You know the feeling all too well. You’re patiently waiting in line at the airport. You’re caught in a sea of people. Being corralled like so much mindless cattle. You made all the proper preparations. You didn’t pack your broadsword in your carry on. You don’t have any “liquids of death” or “nail clippers of doom.” You even wore your easily removable shoes that don’t contain weapons of mass destruction. You were so ready for this checkpoint. But the repetitive sound of gray monotone plastic bins stacking and re-stacking is slowly wearing you down. It’s sucking your will to live.

You arrive at the moment of truth. You’re no amateur, you’ve got the system down. Shoes, belt, pockets… Only a few more minutes of this charade and you can go sit by your gate for the next hour or two and make fun of other travelers with your clever inner monologues while you rock out to your iPod. But then, it happens. A large overweight TSA agent approaches you. You’ve been randomly selected.

There are really only a few ways you could interpret this “random” selection. You may choose from any of the following:

1. They think you are a terrorist. They’re on to you. That sweet innocent traveler act isn’t fooling anybody. Your shifty eyes must’ve given you away. Blast! It’s only a matter of time before they discover your shocks with the 3-foot collapsible machetes in them!! Should’ve taken the train you America hating Nazi!!

2. They don’t think you’re a terrorist. But they do think you’re hot, and they’re looking for a way to keep the eye candy around a little while longer. Because that’s what you are: sweet, sweet, delicious eye candy. I suppose you could take it as a compliment. Just remember that when they ask you to step into the image scanning machine, or assume the position for your pat down. What’s that you say? You’re sure they will be very professional when they’re sliding their hands up your crotch? Who are you kidding? We both know what’s going on in their heads. I’m a guy. I know how guys think. Should’ve taken the train you sweet, sweet temptress of the terminal!

3. You were selected randomly by some sort of machine, and you are just really unlucky. You poor loser. You can’t even win a game of rock-paper-scissors, let alone avoid being randomly selected for additional security procedures. At least you can take some comfort in knowing that our crack-shot airport security team is pulling a few random people out of line… Y’know, because they can’t seem to identify the loads of explosives under the pants of the guy ahead of you… I suppose you could’ve taken the train, but you’re so unlucky that someone would have placed a penny on your track causing you to derail and die a horrible  death by “exploding into a FIREBALL!!”  …you unlucky loser.

I should note here that I’m not in favor of “profiling.” What I am in favor of is some well trained professionals who aren’t making minimum wage, with real experience who can identify people acting and behaving suspiciously. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a guy who likes to take the train.

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Ok, since we’re on the subject of lines, I got a story for you. It was only a few years ago…in the land of Disney. It was a busy day at the park, and we had been having poor luck with rides breaking down. (In fact, this wasn’t long after our Tower of Terror experience.) Everywhere we went, it was especially crowded. No. Let me elaborate. You could not walk anywhere without stepping on exactly 5 small children, and someone’s straggling grandmother. Don’t ask me how I calculated those numbers…just trust me. They’re accurate.

We waded through the masses, trying desperately not to be run over by an army of designer strollers and obese people on fat-carts. I mean seriously…c’mon chunky. If you’re overweight maybe you should think about walking instead of cruising around on your personal fat-mobile. And don’t even get me started on the strollers! Disneyland was not made for strollers. When I first went to Disneyland I was only 2, and I didn’t have a stroller. I walked dang-it. And when I got cranky and tired my dad carried me like a real man, and not some yuppie pansy. But I digress…

With the poor luck and long lines we had encountered, we searched for a ride with a decent wait time. We finally decided on Pirates of the Caribbean as the wait time was listed below an hour. We stood in the line and began our journey towards eventual ride-dom. The line had been zig-zagged and strung out quite a ways from the actual ride. Ropes had been used to corral us like the cattle that we were. About 20 minutes passed by. And then, the strangest thing happened. As we followed the line, the line disappeared. Actually, “disappeared” doesn’t do it justice. It evaporated. The line literally vanished. All of a sudden, it was just gone. There was no one in front of us. And with the exception of a couple of confused people, there was no one behind us. We stood in the middle of the street, looking around with stupefied looks on our faces. Were we being watched? Was this some sort of Disneyland test used to discover the results of poor trafficking and line management? I may never know.

As we walked aimlessly, having completely wasted 20 minutes of our lives, we overheard that the ride may have broken down, which could have lead to the line’s annihilation dispersal. It really was the weirdest feeling. You think you’re going somewhere, and then all of a sudden…you’re not. Kind of like life after college.

Later in the day, we would in fact ride the ride…only to get stuck in the middle…for over half an hour… Shyeah. I can pretty much tell you every single detail about every pirate in that portion of the ride. And I’ll tell you what… Those pirates are persistent. They just keep shooting at each other endlessly. Over, and over, and over… At least I had the redhead to look at.

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Ok. I know a lot of you are going to hate me after this. But I have a confession to make. I’ve read the Harry Potter books, and I’ve watched all the movies, and… -get ready for it- I think I might actually prefer the movies to the books. I know, I know, blasphemy you say. But I remember when I read the books, there were all these things that seems unnecessary as far as the story structure goes. Several times I remember thinking, “Man, I wish she’s just get on with the story instead of going off on this ‘house elf’ tangent.” Sometimes I honestly believed the author was just writing to try and fill pages to make the books longer.

Now, before you all leave my site and never come back, let me clarify by saying that I really did enjoy the books. I think the stories are great. I think the characters are great, and I think the author did a great job of strengthening the characters within the stories. I just think there’s an awful lot of unnecessary filler in there. Maybe it’s because I’m not really into the fantasy genre as a whole, and that’s kind of the style there.

Now when I watched the movies, I got really excited because they cut out a lot of the fat. The screenwriters cut out all those things that I wanted to cut out while reading the books. I thought they still stayed true to the stories (with just a few glaring omissions), and I felt the movies really kept the pace alive. I enjoy both. But the films have stuck with me much more.

It’s ironic really. Because I was out of the country for a couple years when Harry Potter mania stuck. At first I really avoided it altogether. I finally watched the first two movies at the request of a friend. I thought they were alright. And then some kids pushed me to read the books, which I also enjoyed. Then the movies grew up a little, and they really won me over. So yeah, there ya’ go. Don’t hate me for my opinion, but feel free to comment below.

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