A hip student hangout at Duke
Plays music that makes us all puke.
You get niggas and bitches
And pistols and snitches
Along with your onions and cuke.

Hot New Hiphop notes the incompatibility between lyrics like

I showed her a Xanax, she hurried up and took
I fucked her so good, she got up and started cooking
Rolling up big blunts, out a pound of cookies
If you ain’t got 40 bands, then you can’t book me
Pulled up on the side of your bitch, she wouldn’t stop looking
That bitch good as tooken, good as gone
I guarantee tonight my nigga, that bitch ain’t coming home
I got money to count, I got bitches to fuck
I got packs to flip, pistols to bust

and a public cafe.

One of Duke University’s cafes was playing this song for its customers when a vp of student life walked in, got wind of the pistols bitches and niggas, and took it up with an employee. The woman apologized and turned off the music, but the vp was really pissed and called the store’s management, which fired the woman and another guy who was also working the counter while the Xanax and the fucking so good wafted o’er the air.

The vp says he did not ask for them to be fired; he didn’t apparently ask for anything except for management to note that children and other non-violent, non-misogynistic people enter Duke’s establishment. The firing was management’s call.

UD doesn’t think the workers should have been fired. She does think that the cultural centrality of hiphop – like UD, I’m sure you’ve heard lyrics worse than these in public establishments – makes these incidents inevitable, and that universities need to think about whether this music is a good look for them.

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UD thanks dmf.

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UPDATE:

I’ve been in public places with young kids around and thought, yikes, that song is a lot. I certainly wouldn’t go babysit for friends and throw on Dr. Dre with their 4 year-old. But even if you think the standards should change, the approach of calling out random people helplessly embedded in profane U.S. culture, as if upbraiding them is a righteous project, is not the way forward…

UD (see above) agrees; and yet think of that phrase: helplessly embedded… Really? Does that mean no one employed in a public setting has the capacity/responsibility to reject disgusting lyrics? Are we all helplessly embedded?

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Another Update: The shop owner has now apologized for firing the employees. Good move.

The story is going national, which is also good. Attention must eventually be paid to the matter of – quoting from the article above – our helplessness relative to vile lyrics in public spaces.

And now they have another new athletic director! One of thousands!

Among [the new AD’s] first to-do items will be hiring men’s and women’s basketball coaches. The women’s program, coached by Angela Jackson for 15 seasons, lost a Division I-record 59 games in a row over the last three seasons before ending the streak in February. The men’s program let go of [its last coach] after the Cougars went 3-29 in his eighth season.

How do they even field teams?

Why does a school that’s so bad it’s practically non-existent have an athletics program?

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Ask the taxpayers of Illinois. Maybe they can tell you why they’re paying for this guy.

In August 2012, [Chris] Zorich agreed in court to pay back more than $300,000 in unaccounted [charitable foundation] funds. In July 2013, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges for failing to file federal income tax returns from 2006 to ’09.

Stealing from Chicago State is certainly a tradition among quite a few of the people who work or have worked there. I guess Chicago State, and the taxpayers, appreciate traditions.

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Or ask a philosopher. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it…

In a new series, UD will acquaint you with her world, Washington, DC.

Here’s a representative denizen, a fellow Metro passenger this afternoon.

Let me start with what you can’t see: His lapel boasts a large circular button identifying his membership in some political organization – NRA maybe. He doesn’t look like an ACLU type.

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Actually, to UD’s majorly practiced eye, he doesn’t look like a DC resident. He looks like a heartlander in town for a conference (note the luggage).

You also can’t see that his tie is a big splash of red white and blue.

He is young yet portly.

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Now to electronics.

Note that his headset phone’s red circle is all lit up cuz he’s just received a call. The bright circle of red goes around and around and around until he starts talking. Let’s listen in.

Hi yeah. Can’t do it until end of next week after the membership meeting. Now? I’m on the Washington metro to the airport. … Did you get a chance to read that report? Can you believe that stuff? We need to draft a response. Get Betty on it.

He is texting while talking.

… extended.

That’s the moment that would have done it for me. Not my professor rather obnoxiously complaining about my decision to give a presentation in front of class wearing short shorts, but the yutz who felt free to tell the presenter (in their public presentation class at Cornell) that she was an immoral woman because of her short shorts.

There’s a long distinguished history of women protesting various forms of repression by, en masse, taking off their clothes, and Letitia Chai, Cornell undergrad, made the perfectly reasonable decision, in this classroom atmosphere, to join that movement.

Rather than obey the young man who scolded her for immorality, Chai – and a bunch of other students whom she invited to join her – presented in bra and underwear. And then of course she went viral with the protest via her Facebook page.

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What did the male international student do in this shocking situation?

UD trusts he drew his burqa more tightly around his face so as not to see.

[H]e was sitting in the student pickup car line waiting for his child to get out of school when he decided to “clear” or unload his firearm. [H]e pointed the gun out the passenger side window and began pulling the slide back on the gun.

Deputies say multiple witnesses reported seeing [him] pointing the gun out the window of the truck.

… Deputies secured an unloaded .40 caliber Glock handgun, two magazines and 27 rounds of ammunition from inside of [the parent’s] truck.

… in Italy.

Their absolutely massive and growing athletics debt is attracting a lot of press attention, especially after an audit which disclosed just the sort of greed, lies, stupidity, and desperation you’d expect from a humongous sports program humongously tanking.

But it’s not just about numbers: WSU crowned the… troubled Mike Leach king of the school (Mike absconded clutching most of the school’s money and trailing lawsuits); their football players typically rack up more arrests than any other team; and their professors? Don’t ask.

And of course there’s a brand new management team in place! Life will soon be beautiful all the time.

The mug shot that says Dismiss me.

[T]ime and “the beginning” of the universe arose holographically from an unknowable state outside the Big Bang.

As you were.

Of course the Onion was there first.

But as Saudi Arabia (insert world’s largest quotation marks around the following word) liberalizes, we will be able to enjoy many real-life versions of this story.

… and they found this,

with two long dusty cords
dangling out of it.

I’m thinking Margaret and Munro Leaf
had it installed around 1965.

Somewhere in the distant inaccessible reaches of Washington State University lies the crashed alien spaceship from which the school will extract the $67 million they need to pay their athletics deficit.

Details here.

… in the wake of the ongoing Professor Jay Smith… unpleasantness. Beginning in September 2019, all teaching/research hires will be asked to certify the following:

I, _______ _________, having accepted a lectureship/professorship at UNCCH, do hereby swear, with all my heart, all my soul, and all my might, the Faith Priority of my school’s major sports teams (viz., football and basketball). Specifically, I pledge strict obedience to the Gaming Imperatives issued by our coaching staff, as well as by any in-residence professional agents seeking to recruit future clients, as those imperatives relate to professors, tutors, graduate students, and anyone else in a position of responsibility relative to the education of our players.

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UD thanks John.