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.

I’m too tired to gab. Time is short and there’s no time to nap. Maybe. No. Yes. I’m baking sweet potatoes. The cranberries and dried fruit have already boiled and jelled. Later, I’ll steam snap peas – very briefly. Dad and his amusing entourage have arrived in New Jersey to roast meats. It’s Christmas – again. The second pan of manicotti I made a week ago is at Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s house. I hope someone took it out of the freezer or those are going to be some mighty interesting popsicles. With sauce.

If you’re alone or if you’re not, if you’re prosperous or if you’re not, if you’re happy or if you’re not, I wish you a healthy, happy, prosperous and loving New Year. Take good care of yourself. To better days, friends!

Meanwhile, mysteries abound a Casa Ta: last night, my son-in-law Mr. Sasha finished putting up the storage cabinet in my bathroom. I am overjoyed! At last, I have an away to put my recycled TP. This cabinet serves also as a burglar alarm. It is mounted right next to the window, which location assures me that if unwelcome persons attempt to climb in in the night, I will hear the sudden collision of cabinet and floor and hastily summon armed locals – after I conk someone on the noggin with a rusty pipe wrench, because lockjaw is the gift that keeps on giving and I’m a generous gal.

This is a sensible arrangement and I like those. In general, I am pleased when things make sense to me. We all like that, don’t we, to find that our world view squares with what we observe in everyday life? That is why I was completely flummoxed to find large bits of broken cracker on my bedroom windowsill that I didn’t put there. My upstairs neighbor hasn’t been home for some time, though I’m not sure how long. This absent neighbor differs from the other absent neighbors in that my immediate upstairs neighbor is the single gentleman I sometimes see wearing pants and the others are a couple who always wear pants. I am pleased that this distinction serves my common sense purpose: my upstairs neighbor has not thrown crackers out his window for the squirrels. Neither have his pants.

This is the view straight down from my window. Not even an exotic professional basketball player could stand there and place bits of cracker on my windowsill. I have observed that this stairwell is wide enough for two fully grown PSE&G employees to descend the steps side by side, pretend they couldn’t open the door to the meter room and ascend to ground level without touching shoulders, no matter how manly.

We have established, then, that I did not place the puzzling cracker bits on the sill, that my upstairs neighbor did not drop them out his window, and that it would be very difficult for a person standing outside to place those cracker bits on my windowsill. Thus, we can only draw one conclusion: these cracker bits are a gift of the loving squirrel people, who sit in the apple tree and worship me from near and far. They adore me, do the squirrel people! Where they got these precious crackers, I cannot say. That they would leave me this offering is a sign that I am well and truly treasured by the squirrels. I am their god. I would rain favor and chunks of apple on them if my current lease did not include a proviso that I not throw things out my windows. No. Really.

Should you doubt the veracity of my story, you would offend me. To think that I would buy crackers prepared without whole grains is preposterous. I’m a Triscuit gal, or at the very least, stone-ground wheat. In the kitchen cabinet, I have some of those Norwegian crackers that taste and feel like stale cardboard, but even they are rye. I save them for days when I am displeased with myself and don’t deserve a good snack; thus, those crackers haven’t seen daylight in over a year. Take that as a sign that the squirrel people are not alone in their love of Me. Even so, sometimes an offering doesn’t fit a god’s common sense needs. Take this as a humble warning: I swept up the crackers and threw them away.

Let’s play a game. Here are some rules.

1. My arrest record must remain clean.
2. The lowest form of life is a snitch. Men know it. Women know it. Little children in their cribs know it. I’m no snitch. My lease says no cats. Chances are good all the leases in my complex say that. Every window has a pussycat.
3. No animals or their dumb humans may be harmed before the fat lady sings.

The game board is my building, where inside the fire walls nestle four apartments. Last week, one of the upstairs neighbors said his catsitting plans had fallen through and would I please look in on his cats on Christmas Eve (Sunday) and the day after Christmas (Tuesday)? I agreed to do this. He handed me a key and told me to leave it inside the apartment when I fed the cats the second time because he and his wife would be back on Wednesday, which is to say yesterday. Upstairs, I found two cats the size of Buicks, four giant bowls of water and five giant bowls of kitty kibble. On Tuesday, I noticed they had eaten very little. I filled the bowls and freshened the water. Then I left the key on the stove where cats the size of Buicks were less likely to kick it under furniture they liked to stand on.

Let’s not even talk about the three litter boxes in the bathroom. They looked okay but my eyes watered.

Are we on the same page? We are. Let’s play: the apartment upstairs is dark and it’s Thursday night. My neighbors have not come home. Their phone numbers are upstairs in the apartment I locked. The cats almost certainly have enough water and food. What would you do?

If I call the super, I’m making the issue the safety of pets we’re not supposed to have.
If I break into the apartment to get the phone numbers and I call them, what do I say? “Say, neighbors, I’m so trustworthy I’ve picked your locks. Are you coming home or am I still taking care of your stuff?”
If I do nothing, what happens if they’re in trouble and I haven’t acted?

Ready? Go.

That goddamned tire was flat again today. I had just read Mr. Breszny’s prediction for the Aquarian 2007:

There are still places in China where plagues of locusts periodically descend in Biblical proportions. A few years ago, farmers in the region of Xinjiang fought back, gathering an army of 10,000 chickens in anticipation of the invading hordes. The bird soldiers were trained for two months, and when the showdown came, they acquitted themselves admirably. This vignette is an apt metaphor for a challenge you’ll face in 2007. While in general the year should bring an abundant amount of sweet luck and high adventures, there will be a locust visitation or two. I urge you to assemble your own personal equivalent of a chicken army. What might that mean, practically speaking? Here are some possibilities: (1) Be well-prepared for natural anomalies. (2) Ally yourself with the enemy of your adversary. (3) Get others to help you fight your battles.

Fuck! I might have to report this to the cops. Is there a quicker way to recruit a chicken army? Fortunately, my innards are a double helping of red hot Scorpio.

In 2007, you’ll need to find the power to do the half-right thing when it’s impossible to do the totally right thing. To help you do that, remember this advice from Abraham Lincoln: “The true rule, in determining to embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.”

Yeah yeah, Good. Evil. Good v. Evil. Good with a creamy nougat center of Evil. Evil with a hard, candy shell of Good. Reverse the recipe and rock on.

I don’t have enemies and I don’t want any. I want to skip madly along my own path and throw petals at the small-minded and selfish. Hopefully, somewhere along the line, another equally mad skipper sashays along side, but I can’t do anything about that. What I have to do is find an artform for the next stage of my life, which has nothing to do with anyone else’s problems with me, however real, imaginary or growling like a pirate. So if someone is flattening my tires, that person is seriously misguided. There’s nothing to be gained by damaging my car.

In other news, I’m spending too much time alone and a florist moved in a few blocks from here. I’m thinking of hiring my own Munchkins and easing on down Route 27. Often.

RAI Internationale burbles in Italian as I do little chores. The explosion in Lagos is no less horrible for the language gap. Cars and people are still on fire. Young men driving around Mogadishu in pickup trucks with machine guns is a recurring nightmare. Then there’s this week’s Italian government scandal. I might Nair my mustache in self-defense.

I could swear Atillio the Talking Testa said Dracula’s castle was sold. Or maybe it was Winona Ryder. My Italian isn’t so much rusty as rusted shut. But I have patience.

This morning, I was wide awake and nervous before 6. It was dark out and creepy in, so I laced up my sneakers and went walking in the pre-dawn fog. I could barely make out gray figures of other people and dogs walking and running in the park. Being outdoors in the dark holds no terror for me – it’s peaceful and I am sure of myself – as opposed to shivering indoors, looking out at the night. The air was cool and damp and walking at a brisk pace was a little like breathing, drinking and marching uphill. Both ways. On my way back, I barged in on the cats upstairs who had a whole apartment to themselves but not quite enough food and water while their people were gone for a week. Their people left three litter boxes for two gatos and a box of homemade biscotti for me. We’re all glad that wasn’t reversed.

Mostly what I did today was rest. I ate a little. Cleaned a few things. Read the blogs. Napped. Scratched Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul. Napped. Ate a little. Miss Sasha called me at least three times to discuss hand signals we can use during phone calls with Mom, which worked great when Mom called to invite me over for dinner. I was honest. I said I needed rest. Then I lied and said Miss Sasha was coming over my house and could she get a move on? I’d send me to my room…but I’d be there. And I’m clearly a bad influenza.

Somewhere, in my palatial one bedroom apartment, I have misplaced a present. I recall cheering when I found it on my welcome mat. I recall opening the mailing envelope. The insulating bubble wrap is sitting on my couch. And yet, I can’t find that present. What the hell?

I’ll find it. It’s here. I asked the cat where one of us put it. He’s been no help whatsoever.

Until yesterday, the plan was that right now, I’d be getting dressed for dinner at Mom’s and swearing under my breath but – and I say this with exhausted glee – Mom’s sick and I’m home alone with the cat. Wheee! My stepfather Tom came to the store yesterday and delivered the news that Mom wasn’t feeling up to snuff.

Tom: Deine Mutter ist krank.

Okay, he didn’t deliver his lines in German. I’m hamming it up. See, Anya ran over from the toy store ten minutes before with fantastic news –

Anya: Guess what! Guess what! Your mom’s sick and our parents are thinking of postponing Christmas dinner!
Tata: Get out! I might get tomorrow off?
Anya: We can just eat on Thursday, anyhow. Why have dinner twice?
Tata: Speaking of which, I need a few things for Thursday. Where am I gonna get anchovies and a plastic deer head?
Anya: We have So-And-So again for the Not-So-Secret Santa. We had him last year and I don’t know what to get him anymore.
Tata: How about 49 things from the dollar store and gum?

– So when Tom appeared, I attempted to look surprised.

Tom: Your mother’s sick.
Tata: And you’re thinking of postponing?

Damn! That was his line!

Tom: Well, we are aware that if we postpone some of us who may have committed to dinner may not have other places to go.
Tata: I personally would be overjoyed to have no place to go. I’m thawing a duck as we speak.
Tom: You’re very talented.
Tata: Thank you. Thursday, then?
Tom: [ … ]

Tom said something but no one knows what it was, and it is now lost in the sands of time. I recall not being sure if I was off the hook for today. Even so, we were in the store and the public had gift-giving needs and I’m not entirely certain I said goodbye when he left. That’s a little anticlimactic for you. I apologize! Consider it a simple denoument and let’s crank it up.

On Thursday, Mom, Tom, Daria, Anya, Corinne, Miss and Mr. Sasha, assorted spouses, seven children and I will stuff ourselves into one house, eat too much and exchange gifts. The truth is we dread this day every year because if dinner is supposed to be at 3 it will be at 9 and the kids go crazy and there’s no room for everyone to sit down so it’s a constant game of musical chairs. With eggnog and glitter. I can work my way around a shrimp ring while everyone else runs in circles but the parents of small children lose their tempers after three or four hours of cramped, festive togetherness. One of these years, we’ll have a homicide.

On New Year’s Eve, Dad, Darla arrive at Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s from Canada, and we replay Italian Christmas Eve. The manicotti for this event now shivers in Auntie’s freezer. Rejoice! Planning, effort and homemade crepes have come together in such a way that I now have days of peace and quiet. If I am tired, I can nap. I am tired. I’ve napped once this morning and may nap outrageously again later. It would be divine if I had a companion to play with but I don’t and can’t do anything about that. On the other hand, I’m 45 minutes away from crisp roasted duck.

By the way, I moved a few things and found the lost present.

Anya, Mary and I ran our butts off in a tiny space at the family store for hours, including a raucous visit from The Fabulous Ex-Husband, his fiancee Karen, Miss Sasha and Mr. Sasha. Customers were thrilled when this was a felicitous turn of events not ending in bloodshed. No, it ended in gift wrapping. Everything ended in gift wrapping. I didn’t get home until 10:30, so I was up until 1 assembling the manicotti. Now, I’m off to the store again.

Yesterday, a customer came toward me with a Yule card, asking, “What’s this for?” Mary and I, seeking to avoid an Unfortunate Incident, smiled and spoke all at once.

Mary: Some people celebrate the Solstice –
Tata: It’s kind of seasonal –
Mary: The changing of darkness to light –
Tata: It doesn’t at all involve bonfires and nekkid dancing, no –
Mary: Get a load of you, sistah…
Tata: Oh. Was that my outside voice?
Customer: So it’s not for Christmas?
Mary: Noooo.
Tata: Still, very festive…!

Back soon.

Someday, I will pen a lengthy and erudite treatise on the locus of identity. It will be unlike an other treatise in the history of treatises in that footnotes, while properly formatted, will look a lot like this.* In the meantime, Blogger can kiss my fabulous rump. I can choose my own identity because of who I happen to be, in this time and place, and I firmly believe I can’t afford to give any ground on this. It is the natural state of society and other people to see us their own way, which is why Michelle Malkin can advocate concentration camps for brown Americans without irony. Ultimately, we are ourselves as long as we inhabit those selves and stand that ground.

I’ll be popping in here every few hours to kvetch about whatever crossed my path or smudged my lipstick. Join me when you can. Or not. I’ve got solvent.

Whatever you’re celebrating, give a thought to people who are struggling. They’re everywhere, and you might not see them if you weren’t looking. Go in peace, my pets!

*Motor Vehicle Services should put down the crack pipe if it thinks it determines who I fucking am.