It’s time to learn a second language. We’ve had a good run with this one, but it really is far past due that we broaden our horizons and pick some Tagalog, or Farsi, or at least a little Spanish.

Now, don’t get me wrong: English is great. Hold on to it. Don’t forget it. It’s beautiful and fun and you’re still going to need it. But it really is past time to take the plunge and fire up that DuoLingo, or some classes at the lifelong learning center, or something. Because English has had a good run but, our infatuation with it really speaks volumes to where we stand today as a country.

Like many institutional shortcomings that plague this country, we need not look much past the current President for an example. He has said, for instance, that he is not anti-immigration, but simply expects that immigrants speak English (and are wealthy). And why shouldn’t they? This is America, after all. Where English is the official language. It’s only reasonable that to be welcome here our new guests should learn that much.

Only English is not the official language of the United States – we do not have one. It’s as though we only recently decided than a nation of immigrants can settle on xenophobia as a tenet of national policy. And really, any insistence that new Americans speak English is another glaring example of our tradition of double standards. Like meddling in foreign elections, and corporate espionage, we really do expect so much more of others than we do of ourselves. Consider the president:

That this president has chosen to hang his hat on immigration and language is an irony that should not be lost on any of us. He has demonstrated time and again that he has, at best, a basic understanding of the English language. He coins demeaning terms like “chain migration” and “anchor babies,” and then flaunts those very same practices with his own family.

Our infatuation with English grows not from the fact that it is a wonderful language, but from the fact that we happen to speak it. Our clinging to it has nothing to do with its beauty, but that it simply reaffirms a self-centered status quo, based only in hubris and narcissism. Remember that we’re the people who just one day said, “Nope, we’re Americans. All you other people living on the American continents gotta pick something different.”

And no differently from burying our heads on climate change, our clinging to English ignores the obviously changing conditions around us.

Is English going anywhere? Of course not (so really, don’t forget it), but the Cervantes Institute estimates that by 2050 (within our lifetimes unless we’re wiped out by an anomalous natural disaster or disease curable by vaccines) Spanish will be the most spoken language in the US. Even today there are large swaths of this country where it is the primary language, and is spoken at home by more than 41 million people.

English is not obsolete, but monoligualism is. Sure, speaking Spanish, or Russian, or Salish will help you practically. But more than its practical benefits, embracing a second (or third, or fourth) language recognizes at a base level that the world does not revolve around us. That there are many, many other cultures and perspectives, and that it really is possible that we don’t have all the answers. Is ‘merica the best goddamn country on earth? Maybe. Probably not. But it’s a bold claim from someone unwilling to even look around.

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The surest way to know that a holiday is upon us is to take note of when Costco has moved on to the next one. Anymore, it seems like Christmas carols are the kind of thing we need to live with for longer and longer every year, like fire season and campaign ads, and so it can be easy to lose track of just how soon the winter holidays are.

Like, for instance, Costco is pushing heart-shaped chocolates and you already missed Hanukkah. It ended yesterday. You’ve still got eight presents to mail, and the post office is going to be crowded. Get with it. And if you celebrate Christmas or Kwanzaa instead (or as well as) Hanukkah, you’ve got a little bit more time to make your holiday preparations. But not much. So listen up.

Last week we delved a bit into what to give that person in your life who seems to have it all. Some of those suggestions are pretty hard to find, though, and at this point it’s time to call in a hail mary. The mother of all gifts. The GOAT. The gift so extraordinary that forever more and into the future, all your friends and relations will say, “no really, you’ve already given so much, perhaps just a heartfelt sentiment on a card this year.”

You can still give your loved ones a pug.

It’s perfect. A pug is like new slippers and a lint-free chamois and a sassy gay best friend all rolled into one. A pug is there for you, whether you just lost your job or just lost a forkfull of manicotti. I don’t know a single person who watched “Uncle Buck” and didn’t think, “geez, that John Candy sure is great. I’d love to have a 10% scale model mouth-snoring on my pillow every night.”

There is no woe, no ailment a pug cannot fix. There is no joy a pug cannot make more grand. A pug wants simply to show love, to be near you, and to share your electric blanket. It is an ancient, noble breed, and has grown over thousands of years to be a human’s best companion.

And of course we should remember, that the pug as a breed is a crime against nature. They live nasty, short, brutish lives and suffer perpetually from labored breathing, infected rolls, leaking glands and prolapsed eyeballs. It would be morally indefensible to encourage humanity to continue breeding the poor souls. But there are still a few tried and true ways to get your hands on a pug, to improve both of your lives, and you should for goodness sake.

• Contact a Pug Rescue – This is really your best bet to bring a pug into your life without supporting a breeder. Anyplace you live, there is a pug rescue near you. They’ll just give you one. And each spring, apparently, there is a thing called The March of the Pugs, but in my experience Googling that presents many, many more questions than it answers.
• Steal One from a Yard – Also a tried and true method of getting yourself a pug on the cheap. This works better than a rescue if your meth scabs are still oozing or if the reason you need a pug is that you lost your soul betting on the Patriots this weekend.
• Just Get a Mastiff Puppy Instead – This one works better as a gift for someone in a different town (far away), but for the first few weeks they’re pretty much indistinguishable.
  
• Borrow One from a Friend Who’s Leaving for a While – You know, as great as they are, pugs aren’t for everyone. And you never really know if they’re for you until you’ve had one under the covers for a night or two, so if you’re at all pug-curious you probably ought to borrow one for a bit. Maybe while someone you know, who’s got one, hits the road for a while?

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