[T]he regime should have let go of hijab,… even if we consider nothing but its self-interest in surviving. The younger generation would have persisted in their blissful political inactivity, and the poor horny basijis would have soon learned to acclimate to the new situation, their libido subconsciously adjusting to the new normal.

It’s all so neat and easy. What’s so hard to understand? You remove girls’ clitorises so they don’t sexually excite themselves; you remove their hair, faces, and bodies from the public realm so they don’t excite men. Women happily, proudly wear the hijab, because “it is the duty of women.” Men protect their spiritual well-being by draping cloth over women and numbing women’s capacity to feel anything sexual, thus making them even less threatening to men’s spiritual well-being. A beautiful world any of us would wish to live in.

Or, you know, failing that – a really … interesting, different world we would never think of judging.

Wisconsin fired Paul Chryst on Sunday, fired him five games into the 2022 college football season, fired him with a career record of 67-26. Just sent him packing, humiliated the former Wisconsin quarterback, as if his previous seven seasons — all ending in bowl games, the Badgers winning six of those — hadn’t happened.

This is where college football has gone. Into the dumpster, into the land of toxic make-believe.

Into the SEC.

Trees aren’t even shedding leaves yet, and already five Power 5 schools have shed their head football coach. Wisconsin on Sunday joined Nebraska (Scott Frost), Arizona State (Herm Edwards), Georgia Tech (Geoff Collins) and Colorado (Karl Dorrell), firings that will cost those schools more than $50 million in buyouts. All five are public schools. The money comes from somewhere, a shell game of shady boosters in the background writing checks, money diverted from more noble potential causes. Cleaning up a landfill, for example...

[University coaches?] Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher and Alabama’s Nick Saban have contracts in the $100 million range…

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You know, toting up all the money pathetic states like Alabama give their coaches, blah blah. It’s like NFL concussion stories. Blah.

Being on the tail end of a hurricane turns out to be a real tonic for ol’ UD, who must share this odd trait with others, because she’s far from alone beside the raging ocean. The restaurants – on a dreary sodden Monday night – were packed; we had to wait at the bar for a table, but that was fine cuz the bartender wanted to know the details of the Rapoport/Ocean City legal case, so actually we had to tear ourselves away from him.

Obviously there’s a drama to it all – the shimmying trees, the wind/waves roar, the watery watery world – and everyone’s pleasantly stirred. The inner/outer contrast is a thing too – our zennish hotel has hearths aplenty, and perfumes from their spa drift along the air; and in case you need more tranquillizing, they’ve just this year inserted a glowing bar into the glowing lobby.

My drink, however, is black, fruit-flavored, tea; and I stare at a fireplace and watch my tea’s smoke curl up while I listen to an audiobook version of AVENTURES D’ALICE AU PAYS DES MERVEILLES (one must continue to set oneself challenges, even into one’s dotage) through my earbuds.

Off to two days at the soggy beach. Blogging continues.

“They[‘ve] had mass arrests in the past few days of journalists, and of people who they thought could potentially be leaders. They did that, but the protests haven’t been shut down. They couldn’t shut it down. In fact, it has become more widespread.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human-rights lawyer who has represented many of these women who, over the past ten years, have been sentenced to jail or summoned to court on the basis of not observing the compulsory hijab. She recently said this movement is leaderless and is only led by those women who are doing this one revolutionary act. And that revolutionary act is not carrying a weapon. They’re not armed. This is completely peaceful.

And the only thing that they’re doing is they’re harmlessly taking something off of their head and they’re walking in the streets of Iran. The figure of this revolution is the body of these women, these unveiled women who are walking in the streets without harming anyone. Without even chanting “death to the dictator” or saying anything harmful against anyone.

Their bodies have become the revolutionary figure of this movement. And this is unprecedented.”

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Once you understand what the hijab – and its revolutionary repudiation – represents, the US/Euro feminist championing of the hijab as liberatory (“Hijab Means Power, Liberation, Beauty, and Resistance”) looks so perverted, mes petites.

We also see [in Iran] a change in gender-related norms and values. These are the concepts that refer to virtue and honor, and traditionally relate to the male protection of females virtues, and the female body.

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And what of gender fluidity, little ones? Ain’t you a mite embarrassed, throwing your lot in with I. AM. WOMAN. SEE ME SHEATHE. ?…?

Of course it’s completely hohum for soccer matches to end in bloody slaughter all over the field, but UD wondered about this comment. I think it must mean that the crowd that killed itself the other day was made up exclusively of supporters of the home team. The slaughter wasn’t even about opposing fans – just the local guys unhappy that their guys lost. What an achievement.

When will Repubs give in to their deepest passion of all and welcome The Dear Leader to the next CPAC?

[S]ome residents of Fort Myers Beach trickled back on foot, pulling wagons and carts over the Matanzas Pass Bridge in the hopes of salvaging what they could from what was once their homes. 

… [A group of] Sanibel residents wanted to ride out in a boat since the bridge was impassable, but the marina was so jammed with storm-tossed boats that [they] did not think [they] could safely navigate …

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As if they’ve gone back in time.

… Recently, her son’s teacher told the class that all the planets revolve around the Earth, and drew a picture to illustrate.

“My son, who’s a little bit of a space geek, raised his hand and was like, ‘No, that’s not how it works,’” [Beatrice] Weber says. “And the teacher was actually surprised and actually paid a lot of attention when my son explained it to him. And I was like, ‘Wasn’t he angry that you disrespected him?’ He’s like, ‘No, no, no. The teacher was very curious. He said he had never learned that before.’” …

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NY’s yeshivas: We do it our way!

Sanibel’s mayor conjures free-range bobcats, alligators, and iguanas in that sudden waterworld.

As the mayor speaks, UD remembers the flamingoes, the turtles, the gators, and tries to imagine the island today, cut off from the mainland, and teeming with loose wildlife.

We talked to our friend, Peter, who is in Croatia. He said his house looked ok in a satellite picture, but “the inside might be a disaster.” He’ll have to wait before he knows.

The chant is already all over Tehran, and you can hear it (Woman, Life, Freedom) in lots of other cities of the world these days, as the Iranian diaspora marches against theocracy.

I’ll admit I didn’t think the enslaved women of Afghanistan would have the guts to come out with it, but, inspired by the Iranian protesters, a small group of them just did. With bullets whirling about.

She wrote about it here.

My friend’s house on the ocean will probably be destroyed if the surge is eighteen feet (a possibility).

KIIILLLLLLLLLLLL the murderers!

It’s staring right at you. I tried a closer shot, but it hid in the high grasses. I maintain this wild corner of my garden in hopes that animals like rabbits will eat stuff they find there rather than in the expensive pollinator garden to their left. Its main purpose turns out to be a flophouse for deer. They bed down here for the night and then leave deep long impressions in their wake.

… საქართველო.

SING IT

Russia proved too much for the man (too much for the man, he couldn’t take it)
So he’s leaving a life he’s come to know, ooh (he said he’s going)
He said he’s going off to find (going off to find)
Ooh, ooh, ooh, what’s left of the world
The world of the sane he knew not long ago

He’s leaving (leaving)
On that midnight train to Georgia, yeah (leaving on the midnight train)
Said he’s going off (going off to find)
To a simpler place and time, oh yes, he is (whenever he takes that ride)
(Guess who’s gonna be right by his side?)

And I’ll be with him (I know you will)
On that midnight train to Georgia (leaving on a midnight train to Georgia, woo, woo)
He’d rather live in that world (live in that world)
Than live with Putin in ours (his world is nuts, his and his alone)