If you have had occasion to fly since Christmas, I would guess you are not amused.

One nutbar with a package of nitro hidden near his package has managed to throw governments and the airline industry into a tizzy.

Air passengers around the world are lining up, shoeless and maybe pantless, to be frisked and scanned, while being told to leave carry-on luggage at home, and forced to stay seated during the last hour of their flight.

While in the air, passengers no longer get to see where they are on the in-cabin monitors and you can bet the pilots won’t be telling you to look out the right side of the plane for a view of the Grand Canyon.

Much of this smacks of overkill (pardon the poor choice of a phrase) and exhibits a lack of common sense. My guess is that terror tourists don’t plan to bring down their plane only during the last hour of a trip and they don’t use geographic locations to synchronize their blasts.

Don’t misunderstand ... I’m glad the security squads at airports have beefed up their vigilance. I will soon be taking a flight and I will be on a Northwest/Delta plane that makes a stop in Detroit.

I’m not certain, but I suspect I will be subjected to some pretty severe scrutiny when passing through Pearson Airport.

If they had a full body scanner, I would not object to being zapped. I might even buy a print of the image. (Note to airport authority: There’s a potential revenue booster).

However, while the authorities are waiting for approval and funds to buy body scanners, maybe we should equip all security staff with X-Ray Specs. They were all the rage when I was a boy and every comic book contained an ad for them. For only $1 plus 25 cents shipping, every kid in the neighbourhood could have X-Ray glasses that let the user look through flesh and clothes. And the ad was always illustrated by some perv leering at the silhouette of a woman.

I’ll bet there’s a warehouse somewhere in New Jersey full of these goggles, just the thing to take the fight against terrorism to the next level.

Here’s another tip: if a guy boards a plane with no luggage and a one-way ticket, and his name is on a terrorist list, or a wacko list, or a shopping list, security goons might want to take him behind curtain number two for a closer look-see.

I can imagine that passengers in the future might be boarding aircraft while dressed in flip-flops and a thong and that image is extremely disturbing (you’ve never seen me in flip-flops and you never will).