There is no Combat! blog to speak of today, because I am sick. Possible vectors include the toddler who stuck his finger in the spigot of the water cooler at brunch yesterday, or the lady buying cold medicine who sneezed on the PIN pad at the grocery store. Other people: they exist only to create lines and get you sick. While I imagine a hot X-Acto blade in the seam of my throat, how about you read this review of a usage dictionary by David Foster Wallace? It’s the first work of his I ever read, and it might still be the best. For a man whose prose muddles the line between mandarin and colloquial, it amounts to a statement of purpose. We’ll be back tomorrow with real opinions, or maybe a close reading of a car commercial.

 

Last week, the Carlyle Group agreed to sell Missoula’s water supply to Algonquin Power and Utilities of Canada. It was kind of a surprise, not least because Carlyle had recently argued in court that it did not actually own Mountain Water, as part of its all-stops resistance to the city’s condemnation effort. You might remember this issue from January, when I said the city should buy our water supply. I was wrong. Missoula should buy Mountain Water from the Carlyle Group the way I should rescue a toddler from a bear: yeah, in principle, but in practice inexperience demands a cost greater than I can pay. That’s the idea behind my column in this week’s Missoula Independent, in which I admit that I was wrong and urge Mayor Engen to do the same. We’ve got a tiger by the tail, and now is an opportune moment to let it go. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Ravalli County has charged a pregnant woman with criminal endangerment of her unborn child after she failed a drug test. Casey Gloria Allen, 21, tested positive for THC, opiates and benzodiazapines—an active ingredient in prescription anti-anxiety medications—in a urine test administered August 26, when she was 12 weeks pregnant. Allen has been charged with a felony “for criminal endangerment over concerns about her unborn child.” Props to the Missoulian’s Perry Backus for that phrase, which A) refers to a fetus as a child a full 10 weeks before it can be legally aborted in the state of Montana, and B) disembodies the word “concern.” Who is concerned about Allen’s child, exactly? Whoever it is, they care so much about a person who hasn’t been born yet that they want to put his mother in jail.

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Don’t watch the video above if you did what I did last night, which is eat Montanan delivery Chinese and have a gastrointestinal experience. I am like a wet flute. There is no Combat! blog today, because I am prey to whatever bacteria can be borne on fried noodles. Fortunately, you have the whole internet to amuse you during my convalescence. You could read, for example, James Baldwin’s painfully convincing takedown of William Faulkner, asshole. Props to Caroline for the link. We’ll be back tomorrow with scads of other fun stuff and, God willing, a more reliable large intestine.