Friday links! Sociable ghosts edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment
Illustration from "The Sociable Ghost" by Ellen D'Apery, 1903

Illustration from “The Sociable Ghost” by Ellen D’Apery, 1903

That’s a design-wreckingly vertical illustration, but my, how it pleases me. Everyone who is not dead yet is going to die. It’s cool you have an Apple Watch, but someday another person will remove it from your cold, stiffening wrist and count himself lucky before he dies. Then everyone who knows him will die. Then the space mantids of Alpha Proxima will be like, “Get back to work.” But our words will live on, and the stories of our deeds will be remembered long after our names are only sounds. Today is Friday, another minute in a game whose meaning abides in a handful of spectacular plays. Won’t you review the tapes with me?

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Friday links! Versus wind edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 3 Comments
Wind blows the Pope's mantle over his face in this photo by Alessandra Tarantino (AP).

Wind blows the Pope’s mantle over his face in this photo by Alessandra Tarantino (AP).

Whenever the wind blows, I feel the universe is persecuting me. I know this feeling is irrational. Even if some malevolent force were deliberately causing gusts of wind whenever I set down my book or tried to lay out a blanket, the wind would still be blowing on everyone else, too. And even though the wind seems like a useless irritant—an unnecessary feature of Earth that serves only to piss me off—it’s probably important to change whether patterns and blow seeds around and stuff. Still, I cannot escape the sensation that this natural feature is an unfair irritant to me personally. Today is Friday, and the world’s basic mechanics feel like a conspiracy to thwart our plans. Won’t you shake your fist at a cloud with me?

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Friday links! Something I was supposed to remember today edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments
Saddam Hussein was not technically involved in 9/11, but you know he liked it.

Saddam Hussein was not technically involved in 9/11, but you know he liked it.

“It was unquestionably the most terrible day of our age,” begins a News.com.au article headlined 30 pictures of 9/11 that show you why you should never forget. Fourteen years after I noticed the World Trade Center was on fire on my way to work, it’s still impossible to listen to other people talk about it. September 11th changed all our lives forever, according to a bunch of people who saw it on the news. Unquestionably, it was the most terrible day of our age, says an uncredited photo aggregator who was not at Hiroshima. Never forget, say people who remember where they were when they heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center, and it wasn’t lower Manhattan. Today is Friday, and events don’t have to happen to you to affect you deeply. It’s probably better they don’t. Won’t you survey tragedy from a safe remove with me?

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Friday links! Collapse into hyper-individualistic murder culture edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments
Three onesies you can buy for your three babies

Three onesies you can buy for your three babies

I don’t mean to alarm you, but more than 30 American cities have reported a sharp increase in their murder rates this year, and nobody can explain why. Just kidding—I totally mean to alarm you. Murders in St. Louis are up 60% from this time last year. Donald Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination. You can buy this shirt and wear it to the mall or whatever. Maybe your grandfather was right, and the last 50 years—the period that begins when we decided everything that feels good is okay, and ends when we gave first-person shooting games to children we taught how to deliberately feel self-esteem—set this country on some kind of course. Today is Friday, and America has embraced an iconography of skulls and luxury. Won’t you demand money and respect with me?

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Friday links! Landscape of contemporary discourse edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
Contemporary discourse (artist's rendering)

Contemporary discourse (artist’s rendering)

I will never get tired of using Heironymus Bosch images in posts, which is good because A) there are a lot of them, and B) they are the art our time demands. That’s totally what communication on the internet looks like: wounded ears with knives between them, arrows shot through the dead, people living inside a smug burgher’s butt. It’s awesome that we’ve invented the largest, fastest, more democratic communications medium in the history of humankind, and people spend hours a day looking at it, usually on their phones, often during brunch. If only it were just as fast but a little more considered, or just as democratic but a little less vulgar. Today is Friday, and popular discourse is good, but there is no good popular discourse. Won’t you look out over the plebes with me?

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