Couldn't help myself...

“Please, where is line for second-class peoples?”


“HA?”


“Where is line for second-class peoples?”


“Talarðu ekki íslensku?”


“I am sorry, I not understand.”


“grrr...Ok, vhat is your question?”


“I am needing food, what line do I stand in please?”


“Vhat is your flokkur, you know, your rating?”


“Rating?”


“Your rating, yes, vhat is it?”


“I am sorry, I not know.”


“....útlendingar...OK, I vill explain. That line is for Icelanders, they get served first, don't stand there!”


“OK”


“The next line is for hálf-útlendingar. People who have Icelandic citizenship, but are not Icelandic. Ewen if they have been living here a long time, ewen if they speak Icelandic, own a home or business in Iceland, are married to an Icelander, and have half-Icelandic children. That is vhat the sign says. Íslenskir ríkisborgarar af erlendum uppruna. See? Not íslendingar.”


“Yes, I see.”


“The next line is for E.U. citizens, or as they are called in Icelandic, erlent vinnuafl. They should go home but some of them don't understand the Icelandic system and stay here. Are you a EU citizen?”


“Sadly no.”


“OK, then you must go in this line, see? It is the line for mostly brown not EU people who come here to steal our jobs, cheat our well-fare system, steal our men, abuse our women, create mafias, destroy our culture, and steal food from the mouths of our starving children.”


“But I am not coming here to do that!”


“Oh good. Ve keep trying to make them go home, but nothing vorks! They have to pay taxes for it, but they can't get bætur, ve can send them home if they don make more than minimum vage, or if they can't afford to pay fines instead of going to jail, and ve have a rule that they can only get a job if no Icelander vants it, and still they keep coming! But if you are not here to do that, vhy are you here?”



“I am coming here to teach dancing.”


“Vhy didn't you say so! See that much nicer line over there? That's the line for exotic foreigners who make Icelanders feel cosmopolitan and culturally hip. You belong in that line!”


“Why is they all so high?”


“THEY'RE DOING DÓP!?!?! ÚTLENSK GLÆPAGENGI!!!!!!!”


“I sorry, I mean to say why are they so tall?”


“Oh! Ha ha. Oops. That is also the line for foreign athletes.”


“Oh. I understanding. Thank you. Please can I ask one more questions?”


“OK.”


“The place with leather arm chairs and free champagne, who is that for?”


“Oh, well, that is for íslandsvinir.”


“Um...I am also friend of Iceland. Can I go there?”


“Vait a minute, I thought you don't speak íslenku!”


“I don't but the author does, he just forgot about it 'cause he ain't had enough coffee yet.”


“That would explain vhy all of the sudden your accent vent from generic foreigner to hillbilly Yankee.”


“Please to be regaining plot now?”


“Oh, yeah, sorrí. Anyvay, íslandvinir are rich or famous foreign people who like Iceland, or at least come to wisit once or tvice. Because they are famous, they make us look famous too, so ve give them special treatment.”


“Oh, like what please?”


“Vell, They never have any problem with getting wisas or vork permits, ewen if they are from outside of the EU, the police usually don't bust them for drug use, and if they are famous enough, ve vill grant them asylum or citizenship if some other country vants to charge them vith tax-fraud or something silly like that.”


“Really? Is allowed asylum seeking here?”


“Hahahahahaha. Ó mæ gadd nei! That is vhat that electrified cage ower there in the corner is for! Ha ha ha ha!”


“OK, I think I am understanding. Who is all the peoples in parkas though?”


“Those are tourists. Also the ones in skinny-jeans and ironic T-shirts. Ve like them, they come here and spend lots of money. They even tip! Sometimes they are so stupid they pay for other people's drinks! Best of all, they leave!”


“I see. Thank you so many for helping me. Could I ask one more thing?”


“Sure, vhy not?”


“Where can I be finding list of rooms to let?”


“Let?”


“Yes, am needing to find new place to live.”


“Oh, you mean “rent”, funny how you útlendingar can't even speak correct útlensku. Vhy do you need to find a new place to live?”


“There are homo-faggots living in the house!”


“Hólí sjitt! Ég trúi ekki að þú hafir sagt þetta! Hvað er þetta með ykkur fokking útlendinga! Þið eru öll svo helvíti fórdómafull!”


“What?”

"Never mind. Here is your order. Do you want kokteilsósa with your fries?"

I know, I know. Mean. Ranty. Negative. Stuff I was gonna stop doing...but c'om! It's funny!

Snowed In

So I went to work this morning in blowing, crazy, sideways snow. I only made it about a third of the way before I gave up and hopped a bus. the white stuff (oh oh ohhh oh oh!) is piled up in drifts around the school, plastered to the sides of the buildings and busy forming massive icicles on the overflowing eaves.

The news has snowed me in too these days. So much I want to write about, but so little time.

On the good news side, the powers that be have decided to reform the rules surrounding temporary work and residence permits, finally registering the permit with the individual and not the company that applied for the job. This allows the individual to change jobs (though not without the requisite bureaucrazy) or to get fired/laid off without risking deportation, as was once the case. They are also looking into a much needed exemption for foreigners granted residency due to marriage or domestic partnership with Icelanders. As the law stood, if they broke up, or left (even in cases of abuse, although those were usually granted exceptions) they were subject to deportation. Thankfully they are writing the exceptions into law.

Which is all well and good, but still fails to address my main problem with these laws, mainly that they are aimed more or less soley at people from outside the E.U. (and Bulgaria, apparently Bulgarians are "too brown and too poor" to be lumped in with the rest of the E.U.). While E.U. citizens can come and go as they please, without having to somehow land a job before the arrive in the country, and they don't have to take mandatory Icelandic classes (which one usually has to pay for out of ones own pocket).

In the bad news department, the Ministry of Justice (can you say oxymoron?) is lobbying to change the current prison law to allow foriegners convicted of crimes in Iceland to serve thier time "back where they came from". This raises some very interesting points. Iceland has one of the most humane (not to mention leniet) prison systems in the world, meaning that an Icelander sentenced for drug dealing is much less likely to be shived for a pack of smokes than his American or Polish counterparts. So even if the foreigner involved only has to serve his Icelandic sentence (if they had to serve a sentence from one of thier home-country's courts, they'd be in deep shit. I mean, Icelanders get maybe 16 months for first degree rape, whereas a Yank can do 5 years for posession of marijuana) they are still being subject to a more heinus punishent for the same crime.

Ministry of Justice my ass.

Meanwhile, in a stunning display of Democrazy Inaction, Rvk's got its third government since the last election, one that does not enjoy the popular support of the previous usurpers. They had to empty the council chamber yesterday due to disruptive protests, the first time that's happened since the infamous Gúttóslag back in the 40's.

The new mayor is a Libertarian, one of the more unpopular parties in Iceland at the mo', and it looks like the old mayor, ousted in part over his party's involvement in some very complicated but very very shady business deals will then succeed the Libber.

The whole get-a-new-government-without-an-election thing bugs the hell out of me. I mean, how the hell is anything supposed to get done? Its not like governments are all that efficient when it comes to "running a country/city" to begin with, but when your going through mayors or prime ministers like there's no tomorrow, or playing techno-musical chairs with ministers (so that everyone can get a nice fat piece of that pension-fund pie), not much of anything gets done, and what does get done gets all kinds of fucked up because of all the random personnel and policy changes.

I also think that if you're going to have democracy (rule by the people) the people really ought to have a bit of fucking say! How about a recall vote? National or city referendum?

Nope. They've been elected, now all we can do is sit back and watch them fuck it up.

Of course, some people don't just sit back. They storm the council chamber and shout and protest and get kicked out, at which point some pompous fuck at the editorial desk writes an column about how they should be ashamed of themselves and should have spent their time waving picket signs (quietly, a discreet distance away) writing blogs, signing petitions, and writing letters to the editor.

Because that works. Yeah.

A short apology...

Sorry dear blogadytes.

That last post was total shit. I not only let the rant get the better of me (especially as I really wanted to rant about how much I hate my job, but couldn't, so I chose immigration and nationalism as a distraction), but also (to my mind at least) failed to adequately convey my utter disdain and loathing for people who spout xenophobic nationalist bullshit.

For the record: We útlendingar are not stealing jobs from Icelanders. We're simply filling the void in the job market left by everyone deciding that they need to make alot more money and work at something hip og kúl like banking, or just bisness.

Which means that if an Icelander can't get a job at a fish-factory (as the ÍFÍ claim), then they have only other Icelanders to blame. Like a Parliament that didn't think about the logical consequences of joining Schengin. Like a population that thought "Cool, now I can go work anywhere in the E.U. no problem!" without thinking that the same applies to their own country. Like the kvóta owners who continue to move the work out of the small towns where most of the virulent nationalism blossoms up. Like the bosses at the fish factories, that often choose to hire foreigners because they think they can get away with worker's rights violations that way. Like the nationalist themselves, who seem to be very immature, and perhaps expect jobs to be handed to them on a silver platter regardless of whether they show up on time, sober, and work hard.

Neither are we útlendingar responsible for the majority of "marriages of convenience". Those are largely a matter of Icelandic men importing "brides" for "fun" and profit.

We are not responsible for the majority of crime in Iceland, no matter what distorted pictures the media hypes to improve its market share. That one lands squarely on the shoulders of Icelanders as well. The vast majority of armed robberies are perpetrated by Icelandic youngsters desperate for a new Wii or maybe a fix of meth. The vast majority of rapes are by Icelanders (and you can bet there are plenty of instances of Icelanders raping foreigners and getting away with it), not to mention cases of child abuse and molestation. Fraud, drugs, you name it.

Its not that all of us útlendingar are innocent little angels, pillars of righteousness and so forth. Far from it. But seeing as Icelanders signed an international agreement that allows increased immigration and then failed utterly to check the criminal records of most of those coming in, that one kind falls on their shoulders too. After all, my foreign ass can't access those records.

It's just that if Icelanders want someone to blame for Iceland's problems then they best look in the fucking mirror.