Oh, About That Petulant Snit...

...it has matured in to a full on, Andy Rooney-esque bitch fest about something that I cannot control.

First off, read the facts about the winter we've had in Southern Wisconsin here.

As those who know me well know, I have never been one to complain about the weather. Quite the contrary. I have always taken great pride in the fact that I grew up and live in the Midwestern United States where we get it all, weather-wise. Freezing cold, stifling heat, pouring rains and, yes, even some nice days now and then.

I have even been heard to remark that Midwesterners could, because of their experience of climate, live just about anywhere and get used to it.

With all of that, it is hard to imagine that I even have a limit when it comes to extreme weather.

I'll admit, it's high. But it is there.

What's more, folks, we have almost reached that limit. We are mere fractions of a mile from the border between "Grin and Bear It" to "Toxic, Screaming, Super Freakout That May Involve Guns."

No, I am not exaggerating. It seems that I am not the only one who as about had it.

I am sick and tired of living in boots, wool socks, long underwear and pound after pound of other protective clothing. I am tired of constantly being cold and/or wet. I am weary of constantly looking at the ground to adjust my gait so that I don't fall and break something. I am in pain because I have actually already fallen (that I can count) six times. Oh, and you know the old saw "the bigger they are, the harder they fall?" It is absolutely true. A kid falls down, he's light and doesn't have far to go. I fall down, and the better part of 325 pounds has to fall several feet.

I am also fed up with the temperature, getting just warm enough on occasion (and these have been rare) to melt just enough so that, come evening, it can re-freeze and turn deadly again. I realize and appreciate how hard clean-up efforts have been, but I cannot help but think that some proactive measures (plowing before things are buried and impassible) may help sometimes. I am still pissed at UW for closing only when all of the tens of thousands of us were already on campus.

I want to wear regular, dry shoes, no sweatshirts and no sweaty stocking cap. I want to breath in without my nostrils stinging. I want to air out my apartment which bears the smells of a hundred dinners, cigars, spilled beers and so on. I want to walk without the fear of broken bones constantly. Most of all, I want a short time before cold weather that can kill you turns to hot weather that can kill you.

Is this too much to ask.

Probably. But I'm asking anyway.

Let's See, Where Was I? Oh Yes, The Inhumanities Building

Picking up where I left off over a month ago...

(Where was I, you ask? Let's just say that after the semester I had, I needed a month of beer, smoked meats, live music, family and friends and not riding a bus all day. I would have written about what I was up to academically, but it was mostly more Thomas Hobbes and pretending to learn Latin, which is where I drew my intellectual line. I also would have written about all of the political mishegoss that is going on but, well, what does it matter which group of lunatics runs the asylum next. I have never voted for a winner yet and I have no intention of starting now. We have a whole year of that ahead of us yet. Oh well, on with the commentary already in progress)

I would update you on the situation but, sadly, there is little new to report. The holes are still in the roof, the thin layer of film (while not asbestos-laden, apparently) still comes back every few days, the hall is still stacked with various mold-encrusted acoustic tiles and the workmen
have not been seen in more than a month.

So, there's that.

If this building seems to have all of the problems that were endemic to Soviet housing projects of the, well, entire sorry Soviet period, why would anyone want to keep this thing around?

Not surprisingly, the preservationist charge is led by art critics.

They say that this 1968 design by architect Harry Weese is a great example ofb Brutalist architecture. This style is everything it's name implies. Stark lines, confusing floor plans, imposing vistas and concrete. Lots and lots of concrete.

They argue that this building, because of these, ahem, merits must be saved, use and users be damned.

O.K. I'll buy that with one stipulation.

All of those who want it saved can come and set up shop in the building for one whole year completely free of charge. I guarantee that within a few months, they might change their tune(perhaps the Music department buried in the bowels of the beast could help them with this?)

If the built environment cannot change with the needs of its users, its continued presence must be called into question. If it needs to be repurposed but is generally sound, then overhaul it. If has outlived its use, or never fit it to begin with, it's time to admit the failure, cut the losses and rethink the plan. Simple as that.

Well, as simple as destroying a block long hunk of steel and concrete ever gets.

In the meantime, we'll take some of those FEMA trailers they use for disasters. I'm confident that the heat is better and I know for sure the bathrooms are closer.

Artistically insensitive? Perhaps, but with the embarassingly low amount of money I get paid, I think I have some room to complain about the working conditions.

Nothing will be done about it, but hey, if blogging is about anything, it is about catharsis.

Really glad I'm back, aren't you?

Don't answer that.

Living In A Brutalist Meat Locker

This post might seem like it starts far away from where it ends. In that cause, I will tell you now that it discusses:

1. How cold my office is at present.
2. Why this has not yet been fixed.
3. Why architecture critics like Brutalist architecure and why no one else does.
4. Why some history isn't worth preserving.
5. Why the Mosse Humanities Building at UW-Madison must go now.

If all of that sounds interesting, read on. If not, well, you are here already, so might as well...

I am a gentleman of considerable carriage and a native Midwesterner. I have never even spent part of a winter in a place where the weather didn't have a regular dose of conditions that can kill you.

This means that I am never one to complain about the winter. Separates the sheep from the goats, climactically speaking.

A situation has developed, however, that has caused me to avoid a particular place because of the weather. You might be surprised to learn that this place is actually inside.

It is my office in the George L. Mosse Humanities Building on UW-Madison's campus.

The reason that I have had to avoid it is that the heat has been off, well, the whole time I have been here, really. It has never worked well. Now, though, it has been completely off since Monday and it is really no warmer inside than it is out.

The maintenance people have been doing, well, something for more than a week now. First, it involved tearing out the ceiling tiles, sawing holes in the ceiling and then pointing into those holes. Then, it involved disconnecting things inside the holes, taking them from the holes and then pointing at the things. Now, it involves banging and sawing other things in the holes, arguing about what to bang and saw next and then leaving for the day.

In that respect, it is a pretty typical union job. A lot of activity with very little achievement.

More broadly, however, as an almost three year inmate in the infamous "Inhumanities Building," I have always been with the pack that is baying to see it torn down. According to Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning and Management Al Fish, the building has cost more to maintain than it did to build in 1968. Fish also calls the building an "energy hog," points out that the concrete is cracking and chipping and relates the sad fact that the Music Department is housed largely underground where the temperature fluctuations destroy the instruments.

According to, well, damn near everyone I know who works/studies/maintains this building, it is always damp, it is cold in the winter, stifling in the summer, it lacks the rigging to clean the windows and it lacks natural light inside. In addition, to call the floor plan labyrinthine would pay it the undue comment of being intelligible at all and it lacks a central entrance and elevators and stairs are anything but intuitively placed.

From a maintenance standpoint, the heating, cooling, plumbing and electrical systems seem to be held together with duct tape and kind thoughts. Lastly, one must wonder about the use/wisdom of putting a five and a half storey breezway/courtyard in a building in Wisconsin.

I just know that you want to move in tomorrow. Bring gloves, a hat, some breadcrumbs (so that you can maybe find your way out), a stout pair of shoes and lots of patience.

Why, you ask, would anyone in their right mind want to save such a monstrosity? We will attack that subject in my next post.

Although I will tell you now that the people who do want to save it aren't in their right minds.

How could they be? They're art critics.

Drinking > Sexual Assault: Catholic Church Logic

I'm glad I was alone in the office when I read this. No one around here needs to hear me swearing that much this early in the day.

According to an article in today's Chicago Sun-Times, defrocked and imprisoned former priest Daniel McCormack had a known history of sexual improprieties going back to his days at Mundelein Seminary (the main seminary for the Archdiocese of Chicago).

It seems that Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tuscon, AZ, who was the rector of Mundelein when McCormack was studying there in the 1980's, knew of these sexual incidents but thought that it would have been "grossly unfair" not to allow McCormack to be ordained.

He was indeed ordained and went on to be somewhat of a "high flyer" in the archdiocese. He also went on to molest five boys (aged eight to twelve, and there may have been more) over the period of about nine years while pastor of St. Agatha's Parish on Chicago's west side. Read the whole sordid story, as told by the Chicago Tribune last year, here.

McCormack is now in prison, having been convicted and sentenced this summer for a five year sentence.

This situation seems like a broken record, another sad chapter in the damnable story of clerical abuse in the church that now involves the entire hierarchy of the archdiocese; read about the larger implications here.

This does not make it better or excusable. Nothing ever could.

What struck me about the revelation of Bishop Kicanas, however, was what he said about the handling of the situation. He claims that he knew about the sexual improprieties while McCormack was in the seminary and allowed him to be ordained. Why, you ask?

There was a greater concern on Kicanas's mind, something that trumped these sexual misdeeds that caused then-rector Kicanas to send McCormack for treatment. What could this possibly be, that would seem more important than a possible predeliction for sexual deviance?

Kicanas said that he was more concerned about McCormack's drinking. So much so that he was sent for treatment for his supposed alcoholism.

Astounding. Simply astounding.

Now, I know that the two might be related, that a drinking problem can come along with other mental issues and that one might have led to the other. That much I get.

What I cannot understand, nor could I ever condone, is the notion that a drinking problem is somehow worse than sexual misdeeds. I also cannot fathom, furthermore, why treatment didn't possibly reveal a more full mental picture of this sick individual.

I think that two main points arise here. First, this story is proof positive of the institutional culture of cover-ups, lies, obfuscation and bullshit that plagues the Catholic Church hierarchy. These specific allegations, and others like them, have caused more than a crisis of confidence among Catholics; I'd say it has caused more than a few Catholics to become not-so-Catholic anymore.

Second, I realize that using a drinking problem to cover up sexual abuse could be a symptom of this aforementioned diseased institutional culture of the Catholic Church. I think it is interesting, however, that at least to one person, it seemed that a drinking problem was worse than sexual "misdeeds." It says a lot about our attitudes as a society when, in a taxonomy of mental pathology, alcoholism beats out sexual abuse.

To put it more bluntly, what would you rather deal with: a priest who is an alcoholic or a priest who molests kids?

Oh, and as for McCormack? Let's hope he meets the same fate that John Geoghan met.

Amen.

Badger Game, Approximately

Right now, the Badgers are in the midst of their second game of the year against the Michigan State Spartans...should be a good one.

Wait, you say, why isn't Will at Camp Randall, like every football Saturday?

Well, I was there, but am not now. Let me explain.

Camp Randall Stadium holds about 82,000 people, about 25-30,ooo of that is the student sections. That is where I sit for most games. That is where I was to sit today (Section P, Row 20, Seat 36 to be precise). So far, so good.

I am inside the stadium, I am going to my seat and, as ever, there is someone sitting there. No problem, I'll just ask one of the friendly Per-Mar Security people to eject the interloper from my seat and we can get on with the show.

Upon asking the aforementioned Per-Mar person, I was told that there was plenty of room in rows above and to seek a seat there. Not something they normally do, but allright. I make my way to near the top of Section P and find a seat as instructed.

Does this clip need any set-up?

The people with the tickets for the seats that I commandeered showed up. I explained politely that I was told to find another spot as it is nigh on impossible to move thirty rows of people and that, as a matter of fact, I was not staying for the whole game (I am even now waiting for a bus to Milwaukee) and that, if they could handle the squeeze for about forty-five minutes, I would be gone.

They were having none of it. I was told, and I quote, "get out of our fucking seats, you fat asshole!"

Well, I never...

I left the seats, deciding that a fight with these people (drunk, but with no notion of how to deal with it) was not advisable as I was just one. I again sought out security, and they did offer to get me to my original seat, but by this point, I was so angry that I suggested to the people who displaced me some possible erotic activites to take place with their mothers and left Camp Randall, walked the several blocks to the Humanities Building and here I am.

What will come of this? An angry letter from me to Barry Alvarez, John Wiley, and Per-Mar Security that will be ignored.

What should have happened? Either I should have been given my seat the first time I asked for it or the fuckwads that made me move should have understood how game days go at Camp Randall and found another seat in the section.

According to the radio, I am missing a hell of a game.

So, to Per-Mar Security (for their idiotic employees), the UW Athletic Department (for not making the student sections general admission) and the amateur drinker assfuckers who caused this I say that I would not give you a squirt of my piss if you were dying of thirst.