Didjeridu: Weapon of terror

[Az]

A friend just came back from a trip to Australia. She went there as part of a concert tour for a local orchestra. One of the members brought back a didjeridu. US airport security stopped this person and put them through a full check because they were convinced it was a weapon. They honestly did not believe it was a musical instrument. They kept him in interrogation until someone actually showed up that knew what a didjeridu was.

Please tell me our national security is not being controlled by idiots of this magnitude.

[Shine]

1. That's hilarious!

:rofl:

Sadly, yes, our national security IS being controlled by idiots of this magnitude.

[Delphinus]

2. Sorry, I can't lie.

Our National Security truly

IS

being run by idiots.

[mitchum]

3. yes, seems like a drone would be able to recognize an instrument that produces a drone

[Richard D]

4. I got stopped with mine . . .

. . . on the way back from Peru. Had to do a few notes on it till they believed it wasn't a hand grenade launcher or blow gun or something.

[SoCalDem]

8. "Where ya hidin' them poison darts, sonny boy"?

:rofl:

[A HERETIC I AM]

9. Can you imagine the size of a dart made for a Didgeridoo?

Hell, it would have to be an inch and a half across!


A Didgeridoo would make a good blowgun like a 16 inch battleship main gun would make a good tobacco pipe.

[SoCalDem]

5. I guess the ceremonial spear industry is gonna really suffer too.

:)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Wish I could....

what's next? Tibetan Buddhist monks stopped because they are packing their suitcase horns?

[Captain Angry]

7. Wasn't it the move Airplane! that showed us how inept security is?

Men with huge guns walked through the metal detector, nothing went off. An old lady walks through, it beeps, and the guards take her down.

But you know it's your friend's fault. Good Americans play acoustic guitar, because we have both kinds of music here. Country AND Western.

Sigh.

[treestar]

10. At least these morans are learning there are cultures other than

American.

Though I'm sure they'd outlaw them if they could.

[Igel]

11. I had trouble with my Soloette.

Had to assemble the thing and show them that it really was a travel guitar before I could proceed.

(The worst, of course, was taking an eye-tracker to Poland. The Pole's were fine, multilingual and able to understand what it was fore. The dolts at French airport security, however ... as I transited they actually made me set the thing up--quite an annoyance, having to explain what the gear's for in broken French, with two computers to connect, software to run, and finding a volunteer to put the head-mounted thing onto, then repacking it ... when your plane's leaving in 5 minutes. Oh, and did I mention that there were at least 5 security folk there, all of them monolingual in French in the international terminal, and unable to handle any English, Spanish, or Russian at all, while being annoyed that I would actually dare to try to transit a French airport with $50k worth of research equipment? They found it funny when I had to hurry and did a poor job packing, racing off a few minutes after the last call for the flight; had to spend a day in Poland trying to fix the equipment. Didjeridu problems, compared with the benighted idiot French security folk? Eh.)

[Lint Head]

12. Did they ask? "What does your didjeridu?"

:dem: