Well, not exactly in the bedroom; but late this morning as I sat in bed news-scrolling, I looked through the sliding glass doors to the garden to see a very big mammal of some sort staring at me. I mean, quite big. Perched on a paver among the lavender and bee balms. We looked at each other for a few seconds, after which the thing trundled off, dark flat tail trailing… A hurried Google search turned up this helpful graphic

We’ll be seeing a lot of these valedictories: Bloomsburg University has just shut down its entire Greek system. Typical reason: A dead freshman and a big ol’ lawsuit.

Marjorie Taylor Greene makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nostalgic.

One Injured After Hummer Stockpiling Gasoline Cans Bursts Into Flames In Florida

2-Year-Old Shoots Both Parents after Finding Gun in Maine Home

Who knows why the University of South Carolina president, addressing a proud contingent of students and parents on an important day, referred to the students as lucky graduates of the University of California? Who knows why he for the third time (reportedly) recycled in this speech a plagiarized paragraph from a speech by a famous Navy Seal? Who knows why (according to some observers) he slurred his words throughout?

I don’t know why. But let me speculate about Bob Caslen, who has now resigned. Let me begin with the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips:

These are parts of ourselves – that don’t want to live, that hate our children, that want ourselves to fail. Freud is saying there is something strange about humans: they are recalcitrant to what is supposed to be their project.

I think anyone reviewing Caslen’s odd behaviors (which, according to some, predate this speech) would want to entertain the possibility that he hates his job (the university bestowed it unwillingly; he has been an unpopular president) and wants out; but rather than grasp that fact forthrightly (a military man, he has always done his duty) he has at it were allowed his unconscious to have its way with his situation. He has allowed his recalcitrance to what is supposed to be his project to emerge, and USC got the message.

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For a wee bit more insight into the whole “unconscious” thing, consider the fact that in Donald Trump the USA experienced its first president with no apparent unconscious. He lost an election and this made him mad; to get the election back he sent a mob to the Capitol to kill his vice president (who made him mad), take out the Congress, destroy democracy, and get back what he wanted. When desperate allies called him from the besieged building, he blew them off and went back to enjoying the riot’s tv footage. Now THAT’S having no unconscious. Recalcitrant to his project? Just like Ubu the King, Trump was happily blowing up the world to achieve his project.

But this is very rare. Outside of select psychopaths, most everyone has an unconscious.

The sole purpose of the male fish is to help a female reproduce, reads the post. “Males latch onto the female with their teeth and become ‘sexual parasites,’ eventually coalescing with the female until nothing is left of their form but their testes for reproduction,” reads the post.

With its latest accomplishment – caught by the feds stealing gobs of money in a wide range of inventive and patient-anguishing/bankrupting ways – UM Med maintains its national position as America’s most corrupt medical school ever. With a rogues’ gallery of leaders and doctors, the school has, over decades, enriched itself in ways so deeply and consistently depraved that at some point you have to grant it grudging credit for having utterly transformed a place of healing into an abattoir. The state of Florida is to be sure already the USA’s epicenter of elderly people and medical fraud; it took decades of clever planning and moral squalor for UM to make itself the epicenter of the epicenter.

“Tens of billions of dollars are lost annually to fraud, waste and abuse, and Miami is the Medicare fraud capital of the United States,” [the whistleblower’s attorney] said. “Today’s announced settlement and the schemes described in the DOJ press release are ironic considering they were committed by an iconic South Florida institution under the leadership of the former Secretary of Health and Human Services [the appalling Donna Shalala], the very agency that promulgated the Medicare rules that were violated.”

Wanna know exactly what they did? Details here.

After referring to his institution as the University of California in this year’s commencement speech, the president of the University of South Carolina plagiarized, verbatim, a paragraph about personal ethics.

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How do you achieve this outcome?

Let’s put aside things like a drop of the hard stuff. Without that it seems pretty unaccountable, no?

Here’s what UD figures, FWIW:

Like many busy people, the president of the University of South Carolina has a squad of speechwriters. Here perhaps are the two things that went wrong:

1. He mentioned to one of them that he liked this one quotation a lot, and it seemed real pertinent, so could the ghostwriter work it in. Sure, boss. Only the ghostwriter (who may have been a student) stuck it in without attribution.
2. I’m gonna go with an overly obliging spellcheck on the California thingie. Student’s typing the speech real fast and misses the fact that after she puts down the letters University of Ca the app figures she means California and helpfully fills that in for her. As to why the president went ahead and read California – that’s an easy one, eh? He’s never seen a word of the speech before delivering it, and he’s on automatic pilot, paying very little attention to what he’s saying, thinking mainly about the reception right after the speech… … …

Cicadas are leaving their encasements all over UD‘s garden this morning.

Things are happening fast.

[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.

Prince Aimone, Duke of Puglia, declined to meet for an interview in the Tuscan country estate of his father, Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, who was reportedly punched twice in the face by his cousin, Vittorio Emanuele, at the 2004 wedding of the future King Felipe VI of Spain. Soon after that altercation, Amedeo claimed to be the legitimate Duke of Savoy.

Let us hope this is not the most prominent thing the media notes about Helmut Jahn, who has died in a very bad bicycle crash. He apparently ran a stop sign and was hit by two cars.

UD vividly remembers walking for the first time into the vast Eschery atrium of Jahn’s James R. Thompson building in downtown Chicago. It must have just opened. It was my first encounter with the breathtaking empty space of monumental late modernism.

UD has a thing for Bellocq Tea, which La Kid knows well, so she bought her mother monthly gifts of various teas from the place. Here’s the first one.