… to the Chesapeake Bay for a family thing.

Blogging persists.

Shortly after finishing “Pragmatism and Romanticism,” I was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Some months after I learned the bad news, I was sitting around having coffee with my elder son and a visiting cousin. My cousin (who is a Baptist minister) asked me whether I had found my thoughts turning toward religious topics, and I said no. “Well, what about philosophy?” my son asked. “No,” I replied, neither the philosophy I had written nor that which I had read seemed to have any particular bearing on my situation. I had no quarrel with Epicurus’s argument that it is irrational to fear death, nor with Heidegger’s suggestion that ontotheology originates in an attempt to evade our mortality. But neither ataraxia (freedom from disturbance) nor Sein zum Tode (being toward death) seemed in point.

“Hasn’t anything you’ve read been of any use?” my son persisted. “Yes,” I found myself blurting out, “poetry.” “Which poems?” he asked. I quoted two old chestnuts that I had recently dredged up from memory and been oddly cheered by, the most quoted lines of Swinburne’s “Garden of  Proserpine”:

We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

and Landor’s “On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday”:

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life,
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

… about which Leon Cooperman weepingly complained, is nothing. Now they’re profiling them!

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay said his March 2014 arrest for driving under the influence was a result of prejudice against him for being white and wealthy…

“I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich, white billionaire.” 

People also probably take against him for his tendency toward redundancy (“rich… billionaire”) and his tendency to endanger us all by driving while high as a kite.

 Irsay had the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone as well as alprazolam, which is used to treat anxiety, in his system at the time of his arrest. Officers on the scene said he had trouble reciting the alphabet and failed other field sobriety tests.

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

Get yours today.

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

And UD pledges to be kinder to this much-misunderstood demographic.

Read the whole thing and understand. Read, read, read.

Whew! Two Cal Poly students basically spent part of an afternoon, last week, strolling the campus and shooting various guns into occupied buildings and at street signs and at anything else that caught their fancy. But in a bit of luck they had not yet started shooting people (their activities were pretty quickly reported to the police), so that’s good! That’s great!

“During a search of the students’ on-campus residences, police located and confiscated additional weapons and ammunition.” Well I mean of course and I’m sure all indications are that the students are NOT amassing an arsenal for an eventual mass slaughter and this is nothing to worry about. Just a coupla kids.

As for professors: UD would have loved to be on the search committee that decided a permanently disbarred thief who packs loaded heat on campus would be just the thing for the students at Santa Rosa Junior College.

… plays out in Walmart (where else) as we contemplate our many blessings. An ordinary mom in ordinary Ohio searches the shelves for Thanksgiving decorations while her two year old sits in the shopping cart figuring out how to shoot the loaded Taurus PT92 9mm stainless pistol he found in her purse.

It’s such classic Americana that it calls to mind the famous Norman Rockwell painting, “The Runaway” (1958), in which the policeman leans over to the runaway to say Fine kid but take my gun with you.

Back to the Walmart: The baby shoots at the ceiling and mom’s pissed cuz that thing cost close to six hundred dollars and the reason she’s shopping at a discount outlet is that she’s bought like five of them plus other more expensive firepower plus ammo ain’t cheap and if the cops get wind of this she stands to lose the guns at least temporarily and she still owes around five thou on them all.

Of course she’s proud the kid took the hint and started sharing the gunny life with mom (“Shootin before he can walk“) and she certainly had a laugh when she saw all the shoppers around her scatter! “HAHA he’s just a baby he don’t got no sense of direction chill out.”

And fuck now they’re arresting her and talkin nuts about child endangerment (he only got a itty bitty head wound for godsake) and … ok you can have the kid but gimme back my guns.

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

Of course, this particular scene in Walmart is nothing:

Walmart Speaks Out After Two Mass Shootings Occur at Stores Within 24 Hours

There’s a whole lot more going on in your Walmart every day besides a two year old shooting a Taurus!

“But open your nose!”

What political courage.

She even had the guts to clarify:

“I think he means well.”

Or, in the original German: “Ich denke, er meint es gut.”

This one comes from just around the corner!

MERCEDES CRASHES INTO AMAZON FRESH STORE IN CHEVY CHASE

For details on The Don DeLillo Headline, go here.

Well, now… hold it right there. There’s a long tradition, in our most benighted states (West Virginia, Georgia), of public school teachers and coaches and hey even principals, marching all the kids off during school hours to Preacher Dimsdale in the auditorium or on the playing field. Dimsdale will dunk them in baptismal waters or instruct them to perform a group Jesus Wave — unless of course they want their dicks to shrivel, rot, and fall into the fires of hell FOREVER.

Separation of church and state? Coercion?

Who said coercion? How can it be coercion when you’re fifteen years old, dumb, and desperate to please your coach because all you want to do is play college ball? That sounds like informed consent to me.

But some malcontent heard tell bout Coach Dunkin’ and his wet ways and complained to the Freedom from Religion folks and uh oh.

Enraged at his lawyer’s latest embarrassment, former president Trump has dropped Alina Habba and picked up David DePape as lead counsel.

‘Meanwhile, a deluge of other civil and criminal lawsuits has left Giuliani, in his own attorney’s words, experiencing “financial difficulties.” Among other obligations, Giuliani faces a $1.4 million lawsuit for allegedly failing to pay his former attorney, Bob Costello. A former business associate in May filed a sexual harassment claim against Giuliani, seeking damages. And in October, Hunter Biden sued Giuliani for unspecified damages, accusing him of mishandling personal data belonging to the president’s son. The former mayor also faces a criminal racketeering indictment that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis returned in August against him … for efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.‘

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

UD recites the above every day. It’s her morning mantra.

Guns: A thousand and one uses!

If you read this blog, you’ve known for years and years that down them parts thems all be morons. If you’ve been reading the Star Tribune, you think this is actually news.

‘Donna Adelson made a statement [to her son’s girlfriend] that she felt Dan Markel was haunting her from the grave.‘

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

The Florida Adelsons are giving the South Carolina Murdaughs a run for their money: Bloody Donna has just been nabbed ‘at the Miami-Dade International Airport after purchasing tickets to Vietnam.’

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay so UD saw this story last night on YouTube and said NAH this is one of those bogus things that show up… But it’s true! They arrested the author of texts and emails that would make the mad queen of Scotland blush, baby.

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

UD notes the choice of Vietnam, which, while it has no extradition treaty with us, is known for cooperating if we ask nicely. UD would have gone with Indonesia, which is also reassuringly far away and which isn’t very cooperative and which (most importantly), like Vietnam, boasts excellent local cuisine and spectacular coastlines.

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

The full warrant. I guess dad goes to jail for accessory to first degree murder… Which leaves only Wendi still at home with the kids… Wendi, who drove by her annoying ex-husband’s murder site pretty much as the event happened (weird, huh?), then immediately swept up the kids, changed their last name from the corpse’s to hers, and set out on her blessedly Dan Markel-free life…

But whaddaya gonna do? Who else would have a motive to assassinate blameless Dan Markel but his ex-family? And hey how bout those traffic cams which can pick up exactly the make and model of Prius that Markel’s neighbor saw pulling out of his driveway with two guys in it who shattered Markel’s driver’s side window and shot his head off? What in God’s name are you going to do?

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

And wow do you think they’ll get nutty scuzzy Charlie (currently rotting in jail for eternity) to testify against his own mother? Will he flip on his sister?