Local humorists Jonathan Gallant and Lorenzo Milam have written a satirical travel guide to the U.S. for Mexican visitors. Here are some excerpts...

Public Transportation
Getting about may be a puzzle to you. You may be accustomed to the Mexican system where everyone has access to public transportation. Here, we do it differently. Buses run only once or twice a week (such as Monday and Thursday) because everyone is required to have a car. Sidewalks have been eliminated and pedestrian walkways are restricted to those who are shopping or those who are trying to collect money from pedestrians. If you don't have a car, you must stay home and do your shopping on TV.

American Cities
American cities are carefully planned. For example, most of the space around city center is reserved for concrete enclosures known as freeways on which automobiles are kept with their engines idling each morning and afternoon. This provides drivers something to do with their mornings and afternoons and simultaneously enriches the atmosphere with the essential nutrients found in engine exhaust.

Mid-city is occupied by large buildings owned by corporations. these buildings, normally between 70 and 1000 stories high, provide the vertical space needed for corporate offices, lawyers, accountants, import expediters, export impediters, and other financial and business services. At the same time, the buildings protect the streets below from sun, rain, air, or indeed, any kind of weather. As a result, the streets are available to live and sleep in, and a large population takes advantage of this. At night, space between the sleeping people is given over to "dealers" (comerciantes) taking care of business.

Inside the buildings, white collar employees sit at computer keyboards and generate print-outs. These are sent to the upper floors of the building which is reserved for the regional offices of a major corporation. In the offices - the only places in center city tall enough to see the sky - top executives receive the print-outs from below and file them in large drawers. Every few months, the executives change the corporate name, vote themselves a "golden parachute," throw away the files, and lay off a thousand or so of the white-collar employees on the lower floors. The ex-employees then move out of the building and join the homeless on the streets outside. The technical phrase for this is "restructuring."

Cars
American cars are often named after planets, stars, or constellations, vide: Saturn, Gemini, Mercury, Nova, and T-Bird. Television advertisements show these cars doing normal everyday things, like speeding through an African savannah, flying through the sky, or parking in a medieval city with a buxom, casually dressed lady fooling around with fenders and bumpers. These advertisements are meant to make the viewers comfortable with the car so they will go out and buy one. Another kind of advertisement shows the car doing not-so-normal things, like driving on an uncrowded freeway, or accelerating from zero to 120 mph (200kph) on a country lane without running over a horse. this class of advertisement is meant to tap into the viewers' sense of fantasy and adventure, so they will go out and buy a car. If the advertisements don't work, telemarketers will call the viewers and demand to know why they haven't gone out and bought a car.

Owners often install electronic instruments in their cars that make noises when people go near them. Some will howl or whistle, others will go "ough-wah-ough-wah." these sounds are meant to attract other cars so the two can mate (carros echando pito) and have a large family of subcompacts.

Other improvements to cars include Cruise Control, which guides the car directly into whichever kind of bar is most appropriate for the car's owner, and Air Bags, which provide something to breathe while on the freeway. Since the 1980s, the carburetor has been replaced by Fuel Injection, which enables tihe car to snort powdered fuel directly up its nose. In more modern, cutting-edge cars, the motor has been replaced by a tiny but sophisticated computer called a Search Engine. With this device, the motorist has only to click his mouse on a desired location, and the computer tells him so much about it that there is no need to actually drive there.

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Contents this page were published in the July/August, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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