At Las Vegas International Airport, TSA supervisor [REDACTED] is keeping travelers safe from the terror of delicious cupcakes-in-a-jar. I learned this firsthand earlier today, when I put myself and my fellow travelers at risk by attempting to travel with one.
The agent who first found my dangerously delectable snack consulted [REDACTED] about it just barely within my earshot. He responded hesitantly at first, saying that he was “not sure”–and “with the holidays coming, it’s getting harder and harder.” When he finally decided my treat was a no-go, I asked to speak with him directly, and he asserted that the frosting on this red velvet cupcake is “gel-like” enough to constitute a liquid, in part because it “conforms to its container.” Also: it “should have been in a zip-lock.” At this, I offered to scoop my dangerously conformist cupcake out of its jar and place it in a zip-lock bag, where it could mush about to its heart’s content; but Agent [REDACTED] wisely refused. After all, the jar in all its tasty glory “clearly contains more than 3 ounces of total contents,” he said.
A frosted cake would be like a full-fledged bomb to this guy. Taser time!
BTW, here’s an overview of the effectiveness of the TSA’s security theater.
Thank heaven those noble defenders are protecting us from these celebs whose kindles and cupcakes have caused so many planes to fall from the sky.
I salute them
You can never be too careful.
One can smother a pilot stuffing a cupcake down his/her throat in seconds. Think of all the white children that might perish.
You’d have to break down the cockpit door with the little bottle first.
I recently went through a security checkpoint.
I dip skoal. I carry a bottle with my scuzz in it (I’m polite and keep it out of site). Well, I forget to put it on the conveyor and kept it on my cargo shorts pocket.
Suddenly all these TSA dudes showed up and demanded to know what was in my pocket. When I pulled it out and handed it to them, they where passing it around with two fingers with this EWE look on their faces. Everybody in earshot/eyeshot were laughing their asses off at these guys while they tried to figure out what to do with a bottle full of tobacco spit.
Finally one guy said I couldn’t have it back. By this time, I’ve got a mouth full of spit and ask him if I can spit my dip out in his trashcan since he was taking my spit bottle.
He wisely said never mind, handed it back to me and sent me on my merry way.
The looks on their faces . . . it was priceless.
Wow, I never knew people walked around with a bottle of their spit. Learn something new all the time!
…. me too and FLMAO!
Another blow for FREEDOM! Good man.
“Everybody in earshot/eyeshot were laughing their asses off at these guys while they tried to figure out what to do with a bottle full of tobacco spit.”
I doubt that, unless you were flying out of some redneck airport in Alabama.
Real classy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dipping_tobacco_in_mouth.jpg
Nashville during the latest awards show.
Great, now the terrorists know how to smuggle explosives onto planes. Is this the origin of the expression ‘dipwad’?
Don’t blame the messengers. Within system as is – TSA oddly did exactly what should have been done (and despite the ridicule in article, I grew in country where high school education included training in what would be called “insurgency” nowadays… part of practical curriculum were bombs in cakes/cupcakes/… and in toys… ).
What should be changed is complete TSA system to one where items are not so much targeted as people and behavior. But, than we’d need really well educated people to do so and profiling of some sort would be inevitable…
I don’t understand?
Are you saying every item belonging to every passenger should be hand searched and disassembled?
Or, it would have been okay if the cupcake had been in a ziplock bag?
Eventually we will be tracked everywhere we go, and we will be monitored 24 hr / day. The price of disk storage must first drop to $1 / terabyte.
Only then will their be two classes of citizen, the controlled, and the criminal. The criminals will be allowed to operate invisably by their pals in government who protect them.
This sounds like an interesting basis for a book of fiction.
Okay, we’re still an order of magnitude over the $1/terabyte (2 orders of magnitude for consumer products,) but its almost here and getting closer all the time… (I’m sitting at a desk with two laptops and over 3TB of disk space and that only in my SoHo. I’ve got another 2TBs out in the living room and my wife’s SoHo.)
Then it will be interesting.
Will the MPAA be able to sue the surveillance systems of the various authorities for recording the movies when suspects are sitting in theaters or listening on speakers?
Yep. Unfortunately, this country would rather coddle Muslims than protect US citizens.
I think Roosevelt did the right thing in 1941, incidentally, considering the insanity of the Japanese people under Hirohito at the time, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also the right things to do, despite the history re-writers all over the fucking place now.
I read the Vanity Fair article earlier today and was hoping you’d post something about security so I could mention it. Instead, I’ll post the address of Schneier’s blog. Good reading and not just TSA stuff.
As for the original post – who puts a cupcake in a jar???
That’s what I was thinking. Maybe “cup” is just a euphemism. Maybe are really jar-cakes by another name.
The TSA will make you throw away a can of aerosol deodorant or hairspray.
Whoever thought they’d be allowed to carry something stupid on a plane like a cupcake in a jar deserved to get called aside and given an anal probe.
When I read the “trillion dollars” comment in the article, it reminded me a little of the cold war between Russia and the U.S. – it contributed to USSR’s eventual collapse. Here we have Al Queda, whose purported actions have cost us over a trillion dollars over the past ten years. Our debt is at an all-time high, and we’re still in a recession. Political ideologies aside, I can’t help but wonder about the similarities.
You people don’t learn. You still insist on flying, paying attention to Kardashians, voting for Democrats and Republicans. Bahhhha!
Yup. Them damn Dems and the repulsive Repubes.
All they figure they need is a tub of Crisco…
The election of 2012 feels like you’re being given a choice between either hand when you’re going to get fist-punched up the ass, just before they reach deep and you end up playing hand puppet in a sling chair with their political arm up your butt up past the elbow.
Wow.
Just to be a smart ass I would unload the cupcake, eat it, then ask now what? Yeah I would probable get tasered (btdt) but it would be worth it.
Note to whomever becomes President next: The TSA is a fuck-up and should be closed down. No other country subjects its air travellers to such ludicrous checks and delusions.
And whomever becomes the next president won’t do a thing about it.
The 1%ers like keeping the 99%ers scared, timid and in their apartments and bank-owned/mortgaged homes.
The 1%ers are scared of us and getting desperate faster than we 99%ers are.
Don’t worry about the 12,400 billionaires, they fly out of their own airports on their own planes and they are not subjected to the groping, radiation and other indignities the rest of us have to put up with. They don’t give a fuck.
msbpodcast, your a dolt, there is no 99% of anything or anybody. Those ass clowns claiming to be the 99% are the 1 tenth of 1 percent, nobody cares about them, we’re too busy working and taking care of our families.
Urine is a liquid and I might carry about a half litre onto a plane.
One wonders whether to laugh or cry
Did you hear about the Canadian woman who got charged for having a commercially packed brand named German man ‘Kindertoy” ( a wrapped chocolate in a carton with a toy inside)
Why are they going after average citizens yet not touching the real villains
And yet no doubt they have graphs and charts of how well they are doing and believe that the world and the traveling public cannot do without them
instead of flying to Arizona, I drove.. Instead of flying to San Francisco, I drove. Why? Because of this kind of crap!
TSA is now on the highways.
What’s really sad about this. Is all the things we have done to stop another attack. We will still eventually overlook something that will allow the terrorists to succeed. Nothing is 100% foolproof.
The last few “attacks” (shoe bomber, underware bomber, time square, foot hood, etc.) were supported and fomented by agents provocateur. The public mind control and manipulation is working just fine, thank you very much.
Watch this. It will make you throw up your cupcake.
“The TSA costs taxpayers eight billion dollars a year. But Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano says the agency needs to exist. In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Napolitano says the TSA is well worth the money, and argues incidents like the underwear bomber could today never get as far as the suspect did on that day.”
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/20/janet-napolitano-is-the-tsa-worth-the-money-i-think-so/
TSA under Obama is expanding its VIPR program to put up thousands more checkpoints on highways. Note to Republicans, when Democrats propose a new government agency, just say no.
Gosh, where will it all end?
http://dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2062265/65-years-Holocaust–changed.html
I guess this is trivial but I comment because there aren’t a lot of women posting here, but I went to a special event in Tallahassee in November, flew in and out the next morning so only wanted to take carry-on, and I had to go all scary-looking because I realized my cosmetics would all have gotten trashed. This is more than an inconvenience! This is an outrage! Won’t somebody think of the children!
DENVER, Dec. 22 (UPI) — A woman traveling through Denver International Airport said she was frustrated when agents told her she could not bring a jar of homemade jam on the plane.
Kathleen Triou, who said she makes frequent trips from the airport, said a Transportation Security Administration took her jar of homemade jam Dec. 15 and told her she could not bring it on the plane.
“It was jam. Just homemade jam in a tiny mason jar,” Triou said. “They said it has the potential to be bomb material.
“I told the agent, ‘It’s not gel, not perfume, not cosmetics, just jam.’ You could see the seeds in it,” she said.
The TSA agent would hear none of it and “continued to insist it could not pass through security as it could be bomb material,” she said.
The purpose of TSA is to allow airlines to charge for checked baggage.
I am guessing that the Nazi party members in Germany felt safe all of the time.
Simply because when do we demand an company that steals cupcakes from passengers, I dare to inquire? Have we permit the terrorists acquire in the war on terror? Has our TSA taken around the position of the terrorists, as it seems they are typically terrorizing the traveling manifeste? I identify this really alarming as a citizen with an individual hell of an ancestral line of persons who served establish this nation, like all the way back to the Mayflower.