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By Mina Xavier, October 1, 2009 1:48 pm

The following just took place via text, with one of my best friends in the city. It started with his complaint about his coworker’s… um, assets.

“Is it socially acceptable to tell a girl, flat-out, that I wish she would put her tits away? It’s horrendously distracting.”

I pondered this.

“Is she hanging off of a brass pole?”

[pause]

“No, what kind of jackass goes to a girly bar for lunch?”

“My ex. And his uber-cool-senate-coworker-types.”

[pause]

“I forgot about that. That’s pretty damn funny.”
[pause]
“I mean… it’s not funny. I’m sorry. “

“S’ok. It’s finally funny to me. He’s still stuck with the potato sack bar girl, who’s gained like 60# since I left him with her.”

“Dayum…”

“Are they at least appealing?”

“Which?”

“The offending mammaries. How are they?”

“They’re nice. Pale. With a tiny tattoo on the left one. She’s not wearing thick enough shirts for the decibel level of her nipples, though.”

“LMAO”

“She’s just so ridiculously titty. I’m sure that’s why she got hired. No one in the department likes her or her bullhorns.”

“What’s her job title? Is she clerical?”

“They hired her as eye candy. And to torture the uninterested, a la moi.”

“So, she’s the Token Titty Taunter?”

“OMFG. Marry me.”

“No.”

“Srsly? Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”
[pause]
“I’m not opposed to legitimate heterosexuality, you know. You’re my favorite feral.”

“Just because.”

“????”

“I’m saving myself for Ann Coulter.”

“ROF I fuckin love you, bitch.”

“I’ll toast to that.”

“You’re writing my eulogy. That’s it. Done deal.”

“Oh good, I could use the exposure.”

“Lol. I’m off lunch, see you later, sweetie. <3″

“Tootlez.”

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By Mina Xavier, September 15, 2009 2:13 am

The most annoying thing that has ever befallen me whilst spooning in the cold fatty goodness of ice cream is the incongruity of textures. The ice cream melts faster and the frozen chocolate chips become a mouthful of cold bricks that stick to the teeth.

Andie, on the other hand, had a story to tell me today that just positively takes the cake. She was roughly one quarter of the way into a pint of rocky road when she noticed a funny tickle in her mouth. She gave it a tactile examination with her tongue and, producing no satisfactory hypothesis, she re-spooned it to give it a visual inspection.

Parts of a dead, frozen millipede lay in her gaze.

I’m not one to judge the exotic delicacies of others, but the sudden discovery of a cryo-insect embedded in one’s dessert is enough to send me screaming to the medicine cabinet for some Pepto.

She was an excellent sport about it, though.

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By Mina Xavier, December 26, 2008 9:50 pm

A grocery store in Murray, Utah, had quite a tale to tell this afternoon.

My old dog from childhood was famous for stealing tissues out of the box and running off with pieces of food from my plate, but she could never have pulled this off. Bravo!

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By Mina Xavier, November 18, 2008 2:52 pm

Radio hosts are some of the last true catalysts of unsweetened honesty, so naturally they bear the burden of filtering that honesty as it comes in through their phone lines and leaves their studio rooms on its way back out into society.

I won’t whine. I understand the unusual bind that it puts us in to be feminists and yet defend Eminem’s right to refer to women as whores and bitches. I also gladly accept the grain of salt that comes with turning hot button issues into tactless humor for the sake of breaking tension.

But I have also spent three months watching my culture turn some ugly shades of Union blue and Confederate gray. Furthermore, under the Palin/Bachmann spell of With Us Or Against Us, I have been summarily relegated to anti-American radicalist by some of my contemporaries for speaking my angst about government, law, and national integrity.

Women are the loudest speakers about issues of feminist flavor. We habitually restrict debate about our gender-related issues to female participants out of the recurring fear that we will be dismissed. If I cannot bring Sarah Palin down a peg or two by calling bullshit on her ulterior motives (as well as her mothering skills) without being shot down by conservatives as an antagonist firebrand, then why take my call in the first place?

Most engaging in the discussion were the points made about the role of race in this very intense election. No caucasian in their right mind would dare attempt a monologue on the topic; to approach the issue safely almost always requires a co-host from another cultural community for balance and counterpoint. Evidently the observations of a white female are too risky to air to a mixed audience for fear that I may be interpreted as patronizing, despite the clear message of my complaint: I am ashamed and afraid of my fair-skinned peers for what I have experienced this year.

I will not delve into the tedium. I will relate the hilarious ice breaker that caused my call to end rather abruptly. I was followed by at least a dozen or so opinionated locals who not only laughed with me, they could scarcely let the host argue his way out of the corner he had painted himself into.

After confirmation spread of the RNC’s use of robo-calling to directly imply a connection between Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden, and after reviewing Palin’s remarks about who he “pals around” with, it was clear to me that white America was being given subtle permission to indulge their phobia … just this once.

The last name. That was the clincher. Too many people were put off by the foreign sound of it and the subliminal rhyme of the still-at-large al Qaeda leader. Barry might easily have circumvented much of this by adapting his last name to O’Bamaugh.

This country is not completely without its sense of humor.

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By Mina Xavier, November 13, 2008 12:36 am

I read an article a few months back about how the job market has become so bad that many of us are taking jobs we wouldn’t have considered for pay we would never have tolerated. The result is that the average employee now working at places like McDonald’s and Walmart has a degree and more diverse work experience than their peers on the same job. This phenomenon must not have been the case at two local retailers.

I walked into the local Walgreens the other night and this was the first thing I saw:

I cast a glance over to the kid behind the counter. He just shrugged and smirked at me.

Twenty minutes later on my way out he warned me, “Don’t slip on that wet carpet!”
We both got a snerk out of it.

Earlier in the week I was at the supermarket down the street when I spied a display sign that didn’t quite look right:

Even if they had typed it correctly to read “PORTION” it still would have made me giggle the whole way to the register.

Now we know why people like Rush Limbaugh have a radio show.

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By Mina Xavier, November 12, 2008 1:35 am

I had a front row seat last week to the dumbest traffic jam I have ever witnessed.

There is a one lane brick underpass down the road that has been around for at least 70 years. When it was constructed there were fewer cars in existence and they were reasonably sized at that. There is now a mall nearby, hence it sees a great deal of traffic these days. With all those people scurrying through in their ever-larger vehicles, it made me wonder from time to time: What would be the magic combination of fat-ass vehicles that could plug this toilet?

Well, Thursday afternoon I found out. A Hummer H2 and a Ford F350 with a trailer full of landscaping equipment. They didn’t exactly hit one another but they jammed into that tunnel so close and at such unreasonable angles that they simply could not get past each other. I was four cars behind the Ford. I could see the H2 in all of its grotesque glory, its driver screaming furiously at everyone as he was unable to move forward, back up or even open his door to get the hell out of his mammoth.

We sat there for about 28 minutes, waiting. For whom, I did not know. (Police? Fire department? PennDot? Superman?) In the interim, the man in the car in front of me got his dog out of the backseat and leashed it for a walk. Sure, why not? There will obviously not be anyone coming from either direction for a good long time. The rest of us were so bored that we sat in our cars, fiddling with cd players and radios, talking on our cell phones, playing solitaire, making origami with gas station receipts and meanwhile watched this dog walk the shoulder and label the landscape.

Finally an officer arrived from behind our half of the traffic. In my rear view mirror I could not count the cars that faded back into the horizon behind me. After some refereeing and yelling he managed to get a few of us to move perpendicular and scoot back a little. He got the Ford to back up. Immediately the H2 came surging out of the tunnel. The officer yelled for him to stop.

The icing on this cake is that he gave that bastard a ticket. We watched in giddy avarice as he wrote it out and handed it to him, with his license. Apparently he was so concerned about his paintjob that he was taking up too much room away from his side of the wall and was officially to blame for the whole affair. I was late for work but smirking the whole rest of the day.

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By Mina Xavier, October 24, 2008 1:23 am

This actually happened right in front of me a few months ago. In retrospect, it’s even funnier when reframed within the context of national symbolism.

Cruising through downtown, I had stopped at a light.
To my right was a gas station. In front of me was one car before the intersection.

Attempting to exit the parking lot of said gas station was a new coupe with gorgeous paint and an oblivious Supertasker at the wheel.

He was rummaging through his front seats, jabbering into his bluetooth, and intermittently forgetting about the foot that is supposed to be on the brake.

I sat and watched.

Every few seconds he crept forward a bit.
The car in front of me was now only about 2 feet away from his bumper.

I did the honorable thing. I tapped the horn.

The way I figured it, either it would catch Supertasker’s attention and snap him into focus, or it would catch OtherGuy’s attention and give him warning.

Neither.

OtherGuy freaked out, turned his head around out his window and started screaming at me that “the light is still f***ing red, so back the f*** off!”.

Supertasker crept forward, still oblivious.

-SMACK-

At least the coupe had gorgeous paint.

Oh look, a green light.

I pulled into the left-turn lane to pass them and waved as I rolled by.

What kills me is that both of these guys are a carbon copy of millions of citizens, ignoring the rotation of the planet but fixating on every little shiny object with unbottled rage.

If we aimed this angry fixation on something important like, say, destructive legislation being passed over our heads to strip us of our rights and income, how quickly could everyday life here in the States improve?

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By Mina Xavier, October 20, 2008 3:03 pm

I received it as a joke a little while ago as an email forward. Because I occasionally work a part time gig in retail, I have access to a mall food court with a McDonald’s fast food kiosk.

I decided to see for myself: Would the same thing happen at my own McDonald’s?

“I would like a half dozen chicken McNuggets, please.”

A pleasant voice and soft smile came back at me.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ve only got six, nine or twelve nuggets meals. Which one would you like?”

“So I can’t order a meal with a half dozen nuggets?”

“I am sorry but I can only ring you in for what I’ve got on my menu. Do you still want a McNuggets meal or do you need more time?”

She was genuinely nice. She was patiently trying to accommodate me as best she could.

I could blame the corporate chain for not explaining it to them, or I could blame the school systems for not teaching them weights and measures. Maybe I could blame the parents for not caring whether or not they ever even knew.

I could also stop using the term “them”, and accept the fact that no matter how different I make myself I am still part of an aggregate.

Somehow I ended up knowing something common, and she did not. Regardless of circumstances, she and I are still at the mercy of the same process. I have no greater chance of escaping it than she does.

Someone with better circumstances, better parents, and a better education would probably look down on both of us. And that individual would probably fall prey to the lure of the yuppie vote, while we dug in our worn heels and voted for the other guy.

My point, finally, is this: We cannot pre-package people any more than we can pre-package our national fate. We are trailing most other developed nations in math and science and our grasp on language and basic skills is evaporating fast.

I know that most people relish the separation and actually base their identities on it. The system of pre-packaged choices and the isolation it creates has harmed us for too many generations.

Get out there and vote, as the trendy commercials beg you.
But after that you must stay in the loop.
You must participate in this aggregate.
Our collective survival may depend on it.