So, a couple of months after 9/11 I'm at Kennedy airport waiting for a Vegas flight (they gave it away back then, including a hotel package, and a refund of all money paid in the form of chits), and one of the gate alarms goes off. Full blazing alarm, red lights flashing and all. There's an entire complement of armed National Guards not 300 feet away. Nobody came over to check. Gate door is fully ajar, no one in sight, alarms blaring. But that - not in the list of things that have to be checked.

Fast forward five months. Same airport. I'm flying to Canada because I'd been so sick that I'd been hospitalized for three weeks, and I need the tender loving care only my mom can give. I look like a skeleton. I am so weak that I was taken from the cab and put directly into an airport wheelchair and then taken through all the usual hoops by an airport employee. At the gate, I'm selected for random screening. They have to check the wheelchair. Did I mention it was an airport wheelchair, with a big JFK stamped on it and "driven" by an airport employee? I am told I must stand through the inspection. I tell the guy at the gate that I'm likely to faint - my blood at that point, although boiling, was still ridiculously low pressure. He tells me to keep standing. I faint. I'm sure he thought I faked it.

Reason? There is no reason and no common sense. Just a checklist. I'd be angry about it, but the fact is that none of the TSA people are given more than cursory training. None of them are security experts. Someone upthread mentioned Israel. No question, that's the way to do REAL security. But keep in mind that all Israelis go through the army. And many of them work security posts. All airport security people in Israel have either worked Intelligence in the army, or MP security posts. But that's easy to do there - Israel only has 1.5 airports. Still, I would think it would be more efficient in the long run to hire and train people with security background all across the US too.

But here I go looking for common sense again...

BTW, being super-nice to them works really well. They are so used to being the butt of people's frustration that anyone who smiles at them and makes life easier for them gets by. I'm not sure what that says about actual security, but it sure makes my life easier when I have to fly. Still, if the taser bracelets come into play I'm done flying in this country. I can always cross the border into Canada and fly from there...

Really, you've outdone yourself on this one. I was cracking up reading this, and the comments in response, are also hilarious.

I swear to god. Without salon.com I would have lost my mind with this administration. I look forward to reading columns on this website, because I can't bear the t.v. media and my local newspaper is full of crap op eds by pundits talking about Obama really being smart by "moving to the center." Plus, is there anything more humorless than the political class and media punditry?

Would someone in the next administration please fix the Dept. of Homeland Security? Start by changing it's name, because the name alone screams BE VERY AFRAID OF LIVING. Then completely change the T.S.A., since the chance that the next terrorist attack will come in the form of someone flying airplanes into buildings is, well, nil. Does anyone think that someone on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is saying, "Hmmm, I know...Let's fly commercial jets into very tall buildings?"

Come on. TSA is a way to disguise that the government bureaucrats who were supposed to be paying attention to information they were getting prior to 9/11, ignored what they were told. Yes, there has to be better security than before 9/11, because, um, there wasn't really any, but T.S.A. has nothing to do with security. It's just a big job creations program. For people with authoritarian personality disorders who like to yell, don't have high i.q.s and perceive themselves as not having gotten enough respect in life.

I don't mind Patrick's stories about T.S.A., because they are funny and educational. Who would have thought that a pilot couldn't carry a white plastic old "knife" through security? Because some idiots would call it "serrated."

I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe Halliburton should take over t.s.a. Nah, the same people would be in those jobs with their psychological disorders. Never mind.

So I'm not flying much domestically these days.

And wouldn't you know, last time I checked into O'Hare I joked to my wife that it was payback time, and I would be getting mine.

In prior years, it took the form of lighters that were OK to bring to a wedding in NY, but not OK to bring back and other such cockamamie. Little things. Fine. So the rules were inconsistent -- no surprise there. Annoying, but I could move on.

But this time I was held up for 40 minutes while they completely disassembled my carry-on shoulder bag, the one I've had for about 8 years, the one I've always flown with, and the one that probably sat in the closet untouched since my last flight. Holy christ, whatever for? I mean what could it possibly take to inspect whatever it was about the bag that queered them? It actually got sent into some secondary roll-in plastique detector or whatever. As I'm getting the third degree, I'm just chuckling, you know, send good vibes, all that business. But that doesn't help me one bit. And after literally slicing the bag to find, well, more nylon and foam I was told by THREE different clowns in the circus "This must be one of the new bags" and was just handed it back, because hey, that suffices to explain what just happened.

No shit. Those deadly "new" bags. And wouldn't you just know it, I laughed and tried to explain that not only was it not a "new bag" and, last I checked, "new bags" weren't being made of plastique/explosive shampoo, but in their whole mess they missed a pair of fly-tying scissors I neglected to unpack from my last trip (which were OK at the time, natch) but which were now exposed thanks to their vandalism.

Guess who got to miss his flight?

So up yours, Mr. Just-Send-Out-The-Happy-Vibes.