A terrorist says what?
This comic is number three in a series that started here.
Six years ago, while traveling through Europe and the Middle East, I smuggled a weapon onto the most secure airline in the world – twice. It's not a story I'm terribly proud of, because it makes me sound like a dangerous psychopath when it's closer to the truth to say I'm simply an idiot.
I'd gone to Bucharest as a wedding guest and ended up part of the ceremony, holding a six foot candle and singing in a foreign language. Coming out of the church, I had to pay Gypsies not to curse me with infertility. That doesn't have anything to do with the smuggling, but if you're sick of using birth control, I know some Roma who can hook you up with a maintenance-free solution.
Long story short, I met a pilot who took a real shine to me, the exotic Canadian from the mysterious West. At the end of my week in Romania, he gave me two parting gifts: the pin he'd received upon graduating flight school and the thirteen-inch dagger that had been part of his military uniform.
Needless to say, I was extremely flattered by his generosity and couldn't risk insulting him by refusing the gifts. This, despite the fact that the next stage of my trip took me to Israel, a nation with a legendary and understandable antipathy towards people who bring foot-long knives onto their planes.
Rather than risk having the dagger confiscated, my pilot friend showed me how to defeat the x-ray machines (it's terrifyingly easy, though this was before 9/11). Getting the dagger into Israel was as simple as talking my way past Romanian security. Getting it out again was something else. Military service is compulsory there, and my customs agent was a petite eighteen-year-old girl with an extremely large Uzi sub-machine gun. I think about her often, not so much because she was cute but because she's probably the person who's come closest to killing me, with the obvious exception of my mother (long story).
Having broken international law a second time, I returned to Canada with my prize. Only then did it occur to me that I could have simply mailed the dagger home.
Speaking of stupidity, last week's debate was a pretty bad miscalculation on my part. I thought I was being terribly clever, only to learn that 61% of you find my penis repulsive. Well, that's hardly the first time I've heard that one, so I guess the joke's on you. This week's question comes from Mitch B., who asks how badly you want to be a millionaire...
