Yesterday T’Nealle, James, Charlie and I spent the better part of nine hours in what is basically a holding area for bad kids at Los Angeles International airport. I learned some important things:

• Never get a visa for the United States. Never. Just fill out one of the green slip things and tell them you’re here to “chill outies” or something. Honestly, the first dude I spoke to was trying so hard to get me into the country he wouldn’t have cared if I’d been waving a 9mm around in his face. Sadly, I pressed the “I have a visa that is being processed,” line (on advice from an immigration attorney) and we were referred to “secondary.” This is where we stayed for the rest of the day.
• SPEAK ENGLISH. Nothing is more important than this. Although Customs and Immigration employ many cunning linguists, if you can’t speak English you’re a second- or third-class citizen NO SHIT. This one dude who was having trouble finding a Mandarin translator got arrested in front of everyone even though he looked like he was packing some serious $$$. When I was out back being questioned his luggage was still there BUT NO SIGN OF HIM. I BET THEY KILLED HIM. KILLED HIM FOR NOT SPEAKING AMERICAN.
• Make sure that your application isn’t shuffled between shifts. Our case went through three shifts of officers and two different supervisors and what seemed like two different Port Directors (but I think it was just one dickface changing his mind.) DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. DON’T BE A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE.
• DO YOUR UTMOST to ensure that when the overly-keen officer dude is playing you Placebo from his iPhone and looking up your band on the Internet he doesn’t find any reference to vulgarity or drugs or an EP with “CUNTTTT” in the title or anything like that.
• If one of the officers tells you that the Port Director has “graciously” waived the 545USD per person fee, stick by this NO MATTER WHAT. Just because some wanker in the office out back changed his mind doesn’t mean that you and your friends are going to be $2180 out of pocket. Fuck that.
• Don’t get some lawyer in Vermont to process your visa application in such a manner that it gets approved the night before you arrive at LAX meaning not only do you have no documentation to show you have a visa, there is no evidence of the visa in anyone’s computer systems and customs basically have to take the lawyer’s word for it.

For anyone who didn’t care about this, here are some tits:

LOZL JUST KIDDING:

Written by: Zach.
Tags: bribes, ffffuuuu, life lessons.