Because this is America, that’s why. Arming murderous maniacs is just the way we roll.

“He’s kind of a neatnik in his yard,” said Skaggs, the co-developer who built Rivergreen 20 years ago. “You’d see all the little clippings sitting in little plastic bags waiting for pickup every week.” Indeed, on a recent afternoon, a black garbage bag filled with yard clippings still sat in Boucher’s driveway in front of his three-car garage…

Like most everyone else in the Rivergreen development, Goodwin told me, Boucher pays in the ballpark of $150 a month for professional landscaping, while Paul insists on maintaining his yard himself. Goodwin said that part of what nagged at Boucher was the difference in grass length between his lawn and that of his libertarian neighbor’s. “He had his yard sitting at a beautiful two-and-a-half, three inches thick, where Rand cuts it to the nub,” Goodwin said.

… Also at issue, according to Goodwin, is Paul’s tendency to mow outward at the edge of his property, spraying his clippings into Boucher’s yard. Boucher, he said, has asked Paul to instead mow inward when near the boundary line, and even sought help from the Rivergreen Homeowners Association but has gotten no relief.

Goodwin recalled picking up Boucher, a devout Catholic, at his home after church one Sunday afternoon several years ago. Boucher had confronted Paul about his yard-maintenance practices a few minutes before Goodwin’s arrival, to no avail, and Goodwin saw Boucher grow agitated as they both watched Paul blow grass onto his lawn. “I’ve asked him and I’ve asked him and I’ve asked him,” Goodwin recalls Boucher fuming. “How long can you sit there taking someone plucking a hair out of your nose?” Goodwin asked. “How long could you take that before losing your temper?”

… But across Bowling Green, sympathy for either man appears to be in short supply. Goodwin described them as “two little shits” who have brought embarrassment upon the town.

***************************

SING IT:

[YUM-YUM, PEEP-BO & PITTI-SING]
Two little shits are we!
One little shit who, grasses snipping
Blows ‘cross the line offensive clippings
Must undergo relentless whipping —
Two little shits are we
Two little shits are we!

During one lecture, a student asked a question I’ve heard many times: “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” My response was and is always the same: We didn’t evolve from monkeys. Humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. One ancestral population evolved in one direction toward modern-day monkeys, while another evolved toward humans. The explanation clicked for most students, but not all, so I tried another. I asked the students to consider this: Catholics are the oldest Christian denomination, so if Protestants evolved from Catholics, why are there still Catholics?

Be as Philip cutting through The Forest of Thorns and heal the pains of thought!

Our native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with a pale cast of professors. Your state’s universities lead the nation in ruddy red-blooded, black coal’d, athleticism. As it is said:

Among the top seeds in the March Madness NCAA men’s basketball tournament is the University of Louisville. The public university is known nationally for almost nothing except its ability to translate its success on the basketball court into money.

As it is said:

Ladies and gentlemen, sports fans of all demographic ages, Nike jersey and sneaker sizes, your University of Kentucky Wildcats!

Finally, a team without false collegiate pretense, a team that plays on courts stripped of scholastic varnish. Finally, a team fronted by a major university that knows we know that this team now annually has the same relationship to college as pigeons do to stone soldiers standing in town squares.

No team, as politicians vowing partial truths say, is “more transparent.” No team has made it so clear that its full scholarship recruits aren’t “student-athletes,” but assembled to spend seven months using Kentucky as a luxurious basketball facility.

Kentucky, your universities are luxurious basketball facilities. They are almost nothing but sports-revenue generators. You waste barely a spikelet of bluegrass, barely a burp of bourbon, on the weariness, the fever, and the fret, of consciousness. You are the nation’s true Sleeping Beauty.

**********************
UD thanks John.

[University of Kentucky deputy athletics director DeWayne Peevy said that basketball coach John] Calipari’s $1,550-per-night suite at the Atlantis [in the Bahamas], which totaled $12,400 for the eight-night stay, was booked partly so team meetings could be held there. Peevy said that if Calipari had a regular room, UK would have had to rent out an additional meeting space at added cost.

UD has kind of run out of things to say about the University of Kentucky. Its academic ranking has tanked like crazy over the last few years; its run of drunk corrupt practically insane coaches is matched only by its run of criminally violent practically insane players… The school’s best friend is Big Coal; it hates the state’s greatest living writer but it sure do love its bourbon and Adzillatron…

It’s always illuminating to read the local press there. Reporters reflect the local mood, the local ethos. Let’s SOS through a recent representative piece.

The writer headlines the article UK arrest should concern Stoops, and concern is the operative term… Nothing to get alarmed about! Just concerned.

We begin not with the arrest. For that, we’ll have to wait for the third paragraph.

The beginning of the article is about what matters – UK football’s “swift” and “stunning” current winning streak. Lots of excited language about that starts the piece.

Ahem. Now:

Off the field, however, there have been some potholes…

A few bumps in the road is all… Sure, a player was just arrested for rape, but our visibly shaken coacha inconsolata said all that needed to be said about that:

Later in the day, [Coach] Stoops, who was visibly shaken, twice said that he “feels for all parties.”

Then there was the case of the misunderstood players:

[L]ast week, Wildcats freshmen Stanley Williams, Drew Barker, Dorian Baker and Tymere Dubose were charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, after an on-campus incident involving air-soft pellet guns.

It sounds as if the players were just shooting at each other in a playful game, but there was nothing playful about the ensuing campus-wide lockdown.

Playful lads! Boys will be boys. And coach is such a good coach! Why,

Entering this season, he had dismissed five players for violations of team rules.

I mean – haha – you might ask who the fuck recruited this lot. But let’s not go there! Let’s instead be really impressed that our coach “has built up some equity as an enforcer.” Because if there’s one thing an amateur university athletics coach is, it’s an enforcer.

The writer goes on to list several more forms of criminal mischief among yet other players, and then cautions:

Taken as a whole, these incidents show that maybe the Wildcats need some more oversight.

But basically this is the situation:

[T]he Wildcats are finally winning, finally thriving, finally happy…

He might as well be talking about Happy Valley, Pennsylvania! Happy, happy, thriving, winning – this is the reality at UK. Potholes we may have to negotiate here and there, but when all is said and done, these are our best days.

And don’t talk to me about students not going to the games…

… here. (Read the rest of my WKU posts here, if you can stomach it. Scroll down.)

Next, enjoy this beautiful observation from a faculty member at a university meeting last week.

Dick Taylor, an assistant professor in the school of journalism and broadcasting, asked [the president] if money spent on the football coach could be used towards education.

“In my three years, I’ve watched just the football coach … go from 250,000 a year to 450,000 a year to 850,000 dollars a year,” Taylor said. “I really wondered if the money could be better spent in what our core is which is educating students to get jobs.”

LOL.

Here’s the photo I want you to have in mind as you read the following summary of the Scott Eaton story at Northern Kentucky University. I want you to see how dressed for success the guy is, how he’s doing the Number One thing that Joe Paterno’s statue does (did), how next to him on a presentation board there’s the slogan BUILDING WINNERS FOR LIFE rather than, say, STEALING FROM YOUR SCHOOL AND FUCKING EVERY FEMALE IN SIGHT. I want you to think about how many American universities, as they sport up, fervently embrace and abundantly pay and abundantly esteem douchebags like Scott Eaton.

Smiling sweet-smelling Scott Eaton who came to pathetic NKU knowing he couldn’t do anything for it but that it could do plenty for him, and immediately began his sex and money extravaganza.

He did it for years, too, and that’s onaccounta no one cared, no one understood, some people were being cut in on the deal, some people were too scared to speak up about The Athletic Director, etc.

Dumb, pathetic, desperate schools like Northern Kentucky University are sitting ducks, and their desperate athletic programs are set up to attract people like Scott Eaton, who know losers for life when they see them.

I’m sure next season will be much, much better.

And if it’s not, fire the latest coach and coordinators and hire another new batch.

Keep doing this long enough, and you’re gonna start to win!

The school’s governing body for athletics, the University Athletics Committee, voted in favor of a $12.5 million budget increase from the $91.9 million in 2012-13, a number the department actually exceeded by $4.2 million due largely to capital projects such as new track, softball and soccer complexes. Most notable in the new budget: projected football expenses are up 32.6 percent, from about $9.5 million last year to $12.6 million for ’13-14.

Roughly $2.4 million of that $3.1 million increase is to cover the higher salaries of the new football staff. Just counting head coach Mark Stoops and his two coordinators, that trio makes a combined $874,000 a year more than predecessor Joker Phillips and his coordinators. At Tuesday’s meeting, athletic director Mitch Barnhart said those numbers reflect the school’s strong commitment to a football program that last year suffered through a 2-10 season before firing Phillips.

And wow. As always, a big-time athletics program benefits the university academically. UK’s US News and World Report ranking has gone from 112 in 2007 to 125 today. With those numbers, no wonder UK is devoting hugely increased resources to sports.

… for as long as I’ve been following it. But now that they’re on a losing streak, the crowds are pissed.

I mean, they’re always pissed. But now they’re also pissed.

University of Kentucky police will increase their presence at the next UK home football game as a result of fights among tailgaters outside Saturday’s game against Western Kentucky.

Police are getting wounded as they try to break things up.

More police will be patrolling at future games. So.

That will be expensive. Great use of money for a university.

And that will be hyper-surveillance. Always fun at a sports event. But if your fan base is made up of jerks …

Of course a lot of these people aren’t students. They aren’t even fans. Why watch a shitty team play? They’re there because violent drunks love a tailgate. Any tailgate.

… transition to Division I (details here) to notice who they’re hiring. As chair of a department.

One of her students has complained to a dean, but, you know… it’s just an anonymous student… Fuck him. And the staff members who keep resigning? Ditto…

But hey… WE’RE GONNA BE DIVISION I!!!

Now how you gonna get around a nepotism policy and hire the coach’s daughter?

Let’s see. Well, make sure the coach is right there, of course, in the room with the trustees. So they can see her rich powerful daddy.

Then ask for a voice vote.

A divided University of Kentucky Board of Trustees on Tuesday narrowly approved hiring Kirby Willoughby, the daughter of UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart, as a graduate assistant in the athletics department.

The trustees voted by voice, and no individual votes were counted. When reporters polled trustees as they left the meeting, eight of the 19 who were present said they voted against the hire…

After the meeting, chairman Britt Brockman said he did not hear enough opposition to request a roll call vote.

… [The coach] was present for most of the meeting…

WKU: a perennial University Diaries favorite:

“Our president has great vision and does not settle for anything less than excellence,” [coach Willie] Taggart said. “The school has put a lot of money and resources into upgrading the football program. We have unbelievable facilities and the budget to get the job done. It won’t happen overnight, but we’re going to get this thing rolling again.”

Western Kentucky has struggled mightily since leaving the I-AA level in 2007, compiling a 4-32 record the last three seasons. WKU posted a 2-10 mark in Taggart’s first season at the helm, snapping a 27-game losing streak along the way. The Hilltoppers have not won a game at Houchens Industries-L.T. Smith Stadium since Sept. 20, 2008. That home losing streak currently stands at 15 games.

Dietel can take no pleasure in what has ensued over the last few years, though I’m sure he’s not surprised. He told the idiots at WKU what would happen. They didn’t listen. The school is now a money-hemorrhaging laughingstock.

Here’s our most recent information on WKU:

There will be a lot of empty seats at LP Field in Nashville tonight when the University of Kentucky and Western Kentucky open the 2011 football season at 9:15 p.m.

At 3 p.m. Wednesday, 40,262 tickets were available at Ticketmaster.com, including nearly 10,000 in the lower level. The stadium, where the NFL’s Tennessee Titans play their home games, holds 68,798 fans.

They’re desperately handing out free tickets so the stadium won’t look like a funeral home.

Everyone’s upset because Peevy – a UK athletics public relations guy – went and got all peeved with a UK student reporter who had the gall to interview a couple of basketball players without getting Peevy’s permission.

Yeah, just a couple of amateur college athletes, but there’s a big, big big old public relations machine right behind them, and you don’t, like, just, you know, call them… I mean, are you crazy?

When he found out that the reporter had committed journalism, Peevy punished him and his newspaper by withholding various other forms of access to the team.

The Associated Press Managing Editors group sent a letter to Kentucky’s Director of Athletics:

This is a level of abuse of free speech not tolerated at universities in other states and is particularly abhorrent at a taxpayer-owned institution…

Peevy does this sort of thing all the time – whenever anyone dares to do some independent reporting.

Because of course you need to control the news very closely when your franchise is filthy top to bottom (scroll down). You don’t want a free press reporting on what’s going on. Peevy is seeing to that.