is
- Does your Momma know you do this?
- Stop it or you will go blind
- your fly is open
- I'll let you touch it for a nickel.
- I showed you mine, now show me yours
Shades of Mohammed Ulysses Fips! (AKA Hugo Gernsback)
ReplyDeleteSince the TSA's "every boy's dream of X-ray glasses" uses millimeter waves, the letters will probably have to be either metal or metal loaded plastic.
Hmm, I wonder what would happen if you did a bit of mirror writing with Testor paint pens with metallic paint on the inside of your clothing. I suspect it would show up quite well.
Stranger
Ride a motorcycle, flying is for fools and independently wealthy.
ReplyDeleteThe comments over at Marko's were all over the mark, so I'll try summarize here...
ReplyDeleteI've been in the CT (as in foreign) business off and on since before 9/11. I have some down on the side of "Wanna stop hijackings? Let us all carry on the damn plane!" - of course we see how that one's gone over.
The Fed - DOD in particular - IS correctly charged with CT and I absolutely disagree with Marko (a first) that fighting the Islamist bastards who seek to destroy us is NOT a "law enforcement problem". Sorry folks it's war and the War Department should be fighting it ('course we should still be called the "War Department but aren't) ARE fighting it and (when allowed to do so), doing a damn good job of fighting it; none of which is inimical with Civil Liberties as guaranteed to us citizens. Does the Imperial Federal/State/Local Governments abuse such things on occasion? Yeah, usually only to the extent that we let them. Somewhere between the body scans at LAX and the body scans at State and Main there will likely be a reckoning - long's we keep the means to do so.
What's a doddy head?
ReplyDeleteAnd I kinda agree that W. Smith isn't really the one to emulate. He isn't good, so much as he is Not Bad. And I don't want to go there.
I think he means "doody head", Joanna. :-D
ReplyDeleteI'm partial to "Nosy little f*cker, aren't ya." stenciled on.
ReplyDeleteFor heaven's sake, Nathan. Give me a little credit. :-)
ReplyDeleteHard to ride a motorcycle to Hawaii, or even a jet-ski. Obamacare Sucks.
ReplyDeleteI'm with the Stranger, but surely there is some ink or paint invisible to the eye yet visible to the machine.
ReplyDeleteIt's the stripping on command that so irritates me. I've about decided that next time I fly, I'll wear a bed sheet and flip flops, with my actual garments in the carry on.
Better than plan A, which was throwaway clothes on the way in, strip in front of the scanner, and go in naked.
Because I'm not this fellow.
1984? Would that it could be so. Do-overs on those 25 years would mean no 9/11 or Iraq or TSA...and no O. I'm thirty again and the visionary who single-handedly opened my eyes had reached his stride. And it was morning in America. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteWhat? The Orwellian '84? Oh. Well, he was off by a decade or three but pretty prescient otherwise.
Here's the thing though. It ain't quite "1984" yet, ya'll; more like 1980 was in the real world. The handbasket was sliding fast and furious towards hell then, too. But freedom as we know it was pulled back from the brink, at least for a while.
Georgie was warning us as to what can happen when we abdicate personal responsibility; Ronnie inspired us as to what can happen when we seize it.
So it's 1980 again; which 1984 will come?
AT
At,
ReplyDeleteVery well said. I truly hope most understand what you refer to, and will act accordingly.
hrmm.
ReplyDeleteif you took metalized mylar tape, cut strips of it and interweaved it basket-style... made a sheet of it (or three, ladies) and stuck it to your undies...
...backscatter effects would have it looking *exactly* like pixelization.
Joanna: "What's a doddy head?"
ReplyDeleteIt's almost exactly like a "doody head" but it more accurately describes Senator Dodd taking his afternoon tea in Barney Frank's office.