The TSA actually found something!  Normally, I’d say that they couldn’t catch a cold, but they caught someone who tried to bring a derringer and bullets onto the plane.

Of course, it appears that this was found with an old fashioned baggage x-ray.  It wasn’t the porn-o-tron body scanner, enhanced patdowns/colorectal exams, or any of the other stuff that has been put into airport security over the past decade.  It was just a TSA guy, watching a monitor, looking at what was in someone’s carry-on.

So, chalk one up to 1970’s airport security technology!

OK, I’m probably way off on this, but something’s making the back of my neck tingle about three things in the news over the past few days:

• A Muslim Marine reservist was arrested in Washington DC with a fake bomb and a notebook full of things about the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
• An illegal immigrant from Guyana stole an identity and worked as a flight attendant.
• Intelligence gathered when an Al Qaeda leader in Somalia was killed indicates that an attack on London ala Mumbai is either in the planning or preparation stage.

I’m probably just seeing a pattern in chaos, but the methodology of Al Qaeda in the past has been to do a few soft probes to watch our reaction, make a plan adapted to our reaction, make dry runs to see if our preventive measures can be penetrated, and then to drop the hammer.   These things look like plans, probes, and dry runs to me.

What do you all think?  Do these and similar incidents mean the same to you guys or am I just being paranoid?

In England, a group of young men were being initiated into rugby and soccer teams, so they got drunk, dressed up like fighter pilots, got on a bus, and “performed lewd sex acts while on the vehicle”.


You know, I’ve been through some initiation rites.  I went through Scouts, which was rife with ceremony.  I have four small scars on my chest where the pins from my sergeant’s stripes were pushed through my uniform to make “blood rank”.  Heck, you could say that the entire time I spent in basic training was one long hazing session that coincidentally made some semblance of a soldier out of me.


But no-one ever asked me to dress up as Goose and scare the little old ladies on public transportation.  And to be perfectly honest, if Drill Sergeant Hill had told me to put on a flight suit and dry hump my battle buddy on a bus, I might have found a way to be sent home.  


Guys, if any group wants you to do things that you wouldn’t do in front of your grandmother in order to join said group, find another group.  No matter if it’s a sports team, military organization, religion, sewing circle, reading club, or Cub Scout den.  Your self respect is more important than having your teeth knocked out in a scrum.

Excavation of a site in Mexico has revealed a statue of an athlete that dates to over 1000 years ago.  No word yet on the subject of the statue’s NCAA status, but if he went to Ohio State, I understand they have pre-printed forms for the investigation.   If he went to Kentucky, some of the alumni might have a little something for him, as long as he’s related in some way to Richie Farmer.  If he played for Boise State, then at least we know why the statue was buried.  The NCAA can’t have that little school having something to crow about, now can they?

That’s my formula for fixing this particular problem.

“It’s really hard to rest assured at night to not think you’ve got a snake in your bed with you or going to step on one when you get up,”

No kidding?  Excuse me while I have an all over body shiver.

Yeah, garter snakes are harmless, and I’m sure this house doesn’t have a mouse problem. 

But I wouldn’t touch this property until the house had been gassed, burned to the ground, checked for an old Indian burial ground, and rebuilt.

Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?