There is danger everywhere! First we had pipe bombs, turning every plumber and tobacconist into a potential mass murderer! (OK, so the tobacconist doesn’t sell the same kind of pipe, but you must allow me a little poetic license.) Then we had handguns! Then we had assault rifles! But now? Danger lurks in the housewares department of every department store! I’m talking about pressure cookers!

Don’t get me wrong, Dear Reader. I was as nauseated as most by the atrocity at the Boston Marathon. Maybe more nauseated. I spent the lockdown in Boston sitting at the top of my staircase with a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot across my knees and a 357 revolver tucked in a belly band, while my baby grandchildren huddled in a bedroom. Paranoia? Absolutely not! I was five minutes, as the carjacked Mercedes drives, from the area being searched for one of the homicidal maniacs who bombed the Marathon finish line and murdered a harmless campus cop.

But back to more serious business. Pressure cookers have now replaced assault rifles as the most fearsome inanimate objects running amok in the world today. Personally, I have always detested pressure cookers. I was always convinced that they would explode violently even when used according to the instructions in the manual. (Of course, the instructions are written in Mandarin, so following them can be an issue.  Also, everything pressure-cooked in one of those contraptions tastes like waterlogged Brussels sprouts.) But our paranoid society has now developed an anti-pressure cooker reflex.

The Detroit News reports that “Federal agents have arrested a Saudi Arabian traveler who arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with a pressure cooker.” Now, they do go on to point out that a pressure cooker was a key component of the Boston Marathon bombs, suggesting that busting Mr. Hussain Al Khawahir was not unreasonable. Maybe not. On the other hand, there were a lot of other components in the bomb. One was the remote control unit from a radio controlled toy. While I admit that I do feel a kind of terror when one of my grandchildren aims a radio controlled tractor at my ankles, I do not consider that a terrorist act.

And we are in for even more trouble. Remember when an irate journalist chucked a shoe at President Bush II? Perhaps shoes are terrorist weapons, and the next thing you know, the authorities will be making us take off our shoes at airports! Ridiculous! What? You say we already are forced to take our shoes off at airports? Ah ha!

But this is all great!

There are so many more small kitchen appliances to add to the infernal machine list! How about electric meat slicers, those digit-hungry refugees from an Edgar Alan Poe novella? How about food processors, those potential mixing devices for who knows what explosive stews? Try to fly to Dubuque with a Mixmaster for Granny’s birthday and you will find yourself face down on the floor with a shootin’ iron pressed against your neck.

However, on the plus side, as the infernal machine list grows, the amount of baggage you will need to bring with you when you travel will decline precipitously. In the not too distant future, we will all adopt the following policy, leading to merriment, titillation, revulsion, and many other rewarding emotions:

FLY NAKED!