Friday links! Reality-based community edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Campaign season is over, and truth can assert itself relentlessly once again. Not on TV or in conversation, of course—those are neighborhoods from which truth is long since gentrified out. But in the cold world of numbers and events and things that exist whether we believe in them or not, the discipline of the machine is once more imposed. Say what you will about what’s going to happen in the future—that stuff or some different stuff will happen. Today is Friday, and actuality is a cold splash. Whether it’s refreshing or chilling depends on how heated-up you got yourself in the last few months. Won’t you wash yourself clean with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Scoundrelsy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 5 Comments

A scoundrel

Everybody loves a scoundrel. Who can resist the raffish charm of Han Solo, the ironized confidence of Chael Sonnen, the armed troops of Francisco Franco? Not Americans—Americans love an anti-hero, a fellow who does bad but deep down is good, somehow. Our penchant for anti-heroes is so strong that, as many critics observe, we have damn few regular heroes left. I am not worried about the hero population, though. I’m worried about our supply of villains, which dwindles to near zero as they are all declared likable scoundrels. Today is Friday, and the week that was does not look so bad in retrospect. It was actually total dicks, though, and a scoundrel is a scoundrel no matter how much the princess loves him in Jedi. Won’t you shoot first with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Dubious pleasures edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

So much of what makes us feel good makes us feel bad on further consideration. It’s as if we had two selves: one who experiences pleasure in the short term, on a timeline of about three seconds, and one who wants only to live abstemiously in retrospect. It so happens that self #1 is located entirely in the past, and self #2 keep scolding us for associating with him. Today is Friday, and the internet has spent all week delivering us stuff we probably should not like so much. The past is a garden of dubious pleasures.Won’t you wish you hadn’t frolicked in it with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Hey girl, I’m insane edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 3 Comments

Photos of Paul Ryan working out from a shoot with Time magazine

Yesterday was not a good day for Paul Ryan. First, Time magazine leaked these candid photos of him pumping iron in the ol’ blue space. Then he had to go on TV and debate Turbo Biden. Then he tried to ramp his skateboard over a doghouse and pooped his pants. That last one is slander, but the past 24 hours really have been the story of Ryan destroying himself to get people to like him. Today is Friday, and nothing is less appealing than trying to be liked. Won’t you scrabble desperately for approval with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Rich pleasures edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

It is tempting to believe that as our society becomes more crass and hedonistic, the sophisticated pleasures evaporate. How can we enjoy the incisive psychology of The Cherry Orchard when our brains have been honed to Barely Legal 6? It’s tempting to think that the game of inches that was 20th-century culture will be lost on a society that measures value in millions, but that’s just declinism talking. In fact, the mass stupefaction of American society provides us with rich pleasures, the way Oedipus having a marital dispute with his mom provided the ancient Greeks with irony. And we don’t even have to go to the theater. Today’s links offer plenty of schadenfreude and a healthy dose of rueful surprise, and they’re all constituted of at least 50% real life. Won’t you succumb to embittered satisfaction with me?

Continue reading