February 5th, 2002

The Nation that Freaked Out



We've been at war with terrorism for about five months now, which may come as a shock to you if you're an eccentric hot air ballooner just coming down from your ridiculous two year trip around the world. In which case, let me tell you, we've been doing a lot of freaking out. We've almost stabilized, so I've categorized the specific types of freaking out we did and possible ways to avoid them in the future just in case terrorism wins the war and we end up living in a world where it's required by law to be terrifying.



Reaction One-- Increased Secutiry: Pretending to be Idiots

Security immediately became our main concern after 9-11. The only problem with security is that it's based around pretending to be an idiot. A clerk asking me if I packed my own bag isn't going to foil anyone's smuggling operation, but the two of us have to pretend to be stupid enough to think we're keeping the world safe. Airport security quadrupled after September 11th, which meant that security personnel had to pretend to be idiots four times as hard.



I saw a business man get searched a month aftwards. A security woman found his nail clippers, got pissed off, broke off the file part of them, and saved each and every one of our lives. Afterwards she even made eye contact with me as if I might share her intolerance for all these fucking business men that may at any time want to clean under their toenails. Now, I might have an unusual perspective as the world's foremost donkey basketball enthusiast, but to me, if you think crippling bathroom devices is the key to passenger safety, you're either a fucking moron or playing make-believe. Even if he was the kind of kung fu master who would try to take on a plane with nail clippers, he has the same chance of doing so with or without the little pointy thing.



Over the holidays, I saw airport security take away a 60-year-old woman's tweezers. Tweezers. I want to tell everyone right now, you don't need to pretend to be stupid that hard to make me feel safe. In fact, if I'm ever a passenger on a plane that gets taken over by a 60-year-old woman with a pair of tweezers, I fucking deserve to die. And after I'm dead, I'll walk up to the pearly gates and say, "Hi, Saint Peter, I'm with the group that got killed by the old lady with tweezers. I assume there's a section of Heaven for unbelievable pussies?"





It's not rocket science spotting terrorists, airport security. Newspaper headlines are going to read, "Twitchy mutant freak caught on a plane trying to explode own shoe."





You'll never read "Loving grandmother of six and wanted terrorist, Henrietta Fields is wanted in connection with 98 fatal tweezer stabbings."





You have a better chance of reading, "Novelty Menudo drum wanted in connection with transforming into Voltron and curing bowel cancer." There are some airports that have never had a problem with terrorism. Over the holidays I was at the airport at Boise, Idaho where five camoflaged armed soldiers at every [the] metal detector were eyeballing everyone. The only problem is that their camoflage was made to blend into a jungle envirornment and forgive me if you're the type of genius who already knew this, but there aren't any jungles in the airport. That means that if they ever end up in a gunfight against a group of elderly passengers with contraband nose hair trimmers they're all going to have to hide in the same rubber tree plant.



One of the biggest tragedies involving airport security was the huge number of editorials that appeared in every paper, magazine, and TV show in the country complaining about it. That's fine; you should complain every time someone shoves a bomb-sniffing dog three feet into your asshole for wanting to ride their plane. Those don't bother me. The editorials that bothered me were the ones by people complaining security wasn't tight enough. There were all these brave investigative journalists that were outraged they managed to get through checkpoints with a butter knife in their carry on. Some people even got arrested after they got through checkpoints and screamed "Look! I got a pocket knife through! I could have killed everybody!" These fuckers shouldn't think they've spotted the hole in our safety net because non-terrorists like themselves are allowed to get through with harmless everyday items. That doesn't mean we're all going to die. All it means is that the person at the metal detector wasn't a complete fucking moron. If commuters really only feel safe when they're getting punished for something somebody else did, they're going to love my new invention. They're called Airport Pants, and they electrify your genitals every time I think about having sex with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.



Now that our airport security is a gag taken straight out of a movie about a possible dark future where nazi Germany won, we should embrace people who don't highjack planes. Like women. My statistics might be off by a decimal or two, but in between the time they spend having pillow fights and slowly trying on lingerie, not one woman has ever highjacked a plane. In fact, they're so unlikely to kill us, I think airport security should issue them helmets that launch rockets. That way, if one of these white people with their nail clippers ever starts some shit we'll have people on our side ready to flex cybernetic hat implants that release a high-powered rocket payload into their faces.



Security agents need to use their heads. While airport security agents are pretending that tweezers are deadly weapons, they're also pretending not to notice that slightly over one hundred percent of terrorists are of middle eastern descent. I know racial profiling upsets all the people who still believe the lyrics in Whitney Houston songs, but everyone will understand if airport security uses a little bit of common sense when they're deciding who is likely to explode something and who is just a person who might need a fingernail file.



Maybe it's wrong to discriminate against a people just because they occasionally blow up a plane, but I'm going to try to talk you into it. Say, for example, you're an Arab at the airport. First of all, welcome to one of my country's beautiful airports, suspicious traveller from afar. You'll notice that security searches everyone in the airport including you. That means you have to wait in line for three to four hours while they go through the luggage of all the old ladies ahead of you for no good reason other than try to not hurt you and and your people's feelings. Now imagine how nice it would be if they ignored everyone else and went straight for your luggage. You just saved four hours of standing in line, and all you have to do to get on the plane is not carry a bomb. I want to make it clear that no one is accusing you of being a highjacking murderer, we're only accusing you of being of the only race that has a CHANCE of being a highjacking murderer. Searching white people and hoping to find a terrorist is like searching white people and hoping to find a talking birthmark that can predict the future. It's certainly possible, but mostly you're just wasting everyone's time, you god damn idiot.



On to Part Two



