TSA finds vibrator, leaves note: 'Get your freak on, girl'

[Newsjock]

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/24/tsa-goes-through-womans-luggage-finds-sex-toy-leaves-pervy-note.html



"Just unpacked my suitcase and found this note from TSA," tweets writer and attorney Jill Filipovic of Feministe. "Guess they discovered a 'personal item' in my bag. Wow."

It was a standard-issue we got all up in your baggagebusiness Transportation Security Administration Notice of Inspection (NOI), but with these handwritten words in pen, overlaid: "GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL."

"Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok," Filipovic writes in a post titled Your Tax Dollars at Work, "but I also just died laughing in my hotel room."

The "personal item" in question, Ms. Filipovic tells Boing Boing, was this $15 "Silver Bullet" vibrator from Babeland.

[seabeyond]

1. guys are allowed. no lines at all. simple consideration matters not anymore, i am told

free for all....

[Warren DeMontague]

15. haiku?

gezundheit!

[EOTE]

28. Limerick, I believe. NT.

[seabeyond]

30. what a hoot. you two. fighting over my lyrical genius.

funny.

[Kennah]

2. Note sounds like they "tested" it

[Initech]

3. Ah, a vibrator. Or as Frank Zappa referred to them: "Lonely person devices."

But I think I wouldve had the same reaction: :rofl:

[redqueen]

9. deleted

[riderinthestorm]

19. Oooh, TMI perhaps but this married couple owns a vibrator and they are NOT for singles...

Yeah baby, get the freak on for two...! :bounce:

[Initech]

20. !!!!

:spray:

[XemaSab]

22. Your user name now has a whole new context

:hide:

[waddirum]

4. It's a neck messager

HONEST

I have arthritis or something.

[waddirum]

5. "Massager"

I can't stand to look at my own typos.

[Cirque du So-What]

6. Thing is, you can still see it

You can edit your posts for up to 15 minutes (I think) by clicking on 'Edit' in the lower right corner of your post window.

[geardaddy]

31. lol

I was wondering what a neck message would look like. :)

[HockeyMom]

7. Obviously, a MALE who wrote that

So jealous, of other men, women, and electronic devices. THEY all the "studs".

[Taverner]

8. Um....that was incredibly stupid

She's a JOURNALIST and a LAWYER

They couldn't have made a worse mistake if they tried

[Initech]

10. True. That was pretty idiotic but she at least had a sense of humor about it.

[Taverner]

18. Yes, but at the same time, WTF was she thinking?

[bluestate10]

38. Actually. The person that put the not in the luggage left a footprint.

First, the passenger traveled at a certain time, that narrows the list of possible. Second, the wrote or typed the note, handwriting and printers have signatures. Look for confirmation that a person has been terminated soon. Won't take long to find the dingbat.

[undeterred]

11. I have a friend who works for TSA

Vibrators are known as sex toys- they are totally commonplace in luggage. Not even worth a conversation to most airport workers. An eyebrow is only raised when they really don't know what something is. Stupid to leave a note about it.

[Warren DeMontague]

14. ***

[cyglet]

17. Yeah

I wouldn't think it was the first or last time they saw one. Unprofessional.

[2banon]

23. Really? Your friend says this item is common place? Wow..

I'm thinking, wtf to anyone who would pack such items which is completely exposed to the public. wow. I guess I'm just too old school, though I've never considered a prude, I'd never pack sex toys or anything that would be even remotely resemble such items exposed to public scrutiny. Wow..

[EOTE]

29. Yes, I'd imagine it's extremely common place.

Quite a few people own sex toys (perhaps the majority of women, maybe the majority of men, too). So I'd think it would be extremely rare for an hour to pass with TSA screeners not encountering them.

[2banon]

35. it's not the owning sex toys that stuns me, it's doing air travel with them! n/t

[bluestate10]

40. When I travel. I pack dirty underwear on the trip to the next destination.

A person can't take care of some needs on a fast turn. I don't expect people to dig through my personal stuff outside of what is required to insure passenger safety. When the screener picked up the woman's vibrator, that screener should recognized what it was and replace it, without a note. I can see picking up the vibrator to check it out if a person has not seen one like it, bombs can be hidden in lots of objects. But the note goes beyond what was called for.

[customerserviceguy]

12. Hey, one would have to be a pervert

to even keep that job more than six months. A normal person would have quit, or taken their own life by now.

Clearly, they were expecting that she would be so embarrassed that she wouldn't whisper it to a soul. Didn't work out that way.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Your tax dollars at work. Yippee.

Of course, if it wasn't for the dreaded sexual revolution and concomitant evil pornification of society, it'd still be illegal to buy those things in most states. I know in Alabama, it still is.

[Tsiyu]

33. I think you can still buy them in Georgia

but no mail order. :wtf:

My cuz had to have some toys sent here to TN because it's illegal to have a vibrator mailed to you :rofl:

TN seems cool with the freak. Not far from here is The Fun Store, and it's as accepted by the locals as the Harley Shop or the feed store.
NBD

[lib2DaBone]

16. TSA are Brown Shirts and should be disbanned.

The American people have no idea what they are fliriting with... TSA are NAZI Brown Shirts. Checkpoints.. within American Borders.

"Your Papers Please..."... "so why are you traveling? Where are you going.. why? Where have you come from? Verrry ineresting."

[MindPilot]

21. Note to self: Next trip, find another place to hide my weed.

I didn't know they test-fired those things.

As the article notes, this is not the first time. "Saturday, March 15, 2003 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific

Suitcase surprise: Rebuke written on inspection notice

By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter
Seth Goldberg says he found this notice — and note — in his luggage after it was inspected earlier this month at Sea-Tac Airport.

Seth Goldberg says that when he opened his suitcase in San Diego after a flight from Seattle this month, the two "No Iraq War" signs he'd picked up at the Pike Place Market were still nestled among his clothes.

But there was a third sign, he said, that shocked him. Tucked in his luggage was a card from the Transportation Security Administration notifying him that his bags had been opened and inspected at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Handwritten on the side of the card was a note, "Don't appreciate your anti-American attitude!"

"I found it chilling and a little Orwellian to have received this message," said Goldberg, 41, a New Jersey resident who was in Seattle visiting longtime friend Davis Oldham, a University of Washington instructor.

Goldberg says that when he took his suitcase off the airplane in San Diego, the zipper pulls were sealed with nylon straps, which indicated TSA had inspected the luggage. It would be hard, he said, for anyone else to have gotten inside his bags."

[2banon]

24. +1

[Renew Deal]

25. Link to Babeland here

:evilgrin:

[NJCher]

26. What does that mean?

Get your freak on. I don't understand. Somebody 'splain, please.



Cher

[Warren DeMontague]

27. ***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNGQiCDKxVM

[Nye Bevan]

32. Ah, the TSA. Such consummate professionals.

Whether they are groping six year old kids who are flying back to Kansas with their families, or writing stupid notes about vibrators, they never cease to impress me.

[redqueen]

34. I'm sure the person who wrote it meant nothing bad...

if the media didn't portray women as being open to and appreiciative of 'positive' feedback from any and all men regarding our sexuality 24/7, then I doubt anyone would think this was a good thing to do. As it is, that's how women are portrayed, so most people think that's just reality.

He wasn't intentionally trying to creep her out or ruin her toy ... he may have expected her to get a good laugh out of it, so there is that. He thought he was doing a nice thing. Hopefully someone close to him will clue him in before he ruins any more sex toys.

[chrisa]

36. lol

At both the story and "The Silver Bullet."

[bluestate10]

37. TSA will narrow the potential suspects down to less than a handful.

Those that travel should know that luggage checking stations are not occupied by many people. TSA will find out when the passenger traveled and narrow it's list down to maybe three people, all of whom should be questioned.

[WillyT]

39. Well... This Ain't Exactly New Ya Know...

Except for assholes leaving notes...



:shrug:

[HipChick]

41. I doubt her story...she's a blogger that wanted more traffic to her website

I am sure the TSA see worst than the $15 "Silver Bullet"...she could have wrote that herself..

[MindPilot]

42. I was thinking that same thing.

The note--assuming the owner of the luggage did not write it--could have been written in some completely different time, place and context. Since it was on the Spanish side of the TSA notice, it is entirely possible the TSA inspector who put it in the luggage wasn't even aware of the note's existence. Lawyer. Blogger. Feminist. Sexually suggestive note. It is just all tooooooo perfect.