Nippits are "nipple concealment devices" for women of fashion. From World of Longmire:

According to the Birmingham Business Journal, Knoxville is soon to have a new entry in its long-beleaguered apparel industry. A company called Nippits, Inc., manufactures special adhesive tape that helps fashionable ladies in thin dresses conceal their nipples from unwanted detection. The Nippit has reportedly already been worn by some of the most fabulously breasted women of Hollywood, including Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, and Angelina Jolie, and by Carrie-Anne Moss in the new sequels to The Matrix. Developer Sheila Johnson, a Birmingham entrepreneur and former model, and her physician husband Kraig Johnson have reportedly bought "manufacturing capacity at a factory in Knoxville, Tenn." They have sold more than 300,000 of the accessories at $5-10 per five-pair pack.

Longmire is a twisted bastard. I like him already.

U.S. Internet alum Hillary Meyer reports that Idleaire got Slashdotted yesterday. They're a local Knoxville company that makes trucking terminals that provide truck cabs with air conditioning, heating, Internet access, phone lines, cable TV and AC power so that the truck's engine doesn't have to idle all night. The company was founded by some of the same people who started U.S. Internet. Fellow U.S. Internet alum Chris Range of Celtic Grove announces a possible new direction for the startup:

Stay on the lookout for new licensed products including Idleaire Pull-Ups. They're absorbant, disposable pull-up underwear for bigger kids suffering from enuresis and nighttime incontinence. Plus they have the added benefit of in-pants air conditioning, Internet access and electrification.

Jay was saying the other day how a .410 pistol would be cool. The Thunder Five is a five-shot, .410 bore revolver made in Piney Flats, Tennessee.

Technically, Piney Flats is one county over, but Knoxville has its own gun-making history. According to Ian Hogg's "Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Firearms," a Knoxville firm known as Commando Arms Incorporated used to make a Thompson submachine gun clone called the Commando. Starke Patteson tells me that there's currently a Knoxville company who manufacturers gun barrels for Winchester, and is now tooling up for their own guns.