It's a Wonderful Life!

As a public service I'd like to help you with the "do's and don't's" of air travel. Before heading out to the airport get a really big suit case and just put everything you might possibly need during your trip in it. Try, if at all possible, to not carry ANYTHING onto an airplane. Trust me, the people waiting in line behind you at the security gate will be very appreciative.

If you MUST carry on personal items, make sure anything liquid is in the 3 oz or less range. Anything more than that will be kept at the gate. (And, TSA doesn't care HOW much you paid for that face cream girlfriend, so don't even go there!)

In perusing the TSA list a few things caught my eye. For example, here is a very short list of some of the items you CAN carry onto the plane:

• cigar cutters


• corkscrews (for some reason DCup comes to mind)


• knitting needles (thought of Blue Gal on this one)


• screwdrivers (seven inches or less in length)


• pliers (seven inches or less in length)

Now if you want to get picky, some of these items could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Cigar cutters -- there goes someone's fingers! Corkscrews, sharp end, could easily poke out an eye. And even something as inocquous as a knitting needle or a screwdriver could be a weapon in the right wrong hands.

So let's take a look at the items you CAN'T carry onto an airplane:

• guns (pretty obvious)


• box cutters (see above)


• knives


• hatchets


• drills (?)


• hammers


• crowbars


• brass knuckles


• stun guns


• hand grenades (well, yeah!)


• dynamite


• snow globes (WTF?)

Can you hear my brain coming to a screeching hault? Snow globes? Those fun things we all played with as a child?

Jamie Rhein writes:

While perusing the list of things not allowed as carry ons on airplanes, snow globes caught my eye. These are those items I usually associate with Christmas. Remember the one in "It's a Wonderful Life" -- the Jimmy Stewart classic holiday movie? The snow globe represented the main character's idlylic town--all cozy and snowy in winter. Even if you had that snow globe-- calling it an antique--a movie classic piece of memorabilia, TSA wouldn't blink and eye before snatching it up and selling it on Ebay. (See Catherine's and Neil's posts.) [...]

See, the water in the snow globe might not be water at all--and heaven knows what those white flakes or glitter that swirls about when you shake the globes might be made of. Plastic, sure. How about EXPLOSIVE plastic? Just kidding, I have no idea.

Only in America! ha