Recently, I had a stern discussion with Me about our height. It is insufficient. For our weight, we should probably be closer to six feet tall, and height is way, way trickier to change. I’ve even considered weight loss by paring down my number personalities but we voted to strike if anyone was laid off. With the fatigue, the expenses and daft overeating, I feel I’ve drifted from what I want to do. I mean, besides eating. I have a positive gift for that.

In 2006, I:
1. replaced all my household paper products with recycled or cloth.
2. learned to bake bread. I am still a novice.
3. took up walking and now walk to and from work, weather permitting.

This represents progress. There were a few other projects, like knitting blankets for animal shelters and getting all my belongings out of moving boxes and installing cabinets. I liked the projects as an application of skills I already possessed but they didn’t change me in any way except to give me more floor space. I love floor space. Then I fill it with some new project and my recycled toilet paper is put away, giving me new and different reasons to be cheerful. If you have children and you’re not using the recycled, it’s a lot like saying, “Fuck you, sweetheart, I’m too selfish to consider my contribution to the toxicity in which you’ll muck about after I take the dirt nap.” I have a grown daughter who wants to someday have children that don’t set off Geiger counters. But whatever works for you.

I was concerned that if I instituted mondo life changes willy nilly I’d lose interest and change back, but so far, so good. Even so, I feel my progress is stalled. This led to a logical question – stop laughing! – progress toward what?

I don’t know. A yoga studio is going up a bunny hop, skip and a jump from my humble abode, but planning to exercise in the future is not a direction and I want one. Let’s hope inspiration arrives soon with a HELLO, I’M tag and the crappy handwriting says YOUR FUCKING PURPOSE ON EARTH.

Some situations are too appalling for tiny old me to dignify with discussion, which might lend credence to morally indefensible actions or perspectives. In the last week, we’ve seen several disgusting revelations that should tell a whole dreadful story. Thus, this morning’s A Word A Day vocabulary bon bon is a candy-coated morsel.

“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”

Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass might as well have been talking about this week’s set of words. While these words do not have as many meanings as the word “set” (the Oxford English Dictionary devotes 26 pages to it), each of this week’s hard-working words has many unrelated meanings. And they are not bland, like the word set.

With these words, one could say, we get our money’s worth.

malkin (MO-kin, MAL-kin) noun

1. An untidy woman; a slattern.

2. A scarecrow or a grotesque effigy.

3. A mop made of a bundle or rags fastened to a stick.

4. A cat.

5. A hare.

[From Middle English Malkyn (little Molly), diminutive of
the name Maud or Molly/Mary.]

A related word is grimalkin, referring to an old female cat or an ill-tempered old woman.

-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)

“And speaking o’ cats, gray malkins hunt through the forest as well.”
Cecilia Dart-Thornton; The Battle of Evernight; Aspect; 2003.
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Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It’s one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period. -Nicholas Sparks, author (1965- )

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Funny that even in a time when down is us and wrong is right the language is full of yummy surprises.

One of these days, I’m going to chase Daria around her house with a recording device because some things cannot be conveyed without tone, inflection and sheer volume. In Daria’s case, add frenetic movement, a microscopic attention span and a cloud of naturally spiral-curled Jersey Chick hair like a pivoting microburst, none of which translates easily into print or sound. So let’s practice seeing and hearing a person who is my sister but might be just like yours. First: you must know that no matter how uncomfortable the new shoes or unforgiving the jacket, Daria never takes apart an outfit she’s wearing. Yeah, I don’t get that either. It’s New Year’s Eve at Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s and the house is packed. Daria and I are zinging around the kitchen so no one else has to. Watch this:

Daria: Yesterday, Fifi learned to say Daddy. I’m used to her all day long with the Mom! Mom! Mom! but he was shocked and nervous when he’d leave the room and she’d shout DADDY!
Tata: She went from summoning the help to issuing her own ransom demands?
Daria: I’m used to it but he thought she was furious.
Tata: I’d be furious too if my Chief Admirer found something tacky to do like, say, making a living. Tsk! Tsk!
Daria: She doesn’t say much – but then it’s DADDY!
Tata: Maybe if you quit shouting she’d learn an Indoor Voice less appropriate for the Kentucky Derby.

Don’t worry. She’s not actually listening and I’m not really heckling her parenting. I’d only do that from a safe distance – say, the width of the Atlantic. In the meantime, I’ve filled up the dishwasher, rinsed pans for the next load and set up a salad. Daria’s set up the bain marie, lit the Sterno pots and arranged the buffet. Mom and Dad didn’t so much raise children as a kitchen crew they could only fire a few times. As the dust cleared in the kitchen, Dad’s wife Darla –

It’s a freaking Italian family. Our ancestors rearranged the same half-dozen names over and over for centuries, even as families joined and joined with families from other traditions and so forth. When someone squawks a familiar, “Hey, Dar!” three people mutter, “What..?” The same thing happens when someone says, “Hey, Dom!” or “Yo, Tony!” If it’s confusing, one of these days, I’ll make you a seating chart and paper dolls. Moving on, then.

– offered a gift to Miss Fifi in the living room. Miss Fifi has attained the correct age to enjoy tearing wrapping paper to shreds Auntie I. will be vacuuming up for years to come. I am surprised when she opens the box and cares what’s inside: a new outfit! Miss Fifi grabs the very frou-frou dress and matching sweater and runs for her mother, who steps out of the kitchen, sees the happy baby and shouts in an air traffic-disrupting voice heard for miles, “WHO’S PRETTY!”

If only I had it on film…

Sometimes the grownups run around like toddlers: Lock the Library! Rowdy Students Are Taking Over

MAPLEWOOD, N.J., Jan. 1 — Every afternoon at Maplewood Middle School’s final bell, dozens of students pour across Baker Street to the public library. Some study quietly. The Baker Street library in Maplewood, N.J., near a middle school, will soon close from 2:45 to 5 p.m. Others, library officials say, fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians or refuse to leave when asked. One recently threatened to burn down the branch library. Librarians call the police, sometimes twice a day.

As a result, starting on Jan. 16, the Maplewood Memorial Library will be closing its two buildings on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m., until further notice.

Oh bloody hell. There’s more.

This comfortable Essex County suburb of 23,000 residents, still proud of its 2002 mention in Money magazine on a list of “Best Places to Live,” is no seedy outpost of urban violence. But its library officials, like many across the country, have grown frustrated by middle schoolers’ mix of pent-up energy, hormones and nascent independence.

Increasingly, librarians are asking: What part of “Shh!” don’t you understand?

About a year ago, the Wickliffe, Ohio, library banned children under 14 during after-school hours unless they were accompanied by adults. An Illinois library adopted a “three strikes, you’re out” rule, suspending library privileges for repeat offenders. And many libraries are adding security guards specifically for the after-school hours. In Euclid, Ohio, the library pumps classical music into its lobby, bathrooms and front entry to calm patrons, including those from the nearby high school. A backlash against such measures has also begun: A middle school in Jefferson Parish, La., that requires a daily permission slip for students to use the local public library after school was threatened with a lawsuit last month by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Fortunately, some adults have a clue.

Librarians and other experts say the growing conflicts are the result of an increase in the number of latchkey children, a decrease in civility among young people and a dearth of “third places” – neither home nor school – where kids can be kids.

“We don’t consider the world as safe a place as it used to be, and we don’t encourage children to run around, hang around and be free,” said Judy Nelson, president of the Young Adult Library Services Association, part of the American Library Association. “So you have parents telling their kids that the library is a good place to go.” Rowland Bennett, who served as the director of the Maplewood Memorial Library for 30 years and is now president of the local school board, said libraries had become “the child care center by necessity.” Linda W. Braun, a librarian and professor who has written four books about teenagers’ use of libraries, said the students want only to be treated like everybody else.

“If there are little kids making noise, it’s cute, and they can run around, it’s O.K.,” Ms. Braun said of standard library operating procedure. “Or if seniors with hearing difficulties are talking loudly, that’s accepted. But a teen who might talk loudly for a minute or two gets in trouble.” She added: “The parents don’t want them, the library doesn’t want them, so they act out.”

Even more than women in ladies room packs, I dislike children running around libraries. I work in a library, mostly by concealing my presence from all but the Mole People in the building’s basement. This hasn’t always been the case. For ten years, I worked with the public; for eight of the ten, I ran a 24-hour study hall that resembled nothing more than Dodge City when I got the job. It took a couple of years, but I turned it into a clean, organized, useful facility, chaos and all. I know what these people are up against, and it isn’t what it appears.

I am not a librarian. Between me and librarianship stand two degrees and an attitude problem. That will be important to class-minded douchebags who will decide to go count their untended IRAs. Further: I hate to be the Voice of Reason. I much prefer to be the Voice of No Fucking Reason, Thank You. I see things other people don’t. I talk to squirrels. The blog is called Poor Impulse Control for a reason. My grasp on capital-R Reality is faint, but sometimes crazy people speak the truth. Moving on, then. The problem isn’t the library, the staff or the children. It’s the town.

Urban planners know that if you build a city without places for kids to go kids will find their own places. In this case, the kids in the library aren’t even the bad kids. Nope – they’re somewhere else, pursuing after school activities you don’t want to think about, which is what kids do. Remember? Healthy kids sit in school all day while their bodies are telling them to get up and move around. When school’s over, they should be up and moving. If they’re too young for jobs, they’re not too young to run laps around a track. Telling them to sit down and be quiet isn’t going to cut it.

Now, this is not news. Kids need exercise. Gym class isn’t enough. The walk to the library isn’t enough. Since the article was published, the mayor asked the library not to close its doors during after school hours. That’s actually counterproductive.

On at least a temporary basis, Maplewood should close the library. Why? Because parents of these kids aren’t dealing or can’t deal with their children’s unsupervised time. Daycare is not the function of the library, which presence masks the problem. Close the library. Calling the cops on children is a dumb bandaid solution slapped on a fairly straightforward problem. If the schools don’t have adequate after school supervision, and the library is closed, then the whole town has to come to consensus regarding productive activities for kids.

So. Let it. Let’s see Maplewood take on the initial hysteria, even face lawsuits, and get moving. Give the library back to the people who want to use it. Get these kids out of the library and moving. Ignoring what everyone here truly needs will only make matters worse.

Mr. Hitchens, you are having a little problem with expectations.

The disgusting video of Saddam Hussein’s last moments on the planet is more than a reminder of the inescapable barbarity of capital punishment and of the intelligible and conventional reasons why it should always be opposed. The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution. At one point, one of the attending magistrates can be heard appealing for decency and calm, but otherwise the fact must be faced: In spite of his mad invective against “the Persians” and other traitors, the only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene is the father of all hangmen, Saddam Hussein himself.

How could it have come to this?

I am happy to help.

Everyone has funny pictures in their brains. This is called imagination. It’s good for us! Using our imaginations, we can think and plan and consider how other people feel. I’m using mine to imagine how a guy as smart as you used to be could confuse someone else’s Oedipal complex for a feasible war plan. I mean, come now. You didn’t actually imagine make-believe “democracy” could be imposed on a volatile MidEast country by an invading superpower ignorant of complex, delicate and centuries-old tribal relationships and rivalries, did you? That’s just silly!

We are all subject to flights of fancy now and then. I pretend my rump will remain adorable with the passage of time but that’s not going to happen, which is more or less predictable. Likewise, the utterly tasteless and pathetic execution of some ordinary bloody dictator convicted in court proceeding so surreal we should have expected duck noses, because we handed said dictator over to the really annoyed opposing tribe right before a big, touchy religious celebration of peace was as predictable as eventual sagging. 1 – 2 – 3. Here’s why.

Sometimes people tell you the truth. It’s very bad manners, but it does happen. When you hear the truth, it should change what you imagine because like facts the truth tends to interact significantly with reality. Here’re some truth-based bad manners now, which you might remember.

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ “

“What was her answer?” I wonder.

“Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”

This 1999 interview can tell you a lot about our current administration if you let it. I certainly heard the message loud and clear. Give it a try. I’ll wait.

Tappity tappity…I love the new OPI colors…feelings, nothing more than feelings…

Oh, hey. You’re back. Love what you’ve done with the, um, thinking. I think we can see you’re listing just a little bit to starboard, sailor:

The shabby, tawdry scene of Muqtada Sadr’s riffraff taunting their defenseless former tyrant evokes exactly this quality of hysterical falsity and bravado. While Saddam Hussein was alive, they cringed. Now, they find their lost courage, and meanwhile take the drill and the razor blade and the blowtorch to their fellow Iraqis. To watch this abysmal spectacle as a neutral would be bad enough. To know that the U. S. government had even a silent, shamefaced part in it is to feel something well beyond embarrassment.

We’re making progress. Sort of. You’re using your imagination.

Now use it to imagine the part you played in making the last six disastrous years happen.

Network news is a snorefest, yet every so often, the teasers tempt me to watch. I made popcorn when I heard: Chicken Shop Owner Allegedly Sets Fire.

The Bronx food fight began when a Twin Donut shop started competing with a Kennedy Fried Chicken by adding legs, wings, breasts and thighs to its menu and selling plates of food for 50 cents cheaper, supervising fire marshal Robert Pinto said.

…needs salt. Wait – doughnuts and chicken parts?

The chicken place’s owner, Kabeer Ahmad, whose business had taken a nosedive, used a hammer to punch a hole in the wall between the stores around 4 a.m. Monday, squirted gasoline into the doughnut shop and tossed in a lit match before driving off, Pinto said.

GET OUT! The same building? GET OUT!

“The chicken store guy eventually admitted he was suffering,” Pinto said. “In a moment of weakness he punched a hole in the store wall and sprayed gasoline.” Ahmad, who was charged with arson, a felony punishable by up to 25 years to life in prison, was in custody Monday night. He didn’t have a lawyer and hadn’t been visited by his family, and there was no telephone number listed for him at the home address provided by the FDNY. He was to be arraigned Tuesday.

The owner of the doughnut shop, Mike Chhor, said he didn’t know why his neighbor set the fire and destroyed his business, which he bought three weeks ago.

“I don’t know why he burned the store,” Chhor said. “I had no problem with him.”

Ah, the bitterness of recrimination and the sweet taste of kettle corn don’t mix! You’d think our amateur arsonist would know this but – and I say this cautiously – people are really very fucking stupid.

The centre on Regent Street in London prides itself on being a one-stop shop for inquiries. But sometimes, the agency has admitted, the questions asked by travellers are simply unanswerable. For example, one visitor wanted to know: ‘What is the entry fee for Brighton?’ Another asked: ‘Do you have any information on (former Page 3 girl) Samantha Fox?’

It is not known what mode of transport was envisaged by the person who wondered: ‘Can I get to Jersey any other way apart from sea or air travel?’

Another clearly jet-lagged visitor asked: ‘When is the changing of the guard at the White House?’

A person once called the library I work in and asked for a photograph of Jesus. I did not mention the fake in Turin.

Encounters could be just as strange in the help centres of VisitScotland, where questions from tourists included: ‘What time does the midnight train leave?’, ‘Which bus do I get from the Orkney Islands to the Shetland Islands?’, and ‘Is Edinburgh in Glasgow?’.

Another tourist wanted to know: ‘What time of night does the Loch Ness monster surface?’

Look, I’m no genius and I’ve never invented anything but if there’s a God, I bet she wonders how this dud of a species got through R & D.

The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged that a United supervisor had called the control tower at O’Hare, asking if anyone had spotted a spinning disc-shaped object. But the controllers didn’t see anything, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.

“Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon,” Cory said. “That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low (cloud) ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things.”

The FAA is not investigating, Cory said.

I’ve put down the popcorn because I hear the banjo strains of dueling eyewitnesses.

At least one O’Hare controller, union official Craig Burzych, was amused by it all.

“To fly 7 million light years to O’Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable,” he said.

That guy sounds pretty sane. Huh.

Some of the witnesses, interviewed by the Tribune, said they are upset that neither the government nor the airline is probing the incident.

Whatever the object was, it could have interfered with O’Hare’s radar and other equipment, and even created a collision risk, they said.

That sounds kinda rational. Ruh roh!

“I tend to be scientific by nature, and I don’t understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport,” said a United mechanic who was in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 that he was taxiing to a maintenance hangar when he observed the metallic-looking object above Gate C17.

“But I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [Earth] aircraft,” the mechanic said.

If this story is still playing a real nutburger must warming up his glowing psychosis.

One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and “experienced some religious issues” over it, one co-worker said.

Oh, Jesus Christ! I mean, really! If our Sky God can make whole universes including other populated planets, why can’t the aliens make it through baggage check? Meanwhile, around full circle and back on earth, some people really need to skip the fryolator and upgrade to a microwave: Gas cooker blows up island. You read that right.

This was the staggering scene after a faulty gas cooker exploded in a timber-framed shack – and devastated a tiny Caribbean island. The blast caused an inferno that leapt from hut to hut, taking less than ten minutes to sweep across Soledad Miria. Many of the 1,014 inhabitants dived into the sea or took to fishing boats to escape. More than a third – 348 – were injured but, amazingly, no one died.

Mmmm. Chicken…

Note: for short people, objects in digital view finder may be closer than they appear.

Half-way through dinner at Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s last night, I realized that not only had I left Monday’s and Barry’s present at home but I’d left my lunchbox next to it. This is significant because my lunchbox contains stuff, things, and my wallet. I was half an hour’s drive from my apartment on New Year’s Eve in a car with a tire pressure problem and without my documents. It was a miracle that I’d realized anything at all. The crowd and noise around the dinner table spilled out into the living room, down into the basement and out onto the street. I was amazed strangers driving the Turnpike didn’t stop in for aperatifs but anyway: before 10:30 I got into my car and drove off. Daria, Todd and I gave Dad and his wife Darla the DVD collection of Father Ted, which Dad, as a disgruntled altar boy, will truly enjoy. We probably should’ve given him an oxygen tank. Darla and I share an ordinary revulsion for all things precious or baby pink or excessively girlie, so when she plunked down in front of me the Care Bear gift bag, I don’t know who laughed harder. I could’ve gone home happy at that moment but miraculously the actual gift was even better.

Nobody appreciates my propensity for violence and desire to chffonade like Dad and Darla. We found these on a Sicilian website years ago but couldn’t get them to accept credit cards. Maybe if we’d PayPalled a horse’s head I would’ve had one of these gratis. Regardless, I have one now! Joy! I’m thinking of assembling it and putting it in my kitchen window. So after Miss Sasha’s amaretto mousse, of which I have a small container in my fridge right this very minute, I kissed forty-odd people goodbye and drove home very, very cautiously. In doing so, I left behind presents, dishes and awesome leftovers. Yeah. What was I thinking?

The ball dropped, Anderson Cooper introduced the B-52’s and suddenly there were flashing lights in the cul-du-sac. By 12:05, the tiny street was filled with peculiar twenty-somethings, five police cars and two amubulances. Soon, my neighbors were walking around outside like the fair had come to town. A little more than half an hour later, one of the ambulances took away a woman I didn’t recognize supine on a stretcher and I have no idea what happened or what it meant. I was grateful however that I didn’t drive documentless after midnight hoping to avoid police of six entire towns only to find them all in front of my house.

Today, lunchbox and forgotten gift in hand, I drove back down to Auntie’s for lunch and leftovers. I possess pork roast and stewed chicken! I have gravy and poached figs! I have my pans and what passes for my purse. As you can see, Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, examined the Care Bear bag for paper-crunching kitty amusement and pronounced it “merely diverting.” We both need a nap.