Right now our friend Brian Mier’s at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil (you can find a bit of history about this enormous annual event by clicking onward), which this year is focusing on developing solidarity among all the different indigenous tribes in South and Central America so they can better fight off darklord mega-projects that are destroying their territories. Brian drank some tainted water and we presume he’s sweating and shitting it out as we type these very words, but he did have the wherewithal to forward on some images from a photographer he met there. The only comments Brian could give are: “That mime guy is wearing a paper visor that says, ‘Your Mouth is Fundamental to confront the Fundamentalists’,” “The women in purple are from the World March of Women,” and “I have no freaking idea about that giant cow.” Not entirely helpful, true, but when he stops squirting life-force from his body he’ll be checking in again to let us know more about what’s going on over there. Read more »
Posted on January 30th, 2009 | 1 Comment
I recently discovered that my mother, a woman happily married to my father for 25 years, once had a faraway love. They were both ten years old at the time. His name was Hernan Lozano, a bullfighter from Monterey, Mexico. They met, they swooned (hugged for longer than three seconds behind a building), and they vowed to write each other constantly. And they did, even though my grandparents hated it because they were totally racist. But my mum kept the letters all this time. She sent them to me with a note attached reading, “Enjoy learning more about my bullfighter and don’t forget to buy pepper spray.” Here are the letters, obviously written by family members with her name misspelled each time, but they are so fucking adorable it makes your heart hurt. So screw the jaded, hardass, swaggering ten-year-old bullfighters of today who want to kill six bulls in one fell swoop; this one was a true romantic. Read more »
Posted on January 30th, 2009 | 3 Comments
When a sign at the local supermarket says it’s too hot to put cheese in the refrigerated display unit (you have to ask for it over the counter like you’re buying nangs) you know things are getting bad. If you live in Melbourne or Adelaide, we don’t need to tell you that you haven’t slept for days and are about to kill everyone you live with.
But, if you’re going to crack, why not crack in the name of science? We conducted the following experiment yesterday when the temperature had reached its maximum of 43 degrees (109 fucking degrees F). As you can see, it may not have been worth it. Read more »
Posted on January 30th, 2009 | 3 Comments
As you may have gathered from the previous dispatch, the purpose of these scribblings is to allow myself to experience something I would normally avoid, in the hope of greater understanding and hopefully some broader horizons, and then to share my conclusions with you. You could be forgiven for assuming that the first column was a thinly-veiled ploy to legitimately acquire a self-pleasing sex toy, but I can assure you that’s not so – there will be many more of these experiments to come, some of which I’m rather looking forward to. Of course, there’s a very real chance that my mind remains sealed off and my reservations are confirmed beyond the slightest sliver of a shadow of a doubt, but “a closed mind is a good thing to lose” as the saying (apparently) goes. Read more »
Posted on January 30th, 2009 | 1 Comment
This I know: the Next Big Thing in music will come from the United States Gulf Coast. I know this because I watch The Uncharted Zone, featuring Phil Thomas Katt.
The Uncharted Zone is a weekly television show that airs on public access channels in the shit-hot Northwest Florida markets of Pensacola, Novarre Beach and Bagdad, as well as on YouTube. The operation is run by painfully earnest former radio DJ Phil Thomas Katt and some guy named Tommy Robinetti, the Anton LaVey of meth.
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Posted on January 29th, 2009 | 2 Comments
I have good, sweet, loving parents, I really do, but I spent Christmas with them in the suburbs and I haven’t been able to leave since. On the morning before flying back home to the city where I live many, many miles away from them, back to my friends and job and own apartment with books and beads and bright green lightbulbs, I go for a run. I slip on ice. I hear my right ankle crack – a tight fluid sound – and right away I know I’m really fucked. Now I’m stuck here, just waiting. Here is my long story about the painful ordeal. Read more »
Posted on January 29th, 2009 | 12 Comments
A suspected terrorist scoping out a branch of Oxfam
The things you can pick up in charity shops: second hand books, old Levi’s, rollerskates and… hundreds of pages of confidential US military data?
Yes, in a move that may see nuclear warheads away from Iran and towards the local Salvation Army shop, a man in New Zealand managed to buy an MP3 player that was rammed full of the personal data of US soldiers from a charity shop. There were names, phone numbers, social security numbers and mission briefings. Wait a minute… mission briefings? You mean someone actually stored their mission briefings next to their Phil Collins Greatest Hits album and collection of Rage Against The Machine singles? Read more »
Posted on January 29th, 2009 | 2 Comments
We’ve already pondered the questions of which race is the cutest and which can drink the most, but one matter that has long eluded us is which race is the best for kids? To the best of our knowledge, nobody has ever come forward with a workable schematic, so we asked a teacher of 7- to 8-year-olds to give us a full breakdown of how the kids stack up against each other. Read more »
Posted on January 28th, 2009 | 10 Comments
The Megadeath, The Nazi-onal Express, Cagecoach – they’re all hell on wheels.
As if it wasn’t punishment enough to have to spend five-and-a-half hours sitting in a chair designed for a dwarf amputee, with the person in front leaning so far back they might as well be using my cunt for a cushion, while the person next to me munches through a sandwich that smells like putrefying maggots mixed with cheese and onion crisps, I had the misfortune this weekend of being driven by a total psychopath. Read more »
Posted on January 28th, 2009 | 7 Comments
One of the perks of sleeping with someone at Gizmodo is that the wistful whispers that wake you from your slumber with the morning light are also highly informative, and hone your A-game when it comes to Silicon Valley parlour banter (suck-and-blow is getting really old, Mark Hurd).
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Posted on January 27th, 2009 | 4 Comments
I used to think I was selective when it came to choosing my sexual partners. That is, until I woke up yesterday morning to find that trying to wee felt more like passing molten lava. So I did what everyone does when they think something’s wrong down below and Googled my symptoms. Chlamydia was ruled out after I used a home kit I’d been posted and the clap looked too fucked up to go unnoticed so I ticked that off the list. That left me with about a hundred other diseases, with symptoms ranging from crazy amounts of pain and gross looking discharge to absolutely nothing. That left one option: a trip to the clinic.
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Posted on January 27th, 2009 | 47 Comments
I moved to east London from Chicago two months ago with the incredibly responsible plan of being a supply teacher, when in reality I moved to get drunk and fuck anything with an accent and a club night. But I’m the best supply teacher you could ever want – I wear too-short skirts, gossip with the (8-year-old) girls about which of the seven Mohammeds in class they have a crush on, as if I were their friend, and let everyone do whatever the hell they want all day while I fantasise about banging the hot year 5 teacher in the bathroom at lunch to a soundtrack of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher”.
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Posted on January 27th, 2009 | 12 Comments
Tagged: children, vomit
Am I the last person on earth to discover the awesome personal ads in the London Review of Books? Somebody sent me a link to LRB’s personals a few days ago, and I was immediately struck by ads such as this one:
Yesterday I was a disgusting spectacle in end-stage alcoholism with a gambling problem and not a hope in the world. Today I am the author of this magnificent life-altering statement of yearning and desire. You are a woman to 55 with plenty of cash and very little self-respect. When you reply to this advert your life will never be the same again. My name is Bernard. Never call me Bernie.
I was blown away to find that when an Englishman participates in the sad ritual of writing a personal ad, it ends up containing all the wit and complexity of a Noël Coward play.
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Posted on January 27th, 2009 | 4 Comments
Tagged: boob-pinchers, Britain
