Damn Foreigners And Their Donuts

My apologies, but the internet has been shaky for me at best these last few days.  I intended to finally post on some big issues, namely immigration and language, but if the cogs and wheels inside this modern typing machine can't bother to move properly until later in the evening when my brain is spent, well... it's not as if immigration and language will stop being issues in North America tomorrow or the next day anyway.  In any event, for those of us wondering what particular group will be the topic of discussion, that would be the Spanish speaking peoples to the south of us.  While I am loathe to give a preview of a post that I have no plans on getting to on a holiday weekend, my readers can probably figure out where a bilingual French-Canadian ex-pat will stand on the issues.

Hint:  The United States has no official language, and this peculiarity is kept in place by people on both the political right and left of this country, and has been kept so by such people since its founding.  Just as French speakers in Canada tell the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada, however, English probably is not going to go anywhere.  On the topic of culture, even though Mexican-American and Puerto Rican kids enjoy copious amounts of their traditional cuisine at home, most of the ones that I know make a grand charge to the nearest McDonald's whenever they can get the chance to, just like any other American kid.  Amazing.  No, no, don't be alarmist and think that this blog is going to turn into some political podium for the encouragement of opening the flood gates to foreigners who want to take away our apple pie and soak up welfare funds, and on the other side don't think that I am totally against the American concept of assimilation.  That's the amazing thing about the United States of America!  This country takes the world and (gasp) tries to make it work together.  Yes, it tends to get turned into something else in the name of opportunistic capitalism, but more often than not this is worthy of a laugh in and of itself.

In that line of thinking, and considering that we are now just that much closer to July 4th, take a look at this amazing scene in southern Ohio:

The fabled city of Portsmouth, Ohio.

That's right, those hills in the background are actually Kentucky, and that is indeed a Tim Horton's which has made an advance on behalf of Canada this far south.  I was in complete shock when I saw one this far from the maple frontier, hitherto thinking that they were only to be found within two counties' distance of the Canadian border.  Before I go ahead saying "assimilate this" and having y'all shake in your boots, be aware that as with all things imported into this country, even Tim's is not immune to Americanization: you can get a coffee in a dangerously large, totally patriotic extra extra extra large mug.