Workplace etiquette

An acquaintance of mine shared this memo, which a co-worker (who is, notwithstanding all indications to the contrary, a native speaker of English) circulated to everyone in their office yesterday:

Good Morning.
This has not occurred in several months. But it has been noticed at each incident. And this preliminary, hopefully, has allowed you to share some [...]

Back to the garden

This past weekend, we took an overnight trip to Asheville, North Carolina. While driving through downtown, distractedly gazing at the various shop-window displays of healing crystals, hemp clothing, and other new-age tchochkes, I nearly rammed into an SUV with a bumper sticker reading “Joy is My Compass”.
The day after my near-collision, I finished reading Foreskin’s [...]

Does it have a matching toilet paper dispenser?

Once again, it’s that time of the year when we are inundated with catalogs hawking endless arrays of useless merchandise. As Ann Bartow observes, some of the items are truly odd. But this one is by far the oddest I have ever seen:

Stone Statue Tissue Box Cover
For centuries, the giant stone statues on Easter [...]

Ceci n’est pas une compact

Every morning when I park my car in the lot across from the law school, I ask myself the same question: Who is the putz who routinely squeezes his Ford F-150 pickup truck into a spot fit for a Mini, and why is he (surely it is a “he”) such a putz?

The ties that bind

One of the few annoying aspects of my job (and, as annoyances go, this one is pretty tolerable) is that I’m expected to wear a tie to work. Even when I was practicing law, I never wore a tie unless I was appearing in court or some other formal proceeding. I suppose the relative formality [...]

A higher power

A letter in today’s Greensboro News & Record touches on a touchy issue for non-evangelicals living in the South:
The God I already have suits me fine, thanks
Lately, small groups of well-dressed, soft-spoken folks have knocked on our door.
They come bearing a message: Commit to their god. That would be my only path to heaven. So, [...]

More about Rapleaf

It seems Rapleaf is more than just annoying; it is downright creepy.
(Thanks to Crooked Timber for the tip.)

Ooops!

I committed a rather embarrassing blunder today, which I will blame partly on someone else’s poor website design, but mostly on my own haste.
I’ve been developing a research project on online social networking and reputation maintenance among law students, and have been perusing various social networking sites. Today I learned of a new (to me) [...]

Hello, do you have Prince Albert in a can

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been subject to a constant, and seemingly endless, stream of telephone solicitations from various outfits offering to consolidate my student loans. They appear to be taking advantage of the gap between my getting a new phone number and my signing up with the FTC’s do-not-call registry. Though, like everyone, [...]

Rear window

During our trip, we noticed what appears to be a new trend in annoying car decoration: rear-windshield decals with little stick-figures representing the family occupying the vehicle (inevitably a mini-van or SUV). The family depicted here evidently go around topless. And poor little Joi appears to have had some tragic accident that obliterated her face.