Friday links! Richie Richer edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 5 Comments

Just do the right shoe—no, the left! Never mind; do them both. Hang on a second. What do you think?

God, I love it when Mitt Romney does things. Yesterday the presumptive Republican nominee went to London the way your aunt goes to a new Olive Garden: critically. While most of his remarks about the 2012 Olympics have been positive, he told Brian Williams that reports of logistical problems before the games were “disconcerting.” I hope you’re happy, Mitt Romney, because your wife’s horse is screwed now. Today is Friday, and rich people around the world will take a half day but get no less money. It’s a fantastic time to be wealthy, even if you are an asshole, and today’s link roundup is bedazzled with cash and anuses. Won’t you get it but not get it with me?

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Friday links! Dastardly villains edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

Rush Limbaugh threatens to crush the local orphanage like a pastrami sandwich in which the pastrami is just right, a little fatty but trimmed, with a hot mustard and no mayonnaise, dammit.

One of the most disappointing aspects of adulthood is the shortage of real villains. As a child conditioned by Thundercats and Bubble Tape commercials, I believed that adulthood would be cleanly divided into kind, decent people and cackling devils. Imagine my disappointment. For the most part, maniacal and cruel are in short supply in the actual world, vastly outnumbered by such boring traits as inconsiderate and selfish. Genuine evil is hard to come by. That said, ordinary humans can still reach cartoonish heights of dicketry if they really put their minds to it. Today is Friday, and our link roundup is chockablock with schmucks who suck, along with a brief burst of late-stage heroism. Won’t you stroke a white cat with me?

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Friday links! Windy everyone edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

Combat! blog is in Chicago, a fine city with an eerie surfeit of lofts and bagels. It’s like New York if a coalition of white people got together to construct a replica of New York, although it’s possible I suffer a bias of perspective. A city is all in how you see it. So is an idea: you frame a truism like “it’s all in how you see it” with a specific context, like a city or a world-historical narrative, and suddenly a rusty old saw seems gleaming and sharp. When it comes to clichés, it’s all in how you see it. This week’s link roundup is A) half-assed—possibly even quarter-assed—and B) about how we see things. Sometimes that’s literal. Other times it’s absurdly, horribly figurative. Won’t you abandon yourself to a directionless relativism with me?

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Friday links! Heady concepts edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments

The presidential sash has since been retired.

Consider for a moment how much more complex our world is than the one in which our ancestors lived. The physical environment is roughly the same—albeit with abortion protestors where burning witches used to be—but our interpretation of that world is far more nuanced. Prose fiction, classical physics, the germ theory of disease, moral relativism, environmental stewardship, being cool—all these concepts overlay one another to make the modern world stand in relation to the past as an origami crane relates to a sheet of paper. It’s Friday, and the more you know the more improbable that seems. Today’s link roundup is full of fine writing and heady concepts, plus fungus. Won’t you deepen the manifold with me?

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Friday links! Audacity of jerks edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 3 Comments

Costa Rica uses a government-funded, single-payer health care system.

I don’t know about you, but I would like to be liked. I may not be very good at it, but in my interpersonal relations I try to pander to others as much as possible. Shame and sycophancy are my watchwords. The panicked need to feel that other people like me—even when I do not like them—exerts a serious check on my behavior. Imagine how free I would be if everyone hated me. If there were no hope that anyone who knew me could possibly like me, I could act however I pleased, the way death row inmates are always filling balloons with their own feces. If I were a public jerk instead of a secret asshole, I could live a life of rare liberty, saying and doing whatever I pleased with no regard for decency or the feelings of others. Today is Friday, and our link roundup contains a bunch of people like that.

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