Lowering the Bar

TSA Confuses Perfume Bottle With a Grenade

The fact that some TSA employees are idiots does not mean they are all idiots. But wow, some of them are utter and complete idiots.

Last week's idiocy, or at least the one on Friday, was the confiscation of a bottle of Jimmy Choo perfume that, to an idiot, looks kind of like a grenade. At least I infer that from the reaction of TSA agents at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, who—and you realize I don't make any of this stuff up, but I still feel the need to mention that I'm not making this one up—shut down a checkpoint for an hour and called in a bomb expert to examine a bottle of perfume.

See, here's what an actual grenade looks like, or at least what one looked like in World War II. This is probably the kind that most of us think of when we think "grenade." The shell of the grenade has grooves in it to make sure there are lots of deadly fragments when it explodes [edit: or maybe to make it easier to grip], which gives it the distinctive "pineapple" shape. Not all grenades have that—most today are round and smooth—but I'm guessing this is what confused the idiots.

A bottle of Jimmy Choo perfume also has grooves in it, sort of, and is also sort of vaguely grenade-shaped. But there's no pin to pull, no lever to keep it from blowing up before you throw it, and it's made of glass. I did a little research, and I didn't find any other grenades made of glass, possibly because that would be a stupid *$%@ing thing to make a grenade out of. But probably the easiest way to distinguish a bottle of Jimmy Choo perfume from a grenade is this: grenades typically do not come with a spray top THAT SQUIRTS OUT SOMETHING THAT SMELLS NICE.

It's a pretty good rule of thumb. Really.

Lois Lewis, whose perfume caused the crisis, is a record promoter for country-music acts. She probably is not with al Qaeda; for one thing I doubt any of them could tolerate country music for long. (Although Osama bin Laden did have a cowboy hat.) She is a member of another questionable organization, though: PreCheck, the extortion scheme program where the TSA will let you pay it $85 to be groped less often. According to this TSA report, $14.50 of that fee pays for the FBI to run a criminal-records check, and the other $70.50 (83%) goes to the TSA for administration. What is the TSA actually doing, besides paying itself to administrate? Hard to say. There are several major line items here that have something to do with "vetting" applicants. But shouldn't the FBI be doing that, not these numbskulls? And if the FBI is doing that, why does the TSA get most of the fee?

Anyway, here's the thing: the TSA estimates it will collect $65 million over five years for the PreCheck program, about $54 million of which it will keep, and at least based on Lewis's experience that money will get you exactly nothing at all. If they won't even trust you with a glass bottle of perfume, what the F did you pay 85 dollars for?

The TSA's position is apparently that this was not a case of mistaking a perfume bottle for a grenade. No, it was about the policy of excluding items that look like weapons not because they are dangerous but because they could be perceived as such. "They said if as a passenger you were to get on an airplane and you were to wave this around," Lewis said, "that people could maybe construe that as you making some sort of a threat." First, if that's what really happened, why the bomb expert? Was he a replica-bomb expert? Please. Second, what the TSA is evidently saying now is that they're not the idiots—it's you. If someone were to get up and start waving a bottle of Jimmy Choo perfume around, they seem to think, you will panic because you are too stupid to distinguish between that bottle and a grenade. And so they must protect you (at your expense) from your own stupidity.

They may also relieve you of your valuables while they're at it, of course. The "bomb expert" kept the bottle of perfume, which cost $83. Probably running a bunch of tests on it right now.

Stupid Warning Shows Up on Leprechaun Hat

Here's yet another example of California's Prop 65 "warning" label, which has become ubiquitous and therefore pointless for reasons I semi-explained a while back when somebody wanted it put on all cooked meat:

That appeared on Mia Matsumiya's Twitter feed with the message, "[Expletive]. I seriously regret not reading the label before wearing this leprechaun hat on my uterus! Happy St. Pat's."

First, if anyone wants to take a stab at calculating how long you'd have to wear one of these (on any body part) before it would measurably increase the risk of "cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm," please let me know the number of millennia you end up with. (If the thing turns out to be made of plutonium-laced asbestos, consider my opinion revised. Otherwise, not.) Second, anybody who wears a leprechaun hat 24/7/365, or frankly on any day other than March 17, should probably not be allowed to reproduce anyway. So that solves that problem.

Dear Falkland Islanders Who Want to Buy My Book

I have no idea what it would cost to ship it there from the U.S. otherwise, but I have just learned that if you buy from the Book Depository.co.uk, they will ship it to you for free. The base price is about ten percent higher than on Amazon's U.S. site, but unless you are going to spend $125 total and thereby get free AmazonGlobal Saver shipping, it would still be cheaper overall.

Plus, it looks like Amazon won't even ship to the Falkland Islands. WTF, Amazon? Why no love for the Falklands? (Actually, the Book Depository is apparently now owned by Amazon.com, so maybe Amazon bought the company to make sure Falkland Islanders could get all the books they want.)

Here's the complete list of countries to which the Book Depository says it will ship for free:

---

A - Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Austria

B - Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Brunei Darrusalam, Bulgaria

C - Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic

D - Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic

E - Estonia, El Salvador

F - Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France

G - Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Guam, Guatemala

H - Hong Kong, Hungary

I - Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy

J - Jamaica, Japan, Jordan

L - Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg

M - Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Martinique, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro

N - Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norway

O - Oman

P - Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico

Q - Qatar

R - Reunion, Romania, Russia

S - Saint Helena, Saint Lucia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovarunkia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland

T - Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey

U - Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, US Virgin Islands

V - Vanuatu, Vatican City, Vietnam

---

The Book Depository also has this cool map with little signs that pop up whenever people in that country buy a book from it (not technically "live," it appears, but within the last 30 minutes). Boom! Someone in Singapore just bought The Dinosaur that Pooped Christmas. Bam! Someone in Australia just bought Carnival of Felting. Boom—The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance? Anyone? How about you, Dominica? I'm sorry I didn't realize you were an actual country. I had you confused with the Dominican Republic. No hard feelings? Cocos Islands? Réunion? You're even more remote than the Falklands! What a deal!

Slovarunkia? No, sorry, you actually don't exist. I just cut-and-pasted the whole list, and how "Slovakia" got changed to "Slovarunkia" during that process is—like the existence of a book called Carnival of Felting—something else I can't explain. But I kind of liked it, so I left it that way.

Complaints about this blog or The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance should be directed to Posting Box 3827, Slovarunkia City, Slovarunkia, until further notice.

Model Teed Off at Man Who Teed Off on Her

Look, I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life, I'm just suggesting that it's a bad idea to put sharp or explosive objects in your butt. Time after time we have seen that does not turn out well (e.g., this). But it's up to you.

As numerous sources have reported, Playboy model Liz Dickson is suing Playboy Enterprises and a TV-show host who she alleges hit her in the ... hip? ... with a golf club during a photo shoot. According to the complaint (via Deadspin), the idea was to take a picture of her on a golf course with a tee between her buttocks and with a golfer pretending to be about to swing at the ball placed thereon. She alleges that he (1) did not pretend as he was supposed to do, and (2) he struck her in the hip/buttock causing her serious and to some extent permanent injuries. She is demanding a total of $500,000 plus punitive damages in the (unlikely) event the defendants are found to have acted intentionally.

TMZ of course has obtained video of the incident (also posted by Deadspin), but it's so shaky it's hard to tell whether she's laughing or yelling in pain. (Laughter wouldn't necessarily mean she wasn't injured, of course.) I watched it quite a few times, just in an effort to figure that out, but to no avail.

"Bound by Honor to Defy a Judge ... and Eat a Document"

That's how Richard Masten felt on Friday, according to Ari Odzer of NBC6 in South Florida. And that's why, as you can see, Masten did indeed eat a document in defiance of a judge's order to turn it over.

Masten, a former police chief, is now the executive director of Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers, which collects thousands of anonymous tips every year in an effort to help law enforcement. According to the report, Masten was ordered by a judge to turn over this particular tip after it was requested by a defendant's attorney. He wasn't required to turn over the source's name, but apparently felt that it would be too easy for the defendant to figure out who the source was based on the information in the tip.

So down it went.

Masten said he ate the document out of a sense of obligation to the Crime Stoppers project and those who contribute to it:

"We promise the people who give us information to solve murders, serious violent crimes in this community, that they can call with an assurance that they will remain anonymous and that nothing about them or their information would ever be compromised," [Masten] said. "The case today started creeping into that... it’s not going to happen on my watch and I understood the consequences."

Of course, most evidence-eaters do it to protect themselves, but here even the defense attorney conceded that Masten was doing something he believed to be noble. He might have jumped the gun a little, though, because the judge might have been willing and able to come up with something that would protect the source's identity while still allowing the accused to defend herself. His consumption of the document deprived her of the ability to do that.

At least temporarily. As I mentioned back in 2007 after a legislator ate a bill in an effort to stop it from passing, this kind of thing is a meaningful gesture but its effectiveness depends on whether there's another copy, and there typically is. Here the information is presumably in Crime Stoppers' files, and so unless it is willing to purge that, too, eating the physical document is only a temporary measure. And doing it in defiance of a court order is, unfortunately, contempt of court.

Masten will be back in court next week to learn what the penalty will be. He reportedly could get up to two weeks in jail, but he said he was prepared for that. "I'll bring a toothbrush and some pajamas," he said.

Via the excellent @_FloridaMan Twitter feed, although the Florida man in this particular case was not up to the kind of shenanigans normally being reported there.

Good Riddance to Hampton, Florida?

The New York Times reported on March 10 that the Florida Legislature may abolish the town of Hampton, a one-square-mile craphole northeast of Gainesville that until now was known, if at all, only for being one of the nation's worst speed traps. State officials started a criminal investigation after an audit of the town's government "uncovered reams of financial irregularities, shoddy record-keeping and missing funds."

The state representative for the area ordered the audit, which he said was not in any way related to the fact that he got a speeding ticket there in 2011.

Hampton has existed, for whatever reason, since about 1925. Home to fewer than 500 people, it is located east of Highway 301 in north-central Florida. Some would say, actually, that it is located on Highway 301, as a result of an amendment to the town's borders in the mid-1990s. See if you can spot the amendment on the map below:

Hint: it is on the west side of town.

There is no question (not that you questioned it) that the town extruded this tentacle for the sole purpose of picking travelers' pockets: the NYT article says that a former mayor admitted helping to arrange the annexation "to help fill city coffers." The speed limit coincidentally dips from 65 to 55 when the highway enters that .2-mile "part of town," making "criminals" out of people who don't notice the change. A lot of people. According to the Times, during 2011 and 2012 alone the town's officers wrote 12,698 tickets, an average of 17 people every day who regretted the 12 seconds or so they spent transiting West Hampton. The town took in $419,624 in fines during that time, but still operated at a deficit.

Photo by Edward Linsmier for the NYT

Where'd all that money go? This guy might know where some of it went. He's the most recent mayor, and he's wearing an orange jumpsuit for a reason (drug charges). The town's three staff members resigned in February, and so has the police chief, who at one point was employing 17 officers ("a word loosely applied here," said the Times) for a town of 477 people. The county sheriff said he did not know how many of the 17 were actually police officers or whether any of them were actually trained in radar detection. The chief is one of the investigation's primary targets, according to the report.

The investigation also involves water, which is the one utility controlled by town government. Not only did it do a poor job of supplying water, the utility's financial records evidently left something to be desired. "The reason ... that no water meter logbooks before April 2012 could be found," the Times reported, "was that they were 'lost in a swamp,' the result of a car accident involving the water utility operator." (He forgot to file an accident report, it turns out, probably due to swamp trauma.) According to the sheriff, some residents said they were threatened with having their water turned off if they made trouble.

The town apparently has about 30 days to come up with a plan, or else the legislature is likely to dissolve it, which would make it part of surrounding Bradford County. That would presumably take care of the speed-trap tentacle, which is currently non-functional anyway due to lack of police "officers" to staff it.

"We are just trying to fix things that happened," said one of the five city councilmen, ironically (or not) named "Frantz Innocent." (Nobody's really to blame, you see—once again it's the fault of these things that keep happening. When will someone do something about the things?! They are getting away with murder.) "If you want to go poking around looking for something," Mr. Innocent continued, "you can always find something wrong." (It's the pokers' fault, too.)

Win a Copy of The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance

I realize that a mere $18.78 (the current price of my book on Amazon.com) is nothing to somebody like you, and that if you had $18.78 in your hand you'd probably just throw it out in the street rather than take the time to put it away in your wallet or purse or wherever it is that you put money. I mean, at your billing rate it wouldn't be economical to spend more than 60 seconds thinking about what to do with $18.78. Better to just throw it out in the street and get on with your day. Maybe then it'll at least briefly disperse that cloud of disgusting street urchins who insist on constantly buzzing around during your morning constitutional. And what else are those coins good for, really? Yacht ballast?

But hey—everybody likes a contest.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance

by Kevin Underhill

Giveaway ends April 01, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

 

  Enter to win

If you are a member of Goodreads or are willing to sign up, you can go there and sign up to win a free signed copy of the book. (Or an unsigned copy, if you don't want to lower the value any further.) Three winners will be chosen at random by Goodreads after the signup period ends, which will happen, appropriately enough, on April 1. I will then send each winner a book (they don't have to share).

Don't miss this chance to win a copy of the book that author Cory Doctorow called "a genuinely funny and extremely weird tour through the world's dumbest rules," and that the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice called "the most hilarious book we have ever forbidden the reading of."

Bieber Deposed

And surprise! He's a complete tool.

TMZ has posted several clips taken from the Biebs' recent 4.5-hour deposition in a case involving allegations that his bodyguard beat up a photographer. In this clip, which TMZ calls "Arrogant Bieber," it has put together examples of Bieber displaying his obvious contempt for the other side's lawyer and the whole process. At one point, for example, he claims not to remember whether he's ever been to Australia, just to be difficult.

 

The bit where he adjusts his outfit while looking into the camera (or possibly at a TV monitor) is also pretty good.

In this next one ("Disrespectful Bieber") he answers a number of the questions by more or less whispering while gazing directly into the camera. Does he think the jury will consist of teenage girls? But that's not the real highlight. The lawyer asks him whether Usher was "instrumental" to his career, which is followed by some argument about whether that's relevant. (Not sure why it would be, but that's not the point here.) Then there seems to have been a short break. When they come back, Bieber returns to that question and tries to emphasize his own role (at Usher's expense). But what he actually says is, "I was detrimental to my own career."

 

Which is true, but not responsive to the question.

This Defense Attorney Got "Street Knowledge," Yo

Also a good sense of humor, though you may disagree with his message.

 

Or you may not.

Accused criminals are entitled to a defense and defending them is an honorable profession, even though many of the accused will in fact be guilty. I'm not entirely sure about the legal ethics of suggesting to potential criminal-law clients that "laws are arbitrary," but especially since it's true that at least some of them are (see The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance, supra), I think he's got a First Amendment right to say that.

No crimes were actually committed in the making of this ad, according to the disclaimer at the end. The ones depicted are "dramatizations."

Needless 911: Can't Get This Jacket Off and I'm Pissed About It!

I'm a big fan of the "You Called 911 for That?!" campaign being run by the Washington County (Oregon) Consolidated Communications Agency, the dispatch center that handles calls in that area. In an effort to educate citizens that—as you certainly know by now—911 is to be used only for emergencies that require police, fire, or medical assistance, the WCCCA has been noting examples of calls it considers inappropriate and posting them on its Facebook page. (Oregonlive.com has also been covering the campaign.)

The agency gets major bonus points for also posting audio files of the calls. (It says the voices have been altered slightly to protect the callers' identities.)

The campaign has been running for six weeks now, and my favorite is still this one that I saved a couple of weeks ago with the potential headline "stuck zipper":

A man called 911 because the zipper was stuck on his wife’s coat and she could not get it off[, wrote Oregon Live]. The man told the dispatcher, the agency wrote on its Facebook page, that he didn’t want to ruin the coat and needed help.

This one is improved greatly by listening to the call, which I'm going to summarize anyway.

The caller starts right off by saying "Yeah, we got a problem here," like he's calling from Apollo 13 and they just heard a loud bang. But the next thing out of his mouth is "My wife is struggling in her jacket ... can't get it off." While the dispatcher is trying to process that, he sternly demands swift action: "I want 911 up here immediately." Thinking that maybe the woman is having trouble breathing, the dispatcher asks if that's the case, to which the man responds, "She's all right, she just can't get her goddamn jacket off! And I'm pissed about it!"

You really need to hear that sentence. The poor guy is clearly very exasperated about the zipper thing, and his voice goes up a couple of octaves (I don't think the agency is responsible for that). I've listened to that sentence several times this morning and will probably do so throughout the day.

Here are the other winning non-emergency emergency calls (links go to the audio files):

• "We are trapped in our driveway because our neighbors are extremely rude." [They had blocked the driveway with their car].

• "I tried to pump the gas by myself, but the machine doesn't work." [The station turned out to be closed.]

• "[I'm calling about an] animal that howls at midnight every single night."

• "I need to activate my phone ... because I'm being evicted. I'm under duress.... I'm just telling you my feelings." [He later escalated his condition to "extreme duress," still to no avail.]

• "I thought [my phone] said to call 911 for help."

Props to the dispatchers of Washington County not only for the campaign, but for the almost inhuman patience they show with these people.