Reading null's journal

Today I've learned that a packet to the USA may not contain more than 2kg of chocolate. Supposedly it's due to some anti-terrorism regulation.
Now I don't know what the *#@&% they think we put in our chocolate, but could somebody enlighten me what our chocolate has to do with terrorism? Do they expect it to be communist or or islamic, or is Swiss chocolate now considered a chemical weapon? It's not that bad, you know! I'm genuinely curious.

Consider yourself hugged.

Yeah but you're allowed to have four packs of matches and two lighters... Yes, our government is stupid. Forgive us.

My guess is that it has to do with how fat America is getting. They think that by sending lots of choclate, you are trying to make us fatter and lazier than we are! Sneaky bastards! /end sarcasm

Seriously though, if our government is stupid, that's because we keep voting in stupid leaders. Go figure, right?

I know I'm dead on the surface But I'm screaming underneath

After 9/11/01 there was a paradigm shift here in the US. Now instead of living life as usual, Americans live life as a paranoid scared society (everyone is a terrorist). Now everything is somehow linked to terrorism, the gov't is now a bigger BIG BROTHER than they were 4 years ago. It's sad, it's sickening to think that now everything we do in life is measured against some kind of terrorism measuring stick. I'm sick of hearing about it.

I'm sick of hearing about it.

I'm sorry about that. I'm well aware that there have been... changes, and that most of them have been thoroughly discussed. I've just wondered what chocolate has to do with this :-P

Consider yourself hugged.

I'm sorry about that.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't saying I was sick of hearing what you were talking about. It's just that you can't escape all the talk about terrorism here in America. It's constant everyday and it shows no sign of going away.

But on your topic I have no idea why there would be anything wrong with chocolate.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't saying I was sick of hearing what you were talking about.

Oh, no problem. :-) No offense taken. I couldn't comment on daily life in the USA anyway (for the obvious reason that I've never been there).

As for the chocolate, I know that it may cause problems in flight luggage checks, because when it's wrapped in aluminium foil the X-ray thing shows a block of metal. But why 2kg of chocolate should be okay then is beyond me (especially since aluminium wrapping is hardly used these days)... oh well... nevermind, it's not like I'm sending tons of chocolate over the pond every day. :-)

The Chocolate Incident isn't soo bad anyways, and US authorities aren't the only ones who tend to overreact. A friend of mine, let's call him R., is well-known by the local police for stranger reasons. R. is into lasers and stuff and has a buddy who works at the CERN. That buddy once sent him a transistor passbank for a laser power supply, and he sent it from work to save the postage. (For you non-electronic geeks, such a passbank is basically a bunch of fat transistors mounted on a big aluminium heat sink.)

I wish I could have seen the face of the guy checking the packet:
It's a heavy packet.
The sender is CERN Nuclear Research.
The recipient is a foreigner living in a small village in Switzerland (R. has an Austrian passport and a foreign sounding name).
The X-Ray shows a block of metal with wires and stuff attached to it.

I also wish I could have seen R.'s face when he got home and found his packet sitting in the middle of the road, surrounded by a bunch of nervous village cops and a bomb squad prompting him to open the packet at gunpoint.

History repeated itself about two years later when somebody at Liebherr Aerospace sent him two bottles of wine, but that's another story. :-)

Consider yourself hugged.

This post was edited by null on Nov 12, 2004.

...a packet to the USA may not contain more than 2kg of chocolate...

hmmmm.... It is highly possible that the furor described above may be related to the following medical abstract found on the internet: lipids in chocolate supposedly contain cannabinoids.

But seriously...

...is Swiss chocolate now considered a chemical weapon?

Just could be... we are that paranoid here. Back right after 9/11 occured was when I ordered my case of Orange Kit Kats from Canada. They had no problem mailing it then, but that was then, and this is now... and we are so much more paranoid, as well as stupid, and all that that implies. The last time I flew on an international flight, they found my tweezers and then gave them back to me... they did not find my 'stash' of cannabinoid-infused chocolate. Could be the 'war on drugs' is slacking, my man.

Maybe they are worried that Americans will get stoned on their chocolate, and sit at home watching reruns of _______________(insert any major soporific television show).

This breaks my heart, as you well know how much I dearly love chocolate. It is part of my mood-defying arsenal. And here I was going to ask you to send me 3 kilos of the tasty stuff. Damn the bad luck!

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.

In the currant state game of "keep the people in a panic so we can justify our stupidity" there are the most rediculous things being done.

This being one of thoes rediclous things. I'm sorry and embarrased that the U.S goverment has done this.

Do you remember all the panic that was created over y2k? There were people in this country that went into debt to prepare for the comming "doom" And nothing happened. It was all media generated.
In the currant state of stupidity, aka anything could be used as a terrorist weapon, what's happening is people are being talked into living in a panic state again.

I love chocolate. It's got alot of the same chemicals that are released in the human body when your in love. No wonder it's loved by millions of people.

I'm sorry about all of this. My deepest applogies for how stupidly the goverment is behaving.

My guess is that it stems from the coffee idea that people use to smuggle drugs around. If you put it in enough coffee, the dogs can't smell it.

With a dense choclate, it would be possible to not only seal up a chamber but the smell might mask the scent of an agent. Or there could be other reasons like choclate is a non volitile medium that could be used to transfer Anthrax or something. I'm sure there's a reason, but not necessarily one we would know.

I know I'm dead on the surface But I'm screaming underneath