Day Off

sorbet tubular hangers

The Crankies experienced a regularly scheduled school holiday on Monday. Sadly, Meta Cranky's clutter meter simultaneously pegged into red zone.

MC's clutter meter is an unscheduled annoyance with an inconsistent trigger. Does it scream abuse at unattractive piles of work-related papers and mismatched socks? Frequently, no. Yet on this day, it howled like a air-raid siren at the sight of a few half-finished art projects lounging on the stair landing. The clutter meter lacks a breaker box; neither can you whack out its batteries with a broom handle as you can with the smoke alarm. There was no recourse for small Crankies except to perform compulsory acts of housework. Startled and unnerved by the meter's intensity, they peeled back layers of effluvia from flat surfaces until readings retreated to safe levels.

tubular hangers, primary colors

The Crankies' clutter meter functions a bit like a high colonic: after purging their collective toxins, the refreshed and clutter-diminished household sailed off to find amusing pursuits. Cranky #1 and her pal visited the local mega-plex for the latest installment of Goofy High School Comedy starring Talent-Challenged Cute Boy. Meanwhile, MC and Cranky #2 took a victory lap at OCD Gadget Store to get just one more clutter-fighting tool.

tubular hangers, ocean

C2 would happily acquire the store's entire obsessive inventory of keychains with light-up dolphins and pink magazine organizers with kitties on the top. Also the non-functional telephone and computer from the modular desk section. MC struck a compromise: pick six brightly colored tubular hangers from the Unnaturally Organized closet section. Don't sniff, skeptical readers: these are 52-gram plastic hangers, much sturdier and satisfying than the usual 34-gram numbers. While C2 made her color choices, a fellow organizer stopped to offer the benefit of his organizing experience. He gave high praise to the OCD tubular hangers, noting that he dedicates the orange sherbet-colored ones to his dress shirts.  MC nodded in admiration. But there was more. Hanger Guy had developed an entire closet system built around color-coded tubular hangers: royal blue hangers for jeans; yellow ones for t-shirts with paint splatters. MC was walking slowly backward and didn't catch what he does with the frosty greens or neon pinks

C2 has installed her cheerful hangers in a tidy yet casual way. C1 continues to enjoy seeing most of her bedroom floor. MC has seen household surfaces reappear, like the terrain left by a melting glacier. The household has been temporarily recalibrated.
--MC

No Satisfaction

Some months back, Meta Cranky learned that an ancient essay of hers had been plagiarized. More specifically, someone named Dr. Shyam Prasad Swain lifted her essay from Studies in the Novel, twiddled with some prepositions, and republished it under his own name in a collection of essays. MC's stony heart was warmed watching placid English major types turn apoplectic on the subject of plagiarism, and she was heartily gratified by the expressions of concern and outrage that came her way.

Apparently, friends' heart-warming concern is the only satisfaction that MC can hope to receive from this theft of her intellectual property. MC is informed that the statute of limitations for prosecuting copyright infringement is three years; that deadline expired back in the George W. Bush administration. So the legal team representing the journal where her essay appeared will send a letter to the fraudulent book's publisher requesting that it cease publishing this particular title. The salient verb would be request, since the journal concedes, "we have no legal recourse at this stage."

MC has sighed heavily. Then she recollected that she was in good company: Stanley Fish was ripped off, too, and his legal satisfaction was as thin as hers. Professor Fish, though, got to air his grievance in the New York Times and proclaim that "the two scholars who began their concluding chapter by reproducing two of my pages are professionally culpable. They took something from me without asking and without acknowledgment, and they profited — if only in the currency of academic reputation — from work that I had done and signed."

Here, here. But there's also a question of degree. Professor Fish's plagiarists are into him for two pages. Dr. Shyam Prasad Swain lifted MC's entire essay. So, short of naming the offender in the pages of the New York Times, what satisfaction can MC manufacture for herself? She recalls a successful campaign waged by her Youngest Older Brother that he called Feed the Bitch. A co-worker got the best of him in office politics; however, her sweet tooth left her utterly vulnerable to the two pounds of M&Ms (plain and peanut) that he purchased each day for office consumption. As Bitchy Co-worker's ass grew, so did Youngest Older Brother's satisfaction.

MC is confident that her friends and acquaintances possess the creative genius to effectively modify Feed the Bitch for her purposes. Let's work the problem, people.
--MC

The Shallow End

Years ago, a place called Atomic City sold MC the perfect t-shirt for Herr Cranky. On the front was a bare-chested man with the words "Victor Mature lives" written across his pecs and abs. The anguished dude's thought bubble read: "I wish I was deep instead of just macho." The Crankies were never quite sure why deep and macho were mutually exclusive, but ambiguity about Victor Mature's character didn't get in the way of their sartorial pleasure.

So now MC's enjoyment of contemporary memoirs has left her feeling that her own character is about an inch deep. David Sedaris and Rhoda Janzen's rip-roaring tales of substance abuse, emotional apocalypse,  and entertainingly wacko relatives didn't encourage self-doubt. Anne Lamott's essays, however, always leave MC scuffling her shoes in the dirt thinking, I could be a better person if I just meditated more. I should ask my neighbors to share their reflective personal insights. I should swim with seals more often.

Extra helpings of meditation could only improve MC's operating system, true enough. But her neighbors are already sufficiently sage. And on the whole, she doesn't see herself snorkeling with seals. Aquatic mammals can be plenty profound, but MC, sadly, is much too distracted to appreciate their offerings unless they come with English subtitles. Compared to Lamott's thoughtful spirituality, MC is decidedly swimming in the shallow end.

People who make their living writing sensitively about single motherhood really should have zen-master-type moments in the middle of traffic. The rest of us, however, show our breeding and character by not bringing firearms to the pediatrician's waiting room. Cranky 2 recently reactivated her strep throat, and MC repeated the familiar routine of doctor's office, pharmacy, and frozen fruit bars. In a waiting room of children dripping with viruses and bacteria, the selection of pregnant-mommy magazines and Fox News broadcasts creates an atmosphere that the CIA could productively use to extract information from suspected terrorists. And yet the parental units of these little petri dishes purposefully douse themselves with hand sanitizer and exit with scripts for Amoxicillin. MC thinks that germ-encrusted politeness is perhaps the height of civil discourse.

There's a time and a place for depth of character. The Richard Nixon impeachment hearings, for example. And happily, Barbara Jordan knew just what to say:

My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

MC wishes she could manufacture pithy, quotable verbage like that on demand. Delivering stirring oratory is probably not in the cards for MC; however, a recently installed statue of Representative Jordan at Big State University invites one to reflect on depth of character, statesmanship, and why flawless enunciation and a baritone register sounds so, well, deep. C2 demonstrates what you can do after all that thoughtful reflection.
--MC