tips for messing with the backscatter scanners this holiday season

With all the hype surrounding the privacy concerns of backscatter x-rays, I thought I would put together a little list to help you get through this holiday season.

If there is a remote possibility of having a naked Tron-like image of yourself posted to the internet, you might as well make it as memorable as possible.

1) Cover a comically oversized dildo (or suggestive vegetable) in stainless steel tape and shove it down your pants before boarding. Make sure you shoot the horns in homage to Spinal Tap during your scan.

2) Fun with letters! Get 2 inch Steel letters and use a little spirit gum to deck your hiney out with "USDA Grade A Beef".

If you do not want to experience the discomfort of having to endure a flight with sharp-edged letters glued to your ass, you can even get letter charms and tastefully arrange them on a chain around your hips to spell out such witticisms as "Scan this you fascist pigs" or "Sheik Yerbouti". But just remember, fonts are important. Comic Sans has no place in a scan that could be posted to the internet.

3) After refusing the scan, and being asked to go into a room to be groped, refuse, and start flinging off your clothes so they don't have to touch you. This works best if you apply some weird abnormal latex parts to your body. Like ears where your nipples should be. Or the appearance of giant beetles burrowing through your skin. Get creative!

4) Have a replica of Princess Lei's metal bikini made. Wear that whenever you fly. For the more modest traveler, chain mail tunics are also easily made.

5) Many people are worried about having personal medical secrets leaked by these scanners. If we all adhere material to our bodies to give the appearance of fake limbs and colostomy bags, nobody will ever suspect anyone of actually really having either of these. If you want to go a step further, you can glue wires and small bits of metal to every surface of your body so that you actually scan as the 6 Million Dollar Man (or Bionic Woman, depending on your gender preference). Extra points for replicating either haircut.

6) Brillo pads can be an uncomfortable, yet hilarious, way to give yourself the chest hair of a Sasquatch that is still readable by the scanners. You can recreate the man-o-lantern scene from 40 year -old virgin!


7) Insist on seeing your scan. Then insist on taking it again because they "didn't capture your good side".

8) When all else fails, get a tattoo of an alien chestburster
or simply paint one on with t metallic face paint.


Just remember. Just because it is mandated, doesn't mean we can't make the people who have mandated it look like assholes. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!