Combat! - Page 204 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

In which I am a dick via satire

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized August 29, 2013 3 Comments

The now-empty Sweetheart Bakery, disputed site of a future soup kitchen

We’re just ten days away from the public hearing on Missoula’s emergency ordinance banning new soup kitchens and homeless shelters, and I personally cannot wait. City council has proposed a retroactive “urgency measure” designed to prevent Union Gospel Mission from moving to the former Sweetheart Bakery, pictured above, after nearby residents complain. A week from Monday, we get to hear homeowners explain why Missoula urgently needs to prevent charities from feeding the poor. In the meantime, you can read my snarky column on the subject at the Missoula Independent. It is biased and poorly thought-out, in that it assumes a law against helping the homeless is kind of absurd. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Superintendent plagiarizes letter to the editor, maybe doesn’t understand original

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse August 28, 2013 2 Comments

Max Lenington, Yellowstone County treasurer, assessor and superintendent of schools

Max Lenington hates the president and his wife; that much he made clear in the letter he wrote last week to the editor of the Billings Gazette, entitled “Why I hate the Obamas.” The way in which he hates the Obamas, however, is suspiciously similar to that described in conservative columnist Mychal Massie’s piece “Why I do not like the Obamas,” which Massie accuses Lenington of plagiarizing. I should point out that these are all allegations and no one has confirmed that Lenington plagiarized anything, but he totally did it. As the Missoulian puts it, “Lenington appears to have essentially condensed Massie’s editorial from about 1,000 words to 300 words. It also seems that he restructured sentences written by Massie and interchanged certain words with others that have similar definitions.” Comparison after the jump.

Here Is Your American Culture: In adulthood with M. Cyrus

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture August 27, 2013 1 Comment

Miley Cyrus, bears of varying emotions

Let us assume that Miley Cyrus did what she did at the Video Music Awards on purpose. Certainly, she put on a one-piece swimsuit and danced with enormous teddy bears while slapping her previously unacknowledged vagina on purpose. But let us assume that she was purposeful in the effect she created, too. Specifically, let us not proceed from the assumption that she tried to do something really sexy and failed. Instead, I propose we take it as a premise that Miley Cyrus did not believe twerking teddy bears would be unequivocally hot, nor did she think sticking her tongue out as far as possible would be a sublimely coquettish gesture. I propose that we assume artistic intent, and think about her VMA performance as if she wanted it to be really weird.

Close Readings: Our glorious satellite, the Moon

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading August 26, 2013 1 Comment

A chart of science

My brother recently forwarded me a spam email wondering if he had yet made his decision re: the important lunar transit. “To be honest I was hoping for some kind of contact from you either by email for through my web-page as we are getting closer and closer to this date,” it reads, “a vitally important day for you as it marks the beginning of a period of 6 months of chance and fortune when you will be living under the full and beneficial influence of our glorious satellite, the Moon.” Thus begins a striking amalgam ancient and modern bullshit, as contemporary business prose enters the house of astrology on the cusp of internet phishing. Long excerpt after the jump.

Friday links! Modern times edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized August 23, 2013 6 Comments

Early 20th-century heterosexual Charles Chaplin

When does modernity begin? Is it with the emergence of nation-states in Europe, as my high school social studies teacher insisted? Perhaps modernity arrived with the industrial revolution, when broad changes in the nature of work altered the day-to-day texture of millions of lives. Or maybe modernity started with the internet and the retrospective knowledge that to give everyone a global voice means dramatically reducing, in your perception at least, the importance of your own. Personally, I think modernity started when a law firm realized it could make more money suing people who downloaded free pornography it uploaded to the internet than by making actual pornography. Today is Friday, and modernity begins when society concludes that its work is done. Won’t you knock off early with me?