In flight wireless is kind of cool. Although I will have much more to say about my security experience after a cocktail.
Shenanigans
by John Cole| 62 Comments
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Shenanigans
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Elroy's Lunch
Ummmm, an in-flight $6.00 Budweiser…
James K Polk, Esq.
Disagree with security Policy?
That’s a probin’.
cleek
problem with wireless everywhere: nobody does anything but check their email, texts, and Facebook every 2 minutes. everybody is constantly distracted.
Dennis SGMM
Does it involve a latex glove?
fasteddie9318
Show us on the doll where the TSA worker touched you, Cole.
Perry Como
Genital photos to the left, genital groping to the right. Make your choice.
Punchy
Of course you got wanded, groped, and fisted. You’re a fucking Democrat now. That’s how shit rolls.
Hating America as much as you do, it’s not “if” you’ll jack the bird, it’s when.
Loneoak
@Dennis SGMM:
All my cocktails involve a latex glove. Don’t yours?
Perry Como
btw, the next time I fly I’m wearing a kilt. Commando style. And I will keep eye contact with the TSA agent during the entire pat down, like a boss.
Lev
Airport security people are paid horribly, and have to deal with peoples’ lousy attitudes all day. I’d theoretically have sympathy for them, but I’m just not. The TSA pays bottom-of-the-barrel wages and gets bottom-of-the-barrel employees. Shit, those people threaten the Post Office’s bad reputation.
Paris
Wells Fargo Repossesses A Fully Paid Off Car
They’re not even trying any more. Its not criminal when you don’t count in their eyes and they control the levers of power and violence.
Dennis SGMM
@Loneoak:
LOL! Gave up cocktails four decades ago after a really bad experience that involved limitless Black Russians and house painting. Now I just pour the hooch into a coffee mug and drink it.
sven
The biggest difference between the right and left seems to be a sense of continuous warfare. The left is only willing to fight titanic battles while the right is perfectly happy to win through attrition. If gridlock is coming we probably need to change our strategy.
Most people seem to think the Republicans are going to force a government shutdown at some point. Liberals seem concerned that, despite still controlling the White House and (probably) the Senate, Democrats will simply capitulate. If both of these things are true, shouldn’t we start planning on how to pressure our (Democratic) politicians ASAP?
Sly
Obligatory Louis C.K.
El Cid
@Paris: People like you are going to bring us another financial collapse. If big banks are not allowed to take cars and houses which don’t belong to them and which are paid for entirely or which were paid for in cash or with on-time payments, our recovering financial system may again face dangers from people like you engaging in class warfare.
America has to tighten its belts, and if this means giving up what you own for the benefit of the most powerful corporations, well, such is life.
El Cid
@sven: Also, the wealthy and corporate right are more than willing to fund and back several generations of ideological warfare.
Lev
@sven: I’m not sure I accept your premise. The right mostly just wants to be in power, and they don’t care what happens when they have it. I don’t recall a mass of Republicans infuriated at Denny Hastert not passing anything of note in ’05-’06, or passing Democratic ideas in NCLB and Medicare Part D*.
I’m sure we’re going to get a bunch of hokum on “the repudiation of Obama” in the coming few weeks, and then in 2012 another Democratic wave will give the Dems back the House. With the current level of polarization, it might well be that we have huge wave elections every time for a decade or so, back and forth, until enough Fox News viewers are replaced by Hispanic immigrants and right wing-hating young people in the voter pool.
*Democratic ideas that Dubya screwed up execution on, naturally.
mikefromArlington
Did you get sent through a full body scanner after having to stand out in the cold for an hour or something embarrassing like that?
el_gallo
Don’t think of it as a humiliating security pat down, think of it as speed dating.
Citizen_X
@Dennis SGMM:
Now there’s a story that demands telling. How did you not hear the “sounds like a very bad idea” alarms going off as soon as it was suggested?
Rosalita
@mikefromArlington:
shrinkage much?
nitpicker
I swear to God, I’ll pistol whip the next guy who says “shenanigans!”
chopper
@James K Polk, Esq.:
“i need an adult!”
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@nitpicker:
Shenanigans!
freelancer
@nitpicker:
Hey, Farva, what’s that place you like with all the goofy shit on the walls, and Mozzerella Sticks?
Alwhite
@Lev:
No, the Rs do plenty when they are in power:
1) rig the game to enable staying in power (it would have worked had Boy Blunder not be such a total incompetent & the banksters a tiny bit smarter)
2) enriching themselves (see Abramoff, Jack)
3) enriching their masters
4) punish those who did not support ONLY Rs
In case you missed it the Rs have already threatened companies (like Wal-Mart) with retribution because they worked with Obama and donated money to Ds.
Sentient Puddle
I read stories that the pat-downs instituted last weekend would be “ball-busting” (and that was apparently a quote from a TSA agent). So yeah, I want to hear how bad it is.
Henry
Hey Balloon Juice people, someone want to take a whack at this?
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101102-712538.html
JCT
In-flight wireless is the devil. The air as my last respite from email.
And LOL re: kilts and commando style. I saw a suggestion re: taking Viagra in the security line the other day…..
burnspbesq
The most thorough security screening I’ve gotten in years happened last Saturday, at the smallest airport I’ve ever flown out of (Galway, Ireland). They made me take out my iPad and my little bag of cables and chargers, and they opened the little bag of cables and chargers and looked inside.
In contrast, in Manchester, England on Sunday I didn’t have to take off my shoes for the first time in at least five years.
Loneoak
@Dennis SGMM:
Yikes. I would also not recommend cheap whiskey and stripping furniture.
burnspbesq
@Henry:
Sure, I’ll take a crack.
Market movements are the summation of a multitude of individual judgments about the future. The world is full of idiots. Kyew. Ee. Dee.
Loneoak
@Henry:
LOL, the markets are up a WHOLE 0.6%!!!! because Republicans are awesome!11eleventy!1!!
WSJ is mostly propaganda for corporatists who need to get fluffed every 16 seconds.
Martin
@Henry: 69 point gain in the Dow is now a harbinger of pent-up investor giddiness that the GOP is getting into power?
Well, the Dow was at 8,077 when Obama took office. It’s at 11,208 now, a 39% increase. I don’t recall any stories about the investor orgasm over Obama taking office and the Dems expanding their majority control over Congress.
Nice to see that the WSJ is still willing to fabricate whatever fucking narrative they desire. Lamestream media!
Sentient Puddle
@Henry: To add to everyone else, the stock market is fundamentally irrational in the short term. For instance, a few weeks back, my company announced a record quarter for revenue, and our stock price dropped. Anyone trying to explain the market as it’s going is playing with fire.
spudvol
I don’t think the phrase “security experience” should be used in the same sentence with the words “cock” and “tail”.
Julie
Was it the kind of experience where the screener should have taken you out to dinner at least twice before they got that close?
morzer
@nitpicker:
Jehovah!
I mean, shenanigans!
Suffern Ace
@Martin: If one looks for the number of days in the past few years in which the market moved at least 69 points or declined at least 69 points. Yeah, our long national nightmare is over, that’s what they’re saying.
Joseph Nobles
@Henry: Movement in the stock market relative to elections is not about endorsement of policy, but confirmation of expectations. The first commandment of Wall Street is THOU SHALT NOT INVEST UNLESS THOU ART CERTAIN.
Henry
Well, at least they acknowledged the possibility that there might be something else going on.
Old headline:
“US Stocks Higher As Election Optimism Builds; DJIA Up 69”
New headline:
“US Stocks Climb On Anticipation Of Elections, FOMC Decision”
Though clearly, FOMC meetings still take a back-seat.
idiots.
morzer
@Joseph Nobles:
And the Second
AmendmentCommandment is likewise:“Thou shalt not invest without thou hast rigged the free market.”
There is no other commandment greater than these.
MattR
May I suggest waiting until you are back home lest you find yourself with an ever more interesting security experience on the flight back.
cckids
@Lev:
This. I took my nieces (8, 12 & 14) to the airport yesterday to fly home to NE. Got pulled aside for the “random” search, got to stand in the little transparent booth waiting to be groped or whatever, while the TSA jerk 15 feet in front of me harassed my nieces to “get your stuff & move on, you can’t stay here”. I tried (politely, because,you know, they have the POWER) to point out that those were unaccompanied MINOR CHILDREN he was sending off into the bowels of McCarron hell alone, but was kindly requested to stop talking. So I stood there & took it, trying to convey “it’s ok” to three nervous kids through body language & sporadic eye contact. Took 10-15 minutes, which felt like 3 times that. Left with my blood pressure skyrocketing from the stress of just having to shut up & do what they say, because who knows what crap you’re letting yourself in for if you don’t follow orders. What a world.
morzer
@MattR:
That would be prudent. Cole no longer has his Certificate Of Wingnutitude.
Angry Black Lady
in flight wireless is awesome. i ended up twittering and commenting over here for almost 5 hours yesterday. i forgot to finish watching my movie!
ETA: I actually wrote yesterday’s “mildly annoyed” post from the plane!
PeakVT
@Loneoak: I would also not recommend cheap whiskey and stripping furniture.
Cheap whiskey and stripping women, on the other hand…
catclub
@Martin:
“Well, the Dow was at 8,077 when Obama took office. It’s at 11,208 now, a 39% increase. I don’t recall any stories about the investor orgasm over Obama taking office and the Dems expanding their majority control over Congress.”
The entire 16 month rise was in anticipation of the GOP taking the House. Even I can figure that out.
The avoidance of financial catastrophe had nothing to do with it.
morzer
@PeakVT:
Of course, there is the intermediate category between women and furniture occupied by Palin, O’Donnell and Bachmann.
MattR
@cckids: I have little doubt that if your nieces had wandered off they would have been picked up by some security guard who would proceed to question you for hours about why you left three minor children on their own.
Michael
@Dennis SGMM:
Some guys pay extra for that sort of special treatment.
I’ve made up my mind to act like I welcome that sort of probing in an excited sort of way if I am ever pulled into the special line….
twiffer
@Sentient Puddle: ah, see…your co. may have pulled in record revenue, but either a) they were expected to pull in more, despite it being a record, and thus fell short of expectations, thereby devaluing the stock; b) by pulling in record revenue, expectations for next quarter and year end are artificially inflated and will not be met, thereby devaluing the stock; c) performed exactly to expectations and thusly disappointed the market, which prefers either over or underachieving, thereby devaluing the stock; d) whim and/or whimsy was involved.
pick one, they all make as much sense.
Michael
@Perry Como:
I’m thinking that a satisfied groan would be in order during the pat down…
Sentient Puddle
@twiffer: So basically, the company failed some way or another, it’s just a way of coming up with some sort of narrative.
God I love the stock market.
morzer
@Michael:
Look him in the eye, smile, lick lips and murmur:
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
Michael
@morzer:
Nice.
Of course, that should be followed with “you want it all, you know it…”
I’m wondering about the timing on the expressions, though. I’m figuring that as the new iPod has speakers and by playing “Pornosonic”, you could sort of keep to a proper rhythm for the dialogue, punctuating with some “boomCHIKAs” at the right places.
Perry Como
@Michael:
I was thinking of playing some Barry White, but I might be charged with having a Weapon of Mass Erection.
Royston Vasey
@burnspbesq:
I’ve been though Zurich, Dubai, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Phuket, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Wellington this year, and didn’t have to take my shoes off once.
Mind you I did see some people take their shoes off in advance, even though there was no direction to do so.
The laptop came of its bag, and through the scanner most of the time (but not all).
kindness
Poor John….already a bumpy ride. If only you weren’t so reclusive when you traveled. We could create a Grateful Dead Village around you where ever you went. Balloon Juice style of course….guess that means we all have to scoop up Feed Tees so that the uninitiated knows something odd is afoot and leaves everyone alone.
I can just see it now….Toranado filled with Feed Tees after several strong Belgians……
I say we have a Balloon Juice party there whether John wants to join us or not.
drunken hausfrau
until your husband has left a backpack on a train to the plane, containing all passports and tickets, etc. (uh-oh, scary unattended luggage that might be a bomb!)… then had your 11 year old son get stopped at security with a full swiss army knife in his backpack, along with three bottles of purell (mom: are you sure you checked your backpack for liquids, toy guns, anything that will embarrass me? son: yeah. it’s cool.) and had to go thru a super secret UPSTAIRS security (because now you are a white terrorist family for sure), and up there, your attractive 13 year old daughter gets the FULL pat down!, you don’t know the meaning of needing a cocktail — I drank pure gin, no mixers, just some ice and a twist, for the whole flight.
Nellcote
@kindness:
I heard SF’s throwing him a parade on Wed.
kindness
@Nellcote: Not only that, the Giants will be there to honor him too…
I am so calling in sick to work that day.