-o – o – ld.

We’ve chronicled for years on this blog the remarkable number of truly out-sized financial criminals who got their training at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Here’s another one – a Muslim who used some of his money to “to undo negative misperceptions of [Muslims] in [the] media.”

Well…

A gray dawn breaks
Over the deaf-mute space ocean
And UD shuts the window of morning readings
To tap out electric greetings:

The better part of wisdom is to share
Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.
In interludes among fests of nativity,
Do not forget the voice of our declivity:

“Why do people fear dying alone and unloved?
What difference does it make?”
“You know in the end, none of it matters,
What happens to you in your life. Not suffering.
Not happiness or unhappiness. Not illness. Not prison. Nothing.”

Among some porcelain, among some talk of you and me
Do not forget: The blood jet is poetry.

Caretaker! take care, for we run in straits.
Daily, by night, we walk naked to storm,
some threat of wholesale loss, to ruinous fear.
Gift us with long cloaks & adrenalin.

Who haunt the avenues of Angkor Wat
recalling all that prayer, that glory dispersed,
haunt me at the corner of Fifth & Hennepin.
Shield & fresh fountain! Manifester! Even mine.

John Berryman

[At school, Evelyn Waugh founded] the Corpse Club, “for those who were weary of life.”

A lede that packs in a lot.

… as she does every December,
for a Polish Christmas.

Blogging continues unhindered.

An Iowa State University fraternity received a sanction for indecent exposure on Tuesday …

FarmHouse Fraternity, which stands for Faith, Ambition, Reverence, Morality, Honesty, Obedience, Unity, Service and Excellence, was sanctioned, or penalized, for indecent exposure, which according to the university’s code of conduct, is defined as intentionally exposing genitals or other intimate areas in a public place where others are present. The exposure must take place where it is “reasonably likely” to offend, annoy or alarm another person…

… The organization received another sanction in December 2015, also for indecent exposure.

Alien Visitation

A second crew with whom to mourn
Th’ uncaptained flight of being

Then, taking a seat in our cabin to share
Camusian notes on the silence of the universe

What else are you going to watch? “General Hospital”? “Young and the Restless”? “Rachel Ray”? “Maury”? The Liverpool-Swansea EPL match?

Time to dust off the Jung.

**********

UD thinks of her friend Paul Laffoley at this moment. He didn’t live to see the Navy footage.

… Prague.

A 26-year-old woman reportedly pulled a loaded handgun from her pocket Tuesday when her Front Range Community College instructor confronted her about cheating on a test.

Fort Collins police said student Brittany Schoonover reportedly pulled the gun from her pocket and “racked the slide” — the process of moving a round into the chamber of a semi-automatic handgun manually — when her instructor confronted her outside a classroom, arrest records show.

… The instructor told police he feared for his life and the lives of other students, but he was able to disarm Schoonover and call for help, according to arrest documents. Other specific information about how the instructor disarmed her was not available Wednesday.

Mandatory faculty workshops in how to disarm students threatening you with semi-automatic handguns are on their way. Training will also feature helpful hints, such as: Never walk away from a student until she gives you permission to do so.

A song of praise for NFL football.

… The grunting, juddering, anti-flow of the broader game, the rote brutality and steak-headed backwardness of the action at the play-by-play level, the sudden blundering intrusion of all those honking commercials — for achingly sincere domestic macro-pilsners, for strapping trucks and their loud and swaggering drive-train warranties, for extremely emotional insurance companies and also weirdly ironic insurance companies — at every stoppage of play. In the most basic sense this is just what the average NFL game is, but more worrying for the lords of the league, it is also a description of what is an objectively not-great television show — one with the queasy pacing of rush-hour traffic, the jarring violence of a car accident, and the fuddy legalism of traffic court, and that somehow manages to be three hours long.

… In recent years, [these sorts of] games, resembling out-of-body experiences, have become worryingly common. The sudden glut of ultra-shitty games probably isn’t the greatest long-term problem facing the sport, but it’s also the most obvious and inescapable challenge to all the solemn covenant-pageantry of the NFL; it’s hard to civically sanctify the experience of being bored.

… The league’s signature corruptions have unmistakably diminished both the quality of the games and the broader health of the sport; things just can’t go on this way.

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

UD thanks Dirk.

Margaret Atwood and…

… George Washington.