Is it racist if it comes from the Asian?

The delegate from Vietnam got into the minivan this morning carrying a National Geographic from 1970, which had a cover story about Japan. The bTexas delegate expressed interest in the magazine, so the Vietnamese delegate let him browse through it. BTexas turned to Vietnam and said “So where are you from originally? Japan?”

“No,” said the Vietnamese delegate. “I Chinese.” And with that, he pulled the sides of his eyes upward with his fingers, laughing hysterically. After he had calmed himself, he recanted: “No really, I Japanese.” bTexas nodded, and perused the magazine further. “So…” he asked quietly, “do you think… you could write my name in Japanese for me?” This sent the Vietnamese delegate into further paroxysms of laughter, after which he finally admitted to being Vietnamese, “but [Libyan delegate] says I look like Cambodian,” which was also apparently hilarious.

The Romanian delegate, not wanting to be left out, chimed in. “You know how the Chinese and the Japanese, they have eyes like this?” Here, he pulled the corners of his eyes back with his fingers. “The people in those countries, they eat a lot of rice. The rice, you know, it makes you… constipated. So all the time those people, they are NGGGNNNNNNGGGGGGGHHH!” The last sound was illustrated with the strained, eyes squinted shut face of someone attempting to pass a cantaloupe through his nether regions.

After a brief second of shocked “WTF?” rippled through the car, laughter filled the vehicle—some confused and alarmed, some genuine and amused.

Any further conversation was not recorded, as the PRL delegate fell asleep shortly thereafter.

Incident report: 24 March 2010

7:29 am

“Oh!” shouted the delegate from Romania, as we waited for the rest of the carpool to arrive. “That is a good way to discharge the battery!” He is looking intently at a red ballpoint pen. He holds it up to us (PRL and Libya), then puts it down into the console between the two front seats of the Buick, and wiggles it around. Sparks start to fly in the console, and it becomes apparent that he has put the pen in the cigarette lighter.

“The metal on the pen, it makes a short cut!” he declares, the miniature fireworks display continuing. “I did not know that it could do that!” To our great relief, he takes the pen out of the electrical outlet, and starts rummaging around in the console, “I wonder where it is the little plastic cover for this?”

As he searches, the remaining carpool members arrive. “Aha!” he shouts, “Now the car it will not catch on fire!” The delegate from Vietnam, climbing into the back seat, is taken by surprise. “Whahappen?”

Victory against pen-initiated car fires being complete, the Romanian delegate feels no need to dwell on the incident by elaborating, leaving the delegate from Vietnam to spend the car ride in a deeper state of befuddlement than usual.

Apologies.

It's been a little slow at the United Nations of Carpool lately. The PRL delegate has bee missing a lot of carpooling, what with a sick cat who requires twice-weekly injections of a mystery substance that is supposed to make him not die (it seems to be working--said cat spent much of last night scratching at the box of kibble and demanding treats instead of laying listlessly about when not peeing on things).
So this delegate hasn't been able to chronicle the current events of Carpool, which are bound to be exciting, now that the Romanian delegate's worst fears have been realized, and we are now part of a Stalinist state under an authoritarian dictator who eats babies (that would be the passing of the health care reform bill for those of you not fluent in post-Communist freakout).


Instead, here is a little tidbit from an email from the Romanian delegate, wondering who would teach the lunchtime weights class at the gym, since the regular instructor would be out:

I hope whoever will be our trainer today, will play .. "Poker face" ?! ... whatever that means...



Whatever that means.

Toyota owners, listen up:

The delegate from Libya has no sympathy for the people killed by faulty accelerator pedals on Toyotas: "I don't understand why they didn't just put the car in neutral. That would have stopped it. It is so simple."




The lack of the protective hat o'doom has that delegate driving rather erratically. The subject of Toyota was brought up after the Libyan delegate accelerated rapidly towards a slow-moving sedan in front of him, in a school zone, after almost running a red light (that said, the timing of the stoplight in question is well known to most of the UNC, and only the delegate from Vietnam panicked and braced himself against the dashboard as we sped towards the red light with no signs of slowing. The light obligingly turned green just as the Infiniti reached the intersection).

Without the hat, the Libyan delegate seems somewhat lost, and prone to swerves, braking, and rapid accelerations at seemingly random moments. It is disconcerting, and makes sleeping in the back seat rather difficult, not to mention making the enjoyment of a breakfast bottle of V8 downright dangerous.

We can only hope that the delegate from Libya regains his driving skills or makes peace with the hat and wears it during the commute. It would be an international tragedy if the UNC were killed while swerving to avoid imaginary roadkill.

The end of an era.

It was a sad day in the world of hat watch. The cap finally came off, revealing a head of hair, gray and cropped. Where was the vortex? Had it closed, with the closing of the month of February? The world may never know. The final act of the vortex seems to have been a cold, sporadic rain, which inconvenienced everyone, not least of all the delegate from Libya, since he had nothing with which to cover his head.

News of the hat’s non-presence was whispered about in the labs, but no one dared mention it but in hushed tones. No one, that is, except for the Queen of Social Interaction, whose dominion is the awkwardness that follows a failed joke at your expense. The Queen came to the office of the delegate from Libya (which happens to be within hearing range of the PRL delegate), and announced to him "Everyone said you looked different today, and I guess that's because you're not wearing your HAAAAT!" Sometimes, to get her royal highness’ point across, she uses overemphasis of important words. The Queen, she is very subtle. "They said maybe you got a haircut or something, but I think they all got so used to seeing your HAAAT that they forgot it was even there!" It is important to increase paranoia by letting someone know that people are talking about them behind their back.

The reply was muffled, as the delegate from Libya felt no need to emphasize his words, and the PRL delegate was able to hear only snippets—that he had suffered a bad haircut two weeks prior, and that the burden of wearing the hat was so great that he wished he had never put it on. Also, the hat is in the wash, and he hopes it doesn’t shrink in the dryer.

It would be easy to put the whole episode off as an effort to hide a bad haircut, but the presence of the hat predates the alleged haircut. Did the vortex allow him to predict the unsatisfactory coiffure? Or did it alter his perception of time, so that the delegate from Libya does not remember the first half of the month? Either of these scenarios is alarming. Not nearly as alarming, however, as the revelation that the closing of the vortex caused such a mess as to require laundering of the hat.

We should all be thankful that the burden has been lifted from the Libyan delegate’s diminutive shoulders (and noggin), and that he single-handedly (headedly) protected the world from trans-dimensional annihilation.