Not a good idea
A READER who had better remain unnamed was thrilled to read that US airports last week said they were abandoning their Rapiscan X-ray machines, the ones that take full-body X-ray pictures of travelers naked. He was wondering whether he could pick one up cheap for his apartment. “I’d hide it in the entrance hall and then check out all the hot women who come visiting,” he said.
I told him that:
a) they cost US$180,000 each, and
b) no hot woman would go within a mile of him, because he actually looks like the sort of person who would hide a Rapiscan in his apartment hallway.
Undaunted, he told me that the tricky bit would be finding a way to make women pause at exactly the right place. “You look wonderful. Just stand there for a moment and let me gaze at you. And would you mind removing all metal objects and lifting your arms?”
To further dissuade him, I said it would be simpler to just offer women US$180,000 for fuzzy negative black and white silhouettes. For that price, I would give him a “selfie” myself.
Why are airports abandoning the machines? A friend in the airline business tells me that airline security people were getting seriously worried that they could be sued under current pornography laws.
A single successful class action lawsuit could see thousands of airport security officials thrown in jail for 20 years. I can’t think of anything that would give the world more happiness, except possibly Gordon Ramsay getting his head stuck in a stainless steel colander.
***
TALKING OF leering men…
***
CARMAKERS IN China have created a full-sized car that you can drive entirely by remote control. The Su Rui car has many wonderful uses, such as, er, um, let me think, well, actually, I can’t think of any. It’s good for car thieves, anyway, as they can drive off with it while you’re asleep in bed. Actually, they can drive it off while THEY’RE asleep in bed.
***
SOMEONE FORWARDED me a photo of “Mike the Murasai”, a fish found near Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant last week. Mike looks normal, but contains 2,500 times the legally allowed limit of radiation. Why call it “Mike”? Surely “Lance Armstrong” would have been a better name?
***
DID YOU read about that sports star Manti Te’o whose online girlfriend turned out to be a hoax? I was sneering at this guy when I decided to check the latest person whose Facebook friend request I had approved.
It turned out to be someone I had never heard of who had no photos, no posts, no conversations and a profile pic of a Japanese model nicked from the Internet. A fake person! Or perhaps Lance Armstrong.
I’m still trying to get over the fact that Betty Crocker on the cake mix box wasn’t a real person, nor was Aunt Jemima on the syrup bottles.
Next, someone’s going to tell me that my hero, Sherlock Holmes, never existed!
But that would be ridiculous.
(Betty Crocker was created by artists)
***
A PARABLE of modern life: To stop my kids sitting and staring in silence at little screens all day, I forced them to invite their buddies around. Now I have several families’ kids sitting around my apartment staring silently at little screens. AAARRRGGHHH…
***
GRANDPA SHOWED me the recent news video of a dolphin that went to a human diver and hovered so that he could remove a fishing line tangled around her. The video is here. Jump to 4:00 for the interesting bit. Animals are amazing.
***
(Illustrations from various sources, leering man at the top is from the movie Teeth)
