Like many people, we Trujillos have problems with “stuff.” Problems not as in “We can’t get enough stuff,” but as in, “We have simply too much stuff.”

Let me explain:

A trip to Samaritan House or Salvation Army is supposed to put our household on a diet: The intention is to take clean, usable stuff to either repository in order to 1) help someone else out, 2) help keep a few people employed and 2) help clear out our own place.

But when we return from these places with much more than we took, the “stuff” issue gets exacerbated. The same goes for this column: I have millions of ideas for each week (I’m approaching 500 columns, from May 2003, never having missed a week), and lots of submissions from readers. Sometimes it’s difficult to get to these contributions, and they accumulate like a lot of our “stuff.”

On that note, I wish to conduct a kind of house- and mind-clearing, including a host of random ideas, just before the new year.

I’m working on an occasional feature to Work of Art called “In An Ideal world,” abbreviated simply IAIW. It may include linguistic gems I’m fond of, childhood memories, submissions from readers, and in short, whatever random thoughts need to be disseminated.

So here goes:

• In an ideal world, nobody who pronounces it “jew-ler-ree” would ever be allowed to use the P.A. system at Walmart. If people can say “jewel,” they can say “jewel-ry.”
• In an ideal world, people wouldn’t text while driving. At the Seventh and Mills traffic light, I needed to tap my horn to awaken a woman in a white SUV who’d apparently decided to nap while texting. As my horn removed her from her slumber, she suddenly jerked the vehicle and took off, but that lasted only until Mills and Grand. Another wake-up honk, and she’s on her way. She drove the van to the city offices, where I assume she finished her texting.
• In an ideal world, no-parking signs around the Plaza would mean something.
• IAIW, there would be some semblance of cooperation among school districts as to first and last days of school, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, and even starting times. And it’s strange that during the heavy snows of late, some schools close, some don’t.
• IAIW, there wouldn’t be the pep rally mentality in the audience when Texas Gov. Rick Perry draws applause by announcing in a debate that his state has executed more prisoners than any other.
• IAIW, Americans would take as a joke Newt Gingrich’s Republican candidacy for president of the United States. Gene Lyons expressed it so well on Dec. 7, when he wrote, “Metaphorically speaking, Gingrich’s candidacy is the love child of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, with Fox News throwing the baby shower.”
• IAIW, some readers know how to get right to the point. I recently wrote about a new movie that casts doubts on whether William Shakespeare really was the author of works like “Macbeth,” “King Lear,” “Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar.” In that column I promised to write about this issue, after I’ve watched the movie. Meanwhile, reader Betty Quick made an incisive point when she wrote, “The works attributed to William Shakespeare were not written by William Shakespeare. They were written by another man with the same name.”

• • •

Going over dusty tomes in the catacombs of the Optic, Martin Salazar, the managing editor, was able to locate original files for exactly 100 years ago. Readers no doubt got to read about yester-century in the Page 1 feature.

One word that got my attention was “comprise.” Many times, when I taught, I’d ask students to use that word in a sentence. Without fail, they appeared to know the word has something to do with composition, the elements of something, but, regrettably most — as in about 95 percent — got it wrong.

Most said something like, “The United States is comprised of 50 states. Wrong-o, Blackboard Breath. There is no such use of “comprised of.” Period.

Let me explain:

Compose and comprise are not synonymous. Comprise is akin to “embrace,” and it refers to the larger object containing (embracing) smaller units. So, well-intentioned as my students were, they ought to have said something like, “The United States comprises 50 states,” “The year comprises 12 months,” “New Mexico comprises 33 counties,” but it is not, it is never, “comprised of” anything.

The use of the word in 1911 Optic files reads, “This marks the completion of the sewer system Section B which comprised the entire ‘hill’ district of the city.”

They got it straight in 1911, so why can’t people get it straight this year?

“Comprise” just happens to be among the top 10 misused words in English, this century.

• • •

Vangie, who’d make me swoon when we were teens, is a girl I once wrote about who included “whatever” in every verbal exchange. Even when she gladly accepted my invitation for dinner and a movie, she used that word.

Well, it turns out that the Marist Poll just this week announced that for the third consecutive year, “whatever” was named the most annoying word in casual English conversation. The word joins other expressions, according to the poll, like “like,” “you know,” “seriously” and “just sayin’.”

It was more than 50 years ago and it cost me $4.50 for two steaks at El Alto and $1.30 for movie tickets. Vangie must have been prescient at such an early age. She chose a word that’s an automatic put-down, even when I’m the one doing the treating. I wonder if she knew of the long-lasting impact that word would have well into the year 2011.