Snow Globes
If you are in Texas and want to buy a snow globe, one of the best place to go is the Texas State Surplus Store at 6505 Bolm Road, off U.S. 183.
For some reason snow globes are banned items on airplanes. Something to do with the fact that they contain a liquid. Because no sane person would normally think that a snow globe as a potential terrorist weapon no one bothers putting them in their hold luggage. This leads to them being regularly confiscated or as the staff at the surplus store say “willfully surrendered”.
The surplus store’s inventory has soared since the imposition of increased security at US airports. Snow globes and many other items have increased the store’s sales by $300,000 in 2010 alone.
The other items include the usual pocket knives, screwdrivers, scissors, pizza cutters. However it doesn’t include corkscrews nor nail clippers (so long as they don’t have a file). However items that are confiscated, sorry surrendered, are toy guns belt buckles shaped like a gun. There are items that have been lost too such as bum bags, watches and sunglasses. Mobile phones find their way into the store, though they must be prepaid ones since it is so easy to find the owner of phones on monthly plans.
Now we know the reason why airport security was imposed – it was to allow passengers to willfully surrender items that they no longer wanted as a kind of stealth tax.
Source. H/t Dick Puddlecote
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June 28, 2011 at 05:39 -
I’m surprised we don’t have something like this over here…
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June 28, 2011 at 08:56 -
OK, so where’s the huge difficulty in putting all the confiscated items in a bag in the hold and returning them at the destination?
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June 28, 2011 at 09:27 -
I refuse to use airports, and this sort of treatment is one reason why. I resent being treated less considerately than cattle.
One cartoon I saw recently picked up on this. An elderly and distinguished gentleman sitting on a plane with his wife, clearly fuming at the confiscation of his cigar-cutter. “What did they think I was going to do with it? Circumcise the pilot?”
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June 28, 2011 at 11:03 -
Not being elderly, or distinguished, it can’t have been me. I can however confirm that the buggers have had two of my cigar cutters over recent years.
Its a bit like going to the boat show, one must remember not to have holes in ones socks.
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June 28, 2011 at 13:52 -
Willfully Surrendered my ar*e. This is theft, plain and simple. America being the land of the no win, no fee legal parasites, I’m amazed that no one has challenged this yet, and demanded “Compensayshun”
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June 28, 2011 at 23:03 -
You have a good point microdave – just another example of where the freedoms of individuals have been trampled on in the name of security.
Ok someone taking a pizza slicer abroad with them is odd, but then here’s an idea – when security takes an item off someone, they have to justify their behaviour by doing a reconstruction of exactly what they thought the person was going to do with the offending item – it would leave airports looking like a series of Monty Python sketches but hey I’d like to see that on the statute book!!
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