Pringles are a government profiling mechanism. Trust me. Your underwear's at stake.

You're none of you as obsessed with feeding the starving journalists of Laramie as my boss is, so you're none of you as familiar with the bazillion or so varieties of Pringles available. (We get rum cake and homemade chicken noodle soup, too)

And you may think that the Pringles plethora is Proctor and Gamble's way of trying to satisfy whatever salty-crunchy-spicy craving you may be having at any given moment in your life.

And you'd be wrong.

Because here's what I think: The flavors can't be a way to appease our dumbed-down American taste buds. They just can't be. There's too many of them, and we're too easily appeased by the plain and simple. Meat and potatoes, boys, meat and po-ta-toes.

Pringles, I'm sorry to have to tell you, are a newfangled way for the government to profile us.

Forget racial profiling at the airport. Pretty soon, in what seems to be a casual conversation while your undies are being thoroughly examined and your deoderant super-inspected by Mr. I Have a Shiny Badge and a Matching TSA Hoodie, the subject of snack foods will come up, and he'll ask you what your favorite flavor is.

Answer barbecue, sour cream and chive, plain or even dill pickle, and you're fine. Pass go. Collect your skivvies and skedaddle to catch your flight.

But answer layered Mexican bean dip or onion blossom, and buddy ... you could spend some time in a too-clean office explaining yourself and your "snack food" preferences to a too-uptight guy who didn't get enough coffee that morning. He drinks black drip coffee, for the record. No cream. No sugar. Certainly none of that lah-tay stuff. Hippies and yuppies drink that crap. Hippies and yuppies and terrorists who want to look like hippies and yuppies. So you like a mocha-java frappucino with extra whipped cream, do you? Uh-huh.

I'm telling you. Be careful which Pringles you eat, and even more careful about which ones you talk about. Your civil liberties - and your unmentionable underthings - are on the line.