Toiletry Terrorism

There are none of the customary graphics associated with this posting tonight.
People in New York are really skittish about where you can and cannot take photos.
So use your mind’s eye to see what I am telling you.

I know where the next Big Opportunity for enterprising entrepreneurs will be. You could quintuple your money on this deal, baby, unless you’ve already thought about this. Imagine a chain of franchises with your name emblazoned across the marquee in every airport in the modern world. This is Your Opportunity, and you can thank the Transportation Safety Administration for dropping this mother lode right into your lap.

Airport Terminal Toiletry Exchanges.
It creates an acronymn only the government could love: The ATTE.

Imagine the catchy phrases—Eau de On-ramp.
Este Un-Lauding Zone.
The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination or your carry-on items no longer allowed.

Making lemonade from lemons (which is also now a banned substance on air carriers), you simply act as a collection and distribution broker for those millions of forbidden carry-on items, tossed by travelers in the latest wave of terror-inspired knee-jerk reactions. This idea could be your ticket to fortune or fame…your fortune if it works…or fame if TSA cops throw you in the brig first. Don’t try this without adult or government supervision.

Travelers are chucking shampoo, astringent, toothpaste and pudding. All you have to do is pick it up and offer it at the other end of the terminal to arriving passengers who had to chuck theirs before they left the place they just flew in from.

This is a little like the original postal service in China. People needing to send a package would drop it at the closest street corner. Someone else would come along, notice they were going in the general direction of the addressee on the label, and tote it a little farther towards its destination. With a population of 1.3-billion, you can imagine the efficiencies of scale. Which is why the Lord invented Fed-Ex and it’s patented central distribution hub scheme.

Now that we cannot bring beverages aboard aircraft, movie producers are scrapping the sequel to this summer’s hottest film, “Shakes on a Plane.”

I predict a slump in Starbuck's stock as last-minute Latte-holics are forced to go cold turkey before catching their flights.

The whole situation makes my hair hurt, doubly so because I'm out of conditioner. I can hear Tony Bennet crooning now, "I left my Pert in San Fransisco..."

I Left My Pert In San Francisco
(Cory George C. Jr./Cross Douglass/Brent Clanton)

The loveliness of Apple Pectin

Seems somehow sadly gay

The glory that was L’Oreal

Is of another day.

The TSA’s been terribly boneheaded in Manhattan

And I'm coming home…

but I’ve thrown my toiletries away.

I left my Pert in San Francisco

High on a shelf, it calls to me.

To be where safety conscious stars

Must fix their hair inside their cars,

Because they can’t primp in the air.

My Aim waits there in San Francisco

Above my blue toothbrush and floss…

When I come home to you, San Francisco,

Your toiletries will shine for me!