Today, I don’t feel much like talking, but that’s never stopped me before. I just finished explaining to co-workers my camping companieros used to play a game invented by Jazz (I think) called “I Am A Sandwich.” You can play this game for a few days to while away some hot afternoons, but then you’ll never want to play it again – until you do. It’s completely addicting.

A person decides what kind of sandwich they are. Players get to ask questions like, “Do you contain vegetables?” and “Are you filled with cheesy goodness?” Eventually, someone guesses what kind of sandwich the first person is or was, and everyone wishes delis delivered. If yours does, chances are the low carb regimen flies out the window.

Naturally, this reminded me I have no eggplant in the fridge. I shopped. I had a list. What was I thinking?

Jazz at Running Scared linked to Poor Impulse Control, and I swear I sat at my desk, speechless. If you knew me, that’d be shocking all on its own. Here’s the date, you can guess at the time: I had nothing to say. I recalled something a friend said once, in the spirit of the Maurice Sendak book on manners for children “What Do You Say, Dear?”

Friend: What do you say, dear, when you’re introduced to your daughter’s boyfriend and he’s three-foot-six?

Me: What do you say, dear?

Friend: You say, “Hello.”

Hello. Jazz’s intro for his readers – bless his buttons, he should have zillions – hinted that PIC is not a very political site. This was a second wave of “Huh?” I have driven friends, lovers, casual acquaintances, workmates, and family members crazy with my politics. Last summer, there was an online test of where the test taker falls on a political quadrant graph-whatsis. I fell slightly to the southwest of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., but for the most part, I am finished arguing politics in this lifetime. It’s a big waste of time for me. Nobody learns anything, everyone gets a sore throat, terrible insults are exhanged. Tonight, Peter Jennings sent some lacky to two different counties in Illinois to talk to red and blue Americans, because it’s not enough that nobody’s listening but now people have to TELL YOU they’re not listening. Result: I finally decided to make myself a sandwich and eat asparagus spears after an hour of being unable to decide how I should eat frozen carrots.

PIC talks about the political in everyday life. Walk lightly on the earth. Give away what you don’t need. Make art, not unnecessary trips to the mall. Feed the hungry and house the homeless. Try to buy things that don’t hurt other people. Refuse as much as you can to be a cog in the corporate machine. Refuse as much as you can to be the instrument used against your own best interests and the interests of people who have less than you do.

That said, our economic lives are tied so tightly to beating the crap out of poor people it’s hard to live this way in a pure sense. I can’t trace where my shoes came from, but I can limit the number of pairs I buy to a tidy minimum. It’s my responsibility to provide for my old age, but I have little or no control over how the state pension plan invests the pittance I’ve saved. What I can do is refuse to shop at WalMart or eat Domino’s Pizza, and never set foot in a Starbucks. It’s not much, and it doesn’t make my hands any cleaner than anyone else’s, but compromises can be made in suburban life.

It’s not that I serve as any shining example – I’m a rather matte example, at best. I am very concerned about the current administration’s clear agenda of divide&conquer, and I can’t help but feel that real evil is afoot. The rhetoric about gay marriage is a tool used to inspire fear and do genuine harm to a marginalized group, but it really harms everyone. Where fear clouds the conversation, fearful decisions will be made. No one benefits from this process. Anything that diminishes another person or group of people harms me and harms you.

Mine are the politics of mercy and I can always live more closely to my ideals. Plus, you know, I laugh at my own antics. My mistakes are everywhere; perhaps someday I’ll learn from them.

Hello. It’s just me. Hello, you.

At 7:20 this morning I decided the Moon must be full. I think it was the school bus turning left across two lanes of roaring mad traffic on grimy Route 27 that did it – not that the children waiting to get on the bus would’ve cared unless the bus flipped and burst into flames. Kids care about history’s highlights. “My day boils down to a fireball that cancelled school,” is the kind of summary that convinces me TV reporters have Peter Pan complexes.

Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, did not want me to leave the apartment this morning. He wanted to stand on me. While I brush my teeth, he stands on the toilet lid and demands to be scratched, but a half-hearted head-scratching won’t cut the mustard. The moment my attention drifts, Larry attacks. The next time you wish to demonstrate extraordinary dexterity, try this: brush your teeth mindful of expensive orthodontic work, scratch a pushy pet, avoid feline fangs. There ought to be a medal for an entire week without bitemarks.

You know, when you have braces on your teeth, you have to be truly careful selecting cosmetic colors. It’s just one of those things you might not consider as an adult if it’s not your own experience.

Tonight I zipped over to Highland Park to pick up magazines for the workhouse. I think I’ve mentioned this before. A friend noted after a weekend’s hospitality that the Middlesex County Adult Correctional Facility had a crappy library. Because I work in a library, I called over there, and they said their library would welcome contributions. My library gets gifts it can’t use all the time. There’s a program that sends books to Africa, but whatever that program can’t use, my library – which is not to say it’s mine, it’s just the destination my car arrives at five days a week – sends to the workhouse.

Now, if you look around your house, my bet is you’ve got books you don’t need or want. If you’re not keen on sending your spare, cluttery books to places of unfortunate incarceration, perhaps you’d consider a nursing home. Nursing homes would pinch your kids for the stuff lying around your house you can’t stand dusting. Actually, nursing homes would pinch *you* for an hour of your time, just singing to other people’s neglected grandparents. If you’ve got a scout troop you don’t know what to do with, call a nursing home near you and ask for the social worker. Warble a few Christmas carols and you are one step closer to Heaven.

I live in New Brunswick, where teachers have so little to work with they often buy their own pencils. If you buy a wide variety of prepared food products, you’ll find those Box Tops For Education labels. You can do everyone a favor by doing three simple things:

1. Cut those little labels off the containers.

2. Save them in an envelope in an out-of-the-way corner of your kitchen.

3. When it’s full, call a middle school near you, get an address, mail them the labels.

This will cost you an envelope and a stamp, unless you happen to have a really smart dog that delivers and can read signs leading to the Main Office. But hey, I don’t know your dog.

If you think about it, you have lots of things you don’t need anymore. There are people who need what you have and don’t need. It’s easy. If you have clothes you haven’t worn in two years, fold them, put them nicely into a bag and take them to a clothing drop off. If you have canned goods your mother-in-law left in the pantry after her last visit and you plan on never touching the menudo, box it up and take it to the food bank.

It doesn’t take much to do good work in the world. What you have and don’t need can help people who have less or nothing. Tonight, there are children in your town going to bed without food, and tomorrow they’ll go to schools that have no supplies in clothes that don’t fit. It’s so easy for you to do something about this without any hard work on your part or loss of dignity on the part of the poor. Why not give away what’s weighing you down?