The security nonsense started and I stopped flying. I’ve been on one flight in the last five years.

How about a t-shirt that says:
Is your airline
going under?
Ask me why

You could always try using the html tag for italics. Just a thought.

<i>verbiage</i>

You know, it’s not even a gun. It’s a made up piece of futuristic robot tech. There is no such object in real life. What if it had a picture of the Stone of Gol?

Apart from going to prison, no other activity in contemporary life exposes you to such intimidation, ugliness, regimentation, overcrowding and cruel dehumanisation, as the decision to go to an airport.

–Stephen Bayley in The Telegraph.

Fifteen minutes later, while I’m reading the lesson plans and finding all the teaching materials, I am summoned by intercom to the office. I walk all the way back, and am ushered into the principal’s office, where he and the vice principal were waiting as though I’d committed some offense. There they tell me that they heard I was wearing a pager. I said “Yes. The secretary already informed me about them; I took it off and put it in the car.” Then they wasted five more minutes going on about the reasons why pagers aren’t allowed. Then they told me to either put it in my car or hand it over so they could confiscate it. I re-stated that I’d already put it in the car, and had done so as soon as the secretary had told me to. They looked at each other with these “he’s a trouble-maker” eye-roll expressions, then finally let me get back to doing my job. Bizarre. They kept acting as though I was sporting a pager even though I’d gone out to the car and even told them that I’d put it away already.

Small world! I was a passenger flying through that day. Nick Cave was giving a free concert, but I missed it because it was too close to my departure time. I should have gone because my flight was delayed ~24 hours anyway.

Naw, I’m already pulled out of the line for TWB (in my case, Traveling While Bald) so it wouldn’t be a very good test.

I sure hope the new POTUS, SOTUS, and HROTUS will see fit to abolish the Trepidation Support Assholes. That won’t help you at Heathrow’s increasingly-obviously-accursed Terminal 5, though.

The USA: My once-great country, now counterexample to the world.

Also, I’ve always wanted to bring this bag with me as my carry on.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsunder20/9856/

People have been arrested in the US just for wearing anti-bush T-shirts to July 4th parades and even simply to shopping malls (even though later, of course, these cases were thrown out of court because they violated no law.)

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=14041

I post this, however, not to contribute to our governments’ climate of fear which has “the terrorists” having already “won” by curtailing our freedoms, but rather to chime in that when our freedom of expression in harmless apparel is seen as a threat, it’s time to use that power to start a real dialogue about our vanishing civil liberties by wearing more and more controvercial T-shirts. Let’s make a transformer shirt that says “Does this T-shirt threaten your security?” or the like. Let’s get creative and baffle the dumbshits further.

And BTW, “travel gangs” are entirely impractical. If you’ve got the time, money, and wherewithal to organize this, you could affect a lot better social change in other ways.

1. The name of the Travel Gang shall be the Black Gang.

2. The uniform of the Black Gang shall be black. As much as you’ve got, as little as a bandana. Extra points for sunglasses.

3. The slogan, secret handshake, tattoo, hailing sign, war cry and identifier shall be : Travel Black!

4. Any who declare to any anywhere are legitimate members. Non-human species are included.

That oughtta do it. “Entirely impractical”? You gotta read more history.

“If it was my job to scrutinize air passengers and figure out which had the potential to be troublesome, unstable or otherwise threatening to the comfort and safety of others I would feel it was not just my right but my duty to select for extra attention individuals who had chosen out of all of the clothing and jewelry options that they might have worn to the airport those which bore representations of firearms”

– how does making him change shirt change his intention or potential to be troublesome in any way? If anything it just makes him angry and so more likely to cause trouble.

I’m sorry sir, you pose a threat to our allergic guests, all animals must be held in cargo. Would you like to rent the appropriate kennel? We’ve got one in extra-large that should accommodate you well.

Sue the bastards for unconstitutional first amendment abuses! Raise a stink in as much media as you can muster, and organize a boycott of that carrier to hit them in their economy.

Make some phone calls to your senators…make sure you speak with them about it and make sure they follow up on it to make sure it won’t ever happen again!

Remember, releasing a chicken in an airplane can only be considered an act of terror if there is a passenger aboard who has a fear of chickens.

Oooh! T-shirt idea: “I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

You’re right. It doesn’t, and I didn’t say it did.

To repeat my earlier statement:
The safety features of our transportation system are obviously tragically broken and I in no way support security people who fear pictures on shirts