Chris Braak's Blog, page 4
July 17, 2015
David Brooks: Hero or Menace?
What an extraordinary creature is David Brooks. Sometimes I read his columns, usually when an article about them appears with a subheading of “Can you believe this shit?” – Brooks is a …what is the word for a person whose job is to have opinions about things and then write them down? An opinionist, I […]
June 12, 2015
Some Thoughts I Have Had While Waiting to Hear From My Doctor
The thing about a tumor is, it’s not just malign tissue. (Well, the first thing is that it’s not “malign” at all; tumors aren’t evil, they’re just obstinately disinterested in the well-being of the organism that supports them. They’re more like Libertarians.) A tumor isn’t just malign tissue, it’s a factory for malign tissue. It […]
May 7, 2015
Avengers 2: Too Avenging, Too…uh…uhm. Eh.
This movie was fine. There were a bunch of robots, and people shot beams at them. Thor hit some robots with his hammer, Hulk smashed some robots, Captain American kicked his shield around a bunch of times. The best part was James Spader’s exasperated Ultron, who just couldn’t believe how people didn’t get how great […]
April 13, 2015
The Hitler Questions
I like hypothetical ethical dilemmas. I think they’re interesting, because ordinarily I think we don’t really think about what constitutes “right” and “wrong”: we’ve just got a sense of it, and when questions come up, we respond to them intuitively first, and then justify them later. The purpose of Ethical Dilemmas is to interrogate that […]
April 10, 2015
On Nerds, Nerd Culture, and Formalism
Here’s the thing about nerds – and please know that I’m including myself in this, maybe as the worst of us all, the monster is within me, &c.: we all know at this point that there are nerds. Nerds are people who like weird stuff, and sometimes display a socially-unacceptable level of enthusiasm for our […]
March 26, 2015
The Taming of the Shrew: In Which Charles McMahon Dicks Me Into Submission
Cara Blouin Well, I guess now I’m going to put my petulant little fists on my lady hips and rant about how The Lantern put on an unironic production of The Taming of the Shrew. Isn’t that just so typical? I’ll probably bray about things like agency and consent until everyone is just bored and […]
February 8, 2015
Is Jupiter Ascending the Best Space Opera of All Time and Also the Best Movie?
Yes. I know that I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to build up my credibility when it comes to talking about movies, and I know that basically everyone (including some critics that I almost always agree with, like Walter Chaw and Genevieve Valentine) hated this movie, and so I’m going to burn that credibility by […]
January 27, 2015
On Jonathan Chait and PC Culture
We have all been waiting for the answer to this question, “Can a white man criticize the p.c. culture of the liberal left?” and Jonathan Chait has answered this question at length . The answer is apparently, “He CAN, but probably SHOULDN’T.” Much better writers will do much better responses to this, but it’s left […]
January 18, 2015
CSI: Necromancy, Part II: Notes on Setting
I don’t know, now I got started, I figure I may as well get it all out of my system. The idea, as I mentioned earlier, was to try to do one of these supernatural-adventure-mystery shows like Constantine or Detective Grimm, but with a feel that was more like CSI or Law and Order (or […]
January 15, 2015
CSI: Necromancy
I was talking to Holland via THE INTERNET the other day, and complaining (I pretty much only ever complain when I talk to Holland about things) about things that bother me in these sorts of supernatural adventure mystery shows like Constantine and Detective Grimm. This thing is, when they have to figure out what the […]
