Airports, Parents, California

So a lot has happened since my last post, one of those things being a lot of not posting. I'll try to get you up to speed with a few choice snippets.

I flew to Los Angeles and back with my brother over the Christmas holidays. Keep in mind this meant we were on no less than FOUR airliners operating in United States airspace in about a 14 day period; two long haired Pakistani Muslim (or so they like to think) males (or so they like to think) of around the age where they go through the I-wanna-blow-myself-up stage. We were stopped for extra security checks (you know shoes off, socks smelly, why is your underwear dirty type of searching) not once, not twice, but ZERO freakin times. I felt like walking back to the TSA people and saying, "Hey. We're Muslim. We're brothers. We have John Walker Lindh hairstyles. We're flying on the SAME PLANE. Aren't you going to probe us or something?"

The funny thing is I always get stopped when I fly alone. Hell, my harmless (I mean, they even LOOK harmless) parents were stopped and searched every flight when they visited me in May (I don't know what happened on their visit last month). Apparently my brother has this weird disarming quality that affects only officials of the government of the United States of America. Remember when the U.S. Embassy decided he wasn't even enough of a threat to be fingerprinted?

Anyway, this incident leads me to believe that either

a) The United States government does not actively indulge in racial and ethnic profiling, or
b) The United States government actively indulges in racial and ethnic profiling, and SUCKS at it.

So, as I mentioned parenthetically above, my parents visited again this December. This time it was just to "be near the boys" since they couldn't come up with a good reason for spending 12 days in freaking DAYTON OHIO. Yes.

2 return tickets to the United States: $4000 (or thereabouts)
Cost of hotel room for two weeks: $500 (we got a good deal)
Total public bus fare over the two weeks: $20 (fearless explorers are my parents)
Getting to "be near the boys" in Dayton, Ohio: PRICELESS

Does not compute.

California was fun. Some highlights:

1. I'm 99.99% certain I saw a cross-dressing transvestite (is that possible?) prostitute on the Los Angeles metro this one day. Just sharing a subway car with that him/her made me want to take a shower. ALONE. To get myself CLEAN. He/she was going to North Hollywood. I know this not because I followed him/her, but because he/she did not get off at Hollywood and Vine, which was the second to last stop for the Red Line, which was where I escaped from the train. Lesson #1: Stay away from North Hollywood.

2. My brother and I took this "Homes of the Stars" tour; Mulholland Drive, Beverly Hills and such and such. My overall impression of the tour was, "God, stupid rich people spend a lot of money to live near each other in cramped, crappy houses on steep hills with narrow winding roads." Maybe when I'm rich and stupid, I'll do that too. Our tour guide was Scottish though. That was fun. Nothing quite like touring Hollywood with a Scotsman. I mean, it makes things so authentic!

3. So my uncle and aunt (in California, this is where we stayed) got this weird idea that my brother and I were missing Ohio. So they took us to Palm Springs for a day where the temperature was TWENTY DEGREES (- 8 or so for you centigrade types) and the wind was BRISK and MURDEROUS. I don't really know what they were thinking... "You know, it's been forever since we've been pointlessly unkind to our sons and our house guests..."

4. On the return journey, McDonalds at LAX tried to sell me a parfait for $3.25! if I weren't so addicted to them, I'd quit eating the dollar parfaits here in Dayton in protest. My protests never really work out anyway. I'm back to using UDF for milk and ice cream and such as well. *sigh*

I just realized I listed seeing a cross-dressing prostitute as one of the "highlights" of my visit to California... I must need help.