To Osama & his sissy Al Qeida

In pursuit of a job so I can pay off my student loans and not live like a pauper, I had to go on a job hunt for a job that would start this July if all things go smoothly. This entails traveling on over crowded, budget airplanes to distant parts of the US that is far away from Arizona, eating budget airline food that consists of cheese sticks, slim jims and 100-calorie oreos stuffed in cute, 3 by 4 boxes, dining on the fine fair of Terminal Airport junk in its small variety of MacDonald's, Seattle Coffee and the countless, nameless bars that all look the same, enduring body smells and bratty children and paying $5 for week-old oranges. I proudly say that I can now pass through security with my eyes closed and despise every person who lay claim to the title "TSA agent", who have, on more than one occasion, "confiscated" my various cosmetics supplies and lotions for the sake of National Security and the War on Terror.

Inevitably, Osama and his sissy Al Qeida have stock piled on Aveeno face washes, 24 hour smooth-on body lotion, bottles of face tonic, bottles upon bottles of good drinking water and bottles upon more bottles of coca cola, swam knee deep in perfectly flourided Colgate toothpastes and frolicked in many tubes of mud masks. So now, they better look like a sissy version of their former selves and can stand next to Claudia Schiffer without smelling like a mountain goat and looking like a gorilla.

Since I refuse to support the small industry that has sprouted after a couple of numchucks in London saw it their duty to participate in a "Holy War" that calls for the maiming of innocents, an industry that profits on the helpless millions of travelers unprepared to part with their body lotions, foundation compacts and lipsticks and has now supplied Walmart and Target with millions of 4 oz pump bottles, miniature soaps and shampoos calling them "travel-sized", I thought it wise to disguise my Aveeno face wash with salicylic acid (or commonly known as aspirin) as "medicine" and squeezed it into the 4 oz ziploc bag that contained my over-the-counter steroid ointment and my over-the-counter nondescript, store brand saline contact lens solution. According to reputed sources, contact lens solution is considered "medicinal" along with heart medications, hemorrhoid cream, and antacids and can therefore be taken into the cabin. After all, I rationalized, aspirin is kind of a heart medication that gets prescribed to people with heart attacks, so what's the difference between that and hemorrhoid cream? On my last trip out to Cleveland, I had pretended that it was something I could not live without and that the trans-America flight would be certain death and a full face melt down if I was not allowed to carry my aspirin infused face wash with me.

The TSA agent (government stooge) didn't share the same view.

"The bottle is too big," she said.
I gave her the aspirin schpeal and dutifully pointed out the word "salicylic acid" on the bottle.
"This is something you can buy over-the-counter and is not medicine," she counters.
But my steroid cream and contact lens solution were bought over-the-counter! Even hemorrhoid cream can be purchased at the neighborhood convenience store, so what makes some over-the-counter things medicine and others not? Was it some arbitrary designation that some how now excluded my aspirin face wash, the almighty aspirin whose properties are all encompassing?

"If I or some other passenger were to be unfortunate enough to suffer a heart attack, we could drink the face wash," I said in a last ditch attempt to salvage the 3/4 full bottle that was slowly moving out of my reach and into the coffers of Osama and his gang.

The TSA agent looks at me.

"The only way you can take this with you is if you checked in your luggage, which would mean you have to leave security, go back down to the check in counter, and check in your luggage."

I gave her an evil eye as she takes the Aveeno and tosses it into a pile of other War on Terror objects. I hear Osama and his sissy gang gleefully laughing in their subterranean hideout. It is one up for them if they can usurp my way of life and deprive me, not only of the pleasure of seeing the World Trade Center live, but now, depriving me of my face wash with aspirin.

May they rot in hell.