Fevers That Won’t Break

Last week I committed a Federal crime and then wrote a blog post explaining what it was and how I did it. Today I’ve got a mild case of the flu. There’s no connection between the two incidents, except right now I’m in that feverish state where you can’t tell if time is passing slowly or quickly, and that unknown quantity of time fills with strange thoughts. Like this: is it courageous or reckless of me, to admit online that I carried four ounces of shampoo and eight ounces of conditioner onto a plane in violation of the TSA’s three-ounce dictates?

The rules are there to protect us from terrorism, and I don’t want there to be any more terrorist attacks but I had conditioner in my carry-on bag anyway. What the hell has happened to my country, where that last statement now makes any sort of sense? In the past week I’ve written three separate posts about my damned hair and how I wash it (four if you count this one), and these posts aren’t some vapid beauty-salon chitchat but actual discussions of government regulations supposedly helping us fight the war on terror.

Granted, I’m writing this in a fever dream. But after the fever breaks this still will reflect reality.

Meanwhile, Ryan Bird has channeled his disgust for the TSA in a more productive direction: starting a website encouraging Americans who fly to write “Kip Hawley Is An Idiot” on their Ziploc baggies of approved toiletries. Unfortunately, I lacked the courage to do any such thing when I flew last week, because I didn’t want to draw unwelcome government attention to the illicit amounts of conditioner and shampoo in my anti-terrorist Ziploc bag. There’s another sentence which has no damned business making any sense after my fever breaks, but I’m afraid it will.