Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Next time there is a conference, I think all the Smart Bitches who attend should blow their minds by carrying erotica with them.

I was pulled aside this summer because the x-ray detected an “item of interest” in my daughter’s carry on. The security guard reached in the bag and then yelped and jumped back. My daughter’s rubbery lizard scared him! I don’t think he had time to note her reading material (Junie B. Jones and Magic Treehouse)

(the items of interest were two stone topped wine stoppers I had tucked in the bottom of her bag)

I get pulled aside regularly because of flying back and forth to the Middle East but my own books were all stored in my ebookreader…

Now, that just makes me want to read something REALLY strange on the plane.  I don’t know, maybe Gravity’s Rainbow?  Nah, they wouldn’t get that.  Threesome BDSM erotica, perhaps?

(My word is give39—what is that, a half-assed 69?)

Well, at this point they’re just scanning people entering the United States, so you’d have to bring those books back from an international trip.

And hope they don’t take your reading choices so seriously that they keep you in a Customs detention room for hours on end while they interrogate you.

This is why I left my copy of Mao’s On Guerilla Warfare at home last week when I flew.  I didn’t want to have to prove it was for research by making the TSA folks read pieces of my really sloppy first draft.

This is so funny because the last time I flew, a sexy dude searched my bag and pulled out my copy of Joey Hill’s Vampire Queens Servant.  The look on that guys face.  Good times.

I guess I shouldn’t choose The Big Book of Airplane Hijacking for in-flight reading, huh?

The Anarchist Cookbook

Awww, man! Now they have all my information, I’m sure. I’ve been in across the border five times in the past year! You know they know all about me.

Mr fiance wear a hat to the airport so no one videotapes his face. I would think that this would make people more interested in getting a chance to videotape his face than they would otherwise.

Last time I flew, I was pulled out of line for a book I had in my bag. It was a hardcover collector’s edition of the Montgomery Ward Catalog for 1923-24, I believe, and was about the size of a large encyclopedia (I bought it for Call of Cthulhu research, but that’s neither here nor there.) It was so big and thick that it blocked the X-Ray for the rest of my bag. I got two security agents searching through my bag, apparently because one was training the other. They were impressed by the size and density of my reading material.

Pre 9/11 airplane security story:

I used to have relatives in Rapid City, SD.  One time when I was visiting them, I think in 1990, I bought a pair of snow boots.  I live in Dallas, TX, and it’s hard to find a decent pair of winter, not fashion, boots down here.  Yes, I do need them occasionally.  Every few years, we have a super nasty winter with snow and ice storms.

Anyway, I also bought a BIG, heavy metal bracelet.  When I was packing to leave, I put the bracelet in the toe of the boots with assorted clothes, including panties on top.  Of course, the bracelet either alerted the metal detector, or they didn’t like the way it looked on the X-ray scanner - don’t know which.  So I had to unpack the boot and show them the bracelet.

Thank goodness there weren’t very many people around - I was much younger then, and pretty embarrassed. These days, I doubt I would turn a hair. And I imagine TSA employees are used to finding * all * kinds of things in checked and carry-on baggage.

When I re-packed the boot, I decided to leave the bracelet out and wear it. I knew I had to go through airport security again in Minneapolis to get to the gate for our connecting flight.  Good decision - had no trouble at all in Minn.

My mom has a neighbor who works for the TSA at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and he told her a post 9/11 story about a security alert due to a vibrator in someone’s carry-on that apparently turned on by itself. Thank goodness, no harm done except to people’s nerves!

And one time when I was coming home to DFW in 2005, I saw some idiot had left something recharging at a wall outlet in the terminal.  I found the closest person in uniform who was stationed at
some self-service computer terminals used for immigration.  Think she was with Homeland Security.  Anyway, I told her, and she called someone on her radio, and when she said I could go, I * got * as fast as I could. If things are going to explode, or shots are going to be fired, I * do not * want to be present.  Just sayin’.

Hmm… since I’m a doofus Caribbean med student, I’m constantly doing international flights… this could explain why I’m constantly pulled out for screening despite being incredibly innocuous.  Time to stop bringing “Subverting the Infrastructure of the American Infidel Government for Dummies” along as reading material.  I thought it was just all the one-way tickets.

I did get a lot of dirty looks when I was reading Lucifer’s Hammer in the Charlotte, NC airport (it’s about a freaking comet).  I wonder if that put me on a permanent list…

I went out and bought a copy of BIG SPANKABLE ASSES just for all flights. I’m really hoping to get frisked for my cheekiness!

OMG, that is AWESOME.

And please fly first class when you do it, we could get a collection together.  I wanna see “Big Spankable Asses” going through the preferred customer gate.

My daughter-in-law is a lovely young lady with a rather impressive bust. Back in the spring, she flew to Las Vegas to visit a friend. On the way home, at the airport in Vegas, she set off the metal detector.
Woman with airport security comes over with a hand-held metal detector.
It starts beeping at her chest and DIL says, ‘Oh, I’m wearing an underwire bra. Is that what’s setting it off?’
Security: ‘Underwire?’
DIL: ‘Yeah, with the little wire under the cup.’
Security, wanding around left armpit: ‘Well, it’s going off here…’
DIL: ‘Yes, that’s the wire.’
Security, waving wand at the center of DIL’s chest: ‘And it’s going off here…’
DIL: ‘Yes, that’s the wire.’
Security, moving to right armpit: ‘It’s going off here, too…’
DIL, managing not to roll her eyes: ‘Again, that’s the wire in my bra.’

DIL was just about ready to start stripping and show the lady her bra, with the wire. But they managed to determine that DD’s were not a threat to national security and let her get on the plane.

I’m thinking that next time I should buy her a really lurid book to carry with her. For variety’s sake.

Can we say paranoid?

So where do we register for that subversive organization “flying with erotica”?

SandyW...When the High School daughter attended a field trip to DC there was alot of chatter amongst the girls to not wear underwires b/d rumors of the possibility that security might check by inserting fingers.  This story makes the rounds every so often, no idea if it’s true.

Last time we flew, security confiscated all of our lip moisturizer soft tubes (except for the contraband one in my pocket), mini fragrance, and other girlie products.  Although it provided some bonding moments as the daughter & I were sneaking around sharing our contraband lip moisturizer.

3/4 through the flight, the teen girl beside me roots through her backpack...I noticed it was almost full of bottles of shampoo and other liquid products.  Go figure.

Every time this kind of stuff comes up, I wrestle with that Benjamin Franklin quote rattling around my brain, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

I suppose you just have to draw a reasonable line somewhere. I mean, people ought not to bring loaded hand guns on the plane, duh… I can handle jumping through some hoops at the airport. But it would be nice to think maybe that the line, when drawn, would eliminate sacrifices that don’t actually result in a significant return.

Give me liberty or give me… a little bag of peanuts!

I just remembered a book I have that would be great to take on a flight!  Get this - “Smart Questions to Ask Your Lawyer.” Yes! Really!

I did some flying for a job in 2005.  I’m an very infrequent flyer, but when I saw people taking their laptops out of carryons and putting them in tubs to go through the X ray machines, I copied them.  I knew about the shoe thing, of course, so that was no surprise.

Re: The underwire thing

At Charles de Gaulle (Paris International Airport) I was searched and felt up in a separate cublicle because the lady wouldn’t believe my underwire set off the metal detector. Underwires usually don’t, but once in a while you run into a bra that does.
Anyway, first she scanned me with the handheld thingy, then she put me in the cublicle, told me to take off my shirt, and then she FELT MY BOOBS! Honestly! I know they’re big (hi, G!), but there are no bombs in my bra!

Word: real84. Yeah, they’re real. Production year is ‘83 though, not ‘84.

Also re: The underwire thing-

I feel pretty confident that - given a good motive & a few moments of MacGyvering - I could do someone some serious physical damage, using the underwire from my bra.

Am adding this to my personal list of things not to joke about when I’m at the airport.

“I always go back and forth on the airplane security issue. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t have guns according to some reports. They had Leatherman pocket knives, box cutters, plastic hand restraints and possibly fake bombs. Reid’s shoe bomb was plastic explosive and an acetone peroxide detonator.”

I worry more about explosives because the overextensive hyperparanoid stuff they do for them doesn’t even seem that effective.  I’d be happier with just more dogs.

The thing with the 9/11 terrorists is that the same strategy really couldn’t ever work again, thus the restriction on nail clippers, even pocket knives, seems “close the barn door after the horses are out.” Hijacking used to mean “inconvenient trip to Cuba” and there’s no way I’m going to risk getting stabbed for that.

Now?  Anyone sporting ANY kind of weapon (that doesn’t simply detonate immediately), including a gun, is going to get their asses handed to them by boy scouts and blue haired old women because even taking a gunshot to the thigh (or the head!) is far preferable to exploding into a fiery blaze with 100-3000 other people, which is what “violent airplane behavior” now means.

I’ve often said that I would feel sorry for the poor fool in the post 9/11 world that would try to simply hijack a plane to go to Cuba.

Well my husband’s name is Ahmed.  He is actually completely expecting to be flagged.  He takes the lumps with no complaints.

But if they’re going to check the carry-on library I’m the one to worry about.  Gads. 

“Scuse me, miss, none of my business and all, but why do you NEED a copy of the Necrotelicomnicon, a hand-scribbled journal with pentagrams and other arcane shapes in all the margins, Good Omens, and Fun Facts to Know and Tell About Poison?”

Anyone carrying “Good Omens” should not only be sent through without a security screen, but should be bumped to gold member status!