My sister was walking around downtown Olympia, WA a few nights ago in a cartoon crow costume, the kind in the old black and white cartoons. So she walks around a corner and this guy spots her and shouts “Stand back!” He obviously thought she was some kind of terrorist. So she took off the head, shot him an “Ummmm, okay…”-look, and went on her way. I understand he may have been scared and confused but was his reaction really warranted?
Got me to thinkin’, what else can’t we do anymore without attracting heaps of attention?
Burn flags - Where I went to college(the extremely liberal college in the Pacific NW) flags were publically burned almost every other day for every reason under the sun. I don’t think that now would be the right time for any reason.
Joke with airport ticket agents. You know the routine, you go to the counter to check in and he/she asks you the “three questions”(Has your bag been w/ you at all times, blah, blah, blah). I fly quite a bit so sometimes I would be a smatrypants and cut in with “Let me guess… no, no and ummm…no.” I don’ think it would be recieved as lightly as of late.
Dress up for Halloween as Osama Bin Laden or an Arab Terrorist. I remember seeing all kinds of Ayatollah Khomeni and other sorts of terrorists at parties in the years back. I suspect that wearing any such costume could could get you bludgeoned to death by an angry mob if worn in public.
I know our security was never top-shelf, but I’ve been flying since before I could walk (not on my own, mind you, that’s just silly) and I didn’t think that was ever taken lightly.
I know our security was never top-shelf, but I’ve been flying since before I could walk (not on my own, mind you, that’s just silly) and I didn’t think that was ever taken lightly. **
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Would that be in Olympia, WA, by any chance. If so, I know it well.
I was at the laundromat last night. While I was at the back table folding my clothes, this guy came in. He didn’t have any laundry, went right to the pay phone by the back door, had a fifteen minute conversation in what sounded like Arabic, then left. How suspicious should I be of that?
I think you should either go to the microwave and cook a bag of popcorn or go to the phone and dial 911. When they answer tell them exactly what you told me and see what they say.
Don’t get all suspicious about every Goddamn Arab that you happen to see. Statistically speaking, the chances of you seeing an actual terrorist are about the same as winning the lottery. Maybe not the multi-million dollar lottery, but maybe one of those scratch card deals.
I’ve seen people forcibly wrestled to the ground and/or held under armed guard at Heathrow, just because they said “What, you think I’ve got a bomb in there?” when told their bag had to be X-rayed at security.
(I used to work at the airports a lot, in the retail side, the first thing we were told is that you never, ever utter the words ‘gun’, ‘bomb’ or ‘crash’, unless you’re telling a security guy about the real thing - the portable barcode scanners we used were ‘portable scanners’ (where elsewhere they would have been called ‘scanning guns’) - You had to say ‘my computer has stopped working’ (instead of ‘crashed’))
I don’t think there was ever really a problem with joking in that way - it just shows that you were familiar with the system, but as Mangetout pointed out, there are some things that you could never joke about.
Oh, I do still hate the Yankees. What I meant was that to say so at the moment seems wrong. The fans at Fenway Park apparently all sang “New York, New York” during yesterday’s game. That’s just plain eerie.
