Should I Have to Press 1 For English?

Dear Gabacha,

I get this question asked mucho, and yours is as good a respuesta as I could ever scrawl. Can I pick you up at Home Depot if I ever need a cheap replacement?

If a Mexican were working at a coffee shop, would it be racist to call him a "beaner"?

Dear Gabacho,

No, but no es funny—about as clever as Minutemen chanting "No se puede!" Try "burrito-ista."

Being in law enforcement I've had to handle many radio runs. I think Mexicans are some of the hardest-working people in Mexi-America, but why is it when Mexicans drink, they often stab or hit a brother or cousin? Why not a stranger to shake off some of that tension?

Dear Triple H Gabacho,

Mexican family and drinking is as volatile a mix as an Irishman and Jameson, but statistics don't support your anecdotal evidence. The 2005 study Family Violence Statistics: Including Statistics on Strangers and Acquaintances by the United States Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that "whites and blacks were more likely than Hispanics or persons of other races to be victimized by family violence" between 1998 and 2002, the most recent period investigated by the DOJ. As I've written before in this column, "alcohol" and "logic" repel each other like "border" and "enforcement"—apologies for the reiteration, gentle readers, but sometimes the most obvious answers are those that are pirated.

garellano@seattleweekly.com