The image above comes from The Nietzsche Family Circus, which randomly pairs aphorisms from the German philosopher with drawings from the, um, insipid comic strip. You should check it out, provided you want to spend 40 minutes refreshing your browser and giggling uncontrollably. The NFC is an excellent example of the Kuleshov Effect, by which unrelated elements necessarily take on meaning in their juxtaposition. The Kuleshov Effect is why film editing works, and why young Billy/Friedrich Nietzsche seems to have perfectly articulated Thel’s existential despair above. It’s also the guiding principle of today’s link roundup, which features items from around the web united in their I saw them this week, but which seem to take on a vague, ephemeral narrative as a group. Sit back, crack open a beer (be sure to cough over the sound if you’re at work) and enjoy the fundamental human impulse to create meaning.
Category Archives: Friday Links
Friday links! Selves beyond our control edition
It’s a familiar story: decent person pursues his dreams but somehow gets lost along the way, achieving success and recognition but becoming, ironically and usually late in the second act, unrecognizable to himself. (Q.v. Batman, Wayne’s World.) The postindustrial, now postfinancial American economy has a way of rewarding people, not products, but the old laws of supply and demand still apply. To paraphrase Voltaire, if Sarah Palin did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent her. This Friday, Combat! blog presents links to people who gave us a little of what they were and, finding us willing, produced more and more of it until it became the totality of their being. It’s the chip in the windshield that becomes a crack, the bump off a housekey that becomes a three-day bender, the simultaneous belch and sneeze that causes you to vomit on your computer.* 
It’s the self out of control, which just might be relevant to our impending holiday weekend. Sit back, crack a beer, tell yourself it’s the only one you’re going to drink today, and join us for an unusually coherent link roundup—whatever we may become.
Friday links! Two kinds of comedy edition
Haven't seen this guy in a while.
Wednesday at the laundromat I encountered a woman who was, literally, washing the blood out of the clown suit. Because I am a naturally friendly person, I said, “Washing blood out of a clown suit, huh?” When that failed to elicit a response of shared humor, I said, “You know, like the joke?” In this way did I find myself in the position of having to tell a joke predicated on violent clown pedophilia to a complete stranger—and not just any stranger, but one who herself was, or was in love with, a clown. I mention this sad episode of aging bachelorhood to advance the thesis that there are two broad categories of humor: that which we undertake intentionally and that which we do not. In an effort to send you gliding into your weekend on a puff of blithe joviality, not to mention finish this shit quickly and get on to other things, Combat! blog presents instances of both types of humor, albeit with a preponderance of the former.
Friday links! Disjointed assemblage of unrelated elements edition
As David Hume reminds us, what often appear to be fundamental connections joining the elements of experience—causality, the consistent self, the unity of objects—prove little more than illusions when we examine them closely. Sure, we like to think that the component parts of our culture cohere into a sensible whole. The nomination of Elena Kagan seems to say something about the tension between a youthful, tolerant United States and an old, angry America, just as the laxity of our federal regulators appears vaguely connected to the popular belief in an omnipotent supervisory force that abides in space, but who knows if that’s really true? When you get right down to it, our most urgent attempts at sense-making amount to, as Emily Dickinson put it, “a bunch of bullshit.” It’s Friday, it’s 73 degrees and sunny in Montana, and Combat! blog has embraced nihilism. Sure, I could tie together this week’s links into some sort of totalizing theory, as I am generally wont to do, but that would rob you of half the fun. Like an undiagnosed schizophrenic alone in his studio apartment filed with pictures of Kennedy, painstakingly circling the first letter of each sentence in the New York Post, it’s more fun when we figure it out for ourselves. This week, Combat! blog presents a bunch of stuff that happened. Something is going to happen tomorrow, and we don’t know what.
Friday links! Twilight of ideologies edition
Why are there no pictures on the internet of me eating sausage? It seems like something I would have done frequently.
It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to party/discard all ideological systems and embrace nihilism. That may sound a little extreme to you, especially if you have loved ones or something, but as near as I can tell this week saw all existing belief systems refuted. Capitalism, Judeo-Christian theology, enlightenment rationalism, Steven Baldwin—just about every meaningful narrative you can think of failed to shepherd the world toward anything but arbitrary suffering this week. First of all, this is why I am no longer asked to make toasts at weddings. Second of all, only bold living can afford us any solace now, as we snatch at tatters of pleasure along our ever-accelerating tumble into a mass grave. Who wants a burger?