‘Break up to make up / that’s all we do / first you love me then you hate me / that’s a game for fools’

Sing it.

1.) Presentation, Socialism 2025 conference, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi:

“I don’t care about this institution. Like I don’t—like fuck the University of Chicago, it’s evil. Like, you know? It’s a colonial landlord.

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

2.) Abdelhadi comment to the university newspaper, a few days later:

 “I love my life at the University of Chicago.”

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

You may also sing:

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

Or is it more complex than this? Recall Geoffrey Firmin, the main character in Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano:

 “I love hell. I can’t wait to get back there.”

Post-hoax embarrassment forces reflection.

“Nature is considered to be the one place free of human artifice, the place where deep universal truths can be uncovered that are not to do with us,” [Helen] Macdonald says, “which, of course, is bullshit. That’s not the case. We put all our deepest human meanings into nature. We sort of force them in there, and then we use them to prove the veracity of our own concepts back at us, which is what nature writing does all the time.”

Today’s mass shooting comes to us from the cute town of Anaconda, in America’s suicide capital, Montana. [Updates.]

And speaking of suicide, I’m thinking the reason the shooter hasn’t, hours later, been found may be cuz he done did the deed and it’s harder to find a half-buried corpse or whatever than a live guy driving (what else) a white Ford F-150 pickup.

Motivewise, why does a guy who lives next door to a bar kill four people in it at ten AM?

I’m thinking this is the way you handle ongoing noise ordinance issues in Montana. There’s a presentation to the city council, and there’s The Way of the Glock.

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

He had “mental issues for a long, long time,” says a neighbor. Same neighbor also says he saw the dude coming out of his house this morning with an AR 15…

Crazy guy with a semi… Call the cops…?

Why, no ma’am. This is Montana.

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

You have to admire their capacity to be shocked.

Says here they’re even in shock.

Weawy? Open carry, permitless concealed carry, everybody armed to the teeth, drifts of drunk depressed delusional army vets dotting the hills like a host of golden daffodils … My dears, you’re awfully easily shocked…

And now that they’ve found his ditched pickup, are you going to be super shocked when they find his body?

And let’s say they don’t find him. Presumed dead.

How long does Anaconda/environs stay locked down?

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

Oh plus everyone’s saying he was elaborately ostentatiously mad as a hatter but simply couldn’t find a mental hospital, therapist, psychological help OF ANY KIND.

He “suffered from significant mental health challenges, including schizophrenia and PTSD from serving in the Army.”

Says here there are three veteran-focused public mental hospitals in the state, and though a lot of the people listed here are all wrong for a vet with trauma, the list is very long. I understand the distance problem, but he clearly should have been resident in a hospital while getting treatment and of course someone should have taken his guns away if he was so dangerous to others. Are we going to be hearing from any of his family?

Okay. Family claims relevant hospitals turned him down. Need for more detail here. No primary care doc to prescribe meds? And why does a delusional schizophrenic who scares his family have guns? Why did the NFL shooter have guns? Why did this absolutely insane woman who killed her four daughters have guns?

Fact is, states like Montana get their high gun violence (suicide and homicide) rate because people there care much more about personal liberty than community safety. There’s a reason we call it the wild west.

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

Leftwing version of this.

[A]ny intervention that has to be imposed on a vulnerable person is so fundamentally flawed and problematic that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Anyone offended by the sight of the suffering is just judging someone who’s having a mental-health episode, and any liberal who argues that the state can and should take control of someone in the throes of drugs and psychosis is basically a Republican. If and when the vulnerable person dies, that was his choice, and in San Francisco we congratulate ourselves on being very accepting of that choice...

Off it goes.

‘Corporation for Public Broadcasting Will Shut Down’

From those wonderful folks who bring you bullet-spewing fourteen year olds…

… comes another trial. Another dazed degenerate shuffles stripe-shirted into court to explain why gifting his insane issue multiple semiautomatics was just what the doctor ordered.

It takes a heap o’ havoc…

… for people to stop castrating five year old girls.

Although the Dersh/Dumple War script writes itself…

… Roger Craver has a nice take on it.

House with matching…

… millipede. As I walked around the garden this morning.

UD thanks her friend and neighbor David for linking to this.
Limerick
When the Vineyard's most off-putting fogey
Demanded his share of pierogi
The seller said, "Alan,
You're just not my pal, and
I think you should move to Muskogee."
“It’s crazy that he was able to walk on a Manhattan street into a building and not be seen carrying a long gun,” [Richard] Frankel told ABC News. “How was he able to just walk with no one seeing him carrying an assault weapon and actually having it dangle out from his jacket?”

UD covers gun news closely and can assure you that all over America every day men, women, and children walk easily about with small medium and large guns all over them. Of course some of this happens in open carry states, where everyone sees the gun, but no one (cough) responds…

As for the lack of response in midtown Manhattan — the area immediately around the shooter in the plaza is curiously devoid of people, so I’m assuming the response was run away. My response would certainly have been Give this person PLENTY of room.

I would also have called 911, and I’m assuming some people in fact did, but there wouldn’t have been a quick enough response to 911 to stop him.

Psychologically, there may have been denial/disbelief/maybe someone is filming a movie scene here... There may have been, in other words, human all too human tendencies to normalize/vaporize a twilight zone sight in the middle of the day.

Just as more Americans need training in active shooter drills, so more Americans need to be taught to lead their daily public lives with a heightened degree of paranoia.

Introduction, THE SHITS ARE TRYING TO KILL US, PEOPLE. GET IT INTO YOUR HEAD THAT THERE ARE FIVE HUNDRED MILLION GUNS IN THIS COUNTRY. Meets Wednesdays, basement of St Mark’s Episcopal, 7:00. Refreshments served.

Limerick

Brevard Co.'s Representative Fine
Is so violent and wretched a swine
That even old AIPAC
Takes a startled step way back
When he speaks what is on his foul mind
Tourist Brochure Copy, Hamptons

‘The Hamptons are less a location that’s a beach than a beach that forgot it was a beach. The place has become the rictus grin of the nouveau riche. It’s the Upper East Side’s revenge against urban humidity and decay, a spiritual center of sorts devoted to musing smugly upon your life and how it’s gone so right.

Now is the panicle season…
Sing it.


Now is the panicle season
Humidity is hell
We're sweating well beyond reason
O hell now sing o hell



‘Rebecca Fischer, the executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, a gun reform advocacy group, said that while New York has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, those laws are undermined when other states have lax regulations. “There’s really only so much our state and local officials and residents can do to strengthen our gun laws if states like Nevada and our federal government just enable, allow, encourage, and promote this kind of violent behavior,” she said.’

Because Nevada has its head up its ass, New Yorkers die.

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

“New York has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation. We banned assault weapons. We strengthened our Red Flag Law. We closed dangerous loopholes. But our laws only go so far when an AR-15 can be obtained in a state with weak gun laws and brought into New York to commit mass murder,” [Gov. Kathy] Hochul said in a statement on Tuesday morning. “Congress must summon the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and finally pass a national assault weapons ban before more innocent lives are stolen.”

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

Nevada permits open carry, whereas New York does not.

Additionally, assault weapons are banned in New York but allowed in Nevada; there are some exceptions to this rule.

Another notable difference is that in New York, local jurisdictions such as cities and counties can enact stricter gun laws than the state.

In Nevada, jurisdictions cannot impose stricter regulations than those established by the state.

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte