Bear with us

A lazy, stupid flu virus attacks a perfectly good blasto-something.

It is Tuesday now, and I’ve still got the flu like a motherfucking fireplace. If you are delirious with fever, don’t spend two of your four waking hours watching Downton Abbey, or that cadence will get in your head and make your recurring dismemberment dream weirdly dry and proper. I feel better today, although I do not feel anything that could be described as good, and hopefully tomorrow will see a return to form. In the meantime, how about you enjoy this clever advertisement? Props to Spencer for the link.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI&feature=youtu.be

 

 

Combat! blog is sick

It’s a brand new week, and I feel like shit’s fat brother. I have the flu, and I know exactly where I got it: at Thursday night’s birthday celebration for the venerable Brad Monahan. That’s where a three year-old greeted the arrival of our pizzas by standing on his chair, putting his hands on his back and coughing—straight up into the air and sort of left to right, like a sprinkler. I felt liquid hit my face. I did not restrain myself form eating pizza in any way, which is why A) I should not be in charge of my own behavior and B) children should be briefly boiled upon arrival in any restaurant. While I sweat through a series of disturbingly cyclical dreams, how about you enjoy this exhaustive inquiry into the Kony 2012 phenomenon. It’s either great or hideously cynical—probably both!

Friday links! Fantasy of decline edition

Since we spent so much of the week railing against declinism, I figured we’d take Friday to argue that American society is going down the tubes—you know, in the interest of fairness and balance. I’ve learned to use those words to refer to the opposite position of what is true, because I regard contemporary discourse as so broken that it doesn’t matter what I say. Thus does cynicism propagate itself. Of course, it is a true fact that empires rise and then fall again. Straitened people achieve great things, and into this greatness they bring a generation of entitled pussies. That was probably our parents, and now we are absolutely livid with them that we might have to do something to remain the Earth’s only superpower. It’s Friday, and Rome is in decline. Won’t you make the potentially disastrous mistake of eating a bunch of olive oil and dates with me?

Continue reading

Pat Robertson wants to decriminalize marijuana

"Shh! This guitar fill is amazing. Hold on—it's coming up. Just a second. Wait..."

When I worked in the East Village, there was a homeless man on Avenue A who would recite the full text of “The Raven” for a dollar. The cornerstones of his operation were that A) it also cost a dollar to make him stop, and B) he was crazy. In addition to being about six foot six, he wore a feather sticking straight up out of his hair and was constantly trying to hug people. I once saw him kick a teenage boy in the testicles so hard that both his feet lifted off the ground. The Raven Guy was a real fixture, and like all crazy people he considered me his friend. One evening, as I was engaged in a delicate negotiation with a young woman re: the future of our relationship, he came charging across the street at us. “You listen to Dan,” he said, looming. “Dan knows what he’s doing.” She broke up with me immediately. I thought nothing like that would ever happen to me again, but this morning I learned that Pat Robertson supports the legalization of marijuana.

Continue reading

Dammit!

I accept that my desire to see Rick Santorum win the Republican nomination is destructive and wrong. American politics is not the Puppy Bowl, and we should not just root for the funniest one. Still, the heart wants what it wants. The heart got really excited last night, when it briefly appeared that Santorum might take Ohio. Then boring, sensible America came charging in, and Romney won every district with an airport. Again, that’s good. Rick Santorum should be kept as far from the presidency as possible, for the same reason you don’t keep the octopus with the Christmas lights. But the ugly part of me—the part that wants the comfort of seeing its nihilistic misanthropy confirmed—was hoping to see the GOP’s most absurd candidate take the country’s most predictive state. I suspect that part of me is also the Santorum constituency.

Continue reading