TSA blog — You couldn't make this stuff up

Excerpts from Al Kamen's July 10 Washington Post Fed Page column follow.

You might want to check out the Transportation Security Administration's blog chronicling the truly dumb things people pull at airport security.

With summer-vacation travel season in full swing, the blog's worth a look, if only to understand why those lines might be so long.

It could be because that guy ahead of you plunked down a grenade (but, he insists, it's just a harmless paperweight!). Or maybe it's that passenger who accidentally packed a loaded .22-caliber pistol in his carry-on bag and decided that, instead of checking it, he'd just hide it in a potted plant.

The blog's "Week in Review" reads like a roundup of the world's dumbest would-be criminals.

Want to hide that knife you'd like to sneak by security? Why not put it in a sock and stuff it into an envelope filled with dolls? That foolproof strategy didn't work for a passenger in Tampa.

And how to cleverly disguise a stun gun? Try putting it in a walking cane, as a James Bond wannabe did at the airport in Knoxville.

"Yes, a stun cane!" the blog notes. "That's a first for the Week in Review posts." Maybe the cane's former owner should get points for creativity, if not for brilliance.

The blog includes helpful tips for travelers, including one prompted by the aforementioned grenade-toting passenger.

"While I know that inert grenades are cool conversation pieces and make great paperweights," a TSA blogger notes, "inert items cause problems at checkpoints.... We don't know they're inert until we check them out, and checking them out can often inconvenience your fellow passengers."

We also enjoy the site's whimsical headlines describing various confiscated taboo items, such as "Eau de Kaboom" (a cologne bottle shaped like — you guessed it — a grenade) and "Holy Bat Stars, Batman" (sharp throwing stars).

Above, screenshots from the TSA blog.