In late April, marketing professor at the University of Georgia, shot and killed three people near downtown Athens, then dropped his kids off at a neighbor’s house. Yesterday, a cadaver dog found his body in a nearby woods.
One of his hobbies had been poetry, some specimens of which he posted at the website of the American Marketing Association. Here’s a sample:
B-School
ARC:Etc.:Arts:Marketing as Life: sailing on the accountancy
ARContribution by George N. Zinkhan
“sailing on the accountancyâ€
over the years, our accounting department reaps great
benefits, because of the large numbers of students who
clamor to wet their beak at our fountain of knowledgeof course, in the long run, this is
so much better than the opposite situation – the dying discipline,
staffed by shadowy faculty members and thin excusesnonetheless, in the short run, this means that we teach many,
many, many (extra) classes – always
with vague promises of relief in the futurethe dark department head is always lurking,
making the rounds with a crooked, yankee-trader smile,
full of false promise about a better time to come
Here’s another. The pages appear to have been pulled, and I’m not going to second-guess the American Marketing Association’s decision, but it’s too bad that we don’t have a larger body of work to con.
Is pdbuttons posting from prison?
/
I live 18 miles from Athens. Was in fact having TexMex there when the story first broke on the bar TV. The patron apparently didn’t appreciate my rousing rendition of Who Let the Dogs Out? however.
So, let’s see: He killed his wife and 2 other people, then, in remorse, headed into the woods, shot himself, and buried his own naked body? Sounds about right!
That’s some weird shit.
He sounds like a closet Vogon.
But it isn’t. It’s just bad. That’s how you can tell a nutjob made it. The art of the crazy doesn’t make you go “That shit’s crazy!”
The kind of aesthetic weirdness that inspires that reaction requires technical skill — and a solid knowledge of the not-crazy, which crazy people can’t get. Real crazy-people art is almost normal, but not quite like the thing it’s trying to be. And it doesn’t know what’s wrong with itself, so it’s offputting, creepy in a way you can’t pin down, but not crazy. It’s…dorky.
This dude’s poetry is a failed example of one of the standard, socially encouraged kinds of professor poetry. The other kinds are somewhat harder to do; there are more unformalized, social-knowledge type rules, and they’d evade a crazy person, so he’d opt for this style if he wanted to try to join up. But he can’t do it right.
So…no. Unless that’s what you meant.
Yes. No Vogon could write Vogon Poetry that matches Adams’s descriptions or examples of it. Its badness is heightened, poetically. A Vogon wouldn’t know how to do that. They’d write like livejournal goths, “really want to take some time off to finfish my novel” dingbats, journalists, this guy.
And it doesn’t know what’s wrong with itself, so it’s offputting, creepy in a way you can’t pin down, but not crazy. It’s…dorky.
So it’s like John Kerry?
I love that intro to the poem. I know, I know, I know that is a line he has repeated so many times at parties. “Over the years, our accounting department reaps great benefits, because of the large numbers of students. That’s why your son is going to be getting a first-rate education at this college, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. We have large accountancy number students.”
And then he gripes about all the many, many (extra) freshman courses he has to teach, and freshman totally suck and they never show up and the handwriting on their test books is illegible, and they won’t give him a single TA to help with grading.
I think the world missed out on a great, boring mind when that man snapped and buried himself naked.
I’m a barbarian. If the poesy don’t rhyme, it ain’t poesy.
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I live about a half mile from where it happened, but was in Savannah at the time. Used to live literally right across the street, so it kind of flipped me out when I heard. The weirdest thing was it was at a community theater picnic, on the grounds of the local playhouse. Gotta watch those amateur thespians.