X-ray machines at airports

If I hadn’t recently passed through Homeland Security on my way to the United States, I would probably have struggled to come up with something ‘X-y’ to write about in my A – Z Writing Challenge.  Sometimes the alphabet hands you lemons, so you just have to make alphabet soup.

If I were stretched for an ‘X’ topic, I could discuss the rather tawdry suburb of Fyshwick in Canberra.  If you don’t know about Fyshwick, let’s just say they put the X into X-rated and sell more than just xylophones in their whorehouses, I mean warehouses.  

Rather than the infinitely captivating and topical issue of xylophones, today I will rant on about x-ray machines at airports. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are masters of the x-ray machine universe, and their foot soldiers have all the qualities I want airport security to possess; they are thorough, consistent, stern-faced, have no time for idiots, and serenade you with xylophones as you embark on your journey. I’m sorry if that didn’t happen to you, maybe you just got the regular ones who x-ray your shoes.

On my recent trip to Hawaii, I was asked by the DHS to take off my thongs for some inexplicable reason. Perhaps rubber thongs have made their way onto a contraband list of prohibited goods that can house home-made bombs.  I hope someone has told Rip Curl. 

Who am I to question the ways of Homeland Security.  I just took my thongs off as instructed, in a fairly expeditious fashion. If you want to see freedom or your thongs again, don’t mess around with these people.

If you ever decide to start up your own airport, you should definitely consider hiring the services of the DHS for all your security requirements. Perhaps they should consider venturing into the bouncer industry. The drunken hooligans who pour out of our city’s nightclubs to fight each other with broken schooners would be wiped out in a night. And then they could deport them on the spot to a place far, far away; like Iran.

And then they would be Ahmadinejad’s problem. Hmm, I wonder what he would do with them? Ah, if only it could come true. I shall write to Kristina Keneally with my plan; it’s no more ridiculous to what they already have on the table. Good grief, I have digressed today...

As critical as they are, Homeland Security haven’t always done their job properly. After 9/11, the Bill Clinton-appointed Democrat in charge of the U.S. transportation department created a whole bunch of stupid regulations that inconvenienced thousands of airline passengers, but made the planes no safer.

He didn’t want to look like he was racially profiling anyone who might actually be a terrorist, so he banned airport security staff from calling attention to any faces that looked like the several dozen men who had just killed thousands of Americans.

Instead, the new legislation resulted in little old ladies being strip-searched, just in case they were hiding a set of boxcutters. Elderly men were forced to strip to their underwear because of steel bits in their legs, women were asked to remove their bras, and some kid’s GI Joe toy gun was confiscated.

Thank god that didn’t get onto the plane – who knows what that kid could have got up to with a miniscule toy rifle. But at least we weren’t offending those poor terrorists.