While I Wasn't Blogging: More News You Might Have Missed

This just* in: Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports.

Really, beyond the headline, do you need anything else?

Okay, in case you do, have a quote: "While it allows the security screeners — looking at the images in a separate room — to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger's face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website."

I'm sure none of those videos will ever pop up on YouTube.

*By "just" I of course mean 19 days ago, but you know.

While I Wasn't Blogging: Phoenix is for Crackheads

Thanks to Tom Waits, I have fully relinquished all anger about paying $4.50 a gallon for gas. Why, you ask? Because I realized it's not overpriced oil I'm paying for — it's the privilege of not having to spend my travel time standing (standing!) next to a whiskeylicious homeless man freestyling on his harmonica and dishing out parenting advice to a women three rows up who (mercifully) doesn't speak any English anyway.

And all of that was after he gravely informed me that a good wife listens to her husband.

Matters hardly improved once we escaped that stalwart bastion of egalitarian eco-friendly transportation, the city bus. After walking three quarters of a mile in 112 degree heat to get to a Circle K, we arrived just in time to see a pock-faced transient tweeker get into a fist-fight with the Circle K cashier over a four-pack of tall cans.

We theorized that maybe Tom Waits intentionally planned his tour to hit as many economically depressed towns as possible in order to boost their economies, in which case more power to him. But may I suggest an Oregonian logging town next time?

While I Wasn't Blogging: Essays and Eses

I'm going to spend the next few days trying to get back into the swing of things after having abandoned my blog to go frolicking in Fort Collins and Phoenix (the latter of which is actually a fairly non-frolic-friendly locale during the month of June, can I just say).

Today's "While I Was Living My Life Somewhere Other than in My Armchair" entry will focus on some of the folks I met while scoring AP World History essays for the College Board. No, not the charming Texan gentleman I sat next to on the shuttle or the lovely Alabaman professor with three sons and two dogs or the fellow Californian vegetarian. That would be far too upbeat. Rather, I'd like to share with you my fond remembrances of the guy who made me want to shove my empty wine glass down his throat in hopes that it would dislodge the silver spoon that was undoubtedly planted firmly in his gullet.

Some of you may be familiar with the Absolut Vodka ad that sent Loofah O'Reilly and his ilk into a tizzy:



How unamerican! How incendiary! How... historically accurate!

I was in the midst of deciding exactly how much tequila one ought to consume before having to get up at six in the morning when lo and behold, one of my AP-reading happy hour companions — who ought to by his very station as a history teacher know better — began a most craptastic instructive monologue regarding how all of this "hubbub" about how the southwest used to be part of Mexico is "crap" because (and I'm not making this up) "they weren't using it anyway."

Indeed! The crux of his argument was that hardly any Mexicans lived in what was at that time northern Mexico — part of an undisputed sovereign nation — and so they had no business getting upset when the United States began annexing it in bits and ill-used pieces.

Fascinating argument, really. Just one problem.



I fully expect this gentlemen to chortle in amusement and take another sip from his deeply dirty martini when Russia annexes the northern half of Canada since, you know, they're not using it anyway.

Furthermore, I find it interesting that someone as undoubtedly devoted to the capitalist ideology as this fellow must be defines ownership solely on the basis of usage. Perhaps he'd endorse a sliding scale for theft-related prison sentences based on the extent to which the original "owner" actually utilized the possession. You know, seven years if you steal his liver, seven months if you steal his brain.

We can call it the the "I'm Taking Your Ball and I'm Going Home Act."