Breakups are the worst. Those three words—Can we talk?—never lead to good news. No one ever wants to talk. They just want to tell—tell you why things aren’t working, that it’s them and not you, that they’re really busy at work right now and they just don’t have time to commit to a relationship.

Sometimes when you ask someone to break up, what you’re really saying is, I want to stay together but change the terms in my favor. You break up and wait for your loving other to say, “What can I do?” Then you secretly smile and say, “No, things aren’t working out.” Desperate, the other person says "no" and "please" and "anything!" You fake-cave and lay out your demands.

But what happens when your intricately laid plan backfires? What happens when the supposed love of your life realizes your shortcomings as you try to exploit his or hers?

Filmmaker Jim Owen brings this painful possibility into a hilariously deadpan, and ultimately bittersweet, reality in the 2010 short film Can We Talk? It finds a patronizing boyfriend, Vince, attempting to break up and score a blowjob from his newly heartbroken girlfriend, Sophie. Jim gets many things right in this short film—it’s brutally honest, in a brash and juvenile way, but handled with impeccable comedic timing. It also has fake crying, so you know the breakup has to be real. 

VICE: Is Can We Talk? autobiographical?
Jim Owen: That’s like asking Gaspar Noé if Irréversible is autobiographical.

Most of your work finds comedy in a person's ego battling against his insecurities. Why are you so obsessed with people's romantic fumblings?
Romance brings out the best and worst in people. I read a story recently about a guy who'd forgotten to book the town hall for his wedding. Rather than just confess to his fiancée that he'd fucked up, he called the town hall and told them he'd planted a bomb. The town hall was evacuated and the wedding was called off. The police traced the call and arrested him. 

The fact he couldn't have a straightforward, honest conversation with the person he was going to spend the rest of his life with is amazing to me. What propelled him to lie to such an extent that he'd rather be a criminal?

They didn't get married, thank God. I think he's in jail.

How do you go about writing your films?
I get up early, sit at my desk, and fucking type until I’d rather do anything else. That's usually about three in the afternoon.

What do you think is the best way to maintain a healthy relationship with someone?
I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer this.... Say what you're thinking out loud as much as possible, without being mean-spirited or discourteous. That’ll sort out whether or not you can be together. And don't go into the bathroom and have a poo while your partner is taking a bath.

What are you working on now?
Finishing up a short film written by Rachel Stubbings called Good Grief. It’s about a woman uncovering a family secret following her mother’s death. It’s not really a comedy. It’s very sad and a bit funny. Once that’s done, I should probably start making something with a bit more scope. Maybe one of those longer films we all used to go and watch at the cinema.

Jim Owen is a filmmaker who makes awkward and funny little films about people and their problems. He just launched a must-see web series called Panic Stations and you can watch the first episode here. Can We Talk? came out in 2010, played a bunch of film festivals, including Sundance (garnering an Honorable Mention), and was included in one of Wholphin’s DVD compilations. Follow him on Twitter at @mrjimowen and check out his website.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall, mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

@PRISMindex

If you've ever played Call of Duty Online, you'll know that snipers are very sneaky bastards. But that's the point. They hide in the distance, camouflaged in their surroundings, and pick you off before you've even realised they're there. In real life, these highly trained marksmen are capable of surviving alone in the wilderness for weeks on end. They dig little holes—or "nests," as they call them—and hang out there for a bit before popping up and putting a bullet through someone's skull from more than a mile away.

Artist Simon Menner was recently granted permission to spend some time with the German Army and its snipers. During the two occasions he visited, he captured the soldiers' remarkable ability to blend into their environment, producing images that appear to be simple landscape shots until you look close enough to spot the barrel of a gun.

This is a common theme in Menner's work, which often focuses on information and the ways in which it can be restricted and revealed. Other similar works include minefields in Bosnia, and the more recent book Top Secret (Hatje Cantz, 2013), an extraordinary collection of both ridiculous and shocking images from the Stasi archives.

Have a look through the images and try to find the snipers. There are tips to help you out.

According to the Toronto Police's own stats, not everyone gets served or protected equally. Photo via.

One night in the mid-80s, a bit before I was born, my parents went to a party in Mississauga. My mother is white and most of the people there were black, like my dad. As the party was winding down at about midnight, they went to leave through the backyard. At the gate that led out to the street, a group gathered, peering out through the fence at a police car parked nearby. Nobody wanted to leave. My mother, being white, described it like this: "There had been nothing illegal going on at the party that I knew of. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I said 'Let’s go.'" According to my mom, the black people at the party were more along the lines of: “I have done nothing wrong but the police are out there and we feel uncomfortable.” Ethics 101 aside, eventually my white mom and black dad left the party.

When they drove out of the neighbourhood, an unmarked police van stopped their car. They asked for ID, and when my mom said she didn’t have any on her, they asked if she was a “good girl,” probably insinuating that she was a sex worker. They did a background check but all they could find were some unpaid traffic tickets, which they said my dad had to pay on the spot. The police then followed them to an ATM, where my dad took out money amidst shouts of "nigger" from a guy outside the store. They didn’t get a receipt. My mom, not really sure what was going on during the hurried encounter, recounted to me later that it just didn’t seem right.

That was over twenty-five years ago. Alas, some things don’t change.

Last year, the Toronto Star published articles showing the breadth and significance of Toronto police’s carding practices. Analyzing the police’s own data obtained through a freedom of information request, the ongoing “Known to Police” series brought to light what black people already knew: black people—and black men in particular—are being “stopped and checked” at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates.

Soon after, Canadian activist organization the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) announced it was suing the Toronto Police. Launched in November 2013, the lawsuits essentially attempt to gain recognition for years of racial profiling, carding, deportation and unequal treatment in prisons, alleging rights violations under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Human Rights Code. Earlier this month, BADC filed their class-action complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, seeking $100 million in damages.

One of the particular demands of BADC and other activist groups such as Justice is Not Colour-Blind is an end to police carding. “Carding” has become shorthand for police street checks—the demand for and recording of information without an arrest. Basically it's saying: if they don’t get you now, they’ll get you later. “Carding” had become the of-the-moment axis of discussion for abuses of power that had been going on in Toronto and in Canada for decades.

While this may seem like a Toronto-specific issue, it also needs to be looked at as endemic of the very way this country operates. Yes, carding is a problem of the Toronto Police Service, which has been called “the most powerful public-sector organization in the city” by one of BADC’s founders, and the police abuse of their carding policy points at a larger, often violent history.

Perhaps the apex of public awareness in and around police brutality in Toronto was in the late 1980s when the fatal shootings of a number of black people by the police cemented BADC’s founding in 1988. Following the Yonge Street "riots” in 1992 after BADC organized a rally to protest yet another shooting, there were more shootings by the police. To this day, one of BADC’s most commonly cited accomplishments is ultimately helping to create Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit in 1990, an independent agency designed to investigate police shootings (the same one that charged officer James Forcillo with second-degree murder in 18-year-old Sammy Yatim’s death last summer, a rare charge for Toronto police).

When I talked to BADC board member Valerie Steele over the phone, she emphasized the long history of the group’s organizing against racial profiling and police brutality.When I asked her about the timing of the lawsuits, her answer was aclear response to the we-need-to-work-together policy police PR spouts. “How long should we dialogue around the same thing? I call it the hamster mentality.”

There has been a bureaucratic police response to carding, which they are now attempting to rebrand as “community safety notes.” The police have called carding an “effective” investigative tool while also often pointing to the fact that Toronto Police Chief Blair acknowledged racial profiling years ago, or what is now being referred most prominently by the service as “bias in policing.”

As part of the Known to Police series, the Star looked at a carding pattern in patrol zone 523, which includes the so-called Entertainment District—which was once a heavily concentrated area of nightclubs that has since been dissolved by City Council. “For young black males, the ratio of individuals documented to the population there is 252:1. For brown young males, it is 65:1. For young white males, 23:1,” the Star writes.

Academic/activist Chris Williams and law student/community organizer Knia Singh's message to Bill Blair.

Despite the Star’s evidence, Meaghan Gray, Toronto police spokesperson, echoed Blair’s year-end interview, adding, “Racial profiling is illegal and so, as an example, any community safety note that was based wholly or in part on racial bias would be illegal and the officer would face significant sanction for any such activity.”

One way to think about the make-believe transparency that the police attempt to transmit in response to the recent publicity on carding is against a case like Clem Marshall, a former teacher who was pulled over in Parkdale in 2009 and subsequently filed a human rights complaint for racial profiling. The police didn’t admit liability, but they settled for an undisclosed amount of money.

But for the BADC, the lawsuits come after hitting a wall: the common tune of reform by police, and little action. Years of increased institutional enforcements—policing, incarceration, and deportation to name a few—coupled with ongoing attention to New York City’s racist stop-and-frisk practices has culminated in the perfect storm of scrutiny to the issue.

It can’t be ignored that part of the reason why the Toronto police’s carding practices have gotten even the smallest iota of attention is due to both NYC’s activism and juridical responses. Most recently, new mayor Bill de Blasio, who when running launched an ad saying he has talked to his black son about someday being stopped-and-frisked, settled his predecessor Michael Bloomberg’s appeal to a judge ruling in August that the practice was unconstitutional.

When I asked Rinaldo Walcott, Associate Professor of Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education at the OISE at the University of Toronto, he confirmed, and noted that the way in which stop-and-frisk news in the US has made waves internationally, it would make sense that a major Canadian newspaper would want to investigate something similar.

He continued: “What is striking is that they look into it, they use the police evidence to demonstrate the significant problem and at the same time, it doesn’t spark a national debate. I don’t think that the Prime Minister has ever made a comment about the egregiousness of these practices. There has been no sustained conversation about it at the provincial level. While activists have been adamant in trying to push conversations at the city level and have been somewhat successful, one would think that every day there would be stories about the ways in which this works in the newspapers.”

“By the mid-2000s, we get this so-called new police chief Bill Blair who is sold to the City of Toronto as the police chief who is going to be all for community policing,” Walcott said. “And what does he give us? He gives us something called TAVIS, which is one of the most paramilitary police organizations, segments of the police force that specialize in multijurisdictional raids, breaking down the doors of grandmothers and mothers to get boys who are selling weed and crack. The same boys who are selling weed and crack to our current city mayor, who’s walking the street, but they’re in jail.”

Yet the policing, surveillance, and imprisonment of black bodies in Canada is nothing new. Walcott pointed to the decades of activism by black communities starting most strikingly with the police shooting of Albert Johnson in his home in 1979. “When we look carefully at the history of this country, this kind of egregious policing has been happening for a very long time and at multiple levels of government,” Walcott told me.

Canada’s multicultural ethos, which some see as a full-on fable, tends to overshadow the country’s deeply rooted and brutal disregard for black people in Canada, which goes far beyond the recent carding “controversy.” We already know that individuals like Marshall (an officer allegedly taunted him by asking: “Who do you think you are, fucking Obama?”), that is, those who stand out as “high-achieving” and “articulate” posterchildren for a post-racial society, aren’t exactly exempt from anti-black racism. But that’s hardly the point. More to the point is what Walcott cited: 40% of black people in Canada live below the poverty line. And according to the November report by Howard Sapers, Canada’s correctional investigator, the black inmate population has increased 90% since 2003, which is just one small piece of the ever-growing Canadian prison population.

There are a number of organizations working alongside and in the vein of BADC, a Stop Police Carding campaign asking people who have been carded to participate, a new city-based cop-watch app, publicity galvanized by Yatim’s death, a chorus against police behaviour at the 2010 G20 protests, and the lawsuit resulting from when TAVIS arrested four black teenagers attempting to “exercise their rights” at a Toronto Community Housing complex in 2011 and the police pointed a gun to their face. These recent incidents, the history of police shootings in Toronto, my parents, and the hundreds of thousands of people “carded” each year, are illustrative not only of individuals being demeaned by individual cops but also of the institutional depth of governing through criminality all over the country.

For many black folks in particular, police presence is one of the furthest things from safety. If “safety” means the Dixon Road Raids, the militarization of communities of colour, and the schemes of Toronto Community Housing Corp complexes, get me far away from safety. “We are creating a society where youth are afraid of police even to the point of hatred,” BADC’s Kingsley Gilliam told NOW in December. “You don’t have enough guns and tasers to control a society that hates police.”

Walcott sees the issue of carding as part of a greater fundamental problem. “We can’t really begin to address the question of policing until we can address the question of the structural place of black people in Canadian society,” he said. “If black people continue to be understood as outside of Canadian society, even the mildest policing—where police aren’t carrying guns—we’re still going to have these forms of abuse. There’s a significant question to be answered about why it is so difficult for the national institutions, whether it’s policing or education, to recognize black people as part of the polity.”

Twenty-five years after my mother and father experienced the effects of racial profiling firsthand, her persisting recollection of the night still strikes as poignant today:

“What are you gonna do?” she told me, “It’s the police.”

@tianareid

Above, a cup of kratom tea. All photos courtesy of the author

Someone told me about a place in Wilmington, North Carolina, that sells tea brewed from “some weird drug called kratom that’s illegal in Thailand.” The place—a tiki bar called Kat 5 Kava that doesn’t serve alcohol—is like some sort of toned-down methadone clinic or legal opium den, I heard. I was intrigued. 

Even though it’s been around for some time, the media is calling kratom a “new legal drug.” A tree native to Thailand, kratom leaves are harvested and dried to create the drug, which was banned there in 1943, after people had started to use it as an opium alternative and the government realized it wasn’t being taxed. 

Last week, I was out drinking at a bar down the street from Kat 5 Kava, so I stopped in to try a cup of kratom tea. Inside the establishment, a group of people sat sluggishly at a table near a bar that was surrounded by multiple screens playing nature videos of whales swimming in the ocean and deer frolicking in the woods. I looked at the menu on the wall. Half of it was full of beverages made with kava, a plant root used for sedative and anesthetic effects. The other half of the menu consisted of kratom drinks and powders, which were supposed to give an "opiate-mixed-with-caffeine kind of buzz," according to the server. 

There are three different kratom powders sold at this bar: White Borneo, Red Mystic, and Green Peace, each of which costs $2 a gram. The United States has a variety of kratom powders, such as Thai, Indo, Bali, Malay, and Sumatra. I stood there perplexed when I noticed the “brew” for $10 on the menu. A friendly patron with bags under his eyes added, “It won’t make you sleepy too much… that one won’t.”

I went ahead and ordered a cup of “brew,” which is kratom powder mixed into hot water. The server told me that each brew contained approximately 5 grams, but he warned me that if I didn’t have a tolerance, I should limit myself to under 9 grams to avoid getting queasy, because 5–7 grams would provide a sufficient high. Apparently, 9 grams is when people begin to feel queasy, the worst physical side effect of consuming the hot tea.

The brew was poured into a Styrofoam cup with a ladle from a tub. Honey was sitting out on the counter to help alleviate the tea’s bitter taste. But even though kratom is “all natural,” the drink tasted thick and chalky, like crushed-up pills. I must have dumped two teaspoons of honey into my cup. 

I took a few sips, but it still tasted too bitter. I drank as much as I could. I couldn’t finish it, so I decided to head out for a real bar where alcohol could wash away the bitter taste in my mouth. I felt a little buzzed, but I wasn’t sure if I could attribute that to the kratom or the alcohol I had consumed earlier in the night.

Kratom powder

The atmosphere of the place stuck with me. I researched kratom online and found some pretty sensationalized articles about it, comparing it to bath salts.

There’s also a lot of websites out there praising the plant, crediting it for being a healthier option for opiate addicts and a great remedy for recovering heroin addicts. Kratom has gained popularly in the US in the past few years, particularly in southern states like North Carolina and Florida. 

I went back to Kat 5 Kava for a second time, during the daytime, before I had consumed any alcohol, to see if the experience would be different. When I arrived at 4:30, it was packed. A middle-aged man sat there wearing sunglasses indoors. There was only one empty seat at the bar, so I grabbed it and ordered another brew, one that I was determined to finish this time. I was sitting next to a 19-year-old guy named Bob Swinson, who told me that kratom keeps him in check. “I have ADHD, and the kratom helps me calm down. I’m not on meds for ADHD, but it helps keep me level,” he said as he alternated between chatting with patrons and sitting statue-like with his face pressed into the bar. On my other side was an ex–heroin addict who was recently released from prison. For this patron, kratom helps him with his heroin cravings. 

I spoke with a server, Brianna Garrett-Sanders, about her clientele. According to Sanders, the bar has been selling kratom since January of 2012, and “75–80 percent” of the establishment’s clientele are people in recovery. As I sipped on my cup of tea, Brianna told me that kratom gives off the same feeling that opiates would. It works on the same part of the brain as opiate receptors, but instead of attaching onto these receptors, they bounce off, she claims, making it difficult to get physically addicted. Kratom is a lot less dangerous than dope or pain pills, but it’s a helpful tea for people who have issues with pain. “It’s holistic. It’s just a plant. It’s a lot more safe than prescription medication,” Brianna said.

Men drinking kratom tea

After my first brew, my eyes were starting to feel a little heavy, and I began to feel relaxed and a bit chatty. I would catch myself getting very fixated on things: a text message, a nature film, or a conversation. It brought me down to a calmer level, because I often feel anxious and overwhelmed, thinking about too many things at once.

But as I finished my second cup of brew, I noticed a shift from a relaxed state to a place that was slightly anxious. I went to use the bathroom and found myself clumsily fumbling to turn the doorknob. I felt like a slug trying to maneuver around the bar. I started to feel very dehydrated. I stuck out my tongue in the bathroom mirror and saw that my tongue had a layer of white, which was very attractive. 

My eyes were a little bloodshot. I went back and ordered some water.

I chatted with a 28-year-old named Jordan Culler, who told me that he does kratom on a daily basis. He has never had a drug problem, but he enjoys the benefits of the plant because it helps him to focus. According to Culler, “It’s like coffee without being jittery. You’re more relaxed, and you can focus. It just loosens you up,” he said, noting that he drinks it before work. 

Kava used to be served in coconut shells at Kat 5 Kava, but since the coconut cracks caused the kava to spill everywhere, the bar serves it in clear plastic cups. His friends bought me a kava shell. They all chugged it as if it were a shot. I politely had a few sips. It tasted worse than the kratom. I couldn’t drink it, but it wasn’t the flavor that I couldn’t handle. I started to feel extremely nauseated, which was entirely my fault, as I had ignored the original server’s warning—9 grams was the magic number. It was a queasy feeling I have felt before, like when I had mixed downers with uppers in a previous experience, or had drunk one too many Red Bull–and-vodka cocktails. It didn’t feel good. 

The exterior of Kat 5 Kava tiki bar

I was mad at myself because I realized that, from observing others, I could have just bought a few grams at a time, and my server would have mixed it in some fruit juice for an easier intake. I could have monitored what I had consumed a little better. 

I closed out my tab. I left the bar and googled “how to come down off kratom” when I got home. “Nothing kills a buzz more than eating,” one message board mentioned. It suggested carbs as the quickest fix, so I went to a nearby pizza place and inhaled a slice. Within a time span of 15 minutes, I felt fine, but when I got back home, I started to itch. I couldn’t stop scratching my stomach and arms. It wasn’t that bad, or enough to be torturous, but it was a little uncomfortable. I started wondering if it had something to do with the kratom. I had trouble falling asleep, and I woke up with a killer headache the next day. 

In the past, I’ve made myself sick and dehydrated by drinking too much coffee. The two are pretty comparable. I drank too much to feel the full effect, and if a little nausea and itching is the worst thing that can happen, the side effect is not too shabby. Even though it was fun to try, I’m not the biggest fan of kratom. I don’t like the taste or the dizzy high. I’m a bit weirded out that the advocates for it seem to want—or perhaps need—to take it everyday. But if it is helping people wean themselves off of dangerous opiates, then order another round of drinks, bartender.

@_GinaTron

Photo via

The nation was put on emergency meat alert this past weekend when 9 million pounds of beef were recalled after the USDA declared them "unsound, unwholesome, or otherwise unfit for human food." That is saying a lot; the USDA is typically about as stringent as a pro-wrestling referee. Not to worry, though: These were neither hamburgers nor steaks, but rather hideous offcuts that few of us will ever encounter on purpose. That said, I like all of them. Here, with my comments, is a working list of meats to fear, culled from the USDA's recall:

"Beef Carcasses” (Wholesale and Custom-Sale Only)
I don't understand this one. If whole animals are bad, why bother with the rest of this list? Or with any list at all? It is precisely this kind of obfuscation that has turned everybody against the beef industry. By "everybody," of course, I mean "nobody."

Two-Per-Box "Beef (Market) Heads" (Retail Only)
This is another item that baffled me. How many beef heads have you seen in the supermarket case recently? Besides in hamburger meat, I mean. If ever there was a wholesale beef product, this is it.

Four-Gallons-Per-Box "Beef Blood" (Wholesale Only)
I don't even want to know who is buying quarter kegs of beef blood. Third-world hospitals? Vampires? Horror-movie producers? Or is it something worse?

Twenty-Pound Boxes of “Beef Oxtail”
Finally, something tasty. Oxtails look disgusting, because they are nearly all bone, and they actually do resemble the body parts that they are. I don't know why the beef industry doesn't call this "osso buco medallions" or something. Even so, they are one of the few low-grade cuts that taste as good as high-grade ones—the key is slow-cooking them in liquid for whole days.

Thirty-Pound Boxes of “Beef Cheeks”
These sound awful, but you know what? They are one of the richest, densest, and most collagen-rich parts of the entire beef carcass. Interestingly, they are seen more in the hands of the best chefs; Naomi Pomeroy of Beast restaurant, in Portland, made the best one I ever have eaten. It was just incredible. 

Thirty-Pound Boxes of "Beef Lips"
Ew.

Thirty-Pound Boxes of "Beef Omasum"
I have to admit that I had to look this one up. As you may or may not be aware, cows have four stomachs, through which their herbivore feed is processed. I don't know what kind of tripe you like best (probably none of them), but I can guess it isn't omasum, also known as “book tripe,” for some awful reason. 

Thirty-Pound Boxes of "Beef Tripas"
Although often mistaken for tripe, this cut, which appears frequently in real-deal Mexican restaurants, is actually the small intestine, familiar to pork lovers as “chitlins”—basically a hideous ring of rubber-like tissue with no known relation to any form of meat or fat.  

Thirty-Pound Boxes of "Mountain Oysters"
You don't want to know what these are, and I don't want to tell you. Let's move on.

Thirty-Pound Boxes of "Sweetbreads”
The king of organ meats is surely this one, whose dainty name is a much-needed euphemism for calf thymus glands and pancreas. I know that sounds terrible, but, along with cheeks, this is one of the most prized so-called "offal" cuts.

Thirty- and Sixty-Pound Boxes of “Beef Liver”
Beef liver is so awful that even the most transgressive of Brooklyn chefs have never found a way to use it. It's tough and bitter and bilious, and looks even worse than it tastes. If somebody is buying 60-pound boxes of beef liver, it's a good bet they're not in the food-service business. I hope. More than likely, they are buying it for pet food or other industrial uses.

Thirty- and Sixty-Pound Boxes of “Beef Tripe”
The first or second stomachs of the animal are actually pretty good; like oxtail, they need to be cooked forever, but, unlike them, they have no real flavor of their own. They are a basic vehicle for tomato sauce or whatever. Again, this is disturbing, because even clean beef tripe is inherently awful.

Thirty- and Sixty-Pound Boxes of “Beef Tongue”
Though another good bet to land in Rex's dinner bowl, beef tongue does have the distinction of being frequently found in old-school Jewish delis, in the form of a tasty cured meat. What you never see is a whole beef tongue, which looks disturbingly like a giant human tongue; the tongues of beef animals are large and muscular, even for their size. They're so powerful, in fact, that they basically function as an oral arm and can open pens and take the paint off a truck.

Thirty- and Sixty-Pound Boxes of "Veal Cuts"
The fact that this is a catchall category makes me shiver.

Forty-Pound Boxes of "Veal Bones"
It's worth noting here that the most dreaded of all beef epidemics, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a.k.a. mad cow disease, was carried 100 percent by bones, especially the spinal cord. That said, veal bones are also completely indispensable to classical cookery, as the basis of beef stock and, by extension, demi-glace. So this is really a danger zone—the most fearful and ubiquitous of anything on this list.

Fifty-Pound Boxes of “Beef Feet”
Revolting as this sounds, I have eaten these more than a few times in my life. You'll sometimes find them in tacos, where they are very good, and in jellied calf feet, where they aren't. Of course, both of those dishes require calf feet, tender and petite things, rather than cow or steer or bull feet, which are likely to be as hard and tough as anything in the animal kingdom. For all intents and purposes, these are basically edible horns.

Fifty-Pound Boxes of “Beef Hearts”
You sometimes see these, in the very worst part of the worst supermarkets' meat cases. They are intensely nutritious—I will say that. You may have read about the practices of certain warlike tribes who made it a habit of eating their enemies' hearts. But who has a steer as an enemy? 

Sixty Boxes of "Veal Trim"
Anytime you see the word trim in the meat business, run. Just run.

Previously: My Brooklyn Neighbors Hate Me

On Sunday, Copenhagen Zoo decided to “humanely euthanize” an 18-month-old giraffe named Marius. By all accounts the animal was pretty healthy, but the zoo said they had to kill Marius because there was a risk of inbreeding if he reproduced. So, after turning down several offers to rehome Marius, Copenhagen Zoo figured it was best to shoot him in the head, chop him up in front of a load of kids, and feed what was left of him to the lions.

Before he was introduced to the bolt gun, Marius was fed his favorite meal of rye bread :(

Naturally, people on the internet weren't too happy about all this. An international petition garnered 27,000 signatures, the bosses of the zoo received death threats, and even Ricky Gervais took time out to be sad about it on social media. But how do regular Danish folk feel?

VICE: How do you feel about the killing of Marius the giraffe?
Sarah, 27, student: Actually, I’m kind of torn. They named it, so that really speaks to my emotions, but on the other hand I eat meat every day.

What do you think they should have done with him instead of killing him?
I don’t know. I heard about this Swede who was willing to buy it because he had a house for it or something. I thought that they should give it to him. I'm not sure if the people who work there are even sad about it—they'd been calling him by his name, and then they just killed him? Like, “Bye, Marius.”

How do you feel about them letting the public watch his execution and subsequent feeding to the lions?
It doesn’t make me angry, but I wouldn’t go to see it myself.

VICE: What’s your take on Marius's murder?
Daniel, 32, unemployed: I think it’s been very over-exaggerated in the media. I saw one of the people from the zoo speaking about it yesterday on the news, and I think he gave some very good explanations. I think the people who are making such a big deal are maybe not very familiar with animals and how the zoo needs to take care of them. So that might be why they give such a reaction.

Do you think part of the anger stems from Marius being a giraffe and not a goat or something?
I definitely do. There was a similar scandal earlier last year in the EU, regarding horse meat. There were two sides to that debate as well—one was that people were not being informed of what they were eating, and the other was the question of whether or not it was immoral to eat horse meat. We eat pigs and cows every day but people were appalled at the idea of eating horse. It’s kind of silly, really.

VICE: What do you think about Copenhagen Zoo making the killing of Marius such a public spectacle?
Ida, 15, student/vegetarian: It sounds very violent. Did that really happen? It sounds like something somebody would make up.

It really happened. Kids could watch if their parents let them.
Ew.

Do you eat meat?
No. I’m a vegetarian.

Do you think people would have reacted differently if Marius had been a goat or a sheep?
Well, yeah. But the lions have to eat as well, and they're probably supposed to eat things like giraffes more than pigs and goats, right?

VICE: What is your opinion on what happened to poor Marius?
Mette, 55, accountant: Well, I think that it was extremely hard to see, because he was a healthy young animal and it’s not fair to kill him. On the other hand, it was said that they could not export him to another zoo for fear of inbreeding, which is also fair, so I’m very torn on the case.

The CEO of the Danish zoo has explained that this kind of killing has been going on for years in zoos in order to maintain a healthy balance of species, but now that it’s made public I think it’s unnecessary for it to be shown on TV and to kids and all of this. It’s fine that they fed him to the lions so that they didn’t waste the meat, but all this big show is too much.

Avery's ordeal will be over soon, say officials. Photo via Facebook.

Avery Edison’s Canadian nightmare will be over within 24 hours, according to a hearing she attended this afternoon. The transgender British comedienne has been trending on social media for the past two days, thanks to her experience with Canadian law enforcement, who evidently don’t know how to deal with trans people.

Avery’s seemingly simple visit to Canada ended up with a welcome about as cold as an unheated hotel room in Sochi. When she got to Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson airport, Avery was detained at the airport for hours, livetweeting her experience using the airport’s free WiFi and leaving off with the definitive tweet, “Okay, my ride’s here,” before getting shuttled off to Maplehurst Detention Centre, a medium/maximum security facility for men.

After overstaying her student visa, Avery left the country willingly in mid-September. Though she has not been charged with any criminal charges, her terrifying breach of law by returning to Canada after the visa debacle landed her in the medium/maximum security facility, where she was refused the use of her preferred female pronouns.

“We absolutely knew that there was a chance that she would get turned away at the border,” says Romy Sugden, Avery’s girlfriend whom she was coming to Canada to visit. “However, we said ‘we have the money, we’ll risk it if we get to spend some time for a couple of weeks,’ we never in our wildest dreams thought that it would come this far.”

Canada Border Services Agency refused to comment on why a visa infraction landed Avery in a medium/maximum security facility. In a statement, CBSA just said, “ultimately, it is the decision of the provincial service provider that determines in which facility the individual will be detained.”

Of course, that statement is also referring to the fact that despite the tiny 'F' for female on Avery’s British passport, she was sent to a men’s facility. Public outcry, followed by an online campaign on Avery’s behalf, has seemingly put enough pressure on those responsible to have her moved to the Vanier Centre for Women, an adjacent facility to Maplehurst where Avery is now held. But if Avery did not have a 14.9K Twitter following, it’s likely her detainment would have had a different outcome.

Today, in her hearing at 1:30 PM, she was told that she would remain in custody overnight, and then be heading back to England tomorrow with no charges brought against her.  All that will remain is a horror story (hopefully some good fodder for Avery to write some “Canadian immigration are clueless dickbags” jokes) and a note in her Canadian file.

Her story, however, has brought attention to a problem seldom talked about here; what are the laws surrounding the incarceration of trans people, and why do they seem so inadequate? It’s time to catch up, Canada.

In our research, information on the issue is limited and precedents seem to be swept under the rug. In 2001, a Human Rights Tribunal ruled in favour of transgender woman Synthia Kavanagh, creating a standing policy that states post-operative trans women would be permitted to serve in a women’s facility, but pre-ops would not. When it comes down to it, decisions regarding where trans individuals are detained are being based on their genitals. But it’s also a fluid issue that, as we’ve seen with Avery, can be decided on a case-by-case basis that is confusing and inconsistent.

“[Avery] has a passport that identifies her as female,” says Gabrielle Bouchard, who is the Trans Advocacy Coordinator at Concordia’s Centre for Gender Advocacy. “But what is being acknowledged by Great Britain is not being acknowledged by Canada.”

Avery was placed in solitary confinement upon her arrival at Maplehurst, and it is highly likely the same has been done at the women’s facility. As is the case with most trans women being placed in men’s correctional facilities, solitary confinement is used as a way of protecting the individuals to ensure that they are safe from rape and assault. And we all know what a great experience solitary confinement can be.

“The danger for her physical well-being is clear, I’m not saying that all prisoners will look to assault her, but the risks for sexual and non-sexual violence is great,” explains Gabrielle. “Which is something that trans women and trans men are living right now, never mind coming from another country. Avery is the embodiment of what is lived throughout Canada by trans people who have to face going to prison.”

In the statement from the Canada Border Services Agency they say that they are “committed to ensuring the fair treatment of all travellers and that the criteria and indicators used by our officers do not discriminate on grounds protected by the Canadian Human Rights Act.”

Well Border Services, the problem with this is that there is no explicit protection for transgendered and gender-variant people within the CHRA. MP Randall Garrison, who has been advocating on behalf of Avery, tried to pass a bill that would have added transgendered individuals to the Act, however it was voted down in its final stages. Many provinces, including Ontario, have added to their provincial Human Right Code sections that deal with gender identity, but nothing’s been done on a federal level.

According to Avery’s girlfriend Romy, she will be able to return to Canada in the near future. However, we wouldn’t be surprised if Romy decided to go visit Avery in London next time, at least until Canadian lawmakers decide to smarten up a little.


@mpearson9 & @lindsrempel

news

Woman in a green beret

on the front lines of gender equality with pakistan's lady cadets

By Aeyliya Husain

Lady Cadet Wardah Noor prepares to lead a mock attack during field exercises.

Lady Cadet Wardah Noor, a slim 24-year-old Pakistani with deep-set eyes and an erect bearing, has pinned all her hopes on becoming a soldier.

“I found my civilian life to be slow moving and unsatisfying,” she told me one evening in September after a full day of class and training exercises at the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy (PMA). Raised in a middle-class home, Wardah had already earned a college degree in computer science but found little opportunity in her small village in Pakistan’s Punjab province, where horse-driven carts were still the primary mode of transportation. She craved discipline and structure. She wanted, she realized, to join the army.

LC Wardah was one of 32 women, ages 23 to 27, who comprised the PMA’s 2013 lady cadet class. The Academy is located in the town of Kakul, just a few miles from the Abbottabad compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy SEALs in 2011. It’s Pakistan’s answer to West Point; it’s just as hard to gain entry, and those who do, go on to lead young soldiers into battle.

Gaining admission to the academy is highly competitive. Once enrolled, male cadets spend two years of rigorous physical training and the study of war craft. Female cadets at the PMA, however, receive only six months’ training and then are assigned duties that don’t involve direct combat, serving as members of the medical and engineering corps, or analyzing tactics and logistics, or even training future officers.

“I want to be a part of protecting my country from the terrorists, and protect our borders,” LC Wardah explained. “We have both external threats as well as internal threats.”

Pakistan’s military is the country’s most stable and powerful institution. It has waged four wars against India, staged three successful military coups, guided the country back to civilian rule, and, since 9/11, received $17.2 billion in US military aid. However, despite having the seventh-largest military in the world as measured by the number of active-duty personnel, inhospitable parts of the country like the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (formerly known as the Northwest Frontier province) remain under Taliban control—and remnants of al Qaeda still lurk near the permeable Afghan border.

The cadets line up on the rifle range for weapons-handling instruction.

Due to the country’s geopolitical significance, Pakistan is an essential first line of defense in the global war on terror. And, remarkably, it has become a venue of progressive change and inspiration for females serving in the armed forces around the globe. In Pakistan, a country where women are afforded little in the way of education and career opportunities, the army has slowly integrated so-called lady cadets into its ranks following General Pervez Musharraf’s inauguration in 2006.

Like in many countries throughout the Middle East, women in Pakistan don’t have it so easy. According to a 2011 survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, gender experts ranked Pakistan as the third-worst place in the world for women, just behind Afghanistan and Congo. Honor killings are still rampant, the report states, and 90 percent of Pakistani women face domestic violence at home. The Pakistani NGO Shirkat Gha reported earlier this year that half of Pakistani women are married before the age of 18, and in its 2012 report on Pakistan, UNICEF claimed that there’s “considerable inequality when it comes to employment for women and men.”

In 2012, the attempted murder of Malala Yousafzai, a teenager who is an advocate for girl’s education, trained a bloodstained magnifying glass on the generation of Pakistani girls and women who are fighting for change. Even now for most women in Pakistan, a career in such a traditionally male-dominated field like soldiering is still a remote prospect. It’s also a tough slog, regardless of gender.

From the moment the lady cadets wake at 4 AM until they go to sleep at midnight, or later, their day is a cavalcade of challenges. Physical training starts at 6:30 AM, followed by breakfast, then classroom lessons on defense, attack positions, and public speaking, then back again for drill and saluting practice.

“This schedule is intentional to train them to cope in stressful environments,” Platoon Commander Captain Arooj Arif, the no-nonsense leader of the lady cadets, told me. When I first met her, she was eight months’ pregnant but still commanding her charges.

The training of every class of cadets culminates in four days of field exercises at a location far from the academy that I am unable to name for security reasons. I traveled with LC Wardah and the rest of her cadet class—a disciplined, ambitious group of young Pakistani women from nearly every part of the country—to their field exercises, where their resolve to become warriors would face its toughest test.

Lady Cadet Kiran writes down defensive plans and attack positions during class at the Pakistan Military Academy.

During the exercises, the cadets practiced combat maneuvers in the blazing postmonsoon heat and slept four to a tent on folding cots. I asked Major Chengaiz Zafar, who is in his first year training lady cadets, why the army trains women in these conditions, even if they’ll never see combat. “Because they need to know how things work in the field when they are dealing with operations that directly affect what is happening to soldiers in conflict regions in the country,” he explained, adding, “They will be a part of the effort to help fight terrorism in the country.” Major Chengaiz graduated from PMA, too, near the top of his class.

LC Wardah was given the role of section commander for the exercises. During a morning briefing at base camp on the fourth and last day, she laid out the plans for the mock attack she and her fellow cadets would wage. They needed to divide into the three squads and move through tilled farmland and cornfields until they arrived at the faux enemy lines. From there they would perform a three-pronged pincer move on their mock adversary.

By 10 AM, the heat was already searing on the plains and the air was thick with humidity. After LC Wardah’s briefing, the cadets returned to their positions—trenches dug at various locations throughout the fields. They would wait there all day until it was time to strike out. With little cover from the burning sun, the idea of becoming a soldier in an army that will for the foreseeable future be pinned between the Taliban and al Qaeda didn’t seem like an enjoyable prospect to me.

“These battle exercises help us understand what it’s like to face the real thing. I wish we could go and fight,” said LC Kiran Javed Khan, a 27-year-old who had trouble meeting the weight requirement for cadets when she first joined the academy. She needed to lose two kilograms. “I ended up losing four,” she told me.

“Hurry up, get yourselves ready and into formation!” LC Wardah yelled. The cadets prepared for combat in their trenches. A heavy rain began to fall on the once-scorching landscape, delaying their attack, but just before dusk, orders came from Major Chengaiz that it was time to strike. The lady cadets, hair pulled tight into low buns underneath olive berets, began trekking through the wet fields, each holding a German-made G3 rifle.

For most of these women, military service is the only opportunity they have to leave their villages and start an independent life.

Twenty-three-year-old LC Meimouna Mahruck remembered sitting in a room with 150 other applicants from her village in Swabi, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, wondering if she would make the cut. With pride she told me, “I am the first woman from my entire village to have joined the army.”

To gain acceptance to the PMA, women applicants must go through a series of written exams, physical tests, and a final interview before being selected for one of the few highly sought- after seats. They have to compete for the 40 available spaces, compared with the approximately 2,100 spaces allotted for men.

“In time military commanders will increase the number of female cadets. They have since the program started and the standards, especially the physical training, gets tougher each year,” Captain Arif, who graduated the academy in 2010, told me. “At first they didn’t know how much the women could do and what they were capable of. Next year they are planning to introduce horse riding and swimming as part of the cadets’ physical training.”

The cadets charged through the mud and fired on their faux enemy. Afterward, the cadets returned to camp and waited for dinner. It had been a long day spent in searing heat and torrential rains. In the cool evening air, the cadets shivered.

It was their last day and the promise of a warm shower back at the Academy and the relative comfort of a routine of drills, marches, and course work on the manicured grounds of the PMA lifted the lady cadets’ spirits.

Lady Cadet Zarnigar, after hitting her target during the weapons- handling exercises

Many people I spoke with held the surprising assumption that someday women will fight alongside men on the front lines in Pakistan, a proposition that is still contentious in many other countries around the world. Only a handful of nations are without restrictions on allowing female soldiers into combat. And nations like the US have faced serious issues with sexual assault in mixed-gender platoons.

Perhaps some of the bullishness about mixed-gendered combat I heard was feigned propaganda and bluster—not the actual mood on the ground. Some male cadets did express that the six-month period of training—in contrast to the two years men spend at the academy—is insufficient for combat, which might be a fair assessment. But that quarrel could also be a cover for belief that women can’t, in any circumstance, be ready for battle no matter how much training they receive. While no one I spoke with wanted to be on the record as having said that, this was a common sentiment I overheard among some of the gentlemen officers. And even if women were trained for two years and green-lit for battle, there would still be hurdles to overcome, like chipping away at the edifice of gender norms about the role of women in wartime.

After returning to the PMA grounds near Abbottabad, the cadets resumed their normal battery of training. They marched into a large field where they were separated into four groups and taught how to handle and fire weapons, finishing in the early evening hours and hurried back to their quarters as dark storm clouds came over the mountains.

LC Mehnaz Younas, a 23-year-old from Kashmir province, washed up, tied a long white scarf around her head, and unrolled a prayer rug to begin her recitations. Clouds billowed across the Himalayan ranges. When she was finished, she quickly joined the others as they headed into the canteen for dinner.

Inside the spacious hall, the women occupied only three tables while male cadets filled the rest of the mess—their booming voices filling the room. In stark contrast, the women sat quietly and ate the small portions of food they served themselves. They were exhausted and finished their meal, barely saying a word. In bed by midnight, they would wake up at 4 AM to start the day all over again.

Being allowed into the boys club—if they are truly allowed—won’t be easy for these women. Cultural mores against the comingling of sexes prohibit them from socializing with their male colleagues and forming allies who could help them get promoted.

In a country where the most that is expected of a woman is to marry and have children, these lady cadets were quickly marching toward a life of independence propelled by an inner motivation that is beginning to take hold of an entire generation of Pakistani women.

“I push myself toward things,” LC Wardah told me on my last day at the academy. “If I want something, I will do my best to achieve that goal, whatever it is.”

A float for gay Muslims at London Gay Pride (Photo via)

Just about every predominantly Muslim country forbids homosexuality. In nine of those countries, homosexual activity carries the death penalty. But the thing is, the whole Islamic prejudice against gays seems to be based on one monumental misconception: that certain verses in the Qur'an about Sodom and Gomorrah condemn homosexuality. They do not, according to Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, Daayiee Abdullah, and Muhsin Hendricks, three openly gay imams I spoke to who are trying to end the marginalization inflicted on LGBT Muslims because of their sexuality.  

I wanted to find out whether they were gaining any traction in a world where LGBT people are routinely disowned, beaten, arrested, killed, or driven to suicide, so I sat down for a chat with each of them.

Imam Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed is a French-Algerian imam responsible for the first all-inclusive mosque in Paris, where men and women pray side-by-side and sexual minorities are welcome. He currently lives in South Africa.

VICE: At what age did you decide to stop hiding your sexuality?
Imam Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed: When I was about 21 years old, but everyone always saw me as an effeminate boy. My mother treated me as her daughter. We were very close.

So everyone knew?
Everyone knew, but we didn't speak about it. When I was eight or nine and playing on the streets, other children would always call me names like "faggot." My father, who was verbally very aggressive, used to tell me I cried too much. I spent years trying to suppress that part of myself. I even turned to the strict teachings of Salafism to find inner peace. I did everything to deny that this was a part of me.

What happened when you told your family?
I packed a suitcase, because I thought they would throw me out. I prepared for the worst, but before I could finish one sentence my father said calmly, "Stop; we are going to accept you like that." He knew I had tried everything to get rid of my homosexuality. I am HIV-positive, and when I later told them about that my mother was more OK with my being HIV-positive than my being gay.

That's sad.
Yes. It was horrible. She was horrible to me at the time, but it passed. When it passed it was weird because I had to reinvent myself. Because they didn’t reject me, I had to find a new place in the family as the "real me."

Did it feel dangerous to be the "real you"?
It was pretty dangerous. Especially after the opening of the inclusive mosque in Paris. The mosque is situated in a widely Muslim neighborhood. People on the street would sometimes stop and yell at me. My Facebook page got flooded with threats, too.

What did people say to you on the street?
"Why are you doing this?" and "This is against our religion!"—that kind of thing. It was very challenging. But here in South Africa it’s totally different. It’s very, very peaceful. I am working at a refuge for LGBT Muslims from all over the world.

Like a gay Muslim refugee camp?
South Africa is a very welcoming country for refugees. It's not like Europe, which is far more homophobic. We're only at the beginning phase, but it has strong potential.

So you think there's hope for LGBT Muslims?
Definitely. There is still much work to do, but things are changing. A while ago, a Dutch imam—Hashim Jansen—came out because he heard about me and other imams coming out. More and more gay imams are coming out, and we have an increasing number of straight allies.

Imam Daayiee Abdullah is the first openly gay imam in the United States. He serves as the imam and educational director of the Light of Reform Mosque in Washington, DC, which welcomes all cultures and sexual orientations.

You came out before you converted to Islam. How was that?
Imam Daayiee Abdullah: I had my family's support from early on, so I didn’t have to figure everything out for myself. My parents are Southern Baptists and cared about my character. They cared about how I interacted with my community, not the community's standards. Besides, don’t you think growing up as a black man prepared me for what I'm dealing with today?

Are homophobia and racism the same?
In essence, yes—it’s all hate, just directed to different parts of our identity.

Many people argue that the Qur'an condemns homosexuality. Why convert to Islam?
The sexual acts that are condemned in the Qur'an were done without the consent of the other. They were torture. Sexual acts are not the same as sexuality. The Qur'an doesn't condemn any sexuality, anywhere.

So all the scholars who read the Qur'an that way are wrong?
Their particular reading isn’t part of Islam, but part of the reigning culture at that point in time. Furthermore, their interpretations were also based on earlier Christian and Jewish interpretations. Historians have also never found any reliable case of the Prophet Muhammad dealing with homosexuality. They haven’t found it because there isn’t one. And don’t forget that a lot of the laws criminalizing homosexuality today in Africa and Asia were introduced by European colonialists.

Is it true that your first act as an imam was performing funeral rites for a gay Muslim who died of AIDS?
That’s true. They couldn’t find other imams to do the Islamic funeral prayer for him, so they came to me. If a person dies as a Muslim he deserves a Muslim service.

Have you ever felt threatened when doing your job?
No, I have never felt physically threatened. Why would I? I study and interpret the Qur'an not as a two-dimensional rulebook but as a living thing. Many Muslims have never read the Qur'an. It’s not something they studied. They just took something they heard as the truth.

How do you feel about people calling you "the gay imam"?
The problem is that they mostly use it to make others dismiss us. Or they do it to for sensationalism, to create a boost for personal gain.

Are things changing?
If you look at the number of inclusive mosques in the US, you can see a significant increase in just a few years. Progress is really being made.

What do you say to LGBT Muslims who are struggling because they're being told their existence is a sin?
Study, study, study. Then you will know what you're being told is the real sin.

Imam Muhsin Hendricks is a South African imam who runs a nonprofit, the Inner Circle, to help Muslims who are struggling to accept their sexuality.

When did you come out?
Imam Muhsin Hendricks: I was 29, living in Pakistan, when I came out, after being married to a woman for six years. I got married in the hope that it would make me straight, but with much effort and frustration it blew up in my face. I then set out to seek answers, which led me to study the Qur'an in greater depth.

What did you find out when you studied the Qur'an?
I discovered that the Qur'an is silent about sexual orientation, and that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah does not refer to homosexuality as such but rather to a bunch of atrocities, including sexual atrocities unrelated to sexual orientation or gender identity. The conclusion I drew was that God is not homophobic but the men who interpreted the Qur'an were. This conviction led to me publicly announcing my innocence and embracing my sexuality by sharing the news of it openly with others.

Weren’t you scared of being openly gay?
I expected the worst actually. I expected to be ostracized by my family and even to be killed. I was quite surprised that most of the responses were positive; as if there was a need for this to be made public and someone to be brave enough to mention it.

How do you feel being labeled "the gay imam"?
I don't wish for my sexual orientation to define the kind of imam I am. I’d be much happier to be called an imam who works with Muslims who are marginalized based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  

Will those marginalized Muslims ever be free to embrace themselves publicly?
Yes, definitely—but it would be similar to racism.  Even though most legal structures prohibit racism, it still manifests itself. I do believe that the Muslim world is opening up to the possibility of accepting same-sex love and relationships, as long as these happen within the confines of Qur'anic values of faithfulness, monogamy and Allah-consciousness.

Thank you very much.

In a land far, far away, love flourishes in a kingdom quite unlike any other. In mushroom-shaped homes and old dormitories, a community of dwarfs—all less than 51 inches tall—can be found singing, dancing, and performing on a daily basis for visiting tourists.

In this episode of The VICE Guide to Travel, we send our creative director, Annette Lamothe-Ramos, to visit the controversial theme park Kingdom of the Little People.

We know that Valentine's Day sucks, and that half of you are spending way too much money on some bullshit dinner while the other half of you are jerking off into an empty wine glass. We get it. No one is happy about this holiday except for greeting-card companies and people who love wearing red in public. 

To dull the pain of yet another year of forced human connection, we compiled some classic pics from Jerry Hsu's Table for One blog. Hopefully, this reminds you that even if you're shoving salami down your throat in a sterile, brightly lit restaurant by yourself, there are millions of people doing the exact same thing. Don't fret, kids. We're in this together... but also completely alone.

Photos by Michael Kirby Smith

Saying that you hate Valentine's Day, in two-thousand-and-fourteen Anno Domini, is a tired cliché. Year after year people harp on about how it's just a day designed to induce windfall profits for the money-grubbing, power-hungry CEOs of international greeting card companies, how crowded all the restaurants are, why we should boycot the day altogether... even how to cheat on the one you love. But it's also important to remember that a lot of people will be eating delicious food and then having some real weird sex tonight. And that's a good thing! But for those of us who don't have significant others to rub our parts on tonight—or other nights, for that matter—it's nice to have an all-knowing goddess of romance and lust to take us by the hand and guide us to a greater understanding of doin' it in a way that is healthy and pleasurable for all parties involved. To that end we asked Karley Sciortino to dig through her Slutever mailbag and answer a few questions from readers about their sex-related woes.

I have a female friend who I'm at art school with, and she recently started texting me erotic photos and porn. Then, last night, she texted me asking me to fuck her. I was shocked! I said I couldn't, but then she responded saying the sex would be incredibly hot and different. I'm confused, actually, because I don't really like her and I wholeheartedly don't want to have sex with her, but I know that will make her sad. By the way, I'm 26, she's 21, but I prefer women older than her, like 35-45. What should I do??

- Zach

As a general rule, if someone tries to have sex with you, you should have sex with them back—it's only polite. However, if you wholeheartedly don't want to, or you have to be somewhere else because of an emergency, etc, then there are methods of getting out of it. For example, why don't you text her something like: "Hey, no hard feelings but I think we're better as friends… but maybe you could introduce me to your mother?" Alternatively, if that seems too difficult or insensitive, you could use my preferred method, and the next time she contacts you for sex just say, "Oh shit, sorry, I can't hang tonight. I have a birthday party to go to." And then the next time she sends you a sexy text, make a similar excuse, and so on, and if all goes to plan she will eventually just get the hint and stop sexting, allowing you to ease with only mild awkwardness back into the friend zone, after which you can both pretend like the whole thing never happened, even though you'll both always remember that it did, and it will probably be somewhere in the back of your minds every time you speak to each other from now until eternity.

I'm a 19-year-old French girl, and I'm wondering: Do you ever feel bad after a one-night stand? I’ve had a few in the past couple months and I just hate the feeling afterward, like the guys didn't take my number and it made me feel like an "easy girl." It’s not like I expect guys to fall in love with me just because we have sex, lol, but I still feel disappointed afterward, like I'm not "the one.” You might think, You're just not cut out for one-night stands, but when I'm in the moment I feel good, and very sure of myself. The weirdness and regret only come the day after. How do I cope with that? Also, do you think you have to to wait to have sex to form a lasting relationship?

- AnnaMaria

Well, I have a few ideas about this. First of all, most people have experienced feeling not-the-best after a one night stand, because things that seem like good ideas in the early hours of the morning often reveal themselves to be unnecessary acts of stupidity and desperation the following day (especially when you're riding the subway home in painful high-heels, covered in the bodily secretions of a mediocre stranger). So you're not totally alone there. However, this is 2014: you don't have to wait for a guy to ask you for your number! Especially if he's already been inside you, for pete's sake. Have you ever considered that after you parted ways, your one-night-stands might be wondering why you didn't ask for their info? The morning after a random hook-up is a vulnerable moment for both parties, so you can't put all the responsibly on the guy. However, it's also important to consider: Did you really want to see those guys again, or did you just want them to want to see you, for the sake of your own ego?

I generally think that regret is counter-productive, because there's no use wasting time feeling sorry for yourself about a past decision that you can’t change. Deal with it—it's been done, move on with your life. However, when regret is useful is when you find yourself continuously regretting the same behavior, because then regret becomes a warning sign that you need to change something. I'm not suggesting that you’re not cut out for casual sex altogether, but it does seem like the way you're engaging in it isn't working out for you, and something needs to be adjusted.

Casual sex has the power to make you feel totally amazing and satisfied, but it can also make you feel like a piece of shit. The difference in results usually has to do with the person's motivation—i.e., are you having casual sex for the “right reasons" or the “wrong reasons”? You know it's a “right reason” when your decision to have sex is very clear and autonomous. For example: you (soberly) find someone attractive and interesting and want them inside you; you're curious and want to explore your sexuality, and think anonymous sex is an important experience to have; or, you’re horny and want to experience something new and different. Now, here's some "wrongs reasons": peer pressure; because you're drunk; pressure from a guy; or, because you're secretly hoping that the sex will lead to something more serious, while pretending to yourself and your partner that the encounter is purely physical and fun. And judging by your question, I think that last "wrong reason" might be the case for you.

I don't think you have to wait to have sex to form a lasting relationship. However, I also think that drunkenly fucking guys and then not making an effort to get their phone number is not the best way to get a boyfriend. Your behavior is making you feel bad so you should try something different and see if it makes you feel good! Go out with someone from OKCupid, don't blackout, wait a few dates to have sex, and who knows… maybe something ~magical~ will happen, lol.

I've been going out with my boyfriend for a couple months and I'm happy about the relationship. However, when it comes to sex… well I'm kinda new at these things. He does everything perfectly to me and I'm satisfied, but I have no idea how to please him. I'm scared that if I suck his dick, for example, I'll look like a complete slut, and I don't want that! What should I do?

- Quinn

OK, what? On one hand, it's nice to know that people like you can still exist in the modern world. On the other hand, I feel scared about your cluelessness and think you need to watch some porn right now. I guarantee your boyfriend watches porn, so this will give you some insight into what's going on in his mind when he jerks off and/or thinks about sex. After you've watched a woman with bad plastic surgery anally gang-banged and then bukakke'd by a group of prison inmates, you'll understand why the image of your girlfriend giving you a BJ could never be seen as slutty, and only as a gesture of true affection and intimacy (even if you're making porn-face). While pornography is pretty well known to misinform men as to how to please a woman (i.e. "the easiest way to make a girl cum is to bend her over, smack various parts of her body with your hands and then vaginally spear her without foreplay"), porn can still be a good source of basic information—i.e. what goes where, possibilities of positions, etc.—and it will likely inspire you with some sexy ideas.

If you're still paralyzed in bed after that, why don't you just ask your boyfriend, "What do you like?" or "How can I please you?" Sometimes the hardest-seeming problems have the simplest solutions! Of course, when asking questions like these, delivery is important. Try not to scream the question or to sound overly panicked. Instead, if you make your voice sound all breathy and comforting, like Scarlett Johansson's in Her, I'm almost positive you'll get the response you're looking for.

@Slutever

A best friend to many Victoria residents. All photos via the author.

Let me just get out in front of this and say it: I don’t think Victorians are dramatically kinkier than the rest of us.

Not any more, anyway. When I first read that Victoria, BC had been ranked the highest per-capita consumer of sex toys, I assumed the islanders were in on some sex secret the rest of Canada had yet to discover. Balloons, maybe? Showerhead orgies on acid? I really wasn’t sure.

After hanging around a couple sex shops and chatting with a few industry wonks, though, I’ve come to understand Victoria’s higher-than-average dildo acquisition is a product of demographics and maybe weather. As one of the most elderly cities in the country—like, 113^th birthday party elderly—there are naturally some folks seeking to rectify (ha) legit plumbing issues. At one sex shop I visited, couples as old as 96 and 98 have dropped in searching of means to keep their tickle trunks twiddled.

But when I tell another sex shop owner the good news, Christine Page is genuinely surprised. She says in-person sex shops have taken a hit—a few in Victoria have closed recently—which is why she’s diversifying into Eyes Wide Shut masks and rave gear. This trend is a shame, Page said, because knockoff Fleshlights are too rampant online—which are totally not worth it, apparently. (I felt this was a PSA worth sharing. You’re welcome.)

Action shot from the Love Den sex shop in Victoria.

Women also outnumber men in Victoria, making vibrating anythings an alternative—if not a necessity—for boring heteros. Yes, I hate myself for even writing that—but this fact and framing was repeatedly pointed out to me, often accompanied by hyperbolic stats like “there’s three women for every man in Victoria.”

“I have heard over the years so many complaints from women age 19 to 70,” said Page, “no single men in Victoria.” I looked at 2011 census data, and it’s more like five women to every four men. There are 22 percent more unattached women than men, a surplus of 14,000-ish single ladies. This phenomenon has a disappointing Urban Dictionary entry: Chicktoria.

The constant, unrelenting February rain also keeps the toy business chugging/pumping/whatever semi-gross metaphor you prefer: “Our high spot for selling toy stuff is the winter compared to summer,” Page said. “In the summer people are out hiking and doing stuff, but this time of year it’s quite rainy and gloomy, the weather.” A Netflix account can only get you so far on days when it’s too miserable outside to leave the house. Victorians make sure to stock up for the season.

The kind of weather that makes you want to get hot and bothered.

If this sounds too deterministic, it must be said Victoria has some genuine sex toy fundamentalists, too. I met one 38 year old woman while she was scoping out a We-Vibe 4, in hopes of taking home a product that would vibrate inside her—under her clothes—while she goes about her day. I listened to her describe a fantasy she had about giving away the remote control, waiting all day for an impending zap.

In retrospect this seems like a perfectly eccentric Valentines activity for a soggy, Victoria afternoon. Because good vibes have to come from somewhere, and a city best known for “newly weds and nearly deads” may not deliver on its own.

To recap, Victoria likely buys more sex toys than any other Canadian city because a) old people b) single ladies be vibin' and c) rain. While these may not be the most glamourous reasons to be crowned the sex toy capital, it seems like a special, Canadian kind of victory.


@sarahberms

Photo via.

Welcome back to our food column, Hot Links, where Dan Meyer explores the neglected culinary stars of YouTube. Dan presents a selection of videos highlighting specific food themes, from amateur cooking to local restaurant commercials, elderly drinking buddies, kitchen disasters, all culled from the infinite supply of odd YouTube wonders. We encourage you to fall into this culinary video K-hole and include your own comments and contributions below.

For the most part, I think we can all agree that Valentine's Day is a rotten piece of shit. For people without a loved one, it is nothing but a reminder that you are completely alone in the world, and for those with a significant other, it is an expensive, forced day of impossible expectations, expensive dinners, and cheese. Since misery loves company, here is a short selection of depressing bullshit videos to help you enjoy nothing. 

Sweet Candle Light Dinner Surprise for Him. =)

I honestly have no idea what universe these people exist within. This video slideshow documents a truly demented romantic gesture that seems both expensive, and really unenjoyable, but the biggest issue that I find here is this couples romantic status. I am unsure as to whether they are romantically involved, or if they are siblings. With Aerosmith kicking off this slideshow tribute, our video creator, Rhyza, walks us through her profession of love for Kenny, a “three in one gift package who is a brother, a best friend, and a partner in life.” When she describes Kenny as her brother, I want to believe that it is being said figuratively because she invited him to a candlelight dinner. After watching it a few minutes in, the fact that the only affection exchanged is a "tight hug," I am totally confused and wonder if they are, in fact, siblings. However, at the 1:46 minute mark, it looks like they might have shared a passionate kiss. I am at a total loss here. From what I can tell, they don't seem to eat much, and they never go out to drink the wine from their "wine toast." This video is the most surreal Valentine’s Day scene I have ever witnessed. 

Publix Grocery Valentine

Publix is the grocery giant of Florida, but it is not the best place to spend your Valentines Day. If you decide to spend it there, make sure that you place a tablecloth over the available indoor picnic tables and a red rose ontop of it. I would love to see what the filmmaker of this YouTube video looked like, and ask the dining lovers if they knew that they were being filmed. Kinky.

83 Bar and Grill, Valentines Cruise

Enjoy these 18 seconds of bliss along an unnamed small yacht. Spinning and twirling with your Solo cup is how I hope you spend your lover’s holiday.

“Romantic” Dinner

I've always had an affinity for lo-fi, undercover filming. Here we have a bit of voyeuristic cell phone footage shot by YouTube user Mark Mos, which showcases a simple couple sitting together, not speaking a word to the other as they appear to be absorbed by the activity of their cell phones for a solid minute at a restaurant space that might be IHOP. We've all been there. And here we are again.

Someone to Have a Romantic Dinner With

Oh no. Nononononononononoonono! This is two minutes of a man in a suit drinking wine, eating pasta, and pantomiming as if he is listening to you. At first, I thought it was going to be another "Hi, I'm Joe" type of dating video, where the man explains his finer attributes, but it turns out that this is nothing of the sort. Or maybe it is, if he considers the mark of a good dinner date to involve absolutely no talking throughout the meal. There is an entire genre of videos on YouTube for lonely people to have instant company, and this guy just so happens to be a very creepy example. I also thought for a moment that this may have been "art,” but after watching his other videos, I don't believe it is. But that is still up for discussion.

Waverly Mansion Valentines Song

I don't really want to explain this very much.  This is a group of old folks in a retirement home performing a music video for a Bruno Mars song in honor of Valentines Day. I'm sorry it has nothing to do with food, but I had to include it. Just watch it.

Previously: Grocery Baggers

Cibo Matto: Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori

Everyone likes Cibo Matto. Riot grrrls, raver queers, hip-hop bros, free-jazz stoners, punk kids—even teenybopper mallrats can get into them after seeing their bewigged drag cameo on Buffy. Miho and Yuka seem to exist in some alternate New York Cool Girl reality, equally comfortable rapping with the Beastie Boys and Yoko Ono, skating, or geeking out over condiments. Somewhere along the way they managed to release a handful of much-loved albums, the third of which, Hotel Valentine, comes out today, through Chimera.

No one has any idea what Miho’s singing about, but she’s way too cool to give a shit. I’ve been obsessed with their music for half my life and still have only a hazy sense of what she’s actually saying, speed-rapping about traffic jams or crooning about, y’know, spoons. (As a gay, I’m pretty certain that “Know Your Chicken” is a cool-girl rap take on chicken-hawking, and I’m waiting to be convinced otherwise.)

It’s been 15 years since they put out new music as Cibo Matto, and Hotel Valentine gives their freaky fans some dense new gems to obsess over. If you live in New York, you can celebrate Valentine's with them tonight at Le Poisson Rouge, but the show’s sold out so pull whatever strings you’ve got to snag a ticket. Last week, I met up with Miho and Yuka on a frigid night in Williamsburg to talk about their band, the new album, food, drugs, and alien vaginas.

Cibo Matto's new video for "MFN," featuring Reggie Watts

VICE: I recently heard a rumor that you guys were in a late-90s East Village basketball league. Is that true?
Yuka: Oh, yeah, that was a long time ago! We were playing basketball with the Beastie Boys and Luscious Jackson.
Miho: And Kathleen Hanna would play.

Do you still play?
Yuka: I would, if it were warmer. This year it’s really cold.
Miho: It reminds me of when we first got together, in 1994.
Yuka: We had no money and lots of time, so what we used to do was just walk around, and that winter it was really hard. We both lived in the East Village, on 7th Street. People used to not deliver to my apartment, because I was between avenues C and D. There were all these drug dealers on the block, and I felt very protected because they didn’t want trouble in the neighborhood.
Miho: They were very chill.

When did you start working with the hotel theme?
Miho: We had the concept from the early stage of making the album. I think we were thinking to make it in 2011, but we ended up writing it over two years. We wanted to make something we were really sure of.
Yuka: We work really well with concepts. You can make so many different kinds of music, but once we say, “OK, this is about hotels,” or "This is food-related," it becomes more fun to kind of riff on. It’s like this vague, abstract thing. It’s like we’re writing a movie. Like let’s write a movie about going to Las Vegas, and then what can happen during this trip.

So the new album is Hotel Valentine, and you’re about to go on tour. Do you ever trash hotel rooms like rock stars?
Miho: I do, all the time.
Yuka: I’m so Japanese, I like clean up before I leave.
Miho: I do make the bed, actually.

Well, you’re touring with Buffalo Daughter; they’re totally wild. I bet Buffalo Daughter trashes hotel rooms.
Yuka: No, they’re so polite. I know that Yumiko, the bass player, she vacuums her house every night. She’s the neatest person I know. They’re very serious people. They make really trippy music without tripping.

Do you guys? Do you ever take drugs to make music?
Yuka: I never take drugs; have you?
Miho: No. Never. Look at us. Look at us! We look like such clean people, right? Right?

Of course. But there is that thing of putting pot in the birthday cake. And on your new album, you brag about sneaking into hotel rooms and stealing weed.
Yuka: This is my first drink, ever, in my life. No, we’re not square. We believe in personal freedom. Actually, in the 90s, we used to hang out with Timothy Leary. We believe in what he said. You should be responsible. You shouldn’t just do things because you’re friends are doing it or something.  I love that he taught responsibility. I was really impressed because, at his house, it had a sign at the door that said, “Please come in.” And the door was never locked, so anybody could just walk into his house and hang out for as long as they wanted. He was like a real hippie. And I had never known real hippie people until then. Y’know these people… they’re like really determined; they have a philosophy behind it, the way that they are. There’s a part of my mentality that I feel like I’m a hippie. Like I like to work with people without really deciding who does what. Miho and I work like that. We don’t say, “You’re in charge of this, and I’m in charge of that.” I like this kind of mish-mash situation. Sometimes people say we sing a lot “about food,” but I don’t think we hardly ever sing about food. We usually sing using food as metaphor. For example, we have a song “Artichoke” but it’s using an artichoke as a metaphor. It’s really about the heart. So that’s where, maybe, I feel like sometimes people get it wrong. I think what we really try to promote is freedom. We’re very pro-freedom. For example, we’re definitely pro-gay. But we also don’t want to preach it. We want to just generate the inspiration of freedom, and for people to expand their minds and accept more things. I feel like when you force people to do something, there’s always a payback. It doesn’t always really work.

Do you have any good-luck charms or rituals before you perform?
Miho: I make sure I’m not hungry. I need to get protein before a show.
Yuka: We really make sure to eat before shows. I’ve noticed a lot of singers don’t like to eat before a show—somehow being full slows them down—but we like to eat.

[At this point in the interview, Yuka asks for the cilantro off my plate. I told her that some people are genetically predisposed to like cilantro, and some people don’t have the gene that allows them to enjoy the flavor.]

Miho: I love cilantro. You don’t like it?
Yuka: My mom hated it, I remember.
Miho: The smell?
Yuka: My mom was like, “Ooh, I hate this.” She was really a gourmet; I had so much respect for her. But that was the one area where I was like, “What?!”

Do you cook a lot?
Miho: We’re too busy lately. Yuka is my favorite chef.
Yuka: You’re a great cook too. She’s a great mixologist. She doesn’t drink, but she makes great drinks for other people.
Miho: I have my own drink; it’s called a Hibiscus High (hibiscus tea, orange juice, mint, cucumber, and shochu).

Ah. Sounds good. Have you ever done a juice fast?
Yuka: I think people like it because you lose weight quickly. But, in reality, I don’t think it’s good for you. I feel like chewing is good for your brain.
Miho: It’s impossible for me to do, because I feel like I’m always thinking about what I’m going to eat next. I’m always looking forward to my next meal, so it’s hard.

Did you have a specific goal in terms of the sound of the new album, or was it more organic?
Miho: I feel like a lot of musicians are working, making jingles to survive, and a lot of jingles are that way—“Let’s make a song like Cibo Matto” something like that. The way we make music is completely different. Yuka brings something, and I put something; then Yuka puts a little bit—it’s like a sculpture we’re making together. At the end of the day it’s completely different, like a baby. It’s a fun thing to do that way, because I cannot make that myself, because Yuka is there, and she’s putting her magick— I think that’s the chemistry we create.
Yuka: I learned that some musicians think of something with a goal, like they want to sound like this or look like this. But we never think like that. It’s more important for us that it’s surprising. We want to surprise ourselves. We really don’t want to be predictable. Not because we think unpredictable is good, but because I think we’d get bored. We think of Cibo Matto not as Yuka plus Miho but more as this new entity.
Miho: It’s like a kid between me and Yuka. Almost like between a lesbian couple, maybe.

You’re both fire signs. Do you think about that at all?
Yuka: I do. [Miho seems surprised] I think we’re both more open. I never think, “Oh, my god, I don’t know what Miho’s thinking about.” We can kind of put it on the table and discuss it. Miho’s very involved. A lot of singers are not exactly involved, and Miho’s very involved and wants to be involved in the process. We try to keep it open and… fire away. [Miho laughs] Our bassist, Jared, is also a Sagittarius. He’s on the cusp, between Scorpio and Sagittarius. But my rising sign is Scorpio, so Jared’s very easy to get along with. And Yuko is Pisces, or—her birthday is coming up during the tour. She’s Aquarius, maybe.

Do you believe in ghosts?
Yuka: We believe in mystery. I think it’s only fair to say that we don’t know everything, in many ways. And instead of thinking something’s scary, we really appreciate it and enjoy the mystery side of life.

So the Ghost Girl on the Tenth Floor. She doesn’t seem like a scary ghost, more like a sad ghost, right?
[Miho shakes her head emphatically)
Yuka: More energetic.
Miho: Very funky, actually.

Is the ghost girl based on a real person?
Miho: Imaginary creation. I think we both tried hard to make her very attractive.
Yuka: She’s Rihanna, really.

Ghosts: check. What about aliens? Do aliens become ghosts the way humans do?
Yuka: I believe in aliens, too, but I don’t believe that aliens look like humans. I think that’s where it goes wrong. A lot of aliens are drawn to look like humans, but I think we have this shape because—for example, our head has to come out of our mother’s vagina, so our head size is limited, and then we have gravity and air pressure and that really decides what kind of form we are, and I can’t imagine that aliens have the same kind of body shape.
Miho: So first we have to find out if aliens have vaginas or not, basically.
Yuka: If they do come out of females, that is.

@billycheer