fussy, fusty, ill-conceived, awkward, lacking in self awareness, mismatched, trying too hard

Ugh. Dowdy writing. It just gets so... skeevy. That creeping sensation is due to vicarious embarrassment for the writer and personal embarrassment at even reading it, I think.

And you know, struggling to define it better, I can't seem to get round it with another descriptor that's as good. Once I hit on that adjective and it snapped into place as exactly what I meant, it got harder.

Miss Manners delivers two smack-downs

In today's column, asshole #1 is surprised that a strange woman in a parking lot didn't like being told that it would have been sooooo easy for her to park her cart 10 steps further away from his nice, new car, and asshole #2 is shocked, SHOCKED, that his brother, an absentee father without custody, doesn't get to give his daughter away at the wedding, and wonders if the proper response to the "vindictiveness" of the "money-grubbing" maternal family is to beat them all down in the restroom. It's not surprising so much when people are rude and clueless. It's always a bit more surprising when they're being rude and earnestly believe it's other people who are being rude to them, though...

In a final, unrelated note of sadness, I have to wait to see the new Bones until Wax is home, and that sucks.