COMBAT!

If you Google “bible vaccinations,” this is the second most popular result.

A. Ron Galbraith has alerted me to the news that Bible mom doesn’t want to vaccinate her child, because Bible, but a federal judge in Brooklyn has denied her request for an injunction. For the purposes of this discussion, we will pretend that the New York Post is a reputable source of news and that Staten Island is part of the city. In February, Dina Check sued the NYC Department of Education on the grounds that she had unfairly been denied a religious exemption to let her daughter, A’ishah Mary, attend PS 35 without her shots. Her reason, which is maybe two reasons, reveals a fundamental problem with religious objections to law.

Read the rest of this entry »

This image of Conan the Barbarian provided as a public-service alternative to pictures of inspectors, hearings or tax forms.

Congressional hearings into news that the IRS singled out conservative political groups applying for tax-exempt status is either a tempest in a teapot or a tempest issuing from the mouth of a tyrannical socialist dragon, depending on which news outlet you read. Mitch McConnell says that the heightened scrutiny of Tea Party organizations reflects a “culture of intimidation” in the Obama administration, which is kind of a weird assertion in light of claims that the President also covered it up. As often happens in our brave modern news cycle, the question of what the IRS did has been elbowed aside by questions of who knew what about what the IRS did, whether what the president might have known they did constitutes an impeachable offense, and how “so many Americans knew this was happening,” as Sarah Palin claims. Now you can know what’s happening, too, simply by reading this 55-page report.

Read the rest of this entry »

But first, an evening you’ll never forget

In answer to Willy’s question in the Friday Comments section: no, I was not aware that Rick Ross lost his Reebok sponsorship over his very rapey verse on the original UOENO. Fortunately, a quick Google search turned up this article from Billboard.com. Besides important information about what Rick Ross will do to your drink if you hang out with him, the article also contains a valuable lesson about misplaced modifiers. From the very first sentence:

After stirring up controversy for lyrics deemed pro-rape, Reebok has decided to end their partnership with Rick Ross.

Kombat! Kids take note: an initial dependent clause modifies the first noun after the comma. In the sentence above, Reebok has stirred up controversy for pro-rape lyrics. In reality, or at least in the portion of actuality covered by hip-hop, Rick Ross was the one who stirred up c for lyrics deemed p-r. Don’t go to the club with him, even though he is rich, because he will put MDMA in your champagne and then, when you become impaired, encourage you to engage in sexual intercourse that (yo)u (w)o(n’t) e(ve)n (kn)o(w) about. Also his head is essentially Lionel Richie’s head upside-down. This has been the news.

Remember that thing I wrote yesterday about summer hours? Yeah, that wasn’t true. I’ve got a job of work to do today, just like any other day, and summer hours are but a bitter dream. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Today is Friday, and nuisances are tenacious. Neither president nor weirdo in his apartment is safe, and hope is a fool’s fortress. All we can do is enumerate the slights against us. Won’t you compose a quick list with me?

Read the rest of this entry »

Not pictured: the News

Regular readers of Combat! blog are familiar with this genius video, in which Huey Lewis recreates the iconic scene from American Psycho wherein killer yuppie Patrick Bateman speaks rapturously of one H. Lewis. I got to interview Huey Lewis last week, because shit is weird, and my surefire interview question was “how did you feel when you saw American Psycho for the first time?” He said he read the book. This and other sweet assertions can be found in my featurette about the 30th anniversary of Sports, which I am posting this morning instead of writing in the blog. After many, many delays, my transition to summer work patterns begins today. Combat! blog won’t be different, but the rest of my day will. For example, I am taking the rest of today off, since A) all those delays of summer work patterns were lucrative, and B) everything is permitted because nothing is true. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.