Thanks for checking out my crazy socks. Are you working on any socks right now?

It is offensive that, “due to heightened security” you are not allowed to bring bottled water, or coca cola, onto the plane. They serve you these things to drink past the security check point in the terminal, and on board the plane. It’s insane.

But people are more than happy to give away their liberties because they mistakenly believe this makes them more safe.

Drinking water is harmless. If it were not, they would not only prevent you from carrying along your own, but they also wouldn’t allow you to have any for the duration of the flight. Its foolish security theater.

Now, if things are so heightened that we prevent people from carrying on their harmless drinking water, because we’re preventing them from sneaking in the chemicals that could be used to make a bomb disguised as drinking water – even if we have already proven that what they just injested is truly a bottle of Arrowhead water, then surely we’re really serious about preventing people from interfering with that plane’s normal opperation, right?

Now we get to the line about electronic devices. The fear is that you could use a device to interfere with the planes controls – you don’t necessarily have to take them over for this to be bad, just preventing the pilot from having the controls respond normally is pretty disasterous.

If it were really possible to do this, why would we let people carry electronic devices onto planes at all, trusting potential terrorists to turn them off when asked politely to do so during take off and landing? People who want to hijack or bomb planes are not rules followers. They’ll keep using their ipods and their gameboys and bring that plane crashing down no matter how nicely you ask them to stow away all electronic devices.

Better hope the terrorists don’t figure that one out.

Unless, it’s a total crock of shit.

I stopped worrying about whether or not my cell phone was turned off for the duration of the flight. I don’t turn it off any more. I don’t even bother to silence the ringer. I’ve flown lots of times now with it on the whole time, and nothing has happened. The worst that has happened, is the battery has drained faster because it couldn’t find service and sucked itself dry looking really hard for a nearby base station to get a signal from.

I’ve played my gameboy during a landing. We didn’t crash. We didn’t have to circle for hours while the pilot insisted everyone remain calm. No one noticed that I wasn’t at a good save point in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and that I kept going until I was had no ill effects on the universe.

What would Patrick Henry say if he were alive and faced with Homeland Security confiscating his toothpaste and bath gel? How ashamed would he be of the modern American apathy toward the sucessive removal of liberties?

I hate prepping for a trip, too. We have a car show this weekend which means I’m packing food, coffee maker, beer, and on top of that I have to try to figure out which projects to bring ;o)

And Grey Kitten? Amen, Sister.