Idiot Magnet

Thor: I have a certain area of personal space I like to maintain, and if I can clip you with my war hammer while standing flat-footed, then you're in it. As we rub shoulders with society, we should expect to bump elbows occasionally. However, I seem to hold a mysterious attraction for the noisiest, pushiest, most obnoxious elements of said society. When I'm cooling my heels at the airport, I like to kick back with a crossword. I find an uninhabited gate, and take a seat. Within 5 minutes, some oldish couple on their way to Reno comes into my area and, with the choice of 100's of empty seats, opt for the ones right behind me. Then they speak loudly to each other about inane things, like their hopes that the carpeting in the casino won't be as ugly as last year.

If it's not the couple who think a good time means losing their retirement funds, then it's the yuppie dickhead who thinks he can impress everyone by yelling on his cellphone about his great skill in managing his stock portfolio. I know he doesn't have anyone on the line. So does everyone else. But on he goes, orating to his imaginary friend about how "I told that bitch if she didn't produce, I'd fire her ass and I mean right now. Any dumbbutt could see that AT&T was going to tank, that's why I moved my liquid assets into IBM two weeks ago....." Dream on, hotshot. IBM, UBM, we all BM for IBM.

There's always a pack of these doofs following me around. I'm an idiot magnet. I always get the check out girl who can't make change, the day dreaming bus driver, the waitress who has a perfect record of screwing up every order she's ever taken. I eat at Subway quite a bit. At least once a week, and I always get the same thing: 6-inch BMT on cheese bread, no onions, no olives. They have never put onions on. Great. But somehow, they have missed adding olives only three times. My habit has been to sit down, carefully pick off the olives and line them up on the window sill next to my table. Since some poor slob has had to clean up these sun-baked olives at least 47 times now, I would have thought that they'd kind of catch on. Screw 'em. Quiznos is better, even if it's farther away.

Back to the airport. There are many people who just want to read or work a puzzle, which is a darned hard thing to do when someone is yapping in one's ear. The infamous and new Austin-Bergstrom International Airport takes it one step further. The brainless Texans who run the place assume that everyone is as illiterate as they are, and they've installed TV's at every gate. So even if a guy could find a deserted section to hide in, he couldn't concentrate because the boob toob is blaring away. And if that weren't bad enough, we have to have an announcement every 60 seconds about being vigilant and about not parking in the no parking zones.

I don't mind if people want to be stupid, but I do wish they would be stupid quietly and with someone else's time and money.

Tyr: Here's my experience with the Austin airport. Back when 9/11 was still fresh in everyone's minds, the guy running the x-ray machine was being overly anal, deciding to have 9 out of 10 bags searched. In my backpack, I had one of those cheap cigar cutters, the kind that come free in a box of cigars and are meant to be disposable . This genius spotted it on the x-ray and decided that I might take over the plane by threatening to knick off the stew's nose.

My pack was handed to two fat, cud-chewing women who dug out the cutter and said "You can't take that on the plane." I just shrugged and said "Then take it." What could be simpler? Evidently they were on some sort of power kick, and I hadn't given them the satisfaction of letting them win an argument. So they repeated "We just can't let that sort of thing on an aircraft." "Fine," I said, "just take it."

I want to be clear. This story is absolutely true in all it's facts and implications. The cheap, plastic disposable cutter meant nothing to me and had no value. I didn't want it, but rather, wanted them to throw the damn thing away and let me get on the plane. I made no argument or even smart remarks. BUT, they insisted that we repeat the cycle of "You can't have that on the plane" and "Then take the damn thing, I don't want it", seven more times.
I'm not kidding. I told them to take the cutter fully 9 times. Whatever they wanted from me, emotionally, they weren't getting. They finally took it and gave me my pack, upon which I muttered "sic transit gloria mundi."

That's Latin for "so passes the glory of the world." Upon hearing this, which they could not have understood, since these two were far from mastering their mother tongue, they started shouting "Leo! Leo!" An overgrown Oompa-Loompa wearing an orange sport coat waddled over and they informed him that I had threatened them with hiring a terrorist. Honestly, I can't make it work. Did they hear "terrorist" when I said "transit"? But where did the whole scenerio about me hiring a terrorist to wreak my revenge upon them for stealing my worthless cutter come from? It remains a mystery, but it gets worse. Leo hauls me to the side and calls the cops. So one of Austin's finest (which isn't saying much) comes and hauls me even farther off.

Leo told him what the cows said I had threatened to do. I told him several times that I said nothing of the sort. He gave no indication that he heard me, but just kept repeating that we all needed to calm down in the airports nowadays. I added that I was and had been quite calm, and it was the cows who were screaming at the top of their lungs, not me. No avail. Eventually, all he did was "take down my name" and I made my flight. But now, without benefit of appeal, my name must certainly be on some secret list of "persons of interest", which explains why I get "randomly" yanked out of the line for deep-cavity search every single time I fly.

In summary: Within 15 minutes of 9/11, the citizenry of the United States solved our terrorism problem by means of their cellphones and courage. The TSA has accomplished nothing. Well, less than nothing.

Tyr and Thor