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Friday links! Dastardly villains edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links July 20, 2012 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?

Joel Kotkin on the “screwed generation”

By Dan Brooks in Millennials July 19, 2012 1 Comment

Hint: It’s not the baby boomers

Because I know you like it, let me lay some demographics on you. We are looking at two groups of Americans: one has lost 13% of its net worth since 2005; the other lost 37% over the same period. Since 1984, the median household worth of one has increased by 42%, while the worth of the other has declined by 68%. One has seen its share of the workforce increase since 2008. The other suffers unemployment at a rate 50% higher than the national average. And one of these groups claims to have invented rock and roll—no, not white people. We are talking about the differences between people over 65 and people under 35. All these fun statistics come from this article by Joel Kotkin, cheerfully titled “Are Millennials the Screwed Generation?”

Can a Daniel Tosh joke ever be funny?

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric July 18, 2012 5 Comments

I’m not certain what it says about us, but this is not the first time we have talked about rape jokes. By now you have probably heard about Daniel Tosh, who responded to a woman who shouted out, “actually, rape is never funny” during one of his stand-up shows with “wouldn’t it be funny if five guys raped her right now?” That’s what we call a First Idea. Tosh can be forgiven his mediocre ad lib, but he can also be taken to task for promoting a rape culture. The internet is pretty much divided on which to do. Careful thinker and talented jokewright Carolyn Jacobson sent me this link considering that there may be a middle ground between “anything is funny” and “some things are never funny.” Its sentiments are eerily reflected in this one. While you read those, I’ll just think about the summer I spent at Boy Scout ca—no! No I won’t!

Meanwhile, inside Michele Bachmann’s head

By Dan Brooks in inside Michele Bachmann's head July 17, 2012 2 Comments

Representative Bachmann (R-MN) waits for someone to feed her a cricket.

It’s been a long time since we’ve used our oscilloscopes to peer inside the extradimensional manifold known as Michele Bachmann’s head. Frankly, that place weirds us out. Since Representative Bachmann went from being a person who stood no chance of becoming president to being a person whom no other people thought stood a chance of et cetera, we’ve welcomed the respite from her mouth-sounds. Unfortunately, it was only the eye of the storm. On Friday, while the Combat! interns were distracted by Japandroids, Bachmann came roaring back to demand that national security agencies investigate infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the US government. Strap on your fallacy masks; we’re going inside.

Combat! blog blast across ground, isn’t etc.

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized July 16, 2012 1 Comment

Pitchfork 2012. I swear I look this young.

Combat! blog’s cross-national odyssey continues today, as Aaron Galbraith and I hurtle across the alkali flats of Illinois en route to the alkali fats of Des Moines. There will be no blog. There will be only gas stations and maybe a stop at George’s in Iowa City. In the meantime, why don’t you think about the slough of sweet bands I saw at Pitchfork this weekend, including Ty Segall, Iceage, A$AP Rocky, Oneohtrix Point Never, The Men—pretty much everyone I reviewed this year. Don’t think about how many people threw up.