If you accept the Bush administration paradigm for "Homeland Security," then I suppose that my experience makes some sense, in which case you probably shouldn't read this, as you will only be even more confused.  Many more people die from preventable auto accidents, equally preventable diseases, and general crime than from terrorists, but we are apparently happy to keep pouring what at last estimate looks to be $3 trillion down a hole that doesn't really seem all that connected to stopping terrorism to begin with. 

$3 trillion in medical research would probably save several tens of millions of lives, but somehow the 3,000 (one-tenth the number who die on the freeways) are more important.  However, we also know that dissent is dangerous, especially when it comes with supporting evidence, so I'll shut up for the moment about all that insanity, lest I frighten my readers away with facts and reason.

So, yesterday I go to CVS (formerly SavOn) to get a prescription filled.  From past experience, this is not generally a great idea.  Since CVS took over the SavOn chain, in every CVS pharmacy that I've dealt with, management suffered - especially management of the pharmacies.  Typically, I would wait for an hour, be told to come back and then find that due to some technicality they were unable to fill it at all (e.g., for <u>months</u> they couldn't figure out how to correct an incorrect date of injury which existed solely on <u>their computer</u>  in a Workman's Comp case) , and so I often ended up wasting hours of time and then going to RiteAid or Walgreens.

But CVS and the other pharmacies are in a price war, trying to entice customers, most of whom clearly have insurance of some kind, to buy from them and get something in return.  So, CVS has been offering a $25 cash coupon for transferring a prescription.  Great.  My last used up prescription for sleeping pills was filled at RiteAid, so I took the bottle to CVS and they said that they would have to call, but no problem.

A few hours later - too late to take it back to the RiteAid - I discovered that there is allegedly a law that prohibits transfer of prescriptions of controlled substances more than once between pharmacies.  So, no sleeping pills.  Note that the law, probably written before everything was computerized, was probably intended to prevent people from getting multiple doses in a short period, which was not the case for me at all as I only infrequently use the sleep aid, and is certainly something that one would expect to be handled in the transfer of data between the pharmacies anyway.

So, I dropped by the next-door Radio Shack and didn't see anything I wanted and then to the Office Depot - all across from South Coast Plaza in the OC, BTW.  I'm still pushing my CVS shopping cart containing my motorcycle helmet and gloves, my jacket and my backback  filled with my printouts, newspapers, magazines, digital video camera and extra memory cards, vitamins, Motrin, bike tools, etc.  I.e., too much weight for me, with a herniated cervical disk, to be lugging around for long, and certainly NOT something that I would feel safe about leaving on the bike.

I look around a bit a Office Depot and spot a whole wall given over to clearance items, including a nice laptop lap holder of real leather, which I'm in the process of examining when the manager comes up behind me and requests that I leave my backpack up at the front counter "for security reasons."  Note that all three stores - CVS, Radio Shack, and Office Depot - all have the ubiquitous electronic screening systems built into their entrances and exits, so I have trouble imagining that they were assuming that I was about to try to steal anything.

Thus, I must be a suspected <b>terrorist</b>.  I note that of the several women in the store, all of whom were carrying some kind of purse - quite large purses in several cases, quite capable of containing a lethal explosive device - NONE of them was requested to leave their purse at the front counter.  Thus, I feel insulted and discriminated against.

So, no sales to me at Office Depot.  I'm not about to leave my precious camera and the cards with all my photos, my legal WORD files, etc., behind a simple counter that may or may not be manned.  I took my money and left.  Note that I have spent over $700 at Office Depot in the past year - but no longer.  Also, I have carried that very backback into various Office Depots, including that one, on numerous occasions before, without ever being accosted as a suspected terrorist.

So, is there some word out that Office Depot has been fingered as a likely bombing site?  And, how many terrorist bombs have gone off in the U.S. since 9/11?  Let me count....  Less than five?  Yes...  Wait, less than two?  Wow.  Less than one?  Boy, we ought to be SOOOO grateful for all those Office Depot managers, putting themselves on the line on a daily basis, risking it all to protect us.

I, however, happened to notice that there were many OTHER possible venues of attack.  Office Depot, TAKE NOTICE!!!  In the PARKING LOT, there were CARS!!!!!  Just think for a moment.  Any ONE of them could blow up and take out not just your store, but the entire block of stores!!!!  WHY ARN'T YOU IMPOUNDING ALL THOSE CARS!!!!  Amerika awaits your answer.

Addendum: To be fair, a couple months after 9/11, I went to a SavOn and they asked me to leave my pack up front, which was common up until about two years ago, when management finally realized that they had had the electronic sensors in the doors for about a decade.  Then it stopped, completely, everywhere.  Even the Regal theater chain doesn't enforce their No Backpacks rule - if they still even have it.  So, I'm cruizing around the store in 2001, shopping, and I hear the intercom calling for management to the front, and then again, and again.  I go to the front, where there are a whole crew of managers, all bravely clustering about my backback with apprehensive expressions, shielding us all from the impending blast, to be sure. 

It turned out that the checkout person had left and completely forgotten about my backpack, with a couple hundred dollars of electronics inside, leaving it sitting there without supervision, clearly a terrorist bomb!!!  One might think, however, that over the intervening seven years, somehow rationality might have replaced hysteria.  Of course, that assumes that there aren't people who are experts at generating and sustaining hysteria who are running the show, people who might not appreciate us noticing the REAL problems.