Shortbus' enthusiasm for life is contagious. 

The dude is like a lion half drunk on cheap beer—in the best possible way. 

My business partner Stacy Lowery flew into town to film some ridiculous shit too. He's a real good sport about putting on costumes and acting like a dipshit when I ask him to. I have no idea why. 

This must be what Hollywood feels like. Minus the fame and money.

Wall plant pop shove-it on demand. Hey, the dude used to be pro-styles. I'd tell you more about the video but then it wouldn't be as awesome to watch when it comes out in December. We tried pretty hard on this.

So I spent most of the week working on a video for adidas. We finished filming Friday night. The next day my buddy Andy Rihn was having a big performance art event a few miles outside of Austin at a dirt farm. I'm being serious. There really is such a thing as a dirt farm.

They look kind of like this. 

There comes a time in every young lady’s life when she moves into her own apartment and is suddenly faced with the challenge of having to purchase drugs on her own. Unless a girl is lucky enough to have a friend who can supply her with her vices at the drop of a hat, in a city like New York you have to call a delivery service. Sounds easy but it really isn’t. A lone female trying to score bad things is a drug dealer’s wet dream. It tells them "This chick likes to get fucked up. Maybe I can bang her." Interactions can get awkward really fast. In order to avoid finding yourself in the midst of a shady transaction, here is a guide on how to do things right so you can get what you want, when you want it, without any bullshit.

WEED

L-R: Vans sneakers, Altamont Pico jeans, Actual Pain tank top, Viktor & Rolf Flower Bomb perfume, Smashbox Lip Stain & Color Seal Balm in Guava, A.OK pouch necklace, Cast of Vices fly pin, Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish Strips, Wildfox t-shirt, Volcom Sound Check Super Skinny jeans, Converse Chuck Taylor All Star Premium Lady Outsider.

A lot of dealers are space cadets who tell you they'll be there in 30 minutes when they really mean an hour and 30 minutes, so this gives you a lot of primp time. Prior to buying weed I normally think about it a lot, which makes me want to prepare myself–kind of like how an athlete who's about to run a marathon first will stretch. I like to tidy up my apartment to minimize the level of destruction that will ensue over the next few hours, and change into something a little loose fitting. Not a "tunic" or "frock" or anything dumb like that, just nothing constricting that's going to make me all aggro when I want to melt into a sea of pillows. But when it comes to marijuana the degree to which you take your look is extremely important because if you're not careful you could easily go from dressing chill to looking like a slob, which to a drug dealer translates into "this bitch is sloppy so I'm going to show up late every time she calls because she probably doesn't even know what time it is." So clean yourself up a bit.

Keep the makeup au natural but with a lip stain, creative nail design, and a sweet yet floral perfume. Clothing-wise, a vintage (or vintage-inspired) tee with a pair of comfortable jeans and a modernized classic shoe will go a long way. The whole point is to visually inspire your dealer to give you a good deal so maybe also go braless and wear a “Jerry Garcia” pouch around your neck and apply a hint of color on your lips if you want a fuller eighth. And if you can avoid buying weed after work on a weekday, schedule your delivery for Saturday during the day. They're always slammed on weekends, but if they remember you're that cool cute girl with the nice apartment that smells really good, they'll get to you faster and will also get the fuck out immediately after because they have to hustle.

MUSHROOMS

L-R: Tory Burch jacket, Rachel Antonoff for Bass loafers, Opening Ceremony shirt, Yves Saint Laurent Rouge Pur Couture in Le Rouge, Dior nail polish in Trafalgar, Acne mini skirt, Book Marc pencil by Marc Jacobs, American Apparel socks, Chanel N°5 perfume.

Buying shrooms is always a little harder because the people that sell them are weird as hell and they're so hard to come by. These guys have to drive down to Jersey to pick up their buddy "Gus," and because of the effort they have to put into getting them for you, they expect you to pay them back by engaging in actual conversations when they drop off. They want to know if you've tripped before and where? What did the mushrooms look like? What's the craziest shit you've ever seen? Where you're going to do the shrooms you're buying from them? It never ends!

In order to throw these guys off dress a little more conservative, like you just got home from your job as a receptionist at a law firm near City Hall. You do not want to look like the kind of person that takes hallucinogens on the reg but you also don't want to look like you have a stick up your ass. I like to wear a button-down blouse with a light cardigan, knee-length skirt, and some loafers. I always keep the makeup light but add red lipstick, nail varnish, and drench myself in a fragrance that smells like “old money.” I also find I get a good reaction when I toss my hair into a messy bun at the top of my head like I’ve been working really hard all day–fuck it, sometimes I even stick a little pencil in there to make it sexy. Like buying weed, it's a good idea to make sure your apartment has been picked up. Not that these guys will take longer to deliver if it's messy, but it'll show them you are a real adult and you might make money. So you might have other fancy friends that make money and like to hit the proverbial mental reset button every now and then too. The more business they get, the easier it is for them to get product, and when you're the only guy in the city with shrooms for sale you're going to make bank.

MDMA / ECSTASY/ KETAMINE/ ACID

L-R: Alexander Wang Ashley boots, Swatch watch, Burton beanie, Von Zipper glasses, Pamela Love ring, APC dress, Opi nail polish in Honk if you love Opi, Hansel from Basel socks, Supreme shirt, Make Up Forever lipstick in Satin Blueberry, CK One perfume.

I lumped these 4 together because dealers are always dicks when it comes to negotiating a reasonable price for them. You can’t just buy one hit of any of them because they want you to buy 25 hits or more. And the more you buy the lower the price tag and your self-esteem the morning after because you took too much of the shit since it was on sale.
Dressing for such a transaction can be tricky, as a lot of the time the dealers that have this stuff are the same guys that sell mushrooms. I still suggest taking a classic approach, but maybe go for something a little more fun and flirty like an above-the-knee dress with flat ankle boots. Accessorize with some black-framed glasses, a thumb ring, and a chocolate or maroon lip and nail. Instead of spritzing yourself with patchouli, which tends to be a huge turn-on for these guys, use a classic woody scent. And when covering up, opt for a nice plaid flannel rather than a cardigan–these drugs are super 90’s so if you look like you were actually born before 1980 they might think you know what the hell you’re doing and won’t try to rip you off.
However, there is such a thing as too 90’s, so if they walk into your house and you’re dressed like Courtney Love or a raver they’re going to think you’re some rich LA brat and you’re fucked. Pretty sure they don’t care about what your apartment looks as long as it doesn’t resemble a college dorm and if you choose to have music playing in the background to soften the mood, double-check your iTunes so nothing trippy pops up at the wrong time. The last thing you want is to be cornered into testing out the goods with them “real quick.” And make sure you wear a watch, because real adults wear watches and the more you look at it the more uncomfortable you’ll make them so they won’t drag their feet.

COCAINE

L-R: Jerome Dreyfuss bag, Too Faced Smokey Eye Shadow Collection, Gucci Guilty perfume, The Row sunglasses, Nails Inc. London Magnetic nail polish, Miu Miu Trompe l'Oeil shoes, Bijules pinkie ring, Acne jacket, J Brand jeans, Stella McCartney shirt, Nixon watch.

Not to sound like a narc but if you’re a young lady you really shouldn’t be buying cocaine all on your own because it’s kinda weird. The people who sell coke are the sketchiest human beings on the planet, so you’re basically asking to be found out. You can spot these guys immediately over other types of drug dealers because they all dress like they just fell into a lot of money–they are beyond indiscrete. If you have to buy on your own and can’t just con a guy down at the bar to get it for you or share some of his, the only way to play down their blinged-out T-shirts is to dress to the nines as well.

Get fancy or swag or whatever the fuck they like to call it. Put your smokey night face on and make sure your hair is done and get your nails did. Paint them black and toss some rhinestones on your tips, or dip them in glitter. The male dealers tend to be super horny and always want to know where you’re going that night and why you’re trying to party ’cause they want to hang out once they’re off the clock and bone. So do yourself a favor, they already know you like to get wild so don’t wear a dress when they come over. Just put on a nice pair of tight-ass jeans, a sheer or satiny top, some high heels, and BAM. It’ll look like your friend came over to say “ayoo” and you’re going to hit some clubs. In this situation I think it’s totally fine to have a messy pad, there is something about being on blow in confined disorganized spaces that people really don’t like. Having somewhat of a borderline hoarders problem will help keep the interaction short enough that he won’t want to try to mack it. It also betters your chances of him wanting to get the hell out immediately so you two can walk out the door together and maybe look like you know each other so your neighbors aren’t like, “Who was that scumball?” and start talking crap about you behind your back.

HEROIN

I haven’t a damn clue, but heroin seems like a bad idea unless you’re looking to kill yourself or have a drug dealer rob or rape you following the successful purchase of narcotics. I’m also pretty sure no one would deliver junk in the city because wandering into a smack den is risky. You have to go get that stuff yourself in a dark alley down by Youlooklikeajunkiesoclothingwon’thelp St. and You’reprobablyhomelessanyway Ave. All times of day are bad times for dying, so sorry I can’t be of more help on this one.

In June, I attended the opening week of the Venice Biennale with the intention of interviewing the biggest and brightest art stars for an online show I host and produce. Sadly, none of them would talk to me at length. Or at least their handlers didn’t deem me worthy of their time.


At one point, I elbowed my way into a group of journalists surrounding the red carpet and attempted to corner the acclaimed artist Christian Marclay. All he talked about was how he didn’t know how he would manage to get his Golden Lion (the Biennale’s award for the best artist featured in its main exhibition) back home. I kept my suggestion of maybe checking an extra bag to myself. Later I saw Swiss fancy-pants artist Thomas “Hershey Highway” Hirschhorn, who is truly a great talent, but a rather disappointing conversationalist. He literally had nothing to say. The closest I got to a true score was a fleeting moment with John Waters, whose PR mafia had been profusely apologizing all day for cockblocking me. But when I finally confronted him, the most he could muster was “Hurry, before they see us!” as he posed for a quick picture with me.

On the flight home to Berlin, I was digging through my bag when I noticed a red book I had forgotten I’d acquired. It was the exhibition catalogue from the Biennale’s famed Danish Pavilion, which seemed like a shitty consolation prize, until I flipped to the bookmark stuck between its pages.

The cardboard placeholder featured a color comic by R. Crumb depicting a drag queen and king holding hands in front of a marriage-license clerk. On its flip side was a blurb from Crumb explaining that the image was intended to be the cover of a 2009 issue of the New Yorker but was rejected for reasons unknown. Although I was excited to obtain such a rare and odd artifact, things didn’t quite add up.

Besides this obscure bookmark, the would-be New Yorker cover—like Crumb—was nowhere to be found at the Venice Biennale. Instead, his incendiary “When the Niggers Take Over America!” (which first appeared in a 1993 issue of Weirdo) was on display. Was someone or something trying to keep the New Yorker controversy under wraps? I imagined Sy Hersh appearing out of thin air, with his hand stuffed deep in his trench-coat pocket: “Stick these in a book no one’s going to read—or else…”

Before further developing my conspiracy theory, I decided to get in touch with Crumb to inquire about the rejected-cover debacle. If there’s one universal constant that we can all count on, it’s that R. Crumb is incapable of feeding anyone bullshit.

VICE: I was very impressed by a bookmark that features one of your illustrations—one I had never seen before. I got it at the Venice Biennale.
R. Crumb: Bookmark? I don’t know anything about this bookmark.

At the Danish Pavilion they were handing out a book called Speech Matters, which shared the title of the exhibition. Inside there’s a bunch of boring stuff about the exhibiting artists, but my copy also contained a bookmark featuring what appears to be a gay or transgendered couple registering for a marriage certificate.
They sent me the book.

But they didn’t send you the bookmark?
No.

Did the rejection offend you?
I’m in a privileged position because I don’t need the money. When you go to the cover editor’s office, you notice that the walls are covered with rejected New Yorker covers. Sometimes there are two rejected covers for each issue. I don’t know what the usual policy is, but I was given no explanation from David Remnick, the editor in chief, who makes the final decisions.

Has the New Yorker attempted to commission work from you since this cover?
Yeah, Françoise [Mouly, the art editor] keeps mailing me these form letters, which they send to various artists they like to use. It says something like, “OK, so here are the topics for upcoming covers.” They send it out a couple of times a year or something. But it’s a form letter, not a personal letter.

Did you receive an apology?
An apology? I don’t expect an apology. But if I’m going to work for them I need to know the criteria for why they accept or reject work. The art I made, it only really works as a New Yorker cover. There’s really no other place for it. But they did pay me beforehand—decent money. I have no complaint there. I asked Françoise what was going on with it and she said, “Oh, Remnick hasn’t decided yet…” and he changed his mind several times about it. I asked why and she didn’t know. Several months passed. Then one day, I got the art back in the mail, no letter, no nothing.

Drake is afraid of us, you guys? Look: “I hate what Tumblr has become. It reminds me of those clique-y girls in high school that used to make fun of everyone else and define what was cool.” AW, MUFFIN! (He also said “But in five years, when you all graduate, that shit doesn’t matter” which is a fun-for-me reveal that high school used to be five years in Ontario, where the legal drinking age is 19, which incredibly meant that all of us could buy Labatt beer in what y’all call “senior year.” It was boring by then, of course.) DOYOCITY that Drake and every other I’m-cool-I-swear-it dude-boy hates what Tumblr has become: a fucking dense and wild forest of girl concerns and lives and likes and values and the HQ of Girl News. I mean I really like Drake and he lives in my town and stuff but Jesus Christ did you hear “Make Me Proud”? Step down, friend.

There is this enduring, annoying stuff about how girls don’t use the internet as much as guys. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that girls are so obviously the unchallenged vanguards of the internet, so clearly the winners of such a flexibly temporal space which suits the frantic micro-obsessions and macro-expressions of girl life so exactly that it must be like sooooo embarrassing for men in their 20s. Do men in their 20s, and 30s I guess, who were “First!” on the internet now battle daily with the furies of being bested by tiny pale cunts with long hair (which is how I shittily imagine shitty guys imagine girls)???

TWITTER

Is starting here too obvious, you guys? Do I even get into it?

Twitter is second only to Tumblr for girl-posi-ness. Girls are way more interesting tweeters because it is essentially a colloquial, verbal medium—those bursts! Those hot, tiny bursts!—and it rewards the sentimental, the thoughtful, the curious; less so the factyness and downward, inward boastyness of boys. Like, I love you, boys. I love boys so much that I’m worried about it sometimes. But I have a secret list of Twitter must-reads and other than my tightest guy friends it is aaaaaall ladies.

I think the real-time realness (uck, sorry for that) of Twitter (fashion, too) is what will ultimately save women from aspiring to and disproportionately appreciating the creative work of men in music, film, art, and literature. Basically, Twitter shifts attention and energy away from a paradigm of pop culture or whatever that is just fine and totally great but in no way girl-cohesive and toward a scary-amazing sphere of girlgirlgirlgirlgirl with no middle-men being like “Yes but is it sexy.”

INSTAGRAM

I still don’t know what this is, actually, except that it’s uniformly chicks who use it. S’like, brown tinge?

WISH FULFILLMENT

Every line of the Riot Grrrl Manifesto is answered by the internet: “BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways… BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other's work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other… BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings… BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.” It’s The Future! Neat.

FACEBOOK

Did you see The League where Taco makes up the MyFace offline social network and to prove your identity you draw a picture of a spider with penises for legs? Dreamworld.

I can only think of three things about Facebook that aren’t either hideously banal or truly terrible: 1) Photos of your cooler, funner friends who live really far away doing enough cool, fun things that you can create a sweet narrative of what their life is like. 2) On your birthday, when people post on your wall even just “HBD!” it feels really nice and validating and is close to the vibe of a pop-and-chips pre-teenage birthday party, which for me was the height of my life’s experience. 3) Parties.

Girls mostly use Facebook to creep on boys of their past, present and future, and those boys’ exes, which SHOULD make you feel filthy and humiliated in front of your rational self, but which we just do and do and do because we can and it’s just so upsetting. I hate Facebook so much.

GRAINY, SELF-SHOT NUDE PICS THAT EVEN A GOOD GUY WILL PROBABLY SHOW HIS FRIENDS

No no no no. Put your vagina back in your pocket, please.

TUMBLR

This is a half-and-half situation, because: 1) Tumblr is where girls are king! Of every space on the internet, this is the one where a girl free-for-all exists and is being built up like a theoretical magic castle; where the dust of 90s nostalgia lives; where you can do the most intense learning about girl lives (and girl-hero lives) because of the instant, unedited access to kind of whoever; where the pro-ana shit and the model shit and the whatever else is there but has nothing on the moody self-direction of what Tumblr essentially is.

2) I fooled you before, with that Drake quote. The rest of what he said was “Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me. Then you’ll meet them and they’re just the biggest turkey in the world. They don’t actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It’s scary man, simulation life that we’re living. It scares me.” Me too. Totally.

SKYPE

All I know about Skype is that I got to see my friend’s killer apartment in Paris instead of just talking to her on the phone, so…

CONFESSIONALS

OK, so I’m over it.

The internet as a whole has been amazingly amazing for girls and women who, previously, paid little formal or canonical attention and had little formal or canonical attention paid to our actual lives, experiences, politics, feelings. A+, internet!

BUT the tragic kingdom (I rate that a “T” for “Topical”) of internet confessionals is that it’s just a bit—a lot—much. I have this feeling (Drake sympathizer) that girls rely on their blogs to take the place of the hard, stupid work of becoming a real and functioning adult in a world that is not, like, about your feelings, or interested in your feelings. My entire career is dedicated to my feelings and I still have about 8,000 per hour that are just mine to sit with alone at my desk willing myself to not take a snooze. At this point I’m a little bit like “Set your alarm clock and get out of bed and then we’ll talk about it.”

OH UM HI YEAH

Related to the above: stop it with this withdrawn, shrunken baby posturing! Don’t fear the dowager, remember? We were more articulate in first grade than we are in the first line of every blog post. It’s not fun or funny to pretend like the “Publish” button snuck up on you.

ONLINE SHOPPING

The WORST! Why did we let this become such a thing that nobody has to go to a store anymore? It’s super nice to see clothes on the internet screen, where you can make them all big and not be oppressed by a fashion editor’s version of what Isabel Marant should be like, but buying something without putting it on your particular girl-body is a crime of capitalism or something.

PROFILE PICS

The actual worst. Every one of us is implicated in it, too, because no matter what it’s offensive: pretty-on-purpose poses are dumb; straight-ahead all-smiles security-pass-style retreats from the ego-strokes of good angles are dumb; photos of somebody else entirely (like, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose picture is my current Facebook profile pic) is dumb. The only way to win is to not have a photo, but that’s so Dada as to be an entire statement. I fucking hate Facebook. You know that part in the opening credits of How To Make It In America where a blonde girl has her hair over her face and sunglasses on? It’s not her or anyone’s fault but I want to murder that whole aesthetic one hundred times. Murdering an aesthetic: Dada! See???

MEMES

Ew, this is for boys.

HATERS

Don’t care, shouldn’t care, but I get that not everybody has a father who gets irritated when you are pushing for a compliment and is like, “For Christ’s sake, Kathryn, you should get a 95 in English. Stop talking.” Which really is a perfect storm of kindness and cruel expectations necessary for quality self-esteem. But then, like, too much of my internet time (23 hours a day I guess? That’s low-balling) is infected with girls complaining about what other girls think of them on the internet and definitely responding with a pointless culture of self-censoring apologies and over-carefulness and disclaimers and other things that make me so sleepy. It’s like, girls largely refuse to be offensive but then also refuse not to be offended by stuff that doesn’t matter. I don’t really know what to say about this because “It doesn’t matter” doesn’t work and also because when given an opportunity to shut down, box up and return some retarded comment or post or whatever made by someone whose ideas I don’t like and feel smarter than, I probably will. This is unresolvable right now.

PROBLEMS

FACT: Nobody needs to stop acting dumb more than girls and the number-one reason for unnecessary willful retardation is the internet. FACT: You can’t really be cool on the internet. You know who isn’t on the internet? Ryan Gosling in Drive (is that dated already? Yiiiikes). You know who is on the internet? Latter-day Courtney Love. (Yiiiikes.) You see what I’m saying? Like, The Silent Female is something that we are categorically against but let’s be quite clear about what posting little posts about your little life really comes down to.

GMAIL

The most democratic invention of all of the internet! If anybody writes me an email from a Gmail account we are automatically on either other’s Gchat lists, so even though I block almost everyone who appears there except for the three or four friends with whom I am in emotionally-needy-pink-tongued-puppy chat relationships, you will be there, and I will be forced to see your status message and think about you for a second. And everybody has Gmail! I’m at a point in my life trajectory where I straight refuse to email a Hotmail account.

GCHAT

Tao Lin has entirely ruined what used to be good about GChat, so, I feel like even discussing it as a life element has been contaminated. That’s a CON. A PRO is that when I try to explain about the machinations of language development to anyone Gchat is the only example I really need.

Gchat is really, really good for girls because its convenience and presence and attendant bad spellings and NBFD vibes encourages the kind of riff-based humor that was, until kind of right now, the solid domain of guys. That said, I’m not totally committed to this idea because I feel like my capabilities to predict and exploit the tenor and tone of Gchat conversations are really exceptional, especially when I’m in kind of an ice-cold bitch moment, and my basic Darwinian instincts makes me feel like “Come at me with your Harold and Kumar stuff, girls. Come at me.”

I keep my Gchat on but I’m always Invisible and then when I want to chat I hit up whoever I want who is stupidly “Available.” (What are you, some kind of filthy whore?) I have a theme song for my Gchat status, sung to the tune of “A Milli”: “Invizzie invizzie invizzie.” YUP.

COMMANDS

The processes, routes, codes, etc. of the internet are still very male. Also why is everything GREY? Barf. Why is it in English but not really? Also barf.

GIG CULTURE

A sort of logistically shitty thing about the internet is that it makes it easy and obvious to work from home, to have a gig or a contract instead of a real job, and while that can be and so often is a genuine economic problem, especially for women, it also just means that fewer girls work in offices, and working in an office can be really powerful. Still, the most important thing is not who @s what but how it is when you and your boss are breathing in front of each other. This gets complicated in terms of self-presentation and the moderated behavior of office life that I can only guess at. I mean, yesterday I wore hot-pink socklets around the office all day because my motorcycle boots felt heavy. (I also spent 30 minutes after work fighting with a man about the nuances of work life and how women being there isn’t the end of it.) But having a legitimizing physical space to go and to work at is so important for how you feel about yourself and what you can do. Also yesterday, I sat in front of my big-screen computer and talked on a landline and looked out a big window at a lake and touched the books and magazines on my desk while people walked back and forth in front of me and I felt like I was both playing at something and also having the realest, best time.

@KateCarraway

Previously – Girls and Growing Up

KATE CARRAWAY
]]> http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2011/11/13/girl-news-girls-and-the-internet/feed/ http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2011/11/10/shroom-ban/ http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2011/11/10/shroom-ban/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:32:31 +0000 viceus http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/?p=41869 Photos by Hamilton Morris and Santiago Stelley

A large pile of freshly cleaned Psilocybe atlantis.

In the bucolic pastures of Hazerswoude-Dorp, nestled in verdant fields of ruminating Holsteins, lazy windmills, and pert tulips, lies a quaint Dutch farm that functions as the world’s largest psilocybin-containing-truffle factory. To be clear, the truffles this farm produces, often called philosopher’s stones, are not technically truffles (or stones) but rather a distinct fungal propagule that serves a separate biological function from that of a mushroom.


The mushroom constitutes the reproductive body, or “fruit,” of the fungus from which spores are dispersed; upon germination these spores combine to form a fluffy network of threads called mycelium. If the conditions are not correct for the mycelium to organize itself into mushrooms, certain species will form tangled clumps of mycelial tissue called sclerotia. In 2008, the Dutch government banned virtually every known psilocybin-mushroom species but neglected to outlaw the humble hypogeal sclerotium. Overnight these scleroid nuggets of fungal flesh—truffles—became the only legal source of psilocybin in the Netherlands, and so I flew to Amsterdam to learn about their history and propagation.

When I arrived at the Magic Truffles farm, its two proprietors, known as the Truffle Brothers, were unpacking a “realistic” five-foot-tall plastic alien and making plans to dress the alien like Bob Marley and construct a large faux joint for it to smoke. We sat down for a chat.
 

What do Bob Marley and extraterrestrial beings have in common? They both LOVE weed.

VICE: Who are you, and what is your business?
Ali: My name is Ali. Next to me is my brother, Murat. We are known as the Truffle Brothers. You’re here at the farm of Magic Truffles. We produce sclerotia, also known as magic truffles, here in Hazerswoude-Dorp, which is approximately 30 kilometers south of Amsterdam.

How did you get into the truffle business?
Murat: I was operating a pizzeria. Above my restaurant was a crack guy who exchanged crack products with those guys who hijack… What are these people who hijack buildings called?

Squatters.
Murat: Yes, right. So these squatters exchanged mushrooms that they found in the wild for the crack products of the guy above my pizzeria. This crack guy came to me and gave me a small bag of what appeared to be white pubic hair. It was kind of gross, so I threw it in the drawer and forgot about it. A week or so later I retuned to the bag and saw that it was beginning to fruit mushrooms! So I went with this bag of mushrooms to my brother and said, “I would like to create more of these.” Ali had just finished with his mushroom project in Poland, and so we decided to start a business together.

What was your mushroom project in Poland?
Ali: I was a supervisor on an international white-button-mushroom project. This was a really large grow project with a canning factory behind it. So I was already part of the mushroom-cultivation network, though a very different part. While I was working on the white-button project, a friend of mine came up to me and showed me some spores he had collected on a petri dish. He told me, “It’s a magic mushroom.” I’d never heard of such a thing, so I took a closer look. I went to a friend of mine who owned a mycological laboratory and asked him, “Can we do something with these spores?” He said, “Well, let’s give it a try.” After several weeks there was only one mushroom in the aquarium, but it was a giant mushroom. I gave it to a friend, and he told me it was amazing. Apparently he was talking to deer and trees and flowers. That was, for me, the signal, “OK, this is good, let’s continue with this.” That’s how it all happened, that and Murat’s encounter with the, uh, crack guy upstairs.

We all say things we later regret, but those things don't typically lead to the messy end of a 35-year marriage. Today's query comes from a concerned son whose parents are splitting up after his father followed his wife's advice and slept with another woman. Unsurprisingly, our man Ron shines the light of reason on this most delicate case of adultery.  

Hey Ron!

My parents have been married for 35 years and are currently in the middle of a long and drawn-out divorce. It all started when my mom told my dad she didn't want to be intimate with him anymore, but that she would stay married to him and he should find someone else to have sex with. He did, and when she found out he slept with a 27-year-old she flipped out and doesn't want to be with him anymore. What should my dad do?

Thanks,
Tim

Dear Tim,

A lot of women say things when they're angry that they don't mean. They'll say they're mad at you and tell you to leave, but when you start to walk out the door they ask where you're going. If I tell a woman to leave, I mean she should have left yesterday. 

In this case, your mother just didn't want to have sex with your father, but he was still hungry. I'm not sure if taking her honey pot away was meant to keep him around or split them up, but it doesn't make sense to get angry when your man follows the instructions you gave him. Maybe he should have gotten it in writing. He just wanted to relieve himself. I would say he should've just gotten a magazine, but I don't know if that would've saved his marriage either, because it sounds like your mom didn't want to be with him.

I think he should've moved out. Once he told her he had sex with some 27-year-old, he should've given her some space to reflect on what she had told him to do. She never had time to heal, so she just got angrier. I'm surprised she didn't go Bobbit on him and throw his penis in the bushes.

But I'm sort of playing the devil's advocate here, because your dad should have known if he followed through with it, he'd get in trouble. But he was a man in need, and his wife was not fulfilling her obligations. A man in need is a man indeed, and indeed he wanted to have sex with his wife! But because she didn't want to spread like a rooster, he went some place else to cock-a-doodle-do-it.

Love,
Ron

Previously - Occupy This

RON HEMPHILL

Last week I was talking about how stylistically-challenged the Occupy Wall Street movement is, and how important style is to any radical manifestation. Well, I was so busy fretting about the style deficit of these disheveled, bedraggled, drum-beating revolutionary dilettantes that I didn’t even get a chance to address the real 800-pound gorilla in the room: advanced capitalism. That’s right, unregulated, unrestrained, evangelical, fundamentalist free market capitalism, the kind that is about to plunge the world into a tailspin of economic hardship, austerity, and widespread poverty. When soviet communism failed and the Iron Curtain fell, everyone was eager to bury communism forever. Now that capitalism is threatening to destabilize the world order, why isn’t it also being recognized as a failed political system? Just asking.

Unfortunately I’m not qualified to lead a debate about world systems of governance. But I am qualified to lead a debate about the fact that according to the website Celebitchy, Kanye West wore an outfit worth over $30,000 dollars last week when he went downtown to express solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. WTF? He was covered in so much of what used to be called “bling” in the 90s and swathed in so many designer schmattes, it was like if Marie Antoinette attended a bake sale in support of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Call it what you will—limousine liberalism, champagne socialism, Gucci Marxism, Cristal communism, Abercrombie and Fitch anarcho-syndicalism—this is the very essence of the disconnect between being part of the problem and part of the solution. The oppressed have truly become the oppressors. It kind of reminds me of when Michael Jackson fancied himself a champion of the impoverished children of the world while simultaneously styling himself as the South American Tin-Pot Dictator of Pop (I’m thinking of the HIStory album cover) while having sleepover dates with pre-pubescent teenagers. The message was decidedly mixed.

Anyway, I’m pretty jet-lagged, and I have to leave my hotel room now to give a lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, so what I’d like to leave you with this week is a manifesto I wrote a while back. It was originally published in a Canadian arts magazine, and pretty much sums up all the modern contradictions I can think of concerning advanced capitalism, celebrity, and revolution. It’s called “The Purple Resistance Army Manifesto.” You can also download it here and plaster it around your neighborhood. Or you can write a manifesto of your own. Whatever works.

The Purple Resistance Army Manifesto

The Purple Resistance Army (a.k.a., the PRA), and it’s auxiliary wing, the Purple Menace Society (PMS: women’s division) is a united and federated grouping of members of different races and genders and socialistic political parties of the oppressed people of The United States of Canada and America, who have, under homosexual and minority leadership, formed and joined The Purple Federated Republic (PFR) and have agreed to struggle together on behalf of all their people and races and sexes and political parties' interests in the gaining of Freedom and Self Determination and Independence for all faggots and others. The PRA declares revolutionary war against the Fascist Capitalist and Largely Heterosexual Class and all its agents of murder, oppression and exploitation. We support by force of Limp Wrists the just struggles of all oppressed fairies for self-determination and independence and hereby offer to all sexual liberation movements, revolutionary workers’ groups, and people’s organizations our Total Aid(s) and support for the struggle for freedom and justice for all people and races and genders!

On behalf of all its constituents and affiliates and various sissy sycophants, the PRA hereby identifies and extrapolates upon the following pop cultural positions that should be followed in order to activate and actuate the aforementioned principles in an opportunistic and propitious fashion. Attention must be paid to the following edicts in order to gain membership to the Purple Resistance Army. Failure to adhere to the general principles delineated herewith may result in humiliation, teasing, taunting, in-house gay bashing, cuckolding, cold-shouldering, and a general reading to filth of the individual in question.

1) Never Trust Anyone Under 30. A reversal (see: Counterintuitivity) of the old proverb from a previous generation that exhorts fellow comrades never to trust anyone over the age of 30, this neo-axiom of the PRA is designed both as an historical broadside against the age-ism that has become endemic to society since the advent of the industrial revolution, and as a reminder that, under the new world order, tender youth, a formerly fairly reliable bellwether of rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, and non-conformist behaviour, has long since lost its counter-cultural compass and can no longer be trusted or relied upon to instigate or disseminate revolutionary ideals a priori. Although it may be misinterpreted as an encouraging sign that voter turnout in the eighteen to twenty-five year age demographic has dwindled in the past several decades in western democracies, it is by no means a dependable indication that the youth of today is anything less than a vast, empty cadre of reactionary, close-minded clones who will swallow any sort of predigested pablum that is placed in front of them, including, but not restricted to, badly realized computer-generated images (see also: The Aesthetic Dementia), political doublespeak, marriage (including, sadly, the gay kind), commercial pandering, substandard reality television, corporate hip hop, pre-fabricated celebrities, hyper-violent video games, respect of property and copyright, and other untold forms of popular prestidigitation. The current ‘youth revolt’ in France, wherein young people are fighting for the right to gain permanent job security (whilst in their twenties! See also: Revolutionary Reactionaries) is a far cry from the events of May ’68 in which a popular uprising of French people from diverse ethnic, cultural, class, and age groups, including communist and anarchist factions, roused to action by a continuing trend of western imperialist adventurism in Southeast Asia, sought to challenge the very control of the ruling classes by espousing ultra left wing causes, including educational and social reform and the advocacy of sexual freedom and free love.

2) Get To Know Your Asshole. The Purple Resistance Army entreats all males, but particularly the self-proclaimed “heterosexuals” (also known as “breeders”, although this term may now apply occasionally to “homosexuals” – See once again: Revolutionary Reactionaries) to get in touch with their assholes, by any means necessary. Marcuse might have had something like this in mind when he talked about the surplus repression imposed on its people by an “affluent society.” In an industrialized society which has reached a point of abundance that is characterized by the production of “unproductive goods” – tech gadgets, excess waste, planned obsolescence, luxury items, excessive military build-up, etc. – a certain repression over and above the one necessary to advance culture is forced on its citizens in order to exert a particular notion of “normalcy” that is more aligned with conformist social and institutional attitudes rather than ideas of individual fulfillment. The redundant, unnecessary work upon which advanced capitalism is predicated, characterized by a deadening or stupefying effect – a kind of zombie state when performed by the working or middle class subject, or, in the case of the white collar workers, by a moral indifference and callous aggressiveness – results in a distraction from their own personal and sexual needs. A person who functions normally in such a sick society is himself sick, while it is only the “nonadjusted” individual who can achieve a healthy acting out against the overly strict restraints and demands of the dominant culture. It is such a society that prevents constitutionally bisexual men from exploring their homosexuality, and in particular, from getting to know their assholes. Many men can spend their entire lives not experiencing the pleasure of the anus, when it has been well documented that it is the very location of the male G-spot and thereby invaluable for healthy orgasmic release. Neglect of this region leads to poor prostate health, general irritability, spiritual malaise, or worse. A carefully placed finger or fingers up the ass of any one of a number of members of the Bush or Harper administrations would greatly reduce expenditures on the military and Star Wars technology, curtail the doctrine of preemptive aggression against oil-rich, Middle East nations (most of whose leaders are already well acquainted with their own assholes and those of their Gulf Coast neighbours), and a whole host of other bellicose, morally insupportable policies based on surplus repression and anal indifference. Members of the PRA are encouraged to help any adult male over the age of consent to explore and befriend his own asshole so that others do not have to suffer as a consequence. Anal Liberation Now!

3) Discourse Sucks! Although it may fly in the face of conventional wisdom concerning the predisposition of homosexuals to the appreciation of art and artistic practice (See: Counterintuitivity), the Purple Resistance Army does not in general support or condone artists or, in particular, art discourse, although bullshit artists and their discourses are provisionally accepted. The art world has become a purely reactive and reactionary institution whose trends and tendencies are determined and circumscribed by the broader conservative cultural forces and socio-economic policies of an exploitative capitalist ruling class, having long since foregone its function as a vanguard or avant-garde, or as serving a therapeutic, cathartic, or even critical function, let alone a political or revolutionary one. Devised by a laissez-faire haute bourgeoisie, art discourse, an Emperor dressed in what he believes are the most au current designer clothes, gets lost in the elaborate, solipsistic layers of his own nakedness, lording his self-importance over an unwitting and uncomprehending public whose idea of art is the fruit in a slot machine. Modern trends in art include escapist folk fantasies involving psilocybin unicorns and golden-tressed maidens with dirty feet locked in pornographic carnal embrace, a new twist on a purely decorative seventies throwback that reinvigorates questionable commodity fetishism. More conceptual, “dialogic” art, including the use of readymades or relational art practice, while less commoditizable than traditional art objects, is nonetheless reified and marketed by the same hierarchical economic institutions and international exhibition superstructures that confine it to the amusement of an insider elite. As an alternative to the art orthodoxy, the PRA promotes finger painting, free range graffiti, tattooing (although not on pigs), home movies, ad hoc shrines – or, for conceptualists, practical jokes, pranks, hoaxes, and public nudity not organized and sanctioned by institutionalized art stars.

4) Counterintuitivity. The Purple Resistance Army, a militant band of insurgent sissies, must not succumb to the current cycle of cynicism and apathy that has infiltrated and destroyed the spirit of resistance, subversion and highly civil disobedience that was once at the very core of the homosexual psyche. In today’s topsy-turvy, wrong is right, revolutionarily reactionary world, the members of the PRA must learn to use counterintuitivity to fight its enemies. The dictates of common sense are no longer to be trusted in this poisoned environment.

5) Death to Celebrity! Celebrity culture has become the biggest boondoggle of the modern world, and members of the PRA must do everything in their power to destroy it. Much of the blame for the rise of celebrity culture has been laid at the dainty feet of Andy Warhol (peace and blessings be upon him), whose famous phrase “In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes” has been wildly misinterpreted as an endorsement of celebrity for all as a kind of democratic principle in a capitalist context. His real prediction for the future was probably more along the lines of an Orwellian (or perhaps Kafkaesque) dystopic nightmare in which each individual in society is forced, by means of an assembly line or factory model, into a limited window of fame/labour precisely fifteen minutes in duration, none more significant or important than the next, each turned out like so many car parts and discarded when it has outworn its usefulness. This is the same model Warhol used to produce his early movies and art work: objects assembled by a series of poorly paid workers and manufactured in his “Factory”, mass-produced and sold in a free market economy. (Although Warhol was, himself, an artist, celebrity, and capitalist nonpareil, the Purple Resistance Army grants him enormous leeway for his overwhelming contribution to hypersensitive, tortured sissyhood.) Today, the worship of celebrity has become a kind of neurotic compulsion that turns otherwise salient and reasonable human beings into slavering, sycophantic boobs who care more about the excruciating minutiae of the lifestyles of the filthy rich and unjustly famous than about their own, infinitely more authentic, everyday lives. Celebrity itself has become a disease that mangles and maims the egos of those who suffer it, reducing them to delusional paranoiacs who should be at the very least, not paid very much attention to, at best, deprogrammed. Down with Overexposure! Up with Anonymity!

6) Show Business is Politics/Politics is Show Business. Awards shows receive their own special category of condemnation from the PRA for their smug self-congratulatoriness and crass commercialism, propping up, as they do, the celebrity infrastructure by lording the wealth and power of the privileged few over the increasingly impoverished, debt-ridden anonymous masses. There are now more award shows and presentations than there are categories to define them, each one a cleverly contrived and predetermined spectacle designed by the various industries who manufacture it to present the illusion of democratic process and free market competition. The Oscars have become the Holy Grail – or golden calf – of the entertainment industry, an award conferring on its recipient both increased status and bargaining power as commoditized icon. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but the free gift bags handed out to celebrities at such awards are worth considerably more than the yearly income of the average Canmerican family.) Celebrities now campaign for major awards like seasoned (read: corrupt) politicians, hiring teams of strategists and publicists to promote their cause, while politicians, an increasing number of them crossing over from the entertainment field, are styled and cosmetically sold to the public like programmatic B-list movie stars. The PRA holds special contempt and condemnation for George Clooney, a liberal star posturing as the rebel dissenter. Recently accepting his Oscar, Clooney eschewed any overt political statement – while his country is bogged down in an unjust war - in favour of professing his proud support and admiration for “The Academy”, the ultimate Hollywood establishment organ that controls the film industry in the elitist and cabalistic, hierarchical style of Freemasonry. Gone are the days of the likes of Vanessa Redgrave (peace and blessings be upon her), who, while accepting her supporting Oscar in 1977 for playing a Jewish freedom fighter during the Nazi occupation, gave a shout out to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Even the most overtly ‘political’ stars today remain inside players who perpetuate the corrupt, nepotistic plutocracy that is Hollywood by not only showing up to every conceivable promotional event, but also actively campaigning for awards and accolades. The PRA strongly encourages homosexuals to challenge their faggoty predilection for organizing and participating in any and all parades, festivals, pageants, and ceremonies that support and promote corporate enterprise. Death to the Hollywood insect who preys upon the life of the people!

7) The Tyranny of Stylists/The Aesthetic Dementia. Modern styling has become particularly offensive to the PRA and the PMS, especially considering that it’s an invisible fifth column of our tragically misguided misogynistic homosexual brothers, from stylists to designers, who have dictated and enforced the grotesque style imperatives that now govern the image of women in the western world. From the unimaginative, uniform blond frosted tips and streaks, to the blow-up sex doll collagen-injected lips and over-inflated fake bosoms, to the grotesquely immobilized Botoxed faces and plastic surgery disasters, a new model army of faux lap-dancers have willingly conformed to the style of the hyper-objectified woman, thereby capitulating to the male gaze in a way that might previously have only occurred in the worst nightmares of Laura Mulvey. (Cruelly, the advent of high definition media technology only serves to exaggerate and intensify the monstrosity of these highly engineered viral vixens on television and, to a lesser degree, in the movies.) The PRA and its affiliates always encourage personal style and individualism over tiresome trends, particularly when those trends encourage women to approximate the image of female porn stars and strippers who are themselves already a distorted and hideous manifestation of the female image as conceived by the exploitative, male-dominated adult fantasy industry. Autonomous and/or amateur sex trade workers with personal flair and a feminist sensibility are, of course, welcome members of the PRA. Although there are too many to enumerate, two other areas of modern aesthetic dementia have been singled out for formal castigation by the PRA. Firstly, the advent of digital effects and CGI is a particular effrontery to the delicate sensibilities of our lavender membership. Even a technology in its infancy should not be responsible for this much garish, crude, and meretricious imagery. The perpetrators of CGI also have the dubious distinction of removing all the visceral stimulation and sense of adventure from the popular media. Nothing can replace the excitement, in the glory days of analogue, of a vacant model or actor being forced to share the same temporal space as a man-eating feline or a predatory bird eager to pluck out his or her eye. The manufacturing (i.e., faking) of high-risk stunts digitally deprives the audience of its most precious form of entertainment: the potential evisceration and/or termination of overpaid, privileged, and totally expendable celebrities. Secondly, the PRA calls out the exhausted kingdom of hip hop for its negative contribution to fashion and style. From its ostentatious signifiers of “bling” – ridiculously enormous gold dollar signs slung around slouched necks; tacky, overstated jewelry and accessories; pimped out, gas-guzzling showboat cars – to its propensity to engage in stylistic excess, infantilism, conspicuous consumption, and rank gangsterism, the hip hop and rap contingent has taken nouveau riche posturing to new levels of banality. Compare this to the sleek and elegant, militant quasi-Marxist style of Angela Davis and the Black Panthers from the era of true black revolution and you may be inspired to burn, baby, burn your Fiddy Cent and The Game CDs and paraphernalia. (Incidentally, no conscientious PRA member should buy CDs, hip hop or otherwise: free downloading from the internet not only challenges the corrupt profiteering of monopolistic music conglomerates and the enforcement of overly strict copyright practices, but it also reduces the use of plastic and other non-biodegradable materials unnecessarily used in the packaging of entertainment products. File sharing is not only true democracy in action, but it’s also environmentally friendly! And remember, intellectual property is theft!

Club Pamela Anderson. By Club Pamela Anderson, the PRA is not referring to an organization represented by or supporting the over-hyped star. It means club her, like a baby seal. From her recent appearance on the Comedy Network as the subject of a celebrity roast (with Courtney “Doll Parts” Love, by her side – Kurt Cobain must be permanently spinning in his grave), to her hostessing gig at the underwhelming Juno Awards, which presented the sad spectacle of Canada’s rad indie rockers salivating over her enormous pair of commodities (see: Never Trust Anyone Under 30), Anderson represents pretty much everything that is wrong with western free market capitalism. She needs to be, if not regulated, garrotted.

9) The Charm Offensive. Counterintuitively, PRA members must always be kind, courteous, and polite. The fact that the world is going to hell in a Kate Spade handbag is no excuse for rudeness.

10) Down with Revolutionary Reactionaries. A relatively recent phenomenon, the term revolutionary reactionaries refers to formerly radical groups of disenfranchised minorities and/or oppressed peoples who are now fighting, sometimes violently, for the right to be conservative, stable, and inert. From the aforementioned French riots, during which so-called socialist youths donned balaclavas and sacked the libraries of the Sorbonne (the very site of the genesis of May ’68!) to promote their fight for sedentary, entrenched job security; to angry gays and lesbians struggling to participate in marriage - a traditional social and legal institution designed to bind and control its citizens - and to adopt family values; to black thug rappers transforming hip hop, a previously unruly and subversive form of spontaneous, rebellious street communication, into a corporate enterprise characterized by good old-fashioned corruption, greed, and internecine violence (Proof RIP!): the oppressed are doing a pretty good job of oppressing themselves these days without the help of hegemonic states, bureaucracies and institutions. The Purple Resistance Army urgently implores you to Wake Up and Smell the Tear Gas!

BRUCE LaBRUCE for the Purple Resistance Army

Or does it only count as scalping if you rip off your actual scalp? Is there a term for just ripping out a huge chunk of hair?

Anyway, you might remember our friend Rich from the time he did acid on an abandoned military base. Yesterday, he uploaded the above picture of himself to Facebook.

VICE: What happened?
Richard: I was doing some shop fitting. Gridwalling walls so that fixtures and fittings can be put up.

Is that your job?
It used to be, but I quit. I was just doing a one-off for a big event. I was using a mains drill, which is a pretty powerful drill with the motor contained in the back, and to stop them from overheating, they have a vent. My hair got sucked in.

Oh god. How did the people around you react?
It was weird. I didn't really scream, so only one guy saw it.

Did it not hurt?
Not as much as you would think. It's weird, it just kinda feels like I've been smacked in the jaw. I think when it pulled on my scalp, it must have done something to the skin in my face.

Have you done any acid lately?
I have, a couple of times. The most recent was acid, plus K, plus booze, and it turned into a bit of a weird night. I ended up going home with this girl, tripping out real bad, then convincing myself it was all some elaborate prank that was being filmed. Real weird.

How do you think acid would have contributed to the experience of scalping yourself?
I think being on acid would have made a dark situation even darker. After it happened, the guy I was working with asked me if I was alright. I said I was fine, but when I saw myself in the mirror it really hit home. It shook me up. I was shaking and had tears in my eyes. Not from the pain but from just thinking about what happened.

Are you sad your hair is gone?
I haven't made up my mind about what to do with it. Whether to shave it or not. Long hair has been my look forever, but maybe I should go for a change. I've been thinking about change a lot recently, as I feel a bit stuck in a rut.

Hair-wise or life-wise?
In general. Just got nothing going on man, except the desire to make changes without knowing what they are or what they need to be.

GLEN COCO

The author, free at last.

It’s difficult to compare getting released from prison to anything. The first time I got out was only a day after I was locked up. I remember smoking a cigarette and drinking a margarita, thinking profoundly about how blessed I was to be free. The second time I got out was after eight months inside. I was floating on air. My dick was singing, and the outside smelled like a good lovemaking suckfest. The third time I got out wasn’t so sweet. I was on work release and had to go back into jail a few hours later, but I think my scrotum still tingled slightly. That was after two LONG years, but I had no pussy lined up and couldn’t imbibe invigorating spirits because of that bastard-fucking breathalyzer back at the work release facility that overlooks Central Park on 110th and Fifth. Not too bonerable. This time my release party was truly quite bonetastic. My loving parents picked me up, transported me to a fancy hotel (a Sheraton) where a Love Goddess (not a prostitute) awaited me strapped with fancy bottles of wine, tasty snacks, an insatiable mind, and a tub of organic extra-virgin coconut oil.

Prison is extremely shitty in too many ways to explain. I overcame the extreme boredom  with my own ingenuity, but there’s only so much to do. I played soccer, basketball, softball, and ping-pong, then lifted lots of weights with a little bit of innovative jacking-off on the side. I hope I live long enough that all the time I spent finger-fucking my asshole in prison makes me have a really strong old man finger. It’d be a shame to have wasted all that time.

Honestly, the worst part about prison (other than no booze and no cooze) is that I was not naked for two years. I could have been naked I suppose, but that would have labeled me a homo, and then I would be ripe for the pickin’ by some big-dicked booty bandit. We shower with boxers on and we sleep with clothes on. There is no privacy available EVER in most prisons. Even the inmates in maximum-security joints with their own cells never really have privacy. I was in a dorm with 59 neighbors in my face day in and night out. So, upon my release I was thinking about getting naked and staying that way like a toddler in the buff—bouncing around and lettin’ my nuts hang, chicken chow mein?

We don’t have mirrors in prison, so I wanted to get drunk, naked, and fucked—and I wanted to do it all while looking at myself as much as possible. I took a lotta pictures in the Sheraton. I’m a glutton for everything I’ve been deprived of. I sucked down oysters on the half-shell while my dizzle drizzled spittle and the Love Goddess touched me tender under the table. After all that sensory deprivation, a tickle or even a feminine word makes my dick drool. So, even as I was eating with a semi-bonerable broad in an eatery in Watertown, New York, I was staring at all the tits around me, imagining everyone missed my hungry eyes.

So, yeah, sweet release… a dream come true for a cracker-ass inmate living lavish on his first day out the clink-clink. The Love Goddess said, “Ooh, it’s bigger than I remembered.” Is that because of all the Kegels I did, or just some line that the bonerable broad manufactured to make her inmate feel more like a man? Whatever, I love her anyway and my hog is long and strong if you measure him all the way to the base of the balls. Maybe I’m a late-bloomer and the thing is still stretching out. I got drunk, laid pipe proper more than three times, possibly made a lovechild, and was the tongue-bath king.

Now that I’m back in the real world I can get drunk, pull weed out of my pocket (and not my ass), listen to my Love Goddess snore and play with her perfectly feminine kitty kat. No more nights worrying about a boisterous gang of Bloods drinking Kool-Aid and shootin' dice in the spunkatorium as I fuck a homemade vagina passionately on the shitter. I don’t have to be rich and in the Bahamas, living a fantasy as Bert BigBucks—I can just be Thud DownThrust on welfare, going to rehab, and spending food stamps. I hang out with the family and try to smile—I am a functioning functionalholic.

As beautiful a fairytale as my sweet release is, I beg the kiddies to be smart and please never get caught. The cops are stupid—be smarter and don’t be Bert, and you won’t know the degree of hurt I’ve incurred. You want sweet release? You’d be much better off going on a mealworm diet for about two weeks and then feeling the unadulterated ecstasy of eating a Cambodian creamsicle out some foxy strumpet’s starfish.

Previously - Booty in the Buttpocket 

BURT BURYKILL

Fridtjof Nansen was a Scandinavian folk hero. With a robust moustache and piercing blue eyes, he was a true adventurer from an era when men actually did manly things, not least of which was his daring and potentially lethal navigation of the fabled North-East passage. He took a fortified ship, froze it into the Arctic Sea and let the pack ice carry him across the top of the world, round Siberia and the entirety of the Asian continent, before heading back to his Norwegian homeland through the Suez Canal and the Med. It took him three years. He was also a renowned cross-country skier, oceanographer, neurologist, foreign diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

And now, it comes to light, homeboy was also a bit of a perv.

With celebrations in full swing to celebrate Nansen's 150th anniversary, a new book entitled Brenda, My Darling has surfaced featuring full-bore love letters from the then 67-year-old to his American sweetheart some 30 years his junior: We're talking no holds barred Henry Miller/ Anais Nin style literary filth here, people. The publication has unsurprisingly shocked the stoic, conservative Norwegians, many of them feeling this move undermines the great man's considerable legacy.

The real shocker, though, comes with the nude photos our man sent to accompany his fine erotica ("There is not a corner of my heart or soul which I do not wish you to look into…") showing the sexagenarian standing proud and buff, in a series of poses showcasing that age had been kind to the old cove.

In Brenda, My Darling are we not witnessing the birth of the truly modern man? His arousal and lack of inhibition predating iPhone cockshots and internet noodz by almost a century? Mr Nansen, we salute thee.

If you want to see more pictures of Fridtjof Nansen's penis, Brenda, My Darling is edited by Eric Utne and out now.

TONY SYLVESTER