Bad Thoughts

Enjoyed your University District tour, Gerard; and I enjoyed your bad thoughts, as always. I take the tour regularly myself, as an "unavoidable bonus" of UW library visits.

University art: Suzallo library has those black wise-crow sculptures hanging from the ceiling -- you've seen them? -- the sort of old-maid school-art that preaches down to adults cum grade-schoolers, intoning: "The wise-crows (who are not white, of course; perish the hegemony!) wise-crows bring glittering vowels to our precious collection."

I notice the wise-crows also remove stuff, too; our single copies of Oriana Fallaci's books have been missing from UW's overfunded stacks for many months now. Seems "the wise-crows go crazy on offal toxins and attack bad thoughts with their hard beaks, so you don't have to!"

When I see the metal crows I can't help but flash on pomo deconstructors, and think: "Garbage scavengers."

I know, I know; "bad thoughts".

Footnote: Have you tried Aladdin's on University Way? The double-meat gyro is worth every penny. Unfortunately, the gyro comes with saccharine Palestinian propaganda, plastered across the restaurant walls. There's no Fallaci at UW, but always plenty of Muslim agitprop, even in the food.

---

Myself, I choke the gyro down indifferently; saving the bad thoughts for dessert.

---

Resist. He who overcomes inherits all things. :-)

Posted by tex at May 23, 2006 11:45 PM

A remarkable description of this wonderful nature of the homo sapien. God, who does seem to be doing something, help us all. Bad thought.

Posted by jeffersonranch at May 24, 2006 12:27 AM

bad Gerard, bad! bad!

Heh.

Posted by Eric Blair at May 24, 2006 4:55 AM

So, what you're saying is, we need to keep Ward Churchill on the reservation... hmmm....

Posted by Clayton Barnett at May 24, 2006 5:28 AM

What a relief to have my bad thoughts exposed as rational behavior. Now every time I see one of those slowly fading Kedwards bumper stickers on another dayglo VW Microbus or rusted-blue Volvo in the local food Co-Op, instead of bad thoughts I'll appreciate the true service to mankind the University performs.

Posted by Jack Collingsworth at May 24, 2006 6:05 AM

In order to reduce spending and avoid the duplication of services, we should simply merge state mental hospitals with public universities.

Call them "Looniversity Bins."

Posted by Gagdad Bob at May 24, 2006 7:25 AM

Since these same bad thoughts are coming to many of us at the same time in different places, maybe the universe is trying to tell us something...

Posted by gabrielpicasso at May 24, 2006 9:27 AM

"For if there ever comes a time when we will have to get our Moonbat population under tighter control, well, we will 'know where they live.' Indeed, it is my understanding that the administrations of all our Universities keep detailed records of names and addresses. And the NSA doesn't even have to ask."

I use the same logic whenever my husband gets upset when he sees a typically liberal bumper sticker, especially a Kerry/Edwards sticker--we will know exactly who to round up when the time comes.

Posted by Lornkanaga at May 24, 2006 9:52 AM

I visited UC Santa Cruz with some alumni friends once.

We had a high and tights, creased blue jeans, boots, pressed cowboy shirt with a collar, and a cowboy hats on. We were tan, cut, caloused, and looked everyone in the eye and said howdy.

Walking down the street, the freaks got out of our way or stared, but the few families on the street lingered in our presence, like sheep in the presence of a sheepdog.

We went into a coffee shop full of goths and freaks and everything in between.

At the counter was some sort of transvestite barista with a "tweest of leeemon" fake accent serving latte's with an affected swish of his wrist.

The trencoats must have blocked the view of us, but as the last freak cleared out, we stepped to the counter and into the barista's view.

He just stared at us out of his be-ringed eye brows, his tongue stud twitching as his tounge licked his upper lips. His spiked hair went along with his shocked, wide-eyed look. The whole place became quiet.

In a midwestern accent he asked us, "Been here long?"

Posted by red river at May 24, 2006 10:33 AM

My brother is an alumnus of UW. He majored in theater, stage movement to be specific. While he is not a full-fledged moonbat, he is certainly sympathetic to their siren song. He has been safely ensconced on campuses throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, and is preparing to set up camp at the University of Hawaii.

He's a pretty good director, and a good writer to boot. And yes, he is my mother's favorite.

Posted by Chris at May 24, 2006 10:42 AM

What a fun romp through the commune of insanity, Gerard. Looniversities. Birdbrain Flu. There is more creative energy in this blog, writer and commenters, than in the Pulitzer lists or anywhere else.

You did miss one happy aspect of the voluntary ghettoing of the moonbats. While they recruit among our young (and parents must be vigilant) they alo tend to be somewhat self-limiting. They often misbehave themselves right out of the picture, believing as they do in abortion and relentless birth control, recreational sex and drugs, semi-starvation in the guise of fashion and the chic shopping list of the DSM-IV.

If ever there was one overarching argument for Christian private school or homeschooling followed by careful sequestering of the young at one of the few conservative colleges, this is it. Do you want your child to become a proud warrior, scientist, technologist, maker and mender of useful/beautiful objects, devoted caretaker of a household, married parent of many? Do you want to be a grandparent someday?

Or do you want to see your child become a leech on society and listen to their same-sex "partner" whine about the lack of adoption options for gays until you die old, frustrated and without genetic lines to the future?

Posted by AskMom at May 24, 2006 11:50 AM

Locals in Mass. refer to Amherst as "5 square miles surrounded by reality".

Recently I had a job interview at Penn (consulting, not teaching) and in my 8 minute walk from point a to point b on campus I was accosted by several different earnest to the point of zealous young people with various pamphlets and causes. The disposition of one of them still made me wonder at her intensity

Posted by Duffy at May 24, 2006 11:56 AM

Bad Gerard! No biscuit!

Heh--count me in... I've had the same thoughts, although not nearly as eloquently expressed.

I'm still upset about the black bear that was killed in the U district recently. There are plenty of human specimens in that area I'd rather have tranquilized, tasered, and relocated. *sigh*

Posted by Dar at May 24, 2006 12:54 PM

Why not trade the Moonbats for the FoxTrotters? They are a lot more productive.

Posted by SMK at May 24, 2006 2:50 PM

Vern: And here we go. fromTheLoins at the plate, facing ChompsattheBit.
Vince: Gerard has that funny look in his eyes, we may see something here.
Vern: Indeed, and here comes the pitch
Vince: ....
Vern: ....
The crowd goes crazy, as Gerard rounds the bases.

Funny, I read that, slowly, with Lou Reed's Coney Island Baby on the speakers.

"Theyr'e talking behind your back saying, man
You're never going to be no human being
And you start thinking again
bout all those things that you've done
And who it was and what it was
And all the different things you made every different scene

Ahhh, but remember that the city is a funny place
Something like a circus or a sewer
And just remember different people have peculiar tastes".

Well done, Gerard. I can't still think of who I'd compare you to. Montaigne, maybe?

Posted by James W Cooper at May 24, 2006 2:59 PM

Apropos of the epidemic of dementia professorum, I'd love to see you take apart Pinch Sulzberger's commencement rant at SUNY New Paltz last Sunday. Here's the link to the full text; hope it won't spoil your dinner.

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=11435

Thanks for today's post, too.

Posted by Connecticut Yankee at May 24, 2006 4:25 PM

Every essayist since Montaigne has been only a footnote to him. It is only a question of how big a footnote you can become.

Posted by Vanderleun at May 24, 2006 5:39 PM

I, too, have clad Ward Churchill in a Speedo, albeit in a slightly different context...

http://weblog.javazen.com/?p=40

Posted by GPE at May 24, 2006 6:49 PM

I remember my first experience of Seattle's university district. I was eleven years old and it was 1968. We had just moved up from socal. My pop was an engineer for Boeing and had been working on the Minuteman project at Vandenberg AFB.

He had that mid sixties engineer look down. Flatop haircut, peg leg slacks, short sleeve white shirt with clip on tie, pocket liner with Boeing ID firmly affixed. I was fairly certain that every male over the age of twenty or so looked just like him.

Then I saw the university district circa 1968. It was how I imagined a safari at an African wildlife preserve might be. We would drive up and down The Ave. staring at these curious creatures people were calling "hippies". Getting over our initial uncertainties and being tolerant open minded sorts, we settled right into our new habitat with a vengance. By 1969 my midwest raised, Catholic school educated mother had taught herself the "art" of batik, applied for a dealers permit and was selling this crap (sorry mom) at the street fair. Poor pop had no choice but to go along. His hair had gotten quite a bit more shaggy than the picture on his Boeing ID badge and he was sporting a rather sigifigant pair of mutton chops by now. Us kids, who could hardly believe we were a part of what just a year ago seemed like a trip through an ancient Turkish bazar, would help man the booth for the weekend. Ah....the memories of late sixties moonbattery when it all seemed so fresh and liberating! Not like these phony kkkorporate moonbats you see at the fair today!

Mom became somewhat of a true believer, attending various phychic fairs, crystal fests or whichever leftist new age psuedo philosophy was the latest thing. A virulent case of BDS and conspiracy mongering being the most recent. She even went so far as to try and influence me to attend The Evergreen State University in 1976. Fortunately I chose the more intelectually stimulating field of construction labor and have never regretted it. Pop had a stroke around 1990, lost his annalytical thinking skills and has joined mother on the new frontier.

Yes, the U district and the steet fair bring back fond memories!

Posted by anybodyinpoulsbo at May 24, 2006 7:17 PM

I like AskMom's post. But can I please have a list of University towns that are not like this?

Posted by barcode at May 24, 2006 7:45 PM

As long as you bare a footnote, not bear a footprint!

Posted by red river at May 24, 2006 8:55 PM

We almost had a university district. Back at the turn of the 20th century ('bout a century ago as a matter of fact) USC had made plans to locate here. Then they decided to go elsewhere. So the brand new development of University City was without a university.

And we had gone so far as to build what was supposed to be the heart of USC in San Diego.

So we made it into a normal school, which later became a [forbidden word]'s college. But when it became San Diego State College (SDSC) (later San Diego State University (SDSU)) - "State" to us locals, the physical plant was moved to Montezuma Mesa a few miles east; mostly because the land that was supposed to be developed as a university had been sold to commercial developers.

Currently the City of San Diego has three universities. The University of San Diego (USD) is a Catholic institution, and has one of the top law schools in the country. State is sort of a working class university. The denizens and habitues are of a liberal bent, but the curricula tends to the practical. The University of California at San Diego (UCSD) is a more faux liberal institution, but with a long established science core.

The big difference between San Diego's university districts and those of most every other city's is that the bordering streets have retained their original nature.

USD and SDSU are sited in working class neighborhoods. In the case of the latter there are fraternity and sorority houses, but loonkitsch is pretty much restricted to the campus itself. Lots of Town/Gown animosity between Montezuma Mesa and SDSU.

UCSD on the other hand is set in a tony location. Lots of science types settled the area back when UCSD began, and a number of other scientific institutions - the Salk Institute and Scripps for example - were already there. So the neighbors tended to the moderately upper class with responsibilities. By the time the moonbat brigade starting showing up in force there really wasn't anywhere for them to settle nearby.

So they, from SDSU and UCSD alike, found another location. A place called Mission Beach. With some settling in the Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach areas. Though the former is more working class moonbat, while the latter is "Old Settled Down Hippie" moonbat.

That's right, San Diego is the first city to have university students who commute from where they sleep (the university) to where they discuss matters of import (their crash pads).

Posted by Alan Kellogg at May 24, 2006 9:03 PM

barcode,

Champaign, half of the home of the University of Illinois, is fairly decent for a couple of important reasons:

- Nothing but corn for an hour driving in any direction.
- Strong engineering, science, and business programs; weak liberal arts and education curriculms.
- Lots of frats, something like 20% of the undergraduate population lives in a fraternity/sorority. Say what you may about the frat boys, but I'll take one of them over ten randomly choosen professors in any liberal arts department.
- The city of Urbana takes in most of the University defects.
- Campus sits on the border of Urbana and Champaign, thus the center of town is fairly unaffected.

It isn't a perfect situation: there's a hideous-looking mosque that's too close for comfort in Urbana (More like a bunker than an actual house of worship. There's even a wall around it. I'd put good money on it being Saudi funded.). There's the occassional campus protest, provided hippies elsewhere are protesting too. Otherwise it's a fairly decent, law-abiding town.

Also, in case of emergency, campus can be cut off from the rest of Champaign by control of some strategic viaducts. It might not have been the first thought in the minds of the civic planning board, but even before I read this, I thought it had to be second.

Posted by LRFD at May 24, 2006 9:14 PM

Your kind of intellectuals are the first to scream when it's safe-and the first to shut their traps at the first sign of danger. They spend years spitting at the man who feeds them-and they lick the hand of the man who slaps their drooling faces.

You might have to worry about any other breed of men, but not about the modern intellectuals: they'll swallow anything. I don't feel so safe about the lousiest wharf rat in the longshoremen's union: he's liable to remember suddenly that he is a man-and then I won't be able to keep him in line.
But the intellectuals? That's the one thing they've forgotten long ago. I guess it's the one thing that all their education was aimed to make them forget. Do anything you please to the intellectuals. They'll take it."

Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged

Posted by Mumblix Grumph at May 24, 2006 11:03 PM

Gagdad Bob

"Looniversities!" Heh,heh heh! That one should replicate around the blogosphere like avian flu. No known antidote to original wit!

Gerard: Your brilliantly bad ballad resonates beautifully with the state of play in many campuses of Her Majesty's multi-culti madhouses. It's called 'care in the community' here. As for God, perhaps he allows the bad and bizarre to enable us to recognise the good and 'normal'. If that is so, perhaps someone should point out that we got the messsage and ask if it really necessary to hammer the case home so brutally. Particularly when the bad and the bizarre is becoming more normal than previous delineations of that state.

Posted by Frank P at May 25, 2006 1:57 AM

Gerard,
Great story. Made me LMAO. Just remember... you are only as bad as your worst secret.
Regards, JCC

Posted by RunningRoach at May 25, 2006 11:55 AM

And yet, in the completeness of their moonbattery, looniversity denizens will be genuinely hurt and upset at what they will perceive as a gratuitous and unprovoked attack on your part.

You meanie.

One of the hallmarks of liberal derangement that typifies this group is the carved-in-stone TRUTH that their positions are morally and ethically unassailable and, that anyone who even proposes dialogue is guilty of treason! How dare you! We are your intellectual superiors, worm!

It is only when 'others' (G.W. Bush for example) gain prominence, fail to know 'their place' and decline to ingest and spew the liberal manifesto that libs become totally deranged.

Unfortunately, the usual behavioral manifestations (marches, signage, sit-ins, conspiracy theories, Hillary Clinton), have become so 'quaint', unfocused, ineffective and downright silly that they are laughable. Dangerous, yes, but it's getting harder and harder to keep a straight face at the Sheehans and Churchills and Gores, the MSM, Reid, Pelosi, Murtha... Even I can predict, with alarming accuracy, the idiocies and sewage that will appear after any given event.

And laughing at the Loonie Left doesn't help calm them any.

Always remember, in their heart of hearts, any liberal is superior to any non-liberal. They don't have to be considerate, respectful, diplomatic, tactful, or polite. They rule, if only you would stop being so stupid and acknowledge it..

Kind of like Muslims and... well, everyone else.

Submit, Infidel!

Posted by heldmyw at May 25, 2006 12:15 PM

C'mon -- you're holding out on us.

Your "pleasant nightmare" didn't end with the NSA "not asking", did it?

Didn't it include NYC, or was it Miami or Tel Aviv, getting nuked, first? And what do we do then.

Round up the usual suspects.

Posted by Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at May 26, 2006 5:36 AM

Ah yessss. A day at the zoo is SO interesting. But, like having monkey dung thrown at you, it can wear thin rather quickly.

Posted by Richard in Port Orchard, WA at May 29, 2006 12:01 PM

Did you count the number of people at the street fair? Figure around half of them are not really students, teachers, or administration.

That leaves the vast bulk of the students, at least, somewhere else; Either doing their homework, relating to the opposite sex, or even working at a part-time job. Not all is lost...

Posted by Ricky at May 29, 2008 9:43 AM

Well, the latest GOPeer crybaby rag fest is playing out, invective hurled plotz-like against imagined sprites and evil conspiracies lurking deep within their under utilized gray matter, but what does it matter? No late night crybaby calls to Dr. Rove, Maharishi Knucklehead, or any number of network bend-over buddies will clear the air from both the fetid stink of their pinhead invective nor the residual stank as a result of eight years of Boosh blunder and criminality. How to avoid four more years of the stupid progeny blunder courtesy of the man with the woman’s head and the curse of Nazi Boosh? No compromise, that’s what it takes. And what it takes is a piss, and all will behold that long, deep sound running down the back side of your local Repug retard (just like the country). As much as any sane thinking person wants to run and hide, it probably bellwethers better for all that we confront further repulsive and immature hormonal assaults that await any 22% rube or dupe stupid enough to buy the GOPeer magic beans or drink the Repug Kool-aid hence. Then we can rest assured, repose in idyllic compassion, apply topper, maliciously dump trash in Crawford, trim the Wax Leaf Privet, program the sprinklers, sprinkle on the nearest remaining conservative, and help the stubborn 22% don the ass hat on Election day. What says you?

Okay, you’re probably shaking your head, unable to comprehend words and ideas not regularly available in any recent copy of “Tom and Jerry”, so here’s the problem with the current occupant:

Unsuitable rage or difficulty controlling anger, i.e., repeated displays of annoyance, unvarying resentment, recurring physical battle with real or imagined enemies or “do-badders”.

Persistent “thoughts” of purposelessness or insignificance.

A prototype of unbalanced and extreme interpersonal interaction differentiated by alternating betwixt boundaries of glorification and deflation.

Individuality disorder: distinctly and doggedly unsound self-worth or sense of character.

Fleeting pressure related paranoid idea formation or relentless dissociative warning signs.

Sudden urges in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging, i.e., promiscuous sex(not likely), eating disorders(crow), binge eating(Dik Chaney’s B.S.), substance abuse(booze/coke), personal sexual abuse(checked out Laura lately?), reckless driving(‘nuff said), etc..

Frequent desperate actions, gesticulations, threats, or self-mutilating conduct such as cutting, interfering with curing of scars(the country’s), or picking at oneself.

Frantic laboring to circumvent authentic or imagined desertion.

Emotional volatility owing to marked reactivity of disposition, i.e., severe episodic dysphasia(duh), petulance(any time he speaks), or angst, as a rule lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days.

Hey, I’m only here to help….

Posted by Carl Gordon at May 29, 2008 5:58 PM

Uh, Carl, you've gotten stuck in some kind of liberal time warp. The resentment, unbalanced personal interactions, sudden urges, desperate actions, petulance, etc....... that was Bill Clinton.

Thanks for the pointers, though. Good to remind folks how much we don't want that buffoon, or anyone who ever voluntarily associated with him in any way, anywhere near the White House.

Posted by askmom at May 29, 2008 7:27 PM

Its worse. Much worse than you suggest. The Looniversities are not just crash pads for the moonbats...preserves that substitute for the looneybin of yore...they're places we send our children to spend the end of adolescence...to lose their innocence...to "grow" and mature. And we pay for the privilege...with after tax dollars...and we are screwed for our trouble. At the end of a couple of "university educations" I think my kids are about the same, but older. Anything they learned would likely have been learned in four years of anything else. Sad. Sad. Time to pull the plug on that bathtub and let it drain.

Posted by rascalfair at May 30, 2008 5:05 AM

Carl, Once again you proceed from a false premise. You seem to think I'm a Republican. I'm not. In fact, up until the Democrats lost their collective mind to the collective I was a solid Democrat. But that is not to say I am a Republican.

Take counsel of Matthew: " 4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Posted by vanderleun at May 30, 2008 6:55 AM

You guys HAVE to check out a new book "Why You're Wrong About the Right." Hilarious.

Posted by Mary at May 30, 2008 7:14 AM

I'm sure the obscenity and stupidity limits have been reached here. i am appalled any educated person would behave and speak so maliciously. Truly appalled.

Posted by anducallurselfsmart at April 28, 2011 10:24 AM

One more goes on the list.

Posted by vanderleun at April 28, 2011 10:43 AM

True

Posted by ghostsniper at April 4, 2016 4:45 AM

Fen’s Law:

The Left believes in none of the things they lecture the rest of us about.

Posted by Smokey at April 4, 2016 11:23 AM

Yes utilizing our existing higher ed structures to contain and delimit the insane and irrational, keeping them away from our neighborhoods and children seems like a grand idea but... The rule of unintended consequences came in to play.

Said high ed asylums could not contain such a massive number of inmates, subsequently they stared exporting them to lower ed edifices (first high schools, then middle schools and, alas, now even elementary schools.) as administrators and ̶t̶e̶a̶c̶h̶e̶r̶s̶ facilitators. To coin a phrase; Trickle down insanity.

My granddaughter told me her facilitators have rated her reading ability at college level (Which I see not as an accolade for her but reproof of present day collegiate reading ability.).

None the less she was doing quite well in her third grade class, every report card containing notes such as; "Disruptive","Asks too many questions!", "Will not accept no for an answer.", etc., -but alas, her last report card lacked such glowing comments noting instead that she is fitting quite well in to the program.

Hopefully the summer away from the institution will detoxify her at least a bit and I'm heartened that I've still a number of years to convince my son that responsible, caring, parents do not allow their children to attend present day universities.

Posted by Jim O'Neil at April 4, 2016 11:25 AM

And lo, these many years later we find that the crazy is geometric on these campuses. Cowering in the face of... wait for it...

chalk.

Posted by mezzrow at April 4, 2016 4:01 PM

I have never given up on conserving and bringing the best of the things I was bequeathed safely into the future, where their beauty and usefulness will find their time. The Moonbats you describe imagined a strange future which has now become the past they are stuck in. Funny, that.

Posted by fodderwing at April 4, 2016 5:48 PM

"....I've still a number of years to convince my son...."
=====================

No you do not.
The time is now.
The best learning is done early.
At 8 years of age she already belongs to *them*.
Negligent parents are a disaster.

Posted by ghostsniper at April 5, 2016 6:16 AM

Once Bill Gates, working with the federal government, figures out a way to implant monitoring chips in our brains at birth, there will be immediate punishment for all bad thoughts. The Dirt People, to borrow from Z-man, will go underground. The Moonbats will start purging other Moonbats. Chaos will ensue.

Posted by James LePore at April 12, 2016 10:11 AM