Breaking Silence

So what would motivate me after months of silence to blog again? Lots of things have annoyed me viscerally since the snowpocalypse (the traffic; the military siege during the nuclear summit talks two weeks ago; the traffic disruptions of the finance summit this week; the traffic; tourists cluttering the Metro; the reduction of already poor service on the Metro; the traffic; tourists; the Senate; the Republicans with particular focus on Mitch McConnell; Harry Reid; the heat and humidity; the traffic; the tourists) but I never blogged about them.

It’s the security systems in government office buildings. And it’s not that they are too lax, leaving us at risk from a mass murdering Teabagger annoyed that we give away drugs and medical supplies to needy countries. The metal detectors have been torqued up in the last month, going from the mere annoyance level to impeding business. The magnetometers in most of the office buildings have been able to detect such weapons as cell phones, Blackberries, aluminum-wrapped sandwiches; metal forks and spoons, and presumably genuine weapons, if anyone tried to bring one in. What the device ignored was a few keys, a few coins, a computer thumb drive, eyeglasses, pens, mechanical pencils, etc.—the basic items one carries around in pockets.

Then, several weeks ago they brought in a tunable device, and we needed to remove our keys and coins (even just one key or a dime). Last week they tuned it a little higher. There go the eyeglasses, pens, even the security badge itself. This week someone amped it some more, and now it finds the one remaining piece of metal on me, my belt buckle. Every trip this week, and it is many times a day that I travel to another building, I have had to step aside to get wanded—always the belt buckle, though on Tuesday my apple sounded the alarm, and I hadn’t even put the razor blades in it yet.

The security stations are understaffed, of course, so no one can pass through the detector while the guard is wanding someone. So, there have been backups of 40 or more people waiting to get into the building.

I know my shoe’s shoestring eyelets set off the hand wand, so I’m expecting that that will come soon.

Perhaps the point is to make air travel seem pleasant again.

END OF RANT