Has anyone seen this one before?

So I'm in the ladies' room sitting on a toilet when someone else came in and entered the stall next to me. As I finished my business, an expensive, flowery smell filled the air. "Wow!" I thought to myself. "That's quite an improvement over my usual business! I wonder what I could have eaten..."

Of course my poop still stinks the same as everyone else's. The young lady in the stall next door was frantically spritzing perfume into the air as she pooped, apparently so that I might be fooled into thinking that her poop, literally, smells like roses.

I'm trapped in the heartland.

I am spending this weekend in my home town. Not only did I grow up here, but I went to LGU here. I got my Bachelor's degree here, and my Ph.D. as well. There are ghosts on every corner.

We have been coming back in the fall for a festival this area is famous for. It's difficult to describe; think of a Renaissance Faire and a Civil War reenactment mixed together and you won't be far off the mark. There are lots of people in costume, muskets, cannon, bits of dead animals hanging from trees, wood smoke and cider. When I was a kid, I helped man the French onion soup tent.

It's fun, kind of, to come home. However, Jesus has taken over my town. We rode out to the festival in a bus covered with "Jesus." Just "Jesus," printed in every imaginable font. There were lots of Jesus tee-shirts at the festival. (My favorite was worn by a young man escorting a young woman. They had their hands stuffed into each other's back pockets and a neutron couldn't have broken between their bodies. His shirt said, "Abstain to Attain!") All the radio stations are playing Jesus music ("Christian rock"); most of the local stations have been taken over by Moody Radio. The highways into and out of town are flanked by large glossy billboards that say things like, "Where will you spend eternity?" and "Hell is a real place!"

The Angry Baker says it has always been this way. I don't remember it so.

More impossible music.

If you're at all interested in the problems involved in getting sounds to one place at the same time, here is a near-horrifying description of what Philip White, chorus master of the Danish Royal Opera, must do as the singers move around on stage.

Hat tip, Mario!

Mailbag Monday: Edition "How to not get in to graduate school."

From: Paddy Travaille
To: Angry Professor
Re: Graduate School

Hello:

My name is Paddy and I am a junior at Another State University. I am just now beginning to look at graduate programs, and I am interested in what you do. My main interests are in [this discipline] and [that discipline] . Could you please email me back with more information about how you interact with graduate students, funding, and the LSU community? I know that most of this information is probably online, but I really want someone to tell me about it instead of looking it up myself. [Sic!]

Paddy

She's definitely mine, no matter what my mother-in-law says.

"Mommy, I love chocolate! I love it so much! I love it all the way to the Oort Cloud!"