… as in, out of what possible world does this parody arise, take a look at this description of the August meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America.

[Membership] include[s] an inchoate collection of activists, and the organization [has become] a big tent for all manner of leftist tendencies—including many that lack any commitment to [founder Michael] Harrington’s democratic tradition, some even holding that elections [are] a capitalist-state apparatus that socialists should not use to come to power... Red Star, a self-avowed “Marxist-Leninist caucus” … openly supports Hamas and emphasizes “the role of the vanguard in organizing the revolution.” Whereas the likes of [Bernie] Sanders have long lauded the New Deal, this group condemns that model as “extending concessions to the white working class to secure their loyalty to the capitalist state.” Similarly, it faults the Green New Deal that Sanders and AOC have championed for failing to articulate “a clear commitment to dismantling the settler-colonial and American imperialist projects.” Another caucus, Marxist Unity Group, calls for DSA “to free itself from the Democratic Party” and “fight to overthrow the Constitution,” in an effort to “destroy every institution that denies the people an authentic popular democracy, abolishing the Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and the independent presidency.” …

Harrington … once complained about a “vocal, and regularly televised, fringe of confrontationists, exhibitionists, and Vietcong flag wavers who could plausibly be dismissed as freakish, or sinister, or both.” Democratic socialists who seek to run mass campaigns and attain power with elections are now encumbered by sharing an organization with “confrontationists” who hold fundamentally antidemocratic beliefs.

The Israel Defense Forces have launched a large-scale operation at Ben-Gurion International Airport. The goal is to identify and detain ultra-Orthodox men who are evading mandatory military service…

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No more seat assignments next to ultra-assholes who refuse to sit next to you because you’re a stinky gross woman. Hurray!

Um. Why wouldn’t they be? Why is this a headline? Why is this news?

Oh because another nut with a gun fired shots outward from inside the club.

The bullets spew fast and furious at Cincinnati’s Roselawn neighborhood hookah joints, where a gunfight broke out on Saturday at one bar, and another gunfight broke out at another bar on Sunday.

The [Sunday] shooting scene is only a few feet away from another shooting that happened at a Roselawn bar around 3 a.m. Saturday morning.

Only a few feet away! And gunfire both weekend nights right there!

Do you think the city of Cincinnati has a little bit of interest in vaguely acknowledging what they’ve got going there? You have to figure there have been tons of fights at those bars that don’t end in gunfire and therefore don’t make the papers… And it’s just a remarkable fact about gunny USA that city councils don’t do shit.

But of course they’re waiting for a real body count. Two or three injured doesn’t cut it.

Mass murder, of course. They’ll be on that right away.

Yes, wotta shocker. Football violence? Now I’ve seen everything.

My “affluent suburb … [an] idyllic hamlet … used to the trappings of Washington’s elite,” looses its chihuahuas on the FBI as the feds search John Bolton‘s house.

But… “bucolic“?

… by early morning sunlight.

People like UD‘s gardens. UD likes UD‘s gardens. But it must be stated for the record that UD‘s zebra grass – eight feet tall and everywhere – is a mite more massive/spreading than she understood when she bought three plants from a little nursery near the Chesapeake Bay a few years ago.

Who knew that some of them are unstaffed? And who knew that giving Gomers unsupervised freedom to shoot would turn out badly?

But they ain’t too dumb to figure out that the best place to shoot their head off is a gun range.

The Bullet Play. Happens routinely now.

Munro Leaf, author of Ferdinand, was the last owner of our house.

One of UD‘s neighbors is suddenly being visited by lots of friends in armored SUVs. Hm.

… they’ve got one in a spanking new high school in Charlotte NC cuz the football team cut a guy and he was pissed so he shot his gun (totally. lots of students with guns on campus every day.) into a room. But he didn’t hit/kill anyone, so why should the school bother telling parents about it? Kid with gun. Yawn. Kid attacks school with gun but no one’s hurt so wazza matter with you? Shaddap this doesn’t count nothing happened.

As you know, UD finds some of her favorite sentences in real estate listings.

… with the usual massive windowless Brutalist suspects; of course, Boston’s City Hall Plaza and its evil twin, DC’s FBI building, continue to dominate the rankings.

While scrolling through images, UD discovered MIT’s Simmons Hall – a dorm – and she was excited to see that this project

… wait — THIS project

is a noteworthy part of the country’s emergent Mortar and Pistol school of architecture, where (in this case) the walls are pockmarked by bullets, and there are generous platforms for sniper nests.

More broadly, M&P design incorporates guns of all kinds into its symbolic forms.

… is UD‘s word for the placement of your body at a site of great meaning as you commit suicide. Offhand, UD can think of many examples of these – nature lovers who walk deep into national parks and lie down, athletes who end themselves on playing fields and running tracks, and, most recently, a young Finnish politician who killed himself in the parliament building (he had apparently gotten dire health news).

Of course most suicides do the deed at home, or, if it’s outside the home, the motive is simply to spare family members trauma. But many want to make a statement about what made them feel fully alive.

Horribly, some locations are chosen to express worthlessness and nihilism.

In 2016, Ohio State football player Kosta Karageorge – covering up concussions that were becoming symptomatic, having easy access to a gun, crushed by a fight with a girlfriend, and with a history of depression – placed himself, before pulling the trigger, inside a dumpster.