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Robert Walser Turned Small Lives Into Incredible Fiction

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Here's an excerpt from Walks with Walser by Carl Seelig, a new book about the great Swiss writer Robert Walser, out from New Directions later this month. Walser (1878–1956), whose stories appeared in the 2009 VICE Fiction issue, was known for his walking and his very beautiful, very short stories from the point of view of seemingly unremarkable characters such as the butler-in-training of his 1909 masterpiece Jakob von Gunten and the daydreaming bank employee of 1914's memorable "Helbling's Story," both of which were informed by Walser's own experiences, bouncing from job to job to support himself as he wrote.

Throughout his work, there is a unique and gleefully subversive celebration of qualities oft-maligned: sloth, sensitivity, even servility. "I know quite well that they consider me a fool," Walser writes of his coworkers in "Helbling's Story," "but I feel that if they have a right to suppose this then I cannot prevent them from doing so. Also I do actually look foolish, my face, conduct, walk, voice and bearing... I just stand there, at the desk, and can goggle into the room or out of the window for half an hour." After suffering from a mental breakdown in 1929, Walser lived out the remainder of his life in mental asylums, not writing but, in his words, "be[ing] mad." Within his work, the bold, unorthodox writer was a voice for insignificance but, in his own life, a victim of it.

Translated into English for the first time by Anne Posten, Walks with Walser is Carl Seelig's revealing and devoted account of his visits with the brilliant, eccentric friend for whom he served as a guardian and, eventually, literary executor.

—James Yeh, culture editor

From Walks with Walser

January 2, 1944

"Shall we pay our respects to Hölderlin today?" I ask. Robert replies: "Hölderlin? What a delightful idea! Hopefully we won't get as soaked as I did last Sunday afternoon, when a veritable deluge poured down on me. I returned to the asylum like the lousiest tramp." Today, too, despite the cold, he has brought neither overcoat nor umbrella. He looks rather raffish in his worn-out yellow-checked suit, gentian blue shirt, red-striped tie, and rolled-up trousers.

We strike out briskly on the lightly snow-covered street that leads to Goßau; a white weasel shoots past, burrows a bit in the snow and peeks curiously up at us, ears perked. We speak first of the bombing of German cities. I remark that I find it disgraceful to wage war in the interior of a country, against women, children, and sick people, regardless of what nation is doing it. The fact that Hitler's people bombed London does not entitle the Allies to employ the same inhumane tactics. Robert counters fiercely, saying that I judge the situation subjectively, and too sentimentally. Anyone who is threatened the way the Britons are must turn to the most ruthless realpolitik. Hitler's Huns deserve no better. Every nation, in merely deciding to exist, becomes brutally egotistical; in this even Christianity has to take a back seat. I: "Did the civilized peoples fight back when the Italians went at the Abyssinians with bomber squadrons?" —Robert: "Allow me the observation that the Abyssinians wouldn't have fallen into that position had they resisted the temptations of civilization and had remained loyal to tradition. It's a matter of loyalty to tradition, always and everywhere!"

"A famous person must not cause one to forget the unfamous."

With pleasure Robert shows me the beautiful old part of the village of Goßau. Most of the people are in church. It is very quiet: only a few sledding children and interned Poles in their yellow-green uniforms. We hike onward, now and then meeting a farmer's sleigh, the horse's harness jingling; the snow often comes to our knees. A farmhand shouldering a dung fork comes out of a stable. I call out: "Mornin'!" He doesn't answer, which prompts Robert to remark: "He's probably jealous that he's not out for a stroll like us!" In Arnegg we knock at the door of a tavern. But it remains deathly silent. Two hours later we are in Hauptwil, where Hölderlin was tutor to the Gonzenbach family around 1800. There is a baroque-style bourgeois house with a sundial containing the motto:

Work and wake, long as it's light,
For I don't tell the hours of the night.

Across from it lies the Zum Leuen inn. We get excellent coffee and sharp Tilsit cheese. Robert asks me: "Don't you think that the proprietress comes from southern Germany? I suspect it from her dialect. Perhaps Hölderlin brought Württembergians here with him." We stop in front of the ample patrician house of the Gonzenbach family, who settled here at the beginning of the seventeenth century and grew rich in the canvas business, admiring the little tower through which the street passes, and the Venetian balconies, the quiet courtyard, the peaceful facade of the stately home with its double staircase and weathervane. The estate is now occupied by a school of home economics run by a charitable society, but Robert finds that the house has kept its painting-like quality, its grand and dreamy feel. I: "Shall we look at the Hölderlin plaque they put up last year?" Robert waves off this idea: "No, no, let us not bother with such placard nonsense! How repugnant are things that make a show of reverence. And by the way, Hölderlin's was only one of many human fates to play out here. A famous person must not cause one to forget the unfamous."

We stand gawking for a good quarter of an hour, and as we turn on a side street toward the wooded hill that separates Hauptwil from Bischofszell, we ask an elderly man who is shoveling snow in front of his house whether there are any remaining descendants of the estate's former owners. He looks at us through his right eye—the left is blind—and answers: "Yes, there's one. But he's nearly deaf and has gone a bit soft," and after a bit he adds, "People don't deserve such a splendid house, now, when they're dropping bombs on everything." I say: "Perhaps they'll improve, gradually..." The man: "Them, improve?" I: "Perhaps they'll be forced to improve!" He: "Indeed. That could be. We can only hope!" and Robert nods.


It's now close to noon. During the hike I finally tell to Robert (it has been on the tip of my tongue for a while but I wanted to wait for a psychologically opportune moment, so as not to upset him) that his sister Lisa, who lies fatally ill in a Bern hospital, had expressed the wish that he and I might come and visit her one last time. He refuses immediately: "Eh, more of this to-do! I neither may nor wish to travel to Bern again, after being thrown out, so to speak. It's a point of honor. I have been staked down in Herisau and I have my daily duties here, which I do not wish to neglect. Only not to attract attention, not to disturb the order of the asylum! That I cannot allow myself... Anyway: sentimental requests leave me cold. Am I not also sick? Do I not also need my rest? In such cases it is best to remain all on one's own. Nor did I want it otherwise when I was admitted to the hospital. In such situations simple people like us must behave as quietly as possible. And now I'm supposed to 'trot off' with you to Bern, of all things? I would embarrass myself in front of you! We'd stand there like two idiots with poor Lisa, maybe we'd even make her cry. No, no, as fond as I am of her, we mustn't give in to such feminine fripperies! It is for us simply to take walks together, don't you think?" I: "But things are bad with Lisa, very bad. Perhaps you'll never see her again...!" Robert: "Well then by God, we'll never see each other again. Such is human fate. I too will have to die alone one day. I'm sorry about Lisa, of course. She was a wonderful sister to me. But her sense of family borders on the pathological, the immature." Later: "We Walsers are all so excessively fragile and hung up on family ties. Haven't you ever noticed: childless couples—and we Walsers are all childless—usually remain somewhat childlike themselves. A person (at least a healthy one) grows up when he cares about other people. Cares give his life depth. Childlessness in our family is a typical symptom of overrefinement, which is also expressed, among other ways, in maximum sensitivity." We eat at a butcher shop in Bischoffszell, after taking in the grandiose town hall. A miniature Christmas tree still stands in the dining room. There is meat soup, veal in mushroom cream sauce, peas, a kind of pommes frites, salad, and fruit compote. Accompanying it, the spirited red Nußbaumer wine of the region. We are served by the proprietor's very pregnant wife. Robert tells me that a sergeant from the unit that he served in, now a bookkeeper in Basel, had sent him cheroots for Christmas. How could he have known the address? They had heard nothing from each other for decades. But the little package had awakened many memories. And then on New Year's Day a farmer from Glarus in his ward had sung old folk songs, including a romantic courtly ballad from the middle ages. Robert had however withdrawn as much as possible from the actual communal Christmas festivities, and from the church service; it was too much activity for him.


Train ride from Bischofszell to Gossau, where we feast on sweets in a pastry shop. I tell Robert about reading Erich Eyck's three-volume work on Bismarck, which contains the remark, concerning the year 1852: Bismarck wanted to destroy the big cities with their revolutionary inhabitants wholesale. I tell him that I am increasingly of the opinion that Bismarck was a forerunner of Hitler's people: a cynical pettifogger and, when it suited him, a brutal power politician and warmonger. Admittedly, Bismarck was a hundred times more clever and cultivated than the Nazis. Robert agrees and says that Mussolini strikes him as an Italian version of Count Bismarck. National socialism really began with Frederick the Great.

Robert asks me if I would mind if we take a path through the meadows from Gossau to Herisau to cool our wine-fogged heads. I agree. We trudge through deep snow toward a wooded area on a hill; between sturdy blackish trees we stumble upon the stone that marks the border between the Cantons of Appenzell Outer Rhodes and St. Gallen. Robert brushes it tenderly and asks twice: "Was this not a nice day?" In Herisau we still have an hour and a half until my train leaves. We dither about whether to go to the station restaurant. I suggest we go up to the village instead. Robert agrees gladly. We decide on the pub Drei Könige in the old part of town. There is only one waitress, who sits writing a letter. It's cozy: warm and dim. Robert feels well taken care of, and his face looks refreshed and alive. He drinks three "large darks," one after another, and smokes the sergeant's cheroots. He talks for almost an hour of Bern: "Yes, I lived there for nearly eight years, until I was hauled off to Waldau, where I stayed three and a half years and even wrote a bit at first—not much, just enough to continue to serve my clientele: in the Bern years that included above all the Berliner Tageblatt, which paid princely sums, and the Prager Tageblatt, which paid poorly. But they took everything of mine, and that trust was worth more to me than the better honoraria I got from the Swiss newspapers, whose editors often grumbled about my pieces. In Biel I wrote mainly for various magazines. You see, every time I went to a new city, I forgot my past and adapted completely to the new milieu. In Bern I had to fight hard, for years. At my age it's no small thing to forge a new home for oneself. I came to Bern as poor as a church mouse, since the few thousand marcs I had put away in a bank went straight down the drain thanks to inflation. Yes, I lived quite alone, and changed lodgings often. Surely over a dozen times. Sometimes the places were truly shabby. My most frequent companions were waitresses and the daughter of a Jewish publisher, as well as the librarian Hans Bloesch and sometimes the writer A. F., who was completely shameless. I should have socked him. I made a tremendous effort to get back on my feet and to hunt down pretty bits of inspiration. But I also let a lot of alcohol flow down my gullet, which meant that here and there I soon found myself unwelcome." I: "Oh, did you go on some real benders?" Robert: "Certainly! The majority of what I took in as honoraria I washed down again in alcohol. What one won't do when lonely! Over the weekends or at holidays I would sometimes go to my sister's in Bellelay; but other than that I rarely saw my family."

"Dependence has something good-natured about it; independence inspires enmity."

I ask Robert whether it is true that in Berlin he burned the unpublished manuscripts of three novels. "That is quite possible. In those days I was hell-bent on writing novels. But I came to understand that I had set my heart on a form that was too expansive for my talents. So I withdrew into the snail shell of short stories and feuilletons... By the way: It is up to the author alone to decide which literary genre he should turn himself to. Perhaps he writes such novels only so that he can finally have enough air to breathe. It is quite irrelevant whether the rest of the world says yes or no. If one wins, one must also be able to lose... If I could start over, I would do my best to eliminate subjectivity, and write for the good of the people. I gave myself too much liberty. One must not try to sidestep the people. The terrible beauty of Green Henry stands before me as an example."

"In Herisau," Robert adds, "I stopped writing. What for? My world was shattered by the Nazis. The newspapers I wrote for are gone; their editors have been chased away or are dead. And so I've become practically a fossil."

Three remarks: "Human reason awakens only in poverty."

"Writers of genius foretell world history like prophets."

"Dependence has something good-natured about it; independence inspires enmity."

On the way to the train station I tell him that on New Year's Day I saw a French farce in Zürich. The infidelity motif of Parisian boulevard authors, now long pat, came off as rather clunky in German, however. Robert: "I'm sick to death of this motif. But perhaps the infidelity is there to keep the women awake. Otherwise they would get sleepy." During the conversation we pass a child pulling a sled, who looks at us with big eyes. Robert asks me: "Did you see his eyes? It's as if he guessed our mischievous mood!"

As we part he says: "Until next time—if we survive that long!" I: "Are you in doubt? We may both live to be ancient." Robert: "Hopefully... and we'll still have many beautiful times together. Beauty usually offers itself to those who seek it."

Carl Seelig (1894–1962) was a Swiss editor and writer and Robert Walser's friend, guardian, and literary executor. He was a selfless supporter of countless other writers, and was also Albert Einstein's first biographer.

Arranged with permission from New Directions Publishing Company. Walks with Walser will be published on April 25. Translated from the German by Anne Posten.


How a Gay Pro Wrestler Became Mexico's 'Liberace of Lucha Libre'

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Cassandro isn't just a luchador—he's an 'exotico,' a fighter who takes to the ring in drag. We spent a few days with the Liberace of Lucha Libre in his home town of El Paso, Texas, to hear about the fighters who inspired him, his battle with addiction and depression, and what it takes to go toe-to-toe with the best in the business.

Sean Spicer Is Spreading Nonsense Conspiracy Theories

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Depending on where you get your news, the name "Evelyn Farkas" might hold particular meaning for you. The former Obama administration official has found herself at the center of a new conservative conspiracy theory circulating around the internet—one that White House press secretary and walking bummer Sean Spicer helped propagate Friday at the daily press briefing.

Here's the deal with Farkas: She severed as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia and Ukraine from 2012 until October 2015. Fast-forward to March of this year, when the New York Times published an article about how Obama staffers had spread information about Russian interference in the 2016 election around the government—though they didn't leak anything—in order to make it easier to investigate. The day after the article dropped, Farkas went on MSNBC to discuss it. Here's some of what Farkas told to host Mika Brzezinski:

I was urging my former colleagues, and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill — it was more, actually, aimed at telling the Hill people: Get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people that left.

She wasn't one of the officials discussed in the Times piece—she couldn't have been, since she wasn't part of the White House. She was just saying she encouraged her old buddies to keep that information about Russian hacking intact.

Two days after that interview Trump claimed on Twitter that Obama had wiretapped him. Why does that matter? Well, after conservative media spread Farkas's comments in late March, outlets like FOX News began reporting on the weeks-old interview as proof that the Obama administration had been spying on Trump's campaign and transition team. Which brings us to Friday's press briefing, where Spicer regurgitated the Farkas narrative. He told reporters:

The substance—the unmasking and leaks—is what we should all be concerned about. It affects all Americans, our liberties, our freedom, our civil liberties. Let's talk about some of the substance. On March 2, the day before the president's tweet, comments from a senior administration official foreign policy expert Dr. Evelyn Farkas, together with previous reports that have been out, raised serious concerns on whether or not there's been an organized and widespread effort by the Obama administration to use and leak highly sensitive information for political purposes. She admitted this on television by saying, "I was urging my former colleagues, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, I was telling people on the Hill, 'Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can.' I had a fear that they were essentially watching the Trump staff and he was worried about the Trump administration." That's what's out there, and I know NBC News has just reported something very similar… Dr. Farkas's admission alone is devastating.

This is a rather disingenuous reading of Farkas's statement. It implies that Farkas was encouraging people to leak, rather than just preserve information, and ignores that Farkas stopped working for the administration in 2015. As she emphasized in an interview with the conservative Daily Caller on Thursday, "I had no intelligence whatsoever, I wasn't in government anymore and didn't have access to any."

Spicer isn't the only Trump administration official to mention Farkas. On Thursday, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that Farkas's statement was "incredible," saying if "that has anything to do with the issues in regard to surveillance of Trump transition team members is something that we need to figure out this morning and throughout the day."

It seems pretty figured out.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

Airbnb Pays Man $21K After He Gets Jacked By ‘Nice Family’

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Airbnb sure started out as a nice thought didn't it?

Help some strangers out while making a little cash on the side, you know, it was win-win, what could go wrong? Well, the problem is that Airbnb is used by humans and humans cannot be trusted.

Take what just happened to Matthew Lyn, a well-known photographer in Toronto, for example. Earlier in the month, Lyn rented out his apartment on Airbnb to a man, woman, and small child (I assume the child was the mastermind of the bullshit they pulled.) Lyn described the crew as what he thought to be a "nice family." When he returned to the apartment after their visit, it was in shambles.

"My door was already open, all the lights were on. It was a mess, all my dishes were used, there were towels on the floor, condoms lying about … It was terrible," Lyn told the CBC.

Looking past the mess the apparent threesome had left, they stole almost everything that wasn't nailed down in the apartment. Lyn's Ipad, Ipods, hard drives, Nintendo Wii, professional cameras, credit cards, and even his drone was taken. They even took his groceries and toiletries.

Most worryingly though, Lyn's SIN card was taken.

Lyn and Paris Hilton. Photo via: Matthew Lyn Photography/Facebook.

Lyn doesn't really know if it was a family that rented the apartment because you don't have to do a face to face to rent an Airbnb. While the person that Lyn was corresponding with said she was a woman after reviewing the security camera in his apartment, he only saw a man entering. Furthermore, whoever it was that did the damage may not have been Einstein.

"The police arrived the next day and fingerprinted everything that they felt had left a strong fingerprint on. They've dealt with this situation via Airbnb before," wrote Lyn in a Facebook post after the theft. "They left stupid things laying around my apartment like receipts, documents with their names on it."

"Whether that will lead to a legitimate discovery is unsure but I feel these criminals may not have been the most intelligent."

In total, the shit that was stolen from his place cost $21,000. Lyn said that Airbnb was going to reimburse him the full amount through their host guarantee program. However, Lyn makes his living as a photographer and has worked with the likes of Daniel Radcliffe, Paris Hilton, Carmen Electra and the like, and the hard drives Lyn lost had a plethora of work on them.

So, long story short, humanity sucks and don't trust strangers.

Photo composited from images via Wikipedia Commons and Flickr user Bruce Guenter.

Follow Mack on Twitter.

A Visual Guide to the Weirdest April Fool's Pranks Possible

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Remember the co-worker who always says Eric Andre isn't funny? Or the friend who comes over and secretly eats your food? Or the roommate who is constantly borrowing your clothes and never returning them? We're sure you do, and being that it's April Fools' Day, we've put together a handy guide to help you finally get that sweet, sweet revenge you've been dreaming of.

Today, nothing is too juvenile, and no motive is too small: Make a prank phone call, subscribe your stoner friend's email to the FBI mailing list or ring some doorbells and run away.

But be sure to hurry up. You've only got a few hours.

All photographs by Jessica Pettway and Samantha Friend.

Photos of Animals with Their Humans

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Over time and across projects, a certain subject has continually come into frame for Jill Freedman: the interactions between people and other animals. In her photos, some of which are presented in this Freedman File, she depicts both how we can show love and how we can imprison while asking us to remember that we're animals, too. Humans don't always follow the old adage "treat others as you want to be treated" when it comes to other species, and she feels we often cover up this fact. Freedman wonders, ultimately, how we can show such affection for our pets yet treat other animals so carelessly without thinking twice—how, say, we can see a dear friend in one we know but accept the consumption of another, with little knowledge of how it was killed.

Reflecting on why she always returns to these relationships, Freedman writes:

I love animals. When I was a child, I wanted a dog more than anything in the world, but my mother was "allergic." A girl and her dog—I still feel cheated. But I had dog friends, read thousands of animal books—Black Beauty and Call of the Wild my favorites—and took people-and-animal pictures right off the bat.

Animals delight me. They're beautiful. They are cute and soft, furry and funny, have great dignity and do silly things. They teach us so much. They teach us kindness and compassion. They are loyal. Most have better manners than we do. They are good for our health, giving sick and lonely people something to care for, to live for. And we are all animals, and therefore all related.

They are something we can take care of and be nice to. They accept us, no matter how mean or ugly we are. All they ask is to be loved. They see things we can't see. They inspire our sense of wonder.

We say we love our pets, and yet we don't spay and neuter them, so millions of dogs and cats are born just to die. The ASPCA states that approximately 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized in the United States each year. Then when it comes to our consumption of animals, the numbers killed are much greater. I often read publications from PETA, and in 2012, the organization noted that 108 billion animals are killed annually for food in the US. Hunting comes along in addition to that. PETA says almost 40 percent of hunters in the US slaughter and maim millions of animals on public land every year, and meanwhile PETA mentions yearly estimates of illegal animal killing by poachers also gauged in the millions.

Yet the pet market is a booming industry. Last year, the American Pet Products Association announced that Americans spent more than $60 billion on on their pets in 2015. Pets wear clothes, go to beauty parlors, have beauty contests and lots of toys. We buy them Valentine's gifts. Pets are an economic force in our consumer society.

This sentimental view of animals is as much a part of American folklore as happy endings, powder rooms, and real men who never cry. Sentimentality allows us to ignore our realities. We are against cruelty to animals, but we tolerate factory farms, horse races, dog tracks, bull fights, fox hunts, dog fights, bear baiting, fur.

I love making pictures of people with other animals, showing the different relationships. I've taken these pictures for years without even realizing it. I even had enough for a separate book about dogs, Jill's Dogs, my sixth book.

Why do we love and admire other animals so much? Is it because they bring out the best in us? Is it because we can literally act more human? Is it because we get along better with other species than we do with our own?

At 77, Freedman posts regularly to her Instagram account, and taking cues from Daniel Arnold and Cheryl Dunn, she now holds an annual April Fools' Day online print sale. Her works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, and George Eastman House, among others. Freedman is represented by Steven Kasher Gallery in New York, where she continues to live and photograph. Working within her archive, she intends to publish more photo books to augment the seven released to date, including Firehouse and Street Cops, which were featured in Dunn's 2013 documentary on street photographers, Everybody Street.

—Words with Cameron Cuchulainn


Dylann Roof Has Given Up

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After receiving the death penalty in federal court back in January, Dylann Roof—the self-identified white supremacist behind the Charleston church massacre—will plead guilty to state murder charges, the Washington Post reports.

Roof's decision to plead guilty means the state's case won't go to court, sparing survivors of the attack and victims' family members from having to provide a second round of grueling, emotional testimony. In exchange for the plea, state prosecutors handed Roof a life sentence instead of the death penalty, a move prosecutor Scarlett A. Wilson described as "an insurance policy to the federal conviction and sentence."

"A guilty plea in state court means that if something very, very, very unlikely were to happen at the federal level, the state sentence would take effect and he would serve life in prison," Wilson wrote in a letter to victims' families.

Roof, now 22 years old, was convicted of all 33 charges brought against him in his federal trial—including 12 hate crimes—but it's unclear whether or not the federal government will actually end up executing him. Federal executions are rare, due in part to the relatively few number of federal death penalty cases that have been tried compared to those at the state level. Since the national death penalty was reinstated in 1988, there have only been three federal executions over the course of nearly 30 years.

In 2015, Roof entered the Emanuel AME church in Charleston and opened fire on a Bible study group, killing nine black parishioners. He confessed to the attack, and refused counsel in his federal trial to prevent lawyers from claiming he was mentally unstable. He's repeatedly insisted he feels no remorse for what he did, writing in his jailhouse journal that he has "not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed."

"Sometimes sitting in my cell," Roof wrote in jail, "I think about how nice it would be to watch a movie or eat some good food or drive my car somewhere, but then I remember how I felt when I did these things, and how I knew I had to do something. And then I realize it was worth it."

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

We Asked a Vomit Fetishist How The Hell You Get Into That Kind of Thing

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Scouring the streets for vomit may seem like an odd hobby, but for some emetophiles – vomit fetishists – it's as much a part of their sexual repertoire as lube. Like any fetish, it has varying degrees of extremities, with some people reporting getting turned on just by seeing videos of people vomiting, while others on the more extreme end might self-induce their sick or ask a partner to for them.

There aren't any known stats on how many people share this kink (after all, it's not exactly something you come out with after a pint), and the only major study into it seems to be the one conducted by professor of psychiatry Robert Stoller in 1982.

So how do you navigate life when puke gets you off? I spoke to Ho, a 27-year-old from Hong Kong, to find out why he's more interested in your vomit than what's underneath your clothes.

VICE: When did you discover that vomit was appealing to you?
Ho: When I was 11. I couldn't stop replaying all the times I vomited when I was a kid – it was like an addiction. The first time I realised I was aroused was when I watched the vomit scene in the documentary Super Size Me in 2005. But my emetophilia didn't intensify until I successfully caught a man's vomit in 2011. It's strange, because I hated the disgusting smell and taste of vomit as a child.

What is it about vomit that turns you on?
The appearance. My favourite type is natural vomit caused by too much alcohol or illness. Vomit from food poisoning is great, but I won't beg for it. If it's forced or unnatural, I would be interested in it but I wouldn't be that into it.

Can you get aroused by your own or does it have to be someone else's?
I can be turned on by my own, but I really hate the feeling of vomiting. I'm mainly turned on by men's vomit. I'm more into vomit from straight guys or men who are dads, but it's very hard to find a straight man or a father to vomit for me. It's much easier to find a gay guy that isn't a dad to vomit for me. If I see someone vomiting in public it doesn't have to be someone I fancy – I would get turned on as long as the person vomiting is a guy.

Do you worry about revealing your sexual kink to partners?
Although my emetophilia does make me feel dirty and a creep, I don't worry about telling partners. Only if I think they're the right person would I choose to reveal it. I'm bisexual and my boyfriend as well as my ex-girlfriend knew about my emetophilia. They accepted it, and luckily it had no significant impact on my relationships.

It's not a dealbreaker, though – I've dated people who aren't into it and some haven't even known about it. Vomit is the most effective catalyst to turn me on, but it's not everything. I've already opened up to my close friends. All of them accept my emetophilia. Some of them have even tried to provide me with their vomit.

Is vomit an active part of your sex life or a fantasy?
I haven't actually had full sex with my ex-girlfriend or my boyfriend – we just masturbate with each other. I have asked my boyfriend to vomit, but it isn't something I force him to do. He has done it sometimes and then I masturbate with him. I've encouraged my boyfriend to drink some red wine as he once threw up after drinking, but unfortunately I wasn't with him when it happened. But I don't control or dominate partners into vomiting, as I prefer it when it just happens.

What's the most extreme thing you've done to find vomit?
I've licked the vomit of a handsome man from the edge of a loo. I've also gone to my town centre at Christmas Eve to find any men's vomit. But I found it hard to identify if a batch of vomit in the street belonged to a man or woman, so that ruined it a bit. Another Christmas Eve, I intentionally caught a batch of vomit in the street. I saw a man vomiting and then I used my hands to pick up all his vomit.

I've also brought takeaway vomit back home. I found a man vomiting in a toilet without flushing at a station near my home, and I used a bag to scoop up the vomit and take it away. From then on I've tried to catch and take away more and more men's vomit. I have problems storing it properly as I mainly put it in my rubbish bin and under my bed. But it rotted very fast, especially during summer. Now I've got wiser – I've started to store takeaway vomit in a freezer so that it can be preserved for longer.

The first time I took away my own vomit, I picked it all up into a plastic bag and then packed it into a large paper box. I then put the box under my bed and it acted as a large container.

If you can't find real-life vomit what do you substitute it with?
I've tried to DIY vomit, but I'm not really satisfied with it. I still haven't found a suitable substitute.

Have you found any like-minded people who share the same kink?
Yes, but all of them are on the internet. I want to find someone in real-life that shares the same obsession with me.

Best of luck to you, Ho.

@layla_haidrani


We Asked People for Their Most Embarrassing Masturbation Stories

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When you break down masturbation to its basic elements—privacy, a little bit of inspiration, some elbow grease, and hopefully a modest cleanup routine—there's obviously nothing to be embarrassed about. But for young people who haven't quite figured this out, each attempt has the potential to cause deep shame and/or personal injury.

As something of a public service, VICE asked several self-identified self-pleasurers to share their most embarrassing masturbation stories. Because whether or not you consider yourself skilled in the area of dialing the rotary phone, shakin' the bacon, or whatever euphemism you prefer, you probably didn't start out as a masturbatory pro.

Johnny, 24

I was driving from Calgary to Edmonton, and I'd done a bunch of partying the night before so I was super hungover. I had the window down, the music on blast, and I was doing everything and anything to keep myself awake but I was still, like, pass-out-flip-my-car tired.

I thought, what can I do to keep myself awake? And then I had an idea. I thought, well I'll just rub one out and that will keep me awake, easy peasy. I planned to do it nice and slow so it would take up as much time as possible. And so I started, and it was great because I was pretty good at keeping it hidden from other drivers for a long time. But then at one point I kind of lost track of things—I was giving 'er hard—and this semi drove up beside me, too close, and so I sped up to try and get by him so that he wouldn't see.

Photo via flickr user Rennett Stowe

He sped up too, keeping pace, and so he definitely did see, because next thing I knew he was giving me the big ol' honk honk. After that I put [my penis] away and just had to laugh. But I hadn't finished yet, and so once the semi was gone I took it back out and tried to keep going. But I just couldn't finish. And that was the worst part for me: I gave myself blue balls. Though I did make it to Edmonton alive, so that's good [laughs].

Kendra, 28

So my friend and I, when we were maybe 13 or 14, used to have these elaborate masturbation parties. Not with a bunch of people or anything; it would just be us and we'd tell each other these elaborate, lavish fantasies and then just, you know, do our own thing. We were both really into theatre so one of our favourite fantasies was one where the Phantom of the Opera would swoop down from the battlements and proposition us—in the kindest way possible!—for sex. And then of course he'd rip off his mask to reveal himself as whichever boy we'd been crushing on at the time.

Anyway, this one time we were having one of our "parties" after watching Pride and Prejudice, and we were completely overcome with Mr. Darcy. How could you not be? And so, in my friend's room, we started to touch ourselves. I should also say that both her parents were super religious. To the max. Her mom came home from work early that day and suddenly she was right outside the door, about to come in. We sprung up off the bed just as she came in, but it was super obvious what we'd been doing because we were both super sweaty. We had our clothes on, thank god, but still. We just knew that she knew, but of course it wasn't something anyone was willing to express because her family was so sex-negative.

That incident didn't stop us from continuing our parties. I mean, I've been masturbating since the crib. I used to hump furniture and everything. It's just something I've always needed.

Dom, 25

When I was 10 or 11, my older brother was having a sleepover with a bunch of his buddies. And I guess around that age people start talking about sexy things, sex jokes and stuff, and so I was hovering at the corners of the room, trying to hang out, when I overheard them talking about masturbating. One of them made a joke and was like, "oh are you gonna masturbate later tonight?" and he made the hand gesture that you make for masturbation, which is that closed fist you shake in front of your crotch. And I didn't know how to masturbate, so I saw that gesture and was like, oh my god, that's how you do it.

That night I went to bed—and I didn't have a boner because I was 10 years old and, you know, we don't get many boners at that age—and I got into bed, made a fist and started hitting my flaccid penis with my closed hand. I was like, oh my god that really hurts! So I gave up masturbating for about two years. I thought, well that's not for me.

Photo via flickr user Marc Roberts

Margaret, 24

It was a rainy Sunday and I was making chilli. I like my chilli nice and hot— muy picante as they say—and so I chopped up all the veggies and things, including many jalapeño peppers, and threw them in a pot. I washed my hands well—at least I thought I did—and sat down to watch a little Project Runway while my chilli was boiling away.

During a lull in the show, I thought, well I'm a bit bored and sleepy here in my sweatpants, so why don't I just rub one out? A couple minutes in, I was gearing up, about to roll into O town, and I started to notice that my vagina was burning a bit. I was like, hmm, I wonder what that's all about? And so I ignored it for a while, but then it started to hurt A LOT, like it was lit on fire. I was suddenly very afraid. But then I realized there was likely some jalapeño juice on my fingers, and so naturally I took to google for a remedy. I typed in something like "jalapeño juice on skin burning how stop?"

I didn't want to put in "jalapeño juice in vagina" because it would corrupt my search history. But anyway, Wikihow said to pour cold milk on the "affected area," and so I filled a huge measuring cup with skim milk, sat myself on the toilet, leaned back and doused myself. It was an odd experience, but it did ease my suffering. And so after that I showered and had a nice bowl of chilli. Which was delicious.

Anouk, 30

I used to babysit for this really rich family that lived in a mansion where the bathroom had this really amazing shag rug. And so I used to go into the bathroom, lay down on the rug, and masturbate after the kids were asleep. I would leave the door ajar so that if the kids called for help I could hear them. But one time, the dog—whose name was Buddy, ugh—came into the room while I was masturbating. I friggen hated that dog—it was a Bichon Frise, ugliest thing ever. Anyway, maybe Buddy got excited or something when he saw me masturbating on the rug, because he started humping my leg. It was awful. Put me totally out of the mood. And from that day on, every time the dog came to greet me at their house, he'd hump my leg. Didn't matter what I was doing—the dishes, cleaning, whatever—he'd go for me. It was super embarrassing because I felt like the parents knew, you know? Like, they knew I'd used their house as a masturbation station because I'd suddenly become a sex symbol to their dog.

American Pie Sock

Still from American Pie.

Theo, 25

So the idea of jerking off into a sock was really popular when I was growing up. Geometrically, the idea made sense, but I guess I'd never considered what I would do with the sock afterward. I was probably about 14, in my bedroom doing my thing, and I decided to try the sock method out. It made the initial clean up a revelation since there was really nothing to be done. But then I had this sock. I couldn't put it in the laundry because my mom did my laundry and she would find it and know that I was a young man doing young man things. Same went for the garbage, because I guess at the time I imagined my mom to be some kind of suspicious raccoon that combed through all the detritus in the house.

Our house backed onto a forest so I decided the sock best belonged there. I walked to the edge of the yard and hurled it into the woods. But you see, it was winter and all of the trees were bare. The sock wrapped itself around the branch of a particularly tall birch. I'm talking like 30 feet up. It stayed up there, bright white, and waved like a shameful flag for months until summer storms came and blew it off. My mom totally noticed, too. She kept asking everyone in the house, who knows what's going on with that sock? My strategy was deny, deny, deny.

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Why Men Will Do Anything to Try to Make Trans People Like Me Disappear

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here was a time when men in dresses and women in suits were classified as criminals in this country because of their clothing. Back in those days, I've been told, there wasn't any word "transgender." But there were "crossdressers," who toyed with the dressings of their sex, and there were "transsexuals," who hid and lived in the shadow of the nation, invisible to the public. In the 21st century, we have the Transgender Day of Visibility, a modern effort to illuminate one of America's most oppressed minority populations.

Today, cities and townships across the United States have found the issue of trans rights suddenly hoisted into public discourse. The trans movement made unprecedented legal achievements under the Obama Administration. To conservative and ignorant people in states like Texas, the equal rights of transgender Americans have been resisted with retaliatory legislation. The federal guidance that the Obama administration issued to protect trans Americans has been viewed as intrusive and unlawful. Of course, one of the first things that the Department of Justice did under the authority of Donald Trump was to revoke that guidance.

Transgender Americans and our allies want to amplify stories of transgender people so that families, school systems, and local governments from rural America to our country's greatest cities begin to perceive us as human. Unfortunately, many people in this country casually disregard the humanity of transgender people. There are plenty of examples of this, but you only have to look at the way that men continue to literally destroy transgender women or the astronomical suicide rate among trans people. These are ugly and tragic examples—but there are far more deceptively civil ways that our humanity is denied.

Read the full article on Broadly.

I Travelled to the Arctic to Plunge a Probe Into the Melting Permafrost

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At Chandalar Shelf in Alaska, a site about 200 kilometres (124 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, I kneeled on the damp, muddy ground, and plunged in a small serrated shovel. It easily penetrated the loamy top layer before I heard it thunk and scrape against the cold, frozen ground beneath—permafrost.

This permanently frozen ground, together with the layers of soil above it, stores vast amounts of carbon from organic material that's accumulated over millennia. Organic material decomposes slowly in the Arctic's cold, wet conditions. If it thaws, microbes in the soil break it down, emitting methane and carbon dioxide, and quickly releasing carbon that was stashed there over thousands of years.

"The permafrost is definitely getting warmer," said Alexander Kholodov from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, as he looked at the temperature readout from a probe buried in the ground. He was one of the lead researchers who I accompanied on this expedition.

While Kholodov recorded properties of the soil, I took soil samples and measured the depth of the permafrost. Nearby, Mike Loranty from Colgate University sat hunched over a small plot of earth. He was clipping off shrubs and grasses, sorting them into paper bags to identify what kinds of vegetation were growing and to estimate their relative abundance. We were compiling an inventory of all the components in the ecosystem to understand how the plants and the soil affect the thermal properties of the underlying permafrost.

Thawing permafrost is already wreaking havoc with Alaskan roads and buildings, but the potential for massive amounts of carbon to be released and contribute to a warming climate is a global concern.

Researchers lay out a vegetation plot in the spruce forests around Fairbanks, Alaska. Image: Sarah Hewitt

The Alaskan landscape isn't uniform, so the way it's thawing isn't either. Since vegetation influences the temperature and rate of thaw, Loranty, Kholodov, and the rest of their team are trying to sort out how the variety of trees, shrubs, grasses, lichens, and mosses impact permafrost temperature in ecosystems across Alaska. It's part of a five-year project that spans from Alaska to Siberia and the data will help to predict how climate change will differentially influence the Arctic.

I always wondered how scientists study permafrost in an area as large and diverse as the north, so I joined this team of researchers for three weeks. We travelled over 800 kilometres (roughly 500 miles) from Fairbanks, up the Dalton Highway through mountain passes, to the open tundra at the end of the road at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean.

Read the full article on Motherboard.

The Highs and Inevitable Disasters of Sleeping with Your Married Boss

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Welcome back to Restaurant Confessionals , where we talk to the unheard voices of the restaurant industry from both the front-of-house (FOH) and back-of-house (BOH) about what really goes on behind the scenes at your favourite establishments. This time, we hear from a new bartender working at a casino who fell for his boss.

My boss was fire—she was absolutely beautiful.

She was the cocktail manager and I was the lowly, new-hire bartender. It was one of my first bartending jobs at a new restaurant inside of a casino in LA. It was the type of spot where cholos went to pre-game before an oldies concert or a Pacquiao fight, and all I poured was crappy beer and vodka-tonics.

All of the women employees wore tight referee shirts and skimpy black skirts, that was it—including the boss. I had my eye on her since the first day I started. One day, we sat close to each other during lunch and it slowly progressed into us having dinner after our shifts were over, at the mariscos restaurant across the street. One night, we ended up in the backseat of my car in that same restaurant's parking lot. But as amazing and natural as everything felt as it was happening, I had no idea that fucking your boss ultimately meant kissing your job goodbye.

I took her to eat fondue at The Melting Pot, 'hood-romance style.

I knew that it was on with her when she started to schedule my lunch breaks at the exact same time as hers. If you work in the drink or food industry, you know that the concepts of breaks are more like a luxurious suggestion rather than a necessity. It was crazy because I found out that she was married and her husband was a sheriff, a jiu jitsu fighter, and an old cholo veteran. Nonetheless, we hooked up in my car in the same parking lot of the mariscos restaurant for two straight months. She was always paranoid because her husband was well-known in the neighborhood, and according to her, would tell the rest of the sheriffs to keep an eye on her while they did their patrolling.

It progressed into us making it into a regular thing. We did things totally incognito, 007-style. We met in dark corners and industrial alleys around the casino, would smash, then we would go back to our cars and show up on the next day and work like nothing ever happened. However, while all of this happening, I noticed that I started to get special treatment from her and the rest of the casino's staff. I would get the five best shifts available in the week, and the rest of my co-workers were exceptionally nice to me. No one would get pissed whenever I had to void drink orders that I got wrong. I would come in late on some days and no one cared. I even got free chicken fingers from the kitchen whenever I wanted. The list went on and on, it was an indirect type of special treatment.

While all of this was happening, I started to get crazy in my own head. Call it being whipped or call it whatever you want. After this, the relationship started to end progressively. She started to want to go out on dates and we did try that once. I took her to eat fondue at The Melting Pot, 'hood-romance style, and as much as we tried to enjoy each other's company, she was extremely paranoid and always looked over her shoulder during the dinner. At that point, I knew it was only a matter of time until her dude caught on. I knew I had to end it but me being a young dude, I knew that I had to hang out with her one final time, so I invited her one last time to the crib the next day to hook up.

Read the rest of the story on MUNCHIES.

We Asked Doctors About Patients' Dumbest Health Beliefs

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Even reasonably well informed patients walk into doctor's offices every day with assumptions that are 100 percent false. We asked three health care providers on the front lines to share the most common misconceptions that drive them nuts—and to shed light on the truth.

Green mucus means you need antibiotics. From amoxicillin to Z-packs, antibiotics rank as one of medicine's greatest discoveries—but as the name implies, they only work against illnesses caused by bacteria. Meanwhile, viruses deserve the credit for colds, flu, and most sinus infections, says Myers R. Hurt III, a family doctor at Diamond Physicians in Frisco, Texas.

Contrary to the belief of many patients and even some doctors, Hurt says, the color of the stuff oozing from your nostrils and clogging up your coughs has more to do with where you are in the course of your illness than what's causing it.

Continue reading on Tonic.

Man Uses Lasers to Carve Bust of Vin Diesel Out of Ham and Cheese

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Undoubtedly, you've been struggling with this pressing question for a long time: What in the hell would a laser-cut ham and cheese sandwich modeled in the form of Vin Diesel look like?

We're pleased to say we now have an answer.

Screengrab via YouTube user William Osman

William Osman, a sort of Bill Nye for the Millennial age, has a YouTube channel in which he does "projects that revolve around film tech and robotics." Another way of putting it is that Osman makes himself "look like a moron on the internet." The mechanical and electrical engineer from Ventura, California recently responded to the following viewer request: "Please sculpt a bust of Vin Diesel using laser cut cross sections of laser sliced ham." Rather than dismiss the request out of hand, Osman set to work, using his trusty laser cutter and two large, cheap blocks of ham and cheese. The result is a video that has received more than 100,000 views on YouTube.

MUNCHIES just had to learn more, so we reached out to Osman to find out how this particular project came about, and what exactly became of the world's first ham-and-cheese Vin Diesel sandwich.

Read more on MUNCHIES.

Ontario School Board Warns of $1,000 "Reward" for Recordings of Muslim Students Praying

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An Ontario school board is warning staff to be "extra vigilant" about a video circulating online that offers a $1,000 reward for recordings of Muslim students "spewing hate speech during Friday prayers."

The video is the latest development in the controversy surrounding the accommodation of Friday prayers, which has been around in some form for nearly 20 years at the Peel District School Board, located near Toronto.

A group of parents has been campaigning hard for the last two months to convince the board to end the accommodation of the congregational prayers, which last 15 to 20 minutes at midday, culminating in a heated meeting last week, that devolved into chaos and saw a Quran torn to shreds.

Police are now looking into a video posted on March 29 by former fringe Mississauga mayoral candidate Kevin Johnston that calls on viewers to send in videos of Muslim students praying within 24 hours of filming them. Johnston, who runs a right wing blog called Freedom Report, says the person submitting the video must identify students by name and reveal the school they go to.

"I am offering $1,000 of my own money, cash reward, for any of you out there that can sneak a camera into one of these mosque-eterias or mosque-stages or mosque-gymnasiums and get me the footage."

They'd also have to be willing to turn ownership of the footage over to Johnston, who falsely claims that sermons are delivered in Arabic and that supervisors are paid — in fact, they are conducted in English, except for verses read directly from the Quran and are supervised by volunteer staff members.

Johnston also said he had Arabic translators on hand who would help him determine if the sermons contain "anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and anti-infidel" hate speech.

Read the full story on VICE News.


This Computer Program Detects Cancer Earlier Than Ever—Without Surgery

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Cancer is often found when someone starts to feel symptoms—pain, an abnormal growth, or maybe just fatigue. Now scientists have developed a computer program that could identify and locate cancer even before symptoms arise, opening the door for earlier screening and better treatment.

The program, called CancerLocator, detects tumor DNA in patient blood samples, and precisely pinpoints where the tumor is located in the body. In a small pilot study, it successfully diagnosed liver, lung, and breast cancer in 80 percent of cases, giving researchers hope that the program could eventually be used as part of regular health checks, eliminating the need for invasive biopsies.

Developed by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California, CancerLocator works by analyzing DNA that escapes into the bloodstream when cells die. Each fragment of DNA has a unique pattern of chemical add-ons, called methyl groups, that mark which genes were turned on or off. These methyl markers can indicate whether a gene was interrupted in a cancerous cell. And because different cells and tissues have different genes that are activated in the body, the methylation patterns can also act as a blueprint for where the DNA comes from.

"It's very much like a message in a bottle," says Jasmine Zhou, a professor of pathology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-lead author of the study. "This cell-free DNA floating in the blood can tell us the secrets of each cell or organ that it's from."

So far, only one FDA-approved test is available that uses this type of free-floating tumor DNA, and it relies on fecal samples, not blood. Other non-invasive screening methods test for intact tumor cells that are loose in the bloodstream. But finding intact tumor cells in blood often only gives an indication of cancer prognosis and is like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Read the full story on Motherboard.

The Last Dark Souls Adventure Ends the Series With a Whimper

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The opening area to The Ringed City, the latest downloadable content for Dark Souls 3 and possibly the final expansion of the Dark Souls universe, is a brutal slog, even by Souls standards. Angelic creatures hover, capable of firing laser-like barrages every few seconds. It means instant death. If you spend 10 minutes trying to meticulously take one down with arrows, they wither away—only to reappear seconds later. Your best option is to run like hell, pray that enough arrows manage to sail past your face, and hide. It feels a lot like trying to survive 2017.

I've been dreading the release of The Ringed City for a little while now. Though I'm almost always down for more Souls, it's bittersweet knowing that The Ringed Citymight signal a curtain call for a series that's transformed my gaming worldview. Even if it's time to say goodbye, a notion I'd settled on after the uninspiring Ashes of Ariandel, I prefer staving off the inevitable. It's why I laughed when the unlocking mechanism Bandai Namco sent me to play The Ringed City early didn't work. It meant I could put off the final ascent for a few days.

But the ascent means nothing if the journey isn't worth it, and like Ashes of Ariandel, The Ringed City continues to suggest FromSoftware is right to move on from Dark Souls. I'm usually beaming with pride when I've scaled the latest mountain FromSoftware has put in front of me, but by the end of The Ringed City, I was left empty, bored, and ready for change.

Images courtesy of FromSoftware

Playing a Souls game is asking to be kicked in the gut, but as far as gut punches go, they feel pretty fair. But little felt fair about the way The Ringed City introduced itself, as I ran in circles, hoping to avoid the angels' glare. Spawn, run, die. Repeat. Invincible enemies aren't the Souls way; the game is usually happy to let you cowardly pelt even the toughest enemies with arrows. There's nothing inherently wrong with subverting expectations, but in this case, it mostly induced frustration. Though you eventually discover a way to dispatch the angels, it came after I spent too much time wondering why I wasn't playing Breath of the Wild instead.

The Ringed City punctuates this intro with a two-on-one boss fight, complete with a last-minute transformation. After banging my head against the boss for a few hours, I succumbed to summoning a friend for jolly cooperation, and we took them down together. I'm normally against summoning, except in the most extreme of circumstances, but it was deeply satisfying to split our efforts, before coming together for the main event. It made me retroactively wonder if my desire to beat everything on my own in a Souls game had done more harm than good. Given how much time you spend alone, having a buddy during the farewell tour felt appropriate.

Read the full article on Waypoint.

Canadians Spotted Over 1,000 UFOs Last Year

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Did you guys know that there is a group that tracks yearly UFO statistics in Canada?

Because there is and they're goddamn glorious.

The main crew tracking the data is the Winnipeg-based Ufology Research Centre who just released their 2016 findings of UFO sightings in the great white north. The data—which is totally true because, you know, it's data—is produced by the centre working in cooperation with investigators and researchers all across the country. The group releases the information yearly "in an attempt to promote the dissemination of information across the field of ufology. "

So, with that in mind, let's go through these numbers, why don't we?

To start, since 1989 the crew has reported 18,038 Canadian UFO sightings or encounters. In total, there were 1,131 UFO reports officially filed in Canada—"the fifth year in a row above 1,000 cases," excitedly reads the study. The only year that had more sightings was 2015.

"This data clearly contradicts comments by those who would assert that UFOs are a 'passing fad' or that UFO sightings are decreasing in number," reads the study.

Fuck yeah, the truth is out there, fam.

Like all good studies, this one is chock full of weird little statistics and breaks down the sightings by province. Turns out, Quebecers see the most little grey men, followed by Ontario, BC, and Alberta and that summer is the best time to see the extraterrestrials. Montreal had the highest amount of any sightings in a major city with 73—Vancouver took a close second with 70.

Sadly, though, most of these sightings had "insufficient evidence" and "the percentage of UFO cases considered unexplained in 2016 has dropped to four percent, the lowest in 28 years of study," which is a total bummer. The crew writes this off as the "result of more careful scrutiny of raw report information available."

The best part comes at the tail end of the study where they keep the "unusual" reports. In this segment, you can find the short tale of a man who "reported that an alien entity was responsible for stealing his sunglasses, belt and silver possessions."

Further into the study, you can read about a person in Cornwall, PEI who had a close encounter with "a thin, six-foot-tall, long-fingered, white alien in a black suit" that appeared in his bedroom. The person then had a chat with the alien before it took its leave by walking through a wall. Meanwhile in Quebec, on the same night, a person was transported in a flash of white light to a bathtub. Here he encountered "three green, big-eyed humanoid creatures who communicated with him telepathically."

Another is straight-up elegant in its simplicity:

"A report was received which read simply, 'They contacted me!'"

The study ends with a man in northern Quebec who spotted himself a sasquatch—which I don't believe counts as an alien but, frankly, who cares, because sasquatches are awesome. Not all encounters were as wonderful as these, some are kinda, well, boring.

In total, close encounters were less than one percent, the majority of sightings (over 50 percent) were just simple lights in the sky. The study also breaks down the sightings that weren't simple lights and, oddly enough, the "flying saucer" classification only was reported five percent of times, tying it with whatever "fireball" is.

So, kiddos, keep your eyes on the sky and the curiosity in your heart strong because if you're lucky, very lucky, maybe one day you'll end up on this list.

At the very least you might see a sasquatch, which apparently counts.

Lead image via  Flickr user maxime raynal

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Nigerian Judge Rules that Coca-Cola Drinks Are ‘Poisonous'

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The fact that kids are drinking soda by the bathtub in the UK and North America has obviously raised health concerns.

Everyone knows these drinks are bad for you, but we can all agree that fizzy drinks are not poison, insofar as they will not (immediately) kill you and are not used to murder people. But for judge Adedayo Oyebanji, who recently made a ruling on whether Coca-Cola products were fit for human consumption, the sweet stuff produced in one Nigerian factory was downright "poisonous."

According to local reports, the gavel fell in a Lagos courtroom earlier this month after businessman Dr. Emmanuel Fijabi Adebo filed a lawsuit against the regulatory National Agency For Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC).

The lawsuit claimed that large quantities of Coca-Cola, Fanta Orange, Sprite, Fanta Lemon, Fanta Pineapple, and soda water that Adebo purchased to export and sell were flagged by European authorities because some had excessive levels of known carcinogens sunset yellow (a food dye) and benzoic acid, which can be "poisonous" when mixed with vitamin C. As a result, Adebo said, he was unable to sell the Sprite and Fanta he bought from NBC.

Read more on MUNCHIES.

Creepy Silicone Body Parts Make Perfect Tattoo Canvases

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It's not unusual for a Melbourne writer to have a few tattoos, but Fareed Kaviani's interest in getting inked extends further than most. He's a regular contributor to tattoo culture magazine Things & Ink, and the founder of Thing Gallery—which exhibits ornate tattoo art on highly realistic silicone heads and hands. Kaviani makes the creepily realistic body parts himself, inviting some of the world's most renowned needle-wielding artists to decorate them.

"It's interesting to look at tattoos that've been created with no client consultation whatsoever, and on a foreign yet lifelike medium," he explains to Creators. "For those who believe tattoos are mere representations of representations, well, here's another layer of representation for you—a hyperreal, lifeless simulacrum of tattoo."

Read more on Creators

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