Back from Edinburgh
Jimmy the Bartender sez: "Kiss my haggis, terrorists!"
Yes, I'm back in one piece from Scotland, having survived the full impact of Security Theater. Yes, I took the picture above, and yes, the pose was unprompted.
Before I launch into my airport stories, let me add the following point:
Attention Newark airport rent-a-cops and Continental Airlines: Please bite this.
Right! Now that we've gotten that out of the way...I could type for pages and pages about what I saw and what I went through--which was substantially less horrid than many of my fellow travelers, given that I actually already had packed a spare bag (ie so I had room to check through the crap I woulda taken on carry-on) and many many plastic bags (always good to keep stuff like filthy laundry, potentially meltly cosmetics, etc. in). I also was traveling alone, with no kids, while Caucasian, English-speaking, middle-aged, and female. I saw many others who fit none of the above categories who had a much rougher go at it.
However, I don't want to get into too much detail here just now. It's 6:30ish on Sunday night and I haven't left the house since I got in late Friday--crashed hard after getting home very, very late, did nothing on Saturday whatsoever, and spent most of today unpacking, doing laundry, shopping for the week, cooking what I had bought as I came home to an empty fridge, etc. If you must know: Cooking highlights included chicken thighs with crispy Turkish 7-spice crust and black rice with barley cooked in the Rice Spaceship. Had that for lunch, but I have an urge for shitty pizza. But I digress.
So, let me hear YOUR airport stories. Special shout out to our own Lower Manhattanite, whom at last note was attempting to take his Black Muslim self and several cases of complicated electrical shazbit to California (LM--please let us all know how it went!!) Given the amount of general fecal matter that yours truly was subjected too, I can only imagine what anyone who vaguely fitted any kind of "profile" went through. So please let me know, and if I have the stregnth before bed, I will try to post more on my own experience.
Summary of my trip: Checked three times, frisking, etc, had all of my non-scrip meds confiscated, including sinus stuff, but they still managed to miss three chewable Rolaids in one pocket, a lollipop in the other (both of which I had even forgotten were there), an opaque bottle of aspirin (which was right next to the Rolaids and Sudafed that they nicked so no idea why that got missed) and a small flashlight on my keychain, which really shocked me. If the chewy Rolaids had really been plastic explosive, I wouldn't even need anything naughty in the aspirin bottle--I coulda just stuck it on the john and broken the bulb on the mini-Maglite to ignite. They did not, however, let us take books or reading material on the plane that hadn't been purchased (with receipt) from the "secure area." Sitting on the top of the Confiscated Shit tub: A copy of Amos Oz's "How to Cure a Fanatic," a book that I was going to bring up here at some point. Oh, the irony.
My prediction: Eventually someone is just gonna shove a tube of nitro up their ass and get it done that way. In 5 years, we'll all have to go thru a full-body screening and wear special airline-issued "bunny suits" on the plane, no exceptions.
More later perhaps, but right now, I need to get some sunlight in or I will never be able to go back to my desk tomorrow.
Again, tag those stories up!
posted by Jenonymous @ 6:26:00 PM
