The Real Threat From South of the Border

Let me preface this post by saying this; I am not the most adventurous person when it comes to trying new shit. It usually takes me several years to adjust to new car styles. For the most part, I dress the same now as I did 20 years ago. I combed my hair the same way for 30 years, when it started falling out, I shaved my head, before it was trendy, before every twenty and thirty something , angst ridden douche bag decided it was hip. A few wrinkles and scuff marks aside, I have looked the same way for the past 10 years. I'm the same way when it comes to what I eat. I don't like surprises, I don't travel outside my comfort zone. So it was as big a surprise to me as anyone, when I bought some gum, gum I had never tried, Mexican gum, Canel's gum.
My reasoning was as follows. The packaging was cool, it comes in a square box, inside are little packages of brightly colored gum, they look like Chiclets gum. I like Mexican food, I don't like Mexican weed, but I do like Mexican people in general, so with that twisted bit O reasoning, I decided to take a chance on the gum, which much like Mexican labor was cheaper than its American counterpart.

Canel's gum comes in four flavors per package, Grape, Cherry, Apple, and Banana. It is without a doubt the most vile thing I have ever put in my pie hole. Seriously, this stuff is as fucked up as the proverbial Soup Sandwich. For starters, it doesn't feel like gum in your mouth. Imagine mixing shards of shattered light bulb in urine soaked sand, now concentrate that to industrial strength, and that gives you a vague idea of what this crap tastes like. The worst of the 4 flavors was the green apple. I would rather have my teeth cleaned by a proctologist, than to put a single piece of this green, vile, rectangular poison in my mouth again. The thing that made the green gum even more unpalatable than the other flavors, and the most insidious of the four, was the fact that it tasted OK for the first couple of minutes, then came the after taste. It tasted like body odor smells. I chugged a Coke Zero, and ate 3 Altoids all at once, and the hideous taste wouldn't leave my mouth. Even now I shudder at the memory of it.

There is more than a little debate over illegal immigration here in America today. We have nimrods with night vision goggles sitting in lawn chairs in the desert, waiting for folks seeking a better life to steal across our border. They claim the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico are threatening our way of life. I think it is just a ploy to distract us from the Real Menace from Mexico. The real threat isn't the hard working people that mow lawns, roof houses, and fuck up orders at the drive through window. The real threat isn't brown dirt brick weed that tastes like a gym sock and gives you a headache. The true enemy is this fucking gum. I'll take it a step further, there is a conspiracy in this country, and I contend that the Minute Men and other anti Mexican groups are all a part of it. I think these Canel's gum people are in cahoots with these groups to distract us from the real threat. The real threat is this innocuous looking gum. I believe the Minute Men are nothing more than errand girls, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill. They are the lap dogs of the Canel's gum company. The horror, oh, the Horror.

Authors note: After dumping this crap in the most appropriate place, the toilet, I have begun to question the wisdom of having done so. If there are any plumbers among my readers, be advised I may need your assistance and expertise.

Lets build a giant wall on the border. Yeah, that's the ticket!

I have managed by and large to keep my 2 cents in my pocket when it comes to the illegal alien/ immigrant, pick your preferred term or insert your own, debate. That is until it affected me directly. For those of you with better short term memory than my own, you may recall that I was recently rear ended in westport, by a large woman of Hispanic origin. Turns out she probably wasn't here legally, didn't have a valid license and couldn't get insurance if she had wanted to. So when I read about states, Kansas possibly soon to be among them, that want to prevent anyone without a green card from getting a license, it pisses me off a little, and solidifies my belief that the folks who run our Governments are completely clueless.

Having worked in the lumber industry for a number of years I'm well aware of the proliferation of Mexican workers , many of whom don't have green cards, who have streamed across our borders over the last decade. Before the ass fell out of the building boom, you could drive through one of the gazillion new JOCO subdivisions, even on a Sunday, and observe 6 or a dozen Mexican roofers slapping shingles down. I also never once heard any of the dozens of builders, contractors or subcontractors complaining about it. These pidgin English speaking shiftless characters worked Sundays holidays and overtime hoping to provide themselves and their families with a better life. The fucking audacity!!!

Clearly they are a threat to our economy, just look at the unemployment rate at a whopping 4.5 percent. Okay, that's a bad example, since that's a near record low. And many of the current unemployed are from the tech markets or a result of the building/real estate bubble bursting and companies like Sprint who outsource customer service jobs to countries that think curry tastes good. But the conservative right tells me I should be worried, so who am I to question them?

So I'm ready to support the campaign to rid the U.S. of these illegal brown devils, who are stealing food service jobs and landscaping gigs at an alarming rate. I'm waiting to hear the master plan. How are we going to round up the 10 or 20 million, depending on who's figures you believe, illegal workers in this country? I'm sure the powers that be have an awesome plan. We couldn't get people out of New Orleans during Katrina, but we can round up millions, fling them back over the border, build a wall really quick, like Wiley Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon, and all will be good. Before anyone gets their shorts in a wad, I am not, repeat , Not , saying we don't need to stem the flow. I'm saying we need a dose of realism along with plausible solutions.

What is a really bad idea is to legitimize the millions who are here. They are after all for the most part hard working productive people who just want to provide for their kids, and we cant have that shit. Besides if we legitimize them, and make them pay taxes and get insurance, they wont be as big a drain on our system. That would take the whole chicken little, the sky is falling factor out of the equation, and that's no good. Now if you will excuse me ,Ive got to go get some estimates to fix my car, out of my own pocket.

Damn illegal messicans.