How do you like Mexico so far?

Today is Friday and I’ll be going to Mexico last Tuesday. It’s April and my passport expires last November. I packed Sunday night. We will drive to Denver last Monday. Last Monday a.m. I grabbed my passport and gave it a perfunctory perusing. I stopped as page none grabbed me back. The perfunctoriness transformed into static disbelief. Luckily for all Americans the Bush administration changed the laws concerning travel to the terrorist harboring nations of Canada and Mexico. Yep, you have to have a passport to go down to the donkey shows in Tijuana. You aren’t going to be doing any parasailing in Mazatlan without a valid passport. No more psilocybin pyramid scaling in Palenque. What? You want to do the Cancun spring break thing? Go back to Daytona punk. Surfing Baja is out. Go back to the Huntington pier. Don’t forget your wetsuit. You were hoping to explore ancient Aztec architecture and culture. Study antiquities. Don’t worry about it. All the best shit’s in the museums in New York and D.C.

You will have to display your lovely blue valid United States passport the next time you drive over the Friendship Bridge at the friendliest border in the world. All this just to get to Queen Victoria park or to go up the space needle or to walk the tunnels behind the falls or to ride the Maid of the Mist or to go to the barrel museum or to look at the Devils Whirlpool or just to see the best view of the falls. Maybe you just want to go to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not wax museum or the casinos or go on to Niagara on the Lake for wine. You’re not going to go without a passport. Oh, and they wont be stamping it either. They are real enough borders now to require passports but they are not really real enough to get ink on a page. No cool guy world traveler souvenir for you. That’s okay. There is plenty of kitschy crap to buy. You’re at Niagara Falls for god sake. You might as well get your tickets to Frontier days in Cheyenne because they won’t let you in for the Calgary Stampede without a passport. You want to go skiing at Whistler? You might as well be whistling Dixie. The snows better in Colorado anyway. What about Québec? They’re kind of a mini France. Sorry, not without a passport.

Wait a minute. We have hundreds of illegal aliens dying out in the Arizona badlands. They don’t have passports. ‘Unprecedent Bush’ has come to a long sought diplomatic solution, a hard won compromise of good faith representing the best interests of both our great countries. We share a thousand mile border with our neighbors to the south. And with that comes a solemn responsibility to foster openness and promote cooperation. In the interest of mutual respect, solidarity and compassion it has been decided by the ‘Decider’ that we’re going to build a fence. I’m not talking a white picket job either. This fence, just like the Great Wall of China will also not be visible from outer space. This fence, like the Berlin wall, no matter how tall, ridged, thick and long, is of course doomed to failure. Bush is like the opposite of King Midas. Everything King George touches turns to failure.