Friday links! Thursday links edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments
The future

The future

Combat! blog will be flying to Chicago very early tomorrow morning, and the last thing I’ll want to do is assemble links on the plane. But we didn’t do Friday links last week, either, on account of we were firing explosive projectiles into the air, and three weeks without a FriLi would hardly meet the exacting standards of our readership. So I shall fire up my specula-scope and peer into a future where everything is dark and gross yet strangely compel—oh, wait. I accidentally fired up my speculum. The actual future looks much more like the present. Today is Thursday, and Friday seems a comforting inevitability. Won’t you tempt fate with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Freedom isn’t free of assault teams edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
A SWAT team assists in the eviction of a Colorado couple from their foreclosed home.

A SWAT team assists in the eviction of a Colorado couple from their foreclosed home.

You can’t have a free country just by letting people do whatever they want. “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins,” said Zechariah Chafee, and he makes a good point: how am I to swing my arms if people keep getting their noses in my way? The problem with freedom is that the lower orders will always try to strip it from their betters. Free to have a nice town where I can walk along the river in peace? Nope—some derelict is lying on the bank, spoiling my view. Free to choose my religion and uphold its values? Nope—gay hippies are taking a break from rapping to smoke marijuana out of each other’s buttholes. These people are undermining the country with their laziness and dissipation, and there’s only one way to preserve American liberty: incarcerate them with paramilitary assault teams. Today is Friday, and freedom isn’t free. Won’t you enjoy membership in a class that can still afford it with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! America’s top party blog edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
Downtown Iowa City, circa bar close

Downtown Iowa City, circa bar close

I don’t mean to intimidate you, dear reader, but I am a graduate of the top party school in the United States. When it comes to binge drinking, I am like a doctor who went to Harvard, whereas you are like a doctor who went to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College. While you were wasting your time with the dead ideas of losers in books, I was learning to drink a malted milk—the whiskey drink, not the ice cream confection—without gagging. While you were mired in cosines or whatever, I was learning valuable lessons about social dynamics and personal equilibrium. The best part is that tuition was cheap, at least monetarily. Otherwise the cost was terrible, and even now I can feel a Jaeger shot rattling around somewhere loose in my intestines. Today is Friday, and we are all products of our alma maters. Won’t you throw a few back and then throw them back forward with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Irrational exuberance edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments
Only Don moves toward him.

Only Don moves toward him.

Ben al-Fowlkes and I went out last night, to celebrate first good news and then life in general. Every prospect pleased and every person, if not a paragon of virtue, at least proved amusing. Life was wonderful and everything would be just fine. Our exuberance was irrational, because now life clearly sucks. You can’t really control what goes into or comes out of your body, and your so-called friends are poisoners who lie in wait. Today is Friday, and I blame forces beyond my control. Won’t you recount the perfidies with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Corporatocracy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

jammer5_corporate_us_flag

I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, but “Kleenex” is in the Mac OS spellchecker where “corporatocracy” is not. Postindustrial America is the land of the free, meaning that government has declined to struggle with multinational corporations for control of our lives. Multi-thousand dollar insurance that doesn’t cover doctor visits? Fine, as long as it keeps government out of health care. Refusal to regulate high-efficiency killing machines that the vast majority of Americans want controlled? Whatever you say, paid lobbyists of gun manufacturers. Today is Friday, and the wolves want to set you free from the shepherds. Won’t you bleat plaintively with me?

Continue reading