Pat-down alternative

You’ve probably heard of this, so go on to the next blog if you have.  I just thought it was so ingenious that it needed to be passed along.

Airport screening.  E-gad what a mess it is now.  Full body scans or, your choice, a nice touchy-feely pat down.  Everyone is up in arms.  Well, not really everyone as the press loves to intimate, but certainly another step in the invasion of privacy in the quest of safety.  And, just recently, some poor guy with a Foley Urinary Catheter bag full of urine had it ruptured by an aggressive TSA employee such that he had to endure a trip home smelling like he just came off a New York subway.  Now THAT would piss you off.

Not to worry, citizens.  Not to worry.  Someone has come up with a solution.  Everyone would still need to be screened, but this steps back from a feeling of invasion towards a more high-tech, sterile approach. 

Yes, it’s still impersonal.  The solution is to provide a walk-through container operated by airport security.  Your luggage would accompany you in the chamber.  Once the traveler securely inside, the agent would flip a switch which seeks out and detonates any explosive device in a bag or on the person of said traveler.  The explosion chamber resonates with a muffled “whump”, security staff goes in, flushes out the debris, and the process continues.  The threat is compromised and the 77 virgins of Islam welcome yet another suitor for all eternity.

A bit harsh?  Possibly.  Taking the worry out of the friendly skies?  Priceless

It’s always something

While recently in New York City we saw this play, and I have so say is the best one I’ve seen in a great while…..

     … I’ll not bother here with detail of plot, what it is - what it is not, though I’m sure it will be some time before I see another play so well written in rhyme.

  The following I took from the web site and have paraphrased it since it didn’t sound right.  American playwright David Hirson's rollicking 1991 play, La Bete, is a comic tour de force about Elomire (David Hyde Pierce), a high-minded classical dramatist, quite the pessimist, who loves only the theater, and Valere (Mark Rylance), a low-brow street clown who loves only himself, on which he will incessantly expound.

  When the fickle princess (Joanna Lumley) decides she's grown weary of Elomire's royal theatre troupe and its theory, he and Valere are left fighting for survival in her court as art squares off with ego in a literary showdown of retort.

  At first one wonders just what is it about the clown who blunders his way through the first 30 minutes of the play.  But the script so eloquent mesmerizes the listener to such extent that one cannot help but be swept in.  Mr. Rylance has a cadence so rhythmic and seemingly unending that it builds the humor - sending the audience into a trance.

  How fun it must be to write completely in rhyme that I myself might try it sometime.  One who has knowledge of couplet and verse may think this play possibly worse but as for me it was delightful to see it.

  It was something

Jesus at the Metropolitan Market

I'm always grumpy in the morning.  The other morning I was heading to the office, hungry, pissed that I was both hungry AND out of bed.  I decided to stop by the Metropolitan Market for some yogurt, pissed that I was hungry, out of bed and had to eat something I really didn't want because eating a donut makes me fatter.  I pull up, get out of the car and hear a woman's voice crying "Oh, no...OH NOOOOO!".  Good Lord, what?  A robbery at 7:30 AM?  
No.  Apparently a stylishly dressed woman was tendering to her stylishly dressed kid and had spilled a $7.50  grande, decaf, double shot, no-whip, mocha-yoka coffee drink inside what appeared to be brand new champagne colored Cadillac SUV mega land-yacht.  I surveyed the scene, chuckled to myself and walked into the store, happy that something bad had happened to some hoity-toity rich person.


Then I remembered reading recently again about someone commenting on those W.W.J.D bracelets.  What Would Jesus Do?  Shit, c'mon, God, don't lay this junk on me right now, I'm sleepy and hungry and in nooo mood.
I started singing this little jingle..."what would Jesus do? what would jeeezus doo, do, do..." and I thought, "well, I suppose He wouldn't have had pleasure from someone's misfortune, now would He?"  No, I suppose not.


Then an apple rolled across my path.  I picked it up and took it over to the guy stacking them unsuccessfully at the fruit counter.  His face lit up as he thanked me.  He put it back in the stack.  Note to self - this is why we wash apples before eating them.  Anyway, it sorta picked me up and gave me a bit of a Jesus is walkin' here strut.  


I walked past a depleted bread shelf and, feeling like Jesus, waved my hand over it to see if I could make more bread appear like in that Cecil B. DeMille event 'feeding the 5,000'.  Didn't work.  The bread was as sad and empty as before.  Ahh, WTF I thought.  It was fun while it lasted.


I back track to get something and pass back by the bread shelf, now resplendent with fresh new bread, packed to the brim.  I have to saay I did a double take and looked at my hands.  I went back outside to get in my car and noticed that the SUV had departed with only a small puddle remaining.  Then I saw a bread truck leaving the parking lot.  Uh huh.  I think i might get one of those bracelets anyway.  It's entertaining.


It's always something