Aunt B! We Never Get to Dance Around Our Offices Anymore!

I know, I know. It’s been ages since I encouraged you to shut your office door and dance around like there’s nobody looking.

Sorry.

I’ve been remiss.

But, to make up for it, I bring you a song which contains a line that makes me blush like a school girl when I hear it. There are certain things men do–that deep, knowing laugh y’all get, that open, appreciative stare, and how R.L. Burnside says “See that moonlight shining through them trees, look at that woman with the dress above her knees,”–that part especially, “look at that women with the dress above her knees”–that just make me feel way too innocent, like I don’t yet know what goes on between grown folks after the kids have gone to bed.

And I think I could be laying there, in a tangle of pleased, exhausted bodies, unsure of which part belonged to which people, and still hear that line and feel like some men have their own mysteries about women that only get shared one way.

Miss Maybelle

Edited to add:  I don’t have sound on my computer because I’ve got the speakers plugged into my iPod and it occurs to me that I haven’t actually heard this version of the song.  I can only hope he still growls about knees and skirts.  If not, I’ll upload the other version when I get home.

Bill Hobbs Wins ‘Act Like Bill Hobbs Day’ Hands Down!

I know it’s a late entry, but when you read it, you’ll see why I had to give the crown to the king.

Every day I think, ‘There’s just no way that TNGOP head propagandist, Bill Hobbs, can top this!” and regularly he proves me wrong. And every day I think that he’ll be reigned in, at least by common sense, if not common decency, but no.

But today, today has to be the day that he writes a post so quintessentially Hobbsian that even he could not top it. This post is so genius it wades chest-deep through self-parody and comes out on the other side back into serious-post-land. This post… this post is… dare I say it?…

This post is the perfect Bill Hobbs post.

See how it starts out so reasonably? He finds a post that interests him, that has some data he thinks might be useful to his readers. He crafts normal sentences that one can read and say to herself, “yeah, that is interesting. I wonder what to make of that. Is it as simple as rural white racism?”

But then he leaps into being divorced from reality–“Actually, that’s not not surprising given the long racist history of the Democratic Party.” Could someone other than the head propagandist for the TNGOP make that point without making me howl with laughter?

Yes.

But Bill Hobbs? Bill Hobbs is going to try to pass the Tennessee Democratic Party off as the racist party in our state? The mind boggles.

Third paragraph, we leap out of self-parody into… into something glorious I don’t quite know how to name. What is this?

The party that raised identity politics to an art form in divisive partisan politics now may find it an intra-partisan cancer. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

See what I mean? It’s almost beautiful.

Sometimes, I like to say ludicrous stuff just to see if I can get away with it. For me, there’s that wonderful moment when you say something like “I never try to guilt people into doing things I’m perfectly capable of” when it just hangs there in the air, like a delicate bubble and you and the person you’re speaking to both know it’s ridiculous, but neither of you wants to let the moment pass, because you almost can’t believe something that contrary to reality could just hang there in the air without causing some kind of explosion or without causing the universe to collapse in on itself.

This usually ends with me laughing from the very bottom of my soul.

I could be wrong, but I kind of see that in Hobbs. Like, he must have some sense that there’s just no way anybody would seriously think that the Republicans were somehow less divisive and less concerned with identity politics. He must have sensed that, even as he was typing it, that it was the most ludicrous thing in the whole Nashville blogosphere.

And he must have wondered if his continued repeating of this idea that black people are just so stupid they’ll let Democrats lead them anywhere would actually work to prevent black people from voting Republican in great numbers.

He’s not stupid.

But he went for it anyway.

It’s wrong, but I can’t help but respect that a little bit.

The Tiny Cat Pants Afghan

It’s my two favorite pastimes combined into one!  I’m making an afghan!  For my blog!

I still haven’t decided how to get it to one of y’all, but it has a 50/50 chance of being butt ugly, so we might wait to see how it turns out before I give it away. 

Also, I know I said it was going to be a lot of blues, but I was rummaging around in my stash and found some very nice purple and red remnants and so they are going in, too.

My idea is to create panels of different widths, but using all the same stitches, and various stripes of things, and then sewing them all together.

I’m using this undulating pattern–two triple crochets, two double crochets, two half double crochets, two single crochets, and then back up.  I like the result, but it’s not going to be to everyone’s taste, for sure.

An Open Letter to the Tennessean

Dear Tennessean,

I regret to inform you that your online presence sucks so much that it about moves me to tears.  As you are aware, since it passed right over you, like it passed right over me, we had incredibly bad weather last night.

As I was flipping back and forth between the networks, watching to make sure that neither I nor the Butcher were in the line of fire, they said that I-40 was shut down for ten miles.  They said there might have been touchdowns in Fairview.

If that information is on your website, I can’t find it.  I can, however, discover how to cope with the emotional toll of the disaster and learn how to submit my own photos to your website.

May I remind you that you are a newspaper, not a social networking site?  Seriously, if people want to show the world pictures of their dogs, they can get a blog like the rest of us.  You, Sirs and Madams, should be a place where I can find out news.

I mean, for gods’ sake, I can easily find out on your website how awesome-o Brad Paisley is, but I cannot see who won the Democratic primary.

But I can go to WKRN and easily find the news that interests me.  WSMV is set up to give me all that information at a glance.  I can easily find their stories about the weather and about the primaries AND they let folks submit pictures of their dogs.

This morning you had two big stories you had to cover in your paper–the storm and the primaries.  And there on your front page, as of 7:50 a.m. is nothing about the primaries and the stuff you have about the storms is a mess. 

See, you are a newspaper and traditionally in newspapers, the most important news goes at the top of the page.  Over at WSMV, at the top of their page, I learn that there are 15 people dead from the storms in my immediate area and that Clinton won the primary.

Need I point out that, right now, at your site, the two highest stories on your page are about some people who survived the storm and the afore mentioned “how to get in touch with your storm feelings” story.

I survived the storm, too!  I have feelings!  I’m not on the front of your website.

BECAUSE THE FACT THAT I SURVIVED THE STORM AND HAVE FEELINGS IS NOT NEWS.

Gah.

In Disgust,

Aunt B.