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Don't Fly During Ramadan
An anonymous reader sends in a harrowing story from Aditya Mukerjee about his recent attempt to fly from New York to Los Angeles. After being pulled aside in the security line, he faced hours of interrogation by uncommunicative officials from several different agencies. When he was finally cleared, his airline, Jet Blue, wouldn't let him on the plane anyway. When he got home, he found evidence that it had been searched. He writes,
"It was 2:20PM by the time I was finally released from custody. My entire body was shaking uncontrollably, as if I were extremely cold, even though I wasn’t. I couldn’t identify the emotion I was feeling. Surprisingly, as far as I could tell, I was shaking out of neither fear nor anger - I felt neither of those emotions at the time. The shaking motion was entirely involuntary, and I couldn’t force my limbs to be still, no matter how hard I concentrated. In the end, JetBlue did refund my flight, but they cancelled my entire round-trip ticket. Because I had to rebook on another airline that same day, it ended up costing me about $700 more for the entire trip. .. But no matter how I’ve tried to rationalize this in the last week and a half, nothing can block out the memory of the chilling sensation I felt that first morning, lying on my air mattress, trying to forget the image of large, uniformed men invading the sanctuary of my home in my absence, wondering when they had done it, wondering why they had done it."
Don't travel by plane.
And don't travel at all.
Built a bomb shelter basement
With titanium walls.
*some restrictions may apply.
Prosser: But the plans were on display.
Arthur Dent: On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar.
Prosser: That's the display department.
Arthur Dent: With a torch.
Prosser: The lights had probably gone.
Arthur Dent: So had the stairs.
Prosser: But you did see the notice, didn't you?
Arthur Dent: Oh, yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." Ever thought of going into advertising?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
How did he know the men in his house were "large?"
They tried on his sweaters and stretched the head-holes.
The Doctor: And your name?
General Staal: General Staal, of the tenth Sontaran fleet. Staal the Undefeated!
The Doctor: Aw, that's not a very good nickname. What if you do get defeated? Staal the Not-quite-so-undefeated-anymore-but-never-mind?
There really were witches in Salem, too. Prove that there weren't!
Sure, just look into my crystal ball ... Oh wait!
I have the sneaking suspicion that you're sort of an idiot.
I own a passport and have traveled to 38 countries on 5 continents. I can't think of any place that offers more freedom than the US. Is our government more invasive than in the past? Yes. Should we change that? Absolutely. Is there someplace with both the same level of security and a less invasive government? No. I am hard pressed to even identify a less invasive government.
We have our problems, but it certainly can be worse. The only place I might consider less intrusive is Canada, but even then it is close and they make up for it with an absurd pile of regulations.
Get rid of the TSA? Absolutely
Reign in the NSA? Should be our top priority.
There is someplace better? Get real.
There are lots of places better. But, speaking on behalf of the rest of the world, we actually like you being this ignorant. Because then you don't leave the USA because you think there are no places better.
Please, stay where you are. We like it that way.
According to his accusers, Mr. Xenu is guilty of extreme war crimes including mass murder by the use of nuclear weapons. There is no statute of limitations on such crimes and if his accusers are saying anything that might be corroborated enough to trigger a police or even customs investigation, that's grounds for adding him to the no fly lists. We also seem to have allegations that Mr. Xenu touched somebody's thetans, and I'm shocked, shocked I say, that apparently nobody has called Chris Hansen with these claims. I fully support adding Mr. Xenu to the no fly lists. (Particularly if the airplane in question resembles a gold plated DC-10).
In addition, Mr. Xenu is alleged to be a space alien, and in the case where I have seen him hanging out outside the Scientology campus in Clearwater Fla. he certainly looked like one. and I have a degree in recognizing space aliens from the University of thousands of hours of Stargate-SG1, Farscape, and Trek. Body cavity searches thus constitute data of priceless scientific value. We ignore people's rights for everything else, why not for science?
Who is John Cabal?
Yeah, that's basically the level of dumbness I've expected from people blinded by terrorism-induced paranoia. I mean, I guess I can kinda sympathize; the world is getting pretty fucking scary, but a large chunk of that is precisely because everyone's walking around so crazy and paranoid!
Funny story: Back in like 2002, I was living in an apartment over an Indian restaurant, and we had an earthquake— now this was in Vermont, mind you, and I'm from New Jersey so like, earthquake, what? —and I swear to god, my first thought was "Oh shit, some fucking rednecks couldn't tell Indians from Arabs and bombed the restaurant!" (Not one of my finest moments; sprawled out prone on the living room floor, looking like Garfield in a car window.)
That's a good tip about the clothes, by the way.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*