Airline Security.

Two days ago four passenger aircraft were hijacked and intentionally crashed, one into the pentagon, on into the world trade center, and one forced down before reaching its intended target. The death tolls are still not in. America as a country and we as Americans must now face a startling and shocking reality: Somebody forgot to ask every passenger if they had packed their own luggage.

Some people (including my mother, who occasionally reads this site because I don't write often enough) may think it's heartless and cruel to make jokes in the wake of this horrible tragedy.
I disagree.
The above commentary is not so much a joke as it is a vital public service. Some of the opinions being expressed on the news right now, those are jokes. I actually heard on CNN yesterday that when US air travel starts up again it is going to be with "much tighter security measures, including no curbside luggage pick-up."

Wait...
Let that sink in. The big security crackdown not only includes No Curbside Luggage Pick-Up, but apparently doesn't include anything else more worthy of mention?? I'm sure the undertrained, out-of-shape, barely-more-than-minimum wage-earning Airport Security staff are going to easily root out the terrorists and hijackers once that fiendishly diabolical curbside luggage pick-up is wiped out! Good thinking.

I'm not whining over a lost convenience here. I don't care that much about where luggage is checked, I hardly ever fly anywhere. I am, however, going to whine like a baby with an SUV parked on its leg about how completely stupid this sort of attitude about stopping terrorism is. If anybody can explain to me exactly how these terrorists exploited the flaws in letting passengers check their bags by their taxicabs instead of checking their bags at the counter with the people who smile too much, I'll give them a FREE David Bowie's Area T-Shirt.

In the meantime, I'd like to share with you a few comforting words from Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic on terrorism:

The purpose behind terrorism is to bring about terror. Let's not let it work. Let's keep things free. Let's consider those terrorism victims heroes. Let's say they died for our freedom. They didn't die for us to have our phones tapped and have our time wasted at airports.

Until next time, Penn says "Hi."