Friday links! Nevermore inside Michele Bachmann’s head edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, inside Michele Bachmann's head 0 Comment
Rep. Michele Bachmman (R-MN) retires from Congress to devour her mate.

Rep. Michele Bachmman (R-MN) retires from Congress to devour her mate.

Beloved hilarious Representative Michele Bachmann has retired from Congress, ending or at least suspending one of Combat! blog’s longest-running categories. Her last official act appears to have been to urge President Obama to bomb Iran at the White House Christmas party. Earlier this week, she delivered a farewell speech in which she attributed America’s economic success to the Ten Commandments. Quote:

It could be no coincidence that this nation, knowing and enjoying the heights of such great happiness and such great prosperity, that it could be built upon that foundation of the Ten Commandments and by the law given by the God in whom we trust.

Can you believe she only legislated for eight years? Today is Friday, and even those most deeply committed to just sayin’ stuff must fall silent sometime. Won’t you keep the flame burning with me?

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Amazon product reviews: skeleton stands

By Dan Brooks in consumerism 4 Comments

Poor Mr. Thrifty

I write this while standing up, because I am a weirdo. In my ongoing, possibly insane quest to fix my rickety body before I get too old, I have constructed a standing desk. It is not a work of great craftsmanship, but it delights me. I have come to suspect that human hamstrings were not designed for eight hours of boneward pressure each day. Standing work makes me very happy, although my standing desk does not, and so I set out to find some new means of raising my laptop to eye level. What holds things at eye level? I asked myself. That is how I lost several hours reading Amazon reviews of stands for model skeletons.

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Wonderful online product reviews: suspenders

By Dan Brooks in Wonderful Online Product Reviews 7 Comments

Don't do this to your waitress. We have Google Maps reviews now.

Behold the Terry Casual Elastic Suspender, a product that you can purchase via Amazon and have shipped to your home, thus allowing you a consumer experience basically unprecedented in human history. Thanks to the internet, we can own things that we have never seen. It’s great for people like me who find shopping a scary, alienating experience, but it introduces problems you don’t get with conventional retail. For example: what are these suspenders like? I know from the picture that they can be easily arranged in the shape of a traffic-sign man, but otherwise I have little understanding of their qualities. Fortunately, I have this five-star buyer review to guide me:

BEST FASTENER, SEWN INTERSECTION: I tried out 3 types of suspenders, and this model had the most reliable fastener clips, meaning they slipped off my waistband least often. Also, I liked the unfancy intersection of the 2 straps, which were sewn together simply. Other types I tried had either a clip that can slip, or a bit of gratuitous leather there.

I, too, like an unfancy intersection. And those fasteners sound great—especially if you don’t read any of the reviews that follow.

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Tom Owad’s map of subversive books

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 1 Comment
Not Tom Owad but an owl

Not Tom Owad but an owl

Remember back when the United States was an ever-richening homeland departmentally securing itself against all threats, foreign and domestic, real and perceived? It was 2006. The Patriot Act had finally established as law the relation between patriotism and the executive branch, Crank had captured America’s hearts, and George W. Bush was calmly gathering library borrowing records. Had you forgotten that last part, as I sort of did? Yes, because the library is for bums and very old people—but theoretically I was against it, if only in preparation for being a very old bum. The US government should not subject its people to data-mining. That’s the term for describing patterns in very large amounts of data, a process presumably done by vast, semi-aware supercomputers in Virgina basements. Or, as Tom Owad demonstrated, by a dude with two Powerbooks and DSL.

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You don’t need totalitarian government when you’ve got MasterCard

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 9 Comments

The sentence “Julian Assange has not yet been charged with a crime,” became a problematic way to discuss Wikileaks a few months ago, when Swedish authorities accused him of rape. So Julian Assange has not been charged with espionage or—as one Fox News reporter suggested, in apparent ignorance of his Australian citizenship—treason. Instead, he is the object of extradition proceedings for failing to stop what began as consensual sex when his condom broke. Meanwhile, in the same treason interview, Joe Lieberman suggested that the New York Times be investigated for publishing Assange’s leak of diplomatic cables. An “investigative” phone call from the senator’s office already prompted Amazon to stop hosting his website, and MasterCard and Visa prohibited donations to WikiLeaks last week. While the US government decides whether what he did was spying or journalism, his website has been shut down, his income stream has been frozen, and Julian Assange has been put in jail. But he hasn’t been censored.

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