Guest Op Ed: Could You Sleep Last Night? Man, Me Neither!

From time to time, The Awl offers its space to public-minded everyday citizens to express their point of view on the events of the day. Today we turn our space over to John Del Signore, who labors during the days as the senior editor of Gothamist, but moonlights as a national security specialist.

You guys. Can anyone else not stop thinking the butt bomber? Tossing and turning last night, it kept gnawing at me: this guy spent the last 30 hours of his life with a bomb up his ass. And then he died. Cause of death: exploding butt. (Or not, but come on.) How hardcore is that? It's not as if he excused himself to use the bathroom, excreted the bomb, then came back and threw it at his enemy and dashed away. No, he pulled a super colon blow and then he died.

Somehow it reminds me of those carefree tween years when my friends used to light farts (I never did). It was pretty fucking hilarious, but the fun stopped when I they heard that this one kid blew out his rectum while lighting a fart and had to wear diapers the rest of his life. (No way was that an urban legend.) But if you think that kid didn't destroy his ass for an important cause like this al-Qaeda guy, you've never seen someone light a fart. It's a game-changer.

And yet despite all the pain in that terrorist's ass, his target, the Saudi counter terrorism chief, was only slightly injured. He definitely left that room a changed man, but I don't think you get the virgins in heaven just for making an impression. Still, what was it like sitting there with the ass bomber, in the moments before he exploded? Did an expression of bliss pass over his face that made the counter terrorism chief think, "Oh fuck, this guy's about to cut one." Because after 30 hours with explosives packed in your ass, death would probably start to seem like an enormous relief.

30 hours! This asshole HATED the House of Saud, big time. And they're definitely hate-worthy. But are they butt bomb worthy? I really hated the Bush administration, but if I had the chance to butt bomb Dick Cheney when he was in office, would I have taken it? No. For one thing, I had Radiohead tickets. So does that make the butt bomber more of a man, because, like Reverend Martin Luther King said, a man who doesn't have something to die for is not fit to live? No, I think this guy just didn't know how to live for his cause, which is less glamorous than being the big shot hero butt bomber. al-Qaeda doesn't "get" Radiohead. Or deep-fried bacon, or Zooey Deschanel. And they're so sick with envy their asses are exploding.

So are these exploding assholes bound for America? We can only assume so, because while Abdullah Asiri's mission proved unsuccessful, this is like the Sputnik of butt bombing. His sly ass made it through all sorts of security, including airport screening. It's only a matter of time before those devious fucks in the al-Qaeda R&D labs-no doubt inspired by that scene in The Dark Knight-perfect the science of anal explosions and peg their sleeper agents here. This means Homeland Security is going to have to develop advanced metal detectors that can detect butt bombs, and as we speak some unlucky soldier is probably being designated the rear-loading guinea pig. No good can come of this. Except at least we now know how to get our sandwich and bottle of water past JFK security.