… pink flowers at the beach.

‘The first year of [Richie] Incognito’s retirement was marked by erratic and threatening behavior. This was not the old shirtless barroom rages of his Dolphins years but stuff that suggested serious distress—telling the police that he was “running NSA class level 3 documents through my phone” when they showed up to stop him from assaulting a stranger at a gym, showing up at an Arizona funeral home with a half-dozen guns in his truck and threatening employees after they refused to honor his request that they cut off his late father’s head “for research purposes.” Last Tuesday, Incognito signed a one-year contract with the Oakland Raiders.’

And now for some Freudian (see post below this one) thoughts about human beings and aggression.

‘The NFL has sold football as a shelf-stable retail version of war for generations, and it’s hard to imagine the league ever settling on a more compelling pitch. Humanity has only ever come up with so many ways to justify the fact that people admire and enjoy things that we’re taught should be abhorred, and squaring all these contradictions is not just a problem for [former Bills coach] Rex Ryan, or football. American culture admires bullies more than it dares let on, primarily because Americans are much closer to the edge than they dare admit.’

Seems to UD we’re absolutely fine about letting it on, having elected a bully president. He’ll probably be re-elected.

Some people really like bullies, and the fact’s right out there. The Deadspin writer cautions us that “cruelty and violence are [not] the same thing as strength.” But Incognito’s brilliant career conveys the fact that fans already know that. They just prefer cruelty.

‘When the inner life is not easily disturbed it has achieved what is to Freud as nearly ideal a condition as he can imagine. There is something Oriental in the Freudian ethic.’

In light of the controversy over its authorship, UD, beachside, is revisiting The Mind of the Moralist.

And go figure. As she reads Sontag’s/Rieff’s/Freud’s repeated … mantra that we simply cannot reconcile, and are stupidly self-destructive to try to reconcile, instinct and civilization, UD experiences a vivid memory of Agnieszka Osiecka – an alcoholic – raising a very full glass at a lunch table in Hanka and Jerzy Soltan’s Cambridge house. This would have been a few years before her death in 1997.

“To the continued success of our hopeless cause!” she shouted to the gathering, and we all laughed.

… to the beach.

… along a wall in Lewes Delaware.

Sea and sky merge after a tremendous storm roars through Rehoboth Beach this evening.

Rolling Stone examines a trend we’ve covered more and more on this blog: The remarkable suicide-by-gun epidemic of middle aged men in the American west.

The genius behind Football Leaks “describe[s] the evolution of European soccer from a varied and distinctive game to a corrupt playground for the international élite, in which only the richest, least scrupulous clubs can thrive.”

Makes our college and professional football look pure as the driven snow.

‘On this day, presiding over [an ISIS fighter’s] trial, [Judge] Amina is wearing a white shirt and jeans with embroidered butterflies — clothing ISIS would have whipped women for wearing in public. She is seated behind a wood and faux-leather desk, which hides her platform heels. The public prosecutor is wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

In the future, Amina says, perhaps they will have judge’s gowns and proper courtrooms where journalists and the public can come all the time.

It’s a shock to some ISIS fighters to be sentenced by a woman. In the self-declared caliphate, women had very restricted roles, requiring them to stay at home unless they were accompanied by a close male relative. According to ISIS ideology, men are not allowed to look at women who are not direct relatives.

“Some of them, when they hear the voice of a woman, they look at the ground,” says Amina. “I tell them, ‘I am talking to you — raise your head and look at the committee.'”

Amina says a female colleague jokes that ISIS fighters thought that, as the Quran promises men who are faithful, they would end up in paradise with dozens of beautiful women to accompany them. “Instead, they look up and see us” in the courtroom, Amina says with a laugh.’

… (all adjectives taken from news headlines) comes roaring back to professional football, which explains to us in an official statement that not all players can be “boy scouts.” University Diaries has followed this mentally ill man from his violent nutso college days to his violent fully ripe grossly insane professional stint, and has always predicted that despite his dangerous madness he will repeatedly (until age and yet more brain disorder make him a throwaway) be taken back by football teams.

As ever, Deadspin has the best take, starting with its headline:

RAIDERS GIVE RICHIE INCOGNITO HIS, WHAT, 50TH CHANCE

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

UD thanks John.

… in UD’s back garden. Photo: Frances Eby.

… whether you like it or not, at the 40 x 80 American flag out on Interstate 77! It’s there to sell RVs at Gander RVs in Statesville NC and it’s WAYYY beyond that town’s limits on stuff you can fly to attract attention to yourself.

Like all hucksters appealing to patriotism with grotesque flags or to piety with ten ton crosses, Mr RV says shit no the entryway to Statesville will remain a mega-kitsch Betsy Ross and anyone who says boo hates this country. I’m a big fat patriot taking up a lot of space to sell big fat gas guzzlers and y’all just try to shut me down.

Bout time Mr RV got introduced to the concept of law, huh?

… aren’t maybe AS exciting as walking directly into a seal (see an earlier post for that amazing moment in UD’s life), but I’ll take them. After dinner in Rehoboth with friends last night, the return trip along the boardwalk featured an electric sky – constant, blazing, chutes and ladders!

Foreground: Silver clouds that turned to gold with each bolt.

I’ll be back to regular blogging soon – need time to adjust to a new computer, etc., etc. As I feel more proficient with this thing (new keyboard too!), I’ll be back to my old self. Ne quittez pas.