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December 9, 2005

Notes from Ferdy - A Solution to the Air Marshal Problem

by Ferdinand T Cat

I've decided I need to weigh in on the issue of the shooting of a deranged airline passenger in Miami. Air marshals say that Rigoberto Alpizar claimed to have a bomb in his bag. When they told him to drop his bag and freeze, he failed to comply, and they fatally shot him.

While many people feel the air marshalls acted appropriately, CNN remains skeptical, and thinks the marshals should have tried to wound the guy so they could check his mental state.

No sane person would play mind games involving bombs and airplanes in this day and age, but Alpizar's wife claims he was in fact not sane at the time. Apparently, he suffered from bipolar disorder and had failed to take his medication. The problem is that the air marshals had no way of knowing that.

Living with Bruce, you learn a lot about the different types of mental illness. The tough thing about bipolar disorder is that the manic highs are a lot more fun than the averaged mood you get under the influence of lithium pills. But the manic bipolar is just as big a danger to himself as his suicidal alter ego. Although the definitive movie-of-the-week treatment of the illness is the Richard Gere flick Mr. Jones, in which the title character is saved by the love of a beautiful female doctor, a more accurate appreciation of the dangers was presented in the Red Dwarf season 1 episode Confidence and Paranoia, in which the personification of Lister's manic side tries to prove he can breathe without a space helmet.

The problem is, you're dealing with a person who gets high by NOT taking drugs. No amount of advertising involving fried eggs and Just Saying No is set up to deal with that. But there is one thing we can do to mitigate the risk.

Remember the color-coded threat system that everybody has been mocking for the past few years? For a while, each threat level change was big news. But no terror attacks ever materialized and after a while the news media lost interest. Call me crazy, but it seems to me that if Alpizar's wife knew the airports were on yellow alert, she might have been more firm about her husband taking his medicine.

So here's my idea. I've had Bruce put the threat level in the sidebar on the main page. If you're about to take a trip by airplane or bus, hop on over here to check the color. If it's anything other than blue or green, make sure you take your smart pills.

The life you save is going to be your own.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Trackposted to Bloggin' Out Loud (orange), Is It Just Me? (yellow), Right Wing Nation (blue), Stuck on Stupid (red), The Business of America is Business (green), Liberal Common Sense (green), Customerservant.com (blue), Jo's Cafe (green), Basil's Blog (red), and bRight and Early (blue).

# At Fri 2:40 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (5) | More Notes from Ferdy

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Tracked on December 9, 2005 6:54 AM

Comments

Sadly, the dude was in his 40s... Which means the evolutionary benefit of Air Marshall bullets was probably wasted in his case.


Posted by: David at December 9, 2005 5:37 AM

Hello Cat,
I enjoyed your blog - check out mine if you get a chance
http://augustus-archon.journalspace.com


Posted by: Augustus at December 9, 2005 12:10 PM

Thanks for the kind words, Augustus.

Augustus does an extremely in-your-face photoshop blog. He also knows about the raisins, which means somewhere along the line he's been exposed to serious Islamic theology.


Posted by: Ferdy [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 9, 2005 8:05 PM

I agree...you know its not just on airplanes but in malls and every other place today! You never know who is going to lose it...but ya know, I have heard about other mentally ill people that have done similar things...in that maybe they wanted to escape and they have used moments like this to get cops to kill them. I am not sure what the term is used...ummm suicide something. Its where they take their life indirectly.

Anyway...like your blog alot!


Posted by: Liquid at December 9, 2005 9:59 PM

suicide by proxy


Posted by: David at December 9, 2005 10:08 PM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

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