Excuse me Ma’m, is that an IED under your sari or are you just happy to see me?

BY: B. Keith Plunkett

I had every intention of writing a great morning rant on the ridiculousness of some recent Facebook trends, and I’ll likely get to that on another post. I’m usually extremely geared up for the task of rant writing in the morning thanks to the fact that I’m forced to drive through two or three major traffic zones to get to the office. By the time I’ve flipped off and cussed out every stupid A-hole driver (SAHD) on the morning commute between Madison and Rankin Counties, I’m primed for prime-time. This morning was no different, until I got to the office and picked up the Clarion Ledger.

An aside here for those of you who know I work a federal job, I come in early to do writing and then prep for the day before the office opens. At lunch, I put the finishing touches on the post and get it up. In other words, this wasn’t written on the taxpayers dime!

Front page of the CL today reads: Female diplomat patted down at Jackson Airport. The subtitle is Indian ambassador’s treatment called humiliating. Apparently this has upset “state hosts and elected officials” according to the article.

Really?! And why the hell is she so special, because, she has diplomatic papers? Big deal, having a state issued driver’s license and appearing to be nothing like a terrorist (read white cracker), a U.S.  Citizen and, in some cases, a grandmother or a 6-year old child hasn’t helped some people out of the invasive search. We should be happy that a person with a “not from around here” appearance from a country with a few billion Muslims gets a second look from TSA, shouldn’t we? Isn’t that what this whole damn exercise is supposed to be about to begin with?

Who cares if she was being escorted by a representative of the Mississippi Development Authority?  Even someone as socially inept as the guy who works at--and I think lives in the back room of--the local 7-11 and has the heavy aroma of funk and patchouli could find some guy wandering Poindexter Park in West Jackson, mumbling to himself and in need of a few dollars, to be a stooge to pull that off. Convince the park wanderer to take his meds, then clean him up and coach him to pretend to be an important person and he could get through security just about anywhere in this town.

Let’s give these TSA airport guys a little credit. They damn sure don’t want a plane to go down because they refused to check someone just because she was being escorted by a suit. For god sakes, they feel up fat people’s junk all day! It’s already a crappy enough job. Let’s give them some kudos for wanting to work bad enough to do that instead of . . . say, signing up for an SSI crazy check and wandering around Poindexter Park all day mumbling to themselves.

Shankar presented her diplomatic papers to officers and was escorted by an MDA representative and an airport security officer, but witnesses said she was subjected to the hands-on search.

"The way they pat them down - it was so humiliating," said Tan Tsai, a research associate at MSU's International Security Studies center who witnessed the screening. "Anybody who passed by could see it."

The poor thing. She must have been in shock. In her home country they would never do anything like that, right?

Wrong! Land in Delhi and you’re met with military personnel with automatic weapons. I’ll take a TSA pat down over being strip searched at gunpoint any day.

We southerners are a hospitable bunch. Nobody—that is nobody not on the sex offender list—wants to see their guests unwillingly fondled before or after a visit. But, let’s get real. While we are known for treating our guests like royalty, the outrage from our “state officials” smacks of a hierarchical superiority. If there was any message they should have received loud and clear after last month’s elections, it’s that the voters don’t think they, or their invited dignitaries, are any more special than the rest of us.

Enough with the faux outrage.

Bah. Humbug.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett

I had the Christmas Spirit yesterday for all of two hours. I heard a Christmas song in a coworker's office, and I thought, "yeah, I'm ready." Visions of happiness and thoughts of "God bless us everyone" bounced around in my sentimental noggin.

Then I went home.

Last night I opened three invitations to Christmas functions--and I do mean functions, not parties. Today, I began trying to deal with how to schedule my holiday season to be sure and hit all the necessary organizational gatherings, as well as make it to all the other events and not piss off any of my friends and family.

This is why I now go on a Christmas Vacation every year. I can't take this crap! The holiday is a constant barrage of "do you love me?" tests driven by an insatiable consumerism. It turns otherwise decent people into zombies that mindlessly reach for cash to throw down for trifling trinkets. They then wrap it in tinsil and pretty paper, and hope above all hope that it proves their love and devotion.

Yes, I love you, too. I love you enough to tell you that the truth is I don't want to be pressured into proving it. I enjoy my alone time, and if you can't understand that you're part of the problem.

For decades my wife and I dealt with going to a Christmas party at my grandparents where we were expected weeks in advance to draw names to buy gifts for people we only see once a year at Christmas. We were told by some of my aunts that if we dared stop the tradition it would crush my grandparents and send them to an early grave. These are the same ultra religious grandparents who have always--both before the get together and after--preached loudly as to how the "Reason for the Season" has been forgotten.

Praise God, Jesus is Born, pass me another helping of cake and let's see how high we can stack the gifts that no one here will ever see again until we clean out our closets 10 Springs from now. Ugh!

After we could no longer get my family to see how absolutely phony their claims of piety were, my wife and I bucked the charlatans for our own Christmas Tradition. It involves not getting the kids more than one gift, and usually only something useful and needed. It involves the four of us alone together in a special place. Last year, it was two weeks in Manhattan. This year it will be 10 days in south Florida.

A family adventure where we spend time making memories, and I don't even so much as hang a wreath or a light.

Here's a few more reasons why we should all give up on our ridiculous Christmas and start again from Leo at zenhabits:

1. The focus is on buying, not on sharing. I love the idea of giving to people you love, but that idea has been twisted. Now people go out in a mad rush to shop, like ravenous vampires feasting on new blood. We shop for a month, rip apart the packaging one morning, and then forget about it the next day. Is this about giving, or buying?

2. Giving is great, but buying is not the solution. Again, I’m in love with giving … but do we need to buy to give? We seem to think that buying is the solution to any problem, but that has lead to a society that is deeply in debt and piled high with needless stuff. We can find other ways to give: bake cookies, wash someone’s car, babysit so they can go on a date night, create a photo album, be there when they need help moving.

3. The waste, oh the waste. Let’s start with packaging: the packaging for every toy is double the volume of the toy itself. From cardboard to plastic to metal twist-ties, it’s ridiculous. Then every item we buy must be brought home in bags. We often put everything in boxes. Then we buy wrapping paper and wrap it all up. All of this gets thrown away on Christmas day. Finally, there’s the gift itself — people get so much stuff they can’t possibly treasure everything. So it goes into the closet to be forgotten.

4. The sorrowful debt. Most people spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on gifts and wrapping. Not to mention all the money spent on gas, driving to different shopping places, and the money spent on fattening food at mall food courts. This goes on credit cards (and around our waistlines), and we then must pay for this — with high interest — during the year. Even if you don’t get into debt, you’re spending money earned from long hours of hard work — is this really how you want to spend your life, paying for needless stuff so corporations can get rich?

5. The horrendous, insipid, seizure-inducing advertising. I can’t stand advertising, and it only gets worse on Christmas. The ads pound on you relentlessly until you give in — and it works. That’s been proven — those ads are getting you to buy more, to want more, to lay down the credit card. I don’t watch TV, read newspapers or magazines, or allow ads in my browser so that I don’t have to be subjected to this.

6. The fuel. If you drive all over the place to shop, you’re using lots of fuel. Even if you just order online, think of the fuel it takes to deliver these products (overnight!) to your home. And the fuel used to create the products, to get the raw materials to the factories, to cut down the raw materials, to ship the finished product to the stores or warehouses from around the world (most likely from China), not to mention all the fuel used to create and ship the packaging. It’s a few million metric craploads of fuel, wasted for giving some presents that will be forgotten.

7. There are still hungry people in the world. In the frenzy that is Christmas shopping, we spend ridiculous amounts of money that is pure waste. In other countries, people are struggling just to eat, or get medicine, or find shelter, or get clean drinking water. We spend so much in a show of consumerist greed, when that money could go to feed a few dozen families. If you have money to waste, consider donating it to an organization that is helping these types of families. I know this sounds preachy, but really, this kind of reminder is necessary in times like these.

8. The neverending clutter. What happens to all the gifts? They go on our shelves, in our closets, on the floor. We already have so much clutter — do we need more? We already have problems figuring out what to do with everything we own. Why do we want to clutter our homes even more? Why do we want to force clutter on our loved ones, oblige them to find a spot in their already cluttered homes for this gift we’ve given them, so they won’t offend us when we come to visit? Is this obligation really a gift?