Part I., Part II.

Part III. I sit down at the table next to Theresa, Dom’s girlfriend. Dom, Sharkey, Dom’s housemate and a high school friend all troop upstairs to smoke after dinner. By the time I arrive, I couldn’t care less about food. Theresa’s still eating. I got myself a small bowl of rice and pork.

Theresa: You’re not hungry? You must be hungry.
Tata: No, no, thanks, this is plenty! I was getting ready to leave the house when my sister called because she’s got some hideous conglomeration of plagues in Flemington and the baby’s stranded in Somerset.
Theresa: You can’t overlook that. What did you do?
Tata: I spent three weeks in the store, delivered bags of groceries to the babysitter’s house and looked at the baby. I thought she was going to take out the pacifier and shout, “IT SURE TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH!” They are raising a princess, they are.
Theresa: You only called about an hour ago, maybe a little more.
Tata: What? It seems like weeks. And I look awful!
Theresa: You do not!
Tata: You shameless flatterer! My horoscope says I get someone new and significant this week. Last time it said that, I got Sharkey.
Theresa: Wow, he’s really important.
Tata: Absolutely, I couldn’t live without him. And I figured out what I’ve been doing wrong with men. I dress nicely and gussy up and then they meet the tired, overworked me later, which is backwards. If they like me this way, they’ll LOVE me later. There’s no place to go from here but UP.
Theresa: Omigod, I never thought of it that way.
Tata: Exactly. I don’t want to go around looking better than I do first thing in the morning. Ooh, and I’m only going to date men with bad eyesight. Because I’m only going to age, and they’ll think I’m glamorously backlit.

After about 45 minutes, I went home before 8, having explained the yogurt and fruit. The broccoli and cauliflower were not, in fact, overdone, which was a fucking miracle. I was so exhausted I went to bed early.

Amendment XXII
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.

This morning, the alarm clock was blinking. I called work and said I was on my way. As I walked under the old trees, I laughed and felt the green leaves, the yellow leaves, the red leaves, the brown leaves and wind-broken branches as if each were mine and mine alone.

Everything amuses me today.

Technorati tags: u.s. constitution, bill of rights,
bush, impeach bush, dinner party, cauliflower, diapers.

Part I.

II. A raspy baritone I didn’t recognize called.

Daria: I need a big favor.
Tata: WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU NEED?
Daria: Shut up, it’s me.
Tata: Oh. Whaddya need?
Daria: I have strep, an ear infection, and two pink eyes. My sons are sick, my husband is sick. I am crawling around my house with rubber gloves and a spray bottle of bleach.
Tata: Crap! What could you need from me?
Daria: Fifi was with Mom last night but she went to New York. Fifi’s with the babysitter and she’s out of food.
Tata: …and the babysitter doesn’t drive or speak English, got it. Let my wash the olive oil off my hands and make a grocery list.

Daria called at an intriguing moment. Twenty minutes later and I probably would’ve been gone. I’d showered and laid out clothes. I was as primped for Dom’s dinner party as I was going to get. The yogurt was ready, the fruit was packed. I was seasoning vegetables and roasting them briefly so they wouldn’t turn into babyfood in transit to Dom’s house. I made a grocery list, looked around and realized I wasn’t wearing any pants. With my friends, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. I’ve spent a lot of time nekkid in public as an artist and a model, and every last one of my friends has seen my birthday suit, with and without body makeup, but Stop & Shop would not view my arriving sans pantalons with the same sang-froid. So I put on a pair of khakis I used to paint my bedroom and drove to the grocery store in my hometown, where I was immediately lost in the store’s gigantic yuppie splendor.

Amendment XXI
Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress.

Miss Sasha is 23, so it’s been awhile since I shopped for baby stuff. In that time, all kinds of crap has changed. Now: diapers come in sizes and genders. When Miss Sasha was a baby, they came in relative baby weights. Now: babies must eat designer chicken nuggets in amusing shapes. When Miss Sasha was a baby, we cooked chicken and cut it up into little hunks she could pick up with her little paws. Now: babies must have macaroni and cheese with every meal and nobody calls DYFS. When Miss Sasha was a baby, you felt underdressed without a caseworker. It was the eighties. I didn’t wear the shoulder pad styles, either. So I stood in the diaper aisle trying to figure out how the small packages could possibly contain 35 or 52 of these twenty-first century, super-absorbent, garbage-dump clogging, engineering wonders that would be the right size, shape, color and tensile strength to keep the indefatigable and relentless Miss Fifi from a lifetime of out-patient therapy, and while I was standing there, I started laughing. Suddenly, this was as funny as life gets. A man graying at the temples and teenaged boy stood next to me, staring at baby foods. The man was on the phone. This baby stuff has become so complicated nobody can do it without consulting other interested parties.

Tata: I haven’t shopped for diapers in twenty years! Did you know there are now six sizes of babies – and that’s it?
Man: Bffft! I can’t pick oatmeal!

In the next aisle, they passed me.

Tata: Did you know there are chlorine-free diapers?
Man: Is this your baby?
Tata: She’s my niece!

The organic yogurt brands were the only ones Daria specifically warned me Fifi wouldn’t eat. I circled the store, reading the overhead signs and bashing into canned goods displays.

Good thing I was wearing pants.

I walked up and down the pasta aisle in a naive attempt to find macaroni and cheese. No, no, it was in the next aisle with Prepared Dinners, where I found the man and the boy.

Tata: Did you know every child must eat this crap? Some sort of local ordinance.
Man: What some parents feed their kids!
Tata: And I’m enabling!

I don’t even want to talk about the sugar-filled nonsense that is yogurt for kids in colors and flavors. Even my skull is too soft to bash against that rock. In the produce section, I found Trout waiting to get her deli order filled. I picked melon, bananas and apples. She picked ham. The man took a number and Trout will talk to anybody so I know know the boy was his nephew and he prefers turkey. I paid someone quite a lot of money to let me leave without an arrest record and drove to the babysitter’s house. I handed her bags of groceries. The TV blared news in Spanish. I looked around for the vivacious Miss Fifi and found her reclining in the living room. I patted her hand. We had a whole sub-verbal conversation.

Tata: Hey, Pumpkinpuss. What’s shakin’?
Miss Fifi: Oh. It’s you. I won’t get up.
Tata: I’ll…be going, then…

So I drove to Dom’s house.

Part III.

Technorati tags: u.s. constitution, bill of rights,
bush, impeach bush, dinner party, cauliflower, prohibition,diapers.

I. My friend Dom was having the usual suspects over for dinner last night, and I was very perky about it. He was planning stewed pork and Spanish rice. I volunteered to bring vegetables. Saturday evening, I cut up cauliflower and two broccoli trees. Then I mascerated fruit and set up luxurious dessert yogurt with heavy cream to warm over night. By the time I went to bed I felt like I’d prep-cooked for an army of persnickety produce managers.

Amendment XX
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission.

When I first looked at this amendment my head hurt. Then I thought, ‘No, that’s sinus pain caused by falling barometric pressure or sudden shifts in reality.’ Blah blah blah live and dead presidents, succession, Congress shall assemble. We’re good here.

Sunday, I wanted to do a whole lot of nothing – and succeeded, when I should have been doing yoga or cycling around town or rewiring Kansas. To placate me, I cut open the box and started assembling a wall-mounted cabinet matching the armoire in the bathroom. As much as I love puzzles that yield furniture-y results, each now comes with a vexing rediscovery that ‘right’ and ‘left’ aren’t as natural for me as for the righthanded puzzle-solvers, and at some point in one of these exercises, I will find myself holding a screwdriver and trying to determine whether I am upside-down or right-side-up, and which way must I turn this screwdriver to secure the locking nut? And don’t think it’s so easy any fool can do it because this fool has to figure it out fresh on every go-round. My brain works differently than yours does. Quit growling. I adapt to your screwy righthanded, differently tall and otherly right-side-up world! Ooh, watch this little health film starring me, and my sister Daria’s tall, Republican, former Marine husband, whom I love to pieces:

Tata: Thank you for giving me the car. It’s great to step on a gas pedal and have something, you know, happen.
Tyler: Everything’s good?
Tata: I moved the seat all the way forward, tilted the steering wheel downward and lifted the seat up. I’ve never had a car that did that before. It’s fantastic. I can almost see over the dashboard.
Tyler: Almost? How do you drive?
Tata: I guess. Most people do. They call it ‘spatial awareness’ but they’re guessing.
Tyler: Why don’t you lift the seat higher?
Tata: Conflict with the solid object called the steering wheel.
Tyler: That’s just not possible.
Tata: Welcome to the World of Ta. I’ll be your host as we journey through life with a torso so short boobs and a belly look redundant…

I was pouring olive oil on herbed vegetables when the phone rang.

Part II.

Technorati tags: u.s. constitution, bill of rights,
bush, impeach bush, dinner party, cauliflower, diapers.

The Cool, Cool River

Moves like a fist through the traffic
Anger and no one can heal it
Shoves a little bump into the momentum
It’s just a little lump
But you feel it
In the creases and the shadows
With a rattling deep emotion
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, white ocean

Who says: hard times?
I’m used to them
The speeding planet burns
I’m used to that
My life’s so common it disappears
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

We are out of time to equivocate.

Please register and vote your conscience.

Johnny, whose co-workers call him Bobby Boucher, takes his charisma to the bank, baby:

Bidness, bidness, bidness. I sold a Tribeca today to one of the principals of a European solar energy firm expanding into the US. It’s my first bidness to bidness, uh, bidness. I let him Christian me down as far as he wanted to on the price. I think my commission per se was a hundred twenty five dollars. However, my client, being European, didn’t know that in Santa Fe you drive an Outback or you drive a Forester, unless you drive an Outback or perhaps a Forester. You don’t under any circumstances drive a Tribeca. That in mind, management placed a bonus on every one of those bad boys. One thousand dollars cash to The Waterboy. Because that’s what I do.

Johnny and I have known one another since the summer of 1977, when when I was fourteen and we were both in love with him. For those of you just joining Poor Impulse Control: Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, and possibly the most interesting Johnny. Here’s the one that brought us hate mail in 2005: Johnny. Yesterday:

After what, a year, finally the gigs are coming out of the woodwork. I play with an old-timey country trio on Sunday night, which with me I guess would be a quatro, then I have to get to work learning two albums’ worth of tunes for some gigs with an accordion player who sings in English and French about the glories of Paris and the joys of homosexual love. He’s putting the gay in gay Paree, and yes, that is one of his song titles.

Amendment XVIII
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress.

I’ll drink to that! And speaking of time-wasting:

A Cool, Dry Place is a sappy little piece of trash starring Vince Vaughn. Both of our minds were so destroyed by commerce that we sat last night and watched it straight through without even groaning. Remember in Beavis and Butthead, when they would flash back to B&B’s aghast faces in the middle of some horrifying video clip? You get the picture. If Vince wants to sue somebody, he should sue the agent who convinced him to take this awful role. I hope he at least fucked the luscious little piece of cornfed cheesecake who played his romantic interest. That would help even the score.

We scoped chicks together up and down the East Coast, and sometimes we scoped boys. It depended on who and what we were doing that season. Judging by IMDB, and without reading more than a few words about Vince was and wasn’t doing, I guess the cornfed cheesecake Johnny’s referring to is Monica Potter. I bet she’d appreciate our Constitutional spotlight dance.

Amendment XIX
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

I’m just curious. Maybe someone knows this: why do some amendments have these little post-its tacked on, hinting Congress is IT in this game of tag?

Technorati tags: u.s. constitution, bill of rights,
bush, impeach bush, car salesman, Waterboy, prohibition.

Gorgeous blurry pictures of blue things that upon closer examination turn out to be Chuan and his friend at Evil Dead: the Musical.

Chuan propped himself against a filing cabinet in my cubicle and explained the new addition to his wardrobe: a cheap plastic poncho. He described gooey stage blood flying everywhere, drenched audience members, a song and dance number called What the Fuck Is That? I asked if, by any tiny, tiny chance, there were camera phone photos of this excellent mayhem?

Oh yes. An usher came running to scold them, but blue plastic history was made. Chuan said the play was an absolute panic, and everyone non-water-soluble should see it in clothing they don’t mind subsequently dyeing red in someone else’s washing machines.

I suspect a Crayola 64 box of Tide pens would solve the problem.

Last night, I got home from the family store just before 9:30, which is to say that every month or two months, the town holds an event on the street for a few hours. Children run through the store filled with lovely breakable objects until 9. My sisters and their partners in the toy store go all out. Last night, they put up a super cool yoga tent and blinky lights, and bluegrass musicians sang right outside the door. We knew all the songs because we grew up with a bluegrass band rehearsing in the rec room. Also: my 14-year-old niece Lois was singing two blocks down the street with her church group. I encouraged her.

Tata: So, ya nervous?
Lois: I wasn’t.
Tata: Don’t worry. No one will notice you. You’ll be fine. Unless you puke.
Lois: You’re making me nervous!
Tata: I didn’t have really bad stage fright until I was in my thirties except when I was in gymnastics. That was really bad. Woo! But I could dance anywhere, that was fine. Later, I found tequila. Hey, you want some?
Lois: I’m leaving now!
Tata: Don’t suck, sweetie!

An hour later, Lois returned. My sister and I were supportive aunties.

Tata: Hey, sweetie! Did you choke?
Lois: What?
Tata: Did you choke or did you sing like the birdies?
Anya: Yeah yeah, thrill of victory or agony of defeat?
Lois: It went great.
Tata: You’re not sure? Did you hork?
Lois: I didn’t! And my brother suddenly appeared.
Anya: Tippecanoe “suddenly appeared”?
Lois: With Dad. Poof! There he was.
Tata: If we’re distributing magical powers, I’d like to levitate, please.
Lois: Please do. We have ceiling fans.

Isn’t she FANTASTIC? Daughters in my family deliver the cutting one-liners. Miss Sasha is also an expert with ten words or less. The girls, they’re brainy and beautiful. And speaking of beautiful, this is Lili, kitty friend of Mr. blogenfreude.

Though I’ve never met Lili in the feline flesh, she talks to me on the phone as if we backpacked across Europe together. While PIC was broken, Mr. blogenfreude was kind enough to let me blither at AgitProp and too kind to observe that while he and I are concerned with many of the same developments in the news, his readers are accustomed to a certain incisive brevity I can’t mimic – not without tequila, anyway.

Tata: Lili?
Lili: MEW!
Tata: Really? Ashcroft’s appearance on the Daily Show was a disaster! For whom? I sure don’t know.
Lili: MEW!
Tata: I don’t see how that’ll help book sales.
Lili: MEW!
Tata: Thanks. I wasn’t sure I could wear the new, fashionable cocoas. But you’ve set me straight!

Her views on physics are equally startling.

I. Two Sundays ago, I walked through Costco, turned a corner and was shocked speechless. Since I was there alone nobody noticed, but that’s immaterial. On a long rack, dozens of children’s Halloween costumes hung from their hoods. To my eye, it looked like someone had killed and skinned dozens of Poohs, Tiggers and Eeyores. Two aisles later, cat food was extra-cheap.

II. The circle, most circle-like.
Tata: Say it: we have no future together. Say it!
Raymond: No. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t say anything other than what I’ve already said.
Tata: That you pay no attention has me utterly indignant. The one thing of which I can be unshakeably certain is that I am entirely fascinating. So this is your problem, crazy person, and if it goes on much longer we will have adjoining suites at Bellevue.
Raymond: If circumstances were different –
Tata: Nope. I am fascinating. You’re not adoring me properly. We have no future together. Say it!
Raymond: …Yes…
Tata: Fine!
Raymond: But a year from now –

IV. Amendment XVII
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

IV. I love celery. I often forget this and neglect to buy it for myself, or I buy it for mirepois, which is as good as not buying it at all. This is a sad state of affairs, I think. Celery is subtly salty, crunchy, and when eaten early in its shelf life, has a lovely, distinctive flavor. The leaves are fragrant and when eaten deliver an exciting bite. Like most gentle sensations, like the feel of water pouring from the kitchen faucet onto splayed fingers, like a change in air pressure before a storm, eating celery as a sensual experience can be overlooked or savored. I realized I was denying myself this simple pleasure when my kitchen smelled like cilantro and I was overjoyed.

Technorati tags: u.s. constitution, bill of rights,
bush, impeach bush, mirepois, Pooh costume.

Everyone has moments of doubt. Mine always come with a soundtrack; this afternoon, you can hear them, too. The last 1:30 of this song is killing me.

Perhaps you’ve noticed I’m a bit temperamental. You’re not alone, my pet. During one stretch when I regarded the dating scene – don’t bother, I’m already writing myself a stern reprimand for using the words dating and scene consecutively – as less of an dessert bar and more of barbecue pit, my friend Ivan decided to call me KaliTata, Destroyer of Men, which was so endearing! Not familiar with KaliMa? Off to Wikipedia with you, and we’ll wait.

Tap tap tap. Hey! Nice to see you again! I wore that outfit to a party once, only the skirt was ironically Barbie Pink, and let’s put behind us the scrubbing-spirit-gum-off-my-epidermis incident. Ow! Anyway, the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) described mine as “the sprint temper” – as in I went from zero to sixty in “DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID?” but that was awhile ago. Even a goddess of destruction likes to think she’s matured since the eighties. Here’s your musical interlude.

Amendment XV
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

God knows I hate the jazz flute. Yes, time passes and we arrive at yesterday. Stuff this into your socks for safekeeping.

Amendment XVI
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Yesterday, I was trying to move posts I’d written to Running Scared while Poor Impulse Control was dead as a doornail, when Blogger quit publishing. I emailed Siobhan, who does all the heavy lifting here, and blurted out, um, something.

Tata: ^&)@$^*!$^!@^!$%@?
Siobhan: I’ll look.
Tata: ^&)@^%^% thank you.

I had not yet begun to swear. Just after I left work, Siobhan reported back.

Siobhan: I pointed the blah-blah-blah to blah-blah and now I can’t publish anything after October 4th.

This news, when I arrived at home, caused me to hyperventilate. This was no time for rational thinking!

Tata: Puff puff cough puff hack hack wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!

My first, second and third impulses were exactly the same. I gripped my head. There was screaming. I felt tragic. Only a person who’d just discovered their entire village had been wiped out in an improbable clown car-pile up could know my terrible sorrow. Since Siobhan was working on it, I forced myself to quit screaming and take a nap.

Tata: Zzzzzzwhat about my needszzzzzz…

Siobhan, meanwhile, had a life of her own to lead, which was so inconvenient for Me. This gave me time to think about things. Morgan used to tell me early and often that I was one of those people who felt too much, to which I responded by throwing ashtrays, skillets and knives. Only his excellent reflexes explain his continued good looks, and though he deserved a good beating he was right. That was ten years ago. Yesterday, I paced my living room floor, trying to imagine being able to restrain myself long enough to ask Siobhan questions.

Yeah, I didn’t get far with that.

After seven, I called.

Tata: MMM What do I have to MMMMM do to MMMM get PIC back up and MMMM running tonight?
Siobhan: It’s not? And what the hell is wrong with you?
Tata: Before I say anything else, please know that I appreciate your help with these tasks I cannot do myself, and I am grateful you understand and do these things for me. That’s important.
Siobhan: Yep. Absolutely.
Tata: Good. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH MY BLOG?

Twenty minutes later, we determined that something might’ve gone wrong at Paulie Gonzalez’ end of this host server moving dealie, and that I would call him. My hair was standing on end. Cartoon steam clouds poured from my ears. My blog was still a wreck and I was still helpless. I called Paulie to throw a weather-changing hissyfit.

Tata: Where are you? What are you doing?
Paulie: I’m at the hospital, picking up my dad.
Tata: What?
Paulie: He’s been here since Wednesday. I’m taking him home. I didn’t tell you?
Tata: No.

Huh. Look, I unexpectedly returned to human form. Small and covered with fur – see? I am not at all coughing up furballs.

Tata: Hack! Hack! Sweetie, call me later, okay?

It’s my work. It’s my identity. It’s just a blog. Thank your favorite deity I’ve fucking matured.

Technorati tags: u.s. constitution, bill of rights,
bush, impeach bush, maturity, fucking blog, What about my needs?