9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

Today I leave for the little spit stop pit stop named Amarillo, Texas. You may have heard of it. It is in a couple country songs, none of which are any good. Ungood, almost. You could say, to a certian extent, that the good is almost Lovecraftian in its deep and horrifying “goodness”. But in my opinion, most country music falls in that alien hatred category that we geeks tend to dote upon so much.

And just you know, Cthulhu is a country singer. And he line dances. Then he devours. Yippie-ki-ay-muttafudder.

I have been to Amarillo before. And I will be there again. Like a great cosmic waypoint in my life, my orbit inevitably crosses through the flat brown wastes of Amarillo far more often than the average human being should be subjected to. I imagine it as Texas’ own custom form of Chinese water torture. Slow, and well, torturous.

But I don’t mind it as much now. You know when people say that something is growing on them, and they don’t mean toe fungus? Well that is how Amarillo is for me.

But still kind of a toe fungus. Nasty brown toe fungus. Ok, Ok, I keed, I keed.

My wife is upset. Of course, she is always upset about me traveling. Or riding my bike to work. Or eating too large of grapes and not chewing properly. But my middle name is Danger. It just happens to be pronounced differently.

The thing I hate most about traveling is my current flight status as a suspected terrorist. Yeah no joke. I am on the TSA watchlist. Of course, they probably have me confused with an Irish Terrorist that does enjoy blowing shit up, but I am not him. I like blowing shit up, but it is generally limited to potatoes. Flaming potatos of DOOM! So everytime I fly, I have to wait while my name is ran through the general TSA bullshit. I have the forms downloaded to get my name off of there, but that means that I am not really off the list, but just on a different one. The second list is for suspected terrorists that are tracked a bit more covertly. I am not conspiracy theorist, but sometimes the big brother thing does freak me out a bit. I mean, come on, I have to get a passport to travel in my own country?

How freaking sick is that? A passport! Can you say federal travel pass? Can you say Nazi travel pass?

When I walk up to the security line, I half expect those SS TSA monkeys to say “Papieren, bitte. Wohin gehen Sie?”

And I must respond with a stiff salute, arm raised, palm forward and state my destination. Or I will be summarily executed.

I am not a terrorist. I am a whitebread honkey mofo from the burbs of middle america. The most you have to fear from me is a bad case of gas.

Or my flaming potates of DOOM!