Friday links! Broken systems edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
The human digestive system

The human digestive system

Here’s the new cleanse I invented, in four easy steps:

  1. Do yoga four days a week and eat mostly vegetables and whole grains for several months.
  2. Stop all that and go to the airport Wolfgang Puck’s to eat macaroni and cheese originally prepared by Lady Bird Johnson.
  3. Fly on a plane to Iowa and eat as much turkey as you can in one sitting two sittings.
  4. Die.

I am currently between steps (3) and (4). Probably my cleanse will proceed as planned and finally remove all molecules from my body, but who knows? Today is Friday, and all systems are broken. Won’t you clench yourself with me?

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Regarding Lore Segal’s “Half the Kingdom”

By Dan Brooks in books 3 Comments
Lore Segal in the world's most likable author photo

Lore Segal in the world’s most likable author photo

Since my dear mother gave it to me for Christmas yesterday, I have read 92% of Half the Kingdom, Lore Segal’s new novel about an emergency room that gives senior citizens Alzheimer’s. Half the Kingdom is a literary comedy, in that it is about small but deeply felt moments between quirky, real-ish people rather than the other two things books can be about: multiple generations of an immigrant family or child wizards. Obviously, I like Half the Kingdom, because I read so much of it in a relatively short time. But there is also a problem with it, which I feel the following sentence encapsulates:

If you find, reader, that you are tired of Lucy looking for her glasses, think how tiresome it is for her.

Thus does one of our best contemporary authors fall into a rookie mistake.

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I am sick

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 1 Comment

ferris-bueller-sick-day

My body is like the Thunderdome of liquids and solids. Two states enter, but only one leaves. It’s possible that I got this way from eating superannuated macaroni and cheese at the Denver airport Wolfgang Puck. Maybe I got it from being belligerent at the Missoula airport, where I allowed a toddler to open and subsequently drink from my Nalgene bottle just to drive home the point that his parents were not supervising him. Maybe I have some sort of long-term illness that seized air travel as the perfect opportunity to, you know, kill me. Regardless, I am sick. Vomiting is a best-case event. Tomorrow is Christmas, and there will be no Combat! blog then, either. The day after that, I will be a shriveled husk. Don’t cry for me. I’m already dead.

Combat! blog flies through air, isn’t useful

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

 

Wing

You know Missoula is a nice town because the airport has an open wireless network. You don’t need to sign up with BoingBoing or whatever. They’re tantalizing you, so they let you update your blog while you suffer. My United Airlines flight 5535 from MSO to DEN is delayed one hour, but I’ll still have half an hour to make my connection in Denver, so I’m good. Or I will spend the night at an airport hotel for my third trip in a row with United Airlines. We’ll be be back tomorrow with a real blog post, maybe. It all depends on United Airlines.

Friday links! Ethic of the ruling class edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment
Sarah Palin is going home with one of you but has not yet decided whom.

Sarah Palin is going home with one of you, but she hasn’t decided which yet.

It makes sense that Sarah Palin would leap to stand with the guy from Duck Dynasty, since they’re both in the business of selling country people a certain noise. Country people, as you know, are locked in an Inherit the Wind-style war with city people for the future of this nation. Just like in 1925, rural communities are recoiling from the snobbery and moral degeneration of city life, defining themselves by the opposite values: authenticity, tradition, and self-reliance. Like the populists of the Dust Bowl, the country people of the 21st century are rising up, this time to throw their support behind the party of big business and old money. Today is Friday, and the ruling class has upped its game. Won’t you survey the quality with me?

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