(WHOA. Says here on Amazon it’s a collectible! Only two copies available, one of which sells for more than $200! The second asks almost $500! Hell – how do I sell my copy? In ‘thesda that’s one excellent dinner out for one.) The meeting concluded with a manifesto, signed by many of the participants, calling for the reconstruction of the Roman colosseum, along with much else of ancient Rome. Once rebuilt, these sites would assimilate into the modern city — they would be libraries, supermarkets, courts, cafes.
Leon Krier loves the idea, feeling only “sad and frustrated” when looking at “expensive to keep up” ruins. “Ruins mean nothing.” O.M. Ungers disagrees and alludes to “memory … romance … [the colosseum’s] patina, its aspect of time,” the continuity of that particular auratic history-charged object over centuries. I.e., ruins of many kinds mean a whole lot to many of us, and the colosseum arguably sits at the top of the world’s ruin-lists.
Of course most people are scandalized by this very idea. You will notice nothing’s come of it.
And indeed the very latest, far more modest, repurposing of the structure also has much of Rome colossally pissed: The city’s agreed to let Airbnb rent out the place to customers who want to pretend to be gladiators in the colosseum: Check-in’s 9 PM; must check out by 1 AM. Details.
[The Who’s] Pete Townshend has said a cup of tea and two digestive biscuits are all he needs to lift himself out of “suicidal” depression every morning.
[Townshend] has eschewed professional help for his crippling “chemical depression”, opting instead to treat his symptoms with home comforts and writing journals.
He told The Sunday Times he wakes up each morning wanting to die, but does not want to talk to “f—–g doctors” about it.
[He] gets up each morning feeling “suicidal, actually suicidal”, and that it will take him half an hour to get out of this mood.
“I have a couple of cups of tea, two digestive biscuits … and I feel happy,” he said.
[M]y fraternity brothers and I walked over to our plot in Greek Bowl to … sing [a] hymn. When we got there, the music was so loud and the marijuana smell was so thick that you could have confused it for Woodstock. We couldn’t even see our plot.
We turned around and walked back to our RV.
About 15 minutes later, the first round of shootings occurred.
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Finally someone’s writing a general piece about the recurrent phenomenon of shootings – sometimes mass shootings – at HBCU homecomings. The writer doesn’t go beyond vivid descriptions and handwringing, but it’s a start.
This year, [North Carolina A&T University] officials reported 131,000 people attended events throughout their homecoming weekend, pumping millions of dollars into the Greensboro economy.
Getta loada that. A school with 14,000 students, and this is their homecoming, with tens of thousands of strangers there getting high and getting excited and getting trigger-happy. Some schools are responding with closed campuses and mandatory i.d. cards, etc. Some are happily continuing to walk into bloodbaths year after year. But all must know that when you concentrate enough people and enough partying in one space, there’s a good chance some stupid fucker’s gonna haul out the AR15 just for the hell of it.
Datz gunny America, folks, and denial only kills more people.
He’s a deep-dyed Louisianan, with a French name (deGravelles), total LSU education, and parents who practically founded the modern Luzianne Republican party.
… where you can rent a handgun lickety-split and blow your head off no muss no fuss. In the last two years, two Purdue students have indeed applied the ballistics the range offers in order to solve their personal problems forever.
When students use exactly the same method/location like this, the poor school gets to worry about copycat suicides.
Shooting ranges are somewhat popular places nationwide to commit suicide – it happens enough that many have rules that no one can come in alone, everyone has to be assessed in various ways by staff, etc.
There have apparently been three student suicides at Purdue in the two-year span. (The third was more conventional: The student simply walked outside to a wooded location and used his own gun.) Yikes.
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PS:Scathing Online Schoolmarm notes: Editors at the University of Texas San Antonio newspaper should know that you can edit stuff out of what people say. You don’t, for instance, have to scrupulously retain every one of this student’s likes:
“It was kind of an eye awakener, there, for me a little bit. But there’s, like, people, like, go through this, like, on a daily basis, which is really sad,” she added.
So after the latest bloodletting at the school’s 100th homecoming a few days ago, officials have closed the campus, and everyone’s gotta wear an i.d. at all times. The tyke who likes to shoot his machine guns into crowds at events like homecomings has been arrested, while sixteen people try not to die of the wounds he inflicted. One person has already died.
Ooh, wonder what his motive was! I’m thinking someone inadvertently shoved him. It was crowded and all.
No, you don’t have to react that strongly to an image of a woman in a hijab, and yes, hijabs obviously should be tolerated (UD‘s readers know she ain’t crazy about them); but the city of Montreal was kinda dumb to feature an image of a hijabi beetled over by two men in western garb in its WELCOME TO THE CITY sign in the town hall. The mayor has announced that it will be taken down — oodles of Montrealers have complained that this pic represents quite the opposite of the secularity near and dear to their hearts — and though there’s the usual insistence that acts of this sort will bring Montreal’s democratic values crashing down, everyone knows that this will not happen.
A small point also, but UD has noticed that, in discussions of the hijab, people tend to overlook the larger total body wrapping that often accompanies the headgear and certainly features in this image. It ain’t just that Montreal is boasting that it welcomes the hijab; it welcomes the total draping of the female body in a modesty gesture that tells the world the female body must be hidden. I wonder why it must be hidden.
Anyway, you’re welcome to traipse about Mont Royal all covered up except for your face and hands, but Montrealers have a right to object to that look for women being made a symbol of their city.
This blog, recognizing that fatal shootings are standard at university homecoming events, now calls homecoming guncoming, that special time of year when young Americans gather, get excited, and do what they do when lots of them are armed.
For Tuskegee’s all-important one hundredth guncoming the other day, bang went the weapons and down went the students, faculty, alumni, and other celebrants. One dead, multiple serious injuries. And of course PLENTY of raw footage from various vantage points for you to enjoy. “The amount of bullets shot last night in Tuskegee amidst their homecoming weekend celebration is terrifying,” writes one audience member. “I couldn’t even finish the video.” (Reminder from SOS: The correct word is NUMBER, not AMOUNT.)
The world’s press is covering this latest guncoming. American rituals are so interesting.
