EEF!

Williams is only three miles from the Appalachian Trail, also offers a 4-1-4, and, unlike Middlebury, doesn't require a foreign language for a junior year abroad, which is a plus plus: Williams has a reciprocal arrangement with Oxford, yo.

Students, even freshmen, will never have more than a double dorm, and most students have singles by sophomore year if they want, though most, according to both the student tour guide and the admissions officer who made the presentation, choose to remain in doubles, as their cohort - they're called "entries" at Williams - has grown so tight, the singles distance from the group rooms is considered a negative.

Most importantly, the mascot is a purple cow:

and the students are known as Ephs, pronounced EEFS: the founder of Williams' first name was Ephraim.

DING! DING! DING! We have a new leader in the clubhouse.

Actually, what's most important is that Planet has been made aware that a significant upgrade in damn is required of her these next three semesters in high school if she hopes to even make a maybe pile in any of these schools' admissions offices. Which was the point, from a sneaky parental POV, of this trip in the first place.

Williamston was OK, the drive through the Berkshires pretty if on shitty Massachusetts roads (anyone who has driven on a Maryland state route over the Pennsylvania line onto a PA state route can imagine what driving from a Vermont state route onto a Massachusetts state route is like). I'm in Amherst MA as I type this, and we're gonna do Amherst College tomorrow, then do some touristy stuff (I may get to throw plastic at metal baskets!), spend tomorrow night here then head to Boston Saturday.

O! One last picture (via Planet) from Vermont!

Moo, motherfucker.

*

Maybe Obama and the Democrats aren't feckless dickweeds afraid to call bullshit on the Right's incitement to violence. Maybe Obama and the Democrats are counting on the violence to solidify and further their power. Maybe they're calculating that the horror and backlash, once a Malkinista starts throwing bullets and people are wounded and killed, will pay dividends the Democrats can cash for a generation.

Maybe Obama and Dem strategists know the rage isn't about health care, know that Obama could propose free government-subsidized ammunition and chewing tobacco and crackers would rebel, would reach for their weapons and load the free ammo, spitting chaw angrily.

Maybe Obama and Dem strategists knew a cracker catharsis was inevitable, that angry white crackers dependent on government dole would oppose government dole if the dole wasn't handed to them by one of their own.

This would not only make Obama and the Democrats cynical and complicit in the violence, it'd make them more cleverly and deviously evil than the Republicans who see inciting crackers as their route back to power. Who knew Dems had it in them?

Sheeyit: of course Obama and Democrats are feckless dickweeds. Which doesn't mean they aren't cynically complicit in whatever violence is coming.

*

• UPDATE! Re: above.
  
• Feckless Dickweeds.
• Hagerstown: Meth Capital of Maryland!
• Les Paul.
• More Gary Numan, Hamster.
• Today's Listening Assignment is quiet.

Updates later. Or not.

*

LOYALTY

James Tate

This is the hardest part:
When I came back to life
I was a good family dog
and not too friendly to strangers.
I got a thirty-five dollar raise
in salary, and through the pea-soup fogs
I drove the General, and introduced him
at rallies. I had a totalitarian approach
and was a massive boost to his popularity.
I did my best to reduce the number of people.
The local bourgeoisie did not exist.
One of them was a mystic
and walked right over me
as if I were a bed of hot coals.
This is par for the course-
I will be employing sundry golf metaphors
henceforth, because a dog, best friend
and chief advisor to the General, should.
While dining with the General I said,
"Let's play the back nine in a sacred rage.
Let's tee-off over the foredoomed community
and putt ourselves thunderously, touching bottom."
He drank it all in, rugged and dusky.
I think I know what he was thinking.
He held his automatic to my little head
and recited a poem about my many weaknesses,
for which I loved him so.

*

Via Hamster: