Kansas City News Blog

By CHRIS PACKHAM

I don't know if you primitives noticed, but early this morning, I MADE THE SUN VANISH FROM THE HEAVENS! Specifically, the heavens over Siberia, Mongolia and western China. LO, I AM BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS! It's also a really advantageous time to see the solar corona, normally obscured by the intensity of the sun's light.

KNEEL BEFORE ME, WRETCHES, LEST I SNATCH THE VERY STARS FROM THE FIRMAMENT AND RAIN DOWN THE FIRES OF HELL UPON YOUR "FIFTY IS NIFTY"-BALL-CAP-WEARING HEAD! The event duration was longest near the town of Nadym in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Northern Siberia. I AM CHRIS, HE WHO LEAVES FIRE IN HIS WAKE! AND 50 IS NOT NIFTY SAYETH YOUR GOD!

Down in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the — gosh, how can I put this? — the fucking retards who mash at the keyboards in the Web department of WDSI Fox 61 with their thick, clumsy hands actually posted this poll question:

I guess the editorial belief in superstitious voodoo magic is more likely to manifest in hillbilly newsrooms, so I can only imagine that they were as shocked by the results as I was:

Apparently, 82.91 percent of respondents disagreed with Fox 61's suggestion that eclipses and the births of three-headed goats are bad omens. The margin of error: Chris had to vote in order to look at the results. Also, I don't know whether it's relevant that Fox 61 covers a city that willfully refers to locomotives as "choo-choos." In light of the new Venn diagram intersection of ooga-booga superstitious bullshit and statistical sampling, I commissioned my own poll to see how people thought I might destroy them if I were insufficiently appeased with their offerings and prayers:

All frightening prospects, which can best be averted by JOINING THE DAILY BRIEFS FACEBOOK PAGE. If I am not satisfied by the number of new network associates by end of business Friday, I SHALL MAKE THE SUN VANISH AGAIN ON JULY 22, 2009! So remember not to look directly at the sun while it's disappearing — why not make a pinhole viewer out of aluminum foil?

After the jump, I get annoyed with an article in Adbusters, for some reason. Click here, or on the best picture that popped up when I typed "hipster douchebag" into Google's image search:

You kids today, with your Beatles and your poodle skirts and your anal sex: Culture-jamming Adbusters has a grim and overly pointy-headed essay by Douglas Haddow about how the hipster subculture represents the doom of Western civilization. It actually says that! As a member of the "dork" community, I'm no hipster. But the article is a surprisingly apocalyptic manifestation of the old people shaking their fists and shouting, "YOU DAMN KIDS!"

The subcultures of decades past are represented as wholly authentic expressions of cultural sensibility, as if nobody associated with the punks or the beats were shallow trend followers. And Haddow cherry-picks the most banal possible quotes from overheard party conversations to illustrate his point. But the thing is, people say banal shit all the time — I guarantee that if anyone had said anything meaningful at the afterparties Haddow documents, he wouldn't have included it. The whole thing culminates in a completely unearned lyrical final paragraph that reads the way I imagine Pulitzer Prize-non-winning novelist Ethan Hawkes' inner monologue sounds. Look, I could go on, but instead, here's one of the article's most pompous passages, cherry-picked and then posed next to a feminine hygiene product to prove my point:

I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyah and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet — oblivious to our own impending demise.

Yes. If only. If I were a shopping mall caricaturist, I would draw Douglas Haddow wearing a bright-pink keffiyah and riding a tiny little motorcycle. FAIL.