iChat Status Menu is "quirky"

have you tried opening up the iChat preferences, unchecking the menubar icon and then reactivating it to see if the behavour goes back to normal?

 

Try removing the long status messages.

 

thats cause your status messages are too large.

 

Yes they do. And it shouldn't be too difficult to do either... just truncate the away messages so that they are shorter...
Tiger, maybe?

reality