On an all-new episode of VICELAND's MOST EXPENSIVEST, 2 Chainz jets to Las Vegas to meet up with Robin Leach, the guy who brought the high life to the masses with his show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The two share a lavish dinner of caviar, blinis, and champagne while Robin tells 2 Chainz about the most extravagant house he ever set foot in.
MOST EXPENSIVEST airs at 10:30 PM on VICELAND. Find out how to tune in here.
Last night's episode of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia looked at kratom, a drug known in the US mostly as a green powder you can find in gas stations or head shops. It has a variety of uses, but according to toxicology and emergency medicine doctor Kavita Babu—who’s studied kratom for 12 years—the drug developed a higher profile in the mid 2000s as a DIY method for weaning people off opioids. You still need willpower, users say, but kratom can cut down on opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms, allowing them to get back to their lives with few, if any, side effects.
But as kratom’s usage and visibility have expanded in recent years—to the point that a sub shop in Arizona installed a kratom vending machine last year—the government has taken notice. On November 14, the FDA issued a public health advisory warning that kratom acts like opioids, carrying similar risks of abuse and even death. The agency stated that it would be working to block imports of the substance to head off a possible escalation of America’s opioid epidemic, or the development of a parallel health crisis.
So who’s right about kratom? Could it actually have a place in opioid addiction treatments?
Kratom is a plant from the same family as the coffee shrub that grows in Southeast Asia, where locals have eaten it raw, brewed it as tea, or turned it into liquids or powders for centuries. The drug's effects set in quickly and last for several hours, depending on the dose taken. In low doses, say two to three grams of powder in water, it acts like a stimulant, providing a mild buzz users liken to caffeine; in higher doses, it can relieve pain, relax muscles, reduce inflammation, and lead to mood improvements. It can be used for anything from a mild pick-me-up to serious self-administered chronic pain, depression, anxiety, or addiction management.
Experts estimate that 4 to 5 million Americans used kratom as of 2016; a survey of thousands of users conducted last fall by pharmacologist and kratom researcher Oliver Grundmann suggests two-thirds of respondents used it to treat chronic pain or emotional or mental stress. Only a little more than a third—mostly younger people with self-insurance, Medicare, or no insurance—said they used it for opioid addiction issues. Many respondents also told Grundmann that they used kratom for pain management to avoid opioids, using just three to five grams at a time—far below the ten to 15 grams suggested to really get high.
But the Botanical Education Alliance (BEA), which works to protect herbal substances from over-regulation, thinks people using kratom to treat addiction are actually overrepresented in the media. The BEA argues that most users use it “similar to St. John’s wart for a patient with depression, or valerian root for a patient with anxiety.”
Furthemore, scientists have identified two key ingredients in kratom—mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine—that interact with opioid receptors in cell and animal studies. So you can consider them opioids, but they seem to trigger the positive effects of opioids in the brain, triggering less negative side effects than other opioids as well. It takes longer to build up a tolerance to kratom than to traditional opioids, and when one does develop a dependency, the withdrawal symptoms are reportedly far milder than those associated with mainstream opioids.
These facts certainly suggest kratom could be an innovative, if not ideal, painkiller; some researchers also claim it would be a good replacement for methadone or buprenorphine, opioids that stay in the body longer than heroin or most prescription drugs and don’t lead to as strong of a high. Despite being used to blunt cravings and control withdrawal, those substances still have side effects, and can be abused; kratom might be kinder and safer.
But there’s still a lot we don’t know about kratom, and how it might affect humans. “At some point,” Grundmann states, “we need to conduct studies that are done on standardized extracts containing standardized amounts of mitragynine so we can compare the effect of doses and how patients react over time.”
“I'm very concerned with the increased use of opioids resulting in overdose and death,” said emergency medicine clinician Megan Rech, who's also studied kratom. “I think kratom offers an exciting alternative to opioids,” she continues, before qualifying that she “wouldn't recommend routine use until further studies evaluate safety and efficiency.” And the DEA and FDA have been eyeing kratom cautiously over the past five years, too. In 2012 and 2014, the latter organization allowed customs agents to seize packages of kratom coming in to the country; late last year, the DEA moved to make mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine Schedule I drugs, placing them under the same criminal restrictions as heroin, LSD, or weed.
But these efforts weren’t very effective: The American Kratom Association claims that hundreds of millions of doses still make it into the country every year, and a massive public backlash led the DEA to temporarily abandon its push to schedule kratom. So kratom users and activists aren't very worried about the recent FDA advisory, but the government still thinks kratom is dangerous and may make more pushes to ban it. The drug's already illegal in Illinois and Louisiana, and its active ingredients are illegal in Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin, as well as other localities. Other states have considered similar bans, and some laws have come based on the DEA and FDA’s anti-kratom actions.
The agencies also claim there was a tenfold increase in poison control center calls related to kratom between 2010 and 2015, with records of 36 worldwide deaths associated with the substance. They note that it's banned in 16 other nations, further claiming it's been linked to opioid-like symptoms as well as seizures and psychotic episodes. But activists and neutral scientists have ripped these claims to shreds: For one, the tenfold increase shrinks in comparison to the number of kratom users in America, and in all but one of the reported deaths, other substances may have been at play, including opioids.
“After more than a decade of increasing kratom use in the US, the FDA is pointing to fewer than 40 deaths coincident with kratom use—none of which were definitively caused by kratom—and calling the plant ‘deadly,’” said psychologist and kratom researcher Marc Swogger. “This is hyperbole, and it's confusing and irresponsible.”
Some have speculated the agencies’ rush to ban kratom means they're interested in protecting opioid revenues, but it’s more likely they’re spooked by any risk that kratom use could go in the same direction as prescription opioids. “I can understand, from a regulatory and public health standpoint,” said Grundmann, “that they don’t want another drug out there that acts on opioid receptors… especially one in which we simply don’t know enough to make a less qualified statement about its potential for adverse effects."
And that fear’s pretty evident in the recent FDA advisory. “We’ve learned a tragic lesson from the opioid crisis,” wrote Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. “We must pay early attention to the potential for new products to cause addiction, and we must take strong, decisive measures to intervene.” There is one big reason, however, to worry about kratom as a health risk: adulteration. Pro-herbal groups like the BEA argue that measures are in place to prevent the sale of contaminated product, but, Babu argues that as the kratom market has exploded, it's also created competition to offer stronger doses.
“We’re seeing that kratom can be adulterated with its own active ingredients,” he said. “It looks like you’re getting something natural, but really it’s been adulterated.” At least one study has found higher-than-natural concentrations of kratom's opioid-like ingredients in samples of US vendors’ products; the FDA also claims that some end sellers have laced their kratom with opioids.
“What we knew about kratom over the past ten years—that it was relatively safe,” Babu continued, “has changed because of adulteration… Our experience with this plant is no longer our experience with the plant as we knew it.” He also worries that we may see more cases of overdose, like the death of New York State sergeant Matthew Dana this year, that may have actually been caused by kratom—or more cases of serious addiction because of adulteration. If the occurrence grows more common or extreme, kratom could lose its utility to opioid addicts, becoming the threat the agencies say it is.
But kratom researchers and advocates agree that banning the substance is no good. For one, where will current kratom users—especially those who do rely on it to manage their addictions or as a replacement for traditional opioids—turn if it’s scheduled? Grundmann ponders the effects of such actions: “Are they talking to their physicians about going back to opioids?… Are they going back to heroin, then?
“It is likely that reducing access to kratom now will worsen the opioid crisis,” said Swogger, “especially for people who are unable to access other treatments” for pain or addiction. And experts argue that, instead of banning the substance, we should be studying kratom to develop affordable drugs we actually can regulate. Studies of synthetics akin to kratom’s main ingredients are underway, and there could be more studies of the plant itself—which researchers are eager to undertake while lacking the resources to pursue.
In the meantime, there could be new regulatory protocols to better monitor kratom’s purity in the US, as well as education on how to most safely source and consume kratom. One thing's for sure: Scheduling kratom would make those measures more difficult to pursue, possibly endangering lives in the process. The question isn’t whether kratom has value in the opioid crisis: It's whether we'll allow the substance to become something illicit and, by extension, more dangerous and less helpful.
What have you dip-shits been googling this year, then? I’m a good upstanding man of God, so the only things I ever google are "[actual dictionary definition of like one in every twenty words I type on a daily basis at my job typing words]" and "diego maradona photos looking mad?". Occasionally I’ll just sit and google the word "adidas". That’s about it. That’s my google search history. Hey: I’m not a man of nuance and depths. Not everyone gets to be interesting.
You idiots, though, holy shit. Google has been watching, you know. You do not consider this, every time you google, but: Google is keeping tabs on us. I don’t want to get too stoner-bringing-the-vibe-down-at-an-afterparty-by-talking-about-government-surveillance-while-holding-a-joint-so-long-it-goes-out-on-his-dirty-dirty-fingers about it, but, like, every single search string you’ve ever done gets logged somewhere. Google has vast mountains of data. Then they release it, at the end of each year, like they have done this week, giving us a portrait of who we are based on the questions we ask of the world.
Here are some of the best–worst questions asked in the UK, and their answers, to stop you from googling dumb shit all over next year, too.
WATCH: Desus and Mero Break Down the Keaton Jones Saga
Earlier this year Conor McGregor decided to take on the greatest defensive boxer of all time by just sort of bursting like a water main in front of him, just sort of psychotically flexing, Conor McGregor essentially trying to outbox Floyd Mayweather without throwing a punch, just pointing to his own head a lot while standing ever-so-slightly too close to a microphone and yelling "FOOKIN". Conor McGregor, in the weeks leading up to the Mayweather fight, sort of had the energy and demeanour of a phonebook being ripped in half, and then he got in the ring and was physically outclassed in every possible way and lost. Remember that? Remember how we had the biggest circus of all time, just this year?
Anyway, this question is good because it’s not actually asking, "How do I watch Mayweather vs. McGregor?" It’s asking, "How do I watch Mayweather vs. McGregor… for free?" This was hyped as the greatest show on Earth, millions of people tuning in from every country, in every time zone – but still… you still couldn’t quite be arsed to pay for it.
Ah, I’m afraid Your Brother – Your Brother has just watched all of Peaky Blinders in one two-weekend mega session, and now uses pomade in his hair and says "bloody" a lot – Your Brother wants to talk this Christmas about "bitcoin", and your dad does too because he’s heard it’s an investment opportunity, and so now everyone around your Christmas table wants to talk about one of the most volatile investments ever in history simply because the bubble has come to a head just before the inevitable pop, and essentially – as best I can tell – this is like when the Dutch went mad on buying and selling tulips again, only instead of tulips it’s Bitcoin, and instead of the Dutch it’s just nerds, and yes some people who a great many years ago showed a great amount of faith in cryptocurrency will make out of here with a fantastic amount of money, but you don’t get to now. You don’t get to. Honestly: it is cheaper and more energy-efficient for you to not know what Bitcoin is right now. If you’re asking in 2017, the information is not going to help you.
An exit poll is a poll taken of people after they "exit" the "poll"-ing booth, and honestly, we really don’t know anything about the democratic process we all participate in, do we? I know I don’t. I just share Jeremy Corbyn memes and call Tories "nonces".
This is very much, though, like when everyone googled "Hang On Lads, What’s Brexit?" the day after Brexit. Not advocating for our right to vote be taken away or anything – it’s muddy water to start wading into, there, isn’t it; nobody on the right side of history ever says that – but. You know. I’m just saying maybe voters don’t have a fucking clue what is going on and should absolutely never be trusted.
I dunno about you but I have this cute habit where I spend the last hour of the day and the first hour of the day and quite a lot of ten-minute slots throughout the day where I just scroll endlessly through the Instagram Discover page looking at things I absolutely hate. And it seems to be the last place on the internet that is completely resistant to me pushing personal information into it to get tailored content out: my Instagram Discover is all weird make-up tutorials that for some reason always involve floss, and rapid hand-movement cooking tutorials that always end up doing something vile with a hotdog sausage, or unfunny sketches from US-based meme accounts. Yesterday I watched a silent video where someone made a rug out of an old T-shirt. It was the worst rug I’ve ever seen in my life. Did I watch the video to the end? I watched the video to the end. So whomst is the real dickhead, here? (The real dickhead is me.)
Anyway, one of the things the kids like now is slime. There’s all these photos of slime being made, and squelched. Hands attached to unseen limbs slowly knead and tear at slime. Watch as a wad of glitter sinks into the slime. Look how this knife cuts through slime. When we invented the internet, all those years ago, did we ever imagine it would end up like this? I thought we’d have robot porn by now. Instead, I’m googling how much glue and Borax to mix together to turn me into a slime vlogger billionaire.
The three most-searched women in the UK this year were Meghan Markle, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and Shannon Matthews. I mean, extrapolating that data, the only way to be a notable woman in 2018 is to marry a prince, full-on die or kidnap your own daughter, for some reason, ten years ago.
I mean, it wasn’t that much better for the most-searched men, to be honest: Jack Maynard, the I’m a Celebrity sex bastard, was just beaten out by Charlie Gard, a tragic baby. Bruce Forsyth did pretty well out of dying, seeing as he was older than all of history. I don’t know what we can learn about ourselves from this. It feels like alive people really need to do better in 2k18.
THE FOUR MOST GOOGLED RECIPES IN THE UK, IN BIG, BIG 2017, WERE BEEF, BEEF, BEEF, BEEF AND BUNS. WHO SAYS WE HAVE NO FOOD CULTURE.
If you play out the possibilities across infinite universes and infinite timelines, there is literally no other outcome for Ed Sheeran’s life beyond "your mate-from-school’s harmless brother who is always very cheerful to you when he has to clear the table you’re drinking at in the pub". That’s it. That’s all he is. Your mum likes him, but "wishes he didn’t have those silly tattoos". Your dad tried to get him a job at his place but he did something so wrong with a socket wrench during orientation that they had to send him home. He wanted to be a veterinary nurse at some point but he didn’t get the grades. "Has Ed got a girlfriend," your mum asks, watching him walk home in the cold, wrapped in a slightly-too-small Superdry coat. "He’s a sweet soul, isn’t he." Ed doesn’t have a girlfriend, no. He does have a decorative sword and a pro-level gaming headset for his PS4. That is how Ed Sheeran ended out in every universe and every reality apart from ours. In ours we made him one of the top three most famous pop stars on the planet. Hey: I’m not going to pretend Shape of You didn’t somehow end up on my Spotify 100 playlist twice (twice!), because it’s a perky little pop banger. But come on. What is wrong with us?
When I was a kid, Blue Peter very famously did the Tracy Island make, in which Anthea Turner elaborately assembled a spectacular recreation of the Thunderbirds base-cum-home out of newspaper and decorative sand and cardboard and paint. It was one of the most iconic moments in BP history, and the island she made looked sick. I came home from school once and my dad had tried to do the same thing, sans instructions, and had – for reasons still unknown – PVA glued an old orange sack to the rocks around the island to give the appearance of texture. It was – and I understand this was an act of love – really shit. I really would’ve preferred either to have the official toy island, like literally all my mates had, or nothing at all. Instead, I had to fly Thunderbird 2 into a slowly expanding mess of painted orange sack for, like, an entire year of my life. "That’s good, isn’t it, Joel?" my dad would say. "That Tracy Island?" No.
So what I’m saying is: like, I acknowledge money is tight these days. I know we can’t indulge children their every whim. A lot of people live, in this country, in very real, very stark poverty. But I’m looking on eBay here and a fidget spinner costs 99p. Get that instead. Don’t make a fidget spinner. That is not going to be a good fidget spinner.
Don’t make things, don’t pay for fights, you’re never going to be a Bitcoin millionaire, try not to die, eat less red meat, we really all need to learn what elections are before we keep voting in them. Bye.
James Comey, what is there to say about such a complicated man? He is astoundingly tall, just four inches shy of seven feet. He is not a basketball player, however, but rather one of the world's biggest cops. He was once in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is called the "FBI" to those in the know. His investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails might have helped secure Donald Trump's 2016 victory. He likes to hide in the curtains. He joined Le Résistance, for better or for worse, when Trump unceremoniously fired him earlier this year, and everyone got upset. Now he's writing a memoir.
Oh, and his social media presence is absolute bullshit.
After Comey revealed that he had secret Instagram and Twitter accounts in March, journalist Ashley Feinberg went to extreme lengths to find them. Since being outed as a social media user, Comey has leaned into the whole thing in a very bad way. Much like an emo MySpace enthusiast circa 2007, or an angsty teen in the mid aughts obsessed with his AIM away message, Comey's social presence consists of cryptic quotes that pop up in response to major news events.
After Trump held a Florida rally where he endorsed alleged child sexual predator Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race, Comey tweeted the following:
And Wednesday morning, after Democrat Doug Jones defeated Moore, Comey shared another deep-ass quote from some history guy you've probably never heard of:
Perhaps most egregiously, when news of former national security adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea broke, Comey posted multiple Instagrams vaguely alluding to the events of the day. The first, a beautiful picture of a mountain stream, was captioned, "'But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream' Amos 5:24." The next day, he followed up with a sunset picture captioned, "Beautiful Long Island Sound from Westport, CT. To paraphrase the Buddha —Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun; the moon; and the truth."
C'mon, buddy!
This is no way to live. This is the equivalent of posting a Facebook status that says, "so depressed.....don't wanna talk about it, don't msg me." The whole point of social media, but especially Twitter, is to speak your mind, even when it's to your own detriment. The cryptic quotes aren't merely tacky, but also cowardly. If you want to express your opinions on social media, either do it or don't do it.
It's like how Florida Republican and notable water drinker Marco Rubio posts a salty Bible verse every time Trump is a giant dumbass. Sure, it's a cute sentiment to tweet, "Do not be friendly with hotheads, nor associate with the wrathful. Proverbs 22:24" but it's so disgustingly disingenuous when it's coming from someone who (begrudgingly) backed Trump in 2016. If you can't be a big boy and tell the president to cool it, I don't want to hear your deep-ass Bible quote.
Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.
If 2015’s The Force Awakens, an entertaining but imperfect film, benefited from arriving in the wake of those loathed prequels, The Phantom Menace suffered immensely for being the first Star Wars movie to be released after George Lucas's seminal original trilogy.
Those three initial movies—1977's Star Wars, 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, and 1983's Return of the Jedi—changed cinema and formed the basis of a quasi-religion for innumerable diehard fans. So in 1999—the year Lucas unleashed his long-anticipated first prequel on the public—expectations were high, and Phantom wouldn't meet them by a long chalk. Critics were mixed, but the fans, who were hyped by promising trailers and perhaps too certain that Lucas couldn't possibly sink lower than the Ewoks, were furious.
Since then, negative opinion of The Phantom Menace has ossified. It so disappointed so many people, in a time before sullying the memory of classic movies with unnecessary prequels was a common Hollywood practice (indeed, the very concept of the "prequel" was first popularized by Episodes I-III), that the film and its two sequels have become shorthand for cinematic betrayal. Nuance rarely enters the Phantom Menace debate these days. The prequels were, for many, tantamount to an attack on an institution, and The Phantom Menace was the unforgettable, unforgivable opening assault.
Phantom’s dire reputation, unsurprisingly, suggests something more egregious than what’s really there. Episode I can’t really be the worst prequel of all time when X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as oversized and out-of-control as Logan’s mane in that film, or The Hobbit trilogy, one of the most cynical cash-grabs in movie history, exist. Neither can Phantom be, as some claim, one of the worst movies period. There are bad films that entertainingly fail on every level, like The Room, or bad films made with high technical competence that are borderline unwatchable, like Michael Bay's Transformers movies. The Phantom Menace fits neither category.
Of course, at script level, Phantom is a lot of bunk: Jedi knights Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) discover a precocious sprog who might be the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), in the midst of an intergalactic skirmish over a trade dispute. But it's bunk executed with earnestness and a stunning level of craftsmanship. Moreover, Episode I is a masterpiece of design. The detail in the world-building is the sort a filmmaker could only buy with a bottomless budget, and Lucas wisely doesn’t bury Phantom in special effects as per subsequent prequels, instead using CGI to complement real sets, models, and miniatures.
It means the worlds in Phantom, unlike those in the FX-cluttered and endlessly greenscreened Episodes II and III, hold up remarkably well: Naboo a verdant future Venice, its palaces inhabited by a luxuriously attired aristocracy; the Gungans' underwater world, a hive of enormous illuminated baubles and Vernean subs; Tatooine, a parched crook’s paradise that’s home to Phantom’s podracing sequence, one of the few simple set-piece pleasures of the prequel trilogy; and Coruscant, a bustling, planet-size metropolis that's the shining capital of the universe. These worlds are a vision of a Star Wars we’d never seen before, a look at Lucas’s galaxy far, far away before it became the faded glory of the original trilogy.
The change in aesthetic, from used-future to something more utopian, is Lucas avoiding a common prequel/sequel trap: Rather than just safely echo the originals, something which greatest-hits package The Force Awakens is guilty of, with The Phantom Menace he for better and worse forges a different path. Yes, there are midichlorians, but Lucas also turns the somewhat lumbering lightsaber duel of yore into a savage ballet, introduces a fearsome new kind of villain in iconic horned bastard Darth Maul, makes something apocalyptic of the score (one of John Williams’s best of the entire franchise), and swaps out his scrappy cowboy and scoundrel protagonists for a scrum of galactic politicians and space samurai.
Without anyone reining him in as before (prior to being an untouchable blockbuster king, Lucas had collaborators whose suggestions for changes proved crucial to the success of his films), he's unleashed to indulge. For all its faults, Phantom is admirably not the Star Wars of old, Lucas turning his throwaway space western into a space opera that’s self-serious, fun, dull, exhilarating, embarrassing, and heartfelt all at once.
None of which excuses Jar Jar fucking Binks, the film’s coterie of overtly racist alien caricatures, or the fact that Phantom is full of dire-logue written by someone who's seemingly never met another human being in his life and delivered as if at gunpoint by otherwise talented actors. With the exception of Ian McDiarmid, who confidently plays the scheming Senator Palpatine like this is the story of his rise to power and not Anakin’s, the cast, from Natalie Portman to an Alec Guinness-aping Ewan McGregor, are uniformly wooden. Phantom is beautiful, but so often hollow, its characters bored tourists on a journey through an overactive imagination.
But, then, one could just as easily say the same about this year's Valerian, Luc Besson’s magnificent flop and another big, opulent mess of a sci-fi. Neither The Phantom Menace nor Valerian are so lacking in inspiration and intermittent thrills that they could really be all-time bad. Ultimately, they’re just unremarkable failures. The only difference between them is that one came with astronomical, perhaps insurmountable expectations.
Follow Brogan Morris on Twitter.
Not every four-legged furball is destined to be your new best friend. As anyone who’s met an aggressive pet can tell you, animals can be total assholes. Snarling dogs, hissing cats, vicious hamsters, possessive roosters; we’ve seen it all. Some obnoxious pets draw blood with their fangs and claws. Others grate nerves by either destroying property, emitting foul smells or barking at ear-splitting volumes.
We asked friends and co-workers to sum up the most irritating pet they’ve come across in six words. Here’s what they said.
“Cousin’s temperamental, sociopathic iguana pooped everywhere.” - Jerry, 28
"Friend’s Boxer that apparently 'resented women.'" - Katie, 25
"Every single god damn Chihuahua. Ever." - Beckett, 25
"Large bird I birdsat shit everywhere." - Peter, 23
"Obese three-legged cat bit dad." - Kara, 28
“Roommate's ferret always licked my feet.” - Jessica, 41
“A colleague's spaghetti-eating parakeet.” - Sara, 39
“Goldfish jumped out of bowl, died.” - Shari, 46
“A dog bit my friend's crotch.” - Aimee, 30
“Petsitting for dog who ate bras.” - Tina, 37
“Bruce the diaper-eating wiener dog.” - Jen, 35
“Stinky weaselly ferret loved stealing Kotex.” - Kirche, 55
"Cat refused to use litter box." - Jessica, 26
“Rescue kitten pooped worms then escaped.” - Katherine, 34
“Grandpa’s dog herded sheep into ocean.” - Kenny, 33
“My cat takes nasty loose shits.” - Joey, 31
“Cannibalistic gerbil ate his dead brother.” - Olivia, 27
“Hamster bit anytime I touched it.” - Paul, 23
“Dog loved to pee on pillows." - Willow, 23
"Roommate had snakes. I hate snakes!" - Ty, 25
“Dog bit me on my birthday.” - Sarra, 25
“Bulldog devoured chocolate cake; he’s fine.” - Kate, 27
“Had smelly, high-maintenance ferret in college” - Julius, 33
“Grandma’s rooster terrorized us as kids.” - Billy, 34
“A miniature schnauzer attacked my face.” - Darcy, 33
“Violent cocker spaniel killed pet birds.” - Kim, 32
“Cat used my face as springboard.” - Adam, 30
“Asshole rabbit chewed through wires, cables.” - Eric, 35
“Girlfriend’s dog rips pungent, powerful farts.” - Tara, 32
“The dog named after Disney's Pluto.” - Allegra, 25
“Woke up: cat biting belly button.” - Brittany, 27
“Cat enemas were a monthly expense.” - Jennifer, 43
“Past-life serial killer Siamese cat.” - Beth, 36
“Neighbour's puppy shat on my feet.” - Vartika, 25
"All cats. Fuck 'em. They suck." - Genevieve, 24
Follow Anna Goldfarb on Twitter.
Mariah Carey is a woman of many titles. She's a pop princess, the Christmas queen, and, of course, the master of throwing shade. For Bravo host Andy Cohen, the latter is the most important.
On the latest episode of Desus & Mero, Cohen talked about the time he had Mariah on his talk show Watch What Happens Live! and pressed her about the infamous interview where, when asked how she felt about Jennifer Lopez, she simply responded with "I don't know her." As you'd expect, her answer to Cohen's questions were just as magically messy.
"Do you know how much time I've spent figuring out if Mariah and J.Lo know each other?" he asked the VICELAND hosts. "I've spent probably 20 minutes of TV time with the two of them going back and forth on this question."
Someday, hopefully, Cohen will get the answer we don't necessarily need, but the one we deserve.
You can watch last night’s Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.
A few years ago I was barely scraping by living in pricey European cities cities like London, Paris, and Amsterdam, which are notorious for their overpriced flats with design oddities. Sure I wasn’t living in a place where everyone could watch me shit, but I wasn’t far from it. £500 a month to live in Elephant & Castle where there were knife battles outside my door seemingly every night. €400 a month in Brussels to live in a Harry Potter-esque closet, sleeping on a leaky blow-up mattress. €350 a month in Berlin to live with a nudist roommate who enjoyed flashing me his wang before I’d had my morning coffee. And there were some really lean moments where I was like, “Should I put the peanuts IN the yogurt? Or have the peanuts as a side-dish?” As a freelance writer, I just wasn’t making enough bacon to pay the rent. So I decided I just wouldn’t pay rent anymore.
Years prior, when I was still living in Toronto, I had on occasion house-sat for my neighbours and friends whenever they went away on holiday—feeding their cats, collecting their mail, watering their plants, and keeping the house occupied for insurance purposes—and I developed a taste for it. It was kind of nice, even within my own city, to discover a new neighbourhood, to change up my surroundings, and to play with all the Snugglebum von Cuddletummies. So, when my straits moved beyond dire while abroad, I decided to housesit full-time.
A quick google search revealed a gaggle of Housesitting websites from which to choose—Mind My House, House Carers, Trusted HouseSitters—all offering to connect Sitters with homeowners. The homeowners were of the same ilk – in a word, affluent, and needing someone to look after their diabetic cats with renal failure for free. Mind you, the sitters also are all the same—charlatans looking for free accommodation. So the in-kind exchange is pretty fair. I immediately signed up to all the housesitting websites I could find.
Sitters have to pay an annual membership fee to offer their services on these sites, but seeing as how I was asking to live in a stranger’s house, I didn’t mind ponying up to show I was trustworthy and seriously invested in this. In any case, the annual fee was less than the cost of one night at an AirBnB or hotel. I also completed several security checks including verifying my identity and having a police background check.
And off I went. The listings for available Sits were overwhelming. People from all across Europe, and as I grew to learn, around the world, were looking for sitters. I applied like mad. I didn’t have much time to dilly-dally and find the right sit, I just needed a right now sit.
The first one I was offered was for a month-long sit in Brussels looking after a diabetic cat. When I arrived at the house, I was shocked to see the “house” was more like a villa. Six bedrooms, five baths, a grand piano, and a pool. And for a month, it was just me and Insulin-Shot-Annie. I couldn’t believe the digs. I had so much space, I actually had to close off wings to the house, I just had no use for all that space.
As soon as I was comfortably settled into that sit, I wasted no time in lining up my next one. Sit number two saw me also in Brussels, but in a 1920s Art Deco penthouse apartment looking after a another cat, this one with severe food allergies (she could only eat raw horse meat and kangaroo meat, which as you can imagine, is rather bloody, and I’m a fricken vegetarian).
Sit number three took me to Surrey, just outside of London, where I had an entire house not far from Windsor Castle all to myself, in exchange for looking after four cats, one of which was a tripod (read: three-legged) and another who loved to piss on everything that displeased her. That Included me and my clothes. And cat piss is designed to eat through anything it touches.
And so it went. I moved on to sitting in London, then Amsterdam, then Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Enkhuizen, Vienna, Helsingborg—and eventually, back to North America where I have housesat in Miami, New York City, Montreal, and countless times in Toronto. These back-to-back sits went on uninterrupted for three consecutive years. Everything I owned in this world fit inside one red backpack anyway, and my job allowed me to work from wherever I saw fit, so that mobility and flexibility leant itself brilliantly to the peripatetic house sitting lifestyle. I truly was one of the lucky people who was obligated to no one and nothing but myself. So even if I only made €300 a month (and that was a good month!), that was enough for just me.
Each time a sit was complete, the homeowners would leave me a reference on my Sitters profile, making it much easier to secure the next. To date I have 26 positive references. I reckon those three years of house sitting has saved me around $24,000 that otherwise would have disappeared into the rent ether. And the benefits didn’t just end at free rent. Sometimes I was even paid for my services, and paid handsomely. Sometimes I would show up and they had stocked the fridge with food for me, or left me a gift card to pay for groceries, or even took me grocery shopping before they left. Almost all of them left me their metro-passes and railcards to use on public transportation. Often I was left the keys to their bicycles. And it did happen more than once that I was left the keys to their cars (I never once used their cars, however, because Europeans love driving stick, and I’m a ride-automatic-or-die gal).
Every time I tell someone about becoming a professional house sitter, they say without fail that it sounds too good to be true! It sounds so simple and easy—a life hack or a travel hack or some other clickbait-y term. But I’ve had my share of fucked up situations while sitting, and I’ve seen a lot of despicable behaviour. Looking after pets, while fun, is also a huge responsibility if the pets have medical concerns. I’ve mentioned the diabetes, the renal failure, the food allergies, the behavioural problems, but it has happened twice now that a pet has fallen ill during my sit from a previously-undiagnosed condition. Rushing them to the vets, learning how to administer subcutaneous fluids and insulin shots, and even once, being asked to euthanize a pet, have all befallen me during my sits.
And then there have been the homeowners with questionable behaviour. In Amsterdam, I found myself sitting for an American expat couple who made off-hand queerphobic comments and also pro-NRA sentiments, which was bad enough, but I figured since the majority of my time there wouldn’t be spent in their company, I could just bite my tongue and bear it until they left. The wife left for the holiday one day earlier than the husband, meaning I had to spend one day alone in the house with him before he followed suit. And he used that time to—you guessed it—make a pass at me. Another time, I showed up at a house to find that the homeowners were hoarders. I found petrified cat shit, dead fermenting mice, and an ant infestation left for me to deal with. Once, in the middle of another sit, a water main burst and the apartment flooded. Repairs were immediately called in, but I had to live out the remainder of my time there with loud, industrial-sized dehumidifiers, fans, heaters, and other contraptions in the bathroom pointed toward the collapsed ceiling, which meant no tub time for me.
If you’re an arachnophobic, then please refrain from staying in the medieval Dutch port town of Enkhuizen, which I discovered much too late, is overrun with massive spiders in every nook, cranny, crevice, light post, bathroom, and backyard in town. I vacuumed up so many spiders the size of my palm, I was terrified to change the filter pack for fear those eight-legged freaks would spring out and nest babies in my eardrums.
But every time things went Balls McGee, I would take a breather on the balcony of my Parisian housesit overlooking a very Instagrammable patisserie, for example, and just remember that, at the end of the day, I was living a charmed life.
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Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is a proud NDP tradition. It’s refreshing that despite the party’s flashy new leader Jagmeet Singh, the old traditions still run strong.
On top of getting ground into dust in four federal byelections this week, the Canadian Press ran a story on Wednesdaysuggesting that Singh had launched a byelection campaign in his hometown outside the bounds of the actual riding. He was quickly able to clarify that the event in question was a “Jagmeet and Greet,” not an actual campaign launch.
But he was unable to clarify why the NDP candidate involved championed the out-of-riding event as a campaign launch on his own social media. Nor was Singh able to explain why he didn’t campaign in the Scarborough-Agincourt riding at all during the byelection, despite not holding a seat in Parliament that might keep him otherwise occupied.
Between the botched byelections and the butchered clarification, there might be a few lessons the NDP might want to heed before they flub their next foray onto the federal battlefield.
There were four by-elections across the country on Monday. Despite a gruelling fall both in and out of the House, the Liberals took three of them—including a former Conservative stronghold in British Columbia. The best NDP showing was cracking 13 percent of the vote in Battleford-Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. Otherwise, they took between 4-5 percent everywhere else in the country.
You don’t want to read too much into four by-elections. But this is not a great showing for a party that has just minted a hip new leader who was supposed to battle Justin Trudeau for our hearts and memes.
Not that you can pin all of this on Singh. The by-election in Newfoundland was going to go overwhelmingly Liberal whether the party ran a dog or a dog-sized venomous spider, and the Dippers were never expected to be contenders in the western ridings. Plus, the guy has only been on the job for about two months, which is not an especially long time to make a mark on party organization.
But the party’s awful showing in Scarborough-Agincourt might be a sign of some deeper problems. That riding was Singh’s home turf, and it was the exact area he was supposed to give the NDP a new bulwark of strength: a suburb with a large South Asian community. That the party only pulled 5 percent of the vote in the riding is extremely bad news. It casts some serious doubts as to how well Singh can translate the forces that won him the party’s leadership into the real world of electoral competition. The NDP didn’t have to outright win the race to chalk up a victory in the riding, but polling in Christian Heritage/Libertarian party territory when you’ve got a home field advantage is a pretty firm rebuke.
Judging by his poetic post-election tweeting, though, Singh appears to be unphased by the setbacks:
Yes. Well. NDP organizers, meanwhile, were more specific about what they needed to grow and nurture: namely, campaign funds. The post-election email blast sent out by the party lamented that they’d been outspent by their opponents and vowed that it would never happen again. Good luck with that.
Anyways, there are limits to the conclusions you can draw from a smattering of mid-term byelections. But there is enough in here to glean a cautionary tale: Jagmeet Singh will not make any gains against Justin Trudeau on compelling personal brand alone. Say what you will about the political depth of Trudeau when he took over the party in 2013, but he had the Liberal machine at his back. Despite its historic lull in the polls between 2003 and 2015, it still had about three to five decades of living institutional memory in terms of winning and holding power at the federal level. They don’t call it “Canada’s natural governing party” for nothing. The NDP has a comparably wonderous showboat, but without that vicious Grit engine.
It’s unfair to expect a rookie to lead his party to victory in ridings with historically weak NDP showings. But to get so brutally roasted in his home town, and in the exact geographic and demographic space that should be Jagmeet Singh’s greatest strength is a red flag visible from space.
Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
Lawmaker Dies in Apparent Suicide After Sexual Assault Accusation
A Kentucky state representative, Dan Johnson, died of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound on a Mount Washington bridge Wednesday, according to police in Bullitt County. Earlier this week, Johnson was accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in a local investigative report, but denied the allegation. Shortly before his death, he posted a Facebook message saying he suffered from PTSD. “I cannot handle it any longer,” he wrote.—VICE News
House and Senate Inch Closer to Passing Huge Bill
Republicans in both houses have reached a provisional deal to overhaul the nation’s tax code. The latest changes include bringing the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans down to 37 percent. A new VICE News/SurveyMonkey online poll found 56 percent of Americans opposed the GOP’s tax plan, and only 22 percent believed it would lower their taxes.—CNN/VICE News
Russell Simmons Hit with Multiple Rape Allegations
At least four women came forward to accuse the music industry mogul of rape, according to two separate reports published on Wednesday. In addition, three women claimed Simmons sexually assaulted them, and two others claimed he sexually harassed them. Simmons denied all the allegations, which followed at least two previous allegations of sexual assault. “These horrific accusations have shocked me to my core,” he said.—VICE News
John McCain Hospitalized to Recover from Chemo
The Arizona senator was in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after undergoing more chemotherapy and radiation therapy to treat his brain cancer. His office explained he was receiving care for “normal side effects.” Earlier on Wednesday, former VP Joe Biden—whose son died of the same form of cancer afflicting his former Senate colleague—encouraged McCain’s visibly upset daughter Meghan on the ABC show The View.—The Washington Post/AP
Thousands of Rohingya Deaths Went Unreported, NGO Reports
Doctors without Borders concluded 6,700 Rohingya Muslims were killed in a four-week period following an outbreak of violence in Myanmar this fall. The aid organization estimated at least 730 children under the age of five were among those killed between August 25 and September 24. Myanmar's official death count for the same time frame is 400.—NPR News
Vladimir Putin Attacks ‘Invented’ Election Meddling Stories
The Russian president insisted US investigations into Moscow-sanctioned election interference are based on claims “invented by those in opposition to Trump to make his work seem illegitimate.” Speaking at an annual press conference, Putin said Trump had made “quite serious achievements,” but added that “there are many things we can do more effectively.”—BBC News
Bomb Attack in Somalia Kills at Least 18
At least 18 cops died when a suicide bomber dressed as a member of the force detonated explosives inside a training facility in Mogadishu Thursday morning. Another 15 people were wounded, according to a police official. The Islamist militant group al Shabaab claimed it was behind the attack.—Reuters
Ecuadorian Vice President Faces Six-Year Prison Sentence
Ecuador’s highest court found Jorge Glas guilty of corruption in a case involving the Brazilian company Odebrecht. Glas was convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for government infrastructure contacts through intermediaries. Glas’s uncle Ricardo Rivera was also slapped with a potential six-year sentence for his role in the scheme.—Bloomberg
Harvey Weinstein Denies New, Excruciating Salma Hayek Account
The actress accused the disgraced Hollywood mogul of persistent sexual harassment and of even threatening to kill her in an op-ed. A Weinstein spokeswoman responded: “All of the sexual allegations as portrayed by Salma are not accurate.”—The New York Times/BBC News
Oprah to Get Cecil B. DeMille Prize
Winfrey will receive the award at next month’s Golden Globes. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's president said the actress and broadcaster was “one of the most influential women of our time.”—The Hollywood Reporter
Morgan Spurlock Admits to Sexual Misconduct
The filmmaker revealed that a woman with whom he had a “one night stand” cried during their sexual encounter. “She believed she was raped,” Spurlock wrote on social media. He added: “I am part of the problem… But I am also part of the solution.”—Entertainment Weekly
N.E.R.D. Drops Kendrick Lamar Collaboration
The group shared “Don’t Don’t Do It!"—the third single from the upcoming album No_One Ever Really Dies—on Beats 1. Pharrell Williams said the song’s political theme was perfect for Lamar, whom he described as “a jazz artist reincarnated.”—Noisey
Michael Che Becomes SNL’s First Black Co-Head Writer
Che was promoted alongside “Weekend Update” co-host Colin Jost, with the pair set to work with existing head writers Bryan Tucker and Kent Sublette. Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider left the writing team despite last season’s good ratings.—VICE
Miami Beach Considers Mandatory Panic Buttons in Hotels
The city commissioner, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, has proposed a city ordinance to have panic buttons installed in all hotels to help protect staff from sexual assault. Several other US cities have introduced similar measures.—VICE News
Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we look into unpaid content moderation, a thankless job that keeps online communities like Reddit safe.
It was a crisp winter morning when Shay Horse set out to cover the protests against Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Brooklyn-based freelance photojournalist was one of hundreds of reporters who traveled to Washington, DC to cover a demonstration that would set the tone for Trump’s presidency: defiant chants, smashed windows, and hundreds of people, including Horse, surrounded by police.
The segment of the protest Horse followed gathered around 10 AM at Logan Circle, a couple miles northwest of the Capitol. The energetic, enthusiastic crowd attracted the attention of journalists as they slowly marched south. They didn’t get far—at the corner of L and 12th streets, the march was surrounded by police, who subjected Horse and the rest of the group to clouds of pepper spray, dozens of “stingball” grenades, and strikes from batons. According to a lawsuit later filed by the ACLU, the protesters, legal observers, and journalists were hemmed in so closely by cops they didn’t have room to sit down; officers spent most of the day arresting people, taunting them in response to requests for food, water, and toilets. When they got around to Horse, he was handcuffed so tightly he lost feeling in two fingers.
It would take the courts and police more than a day to process all the arrests made. Horse was initially charged with felony rioting and released. The police kept his camera. Weeks later, the charges against him would be dropped.
Others weren’t so lucky. A total of 194 people arrested that day have been charged with felonies related to rioting and property damage and face decades in prison. The indiscriminate nature of the arrests and the harsh charges have many observers characterizing the government’s treatment of the protesters as an assault on freedom of assembly. Chip Gibbons, an attorney for Defending Rights and Dissent, a legal advocacy group, said that if the prosecutions hold up, “the result would be the criminalization of dissent.” Six defendants are currently on trial, with the rest slated to be tried in 2018; on Wednesday the judge dismissed felony “inciting a riot” charges for the group of six, but they still are on the hook for other felonies.
Adding insult to injury, some defendants, as well as people like Horse who are no longer facing charges, have another problem: The cops don’t seem to know exactly what they took from those arrested, or from who.
Horse is one of an estimated eight journalists detained on January 20, two of whom are still charged. One of them, Alexei Wood, is on trial right now. But Horse doesn’t know what separates him from Wood and the other reporters. “If anything,” he told me, “Alexei is more professional than I am. I don’t know why the prosecutor is going after him so hard.”
That prosecutor, Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff, admitted during opening arguments that she wouldn’t attempt to connect the first six defendants on trial to any act of property destruction that occurred during the inauguration protests. Instead, the government’s case against the defendants relies in part on proving the items they brought with them to the protest are evidence of a planned riot.
One item, initially presented by the prosecution as a “baton,” turned out to be a camera tripod belonging to Wood. But the sloppiness of law enforcement in this case extends much deeper: On Monday, it was revealed in court by Wood’s defense counsel that his property logs from his detention did not match the belongings the prosecution claims are his.
These property logs are documents the police give you when they are claiming your belongings as evidence in an investigation. Since the police arrested over 200 people, they needed to fill out over 200 receipts, many with multiple items each. But in the courtroom, it was obvious that the process hadn’t been smooth: In several cases, arresting officers could not confirm which items belonged to which defendant. Forensic scientists testified under cross-examination they had not performed any DNA analysis to definitively connect items likely intended to be used as weapons—such as a crowbar—with the defendants.
Another item—a wool knit cap that could likely be found in your average department store—was held up by Kerkhoff as an indication of a deep and organized conspiracy. To make the case against another defendant, a self-described street medic named Brittne Lawson, the prosecution held up supplies from Lawson’s first-aid kit: “These medics,” said Kerkhoff, “they’re not your first aid technician at a charity walk. They had tourniquets and gauze.” (The Red Cross recommends that gauze be stocked in all first aid kits.)
“I carry these medical supplies when I travel, even in my day-to-day backpack,” Elizabeth Lagesse told me. She is one of the defendants set for trial in 2018, and a plaintiff alongside Horse in a brutality and false arrest lawsuit against the police filed by the DC branch of the ACLU.
Lagesse thinks the cops are keeping protesters’ wallets because they plan to use ID cards from the International Workers of the World—a left-wing labour union—as evidence of nefarious motives. Gibbons of Defending Rights and Dissent told me “it’s a stretch” that the police would need to keep IDs and wallets as evidence.
Properly documenting the items that are allegedly key pieces of evidence has proven a challenge for the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). In the aftermath of the mass arrest, Horse said at least one person had the wrong property returned to them: “The police sent them shin guards that weren’t even theirs.”
(Inquiries to the MPD as to the accuracy of property receipts during the J20 arrest were not returned.)
An activist I’ll call Jamie, who spoke on condition of anonymity, ran jail support on behalf of the National Lawyer’s Guild following the arrests. Their role was to ensure those arrested had food and water to tide them over the night. Jamie saw that the police were not returning accurate property receipts to the detainees, and many did not have their wallets and driver’s licenses returned. “They tried to keep everything,” Jamie told me. For the out-of-towners arrested, Jamie said it was “a transparent attempt to punish them just for being there.”
Alex Rubinstein, who covered the inauguration protests on assignment for RT America, also described difficulties getting the police to return an accurate property log in a Medium post recounting his experience: “They kept telling me that even if my property wasn’t documented, I would get it back nonetheless. I knew better than to think that items deprived of a paper trail last very long in any government office.”
Lagesse experienced similar resistance getting the police to return an accurate property receipt. “Mine didn’t list my cell phone,” she said. “Some people’s phones were listed on their receipts, others weren’t.” Her phone was one of over a hundred seized by police, a move criticized by civil liberties activists.
Lagesse has been studying the prosecution’s strategy in the first trial group in a bid to understand her own case. Her impression,so far? “When people ask me for the weirdest parts, I literally don’t know where to start.”
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This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands.
Life offers second chances, but not when it comes to your first tattoo. Once you have it, that's it. You were young, nervous, possibly drunk. You knew you wanted a tattoo but didn't know exactly what—and the result is now stuck with you forever. You may change it into something else at some point, or just consider your next tat better—but the first one stays with you. If you're unlucky, you'll have a mark of shame for the rest of your days.
I asked a few people to talk me through their terrible first tattoos, and heard heartbreaking stories about drunk tattoo artists, expired ink, and crudely drawn genitals.
VICE: Tell me what happened there around your nipple.
Merlijn: My first tattoo was inspired by David Bowie and my old nickname, "Thunder Tits." Some friends of mine played in a band, and they had a song about a superhero called Thunder Tits, who shot lightning out of her chest. They asked me to play her onstage during a show, and it became my nickname.
A few months later, I decided to get Bowie's iconic thunderbolt on my chest, with my nipple replacing his eye. A colleague of mine was willing to do it with a borrowed tattoo kit, in exchange for two six-packs of beer and a bottle of vodka.
How did it go down?
We met at the home of the guy who owned the tattoo kit. But we were off to a false start when it turned out that the red ink had gone bad. I had to wait for the guy to travel to the other side of town to get new ink, which took three hours. Meanwhile, I got more and more nervous and started drinking the vodka I'd brought.
When we finally got to it, I quickly realized that my design was a bit too much for a first timer—I couldn’t handle the pain. So we stopped halfway through. It's been a year and a half now, and I keep postponing finishing the thing.
Do you have any regrets?
I'm not sure—afterward, I found out the lightning bolt was only the third tattoo my colleague had ever done. He also hadn’t slept the night before, apparently.
Have you learned anything from this experience?
Not really. I later had a friend stick and poke the image of a toothbrush on my calf—though a real tattoo shop helped me fix it a bit.
VICE: Hi, Megan. Ouch!
Megan: Yeah, I know, it looks like a three-year-old with a ballpoint had a tantrum on my ribs, doesn’t it?
What happened?
I work in a bar in Laos, and my colleagues and I planned to get the bar’s logo as a tattoo. We drew straws to see who had to go first, and I lost. Because tattoos are illegal in Laos, we had to do it in a shady bar. I was nervous all the way through, so the tattoo artist gave me a lot of whisky and some shots to calm me down. By the time we started, I was totally drunk and didn’t notice that the artist was also quite drunk. Afterward, when my friends saw my ink, they all backed out. So now I’m the only one with this ugly tattoo.
Weren’t you mad at them?
Not really—I probably would've done the same thing. I did regret getting it at first, but now I think it’s actually quite funny. I might have it fixed when I go home to the Netherlands, but it’s also a nice memory of my time in Laos.
VICE: Who’s Henk?
Manon: This here is my ex’s name, in the ugliest of all fonts.
Tell me more.
I was 18 and on vacation with some friends. I’d had a boyfriend for four months and missed him so much. I called him every day and cried all the time. Very pathetic, I know, but I was 18. There was this tattoo parlor on one of the beaches, packed with 18-year-olds lining up to get inked for the first time. I was one of them, and of course, I thought this boyfriend was the love of my life. None of my friends tried to stop me.
Do you regret it?
We had a great relationship for almost four years and split up amicably. I’m not super sorry when I see the tattoo, but I do regret it a bit—there's no getting around the fact that it says “Henk” on my foot. I’m lucky I'm Dutch, and the sun’s out for only about three days a year here, so most of the time other people don’t see it.
You have a second tattoo, right?
To be honest, I regret that one more. It’s a badly drawn peace sign on my left wrist. I’d probably get rid of that one before "Henk," because I can't really hide it.
Wouldn’t you rather cover it up with something else?
No, because I’ll end up regretting the thing I cover it up with, too. I know myself.
Watch: DIY: Homemade Tattoos
VICE: How did this happen?
Jonna: When I was 19 and studying to be an illustrator, we had an assignment where we had to make a wall painting for a theater in Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands. We projected a sketch on the wall, and at one point when I was standing in front of this wall, part of the sketch was projected on my back. One of my friends saw this little house in the projection, drew it on with a pen, and later suggested that I get it permanently inked.
What did the people at the tattoo shop think of it?
They just laughed at me. They made me pay up front because they didn’t believe I actually wanted to get it done. I got a bit annoyed and even started an argument with them about how art doesn't always have to be aesthetically pleasing.
So you don’t regret it?
No. I’m still happy with it. Why should tattoos be pretty? I even started an Instagram account for my tattoo because my artistic friends—and even strangers at parties—like to draw all kinds of stuff around it.
VICE: What’s going on here?
Nicole: About a year ago, a tattoo artist ran a contest on Facebook where you could win a tattoo for just $30. A friend of mine won, but I asked the artist if I could come along and get one for the same price, and he was cool with it.
What happened next?
The guy normally works at a tattoo shop, but for ours, we went to his house. He didn’t ask me for my ID—I guess he assumed I was a bit older. My friend went first, and her tattoo looked fine, so I trusted him. But halfway through mine, he said: "Oops, I've messed up a bit." He tried to fix it by making the letters and the sign a bit bolder.
Were you happy with it?
When I got home, I thought it looked OK—but it has some mistakes, like the random floating "I." It sucks, but I’ll try to have it fixed one day.
VICE: What’s that thing on your calf?
Martijn: I was at a house party once, where one guy had brought his tattoo gun. I was like, "A free tattoo, why not?" I wanted something I thought I would like for the rest of my life, so I decided to get a drawing of a vulva.
Who made the design?
I found a piece of paper at the party and made everyone take a shot at it. The only instruction I gave was that I wanted the labia to be as big as possible. In the end, I had to pick between my own drawing and that of my friend Lisa. After consulting my sisters via text, I picked Lisa’s design.
Do you have any regrets?
No. I always knew the tattoo was really stupid. I can have a good laugh about it, and that’s what counts. Most people only see that it's a vulva after I tell them. And if I ever regret it, I can always turn it into some kind of insect, I guess.
Senator Chuck Schumer was targeted by an elaborate hoax this week, centered on a bogus legal document that claimed he sexually harassed a former staffer, Axios reports.
According to the Daily Beast, an official-looking complaint was sent to a handful of major news outlets on Tuesday, appearing to come from a former staffer accusing the Senate Minority Leader of repeated sexual harassment. But along with a few factual errors, the document appeared to copy word-for-word language from a complaint made against former House representative John Conyers, who recently stepped down amid allegations of sexual harassment. The document also included a signature from a former Schumer staffer, who told Axios it had been forged.
"The claims in this document are completely false, my signature is forged, and even basic facts about me are wrong," the unnamed former staffer said in a statement. "I parted with Senator Schumer's office on good terms and have nothing but the fondest memories of my time there."
Schumer called the document "false from start to finish," and said he turned it over to Capitol Police for an investigation, adding that he planned to pursue "every legal path" against whoever was responsible. According to the Daily Beast, filing a forged document to a public office can land someone in jail for ten years, or with a $25,000 fine.
While it's not yet clear who forged the document, right-wing blogger Mike Cernovich and activist Charles Johnson also received it and ran with it as definitive proof of Schumer's alleged misconduct, despite its red flags. On Monday, Johnson posted on Facebook that the two were "going to end the career of a US Senator." But Cernovich stepped away from the story once Schumer went to the cops, telling the Daily Beast he was targeted by a "sophisticated forgery."
Rather than actually trying to take down Schumer, it looks like whoever was behind the document just wanted a reputable outlet to publish it, Axios reports—potentially hoping to discredit the mainstream media in an era when reports of sexual misconduct among politicians drop increasingly frequently, lead to resignations, and affect the outcome of elections.
"It is clear the law has been broken,” Matt House, Schumer's spokesman, told Axios in a statement. "We believe the individual responsible for forging the document should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law to prevent other malicious actors from doing the same."
Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.
A number of trans people have come forward with complaints that their Tinder accounts have been suspended or banned without reason.
Recently, YouTuber Kat Blaque brought attention to the issue with a Twitter thread about how Tinder had deleted “every single account” she had created on the app since she initially got it. She wrote, “At this point, it's very very very hard for me to not believe that I am either being targeted by transphobic trolls or being banned because I'm trans.”
Other women interviewed for this article also cited suspicions that transphobic Tinder users had reported their profiles, leading to them being banned.
Tahlia, a 23-year-old trans woman who lives in Austin, experienced similar frustrations on the dating app. She started using Tinder in 2014. In December 2015, not long after she transitioned and marked her gender as “female” on the app, she was banned temporarily for the first time. She said Tinder reinstated her account about a month later after she had sent a number of complaints. But, recently, she had her account banned once again.
“There were two guys I was pretty interested in, we were talking, and they seemed pretty cool—now I don’t really have a way of letting them know what happened,” she told VICE. “They’re probably just going to think I ghosted.”
Tahlia has communicated with Tinder via email about her account issue. To date, after weeks, she still has not had her account reinstated.
In emails viewed by VICE, Tahlia contacted the company multiple times and only received what appear to be copied and pasted statements (if they replied at all), such as, “We take violations of our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines very seriously. Please note that we do not have an appeals process at this time, therefore your account will remain banned from Tinder. You will not be able to create a new Tinder profile using your Facebook and/or phone number.”
Jonathan Badeen, cofounder of Tinder, direct messaged Tahlia on Twitter asking her if she and her friends who’d experienced similar issues had tried using the “multiple gender option” on the app after she went public about her situation. “Trust me, it helps,” he told her.
(Since November 2016, Tinder has offered more gender options, including identifiers for trans people. However, despite Tahlia using a trans identifier on her profile, she still experienced a recent Tinder profile ban.)
“Yes I have and I still get banned after being reported by men who don’t think trans people should be on there,” Tahlia wrote in response to him.
“They do this to show how inclusive there are, but at the same time, trans women are getting banned,” Tahlia told VICE.
Jelena Vermilion, a 24-year-old trans woman who lives in Ontario, echoed Tahlia’s experience with Tinder. Currently, Vermilion is unable to access her account. Vermilion has reached out to Tinder about her account issue and has yet to hear back or have her account reinstated.
“It’s more damning in a way because it put a target on us,” Vermilion said about the option to show a trans qualifier on your profile, which she had been doing for the past couple of months.
Vermilion, like Tahlia, also has friends who identify as trans and have had similar issues with the app.
Vermilion had reactivated her account after her and her boyfriend broke up.
“As a trans person, it’s already difficult to explore dating—especially with this political climate,” Vermilion told VICE. “It feels very discouraging… I already have little hope when it comes to dating, so it’s like, OK, there’s one less option.”
Both Vermilion and Tahlia have also experienced men on Tinder sending them transphobic or trans-fetishizing messages. (Sometimes, Vermilion said, it appeared the men hadn't even bothered checking out her full profile before swiping right.) Vermilion expressed concern that Tinder might suspend and/or ban profiles based on the number of reports they get from other Tinder users.
When VICE reached out to Tinder for comment about this story—and specifically asked about its account suspension and banning processes—a spokesperson for the company issued the following emailed statement:
Tinder has made a firm commitment to inclusivity, and in November 2016, we rolled out our More Genders update in an effort to further demonstrate to our users that everyone is welcome on the app. We stand behind our pledge to make sure no one is ever removed from Tinder simply because of their gender. However, we must do everything we can to make sure that Tinder is a safe space for everyone, which means taking our community guidelines and user reports seriously. While we cannot share details regarding specific users or investigations, all users are held to the same standards and are removed from Tinder if they violate our community guidelines or terms of use .
But, as Tahlia put bluntly, Tinder’s statement does nothing for her and many others’ recurring issues with the dating app: “Unless they’re going to reinstate my account,” she said, “anything they say is performative bullshit.”
Rian Johnson's long-awaited Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, finally hits theaters this week. That's great news for all the Star Wars fans around the world who have been clutching tightly to their stuffed Porg dolls for months in anticipation of the big premiere, but not so great for the fans who aren't exactly on earth at all—namely, the astronauts currently living in the International Space Station.
According to a spokesperson from NASA, the space agency confirmed to Inverse this week that The Last Jedi will eventually be screened at the ISS—but the astronauts should probably keep away from spoilers, because it's not yet clear when the movie will actually get up there.
"[I] can confirm the crew will be able to watch it on orbit," NASA Public Affairs Officer Dan Huot told Inverse. "Don’t have a definitive timeline yet. They typically get movies as digital files and can play them back on a laptop or a standard projector that is currently aboard."
This isn't the first time movies have screened onboard the space station. As the Verge points out, ISS has a fancy projector and a library with hundreds of films, one that's screened The Force Awakens and some other sci-fi classics in the past. Even before they had the projector, folks on the ISS figured out ways to rig up their laptop to screen new releases, like astronaut Michael Barratt did to check out 2009's Star Trek reboot.
Sure, it makes sense that astronauts floating hundreds of miles above earth would still want to watch movies and keep up with the world back home, especially when its goddamn Last Jedi we're talking about, but still—can any movie really compete with just taking a stroll outside the space station?
For those of us still down here planet-side, The Last Jedi opens Friday, December 15—though if you didn't get your tickets months ago, you'll probably have to do like the ISS astronauts and wait.
Donald Trump’s visit to the UK could see the largest public demonstrations for decades. Protests against the US president's visit are expected to be huge, at least on the scale of the demonstrations against the Iraq War and George Bush in the mid-2000s – perhaps bigger.
Either way, it's not long until we find out. On Tuesday, the US ambassador to the UK confirmed that the visit has been pencilled in for early 2018.
While it’s likely the vast majority of those gathering will be telling him to go home, Trump isn’t universally disliked in the UK. He's popular among the UK’s right and far-right for the Islamophobic stances he’s taken so far – such as his travel ban on seven Muslim countries – and some British anti-Muslim activists have been planning demonstrations of their own ahead of his visit, to show their appreciation.
Following the news that a date looks set, a Twitter account called "I am British" has been posting videos building for a pro-Trump rally. The account's bio is "A diverse political movement STANDING UP for #Britishvalues". The man who appears in the videos, Rikki Doolan, is a personal assistant to Uebert Angel, a self-described prophet and business coach.
When not hyping Trump’s visit or retweeting his boss’s business ventures, Doolan posts tweets like "No SIN can OUTWEIGH the sacrifice of JESUS" and "What an HONOUR and BLESSING it is to SERVE God and his Prophet".
Doolan has been tweeting about such a march since July, and the fact these tweets have been getting thousands of retweets suggests there's an appetite for a demonstration. Britain First, the fascist group that Donald Trump controversially retweeted, confirmed to VICE that "Britain First and I Am British are jointly hosting the march". This was later denied by Doolan, who called this a "misunderstanding".
WATCH: Who Are the Football Lads Alliance?
Elsewhere, the Football Lads Alliance has shared a Facebook event for another pro-Trump protest on their page. Several hundred people have said they’re going.
After I started researching this article, Luke Nash-Jones – a British "alt-light" figure who describes himself as the "Prince of Kekistan" (alt-light is a new current of the right that doesn't support ethnic-nationalism) – got in touch to tell me about an "actual pro-Trump rally" with no involvement from Britain First, listing a number of right-wing organisations, individuals and front groups that would be backing it.
Nash-Jones told me the protest he was organising was being backed by Mo Fyaz – an ex-Muslim who speaks at protests organised by Tommy Robinson – and Winston McKenzie, the former Ukip candidate who made homophobic comments in Celebrity Big Brother.
He also said two groups linked to the Football Lads Alliance (FLA) – which has been drawing tens of thousands of people onto the streets to protest against Islamist extremism – will be backing his protest. One of these was a group called "Chelsea Football Lads". I asked if this included any of the notorious Chelsea Headhunters firm, and Nash-Jones replied: "Hooligans firms are absolutely not invited and we certainly are not inviting Headhunters. Only peaceful football lads, from any team, with no convictions are welcomed to join us."
WATCH: British Police Have Been Training Sri-Lankan Cops Linked to War Crimes
What the "actual" pro-Trump demonstration could look like is difficult to say at this point. As Nash-Jones pointed out in his email, "Every man and his dog is adding Facebook events for a march."
Former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson has expressed his support for the pro-Trump demos, asking his Twitter followers if they would stand with him in opposing "left-wing fascists", who he claims are planning to riot when Trump visits the UK.
Trump’s inauguration was met with violence when a left-wing "black bloc" torched a limousine and ran around knocking over trashcans in protest. 194 alleged participants are now facing 60 years in jail. It wouldn’t be a shock if some members of the far-left use Trump’s visit to vent their anger on street furniture, but the majority of the anti-Trump protesters are unlikely to kick any bins or threaten any oversized cars.
If the UK’s far-right is planning on protesting on the same day, it makes the chance of political violence exploding onto the capital’s streets a lot more likely, especially as Robinson is using his growing social media profile to rally supporters.
Shortly after the Manchester terror attack, Robinson organised a protest which saw thousands take to the streets with only a week’s notice. If thousands of far-right activists decide to protest in support of Trump at the same time and in close proximity to hundreds of thousands of people who don’t want Trump in the UK, things could get pretty chaotic.
I was surprised at how little hype accompanied this year’s release of Logan Lucky, Steven Soderbergh’s first feature film since announcing his peculiar retirement in 2013 (more on that in a minute).
The film was well-received, despite an unremarkable performance at the box office. Virtually every critic who saw it had positive things to say. David Simms at the Atlantic likened it to a “cheerful sing-a-long of a movie,” and The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy called it a “breezy, unpretentious, just-for-fun film.”
Overall, it came off like a well-made little popcorn movie, a pleasant and minor summer release. I don’t know that it’s the best of the year, or the most important—hey there, Get Out, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name (and Twin Peaks, if you’re one of those people). But Logan Lucky managed to diagnose the present moment perfectly and received very little recognition for it.
We should have been on the lookout for more from the moment the film was announced. To be clear, Soderbergh never retired. Not really. He gave up directing “cinema.” What that actually means is that he was fed up with how stagnant Hollywood had become and how much the people at the top interfered with creative vision. Or, depending on who he was talking to, it stopped being fun. Or, in his most succinct explanation, “movies don’t matter anymore.” Less than a year after his “last” film, 2013’s Side Effects, he directed Behind the Candelabra, a movie but one made for TV, followed closely by the Cinemax series The Knick. He’s also spent time directing theatre and producing series like Amazon’s Red Oaks and Netflix’s Godless.
It seems Soderbergh bought into the golden age of television hard, essentially turning his back on filmmaking destined for the big screen, save for a few feature film producing credits. So again, if Soderbergh was so over “cinema,” it was clear that Logan Lucky must have held some special appeal when Rebecca Blunt’s screenplay landed in his inbox.
Logan Lucky follows a family (known to be cursed with bad luck) as they plan and execute a major heist. Their target: the Charlotte Motor Speedway in West Virginia during the incredibly popular Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR Race. Channing Tatum plays charming, down-to-his-last-penny single dad Jimmy Logan, with Adam Driver as his somber bartending brother Clyde. Together with their sister, Mellie (Riley Keough), and the Bang brothers, led by incarcerated explosives expert Joe (Daniel Craig), they take on the racetrack with the promise of millions in cash.
Soderbergh has described Logan Lucky as “the complete inversion of an Ocean’s movie,” referring to the Ocean’s 11 franchise he directed. And that’s a great way to look at it, with all the glamour and prestige stripped away. But there’s a lot more to the film than that. It’s a story custom made to resonate in 2017.
Our first hint of cultural critique comes when Jimmy loses his construction job in one of the film’s opening scenes. With a limp from an old football injury, Jimmy’s working with an undeclared “pre-existing condition,” which makes the insurance suits too nervous to keep him around. It’s an important detail, and feels even more so when he goes for a drink at his brother’s work, and we realize that Clyde has his own pre-existing condition as a war amputee—the proud veteran lost his lower arm at the very end of a tour in Iraq. The unemployability of Jimmy and low class standing of Clyde paints a rather ugly portrait of America’s treatment of disability. Even a patriot roped into a politically dubious (to say the least) war can’t seem to get much of a break.
That patriotism is a big part of Logan Lucky, and a big part of what makes the film so great. The characters all love their country, and are proud to call it home. As a viewer, you can’t escape the many symbols of America that permeate the film. From the ever-present stars and stripes, to the oddly moving rendition of “America the Beautiful” performed by LeAnn Rimes at the Coca-Cola 600. But something’s not quite right here, and we’re treated to a series of chinks in America’s armour.
The real anthem of the film is John Denver’s ode to West Virginia, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The first time it plays is in Jimmy’s car as he drives home from being fired. Pride and love of his home state are Jimmy’s escape. West Virginia (and the idea of America itself) is a fantasy that he longs for rather than a reality he celebrates.
A kind of McMansion vision of success permeates the film. With the have nots looking to crass commercialism (flashy cars, energy drinks, luxury condos overlooking the racetrack) as the prime example of the American Dream. Its true gift is in not looking down on its subjects, who are just regular folk trying to get by and finding diversions wherever they can. Jimmy lovingly helps his young daughter prepare for her beauty pageant, using heavy duty auto body tools to apply her spray tan in one of the film’s more tender scenes of “low culture” blending with good parenting.
Then there’s the target of the heist itself: a major NASCAR event. A symbol of both capitalism and America itself. The dimwitted Bang brothers (brought along at the sharper Joe’s insistence) go so far as to claim that “NASCAR is America,” as they question the moral implications of their crime. They’re not wrong. It’s a perfect symbol of capitalism, with cars wasting fuel as they drive at top speed in circles, making ridiculous amounts of money. And the track itself is built on landfills, threatening to cave in at any moment.
What better metaphor than going nowhere fast on a literal pile of garbage with a fresh coat of paint on it?
With an American president almost defined by excess—a boastful scam artist with a past peppered with bankruptcies, reality TV sleaze, and an uncanny ability to spend vast amounts of money while still seeming cheap and tacky—the film feels particularly timely. In fairness though, all of Logan Lucky’s allusions to wealth and class could be applied to the broken promise of the American Dream throughout history (though maybe that beauty pageant spray tan scene is worth a closer look).
The film even tackles systemic sexism and workplace harassment (speaking of the commander in chief). Released pre-Weinstein, it offers a conspicuously low-key condemnation of sexual misconduct that reads as much more meaningful on second viewing. In their attempt to convince the Bang brothers of the moral soundness of the heist, Jimmy and Clyde refer back to a former boss of Mellie’s who, when she was promoted to manager of the grocery store where she worked, became “handsy.”
We can infer that Mellie escaped the situation, as she’s now a hairdresser. While Mellie is clearly quite good at her job and seems passionate about what she does, it seems like more than coincidence that she’s chosen to dedicate herself to an industry dominated by women, and that she doesn’t bat an eye at the chance to rip off an industry defined by machismo.
These instances of abuse, mistreatment, and victimization, along with questions of ethics and “good” crimes, beget the question: who stands to lose from the Logans’ scheme. And here the film is quite clear, if implicitly so. Despite gobs of money being taken, this is effectively a victimless crime. Even if a large, faceless corporation stands to lose a few dollars (pennies, in the grand scheme of things), insurance companies pick up the slack, and they’re designed to do so. They’re incredibly efficient with money, after all, and have plenty to spare from doing things like fucking over poor people with disabilities.
Logan Lucky is both a portrait of working-class America and a clever bit of wish-fulfillment in which a fundamentally broken but self-perpetuating system is put in its place to the benefit of those in need. Only the system is too absurd to even feel it.
It’s a brilliant bit of satire. Of course Soderbergh was pulled back into the game. His minor titles have always been his best, smartest work. Movies like Magic Mike, Bubble, and The Girlfriend Experience are far better at reflecting the human stories of the day than titles like Traffic, Erin Brockovich, or Ocean’s 11.
But let’s not forget the writing. Film criticism tends to foreground the director, but it was the screenplay by newcomer Blunt that brought Soderbergh back to the table—and arguably achieved these moments of brilliance. Hopefully the folks with the cash will have noticed and recognized her talent.
I’ll be sure to line up for whatever she comes up with next. But then again, in a WTF twist, she may be an entirely fictional person, despite Soderbergh’s assurances otherwise. 2017, y’all.
Follow Frederick Blichert on Twitter .
While some animals can't stand their shitty, soul-crushing jobs and long for the chance to roam free among their fellow beasts, others just aren't cut out for serving the big man upstairs. One such defiant creature—Stormy the cow—decided to pursue her freedom over organized religion after fleeing from her spot next to Jesus in a church's live-animal nativity scene.
According to Philly.com, Stormy escaped from her pen at Philadelphia's Old First Reformed United Church of Christ two separate times early Thursday morning, after she was tapped to play the role of one of the farm animals who welcomed Christ into the world way back when. She'd been cooped up there for the church's annual crèche, but apparently couldn't jive with the whole Jesus thing—fleeing her cell at about 2:30 AM and hoofing it to a nearby highway, snarling the local traffic.
After someone called the cops, Animal Control managed to wrangle Stormy and send her back to the church. But, like those of us who aren't that into organized religion, the gentle beast fled the church again. At about 6:30 AM, she jetted from her pen and clomped down the street to a nearby parking garage.
Unluckily for Stormy, she is a cow, which means she can't run all that fast. It didn't take long for the cops to wrangle her yet again and shepherd her back to the godly prison from whence she came.
John Owens, a program assistant at the church, told Philly.com the folks running the nativity scene think someone may have fiddled with the gate and set Stormy free the first time around. Apparently some locals were worried about her getting cold at night, or riled up by the sights and sounds of the big city.
The church has no clue how she managed to blast out of her heavenly confines a second time. Call it whatever you want—rejection of a shitty job, a crisis of faith—but at the end of the day, Stormy turned out to be too much for the church to handle. They sent her back to her farm, tapping a new, less restless cow named Ginger to take her place next to Baby Jesus, NBC Philadelphia reports.
Congratulations, Stormy, you rebellious beast. May you never again find yourself conscripted to a life of piety and petting at the hands of local children.
Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.
Last week, a disturbing video capturing a racist attack on a family of three in a mall parking lot went viral. The incident occurred in St. Thomas, Ontario—nearby London, Ontario—and showed a man swinging a bat and screaming repetitively at those behind the camera.
“We got terrorists… ISIS, ISIS, we got ISIS right here!” the alleged attacker shouted in the video. At one point, the camera went sideways, and it appeared the man had hit someone with the bat.
A man was arrested the same day as the attack, on December 8, at a residence in London and charged with aggravated assault and three counts of assault with a weapon.
Now, CBC has reported that the man who was arrested and charged has been identified. Reportedly, his name is Mark Phillips, he’s 36 years old, and he’s worked as a Toronto-based personal injury lawyer.
Oh, and to top it off, he probably had a trust fund: Phillips is the great-grandson of former Toronto mayor Nathan Phillips, CBC reports.
That’s right, that’s the mayor that Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto—where city hall sits—was named after, nbd.
His uncle, Jeff Phillips, gave an interview to CBC: "His father is very upset," he said.
Jeff said that he had lost contact with Mark.
Mark’s LinkedIn profile states that he works at Barapp Law, but no info about him exists currently on the firm’s site. He is set to appear in court this week.
Dear So Sad Today,
When my boyfriend is tired, sad, or grumpy, he won’t want to have sex with me. Even though I know it’s probably not because of me, I get worried that he thinks our sex is boring or I feel ugly. It’s like the way I feel about myself is totally related to how much he wants to have sex with me. When he doesn’t want to, I start feeling rejected and like I need validation. So I will flirt with exes on FB message or DM Twitter people I think are cute. It hasn’t led to anything… yet… but I wish I didn’t have to do this. Also, sometimes I feel like I go to him for sex specifically when I know he isn’t in the mood, just to see if I can. Why do I do this? Help!
Thank you,
Seeking Something
Dear Seeking Something,
I understand why you would go to him for sex specifically when he isn’t in the mood—and it has nothing to do with sex. It’s about proving your “worth” to yourself. It’s like, OK, if I can get him to want me when he really isn’t feeling it, then I must really be: sexy, special, loved, or any myriad qualities you associate with sexual validation.
The truth is, this is all about you learning to take his feelings at face value and not reading into them in ways that make it about you. Some people process difficult emotions by fucking. They seek to escape themselves through union with another person. Others don’t want to be in their bodies at all when they feel shitty, and sex—for them—requires too much presence. In that moment, they don’t want to be present for anything! Namely themselves. It’s not about you.
Sadly, for those of us who seek validation outside of ourselves (most of us to one degree or another), there is never going to be enough external validation. Even if your boyfriend suddenly approached you in a bad mood and was like, “Baby, you can fix this,” your quest for validation would just shapeshift and find another thing that is “missing.” There are not enough FB messages, DMs, flirtations, sexts, makeouts, fucks, or I love yous to fill the hole inside of us. That’s the good news and the bad news: It has to come from within.
So how do we get self-esteem? One way is by doing esteemable acts. Since you do seem to be observant of the moods of others and have a sensitivity toward that, you might be able to channel your desire to please or “fix” a person by doing some volunteer work (not sexual!) that helps others.
xo
So Sad Today
Dear So Sad Today,
I had sex with the toxic dude again. It had been year and a half, and I thought I was over him. I thought I could just have sex with him and be able to handle it. But now it’s the same as before: me texting him, then waiting for a text back, and him ignoring me. So I’ve stopped texting him and blocked him on all my devices like you say to do. But now what do I do with all of this shame and sadness? It’s been five days, and I am still feeling like shit. I seriously can’t believe I’m back here again.
Yours Truly,
What the Fuck
Dear What the Fuck,
Let me tell you a little story. It’s about me and a boy named Dylan: an art school-type kid who I had a major crush on in high school. I was an artist too (a writer) and definitely an inner weirdo, but I looked less “alt” and more just like a Jew from the suburbs who dabbled in Urban Outfitters and was struggling to figure out her hair. Dylan would make fun of me for being basic (before that was even a word) and thought he was way too cool to ever be involved with me.
Then, in my 20s, Dylan found me on Facebook and asked if I wanted to hang out. At this point I had figured out my hair and dressed much “edgier” than I had before (or at least, I wore these weird fishnet gloves). I decided that I was going to make Dylan want me. That was going to be the purpose of our meet up: Dylan would want me, and I would reject him. I had it all under control.
Well, the evening started off fine and he seemed maybe into me. But by the end of the night, I was so wasted that I forgot about my plan and invited him to come home with me. And there, in my bed, I somehow found myself basically begging him to let me suck his dick. To let me suck his dick! And to make matters worse—he rejected me!
I tell you this story for two reasons. First of all, I want to point out the common denominator in both of our situations. Both you and I thought, at the get-go, “No big deal, I got this, ain’t no thing.” Every time I’ve ended up humiliated, in emotional pain, it has started with “no big deal.” Beware of no big deal. No big deal is the slipperiest of slopes.
I also tell you this story just to say, OK, sometimes we fuck up! Sometimes we need to reach our hand into our shitty old bag of tricks just to make sure they are still shitty. Then, we get shit on our hand and have to clean ourselves up again. In a perfect world we wouldn’t have to touch the shit to know it is shitty. But we forget! We forget shit is shitty, because we are human, and sometimes shit looks like it is no longer shitty from afar. It’s OK. Just keep him blocked.
xo
So Sad Today
Buy So Sad Today: Personal Essays on Amazon, and follow her on Twitter.
