Comments

Ralph • November 16, 2010 2:02 PM

What are the odds of being on a flight where someone will do something really stupid or be a terrorists? 1 in 10M, 1 in 20M? The odds of being in serious car accident are so much higher? The odds of being killed by a drunk driver are much higher than being on a hijacked plane.

I’d rather have less security, less waste of taxpayer$$, less waste of time at the airport, than go thru the ‘security theater’ at airports.
Cost vs benefit, honest risk analysis and some sanity to this air security issue.

Embarassed • November 16, 2010 2:23 PM

Groping not desired
No naked pictures of me
I’m not like your mom

Job groping strangers
kids can be terrorists too
pedophiles welcome

Erik W • November 16, 2010 2:48 PM

@ Pete:
You are correct. Try these:

Like the autumn leaves
Our rights flutter to the ground
So too, our trousers.

Like tributaries
our many streams of invective
An ocean of bile

HJohn • November 16, 2010 3:20 PM

@kingsnake: “Under whose watch was the TSA created, the Patriot Act passed, etc?”

Under that logic, nothing the CIA and FBI did on Bush’s watch is his fault since he did not create them.

Absurd.

AlanS • November 16, 2010 3:26 PM

Why Haiku? Don’t you think Tanka, another type of Japanese short poetry, would be more appropriate given that the TSA share an abbreviation with the Tanka Society of America.

HJohn • November 16, 2010 3:27 PM

May want to move the TSA under the health care bureaucracy. They might as well provide mammograms, colonoscopies, and turn-your-head-and-cough tests while they are in the area. An opportunity to streamline and reduce redundancy.

Geek Prophet • November 16, 2010 3:33 PM

@ Dude

Unfortunate fact
Rights lost to leaders now gone
Rarely are given back

Yes, I can blame the Bush Administration. Bush’s supporters would claim credit for a successful policy begun under Bush that Obama keeps, so it is equally fair to for him to receive the blame, too.

Note that I didn’t say Obama isn’t to blame, as well. But that doesn’t make Bush suddenly clean for everything the TSA does after he pushed to create it and set its policies.

Mark S • November 16, 2010 4:30 PM

T.S.A. will not
Be happy until we fly
Naked and in chains.

(With apologies to a friend of mine, who first told me the “naked and in chains” line some years ago.)

Fred Rodgers • November 16, 2010 6:07 PM

May want to move the TSA under the health care bureaucracy.

Now TSA wants to capture x-rays of me (protected health information).

I think they should already be covered by the HIPAA privacy rules.

John Hardin • November 16, 2010 6:21 PM

Okay, now we need to find an on-demand t-shirt place to make these – one that can print the haiku/senryū in foil so it is readable through your outer garments as you go through the scanner…

I wonder if printing them in foil on card stock would work in the bag x-ray machines? Stamping them out of sheet metal would, of course, work, but is a little spendy.

hoodathunkit • November 16, 2010 6:51 PM

Airline scans for health
Barack’s unified program
gropes for employment
.

Sell fear for power
promised safety vanishes
like lost liberties

Imperfect Citizen • November 16, 2010 6:55 PM

she listens
he says look in front of the drive train
when you clear the vehicle
a rare situation

noble serf • November 16, 2010 8:06 PM

hey there security
i opt out please yes please yes
oh yes touch my junk

(i know it’s horrible, but i had to)

spaceman spiff • November 16, 2010 8:54 PM

So, is the TSA a conspiracy of the automobile companies and oil industry to force us to drive everywhere?

Clive Robinson • November 16, 2010 9:03 PM

I’m told there is more to American Haiku than 575 such as “season words” and “cuts”… so,

Winter holds anew
our season of discontent…
plastic glove inside

spaceman spiff • November 16, 2010 9:03 PM

A ticket and book I did buy,
thinking that I’d read while in the sky.
The TSA frowned, saying “That book stays on the ground!”,
and took it away before I could fly.

Ravan Asteris • November 17, 2010 12:02 AM

Just “doing their job.”
That line sounds familiar
… “following orders”?

Liberty, safety
They say we must trade them off.
Now we have neither one

Benjamin Franklin
Must be spinning in his grave
While we get felt up

This tempest will roil
For a news cycle or two
Then people won’t care

Quietly boil frogs
That were once our civil rights
and sacred freedom

Soon enough, we will
Submit to searches for all
Public transportation

“Your papers please, sir”
Will be a mild and genteel
anacronism

csrster • November 17, 2010 1:34 AM

Sorry, I only do Clerihews.

Bruce Schneier
Is smarter than I are
A history of cryptography
Is his autobiography

Richard Kulawiec • November 17, 2010 5:32 AM

Strip stare grope molest
Osama bin Laden’s bitch
is the T S A

High school dropouts grope
Pedophiles assault children
This is T S A

kingsnake • November 17, 2010 7:14 AM

Greek Prophet at November 16, 2010 3:33 PM: Bingo.

Safer airports have?
Bigger boom in Halifax.
Fun with cargo ships!

zeb • November 17, 2010 10:01 AM

Backscatter x-ray
security theatre
rights are forgotten

money is wasted
safety is not a product
the fearmonger wins

KRR • November 17, 2010 12:56 PM

Agents start “oil checks”
Send lawyers, guns, and money
Get me out of this

(apologies to Warren Zevon)

Tony H. • November 17, 2010 1:13 PM

A TSA screener named Bob,
Finds only delight in his job.
“I feel for ‘resistance’,
Then call for assistance,
If something in there is athrob.”

kingsnake • November 17, 2010 3:45 PM

(To the tune of “Monk from Dundee” …)

Osama was once from Saud Arabie
‘Til he went to Afghanistan to flee
He said “la-la-la-la-la-la-BOOM!”
When the Predators come
Must be the ol’ M-O-A-B

Winston Smith • November 18, 2010 12:09 PM

How about a limerick or two?

A pilot went to the airport
and mistook it for a fort
he tried to board the plane
but first, they cried, some pain
and now the airlines est mort

A lady went for a visit
security went ballistic
they exposed her chest
in front of the rest
another agent said: Did I miss it?
[Happened in Amarillo in 2008, lawsuit in progress]

A citizen was treated like a punk
into his pants, security’s hands nearly sunk
it sparked a fire
as citizens grew tired
all because he said “don’t touch my junk”

~WS

Davi Ottenheimer • November 18, 2010 7:17 PM

@ Clive Robinson

“I’m told there is more to American Haiku than 575 such as “season words” and “cuts”… so,”

Yes, they also are best when they capture a moment in time, a repeating effect caused by that moment, and an endless state of being…oh, and are written in Japanese.

But I think the American haiku poetry movement after the 1960s, like the treatment of sushi, removed all formal requirements including taste. Don’t get me started on teriyaki…

Christopher Vera • November 22, 2010 12:28 AM

You security poets could do me a world of a favor by contributing to security haiku.com! 😛

Sander • December 15, 2010 4:55 AM

The underpants bomber would never have gotten on that plane to Detroit if Homeland Security had realized that Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab is Ballatamludba Kuoraf Ramu spelled backwards

Stewart Dean • December 15, 2010 9:50 AM

Please. Haikus are about elegant expressions. The nature of terrorism is much better expressed in a lower form, the limerick.
Taking but 2-3 minutes and indulging in some shameless plagirization:

A nasty young terr of a Saudi
Had PETN found in Abu Dhabi
Said the terr, don’t shout
and wave it about
Or I’ll blow away everyone in the lobby

osceola256 • December 15, 2010 5:29 PM

Strip down now, boys left, girls right
All fly naked and all are safe
Safety first, thank you TSA.

Elliott • December 25, 2010 10:59 AM

I liked the limericks best so far; here are more…

A young man who wanted to fly
away from point x to point y
was scanned, sniffed and tested
whilst being molested
for wearing the wrong color tie!

Oh why!

You cry!

But that’s not as bad as the guy
with a shifty old look in his eye
who’s arse full of PETN,
was cleared at the checkin,
and waltzed through on his very first try

and my favorite nursery rhyme adapted for 21st century travel

hey diddle diddle the cat, after it had been thouroughly dismantled and searched, played the fiddle,

the cow was not cleared to jump over the moon

the little dog found it hard to laugh after being replaced with a less efficient scanning device

and the Dish was disposed of owing to its potential as a cutting device…. As was the spoon

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