It’s small stories like this – the city put up a street sign honoring a drug dealer – that help you understand how far the place where UD was born has fallen.

No one was home, the relevant agency is corrupt, the relevant agency sees nothing wrong with honoring drug dealers – there are many possibilities…

And look. Why take the sign down?

“I don’t think they should have taken the sign down because, at some time, I’m sure he did some great works for humanity,” said Anecia Spears.

UD often wonders: What dey do down dere? Legislation-wise, I mean. What matters so much as to engage the attention of their legislators and be enshrined into law?

Well all you gotta do is follow North Carolina’s massively covered squat story to know the heartbeat of America, southern-style.

So a big thing to do down there is modify your ginormous pickup by stickin’ the front up high and the back down low, so that… heck I don’t know why you do it. Cain’t see the road. Blind oncoming drivers. Run a much higher chance of tipping over. Lots of other stuff. It’s just a thang you do when you tryin’ to be bad.

Last June a bill prohibiting truck squatting passed the NC House — up in my headline, you see Rep. Willis’s poignant plea that the Jeep be spared onaccounta he likes Jeeps — and then it passed the Senate and today the governor signed the thing, which means, uh, squat cuz assholes who squat their trucks don’t fuck with laws.

There’s a powerful J’Accuse in Jalopnik, which I’ll excerpt here.

[M]any people seem to hate the Carolina Squat solely because of the way it looks. Check out all the bigoted comments on the Change.org petition that aims to outlaw the vehicle modification… I think it’s safe to say that few folks see a jacked up car and say: “I’m really concerned that that driver may not be able to see over the hood.” No, the criticism is usually one of simple disgust, and while I can’t assert with confidence that socioeconomic prejudices are at play with the general sentiments towards Carolina Squat trucks, I will say that anytime we notice scores of people hating something immediately upon learning about it or seeing it, we should all take a step back and try to improve our understanding… I’m just always a bit concerned when I see vitriol directed towards any misunderstood car subculture…

……… an anti-vaxer.

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‘[A reporter] approached [an anti-vaxer at a rally] and queried, “Maybe you can help me out: I’m seeing signs that say, ‘Vaccine Mandates Are Fascism,’ and also signs that say, ‘Vaccine Mandates Are Communism.’ Which one is it?”

“It’s both,” she replied.

“It’s both? Those are diametrically-opposed ideologies,” he countered.

“I don’t think it’s communism—I think it’s more like a dictatorship, like we’re living in a Nazi Germany and the only thing that’s missing is the camps and the gas,” she argued.

“That’s what’s happening right now? Because you can’t go to a concert?” [the reporter] asked.

“I can’t go to a concert… I can’t go to a gym…” she reasoned.

“Do you think that’s what it was like in Nazi Germany? People were bitching about not going to a gym?”’

… this? Shouldn’t the government guarantee that Andrew Saul remain socially secure?

Their incoming fine arts school dean tweeted enthusiastic support of a man who has admitted to drugging women for sex, and whose conviction on aggravated indecent assault charges has just been overturned on a technicality. He continues to face multiple civil suits.

Now Howard University women get to worry that their new dean will bring her fierce defense of predators to their campus.

Unbelievable.

Wyoming, UD comes to think, is our most peculiar state. In 2013, it was our fifth richest. It’s bilious with billionaires, but also boasts plenty of brick and mortar industry.

It’s got guns up the wazoo: “Wyoming has, by far, the highest number of guns per [shot off] capita. Of Wyoming’s 581,075 people, there are 132,806 registered guns.”

Shot off? What’s UD mean?

Waaal, you know… all them guns….

In 2020, 181 Wyomingites killed themselves. That’s a rate of 31 deaths per 100,000 residents, up from 29.4 in 2019, the highest suicide rate in the nation. The state’s suicide rate has remained high for years…

Round these parts, people say Let a smile be your umbrella. In Wyoming, they say Let a Colt be your bolt.

Or, as they say at the NRA: Guns don’t kill people; people with guns kill themselves.

And here’s another peculiar Wyoming statistic: It’s almost smack-dab at the bottom of states with the lowest covid vaccination rates. Only some of our poorest states (Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi) rank lower than wealthy Wyoming. (“Wyoming is currently ranked 4^th in the United States for its economic outlook.”) Ain’t dat something? I mean, when you put it all together: A gorgeous, well-off state with everything to live for, whose most noteworthy output is suicidal gun-hoarders who don’t give a shit about their health or yours. Paging Cormac McCarthy.

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And hey maybe UD finds all of this arresting because maybe she’s looking at the future. Where America’s cutting-edge, paranoid, venture capitalists go, there go I. There go all of us. To quote the title of that funny book about grammar: Eats, shoots, and leaves.

[Diane] Andrews and her friend Lee Jenkins, a hair stylist, said they joined the crowd “storming the Capitol” but insisted most protesters were peaceful and didn’t deserve to be charged. The women said they had considered entering the building too, but decided not to because they feared the tear gas would aggravate Jenkins’ asthma.

After they returned to Texas, Jenkins’ Twitter account was removed. FBI agents interviewed Andrews at her home several times, she said. Neither woman was charged.

Photos Andrews had posted online were circulated. Although Jenkins — whose business had just reopened after the pandemic lockdown — lost some liberal clients, she said she gained conservative ones, as did Andrews, who works as a dominatrix.

Elizabeth Dye at Above the Law parses the desperation of Sidney Powell as she attempts to escape from Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.3 billion suit against her.

… the Grass Clippings War between Rand Paul and one of his neighbors. That event inspired UD to write one of her better songs, she thinks… drawn from The Mikado…

These guys seem to rub everyone – far and near – the wrong way, and sometimes open hostilities erupt.

There’s got to be a morning after
If we can hold on through the night
We have a chance to find the sunshine
Let’s keep on looking for the light

(Sing it.)

… the QAnon Lady stroking Trump’s genitals.

One of Sidney Powell’s helpers is about to be disbarred. He pleads his case.

If you’re like me, the letter Q is powerfully associated with the word/world “queer” – Duke University Press even had for many years a Series Q, which brought “a theoretical and interdisciplinary lens to gay and lesbian studies, approaching questions of sexuality from a queer angle.” (One of the Series Q books, Unbecoming, had a humongous impact on UD.)

Now that Nancy Pelosi has cleverly QAnoned Kevin McCarthy by referring to him as “McCarthy (Q-CA),” the letter Q transposes into something very… other.

You know the old joke.

Trumpolatrous Newsmax keeps putting one-feather-short-of-a-bolster Mike Lindell on its screen; then it complains when this notorious dirty picture depicts obscene conspiracy theories about the presidential election.

Complains? His interviewer stormed off the set! Interviewees leave in a huff all the time; but interviewers? “Can we get out of here please?” the interviewer begged his producer as Lindell pant-pant-panted about ballot fraud; but he was stuck in dirty picture hell. So he hauled ass!

People are calling this segment bizarre, surreal. Yet to UD‘s eyes it’s just … It’s like a Romper Room that goes off the rails. It’s like those YouTubes that show two infants burbling at each other with a kind of initial wary friendliness and then getting more and more somehow meaninglessly belligerent, and then one starts bawling and her mother lifts her up out of her high chair, which leaves the other infant big-eyed, at a total loss.

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Und why is Trumpolatrous Newsmax, of all places, shutting down stolen election rants?

Onaccounta Dominion Voting Systems is preparing its billion dollar defamation suit against it, and Newsmax is pissing its Pull-Ups.