“A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: ‘If ANYONE worships the beast and his image and receives his mark [on his airline ticket], he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the [SSSS] mark of his name.” (Rev. 14:9-12).
Yesterday the Transportation Security Authority (TSA) released its new rules on what can and cannot be taken aboard an airplane. This decision will greatly affect South Asians across America. Before, if you were brown an accidentally got caught with contraband, your life was over. After being strip-searched there was the possibility that you would be stamped with the “mark of the beast.”
Good news for airline passengers: Soon, security lines might move faster because you won’t be stopped for carrying most small, sharp objects, and best of all, you might be able to keep your shoes on.
Transportation Security Administration Director Edmund S. “Kip” Hawley is expected announce on Friday the agency will permit scissors less than 4 inches long and tools, such as screwdrivers, less than 7 inches long to be placed in carry-on items. Because screeners won’t have to take time to intercept the objects, passengers should be processed more quickly. [Link]
I for one am NOT HAPPY 
about this change in policy. You see, I have always carried the mark of the beast on my ticket. No explanation as to why I was anointed so, but who am I to question the infinite wisdom of the powers that selected me to be a chosen one? I have embraced it. I have used it to distinguish myself from you mere mortals, standing there like lambs in your TSA security lines. With the “SSSS” I am freed from conformity. Others worry about taking off their shoes in an orderly fashion. They empty the change, tangled with lint, from their pockets. And the belts. I pity those teenage boys that wear pants that are obviously too large for them. Without their belts, gravity slaps some embarrassment into them, the way their parents should be doing. Conversely, I tuck my shirt in and pull my pants wayyy up. Looking like Urkel, my metal belt is displayed for all to see. Other passengers avert their eyes. “Poor guy, he is going to get a beat down.” With shoes on, belt on, and a roll of quarters in my pocket, I walk through the detector. It beeps so loud that those frolicing on the Elysium Fields look toward the sky remembering past glory. I don’t care. I can do what I want. With the “SSSS” mark I am going to get searched regardless.
“Right this way, sir”
That’s right. They call me “sir” at the airport.
The last time I was taken aside for additional screening was particularly entertaining. A minute after I sat in my chair and permitted them to go through my belongings, the TSA brought another gentlemen, a white guy in his late 20s, to the chair next to mine.
“Do you have anything in your bags we should know about?”
“No, I’m clean,” replied the nervous white guy. Amateur.
Two minutes later the woman said, “We found scissors in your bag.”
He was caught like a deer in the headlights.
“Oh, yes, I forgot about those.” It was part of a haircutting kit. Meanwhile, the TSA was refolding all my clothes. I bet ordinary passengers don’t get their clothes re-folded. The scissor guy left while they continued to tend to my belongings. Now THAT is service.
With these stupid new relaxed rules my life is going to change. What will separate me from the crowd? Now lots of people will be more brazen in the security line, knowing that they don’t have as much to worry about. I have decided that the next time I fly I am going to utilize my right to carry scissors and a screwdriver on board the plane. First I am going to sit in my chair and cut little paper men while muttering something unintelligible. Then I will use the screwdriver to fix my shoe…or at least pretend to fix my shoe. Hopefully I can get my SSSS upgraded to the next level. I am a frequent flyer after all.
Halfway thro’ I was going WTF, but this was a very intresting and funny read. Good luck on your trip the next time.
Hilarious!
If you were Jewish, the mark would get you passed over 🙂
(Well, maybe not. It’s an SS mark after all. Ok, that was tasteless.)
I love America West; I’ve benefitted so much from their stupidity. 3 free travel vouchers and counting from their overbooking of my flights! I hope this continues when they’re US Airways.
Unfortunately, I get searched almost every time I fly as well, which I find strange b/c I’m female. (I pack everything REALLY neatly b/c of this!) I guess being brown trumps all. Security officers have actually looked at my drivers license and asked me what nationality my name is…ugh.
You could do all that or just board the flight and start muttering a long sentence in an “Eastern tongue” interspersed with the words “bomb”, “plane” and “President”. Make sure you repeat “bomb” at least 5 times. Grow a beard and wear shades for that extra effect.
Like Reincarnation says, just call your mom and speak in Gujarati:
(Needless to say, the man did not speak Arabic.)
i actually asked once why some people got SSSSs and other people didn’t.
the guy said it has something to do with the way you buy tickets?
i got SSSSed like crazy the one time i had a series of 5 one way tickets [i.e. Atlanta to Chicago to NYC to DC to Chicago back to Atlanta]…i got nailed every single time!
my brother always gets that ominous mark on his tickets
One way tickets (and paying in cash) almost always get you searched. Which is bizarre — one-ways are often more expensive than a roundtrip, so wouldn’t the thrifty terrorist operation just go ahead and buy the trip back even though they’ll never use it?
I’d never noticed this before. People targetted for extra searching are tagged “SSSS” on their tickets?? Is this just an AmericaWest thing?
Nope. All airlines do it.
One way tickets (and paying in cash) almost always get you searched. Which is bizarre — one-ways are often more expensive than a roundtrip, so wouldn’t the thrifty terrorist operation just go ahead and buy the trip back even though they’ll never use it?
I understand that is because the terrorists on the 9-11 planes bought one way tickets.
Funny thing with the airlines.
Once I called the same airline’s helpdesk over and over and over again to see whether they would contradict themselves. So, I asked them whether I could take my shaving foam on board. Of course, going abroad as a wet shaver, you gotta have your shaving foam with you. So they said sure, you can take your shaving foam, ha, ha, why wouldn’t you, ha, ha, LOL and so on. Next time I called, I said, can I take my shaving foam, it’s got butane and isopropane and you can probably fire up the whole cabin with it. So, this time, they said, sure no, you’re not allowed to take this on board, SIR no SIR! I called again – just to have someone allow me my shaving foam (hell, it was one of these “15% additional for free” cans, a real mony saver), and I asked again, with a smooth voice, hey, can I take my shaving foam? And they said, yeah, go right ahead, LOL hahaha.
So when it’s me calling about something, they don’t know what they’re saying.
Now, my wife and me went to the USA for my father in law’s funeral. He had died suddenly. We were both in shock, particularly my wife. Now, my wife had a Continental airlines e-Ticket to fly back with ‘changeable’ date since we didn’t know how long she’d be staying with Mum; the telephone e-Ticket-sales woman from the Continental ticket desk in Belgium said it’d cost an additional 150 US dollars to switch the flight date. And I had booked a fixed date flight back, unchangeable thinking that by that date everything would be over, funeral and all. Mum organized dad’s funeral to be 4 days later than we had thought. Of course we both had to change our dates for the flight back, including me with my ‘fixed’ date flight back.
You have to know that my wife is black and has an African-American first name (so airline personnel could tell, really) and I’m white, in order to better understand the following.
What I did was, to tell almost every single Continental teller person on the way there, that I’d be changing my date for the flight back – – if they want it or not. Obviously, by the time we got to Memphis, my ‘flight ticket customer record’ was pretty loaded. When I turned up with the newspaper obituary to definitely change my flight date back, at the airport, it was sailing through without additional fee. And remember, I was the one with the unchangeable flight date back.
When my wife – with the 150$ US dollar change flight back option – wanted to fix her date, different story. It cost us over 40 minutes, waiting at the Continental desk. They acted as if we had committed some major type of airline fraud. Mind you, all we tried to do was change the date for her flight, with an e-Ticket that was purchased with the clear verbal indication to / from the e-Ticket sales person on the telephone, that that ticket’s flight date back would, indeed, be changed. They also charged us about 175 US$ (and not just 150 bucks as advertised) for the change of the flight date.
My wife ended up not only getting her flight date changed with far more hassle and adversity (than was my own ticket date change experience), despite her having a flight-date-change-ticket (and I didn’t), she also had to pay considerably more than was advertised to her by the same airline’s sales person!
To top things off, she was SSSS’d on the way back.
It’s a fucked up circus man, a fucked up circus. They don’t know what they’re saying and they sure can’t tell shit from shinola. If anything, their perception of “threat” is extremely medieval. Their idea of SSSS-earching – by all means perceivable – is to cause the customer to be ‘punished’ and not to feel safe and in good hands. And the worst thing is, that they can SSSS me, or my wife, until their meat rots in hell, till cows come home – and they still haven’t made this world one IOTA more safe. We were, and are, an utter waste of time in terms of airline safety checks (all we ever do in these airplanes as ‘noteworthy activity’ is drink a beer and try to sleep), yet they put it all up for discussion by cluelessly misbehaving. I do disapprove.
September 10, 2007-coming out of Logan, home airport for some of the flights of 9/11-2001, we arrived at the airport four hours early. Check-in, get boarding pass and head for sercurity. Our last three trips we have had additional screenings, my wife a retired state assistant attorney general and myself, veteran and retired postal worker. We were pulled our shoes off, removed metal from pockets, and smiled. My wife was ahead of me and was searched in the glass booth by a female TSA officer, two people were between us. I was next, the first TSA officer was in his white shirt and dark trousers, with name tag and patches displayed. He took my boarding pass, looked at it and said, “…its the four s’s.” Now this is the first time I was made aware of the S code, the TSA offier pointed to the entrance of the booth and instructed me to wait there. About this time a second TSA person arrived and he was wearing a long sleeved sweat with no identification and no name tag showing and while snapping his blue rubber gloves over his hands, look at me and in a loud voice, said, “come here.” Suddenly, I flashed back, and I was on guard duty in Vietnam and the village kids were playing soccer near the fence line. When we weren’t playing attention the kids would kick the ball into the wire and while retrieving the ball, turn the “clays” around to face us. We knew it and after the kids left we would go out and turn the mines back around. This time the Officer of the Day along with a sweater vested civilian, wearing no identification, came by my bunker and after a few questions, immediately the sunglassed civilian told to shoot one of the kids to keep them away from the wire. Now I had learned to handle screaming cong in the middle of the night and had no problem shooting someone wanting to kill me, but this was different. I looked at the OD, but suddenly there was something in the sky that had his attention. I fired off a round and hit one of the kid’s rock boundary. The kids scattered, screaming and yelling at the in their shrilled voices, “dinky dau, number-10, G.I. ” The civilian made a remark about my inability to shoot and took off talking with the officer about me, as for me, I returned to writing my letter. But at Logan Airport, I am looking at a pumped up unidentiied person telling me to come toward him while another uniform officer had told me to stand there. I turned to the first officer and asked for my boarding pass and just as he was going to give it to me, the second jumped between us and took the boarding pass. I looked at the first officer he seem embarrassed but nodded for me to move on. I stepped into the plastic booth and asked for my boarding pass, the sweatered person said, “Lift your arms and stand still.” I raised my arms over my head and stood still. He kept repeating in a loud voice, “Now relax, relax, I not going to do this if you are agiated.” ” All I wanted was to know what you were going to do with my boarding pass,” I replied. This was the first time I had ever had to give my boarding pass to security, usually they look at it and give it back. The unidentified person backed away, pulling off the gloves off and said, “That’s it, I’ll leave you there all day.” He turned and went behind the podium and stood there looking at me. The podium had a TSA seal so I guess he was an TSA officer as the sweater had no identification and he was not weating any name tag. I sat down on the chair and leaned back, he didn’t know I had spent 18 to 24 hours in the bush on ambushes, so waiting was nothing new to me. After a few minutes, the other officers saw that he was not going to get no response from me, the first officer came over and did the pat down. I have grown up in racism all my life and being a Tejano I have had faced angry Texas Rangers, State Troopers, and City police and I know within each group there are what I consider the Non-professional who lack any form of human behavior relations and this guy was showing all the symptoms. I was cleared in a few minutes by the other officers while the sweatered person stood there and stared at me. I had to pass this individual and looking at my wife refrained from saying,”Allah bless you.” I am familiar with PTSD and its symptoms and I wondered as I locked eyes with this person if he was here when the terrorists boarded their planes on 9/11/2001. Does he blame himself? Or is he a racist who did want to touch what he percieved as an “illegal Mexican.” I have never raised my voice against this country, I am a properity owner and pay my taxes, I served my country and community but I will stand up for human rights when I feel they are being violated. My flight was on Northwest, #383, gate 1AE and we arrived around 1pm on 9/10/2007. I hope this guy, white about 60, flat top hair cut with glasses, gets laid because he is wound up too tight.
Upsetting enough I too get searched everytime!!