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Hi, Diary. … Well. … This is awkward.

I’m into the idea of specialized units of measurement lately, names insular groups might use to define common amounts. A good unit of measurement captures the standard amount or size or impact of stuff in question while still managing to sound special or important. You don’t want your unit of measurement to exaggerate; that’s why “assload,” fun as it is to say, doesn’t really work. The obscenity gives it a heft beyond its literal meaning, and people picture a gigantic pile when really, the average human ass only carries a load of six ounces or so at any given time. But go around saying, “I need seven assloads of peaches” and you’re bound to receive a bag big enough to make pies for the entire homeless population of New Jersey, with enough left over for a Texas portion of cobbler.

Unless we mean the amount that a donkey can carry. But that takes the fun out of it. Nobody wants their assload to have Biblical overtones. “And lo, the wise men brought assloads of myrrh for the newborn king.” Mmmm. Myrrh cobbler.

Back to good units of measurement. Picture, if you can, a coffee klatsch of serial killers. Now, I’m aware that serial killers are typically not the most socially outgoing lot. The nightly news cliche would have them be the quiet types, loners, aloof. But it’s conceivable that there existed at some point in the recent past a Meetup group for serial killers that connected every third Wednesday at the Starbucks on Highway 7 for biscotti and chai. When discussing their latest accomplishments, how would they take measure? Body bags? Too redundant — a body is already a body, and therefore not in need of another name. Besides, a really advanced serial killer isn’t going to be leaving bodies intact, right? One could measure by the size of the victim, but murderers — especially the crazy ones who kill methodically and frustrate private detectives with nothing to lose — rarely feel a thrill based on bulk. If they did, we could just borrow hunting lingo and allow our group to chat about the six-point buck from last Tuesday night in the parking garage. No, a serial killer prizes the difficulty of the kill, the execution so perfect it sends a message without getting the killer caught.

To measure this difficulty of getting away with murder, the best unit of measurement would clearly be an OJ. We wouldn’t choose a Ripper (for Jack, natch) because the unit must represent something average and attainable. OJ wasn’t renowned for being the world’s most accomplished murderer; on the contrary, he’s quite famous for getting away with it almost by accident. So our serial killers could easily attain six or seven OJs in the course of a career. Collateral damage or sloppy first-time efforts could rate 1/3 an OJ. A particularly elegant and difficult assassination could be a triple-OJ, or a glove trick.

On to recycling sorters. I imagine that a constant problem in the life of a recycling sorter is coming across disgusting crap that should have ended up in the trash. (I admit, I have inadvertently put disgusting crap in my recycling from time to time, but I suspect that this is like peeing in the shower: everyone’s done it, but everybody wants somebody else to admit they’ve done it first.) Disgusting crap could be anything from a cottage cheese container that someone forgot to clean out to a newspaper that was used to line a bird cage to a milk jug full of indeterminate, colorful liquid. Sitting in the break room, our heroic sorters surely compare notes about the amount and quality of disgusting crap they’ve had to sort out of the recycling stream that day.

How about a diaper? It’s a discrete unit that clearly conjures up something dirty turning up surprisingly in something that looks so clean from the outside, and it’s small enough to still describe the many little instances of ick that can nonetheless pack a powerful repulsive punch. Plus, it’s readymade for adjectival color. “I hit three of the dirtiest diapers in a row this morning. I need some whiskey for this coffee.” “That’s nothing. I found a diaper inside another diaper on the glass conveyor.”

Something less gross and/or disturbing? Fine. News organizations are often flummoxed when it comes to estimating the scope of a political rally, protest, or astroturfed event. They flail around with attendance figures in the hopes of conveying the popular appeal of the political movement, but what does one learn from hearing “one million moms”? (Personally, I picture the world’s grimmest sale at Mervyn’s.) Besides, the media knows you don’t care about the mathematical figure. This ain’t voting. Protests are about the amount of crazy. How many crazy people showed up? How many crazies actually got to speak? How many crazies were invited and paid to speak? Were there crazy people on fucking stilts walking around? How about people wearing crazy hats and/or wigs and/or puppet heads and/or sunglasses? Did any of them drive a cop crazy enough to bust out the rubber bullets? How will the amount of crazy affect my commute?

The trick to a good name here is to avoid any judgement of the politics in question. Right now, it would be easy pickings to go with something like “teapots” or “grizzlies,” but I remember, in the not-so-distant past, attending several fervent rallies just chock full of crazies in opposition to Bush, in which the words at hand would have been a “dreadlock” of crazy, or “a rally with the same size, attendance and impact of any non-suburban weekday farmer’s market.”

No, let’s stay neutral here, and describe rally/protest crowds in terms of placards. Like the humble bumper sticker, the political rally placard is the ultimate expression of political pith for the average American. I believe it is every politically aware citizen’s deepest desire to someday march out into the sun in front of the community, God, and the news cameras with the cleverest slogan the world has ever seen. By counting up the variety and number of be-sloganed placards in a crowd, the media may neatly and accurately sum up the amount of time, effort, and crazy that went into any given protest.

In fact, the general preponderance of placards in rallies at the past 10 years can stand in for the general rise in rancor in our political debates. How many signs bearing witticisms do you think one would spot at a Montgomery sit-in, or at antebellum anti-slavery gatherings, or in the town squares of Lexington and Concord? It’s not like the technology is particularly new (though modern posterboard and permanent marker technology are often underrated, having once given Ma and Pa Kettle as much new freedom to express themselves on the cheap as today’s Twitter).

“Today, at the capitol, Governor Perry told a crowd of 175 placards that he thinks it’s time for Texas to secede. Nearby, a counter-protest of five placards and a bullhorn was cordoned off by police. Angry words were exchanged, and there was some placard-on-placard fighting, but the day ended peaceably.”

If this were an article on a celebrity gossip site, I would end this entry by comment whoring — “What do you think? Should a pack of talentless transvestites be known as a Gaggle of Gagas?” — but the last thing I want is a porn-spam of commentary to moderate, so just hit me up on Facebook if you feel the need to share.

Or do it here. I couldn’t give an assload.