Ugh

A few complaints because I’m feeling grumpy … even though it’s Friday

• I thoroughly hate that Southwest Airlines doesn’t have assigned seats. Instead, if you want a decent seat, you have to remember to go online and print off a boarding pass 24-hours in advance. That gets you into the A group but your work is hardly done. Once at the gate, you have to line up well before boarding. If perchance you are busy and unable to go online for a boarding pass, you get stuck in B or C group and will most likely end up in a middle seat.

With Southwest, we’re free to move about the country. But we ain’t free to travel in comfort.

• I will never fly through Houston Hobby again. To transfer flights I had to exit back into the main concourse and then go through security again. Stripping down for the second time that day was bad enough. But the terminal I ended up in looked like it’d been built in 1967 and then abandoned after some apocalyptic calamity. It was like some forgotten set piece from a Planet of the Apes movie. In-and-of-itself, this would have been moderately bearable … had not the bar closed five minutes after I got there.

• Final complaint of the day (and a shallow one at that): Sanjaya on American Idol is the worst contestant in the series’ history … which is saying a lot considering the show is an ongoing parade of terminally off-key wannabe singers. But this bizarre little fellow is extra-special bad. He performs like some seventh-grader playing dress-up and singing the blandest song on the Karaoke machine. Remember the old Tonto, Tarzan and Frankenstein singing skit on Saturday Night Live? Sanjaya would be kicked out of that group. He is either completely delusional or Andy Kaufmann has returned to us in the form of a 17 year-old Indian boy.

New TSA Scanner OK By Me

I’m a pretty big advocate of privacy rights. But, I have to admit, I’m not at all concerned with the new airport security scanner being rolled out at U.S. airports.

Called the backscatter, the new technology can see through clothing to uncover objects metal detectors would miss, such as ceramic knives and plastic explosives. The concern is that the machine can actually produce a fairly accurate nude picture of you – except that the machines being used by the TSA are programmed to show mere outlines, no private parts exposed.

First of all, as far as I’m concerned, the right to privacy exists to shield our thoughts, movements, purchases and personal foibles from government scrutiny. I can think of a lot of private information I deem a hell of a lot more important than what I look like naked. What’s the government going to do with a fuzzy naked pic of me? Mail me a gym membership?

Secondly, that naked picture won’t ever exist. Not only will the backscatter not produce a detailed image, the image it does produce will be deleted immediately. I guess some unruly TSA employee might be able to reconfigure the system to snap a nudie of me and then print it out somewhere, but I’d consider such a scenario highly unlikely. I mean, if any TSA employee has that kind of technical skill, what are they doing working for the TSA?

I’m glad privacy rights activists are monitoring the rollout of this new technology. I think the government should always be scrutinized by the public. But I’m not concerned. In fact, I’m glad we’re finally upping our security system in ways that may actually make us safer.