Hakuna Matata

OK, so there are two things that I have definitely learned from the failed attempt to blow up Times Square in New York over this past week. In no particular order they are:

1) You can put "three barbecue-grill-sized propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon (19 -litre) gasoline containers and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components" together in a bundle in the back of an SUV, purposely light it on fire and nothing will happen. This means what, audience? Anyone? Yes, that's right: every public service announcement you ever had to endure at school or between episodes of Saved by the Bell has been proven to be a goddamned lie. The line was always don't play with matches because a single match has all the destructive force of a 900-kiloton thermonuclear device, immediately set off by mere contact with the natural oils that occur in human skin. You light a match, house burns down. The end. Irrefutable cause and effect. And that's only if you're lucky. Probably the whole neighborhood goes up, if not your whole city, leading to thousands of deaths and more displacements until the whole place is Dresden, 1945, but there is no glorious Soviet Red Army waiting around the corner to swoop in and give you all safe jobs in the fast-growing, never-slumping stacking-rocks-as-slave-labor market. Although, to be fair, with our new socialist president, that's probably not far off.

Only slightly less prevalent than the fire safety PSAs were the sexual responsibility PSAs, which I now discount entirely as well as a result of this failed bombing. I will now, in fact, "go all the way" at the next given opportunity, whether I'm "just not ready" or not. There may even be heavy petting.

2) We no longer have to be scared of terrorists. This wasn't really some individual with a fucked-up grudge against Disney films turned into Broadway shows. This guy went all the way to Pakistan for specialized terrorist training. Half way around the world. For specialized training. For months. And he came back with what? Gasoline, propane, some weak-ass over-the-counter fireworks and the one kind of fertlizer that doesn't actually explode. It's generally not good form to mock a guy with murderous intentions, but fuck you, dude. Weeeeeeeak. Whatever you paid for your all-inclusive proto-terrorist getaway package? You got fucking robbed. Maybe he couldn't actually afford the real terrorist camp and had to settle for Terrorist Fantasy Camp, where all the old, retired terrorists go to make a Yankee dollar or two in their declining years. What people don't realize about fantasy camps is, yeah, you get to put on the uniform and stand on a regulation field, but even though you're out there playing baseball with Boog Powell, you're not really playing baseball and you're not really playing with Boog Powell. You're playing a slightly butch-er version of slo-pitch beer league softball with the titanium hip brigade and a guy who would have been Boog Powell's grampa when Boog was still medically cleared to play ball. I assume that's the kind of experience the Times Square guy got. "Yeah kid, you take this alarm clock and duct tape it to a box of M80s and next thing you know? Mushroom cloud. That will be $8,000. I'm sorry, we don't take Discover Card. Allahu akbar." Common attitude in those fatwa-mills.

And, OK, yeah, the guy was allowed to get on a plane afterward despite being on a no-fly list. But look, the did get him off the plane before it left. That's already an improvement over how they handled that guy with the bomb in his underwear. I don't know about you, but I feel safer already. I think we should all celebrate with some nice, relaxing heavy petting.