Yogurt: The Unknown Danger
By Emmett on Tuesday, August 29 2006, 09:06 - Permalink
I recently took a plane flight. On the first segment, the TSA confiscated my shaving cream. On the second, my toothpaste. Is the government fighting a war on hygiene? If my toothpaste is so dangerous, why did you let me take it on the first flight? This seems to imply the TSA is either enforcing useless rules without purpose, or failing to enforce useful rules, or both. The loud speaker barks out more orders as I sit in the airport. The warning level is currently orange and I should be alert! Vague, passive fear - my favorite kind. Boarding with yogurt purchased from airport shops is Strictly Forbidden!
I am in shock. For once, I am in complete agreement with the TSA. Yogurt is dangerous and needs to be kept off of our planes at all costs. But I am disturbed by a glaring weakness in the system: we are still selling the very tools required to secret yogurt onto our planes.
While surely the extremely thorough security check given by the flight attendants as you board would catch a simple ruse like hiding the yogurt by placing it in a bag, I am worried they will miss other more devious possibilities. For example, they sell good, honest, plane-legal muffins in the airport. But I happen to know they do not check your muffin when you board, and it would be only too easy for a criminal to hollow out the muffin and fill it with yogurt. I expect the TSA to follow up on this glaring security hole. Muffin inspection kits should be present at every gate.
Worse yet, you could easily smuggle yogurt in your mouth. Does anyone demand to look in your mouth before you board yet? If they don't, it's critical they start. I don't believe they sell plastic bags suitable for secreting yogurt elsewhere on your person yet, but you could bring them in in your luggage. Either we need to remove all plastic bags from luggage in the security checkpoint, or we need cavity searches at the plane door. Realistically, given that the TSA missed my toothpaste so easily, we probably need both.
Comments
i demmand we spend at least 3 weeks deciding how to prevent potential terrorists from muffgurting. could be disasterous! thank you emmett for directing our attention to such a devious trick as secreting yogurt onto our air transportation. keep up the good work. (what about hollowing out an orange peel and storing the yogurt there?! even the security lables can be good ideas for terrorists. do away with words!)
What about gogurt? Is that even yogurt, or a new hybrid of half yogurt, half amazing? Hm... What if you covered your body in yogurt, boarded the plane, went to the bathroom, scrape all of it off with the pocket knife they missed at security check and put it in a cup. I forget, what's the problem with yogurt? I was going to conclude this note because it's way too long already, but I kind of forget where I was going with this. Um, well you could use the yogurt and cover the tray table with it, along with the area between your seat and the window where men in white space suits wouldnt reach. Yeah, that would be nasty.