The menacing voice in Cincinnati which I describe below referred to a Terror Alert. This is kind of a subtle and nasty (although here presumably unintentional) linguistic trick. A warning about possible terrorism—a notice about ugly acts of a particular ideological sort—has been abbreviated into a sequence of words that each are rough synonyms for fear. We can do better! Let us describe the Terror Alert voice recording on the CVG intercom as the Terror Alert Fear Alarm. And the baggage inspectors as the Terror Protection Stike Force Authority. And the loud, expensive puff-of-air machines that passengers are randomly subjected to (imagine how much a two-year-old girl enjoys an array of such machines) can be known as Air Blast Bomb Warners. Should be popular with Security Moms. Rather than attributing this sort of thing to the usual George, we should instead recognize George Carlin, who said, of course, "I hope I'll be safe at home!"
[permalink
]
So the kid and I made it through a trip to Cincinnati, sans mère, and it went fine. It was surprisingly easy. (Just in time for #2 to make life difficult again.) The only thing that went wrong was that the TSA found my wrist-mounted GPS unit in my luggage and nearly destroyed its nylon wrist strap in an attempt to...do something to it, I guess? A card left in my luggage explained that, "...[my] bag and its contents may have been searched for prohibited items. At the completion of the inspection, the contents were returned to [my] bag." There was no mention of squirting our bug spray on our toothbrushes, failing to close the toothpaste cap tightly enough to prevent it from leaking, or fraying the strap on my GPS unit. This completed a trip home that had started with a surprisingly menacing, and deep, and slow recorded voice at the Cincinnati airport chanting something along the lines of, "The Terror, Alert Level has been raised, to Orange. Please, be alert...and report, any suspicious, activity." Methinks the massive, national paranoia exemplified by the color coded "Terror Alert" is probably more harmful than the thing to which it is an overreaction.
[permalink
]