Holy panties, Batman!

I don't find "Mormon underwear" any more peculiar than other religious body decor. Jews have Hasidic headgear; Catholics wear Crucifix jewelry. And don't forget Church-of-God coolots.

Here's a hilarious send-up on the subject anyway, with a cast of Christian characters straight out of a Flannery O'Connor story.

"It's a question Ruben Israel and his band of brothers at Bible Believers — "Preaching at big events for over two decades" — are only too happy to answer. Brother Ruben et al have brought a genuine article of Mormon underwear all the way from Los Angeles so that delegates may personally examine the offending garment in the halls of the RNC."

Have I got a deal for you

Megan McArdle explains Amway, et al:

"We are most vulnerable to Ponzi schemes and other confidence tricks when we start to believe that we can cheat the universe—that we can get something for nothing. The best con men succeed mostly because we are so desperate to believe them."

I got a bit much Scotch-Irish skinflint in me to fall innocently for a line (the flip-side being I'm a Doubting Thomas about everything).

Meanwhile, here's my favorite Reba McEntire song. Has she got a deal for you.

Academics and atrocious writing

Those with book learnin' often can't or won't write a straightforward sentence. They write to get published.

"Supervisors typically preach stylistic caution [to their postgraduate students]; they want their students to demonstrate mastery of disciplinary norms, not to push against disciplinary boundaries. Editors and referees, likewise, are often more intent on self-cloning than on genuine innovation or empowerment. Peer-reviewed publications, meanwhile, offer a range of stylistic models that are at best unadventurous and at worst downright damaging. .  .  . Academics who learn to write by imitation will almost inevitably pick up the same bad habits."

Somebody give her a hell, yeah

A Detroit prosecutor runs rapists to ground.

"The thousands of rape kits had piled up in a dusty police warehouse in Detroit for years, ignored, until one of Worthy’s colleagues stumbled upon them in 2009. Since then, an outraged Worthy has been fighting to get the kits logged, tested for DNA, and then entered into the national DNA database."

Lunch doggeh

There's no 'I' in team

I'm watching the RNC convention. Wall-to-wall sis-boom-bah-the-other-guy-sucks. Cue the same tape in Charlotte. This--along with a recent habit of watching re-runs of "The Office"--makes me remember "team-building" workplace exercises of yore.

Gawd. Fall backward into co-worker's arms to boost trust! Take the Myers-Briggs and discover you have the same profile as Hitler! Use an afternoon Mountain Dew buzz to shout wild and random "ideas" at your boss, frantically scribbling your rants onto a whiteboard during the workshop's brain-storming session!

Good times.

 

Robert Johnson

Hellhound on my trail today, y'all.

Kitteh goes to strip club; pratfalls, injuries ensue

'On the Greyhound to Tampa'

The underclass is always with us. But lo, there are so many, so many of them these days.

This blogger writes about the disconnect between the have-nots and the rest of America:

"Politicians used to talk to, and about, the poor. There was the 'War on Poverty.' And Jack Kemp – who GOP Vice Presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan cites as one of his role models — was a vocal conservative voice for the centrality of the poor and working class to American public policy.
But over the last several decades, those same people have found themselves increasingly marginalized by both parties as they have focused on a narrow band of middle class swing voters."

Mid-day kittehs

From the LOLcat archives.

Appalachian spring

Have you seen TLC's reality series "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo," about perceived white trash and the Southern girl pageant circuit?

This writer says the show is just another outlet for sanctimony.

"This idea that the hillbilly’s poverty is a choice allows more upscale Americans to feel comfortable while laughing at the antics before them."

This commentator believes we should hold off judging pageant mom June Shannon.

"More important, the stay-at-home matriarch seems to genuinely enjoy her chalk-miner husband, nicknamed 'Sugar Bear,' and to love all her daughters for who they are. The kids have what they need. They seem secure and happy. What exactly is the problem here?"

I think that's about right. But hey, I'm a hillbilly. I cut my people (and myself) lots of slack.

Todd Akin weighs in on abortion; columnist swats him down

Hee-sterical takedown of  men's micro-managing of women's hoo-haws.

Note to Esquire, et al

To old media with web pages that load properly only on desktops--not tablets and phones: You have a 1998 phone call from print newspapers with a cautionary tale.

Catch up with your web design strategies or go the way of the metro afternoon daily, and really the whole buying-ink-by-the-barrel gang.

So says this blogger.

"For all these reasons, Web companies should focus on building a unified experience that can work across every gadget. In an ideal world, the mobile site wouldn’t be an offshoot of the desktop site—the desktop site would be the same as the mobile site, a clean, quick-loading page that looked good on every gadget."

What a way to make a living

I've found lots to read about the dynamics of white-collar offices of late.

Here are "the 5 most useless motivational tactics every office uses," according to cracked.com.

"There's no way to spin a 'our success is your success' speech into something that doesn't sound like utter bullshit unless employees are getting a cut, and even when they are, it just means that they're generally forced into a position where they look at co-workers as competition rather than people in the same boat, so you're just as unhappy at work. If you are happy at work and don't feel this way at all, consider yourself lucky, and maybe also consider that everyone you work with may hate you."

Dolly P. feels your pain.

Your evening kitteh

From icanhascheezburger.com.

Night, y'all.

Writing tips from those who know

I cannot pick a favorite among these "30 indispensable writing tips from famous authors." Though I'm thinking it might be #17 (pictured).

America's smartest cities

I've lived in two of the 25 cited by The Daily Beast--Raleigh/Durham and Denver.

Pictured: Duke University Chapel

Hypochrondria in the age of Google and Osama

The New Yorker nails the essence of the malady of imagined maladies with this book review.

"For example, my therapist tells me that to worry unceasingly about getting cancer is as irrational as worrying about getting hit by a bus on Flatbush Avenue. In fact, I am terrified of getting hit by a bus on Flatbush Avenue, and I think he is the madman for being so cavalier on the subject. Has he been out there recently? Belling says that hypochondria is 'always ironic,' by which she means that, despite all its convolutions, hypochondria is always right. You will get sick and die. The question is only when and how. The bus is coming."

Squeak posing

A kitty with a soul, she was. I wanted to temper my earlier post with something I wrote a while back about the dearest kitty I have known:

A cat of note that I knew and loved died Sunday. Squeakus Maximus was singular, and I will mourn her always.

She had an epic full name, though she answered to just Squeak.  She came to me when I lived in a large country rancher. I wondered whether and how she would adjust when she went with me to a small downtown condo. Such a radical shift takes the starch out of some animals. Not Squeak. Oh, hell no.

She loved life on Kiowa Street. I didn’t let her outside, but she managed to maintain a friendship with the dog down the hall, sight unseen. She raced to the door when he walked his owner by for his morning and evening constitutionals, sniffing at the threshold and sounding her call.

She took to city living, sashaying around her place. She liked to lick lotion off my hands, a ritual we honored each night. She came when I called to her when I first woke, leaping on the bed with aplomb.

Named for a supporting character from “The Color Purple,” Squeak was both catty and sweet, with a witty wildness about her. She was a flat-out card.

When I moved to a house in a small town last fall, Squeak came into her own. She won the heart of her feline housemate, a cat with a reputation for standoffishness and dominance over other kitties. But like the rest of us, Smusch could not long resist. Smusch—in late middle age—sometimes rolled her eyes at and strolled haughtily away from the little black flibberjgigit. But she loved her. We all did, every one who spent a moment with Squeak.

In her new digs, Squeak got to go outside for the first time to explore. She was stuck up a tree for a weekend, but she came down when she was ready. She sharpened her claws in the great outdoors and watched the geese next door with wonder and disdain. And she grew. I don’t mean that she simply gained weight. She grew in length from a petite cat to merely smallish, as if she were adjusting to her new, bigger world.

My partner Deborah found her little body on the side of the street Sunday morning after we went looking for Squeak. It appears a car hit her. Her spirit, though, has since visited us a few times.

I woke Monday morning and called to her to jump on the bed before I remembered she was gone.

In the movie, Squeak’s namesake leaves home to make her mark in the jook-joint blues world. When we realized Sunday that our Squeak had left us, Deborah said softly, “Squeak has gone to sing.”

Squeak, you have a place to stop and rest from your travels anytime. We are so proud to have known you.

 

 

'Oh, god. Here she comes again'

There's always that one co-worker up in everybody's business.

Time says open floor plans encourage office dysfunction.

"And indeed, several decades of research have confirmed that open-plan offices are generally associated with greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment."

In my work experience, an open-floor-plan newsroom is functional because reporters are solitary and independent. That's the nature of the work and what the "beat" system promotes. You cover the Alcoa City Council and I go to the Blount County Commission and rarely shall the twain meet.

So it's not necessarily about walls. The final five years or so of my career, I had a separate office with a close-able door 30 feet from my nearest co-worker's office. Didn't stop me from muttering some variation of my headline when I heard her footsteps.

Every workplace has some mix of these characters from "The Office." Plus Meredith. Do not forget Meredith.

Kittehs are sociopaths

There is nothing on earth sweeter than a cat when he wants to be. I adore felines, but don't doubt that my headline is true.

So sorta says this research. The University of Georgia rigged kittehs with cameras to see what they do all day while you're out earning their kibble:

"Between November 2010 and October 2011, the "Kitty Cams" captured more than 2,000 hours of life in the seedy underbelly of neighborhood fauna, revealing that Princess Fluffywuffykins and her fuzzied ilk are likely killing a lot more critters than the precious gifts they leave for you and your dustpan on the doorstep."

After looking at the LOLcat photos at the end of the above article, you should be fine with the death and dismemberment. I know I am.

(Maniacal laugh)

Phelps wins 19th medal

The most-medaled athlete in the modern Olympics is 420-friendly. Just sayin.'

Your early afternoon LOLcat

Commentary on our cognitive dissonance

The Economist nails America's economic "schizophrenia":

Excerpt: America needs a serious debate both about the size and scope of government, and how to pay for it. The winner of the November election will immediately be faced with the problem of the “fiscal cliff”—a preset $400 billion tax increase, with the expiry of various tax cuts, and a $100-billion-a-year cut in spending—which could push the economy back into recession. Looming over that is the gaping deficit. And over that, America’s schizophrenia: it taxes itself like a small-government country, but spends like a big-government one.

Nudie suits

A downtown restaurant I'm trying soon--The Southern--has a dish named for the Rhinestone style sported by Elvis, Porter Wagoner, and many, many more (pictured is the designer himself in one of his get-ups).

It's the height of glamor meets tacky. Sorta like Music City itself.

Roll some Yoakam while you read. Best Elvis cover ever.