"Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York..."

"... every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves."

I warned you I was going to do this. Come on. Play along. (And, no, I wasn't thinking about Andy Kaufman when I dreamed this up. It was all a riff on that Baz Luhrmann trailer for the new "Great Gatsby" movie.)

So, now, let's talk about oranges and lemons. The phrase "oranges and lemons" appears twice in the sentence, unchanged, even as the oranges and lemons themselves are changed. That's the whole action of the sentence, the transformation of oranges and lemons in one form into oranges and lemons in another form. Here they are on Friday, in crates, and here they are on Monday in "a pyramid." That is, they have become, in that alluded-to time period  — the weekend — a pile of garbage. But the pile is called "a pyramid," A pyramid! We're called upon to think of the grand erections of pharaohs, in comparison to crates from the lowly little character with the silly-sounding occupation "fruiterer."

Are the crates even stacked up? There's the absurd and obviously false notion that the fruit has been improved by whatever it was that went on in that house over the weekend. That absurdity calls upon us to think about the people who arrived and left, the people who ate all that fruit. But of course, they didn't eat it. They drank it. The pulp was extracted for use in alcoholic mixtures, and if the fruit emerged from the weekend as "pulpless halves," then, we may infer, so did the people. We don't hesitate to keep calling them human, yet we see the inaptness of calling the mere rinds "lemons and oranges." Even if you could conceptualize the big pile of rinds as a pyramid, you'd easily perceive it as garbage. Since that perception is easy, we have energy left to think about what is more difficult. Who are these people?

The "Dull Men's Club."

"Dull-men's groups—and the sentiment behind them—have been around for some time."

No topic is too small or large. ...

"I have a question," piped up Scott MacInness, a 75-year-old retired machinist. "We have a person living up near where I am who apparently isn't carrying a full sea bag. How do we get this person to stop throwing all their trash in the recycling tub?"

Suggestions ranged from "stand out there sometime" to "get inside the thing and when he opens it, go 'aha!' "

Mr. MacInness hopped up to refill his coffee.

"Can I ask you a question?" another man shouted to him. "Why do you carry a spoon?"

Mr. MacInness tapped his pocket and confirmed that he does indeed faithfully carry a spoon. "Because you can't stir a cup of coffee with that little brown plastic straw! It will not make the sugar mix!"

"What the hell you need sugar for?" shouted another member, igniting a conversation about the taste of black coffee.

How much respect did the demonstrators show for the State Capitol grounds?

Here are some photographs taken yesterday by Meade (my husband) at the demonstration against Gov. Scott Walker's budget plan:



"If I'm a GREAT worker WHY are you treating me THIS WAY?" — an abandoned sign pleads.





"Hands Off," says a sign that no one touches.



"Educators... care..." enough to leave signs to be trampled into the texture of the wet concrete.



"Proud" pile of dirty snow promises to "fight."

***

(I attended the Tea Party rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol last year on April 15th, and I did not see a scrap of litter left behind. Participants not only took care to leave no trash of their own, they looked around and made sure no one else did.)

UPDATE: Four days into the protests, we observed that the protesters have done a great job of keeping litter off the Capitol grounds. More here.

"Even the dead can't escape the ineptitude of the city's Sanitation Department."

"Sanitation crews dumped tons of dirty snow from the Christmas-weekend blizzard into the city's biggest Jewish cemetery, toppling 21 gravestones and wrecking an iron fence."

When does garbage get good press?

Only when it does something truly heroic.

Why can't we celebrate the little things, the random acts of kindness committed by garbage every day of the week?

(Just an idea for someone who's looking to start one of those narrow-specialty blogs.)

"The worst thing I ever smelled was a 40-yard dumpster full of shrimp shells fermenting outside of a cannery in Kodiak."

"I came very close to losing my lunch. You could actually see a heavier-than-air fog of ammonia rolling out of the top of the bin, but I wasn't allowed to puke. I worked for the company that picked up all the cannery offal and recycled it into useful products. I actually deserve some kind of eco-medal."

Said Tyrone Slothrop at 8:33 PM in the comments on my post mocking the notion that it's romantic to roast lobster on a stick in your fireplace. That made me 1. wonder what's the worst thing I've ever smelled and 2. realize I'd never smelled anything truly awful. I remember one time, back in the 70s in NYC, we bought some expensive cheese at Dean & DeLuca, and it smelled exactly like shit. We thought we were sophisticated. At first. When we ate it. Then we thought we were stupid. And we stopped eating it. But if you want to compare notes with Tyrone Slothrop, you've obviously got to come up with something that smells worse than shit.

***

Don't criticize me for writing a blog post on this subject. Do you realize that I'm not allowed to work today? I'm literally forbidden by the state. There was something I wanted to do too!

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene says: "I think furlough day is tomorrow??" Oh, that's true! It's Wednesday. I keep thinking it's Thursday. Okay, then. I'm all about transforming the syllabus!

At the Litter & Poo Café...

... did you Obamadisonians clean up after yourself as well as the Tea Partiers do?

This would be funnier if it were a Queen-size.

Eco-tourism, the guilt-trip.

Enough whale-watching for you. Time for urban cruise where the sightseeing is the pollution and blight of L.A. harbor.

On a drizzly afternoon, a group of tourists huddle aboard the Christopher sipping wine, nibbling cookies and gazing out at the ocean just off Long Beach. Cameras dangle from their necks, ready to record the sights....

Corroded metal shipping containers, belching smokestacks, trash-strewn waterways and oil islands highlight this harbor cruise.

The 2 1/2 -hour excursion takes passengers through a seascape short on the picturesque but full of concrete and metal -- a ride through exhaust-tinged air and past power plants, rusty warehouses and the Terminal Island prison that once housed Charles Manson and Al Capone.

What's with the wine and cookies? Shouldn't it be something more medicinal and off-flavored? Wheatgrass juice and vegan sushi, maybe.

(I must admit, I would enjoy this cruise. 1. Great photo-ops. 2. Reality is always beautiful/interesting from a safe distance.)

In the Pacific Ocean, there is an island of trash the size of Texas.

"The vortex of currents which pushes the debris together is known as the North Pacific Gyre."

My own private how-to-throw-out-the-trash echo chamber -- re-echoing!

Today was the day to get all the accumulated junk out of the garage and out to the curb for pick up tomorrow -- trash day. I hired two teenagers, children of a colleague, to do the heavy lifting. Big trash bags, two loveseats, a bed, a beach umbrella, a basketball backstop, plywood, a metal desk, sleds, and some big rolls of carpet. Wait a minute! Can you throw out rolls of carpet here in Madison, Wisconsin, or are these among the things that they won't pick up?

Hang on a minute! Let me check the web and see what the rules are again.

A quick Google turns up:

My own private how-to-throw-out-the-trash echo chamber.

I've blogged before about the difficulties of throwing out the trash properly in Madison. In fact, today, as I was thinking about how to throw a few things out this week, I Googled "madison trash collection" and the second thing on the list was my own previous fretting about how to throw out the trash properly in Madison.

At least the first thing on the list seems to be official rules, but no, that's not Madison, Wisconsin! Google again: "madison wisconsin trash collection." And now the first thing on the list is me fretting about how to throw out the trash properly in Madison! I just hope that if there are other people in Madison struggling with the age-old question of how to throw your trash out properly in Madison and they end up here at my blog, they find it a bit amusing, and not incredibly annoying, because it really already is incredibly annoying to try to figure out how to throw out the trash in Madison.

The worst thing is when you try to do it right and they don't take it, and then you've got to drag it back in from the street and try to figure out a different way to proffer it next week. I tried throwing out a blind, and they didn't take it. Did they just not see it? What else can I do? There's no way to fold it or tie it or put it in anything. So I just continue to harbor it by the side of my house, probably irritating my neighbors who are the ones in a position to see it. I have a bunch of chairs and a heavy table to throw out. Let's see, this looks like the right information, and, based on this there is no reason to think I can't just put the furniture right out there on trash day. But no way am I going to put all the things out at one time. I'm going to play it safe and just put out a test chair this week.

Damn it! I try to find stuff out, and I just find myself, complaining about just finding myself!

Anyway, in case you're wondering, you can throw out rolls of carpet in Madison, Wisconsin. But if they're over 8 feet long, you've got to bend the rolls in half and duct tape them in that position.