Secure but Sneezing
Yesterday when I called to check on the delay of my new allergy serum, I couldn’t believe my ears.The person who mixes the serum at my allergist’s office told me that their entire shipment of "ingredients" had been confiscated at the airport by Homeland Security! This is taking that moratorium on liquids to a whole new level.
While they wait for a replacement shipment, my symptoms brought on by the advent of fall are getting worse and worse. My eyes are itching and watering. I am sniffly at times. My throat is scratchy and I have random sneezes.
So do I feel any more secure knowing that my serum ingredients are deep-sixed along with captured bottles of baby formula, containers of contact lens solution, and tubes of toothpaste? No, and truthfully I am outraged that Homeland Security could inflict sniffling and sneezing on me at this important time of the year.
I have a hard time forgiving the idiots who dreamed up this rule that now makes it impossible for me to get an allergy shot! This makes a mockery out of the whole search for terrorists. For heaven’s sake...
posted by Barbara at 12:26 PM
6 Comments:
That IS ridiculous. You should send Dubya your bill and have him reimburse you since he inconvenience you.
And you're signed up for the Little Miss Sunshine Online Pageant.
I believe all the post 2001 "security" measures are intended more to frighten than protect us. The "security" around the Capitol, for instance, was so random as to make it almost funny. Almost. This newest rule, stripping us of yet more layers of civil liberties, is annoying, but the big picture is scary. When people get used to having their rights taken away, it is not good!
Hope your medicine arrives soon and in the meantime, Gessundheit!!
What a dreadful story – how unlucky can one be. I do hope you enjoy your weekend anyway and wish you the best!
Beth -- Welcome! Dubya isn't going to pay for my health care or anyone else's...
Everyone -- Check out Beth's Little -Miss-Sunshine-Online-Pageant.
The idea is to post a picture of yourself when you were in elementary school tomorrow -- October 1. This should be a lot of fun!
Reya -- I sort of got creeped out by this random inconvenience. I feel like I am being unfairly punished for no reason at all. I'll bet that's how a lot of those prisoners in Guantanamo feel. Only there is no end in sight for them. I'm worried that our civil liberties are gradually disappearing and may never return.
Renny -- Are they doing anything this stupid in Norway?
I agree with Reya that the security measures and rhetoric are designed more to maintain a state of alarm and vigilence rather than any genuine security.
Shades of 1984 - terribly cliched in these days and times:
Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. ... There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'
Richard -- This brings back that scared feeling I got when I read that book so many years ago. Of course then no one would have imagined that so many things in it would become true.
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