Arizona county maps: English, Marriage, and Big Money

[angus]

nice maps.  looks like injun reservation country is outta step with the rest of the state.  Makes me think of all those Tony Hillerman paperback novels I read while I was back in grad school taking the subway from my home near Davis Square to BU.  It's about a 45 minute journey so I'd lots of time for pulp fiction.

"I'd just gotten back from New York City.  And it was April.  Safe to say I was the only feller in Four Corners who even owned an umbrella."
    --Chief Joe Liephorn

We took spring break out there in '97.  Part of my Grand Canyon/Painted Desert/Salt Canyon excursion.  Rented a car.  Tooled around the state.  Very third world in that four corners part of the world.  Make MS/AL look rich, even, by comparison.  Mostly empty stores with a few rotten bananas and week old loaves of bread.  Stark and God-forsaken, if you'll pardon the use of that expression by an agnostic.  Pretty.  Painted.  Exotic.  Very very impoverished landscape and peoples.  Roadside stalls everywhere bearing evidence of subsistence living.  Certainly the third graph isn't surprising.

I'm still flabbergasted at this whole anglophilia sweeping the nation, I must admit.  I'm probably the only poster on this thread, certainly the only non-Democrat, who vehemently objects to the English Only proposals.  But I don't want to have that argument again.  I'm not surprised that those closest to Las Vegas are not on my side, but on the other hand, maybe I am a little surprised.  Spanglish money spends as well as Anglomoney.

I am glad the marriage prop failed.  But that's a wedge issue, and there's no wrong or right answer.  I see it as a matter of gay rights.  But I can respect that others see it as a matter of pride in tradition, that sort of thing.  And still some see it in terms of economics, of course.  I think you can't read much into the demographics according to your map, other than the fact that maybe those in deep catholic country don't much care for man/man coupling.  Not all that surprising.  Those closest to Las Vegas don't vote the way I'd think they might, though, considering that more marriages mean more money for them.  I was married in Vegas.  Sometimes what happens here doesn't stay here, if you know what I mean.  Be more interesting to see a map of NV counties on that head though.

Oh, and man, no offense, but that red missouri avatar is hard to take seriously.  I'm thinking, "oh, jeezus, what the hell is this gasbag going to say now... oh, wait, that's somebody else."  Yeah, you gotta keep it though.  Red Missouri needs your help to overcome its image of whoremongering spoiled fratboy steeped in all the worst of Victorian values gone amuk.

[angus]

Caleb Carr.  Good stuff man.  Dark side, you have.  I've read the Alienst.  Actually, I saw Carr on one of those late-night CSPAN shows.  Brian Lamb maybe.  I was in one of those no-sleep stupors.  He is very nerdy, and weirdly interesting.  He wore a slick Van Dyke and had Lennon glasses.  Skinny.  Lots of hair grease.  Talks like a sort-of straight version of philip seymour hoffman.  Man, I can't remember the last time I had enough free time to sit down and immerse myself in a thick serving of pulp fiction.  Or I guess you could say "historical fiction" in Carr's case.  Actually, if I had that kind of time, I'd take up masturbating.  Again.  Well, anyway, yeah, the market will determine the language of commerce.  And right now, that's English.  Not a particularly beautiful language, but because it happens to be my native language, I'm not bitching.  Still, nationalistic God'n'The'Flag types, the sympathizers of the GOP, could market it better:  We are 'merkins, and what separates us from all those other countries--aside from the fact that we're better, and smarter, and have bigger stomachs and more commercials on our TV shows--is that we have no national language.  With proper marketing, this could actually be a selling point for the Anti- folks.  Somebody dropped the ball on that one.  We ought to be goddamned proud of the fact that we're not dominated by only one tribe of White Peoples, like most other western nations are.  Certainly that makes us different from those smelly, snotty French, for whom the Langue d'oc overtook the Langue d'oeiul long ago, for example. 

Ah, I'm getting sucked into this discussion?  Well, there are better reasons not to make English the Official Language than that, for sure.  Practical and idealistic ones.  We just need to market them better.  The hard-core nationalistic GOP types could be won over to the cause against the English Only proposals with a little effort.  I'm sure of it.

sh**t.  edit:  Languedoc was the loser.   Longueuil became French Proper.  You know what I mean.  Gotta stop buying those 1.5 liter bottles of cheap argentinian cabernet.  Well, anyway, I sitlll stand by my original point.

[angus]

Gotta stop buying those 1.5 liter bottles of cheap argentinian cabernet.  Well, anyway, I sitlll stand by my original point.

Try their Merlot. Best wine in the world, and coming from an Aussie, that's saying something.

Had many an argentinian merlot.  Still, I'd say that the best wine in the world for under twenty bucks a bottle is Luis Felipe Edwards Propietor's Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.  Any of the recent vintages.  Of course, if you're spending more than twenty a bottle, then you ought to be buying French wine.  Or Californian.  But for cheap, I agree the argentinian reds are tasty.  For really cheap merlot, Marcus James makes a really cheap argentinian merlot for about four dollars per 750 ml bottle.  When I'm in the mood for that charcoal and burnt sugar flavor that merlots always guarantee, that's what I buy.  But I'm generally in for dry reds.  Cabs and Zinfandels.  Aussie shiraz wines are tasty as well.