Combat! - Page 272 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Authenticity Watch: Drip coffee

By Dan Brooks in advertising April 18, 2012 1 Comment

The snooty waiter waits.

The best part of dogsitting Stringer is watching TV, and the best part of watching TV is seeing commercials. Neither of those statements is what rhetoricians call “true,” but my ad consumption is way up over the last week anyway, probably as a consequence of my inability to work the DVR. Don’t cry for me, because finally I can access the fundamental function of advertising: telling me what’s real. If, like me, you were 14 years old when “alternative” became the most popular genre of music, you know that large portions of American culture are fake. The mainstream is a powerful if misguided force, and it is up to us rugged individuals to discern what is authentic from trends, pretensions, corporate drones and simulacra. And we have nothing to go by besides A) our visceral intuition of the sublime and B) Maxwell House commercials. Video after the jump.

On being alone

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas April 16, 2012 3 Comments

Stringer the lab, asleep on the author around 6pm Sunday

I have spent the last week dogsitting my excellent nephew, Stringer. Stringer is the best labrador that ever there was. He belongs to my friends Ben and Sarah, who work at home from a big house in the hills and therefore have given Stringer a pretty fantastic life. When they are gone, he misses them. He consoles himself by loving me—usually by laying his big, soft head on whatever part of me has briefly stopped moving—and I console him with Dog Adventures. Every time I stand up, Stringer thinks we are going on a Dog Adventure. He follows me from room to room, and in this way I am never alone. Which is interesting, because I have not spoken to another human being in just over 36 hours.

Combat! blog actually was pretty useful

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized April 13, 2012 1 Comment

If you’ve noticed a conspicuous absence of Friday links, it’s because I spent the morning as a guest barista at the newly opened Burns Street Bistro. Seriously: go to Burns Street Bistro right now. I don’t care if you’re not in Missoula or whatever—the important thing is to get one of their sandwiches and put it in your mouth as soon as possible. Only go between the hours of 7am and 2pm, though, or else you will have to camp outside. We’ll be back on Monday with our usual business and without a steam wand. That steam wand really reminded us how glad we are to do our usual business.

DOJ files antitrust suit over e-book prices

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media April 12, 2012 4 Comments

Like many nerds, I am particularly fond of the physical object of the book. They smell like everyone is about to leave me alone for a while. Last year, my dear mother gave me a Kindle as a gift, and I was suspicious of it for maybe 20 minutes. Then I acknowledged that an e-book is superior to a p-book in so many regards as to render its few inferiorities petty. On the minus side, you can’t flip through it—this turns out to be a deal-breaker for textbooks and reference materials—and you can’t loan it to people. Amazon’s lending policy is bullshit, but it is compensated for by their not-obliterating-thousands-of-trees policy, their books-weigh-nothing policy, their instant delivery and the fact that most new titles cost $9.99. I was using the past tense of “cost,” there. E-books used to mostly cost $9.99; then they suddenly cost $12.99 and $14.99. Then the Department of Justice filed an anti-trust complaint against Apple and five major publishers. That brings us to where we are now.