The TSA : Taking Shit Away or The Sexual Assassins or Touching Sensitive Areas or Totally Screwing America or...

TSA: Reason #1 to have a Valium Martini before you get to the airport.

If I ever end up in the Crowbar Hotel it will be for killing a TSA agent! 

I’m a rebel, I know this. I often try to sneak past TSA with a wine opener in my purse, or God forbid 12 ounces of hairspray. Once I even went all crazy and tried to smuggle not one, but TWO nine ounce jars of cheese dip(s) from the very fabulous gourmet food store, Napa Style. The douche bag TSA guy, who clearly did not need the calories associated with said cheese dips, confiscated them from me (for his own consumption, I'm certain) lest I make a cheese bomb and blow the plane to pieces. Grrrrrrr. 
(Authors note: that was about 6-7 years ago and I'm still holding a grudge.)

     
So yeah, over the years I’ve had my share of run ins with them, but nothing has pushed me over the edge like this.

Billings MT...home of the ten thousand TSA agents who stand around with their thumbs up their butts all day waiting for the typically twenty-five passengers to come through security. Because they have nothing better to do, they will ransack every suitcase, legally feel you up and pat you down "with the back of the hand," and make everyone, meaning not just the random terrorist-looking grandma, but everyone, stand in their little box that blows a puff of hot air on you to see if any bomb making (read: fertilizer i.e. cow shit [this is Montana]) blows off.

So here's how my latest encounter went:  First off, I will tell you that I have mascara older than this little twit with a badge, who looks like she just quit her job working the deep fryer at Mickey D's and has now been a highly trained TSA agent for not more than two days. She decides that my 18-20 containers of Little Caesars dog food look suspicious even though I am traveling with two dogs.

She wants to know where I'm going and why I have so much of it. I tell her that at the present I'm living in the British Virgin Islands and that I can't buy it there, so I have to bring it with me. I must look like I’m a mule for the Colombians because she wrings her pudgy blue gloved hands and goes over to her supervisor, who is a lazy lard ass with an inflated ego and says that she thinks it's suspicious that I have so much dog food. They tell some TSA secrets and then he pulls his own blue gloved thumb out of his hind end and inspects one of my 3.5 ounce containers and then he says that I can’t fly with it because...wait for it… it’s a gel. 

Gracie & Elvis ~ The "gel eating" dogs.

The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Me:  “What the...? No it's not.  Dude, it's dog food.” (Note to self: TSA dudes do not like to be called "Dude.")

Lard A:  “It's gel and you will have to check it.” (He makes sure his Cracker-Jack looking badge is at my eye level.)

Me:  “No, really it is dog food.” Then I ask him what seems like a perfectly legit question, which is, “do you feed your dog gel?”

Lard A:  “Well you can’t fly with it.”  

Me:  “I fly with it all the time. Matter of fact I just flew here a few days ago with it.” I can feel my Bad Attitude coming to the surface and I can tell I’m about to do that thing when my horns sprout from my head, but I try to remain un-demon-like as I ask semi-nicely, “well can't you just make an exception this one time?”

Lard A:  “No I can't. What if the next person wants to fly with peanut butter?"

That’s when I throw my hands up in the air, my head spins around a' la exorcist and I declare loud enough for the air traffic control tower to hear me and say, “Peanut butter? Seriously? Peanut butter? We all know how dangerous that would be! There’s nothing like peanut butter to bring down an airplane!!!!”

And that's pretty much when things went down hill. The Big Guy began heading back to the counter to check the bag, while I wondered how much time I would get if I did a cavity search on him with the pointy toe of my super cute slingbacks.

I wasn’t completely finished…“Wait a second,” I say. You do know that we are flying on that little rinky-dink plane and that they will make us gate check this bag anyway, don’t you?”

(I had him there! And for a second or two he looked dumbfounded, or at least just dumb.)

Lard A:  “It doesn’t matter that they will gate check it. It’s not going past here!” 
He sounded pretty firm about it.

Twit with a badge is looking all sheepish because she knows she started this whole business and she knows I’m about to go postal on her frumpy ass. Every time she looks my direction I give her my evil eye. The other 7268 agents on duty look down and avoid eye contact with me because I’ve about turned her into a pool of butter with my death stare.

Enter unsuspecting-smiling-just-coming-on-duty-TSA guy. 
     “Hi poochies,” he says to my dogs, who are looking very sad at this point. “How are you little guys doing?” 

     “They’re pissed off!” I bark at him, “because that asshole just took away their food.” (I point a finger at said asshole, like I’m picking him out of a line-up.) 

My sad looking doggies. :(

And that was when it went all quiet. Luckily for me The Big Guy showed up about then and grabbed my arm and led me away, without the handcuffs on. Yeah, he did whisper in my ear, "Just keep walking, and step it up a bit. I figured they'd have you arrested by now."

I just spun my head completely around one more time and headed to the bar for a Valium Martini. 

 

On a lighter note, here is my recipe for a Stuffed Baguette, and you know exactly where I'd like to stuff it!  Click on the "Appetizers" tab to view it.