THEY CAN SEE THROUGH YOU/STRIP SEARCH

Life is about to get much better for the bored,
underpaid security droids who demand you empty your pockets of pennies
at airports around the world. Soon they'll amuse themselves observing
how big your genitals are, whether you have breast implants, checking
to see if the buzzer rings because you have a steel plate in your head.

Full-body scanners will arrive at Pearson International, just as soon
as the airport's last staff smuggler clears Customs. But not a second
before.

Who hasn't dreamed of having Superman's x-ray vision? The cutting edge
of airport security has debuted at Los Angeles International Airport,
contradicting baggage tags that have always read LAX. Stand in front
of the new electronic gizmo and it puts up a full-length, see-thru
image that's as big as you are -- but without your clothes. The image
is a cross between the x-rays they scope on TV's ER and those plastic
Visible Man toys. Eat a burger for lunch? At LAX, they'll be able to
see how far it's travelled.

I imagine this techno advance will offer security checkers hours of
harmless amusement. Now every traveler can have what only a few have
managed: The full-body strip search. Personal attention. Keep your
pennies and keys. No bells, buzzers or try-again trips thru the
detector. To hell with right-to-privacy freaks, already barking that
strangers shouldn't be allowed to see our gonads or gazongas. These
wimps are ashamed of their Stuff. Not me. Walkin' tall. Comin' thru.
Singing: Walk like a man, talk like a man ...

As it happens, I am something of an expert in Airport Security, having
invested big bucks years ago in hi-tech Canadian sniffer technology.

"Leisure air travel is gonna bust wide open," my stockbroker at the
time assured me. "Dogs and metal detectors won't do. How do you
process millions of passengers and their luggage? Ultra-sensitive
sniffers! A little box that smells a single ion of danger! In
plastique explosives, gunpowder, drugs! Dunf, this is a sure thing!"
This is the same broker who got me into a company that processed fish
skins into "high quality leather for coats" -- dead in a year -- and
the coin-operated vending machines you stuck ice skates into to have
'em sharpened. Litigation from NHL wannabees whose new Bauers were
turned into scrap metal is still pending. Sorry kids.

I gave that broker thousands and today -- after mergers,
consolidations and reverse-stock-splits -- I have enough left from my
Airport Sniffer Investment to buy lunch. Yet every time I fly, I look
for the gizmo he promised. Sniff me, baby! Where is that magic box?
Instead, I am relieved of my pennies and poked with a magic stick.
Strangers in funny uniforms shout: You! Go back! Come thru! Okay! It
all seems so ... primitive. What went wrong?

Why has it taken so long for science to bring us the full-body scanner
promised decades ago by Buster Brown shoes? A kid could go into any
shoe store and find a VW-sized box whose only purpose was to let a
brat see his own toes wiggle. I know families who bought no other
brand for years. Buster Brown's pioneer x-ray device had a hold on
kids Mickey D's might envy today.

Some of us spent most of adolescence with our feet in Buster Brown's
box. Sure, a few now have 11 toes. Others -- now in their 50s -- have
always been luminescent. Whenever I see a dentist hide behind
three-foot-thick lead walls to take a tiny tooth x-ray, I think:
Chicken! I had my whole damn head in that Buster Brown box while the
salesman talked to my mom.

A full-body airport scanner shouldn't be just for security. With
people waiting hours for boarding, a See Thru Show would make darn
good entertainment. Set up couches near the display. Charge a buck to
watch strangers get scoped. Look at that guy's rib cage! Whoa mama,
that's a wig. Are those real? User pay? We'll clear the whole airport
debt in two years.

X-ray vision is where it's at. See your own toes. See somebody else's.
Wow, what a wiggle. Call your broker n-o-w.