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Meet the Nieratkos: Alia Janine Can Take a Dick and a Joke

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Tracy Morgan says in his classic 2010 stand-up special “Black and Blue” that “if you can take a dick, you can take a joke.” I wanted to test that theory, so I tracked down Alia Janine, a former porn star currently trying to break into the stand-up circuit. As the 150 dirty movies she made during her career can attest to, Alia can take a dick just fine, but she’s still relatively new to the comedy world.

When I reached out to her to set up this interview Alia told me it just so happened to be the night of her graduation performance from the Manhattan Comedy School at the Gotham Comedy Club, and would my wife and I like to attend? Having suffered through my fair share of painful open mic and new talent nights full of shitty comics with no delivery, I considered declining the invitation. But Alia assured me there were actually a lot of funny people in her class. She was sort of correct: of the 12 or so comedians, six were funny, two were bad, two were depressing, and two were just plain dreadful. Luckily, Alia was one of the funnier ones.

I called her the next day to discuss the transition from porn to comedy, to see what she missed most about her old job, bukake, and living near Jeffrey Dahmer.

VICE: Tracy Morgan once said, “If you can take a dick, you can take a joke.” As a former porn star turned comedian, how has taking a dick helped you in comedy?
Alia Janine:
Immensely. If it weren’t for the dick I wouldn’t be here today. But I have taken quite a few dicks and I’m pretty good at the jokes, too. Porn stars and comedians have a shitload in common and I have a joke about it in my act. If you haven’t lived in misery or you’ve lived a perfect life you can’t tell a joke or take a joke. Tragedy is comedy.

You started porn late, at age 30. Did you still deal with some doses of on set tragedy?
I’ve gotten ripped off before where I didn’t get paid or the check bounced, but for the most part no. People would try to get me to do extra stuff without getting paid for it and I’d be like, “Why don’t you pay me?” There’s a reason I did what I did and why people do porn: they really like sex. I enjoyed different types of sexual experiences and different types of threesomes. One of my favorite threesomes was with me, Katie Summers, and Tiffany Star, who is a tranny. It was fun because I love girls but I also love dick, so it was a great combination.

How did the whole comedy thing come about?
The strip club I used to work at in Milwaukee had a comedy club underneath it called Jokers, so I went down there a lot and that’s how I got into it. When I retired from porn and moved to Manhattan I started taking a bunch of classes at the Manhattan Comedy School, which hosted my graduation show that you have for this piece.

What’s more stressful: doing stand-up in front of a crowd of people or having sex on camera in a room full of people?
Oh, definitely doing stand-up. My first-time porn experience was awkward because it was a solo masturbation scene and the camera guy was this really creepy Cuban dude who looked like he was from a 70s porno. Those masturbation scenes are always awkward because masturbation is something you usually do alone. But my first actual sex scene I didn’t mind because someone else was there and I was having sex. Doing comedy is like being mentally naked. It takes some getting used to.

What do you miss most about the porn industry?
Having sex a lot more. I’m very particular, and in porn I’d work with a lot of the same guys, who were really fucking hot, and I’d be getting paid for it. I see some of these other women at bars who dress like strippers and act like whores and then they go around and talk shit about actual porn stars; it’s just hilarious to me. It’s like, “you do realize that you guys could get paid $300 for sex instead of a $20 drink?”

I did the simple math and you did 150 scenes in four years, which is roughly three scenes a month. Getting laid every ten days isn’t really that impressive.
Well, I was having a lot of sex off camera with the people I was having sex with on camera.

Porn seems to have that sort of mafia quality with girls, where whenever you try to get out it pulls you back in. Do you think you’ll ever go back?
A lot of people keep asking me that. They’re waiting for a comeback, which is kind of sad and hilarious at the same time. I told them the only way I would come back is if they did a parody of Popeye and I was Olive Oil.

What if they offered to fulfill your other fantasy: a midget threesome.
Oh, comedian Brad Williams has already got that on lockdown! Next time I go to LA we’re going to try and find another midget to have a threesome with. I have to do it now! I want it! It’d be fucking awesome. Who hasn’t thought of a midget threesome? I would love to bang Peter Dinklage, but he’s married.

There was a chance that you almost didn’t make it out of Milwaukee. Didn’t you tell me that you used to date Jeffrey Dahmer?
No, that’s awkward. No, no. I have a vagina so I wasn’t his type at all and I was just a little girl in middle school when all that happened. We’d see him in the neighborhood. My mom had spoken to him a couple of times. Dahmer lived in the same neighborhood as my mom’s ex-boyfriend. They closed down the chocolate factory that he worked at and tore down the building that he lived in just to pretend like he never existed. It was weird. Milwaukee is a pretty gnarly city; people don’t realize that. For a while we had the fourth highest murder rate per capita in the country. So hearing about people dying there isn’t all that surprising, but hearing something like this, with a guy who ate people, was definitely a shock to the system. A serial killer is a hard thing for any city to deal with but when they’re saving their body parts and eating them and having sex with them it’s a little strange.

I’m surprised you don’t have a Dahmer bit in your act.
I’m working on one. I have enough jokes for a whole hour but I have to pick and choose which ones I’m going to use for a five minute set. The Dahmer joke is how my mom always used to tell me she was so glad that I was a girl and her reasons were that she didn’t have to deal with little boners and that I went to Catholic school and lastly because Dahmer was my neighbor so I was safe.

One of your other jokes is about bukake. Have you ever done that?
No. There are certain things, like bukake and gangbangs, that I wouldn’t do no matter how much money I needed. I like to swallow but playing with the cum makes me gag.

What makes me gag is when all that cum mixes with the girls’ makeup and turns a blackish/brownish color and then they drink it.
Oh yeah! They’re covered in a lot of makeup. Like when I do cum swapping in a video I’m always the first one to take it and then spit it in the other girl’s mouth because I would throw up. I’ve never told anyone this. I’m always like, “Yeah, I’ll suck it out, I’m good at that.” I totally took control every time I did that or else I’d be sick. I can handle blood and guts and brain matter splattered on a wall, but I can’t handle swallowing cum if it doesn’t come directly out of the penis.

What would you do if one of your old porn fans came to your comedy show and started beating off?
They’d probably get arrested. I’d be more embarrassed for them than for myself. I’ve had some of my fans come to my comedy stuff but never cum at my comedy stuff. They’re cool guys. They always want to go and smoke a blunt afterward.

Check out Alia's website and follow her on Twitter

More stupid can be found on Chris' website and his Twitter


Are We in Control of Our Brains? Probably Not

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Are We in Control of Our Brains? Probably Not

We Talked to the Gun-Toting Lawyer Who Made the "Hot/Crazy Women Matrix" Video

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The video that started it all!
A gun-toting, 46 year old man with the swag of Hank Hill has inadvertently placed himself in the centre of an online conversation about attractiveness, gender, and misogyny. In a video published by a group called “Tactical Response,” which normally programs their YouTube channel with videos of dudes firing off rifles at the gun range, Dana McClendon, a divorce and family law lawyer from Nashville, TN, stands in front of a white board and demonstrates the “Universal Hot/Crazy Matrix” which he says is “everything a young man needs to know about women.”

The video is ostensibly a comedy routine, which some viewers have observed to be a light-hearted, pseudo-science elaboration of this terrible joke from How I Met Your Mother.

According to Dana’s video, women break down into seven zones: the No Go Zone (for women who are unattractive and crazy), the Danger Zone (for women who are attractive, but crazy), the Fun Zone (for women who are fairly attractive but not very crazy), the Date Zone (for attractive women who are kinda crazy), the Wife Zone (for women who are very attractive but only a little crazy), and the Unicorn Zone (a place where mythical creatures dwell: i.e., attractive women who are barely crazy).

Then, finally, there is the “Tranny Zone,” for attractive women who aren’t crazy at all. Because we all know that if you’re talking to a hot lady who’s not a psychopath, she’s probably a dude who’s all pumped up on estrogen injections. Even though many of us are trying to progress towards a society devoid of transphobia, it would still be totally gross to end up getting tricked into dating one, bro!

Unsurprisingly, Dana’s video has pissed off a lot of people. The original clip is well over 830,000 views, and shorter versions of it have sprung up on Facebook, WorldStarHipHop, and anywhere you can find low-quality internet comedy videos. I called Dana on his cell phone to talk to him about the shitstorm he’s brought upon himself.

VICE: Are you surprised by the amount of attention your video has got?
Dana McClendon: I didn’t expect that millions of people would see it. I guess it’s viral. I never contemplated that would happen.

Is it a joke? Or is it something that you seriously believe?
Of course it is, of course it’s a joke. I don’t know what video you saw—there’s the original video, that’s seven minutes long. And then one that many people have seen has been clipped, and edited down to five minutes. The one that’s seven minutes long, it’s much more obvious, because there’s an intro, [that it’s a joke].

I originally saw the clipped one, but then I found the original video that Tactical Response posted…
That’s the original. I think it should be fairly obvious when I introduce myself as “the terrorist mouthpiece” that we’re kidding around.

So I guess it’s kinda frustrating to have an out-of-context version floating around out there?
Yeah, I wish people would have just linked to the one that we made. I don’t know why they didn’t, but there’s a couple of dudes out there using it to solicit wives. They clip it and put it on their own YouTube or Facebook page and say, “Hey if you’re in the wife zone, hit me up.”

Are you married?
[Laughs] I’ve been married for 22 years.

What does your wife think of this?
She thinks it’s funny, and she tells me every day she’s a unicorn.

OK. Do you regret making the video now, because of how popular it’s gotten?
No… I’m sorry that there’s people who have gotten so offended, but I know we were goofing around, I know how I lead my life… Some of the people who are the most outraged are quick to then throw names at me like “pig” and “fat” and “ugly” and “stupid.” I don’t regret it, but I never figured that millions of people would see it.



Dana in his natural habit. via Facebook.
What is your relationship with Tactical Response? How did this all come about?
Oh, James, the guy that runs Tactical Response, is a friend and a client. It was completely spontaneous. I was there one day, we were having a conversation, he said something about someone’s girlfriend, and I said, “Oh, danger zone.” And he said, “What do you mean?” And I drew the chart for him. And he said, “Oh that’s funny, you should do a video.” And I said, OK, let’s do it!

Literally one take. Five minutes, beginning to end, done. Then he posted it a couple of days later, and that was less than two weeks ago.

So had you already preconceived that chart? Or did you make it up on the spot?
I had shown people that on napkins, I had done it jokingly, and everyone I showed it to was like, “Oh my god, that’s hilarious.”

Are you wearing a gun on your hip during that video?
Yes.

OK, cool. So I guess you guys are obviously pro-gun rights?
[Laughs] Well, yeah. The presence of the gun in the video is a complete coincidence, other than the fact that I carry. It wasn’t there for making a statement or anything. People have observed that, but I carry a gun, so…

I’m Canadian, so it stands out more. But I guess it’s normal for you.
Yeah. It’s an everyday thing for me.

Are you familiar with pick-up artists?
The movie?

No, they’re guys who develop strategies and tactics for picking up women at bars or out in public.
Oh, no, I’m 46 and I’ve been married for a long time to a girl I met when I was 18.

Alright, your video has a lot of similarities to the type of pseudo-science they practice for picking up women.
Like I said, it’s farcical, parody, comedy, from beginning to end. I certainly don’t think anyone should follow this advice literally.

It does kinda seem like some people are taking it literally.
I think it’s hit a nerve.

Why do you think it’s hit a nerve?
Because I think the best comedy makes us examine ourselves, and our beliefs, and things we take for granted. The best comedy is sometimes irreverent.

Yeah… But…
Sometimes you challenge your beliefs and you validate the belief, other times you challenge it and you think, “Maybe I should think a little differently.”

Following that thought, what is the comedy in your video trying to accomplish?
Overwhelmingly guys laugh at this and go, “Yeah I get it.” So to some extent, it is locker room humour, fine. If you want to be critical of that, that’s fine. On the other hand it is kinda mocking the way guys look at the world. If you have a guy who thinks like this, in this simplistic fashion, there are guys that think that way, and I’m mocking that.

A lot of people said I stole this from How I Met Your Mother. Well, no. How I Met Your Mother is the first place a lot of people saw this, but this conversation has been going on between men and women forever. Apparently it hits a little too close to home for some people. You could probably find someone to tell you why they’re bent out shape.

I guess people would say it’s sexist to reduce women to a number rating. That’s probably why most people are upset.
OK, but pay close attention to the video. I said, in the video, that if she’s not a 5 in your mind… I could have put “attractive” rather than hot, and that could have encompassed humour, intellect, common interests… I used some rather simplistic terms, but the reality is if you’re not attracted to someone then you’re not going to pursue them. I could have put, on the horizontal axis, “overall attractiveness, including her personality, her intellect, her humour, her interests, whatever.”

But I did say, a 5 in your mind. I didn’t say a 5 in my mind, or a 5 in the eyes of Hollywood, or a 5 in the eyes of fashion. It should be kinda obvious that everyone needs to pick what they’re after.

Yeah. And you have found your unicorn? They do exist?
Oh yeah. Every dude that sees this should take the opportunity to show it to his significant other and tell her she’s a unicorn.

That’s good advice. Will you be doing any more videos of this sort or has this whole experience turned you off?
I thought about doing one with my wife… so we’ll see.

Yeah we’ll see if she’ll go for that!
[Laughs] She very well might. You can imagine the type of person that would put up with me for 28 years.

I bet. Anything you’d like to add?
I would like for people to realize that, just like no complex relationship can be reduced to a two-dimensional chart, I’m not just some poster boy for misogyny. I’m actually a real guy with a real wife and a real family, and a mother, and a sister, and nieces… People that are making me into a caricature for misogyny, I get it, but they should probably slow their roll. I’m not really that guy.

Some would argue that you made yourself into a caricature of misogyny.
Oh I get it. I made the video. I’m not blaming anyone else for me making the video. I’m just saying, take a minute, take a deep breath… Way uglier things have been said to me and about me [in the comments] than anything else in that video. So, let’s all just realize that nothing is all that it may first appear. It’s gonna be OK.

Yeah, it’s gonna be OK. Thanks man.


@patrickmcguire

The Los Angeles Lakers Are America, and You Should Love Them for It

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The Los Angeles Lakers Are America, and You Should Love Them for It

Bolivia Passed a Law Allowing Ten-Year-Olds to Work

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Young laborers who work inside the Cerro Rico mine in Bolivia. Photo by Jackson Fager

Last year, VICE reported on attempts in Bolivia to legalize child labor. A group of young workers—ages ten to 18—had formed a political group called Unatsbo, the Union of Child and Adolescent Laborers, and these kids wanted the Bolivian government to lower the legal working age to ten years old. On our trip, we met a 17-year-old street clown, a 12-year-old miner, and a 15-year-old gravestone cleaner, all of whom, for reasons of economic necessity, had to work in order to survive. From what we saw, their families were loving and often intact, but they were so poor that without the child's income, the family would've starved. In other words, these kids didn't choose to work—they had to. Cristina, for example—the girl who polished gravestones—made a few dollars each day and gave half to her family, and used the other half to buy school supplies. When I asked her if being around corpses all day was frightening, she told me, No, it wasn't. "I'm more afraid of life," she said, "than death."

The logic behind Unatsbo's efforts is similar to the logic behind legalizing, say, prostitution: In a perfect world, no one would be compelled by economic necessity to be a prostitute or child worker. But we don't live in a perfect world, so why don't we offer those people involved in illicit industries protection under the law? For young Bolivian laborers—of whom there are an estimated 850,000—this would mean the ability to get benefits, disability pay, and to have a legally-enforced minimum wage. It was a counterintuitive argument, but the young people we met on our trip told us stories about bosses stealing their paychecks, about being beaten and abused, and with Unatsbo, at least, they had banded together in common cause. They'd even drafted legislation to lower the working age, which they presented to the Bolivian government in December of last year. Unfortunately, the kids—who marched carrying signs reading "If I don't work, how will my family eat?"—were met by police. The spectacle of 12-year-olds being roughed up by cops, simply because the kids wanted to work, underscored how huge and persistent the chasm between life in the First World and the Third World remains.

Last week, Bolivia's Vice President acknowledged this chasm by passing a law that would horrify most Americans or Europeans—he signed a version of Unatsbo's legislation to lower the working age. In so doing, Bolivia became the first country in the world to allow ten-year-olds to work, flagrantly violating the UN's Convention that prohibits children under 14 from holding a job. According to the new law, children from ten to 12 years old can be "self-employed"—selling chewing gum on the street, shining shoes—and children from 12 to 14 can work as "independent contractors," which means a boss can hire them to help in stores, workshops, farms. Kids can only work six hours a day, with their parents' permission, and only as long as the job doesn't interfere with their schooling.

Opponents of the new law include the UN and the International Labor Organization, and the dangers presented by it are obvious: Freed from legal prohibition, critics fear that kids may be compelled to choose work over school, and child labor may become codified and encouraged rather than discouraged and combated. Supporters of the law, like Bolivian Senator Adolfo Mendoza, reply by pointing out the potential benefits: Now, just like adults, employers will have to pay children the legal minimum wage. Exploited children will have the backing of lawyers and the department of labor if they are mistreated. These kids are going to work anyway, the logic goes—why not regulate and protect them?

No one can predict if, ultimately, this law will help or hurt Bolivia's young workers. But, at the very least, it seems to acknowledge a reality that kids like Cristina, the gravestone cleaner, have long understood: banning child labor won't, on its own, make it go away; it just means that kids will work in the shadows. Bolivia's child laborers, for better or worse, are now in the limelight.

To meet Cristina and Bolivia's other Unatsbo members, watch our documentary, Child Workers of the World, Unite!

Why Did Police Arrest This Man In Front of His Kids at Eric Garner's Funeral?

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Calvin Bryant protesting outside Eric Garner's funeral in Brooklyn. Photos by Bobby Viteri

On Friday, Staten Island resident Eric Garner's death was officially ruled a homicide. For the last two weeks, New York City has been roiled by video of him gasping his last words—“I can’t breathe!"—after an NYPD officer put him in a choke-hold while arresting him on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes. At Garner’s funeral on July 23 at Bethel Baptist Church in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood, reporters and news crews swarmed the block, interviewing relatives, high-profile guests like the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other attendees.

What the local press didn’t see that evening, and what has gone unreported until now, is that police officers chose the funeral of a man whose death in police custody has put the NYPD on the defensive to make another, very public arrest of a guy who wasn’t doing anything illegal at the time.

Among those interviewed during the media circus outside the funeral was Calvin Bryant, a 53-year-old anti-police-violence activist who says he knew Garner growing up. Bryant was angry, and let the press know it as he stood with his cousin, Richard Kirkpatrick, and his two young children, holding a sign that read “# I Can’t Breath” and wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the face of Ramarley Graham, the Bronx teenager killed in his own home by police in 2012. “When is this going to stop?” Bryant asked reporters, clutching his shirt. “Ramarley Graham, this case ain’t been solved yet, and already you’ve got the nerve to kill this man Eric Garner.”

After the funeral, as Kirkpatrick, Bryant and his children were leaving the church, they were approached by a group of plainclothes cops. Kirkpatrick says he was asked, “Is that your cousin, Calvin Bryant?” When he confirmed Bryant’s identity, he says, police followed them down the block and arrested Bryant.

In addition to an outstanding bench warrant, Bryant was charged with resisting arrest. According to the arrest document, “The defendant did resist a lawful arrest by flailing the defendant’s arms and pushing the deponent while the deponent attempted to place the defendant in handcuffs.”

Bryant and Kirkpatrick vehemently deny that accusation. “I didn’t resist arrest,” Bryant says. “I didn’t have time. I was holding my kids’ hands so I wouldn’t have been able to throw my hands up.”

Fittingly, given the current furor over videotaped police conduct, there’s video of the arrest, shot by Kirkpatrick. The video shows Bryant held up against a car on Bergen Street by five cops in the classic plainclothes mufti of sports jerseys and cargo shorts. Doubled over the hood of a parked car, Bryant begs his cousin to watch his two children, who can be heard crying in the background. An angry crowd shouts at the officers cuffing him. In the video, Bryant can’t exactly be said to be submitting quietly to arrest, but neither does he appear to flail his arms or push any police officers. Then again, the video only begins partway through the arrest—what happened beforehand isn’t documented.

What is known is that in the course of the arrest, Bryant suffered a blow to the head. He was taken in custody to Brooklyn Hospital Center, where he received a CT scan and was given pain medication. He was brought back to the precinct before being arraigned the next morning. Prosecutors offered to let him plead to a lesser charge and walk away with time served, but Bryant wasn’t interested, preferring to fight the resisting arrest charge. “It didn’t happen,” he says.

The arrest was hardly Bryant’s first run-in with the law. He’s got a lengthy rap sheet of misdemeanors, and did a bid upstate for a 1980 robbery. He also had the outstanding bench warrant from 2010, when he failed to appear in court on charges that he was scamming tourists outside a strip club in Manhattan. (Bryant says he missed the court date when his grandmother died and he had to go down to Alabama.) It was for this open warrant that Bryant was arrested at the funeral, and his lawyers concede that there’s nothing technically improper about the police arresting a man with an open warrant. They speculate that police officers overheard Bryant give his name to reporters before the funeral, and ran him through their database.

What Bryant and his lawyers do find troubling is the time and place of an arrest that could have been made somewhere else, and at any other time.

"Why on earth choose this moment?” asks Scott Hechinger, one of the lawyers working on Bryant’s case. “There's about a million other ways to arrest this guy. Get him at his house the day before, the day after, any time over the last four years. Why choose the funeral service—the service that they caused—to inflame tensions? The timing just makes you wonder: Is this to make a statement?”

The NYPD didn't respond to a request for comment. But the furor following Garner’s death challenges the core principle of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton: the “Broken Windows” model of aggressively policing minor infractions. So far, Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio are defending that policy, even as its critics are taking the opportunity to demand change.

Rank-and-file police have also been grappling with how they’re perceived over the last two weeks. As New York magazine found, at least some police officers feel unfairly judged amid the public horror at Garner’s death, and believe that, far from being a victim, he got what was coming to him. It’s not inconceivable that officers assigned to Garner’s funeral didn’t take kindly to the sort of criticism Bryant was dishing out, and that they wanted to make a statement of their own.

Carleton Burkley, a retired NYPD detective turned police-reform advocate, says he’s encountered Bryant before at rallies and demonstrations, and Bryant has a reputation for stirring crowds up after police killings. “I’m not telling you that for doing that, people should target him,” Burkley says. “But I am saying the police are known to target people who do that, because they’re trying to send a message: ‘We know who you are. We’re watching.’”

But if there’s one message the video of Garner’s final moments drove home, it’s that the cops aren’t the only ones watching. Whether the officers who arrested Calvin Bryant intended to send a message at the funeral or not, the incident is unlikely to do anything to ease the tensions between New Yorkers and their police that have spiked over the last two weeks.

Follow Nick Pinto on Twitter.

The Week in GIFs: DMX Screamed Like an Insane Person While Riding a Roller Coaster

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Gifs by Daniel Stuckey

Rapper DMX is known not only for his ability to rhyme to a beat, but also his tough guy persona and abiding interest in making weird dog noises at inappropriate times. In this incredible viral video, which you can see here, the Ruff Ryder himself rydes the ruffest roller coaster of them all—the Sling Shot in Orlando—which caused him to repeatedly grunt as though he was ejaculating while taking a shit, getting a car battery attached to his testicles, having his nipples pinched, letting a guy tickle his armpits, and watching that cool guy get his head smashed on Game of Thrones all at the same time. In other words, it was INTENSE.

After the truly scary part was over, DMX told the guy who sat next to him on the ride, "yeah, we did that, nigga." Also something about "stone cold ice faced grill." Despite all the scary stuff, the thing DMX was most concerned about was his gold chain falling off. It must have been DMX's first roller coaster, as I always take my expensive jewelry off before I get on the ride

For only $9.95 a month (or $99.95 a year) you can enjoy news, commentary, and so much more from former politician/former reality TV star/former cable news pundit/former best-selling author Sarah Palin. Taking a cue from conservative personalities like Dennis Miller and Glenn Beck, Palin is taking her message directly to her supporters.

Palin seems to think that it's somehow difficult for her to get her point across because it's so controversial, but I see people like her on Hollywood Boulevard screaming into a bullhorn all the time. What is she, lazier than those people? I can see that guy for free! On the plus side for Sarah, she's got a more even tan than he does.

Juggalo-mania is sweeping the nation! And on a slightly smaller scale, it is also sweeping VICE.com. Check out all of our coverage of the Gathering of the Juggalos, where you can see more pictures of this woman twerking on a 500-pound man. I'm mesmerized!

A 90-year-old water main burst near the campus of UCLA this week, flooding Sunset Boulevard with 8 to 10 million gallons of h2-uh-oh. Kinda like how I burst into Amy—y'know Amy, that smokin' hot little coed I was telling you about from the dorm down the hall? Kinda like how I burst into her coochie last night, making her pussy flood with, like, 8 to 10 million gallons of pussy juice. Dude, she wanted it so bad, man. She was fuckin' begging for it, bro. Anyway, pretty fucked up about all that water and shit. Especially since California's in, like, a drought or whatever. What are you doin' tonight? Wanna grab some sushi?

Lana Del Rey's new music video for the track "Ultraviolence" is up on Noisey. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do so now. We'll be here when you get back. Or, you know, like... open it in another window so you can watch it while you read the rest of this article. Whatever works!

Battered bigot/human toilet Donald Sterling lost his basketball team this week, after a Los Angeles judge ruled that his long-suffering wife was allowed to sell the Clippers to former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer for $2 billion dollars. Sterling, who paid $12.5 million for the Clippers in 1981, stands to make a fucking killing on the deal, proving the old adage that the worse you are, the more God blesses you. In related news, life is utterly devoid of logic or meaning, good things consistently happen to bad people, and you will not be remembered when you die. ;)

If you've always wanted to destroy a drone with a giant shotgun, but just didn't have a free 15 minute slot in your iCal, you can always live vicariously through Motherboard's new documentary, Johnny Dronehunter. Good luck spying on this guy.

The current death toll in Gaza? At least 1,410 Palestinians and 56 Israelis. The majority of the Palestinian casualties have been civilians. Earlier this week, former child star Daniel Radcliff gave a fan a bad haircut during his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Some guy named Guillermo, who the internet informs me is Kimmel's sidekick on the (unwatchable) program, fixed the cut after Radcliff gave up. So, y'know.

In actual news, VICE News has a new documentary out about oil theft perpetrated by the Mexican drug cartels hosted by Suroosh Alvi. The cartels are diversifying their activities, and have started tapping crude oil reserves from Mexico's state-run oil company. You can watch the full-length doc now on YouTube.

Follow Dave, Megan, and Daniel on Twitter.

'When Genocide Is Permissible': The Unsettling Op-Ed That Never Was

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A screenshot of the op-ed before it was taken offline. Via

The Times of Israel has removed an op-ed written by Yochanan Gordon with the stunning headline “When Genocide is Permissible,” which posited Israel would be morally right if it decided killing all members of Hamas was the only path toward sustainable peace in the region.

Gordon’s article was also taken down from 5 Towns Jewish Times, an Orthodox Jewish news website for which Gordon is listed as a sales manager and that is apparently run by his father. The op-ed appeared on the Ops and Blogs section of the Times’ website, where the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported Gordon had immediate posting rights. Miriam Herschlag, the publication’s opinion editor, said Gordon uploaded his article independent of any Times staff.

“The blog post, which was both damnable and ignorant, was uploaded by a blogger,” Herschlag, told the JTA. “It was removed by the Times of Israel for breaching our editorial guidelines. The blog has been discontinued.”

Available on Mondoweiss, the full text of Gordon’s op-ed has also been captured by Twitter users and is being shared with a tone of incredulity and, in some cases, outrage. In his piece Gordon argued that, while many in the international community agree that Israel has the right to defend itself against rocket attacks from Hamas, the “only point of contention is regarding the measure of punishment meted out in this situation.” For Gordon, that measure of punishment is apparently the complete destruction of Gaza and the genocide of Hamas.

“I will conclude with a question for all the humanitarians out there,” Gordon wrote. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?”

In addition to the remarkable irony of a Jewish man calling for the killing of an entire group of people, Gordon’s op-ed includes a strange reference to NBA basketball. And at some point the nature of war changed, something Gordon just recently became aware of.

“Where wars were usually waged to defeat the opposing side, today it seems – and judging by the number of foul calls it would indicate—that today’s wars are fought to a draw. I mean, whoever heard of a timeout in war? An NBA Basketball game allows six timeouts for each team during the course of a game, but last I checked this is a war!”

A war in which one side is demonstrably outgunned and has resulted—overwhelmingly—in the death of Palestinian civilians, many of them children. As of this writing 1,372 Palestinians, 56 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians have been killed in the conflict.

Gordon’s other blog posts on The Times’ website are still available. In one, titled “Israel and its War Against Evil,” Gordon blames the media for not exposing the good deeds performed by the Israeli Defense Forces, including the evacuation of a Gazan woman and her family from an area that was later bombed.

That international media outlets haven’t reported on such events, Gordon wrote, is indicative of their “fear of making Israel look like the moral army, absolved of any disproportionality that it really is.”

In similar fashion to others who have blamed the media for what is seen by some as pro-Palestinian coverage, Gordon added, “Clearly, these stated commentators have distinguished themselves as pursuing anything which makes Israel look like the aggressor—which is patently false.”

In that same post, Gordon mentions “Obamas [sic] Muslim upbringing” as being somehow indicative of the fact “that most civilized people may have a different understanding of the word building.”

Alan Elsner, vice president of communications for J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy group, was floored by the content of Gordon’s article when reached by phone Friday afternoon.

“This is so far out there it is beyond belief,” Elsner said. “Speaking as the son of a Holocaust survivor, let me just say that genocide is never permissible. To even ask that question is beyond the pale. If the question is to defeat the ideology—and the ideology of Hamas is certainly reprehensible—I can support that.”

Attempts to reach Gordon and other staffers at 5 Towns Jewish Times were unsuccessful, but a statement on the site says the article “dealt with the question of genocide in the most irresponsible fashion.”

“The piece should have been rejected out of hand by editors but escaped their proper attention,” the statement reads. “We reject such a suggestion unequivocally and apologize for the error.”

As of just after 3 PM EST Gordon had deleted his Twitter account, but another account purporting to be Gordon tweeted: "Disappointed in Times Of Israel for caving to pressure, deleting my article "When Genocide Is Permissable." [sic] The tweet included a link to a PDF copy of Gordon's piece.

UPDATE: Gordon has posted an apology on the 5 Towns Jewish Times website.

Justin Glawe is a freelance journalist based in Peoria, Illinois. He writes about crime there, and recently launched a reporting project that will address issues of child welfare on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation.


A Few Impressions: The Power of the Past in Cormac McCarthy's 'Wake for Susan'

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Photo via Wikimedia user Ammodramus

My adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s third novel, Child of God, is in theaters today, so I wrote about McCarthy's first published short story, “Wake for Susan,” to show that he has had a fascination with death since the beginning and is the undisputed master of the Southern macabre.

In Cormac McCarthy’s first published short story, “Wake for Susan,” he allows the past to peek through the screen of the present. Some aspects of the past are visible, but others remain just out of reach, creating a sense of mystery. The past feels both monumental and ephemeral. Like Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias, there is a sense of great and horrible people having done great deeds and created great edifices that are at the same time memorialized and destroyed and forgotten.

In this story, the past takes over the main narrative. Usually with McCarthy, the past is submerged behind the narrative present. But in “Wake for Susan,” the protagonist—a teenager named Wes—fantasizes about a girl named Susan who died in the century before his. His daydreams take over the narrative in such a way that his reality is often indistinguishable from hers. In his fantasies Wes projects himself as Susan’s lover and, because the fantasies are told as if they were happening in the present, Wes’s real-life activities become indistinguishable from his fantasized activities. There are so many details that it becomes unclear if Wes is draping the actions in the fantasies over actual experiences or if he is making up everything.

This approach allows McCarthy to foreground the creative act of imagination, which gives a simple story more of a punch than it would if it didn’t involve a young man pining after a dead stranger. The protagonist’s creative act of imagining the girl’s life is a metaphor for the role of the storyteller, and for the story itself.

He threw his arms around the unyielding stone and wept for lost Susan, for all the lost Susans, for all the people; so beautiful, so pathetic, so lost and wasted and ungrieved. (p. 6)

McCarthy loves the past like his character, and his approach in this story allows him to tell a simple story of young love and death while also attaining the grandeur of historical epic. The story begins with a series of small episodes that introduce the character of Wes through action, so that we can get to know the protagonist and the way he functions in the world before his fantasy takes over the narrative. It is important that we get to know Wes before we slip into his mind because he grounds the story in his head. Susan’s story is told in great detail, which gives it emotional resonance. It feels palpable.

But in the end, her story is just a fantasy and thus it is important that Wes is established as a real character. We are introduced to him at the end of an unsuccessful Sunday morning squirrel hunt and follow him on his walk home. These acts establish him as a solitary character. Even when his friend is mentioned, he is called “the Ford boy,” which suggests a lack of intimacy and an irregular companionship. This isolation sets up the daydreams that are soon to follow. Then we are shown how his imagination operates. After finding an old-fashioned rifle ball, he starts to wonder who fired it, and at whom. Several things happen here—first he conjectures that it might have been fired by a settler at an Indian, but then discards that idea for the likelier possibility.

It had been intended for game for a table of some later date when the Indians were all gone. Perhaps it had been fired only 30 or 40 years ago. The old muzzle-loaders were used in this part of the country until fairly recently, he knew. (p. 3)

By introducing the Indians and then dropping that possibility as belonging to an era too early to be plausible, McCarthy layers the history of the region. There were once Indians, and then a time when they were gone, and then there came the present of the protagonist. And in this present, we learn that this area was pretty slow to develop as they still used old-fashioned rifles and ammo until recently. The rifle ball provides the first call to the past and with it we experience the way Wes connects to history.

As Wes examined the rifle-ball, the woods became populated with ghosts of lean, rangy frontiersmen with powder-hors and bullet pouches slung from their shoulders and carrying long-barreled, brass-trimmed rifles with brown and gold maple stocks.  (p. 3)

We get the first glimpse of the way that Wes experiences history, which sets up his full leap into the past when he starts to contemplate the grave marker of Susan. The ball also leads Wes to the graveyard.

Wes pocketed the relic and walked quietly through time-haunted woods.

It was probably the discovery of the rifle-ball that prompted him to look for the burial plot.  (p. 3)

This world and this story are already drenched in the obsession with time before it gets to its main section, the fantasy of Susan. 

As Wes contemplates the grave marker of Susan, the narrative in the present gradually melts away and the fantasy of the past takes over—but Wes, the creator of the fantasy, is present in both time frames and blurs them together. Wes knows nothing about the actual Susan, so when he pictures her as a blue-eyed and yellow-haired girl, it is as if he is a fiction writer creating. Here, Wes and McCarthy are doing similar actions at the same time. They are both depicting an imaginary person. The grave marker is from 1834, a year that Wes thinks is close enough to emotionally connect to. When Wes compares 1834 to two earlier years he thinks are too distant to feel the humanity that filled them, it is not insignificant that the years are 1215—the year the Magna Carta was drafted—and 1066, the year of the Battle of Hastings. More layers—this time it’s European history dug out underneath the story to give it more depth. In the next paragraph, the fantasy takes over and Wes can only be seen as his imaginary version of himself that courts Susan. But the blending of the real Wes and the imaginary Wes is very powerful. On the next page, it is very difficult to understand which Wes is being written about.

And the boy ambled home and eased wearily to bed and tossed and rolled so that the bed-ropes had to be tightened for the second time in two weeks. 

Here the two versions of Wes become one as he lives out in detail what he imagines. The courtship he imagines is very uneventful and if it was told without the frame of Wes’s imagination, it would be a very plain tale. But it is Wes’s deep need to connect to that past and his loneliness and possible inability to connect to living people that makes his creation of a simple courtship so compelling.

Inside the Baghdad Brothel Massacre

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Inside the Baghdad Brothel Massacre

VICE News: Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine - Part 64

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After the Ukrainian military recaptured various cities across eastern Ukraine this week, VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky visited Debaltseve, a town at a strategic crossroads between Donetsk and Luhansk. The army appeared to be using the victory in Debaltseve to isolate those two rebel-held cities while it prepared to retake the MH17 crash site. Its successful campaign has come at a high cost of civilian deaths and troop casualties, forcing refugees to flee the fighting as the army works its way south.

House Music Comes Home

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House Music Comes Home

Madison East and Kris Kirk Shoot Photos of Their Stupid Punk Lives in LA

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Photos courtesy of Madison East and Kris Kirk 

Everyone thinks Los Angeles is a dirty, trash bag land full of dirty, trash bag whores and annoying people who put makeup on their babies. The city is a piece of garbage, but it’s also not. Lots of people live in LA without eating batteries for breakfast or throwing up yogurt at lunch. Although photographers Kris Kirk and Madison East eat batteries for breakfast, they also sip champagne during dinner. When Kirk isn’t making noise in his band DOSES, he’s collaborating with East, shooting images of their stupid punk lives in LA. 

On August 2, Nighted Life presents the opening of Play On: Madison East & Kris Kirk. The exhibit features portraits, moments, and installations representing Kirk and East’s lives in Los Angeles. During the opening night, a video installation will also play, showing “a decadent day in Los Angeles with Madison, Kris, and friends,” according to Kirk. In anticipation of the show, I decided to quiz Kirk and East about a few very important things, like if ghosts exist and how to become ugly. 

VICE: What does hell look like?
Kris Kirk: A Clash Concert.

On the back of the bus in the toilet someone is...
Hopefully setting explosives up to send the bus into oblivion.

When do you feel the sexiest?
On Fridays of course. It’s by far the sexiest day of the week. Flirty Friday forever

What are your thoughts on excuses?
I don't like excuses. People shouldn't make excuses—it's either one way or another. It's not that difficult.

Do you believe in ghosts? 
I don't know, but I used to get sleep paralysis a lot and that was cool. 

What makes the perfect photograph?
This is a very hard question that has a lot of answers and sides to it. To me, a perfect photograph is a photo that captures some sort of energy and emotion—composition, subject matter, and lighting also contribute to a great photo.

When was the first time you really got in trouble?
I never really got in trouble as a kid, but I remember I got yelled at and a pink slip—which is a piece of paper that goes in your school file—in elementary school because i shattered a kid's lunch box into a million pieces on the playground.

What is your most disgusting habit?
Madison East: Talking shit. 

What photographs are on the walls of your own home?
We have a collection of generic dog eight-by-tens (dachshund, lab, etc.), a stolen Dames n' Games now-hiring poster, a Take Me To Your Dealer poster, and a collection of past show fliers. Our walls are a bit curated and tend to change every seven to 12 months.

How does one become ugly?
Betrayal. 

What are some books you wish you had never shown to the public because they were so horrible?
In junior high my girlfriends and I made these collage/scrapbook/notes notebooks with pages of magazine cut-outs of Josh Hartnett and celebrities, love letters to our crushes, and embarrassing photos of each other. I almost burned them in high school after all my love interests leaked. I still have them, and I plan on using them in my upcoming book. 

Empty out your purse and take a photograph of everything inside it.

What is the one thing your parents always told you that you hated hearing?
Be patient.

If you had your own show, what would the theme song be?
Doja Cat “Cali Bitch Mentality.”

Do you like having your own photo taken? 
I don't like having my photo taken because I get flustered and I can never figure out how to smile or else I just look angry. My photos are a representation of myself through everything outside of myself and that is enough for me.

Opening reception: Saturday, August 2, 7 PM to 10 PM
4308 Burns Ave. Los Angeles, CA
(Exhibit also open all week by appointment)

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VICE News: Crimea: March of the Tatars

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In one of history's most severe and efficient incidents of mass exile, Stalin removed the Tatars from their homes in Crimea in 1944. Within just three days, authorities deported 200,000 Tatars. After spending 50 years in exile, the Tatars returned to their homeland during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then they have felt generally protected under Ukrainian rule. Following a fraudulent and illegal referendum earlier this year on whether to become part of Russia, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation—a move that brought back the local Tatar community's painful memories of persecution and oppression. 

VICE News spent time with Tatars around the time of the commemoration of their exile, finding a community already under pressure from new Russian authorities. It’s unclear what their future will hold under Russian rule, and many fear that history could repeat itself.

VICE News: Cocaine & Crude

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Mexico’s notoriously violent drug cartels are diversifying. Besides trafficking narcotics, extorting businesses, and brutally murdering their rivals, cartels are now at work exploiting their country’s precious number one export: oil. Every day as many as 10,000 barrels of crude oil are stolen from Mexico’s state-run oil company, Pemex, through precarious illegal taps, which are prone to deadly accidents. Pemex estimates that it loses $5 billion annually in stolen oil, some of which ends up being sold over the border in US gas stations. As police fight the thieves, and the cartels fight each other, the number of victims caught in the battle for the pipelines continues to climb. VICE founder Suroosh Alvi travels to Mexico to see the effects of cartel oil theft firsthand.


Blood Orange Says Lollapalooza Security Assaulted Him

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Blood Orange Says Lollapalooza Security Assaulted Him

Norway's North Sea Divers Lost Their Minds Over Oil

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Still from Pioneer

Norway used to be a country of fishermen, lumberjacks, and guys who were really good at skiing across barren fields for days on end. The rest of Scandinavia looked down their noses at their simple whale-eating cousins. Half the Swedish joke book is made up of stories and one-liners that boil down to: “Norwegians are dumb. LOL.” In the land of black metal, it was said, everyone drank moonshine and fought in the street just to stave off the boredom. The Swedes are still making jokes about those hick Norwegians and my friend Tom, who is from somewhere near the Arctic circle, says the whole 'fights ‘n’ moonshine' thing is still how they entertain themselves there, but these days the Swedish jokes are full of envy and the moonshine drinking is just for kicks.

That’s because Norway, once one of Europe’s poorest countries, was changed beyond recognition by the arrival of that most precious and deadly of modern commodities: oil. From 1969 onward, huge oil and gas deposits were discovered in the North Sea. The great ocean depths along the Norwegian coast kept the oil from being piped ashore. To lay a pipeline this far down, the Norwegian authorities financed a series of test dives, with the American diving industry helping develop safe methods to allow divers to work up to 400 meters beneath the waves. Vast sums of money lay in wait for anyone who could exploit these resources. Here, in the North, was a new wild west.

At first, foreign companies dominated exploration of the Norwegian continental shelf. These companies were responsible for developing the country's first oil and gas fields, but in 1972 the Norwegian government created Statoil and the principle of 50 percent state participation in each production license was established. On June 10, 1981, the Norwegian parliament approved development plans for a pipeline that would take oil and gas from the cold North Sea to the mainland. The construction was in the hands of the State. Choosing to pipe the petroleum resources to the mainland made Norway one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

Members of the Statpipe team. Photo courtesy of Angus Kleppe

Like many stories of great wealth, though, this too has a dark side—one that is explored in Erik Skjoldbjærg’s new film, Pioneer, a tense thriller that has already been picked up by George Clooney, who intends to remake it in God’s own language; American English. Skjoldbjærghas already has some experience in Hollywood—his debut film, Insomnia, was remade by Christopher Nolan and starred Al Pacino and Robin Williams.

“I consider myself lucky Nolan did it,” Skjoldbjærgtells me. Pioneer, which has an original soundtrack by Air, is about the North Sea divers, also known as the “pioneer divers.” These were the men who went down to new depths as part of the oil exploration process. An overwhelming majority of these divers were physically and psychologically damaged as a result of operating so far down. Today, it is deemed unsafe to dive below 180 meters, but in the 1970s the pioneer divers were working on pipelines up to 500 meters below the surface.

One of these men was Angus Kleppe, who tells me he has “neurological injuries” in his “central nervous system” as a result of the diving he did for Seaway Diving, a company that worked with oil companies and the Norwegian state. Kleppe and his team would be flown out to a ship and then sent far down into the sea in a diving bell, breathing specially developed gas to allow them to work at such pressures. Down on the ocean bed, the only light they had came from a vehicle that was sent with them.

The Statpipe pipeline, 350 meters below the surface of the North Sea. Photo courtesy of Angus Kleppe

At these depths, Kleppe never saw another living creature—save for once encountering an American diving team after the same oil. “I waved at them. When you are working in such dangerous conditions, you’re not going to swim over and start trying to pull their equipment off them. You may be rivals but you’re divers and you respect each other.”

That respect was still present onshore in the bars, where divers from different countries tried to outdo each other with stories of their heroism. “It’s like soldiers from different regiments when they get together to have a drink—you’re all trying to tell the best story,” Kleppe says.

The enormous mental and physical strain placed on these men took its toil, though. Saturation divers need to spend weeks in decompression chambers, but with so much at stake, the divers were being used as guinea pigs for any new gas or medical advancement that might give their company an edge. “Everyone was experimenting but the most likely consequences of this were not communicated to the divers," says Skjoldbjærg, who sees his film as marking a key moment in Norway’s history.

Some of the original pioneer divers. Photo courtesy of Angus Kleppe

"When I was growing up, it always felt like Norway was the little brother of Scandinavia. Finding oil changed everything. In 20 or 30 years the country has become a different place. It changed our mentality and it changed who we are," he says. "Becoming rich has many sides. Wealth is a positive thing, but when I was growing up there was a strong communal sense in Norway. You depended on each other. I think that might have been lost."

The North Sea divers, working class men from rural areas or Norway’s port towns, are symbolic of this. "The divers gained confidence from how well they dived,” Skjoldbjærg tells me, “but they quickly found that serious physical and mental health problems were the price they had to paid for it." Oil brought unimaginable wealth to Norway, but it also brought friction to a society that had once been close-knit. 

This is something Kleppe echoes when he talks about the professional pride he took in his bravery and the bravery of those around him. “The Norwegians had the record—we’d gotten down to 500 meters—and there was an enormous amount of professional pride that came from that. We wanted to be able to keep it up,” he says.

A diver works on the Statpipe pipeline. Photo courtesy of Angus Kleppe

This pride kept him going, but it didn’t obscure the anger he ended up feeling toward his government and the oil companies that profited richly from the dangerous and damaging work he did. “Governments are all the same. They want their money. I’m not unhappy with my diving company but I am annoyed with the governments and oil companies involved,” he says.

In recent years, the Norwegian government has seen a number of cases brought against it by the North Sea divers. In March 2004, about 200 divers were offered sums up to $458,000 in compensation. Now, there is another case in the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg. In 2012, Henning Haug, of the divers’ organization Offshore Dykker Unionen, said that Norway “must see it as very embarrassing that its wealth is based on human rights violations of such a serious character that they will now be highlighted in an international court.”

When oil made the country rich, "Norway learned how to gain control over an industry much bigger than itself," says Skjoldbjærg, but what they did to get there crystalized some of the more worrying elements of capitalism. The IMF currently ranks Norway as the 4th richest country in the world judging by GDP per capita, something that would have been unimaginable to anyone growing up before the North Sea revealed its riches. That wealth was secured at the expense of ordinary working Norwegians. Some of these people are still fighting for compensation for what they were put through. Pioneer takes us back to the beginning of an ongoing story, when everything was still up for grabs and the resources-rich waters of the North Sea played a very similar role to that played by the oil-filled deserts of Iraq a couple of decades later.   

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Comics: 1993 Part One

How to Harvest Meat from a Pig That’s Still Alive

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How to Harvest Meat from a Pig That’s Still Alive

Weediquette: Don't Smoke Out Your Neighbors

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

A lot of crazy people live in Philly. Even if you're normal, you're going to have to deal with crazy neighbors when you live in the City of Brotherly Love. Where normal neighbors keep to themslves, crazy neighbors make their presence known in increasingly intrusive ways until you’re finally forced to keep it real and tell them to mind their own business. Then there are the sleepers—the neighbors that seem normal and low key for months until one day they smell weed coming from your apartment and come by to ask for a puff. They appear like the most harmless guys in the world, but I learned long ago that shit can get crazy when you blaze with sleepers. 

Several years ago, my buddies Sour Joe and Machio lived in an apartment on the second floor of a row house near Girard College in Philly. Parking around there was a bitch, so if I found a decent spot I stayed over for hours to blaze and play video games in their living room. One night the three of us were playing a golf video game and passing around a joint when someone knocked on the door. Sour Joe opened the door. A heavy set dude wearing a white T-shirt, long mesh shorts, and a Phillies hat—the typical uniform of Philly’s white guys—stood outside. “Hey, I’m Kyle from right downstairs. Just wondering…” he said before trailing off and spotting Machio hitting the joint. “I was just wondering if I could blaze with you guys.” Sour Joe invited him in. “Great. Hang on. I’ll be right back,” Kyle said. Machio seemed a little skeptical: “I don’t want the neighbors knowing we smoke weed,” he said. “We don’t know this guy.” Sour Joe calmed him down, saying, “They all definitely already know that we smoke weed in here. The whole building smells like it when we’re home.”

Moments later Kyle returned with a fistful of pills. “Thanks for letting me smoke with you guys,” he said. “Here are some Vicodins as a little thank you. I have loads and loads of them downstairs.” He gave each of us two pills, and we received them graciously. They were the nice, fat kind. I rolled up another joint, and we started shooting the shit with Kyle. The banalities went on for several minutes; Kyle came off like a pretty regular guy. Halfway through the joint, he asked if he could bring his dog up. Sour Joe and Machio said, “Sure.”

As soon as he exited, Machio wondered aloud, “You think he’s going to get us more pills too?” I replied, “I hope so. I already ate one of mine.” Joe and Machio both gestured that they had as well. A few minutes went by, and then we heard a commotion downstairs. Kyle’s muffled voice came through the insulation: “Get off me bro! Get the fuck off me!” Sour Joe killed the music. Stunned, we eavesdropped to figure out what the hell was going on down there.

We didn’t hear a struggle downstairs. We heard one pair of feet dancing around heavily, as if someone was boxing with his shadow. “What are you doing in here? How’d you get in? Get off me!” Kyle yelled against this noise. Moments later he started yelling,  “Leave my dog alone! Leave my dog alone!” We didn’t hear a dog barking or an intruder—Kyle’s was the only audible voice. “It sounds like he’s on the phone,” Sour Joe said. “Yeah, but why would he ask someone on the phone how they got into his apartment?” Machio asked. None of us had any answers.

Kyle’s self-contained melee went on for a few more minutes. We sat there dumbfounded, wondering if we should call the cops. Before we could figure out what to do, a door slammed and Kyle rushed up the stairs. We all froze and looked at each other—and then Kyle banged on the door. “Guys, there’s someone in my apartment!” he screamed. “Please let me in!”

No one moved. If Kyle was having a mental breakdown, there was no telling what would happen if we let him in. Nobody came up the stairs, so we knew Kyle was acting crazy. “Guys, my dog is down there. You gotta let me in!” he yelled, and then he started throwing his full weight against the door. Each hit was several seconds apart, and in between the hits, Sour Joe, Machio, and I went into battle mode. We jumped to our feet and grabbed things that could be used as a weapon: an umbrella, a tennis racket, and a coat rack. After a tense couple of minutes, Kyle stopped ramming the door. “OK. Guys, if you’re not going to let me in, could you please call the cops?” he asked. We put down our weapons. Sour Joe looked into the peephole and recoiled immediately. “He’s just standing out there staring into the other end of the peephole,” Sour Joe whispered.

We preferred not to call the cops—they make everything worse—but Kyle asked for them. We dialed 911, and then Kyle yelled,  “Thank you! Tell them someone’s in my house!” We told the 911 operator that our neighbor might be having a home invasion. About 25 minutes later, a cruiser pulled up in front of the place. We were anxious waiting for them, but then the Vicodins kicked in and we were pretty relaxed. Two cops chatted casually as they entered the building. They came up the stairs and confronted Kyle. “And what are you doing standing out here?” a cop asked. “There’s someone in my house,” Kyle said. “I asked these guys to call the cops. You gotta help me. My dog is down there.” The two cops spoke briefly to each other. One of them told Kyle to go downstairs with the other cop. Then the first cop knocked on our door. We opened it, finding a large woman in a Philly PD uniform. She looked irritated. “What in the hell is happening here?” she asked. We calmly explained the whole thing—minus the weed and pills of course. She rolled her eyes at us and told us she’d be right back. We went to the window and saw the other cop cuffing Kyle and putting him in the back of a car. Kyle saw us and called up, “Tell them the truth, guys. Tell them I’m innocent!” Machio gave him a thumbs up.

The cops entered Kyle’s apartment and rummaged around for a bit. Eventually the lady cop walked back to our apartment to ask us a few questions. We heard the cops go into Kyle's apartment and rummage around for a bit. Then the lady cop came back upstairs to ask us a few more questions. We took the opportunity to tell her that Kyle wasn't threatening us and that he just sounded like he was having a breakdown. He had acted pretty menacing at some points, but that was no reason to stick a cop on the poor guy, but the cop didn’t care. “Well, we're arresting him,” she said. “We found some things in his apartment, but I'll tell you what: If had neighbors like you, I’d probably lose my goddamn mind too.” She slammed the door shut and went on her way.

We breathed a sigh of relief, but at around 3:30, we heard a friendly knock at the door. Sour Joe opened it. Kyle stood there. He looked exactly as he had the first time we saw him that evening. “Hey guys, thanks for handling that situation for me,” he said. “Sorry if I scared you.” Sour Joe said, “No problem.” Kyle smiled and went back downstairs. We never crossed paths or smoked with him again. 

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