Senate Bill 1070

Today is Friday May Seventh Two Thousand Ten. Hallmark holiday weekend, Mother's Day. Ever day should be parental units day, your mom popped you out and your day put up with your mother. At least in my family, I am not sure about other ones out there. I am headed up there on Saturday nite and will spend some quality time with the units on Sunday. Its funny how my folks can no longer make snap decisions. I called them a few hours ago inquiring if they were busy on Saturday nite. When they said that there were indeed free, I asked them if they wanted to have dinner in Salem. This caused my pop to hand off the phone to mumsie, where I had to go thru everything over again. I cut my explanation short and said that I would call them back this afternoon after they discussed it between themselves. I suppose I am a little short and snappy today because I have not had nicotine in my blood for two days now but come on. Its not like I was asking their opinion of the Israel/Palestine situation or anything, just if they wanted to have fucking dinner a few towns away from where they have lived for over forty years.

I know I should not be harsh and I myself am a planner. One of the parts of vacation I enjoy the most is planning it. Doing research, writing schedules, getting tickets, shit like that. Thats one of the challenges of Burning Man is what to bring and how many uses does one thing really have. I think one thing I will miss in sobriety is how damn good a beer tastes at six in the morning after you have been dancing all night to techno with fifty thousand other freaks in a desert two hundred miles from Reno. I guess that a ice coffee, tea, or gatoraide will have to do it from now on, no beers for me anymore. It was funny, last nite in a meeting someone mentioned that Shaffer beer had a slogan something along the line of "If you are going to have more than one, think Shaffer." Thats crazy but sorta awesome, they were encouraging alcoholism and I guess I am naive to think that they were the only company to think about such things. I mean, when you product one point seven five containers of vodka that retail for seven or eight bucks just who are you expecting to drink your product ? Certainly not someone who drinks on occasion, just alcoholics who determine what they buy due to price point and not taste.

Seems that Arizona is pissing the rest of the country off with Senate Bill 1070. Plainly stated it is against the law in Arizona to live there if you are an illegal immigrant and that law enforcement has the right to ask you for some identification. There have been all sorts of protests, marches, boycotts, and impassioned soap box speeches about this bill. Even the city council of Boston has decided that local matters don't warrant their attention and have called for a boycott for everything Arizonian. The Arizona Ice Tea company, the one with the cool blue bottles, is very worried about the economic impact of this anti 'zona thinking and now has ads out there claiming that they are in fact not an 'zonian company. The NBA team has a spanglish jersey they are donning for the playoffs, and I am sure if it was football season that the NFL would do something equally inane. It appears that if you are in the country illegally then you can't live in Arizona but Texas and New Mexico are ok.

Now, I have no idea what it is like to have a big enough reason to leave your country of birth and hightail it somewhere else but I do have a few questions and observations. The first is that if you are in a country illegally, wouldn't you expect to be arrested if law enforcement found out you were there ? If I was to sneak into say, Russia and the authorities found out, I think that they would detain me while they figured out what to do. But thats a bad example because who the fuck wants to actually live in Russia anyway ? It would be sound reasoning however if your classification by the home government of the country you are in contains the word "illegal" that perhaps you would be subject to arrest and expulsion by that government. The second part that has people's panties all in a bunch is that leos are allowed to stop people in the street and demand identification. This reeks of racial profiling and I am sure it would suck to be an american citizen living in Arizona and to have over zealous leos stop you every ten paces for identification. I am also sure that many leos in the 'zona area have much better things to do than be a border patrol officer, and I'm sure due this legislation there is no love lost between the two agencies.

So, I get the part about the racial profiling stirring people's emotions enough to protest, march, boycott, and create snappy slogans but I have a hard time understanding people's problem with the law. If you enter a country without checking in with immigration then you are in that country illegally and subject to them tossing your ass over the fence with hardly a wave goodbye. I suppose that people are pissed that it is a crime and I suppose you could gain quite a record if you kept getting caught at trying to reside in Arizona. I think perhaps people envision a police state with shady scarred faced guys with black overcoats demanding to see your papers. Racial profiling is a fact of life and happens everywhere. White guy in the ghetto ? Must be scoring drugs. Black guy in the burbs ? Must be raping and pillaging. Mexican guy in Arizona ? Huh, they are pretty much everywhere and unless we chip people in the USA like purebred puppies, its going to be awfully hard to tell on site who and who doesn't belong here.

I guess I don't have an opinion on immigration other than if you choose to live in the United States Of American then you should be able to understand the english language. I know it sounds redneck and snooty but residents of a country should speak or at least understand the national language. Say all you want about being compassionate to others and that I don't understand what its like or I'm lucky because english is the world language. So fucking what. If I was to sneak into Russian and set up shop there I would damn well learn Russian to make myself understood. This who idea of everyone being bilingual is fine, just fucking understand that english is the language spoken here. If you want your home language to be spoken then go back to your home and speak it there. Is that harsh ? Sure but I don't go to other countries with the expectation that they speak english. I always carry a phrase book/ dictionary with me so at least I am trying to make myself understood in the local language. I think that sometimes I pronounce stuff so terribly that its easier to mime what I want but at least I am making an effort.