Friday links! Highs and lows edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 2 Comments
Stringer and what remains of his Christmas present

Stringer and what remains of his Christmas present

The holidays are upon us. It is the happiest time of the year, if you take the word of a snowman or an elf. Statistically, it is also the most popular time to kill yourself. Our is a roller-coaster society, incrementally dragging itself to the highest peaks only to hurtle down again. Today is Friday, and I have approximately 20 hours of unsupervised free time before I have to get on a plane for 90 minutes, wait seven hours in the Denver airport, and get on a plane again. Our links are a corresponding garden of delights/trials, alternating between the miserable and the sublime. Won’t you put your arms over your head and go woo! before they are severed by a low-hanging cable with me?

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Friday links! End of whatever edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
Then came the Bird-men, probably because we'd all been fucking birds.

Then came the Bird-men, probably because we’d been fucking birds.

As the biggest assholes in the world remind me on Facebook, now begins the end of the Mayan something or other. Their calendar runs out in like a week, signaling the prophesied end of Mayan civilization. You can tell the calendar was really important to the Mayans, because the only specific part of their end-of-the-world prophecy is the date. In this way it is the opposite of say, Revelation, which tells us in gory detail what will happen but really leaves us hanging re: when. I am forced to conclude that all presently occurring phenomena are signs of the end times, and this week was the ripple that precedes the wave of stable dog/cat roommate situations. Today is Friday—possibly our last. Won’t you scrutinize the heavens with me?

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Friday links! Obliviousnessery edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

We’re in the city!

“Everything that exists without my knowledge,” remarks Judge Holden near the end of Blood Meridian, “exists without my permission.” A whole bunch of stuff that we don’t know about it happening out there, and the more we learn about it, the more we extend our authority. Another way to put that is “the more we extend our responsibility,” and sometimes—as in the photo above—innocence is only possible through ignorance. That doesn’t work once you introduce a third party, of course. Once you know about someone else’s ignorance, their innocence evaporates—but then you’re offering their behavior a Holdeneque permission. It’s a damn thicket, is what it is. Today is Friday, and the internet has made it harder to remain ignorant than ever before. Won’t you expand the scope of your indulgence with me?

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Friday links! Paid pipers edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

How could you not follow that guy?

I am sick. I had fun in LA; I flew on a plane and stayed up late and drank alcohol, and now it is time to pay the piper. My throat is scratchy and all that meets my vision is dirty dishes. Maybe I have a fever. Maybe I am thinking clearly, and everything objectively sucks. One thing is certain: you cannot have a good time without paying the piper. He may or may not be the same one who led your rats and then your children away from the village, out into the country to do god knows what. We only know that the piper is a jerk, and possibly an allegory for the rule of law, and that he must be paid. Today is Friday, and I am forking it over.

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Friday links! Supernatural explanations edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 4 Comments

We think of history as a pretty much continuous forward march of human knowledge, but it’s not as if there are a fixed number of things we are ignorant about. We know more than our medieval counterparts, sure—but can we really say that what we don’t know is any less? There’s our expanding territory of knowledge, and beyond that there is conjecture, limitless the way the space outside a picture frame is limitless. Today is Friday, and ours is a baffling universe. Won’t you comfort yourself through supernatural explanations with me?

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