Combat! - Page 230 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Understand the fundamental dilemma of the United States through addictive food

By Dan Brooks in obesity February 20, 2013 5 Comments

A scamp

When Hostess went out of business, I immediately faced the prospect of not eating a Ho-Ho ever again. I am familiar with Swiss Cake Rolls; it’s possible I ate an entire box of them this weekend, but they are not Ho-Hos. It’s not even that I like a Ho-Ho so much. It has that flavor and that texture, though, both of which lie between chocolate and wax. A Ho-Ho is not good so much as it is particular, and the idea of never having another one makes me appreciate the alcoholic’s principle of One Day at a Time. In short, I am addicted, like the American food executives in Michael Moss’s million-page exposé want me to be.

Regarding wishes

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas February 19, 2013 7 Comments

Since the US government and most history ground to a halt over the weekend, I’m going to take a moment to address one of the comments on Friday’s links. I’ve gone back to reading the comments, because Aksimet cannot be trusted to distinguish rap videos from Cialis advertisements on its own. Anyway, Matt offered the following question about the Dungeons & Dragons spell Wish:

Isn’t wish open to the DM’s interpretation? Like if you wish for a meteor to crush your enemy, the DM can also have the meteor crush you? Or were my friends just major douches?

“Or,” huh? The theme of today’s post is don’t make me choose.

Friday links! Are you kidding? edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links February 15, 2013 2 Comments

From The Nietzsche Family Circus, which randomly pairs Nietzsche quotes with panels from the comic

Now that we’ve all been hoaxed a few times by ZANU-PF’s Twitter and lymphomatic Hawaiian girlfriends and whatnot, it’s easy to read any report with a baseline skepticism in mind. Is this, strictly speaking, real? is a perilous question to ask of the news, particularly since the news is often about events, and events are what we use to determine the quality of the real. To ask whether every new event is real is to fix our standard of reality in the past. Still, certain things that happen seem like they did not really happen. Today is Friday, and the march of wonderment continues apace. Won’t you fall into lockstep with me?

Close Readings: Wayne LaPierre urges gun owners to Stand and Fight

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric February 14, 2013 4 Comments

NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre, seconds before having his hand shot off

“After Hurricane Sandy,” Wayne LaPierre writes in an essay for the Daily Caller called Stand and Fight, “we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.” Ah, yes—the hellish world of a gun-free South Brooklyn. That’s just one of the nightmare scenarios the NRA spokesman invokes in his call to gun owners to Stand and Fight.

Wednesday is for stern self-reflection

By Dan Brooks in Hangovers February 13, 2013 1 Comment

The brain and nerves and everything in the stupid body

I went out to see The Menzingers last night, and now I am dead. My evening began with vodka and ended with sausage gravy—yet somehow now it all begins again, horribly, in the twilight of undeath. I don’t even have bacon in the house. I could go to Albertson’s and get it, but the people in the store would be taken aback by my grisly appearance. “There is a sad man,” they would say, “hung over on Wednesday morning.” I guess I’d have to get there pretty soon for them to say that, since it is almost noon.