I’ve always felt that, much as it’s an easy movie to hate, Terminator 3 has some noteworthy parts to it. Take, for instance, the opening scenes where a now-adult John Connor is shown living off the grid, cash in-hand and a backpack with everything necessary to live in it in order to escape from the law and Skynet. It’s rebellious beyond anything James Dean could ever hope to pull off, audacious even.
After Tom Ridge became the top secretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, he began instituting a series of ID checking. In Pennsylvania, for instance, where the program launched, if your face is on a driver’s license or state ID, you can be tracked to whatever bar you go to where they check to make sure you’re 21. It’s a bit invasive, and in a post-9/11 world, it’s more the rule than the exception anymore unfortunately. That’s right, you’re cataloged into a database, and you probably didn’t even know it.
As much as I’d feel better knowing that the government couldn’t track my every move, I know it’s not going to happen. I’m not some extremist political dissident, and heck, I even like baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and most Chevrolets. But there’s an allure to living out of sight from Sauron atop Mount Doom.
California has allowed me to experiment with it on several accounts. I’m not on a lease here — I’m a fulltime subletter. My business mail gets shipped to a P.O. Box in Ohio. I am registered to vote in Pittsburgh. My driver’s license is from Pennsylvania. My car is registered in my father’s name and is thus not technically mine, much as it was my initial $800 that picked it up. It’s still registered to him, and I drive with a note of permission saying I’m allowed to drive it. I guess that’s a law in this state. In living for three years fulltime in Pittsburgh as a resident of the city, I never ran into problems, and I don’t plan on running into any here, but I’m not going to take chances.
Call it what it whatever you think it is. There are between 7 and 20 million illegal residents in this country — many of which are in California with its proximity to the Mexican border. I’m legally on paper in many places where they are not. If you live over here, you notice many places that only take cash and many people who only pay cash. To me, it’s not that big of a deal because all they’re doing is trying to find a better life, often taking jobs that legal residents often say falls beneath them. I worked with an illegal immigrant who washed cars with me in Pittsburgh at the BMW dealership where I worked. All he wanted was to raise enough money at $8 an hour to ship it back to his family and oneday open up his own convenience store in Mexico. He claimed 11 dependents on his taxes with whatever made-up background he managed to find.
And he was the best worker in all of that dealership — and one of the friendliest people there, too, in a company of truly miserable souls.
I’m planning on voting absentee when that time comes up, switching my voter registration back to Ohio now that I’m out of reach from one of the most short-sighted mayors I’ve ever seen in Luke Ravenstahl. If I have to do it when I visit my family in December, I’m happy to do so. But I think it’s a right I should have, much as dual-citizenship has started growing in popularity (lest you think U.S.-born athletes have no right competing for other countries in international events like the Olympics). Yesterday, I went to Walmart, at which I was stopped by a girl trying to register people to put an initiative on the ballot.
“Hi, sir, we’re filling out a petition against the proposed internet tax, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to sign it.”
“Uh, um.”
“Are you legally able to vote?” Do I really look Hispanic? Really? I had a coworker tell me the other day that I could pass for it, but come on, seriously, I’m German, Irish, Russian, and Hungarian in ethnicity. I start wondering how numb this girl is.
“Yeah, I am. It’s just that I’m not registered here.”
“Oh, well we can change your voter registration right now.”
Do I really want to be on the radar here yet? Do I want to be on-record anywhere in a state that, while it’s growing on me, doesn’t feel like home quite yet?
“I’m not sure I want to change it yet.”
“Why not?”
“It’s still in Ohio.”
“Come on, Ohio. California. Which one’s better?” Listen, you dingbat. What makes you think you have any right to talk smack on my home state? I’m not saying its Beverly Hills or anything, but it’s home. Get off your high horse. Only native Ohioans should have the right to make fun of it.
“It’s not that. I just want my vote to count, and it won’t out here.”
“Oh, you’re a Republican (she says it like it’s a bad word). It’s all cool then. No prob.”
I don’t want to identify myself with such numb, brainless, Kool-Aid-drinking people. I admit that my stay in this lovely state has been eye-opening in that it has taught me that kind, caring, laid-back people do exist in the world. Even the douchebags out here are nice. I’m sorry the same can’t be said of Pittsburgh. I have a lot of friends there and from there still, but but living in SoCal has given me an appreciation for living in a place that you’re not going to be ostracized if you’re not a yinzer.
Still, I’m a libertarian by identification and a Republican by designation, if only because the Libertarian Party is a joke, filled with pot-headed hippies. It doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the majority of its stances, however.
So I’m going to be a rebel as long as I can, living off the grid as much as I can. I’m not paranoid or anything, but there are a good number of people here who deserve a lot more attention from Johnny Law than I do. Let them have it. I have sun, life, and very few worries keeping me contained, just the way I like it. That’s how a state that proclaims itself a paradise ought to be.
Things That Rhyme with 'Cars' 