Give the TSA Your Belly-button Lint, Not Your Dignity

I’ve thought a lot about the TSA. I’ve given it my full ADD attention. That means a whole 7 minutes of thought was given to the security measures at our airports. It was, of course, given in stages, as 7 minutes is a really, really long time. If you don’t believe me hold your breath for 7 minutes. I’ll wait.

Uh huh. See. Ok, now that you’re finished poking fun at my lack of attention skills, and you’re blue, we’ll move on.

I’m considering traveling, hence the amount of thought given over to this subject. I want to make sure it’s a pleasant experience for me, I really don’t care if it’s pleasant for anyone else, especially not the creeps at the TSA.

The first part of making sure life is pleasant will be in properly packing my bags. I looked up a list of the allowed and un-allowed items for carry-on and checked baggage.

Apparently it is fine to have a meat cleaver, as long as you check it. I believe I will pack a suitcase filled with nothing but meat cleavers, razor blades, baseball bats, ammunition, axes and hatchets and a few cattle prods.

I can also bring a sword, oddly enough, however, I can’t pack scissors if their blades are over four inches. I guess a sword is not as big a threat as 4 1/2 inch scissor blades. At any rate, that should give the guys at the X-ray machine something to do, and me a good laugh. Again, this is all about me having a pleasant experience, not them.

Next comes the removal of the shoes. No problem, I’ve got a fake fungus that I believe I will swathe all over my feet. Then I’ll beg for a strip search. “I’ve got more fungus where this comes from, why don’t you strip search me, it’ll be fun. It stinks a little, but you get used to it.”

Once they’ve determined they’re going to opt for a body scan instead of a strip search on me, I’ll be ready. There’s a company that sells rubber pads call “flying pasties” http://www.gadling.com/2010/07/21/flyingpasties/ . You can get them customized with sayings. Mine will say, “You Can’t Touch This”. I will then use invisible ink that only shows up on things like x-rays and body scans, to point out areas they are, however, free to touch. An example might be an arrow pointing to my armpit with a word bubble that says, “Things go in and never come back out… you are free to feel around.” Or an arrow pointing to my belly button with a word bubble that says, “free lint, take some”.

At any rate, it should be amusing to me. Again, I really don’t care how the TSA guys and gals feel about it, unless of course they get too greedy with the lint.

Now for those of you who travel often, you won’t get to have nearly as much fun as I will. Apparently there’s now a “Black Diamond Self Select” lane. I think it’s like a self checkout at the grocery store, except, of course, it’s the airport. You take off your shoes and check them for bombs and other plastic devices, then you go through the body scan and run back and make sure you're not carrying any concealed weapons in your nether-regions. If an area looks fuzzy, you strip search yourself and hand over anything you find. You do need to be sure that you can do this quickly and without smiling, or you’ll be regulated to the non-self checkout lane. You will also have to provide your own gloves.

Good luck to all of you who are traveling this holiday season. I’m sure you’ll find your own way of dealing with the TSA. No matter what you decide to do, you should at least pack your belly button full of lint. Really. It’ll be fun.