Combat! blog’s journey into the familiar territory of New York City and the terrifyingly alien landscape of child care continued today with a trip to the Museum of Natural History. We also ate at Veselka, took a jaunt around Central Park, and experienced the ongoing panoply of non-Montanan styles and identities that is the subway. And I got to speak Spanish, thanks to a wrong number call from the Dominican Republican. That could have happened at home. But the important thing is that the boy kept having the time of his life, even if his life has been too short for him to appreciate what a time it was. His mother is the most patient and forgiving woman in the world, which explains why I’m still around at all. I remain lazy and stupid, which is why there’s no Combat! blog today, and why there won’t be until I become childless again on Monday. While I contemplate lives that might have been, how about you read this fine piece of advice from Amber A’Lee Frost on how to deal with your performative male feminist friend? Frost writes a top-notch column for The Baffler, which you should be reading anyway. We’ll be back on Monday, closer to form.

Regular readers may remember last Friday, when Missoulian editor-in-chief Matt Bunk was suspended “until further notice” for bringing a gun to work. Don’t worry—that was all a big misunderstanding. Here’s a statement from Bunk.

One day when I went to work, I accidentally forgot to leave in my car a 100-year-old antique Colt 1908 .25 caliber Vest Pocket model. It’s a collector’s item. My girlfriend bought it for me a couple weeks ago as an engagement gift. Someone pointed it out, and I put it back in my car immediately. I apologize for the commotion that my mistake caused, and to [Missoulian owner] Lee Enterprises for breaking policy.

See? Just an ordinary engagement gun. Normally he keeps it in his car. So all is well at the Missoulian, despite this recent, strange incident with the new editor-in-chief, the wrongful termination lawsuit from the 30-year veteran he was hired to replace, the departure of the cops-n-crime and city reporters last year, the resignation of the city editor this week, the laying off of Chuck Johnson and Mike Dennison, and the closing of Lee’s Helena bureau. You know, when I lay it all together end-to-end like that, maybe everything is not okay at the Missoulian.

But that doesn’t matter, because it’s Missoula’s only daily newspaper. No matter how weird, unreliable, or festooned with pop-up ads it gets, I’m going to keep my digital subscription, because my alternative is to not know what’s going on in the city where I live. That puts Lee Enterprises and the Missoulian’s editors in a dangerous spot. They have to keep making a good product when they know their customers would settle for a worse one. You can read all about the moral hazard of this position in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, the paper that comes out once a week but remains unarmed.

Will we be back tomorrow for Friday links? Almost certainly not. I took an eight-year-old to Chinatown today. Somehow, I did not sell him.

 

You haven’t experienced New York until you’ve explained it to an eight year-old. For the first time in my life, I feel like I possess wisdom. Granted, it’s “numbered streets run East-West”- and “East and West are two cardinal directions”-level wisdom, but still. I’m imparting it. What I am not doing is writing blog posts, because we’ve got a dense itinerary of sights to see. There is no Combat! blog today, and I am exhausted. While I work the airplane out of my neck, how about you tweet “fuck me daddy” at the Pope? That’s what teenagers do, apparently. Just look at this beautiful series of sentences from Vice’s Broadly:

“I do it mainly because it’s funny but also as like a social commentary?” said Will, a self-identified “teen who tweets ‘fuck me daddy’ @ the pope.” Lindsay, a 17 year-old who has a separate Twitter for “political commentary” in addition to her personal account, said she responds to the Pope with a request to be fucked “every time” he tweets.

Always put a question mark after the phrase “social commentary.” The internet is an unprecedented tool that reflects centuries of advancement in science and engineering. Teens use it to harass the pope, and I use it to make excuses. We’ll be back tomorrow, probably with something very much like this.

Did you know that in addition to being a suspiciously handsome writer, I am also the world’s greatest boyfriend? In the last 24 hours, I installed a washer/dryer in my girlfriend’s home and replaced the knob and deadbolt assembly on her front door. Oh yeah—I’m also taking her and her eight year-old son to New York City tomorrow. So I’m kind of busy today. I’ve got to do laundry and my taxes before I go, plus pack, plus acquire a long-term fish feeder, and…you know, it’s better if I don’t think about it. While I run around like the proverbial chicken who’s taking a child to New York, how about you read this funny feature Sarah Aswell wrote for McSweeney’s? Our whole writers’ group rules—rules at writing, at least. Our personal lives are all in disarray. Really just mine, I guess. I gotta go.