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Popping a pimple is the furthest thing from an orgasm. It’s a shameful deed done in secret. The thrill of watching bloody pus hit the mirror lasts only a few seconds before we quickly wipe away the evidence, resigning ourselves to the lingering pain…

On second thought, popping a pimple is a lot like an orgasm. But considering that sporting a leaky zit falls somewhere on the ladder of social taboos between eating your own boogers and gargling hobo cum, why do so many excruciatingly graphic videos of zit-popping become smash hits on YouTube?

Psychological disorders like dermatillomania—an irrepressible urge to pick at one’s skin—account for some of the zit-popping fan base. In today’s self-help culture, where every cure for your flaws is just a Malcolm Gladwell book away, it’s easy to see why those suffering from an obsessive-compulsive need to claw at their physical imperfections might find temporary relief in watching videos of epic zit explosions instead, like junkies watching Trainspotting between fixes.

But the mentally ill are just a small portion of the zit-popping universe, which is a wide cosmos that even includes its own share of celebrities. Like Vikram Yadav, a diminutive doctor from New Delhi, who, with his doe-like eyes and head full of perfectly slicked curls, looks just like a dad-next-door. Dr. Yadav is hardly the type of guy you would think would be responsible for some of the most horrifically stomach-churning videos on the internet.

And yet, if you’ve ever happened to watch a video of extreme zit-popping—you know, the ones where pores that have been clogged for like 25 years are prodded with a needle till they shoot an unholy rivers of toothpaste-thick white muck—chances are, you watched it on Vikram Yadev’s YouTube channel.

To put it plainly, Dr. Yadev is a bonafide zit-popping superstar. His cache of blackhead extractions, abscess drainings, and cyst removal videos have earned more than 18,307,412 views and 105,000 subscribers. His most popular upload, the poetically-titled “Gold Mine of Black Heads on Nose,”  has racked up at over 12 million views alone. On zit video-sharing communities like Zitmeister.com his cult following affectionately calls him “Doctor Y.”

Doctor Y’s impetus seems to be a medical fascination with the most horrific skin problems a person could suffer from. His videos, posted twice a week without fail, focus on conditions so gruesomely bizarre they could easily double as a B-reel to an icky body horror movie. Think Videodrome: The Giant Cyst Edition. Zit-popping fans flock to his channel to gape at the grotesque, a phenomenon that Dr. Allen Feldman, an associate professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, sees as a modern-day version of a 19th century practice: the carnival freak show, where the working class public flocked to witness bearded ladies, Siamese twins, dwarves, and other malformed, “othered” bodies. Who knows? Maybe if Bakhtin was still around, he’d be a Dr. Y fan too. 

Our collective desire to gawk at the weirdoes isn’t the only way zit-popping videos could function as a social practice. Dr. Feldman also draws a parallel between purging yourself of a cantankerous zit and getting your dick circumcised, identifying both practices as forms of “public expiation” whereby “people whose appearance do not fit a societal norm views themselves as social failures, and they see the deforming visage or body zone as emblematic of their cultural inadequacy and failure.” Getting rid of the contaminating body part allows that person to return to the community, fully purified. “But these acne practices are not direct parallels to [circumcision] rites of passage,” Dr. Feldman adds, “Because there is no real community to join after the mutilation, no collective initiation. Just the mass consumption of the grotesque like the Jackass or Mondo Cane movies.”

For Russ Hamstring, the founder and site administrator of Zitmeister.com, a vicarious feeling of cleansing is exactly what drives him to scour the internet for these videos. “Personally, I just want to get the impurities out. The satisfaction is great once I see the blockage release. It’s even better if there is a sound.”

Russ also acknowledges that for some users on his website, zit-popping is a fetish with a decidedly sexual aspect. “I have had one woman offer to fly over to me just to squeeze my pimples. She promised that she would shower me with gifts and let me stay in expensive hotels,” he said, “But I’m not into pimples like that. A pimple popping wedding doesn’t sound attractive to me at all.” (He also notes that 35 percent of the users on Zitmeister.com are females in the 40s and 50s.)

Yet, the very structure of a fully satisfying zit-popping video is centered on an orgasmic climax. One user on the /r/popping subreddit explained that the narrative arc of a good video should have a beginning, middle, and end. “The bigger the cyst, the more pus comes out and the sooner it happens. A fingernail-sized blackhead that has been there for 25 years has an excruciating middle, whereby the poppers try and fail to extract the substance, and the end comes around so gloriously,” he said. Of course, gratification only happens if the camera operator has a strong stomach. “Can’t stand the person recording the floor tiles while smelly pus is oozing from a perfect cyst,” another Redditor complained.

But not all zit-popping voyeurs are doing it for the love of the ooze. Some—including myself—are simultaneously disgusted and attracted to these videos out of a prurient interest in what the human body can do when taken to the extreme. Dr. Harris B. Stratyner, a clinical associate professor at Mount Sinai’s department of psychiatry, made his revulsion very clear. “The videos I looked at, they made me sick. People are doing things that are simply disgusting. I’ve worked in ERs… It’s hard to gross me out. But I have to tell you, this grossed me out. This was simply disgusting.”

So where does Dr. Stratyner think this truly disgusting urge to watch these extremely disgusting videos comes from? Well, Freud’s theory of thanatos, or the death drive, might be the key. His theory goes, “If you go up to the top of the Empire State Building and you look over the edge, there’s always a part of you that would like to jump. Not because you want to kill yourself, but because there’s a strong urge towards the unknown concept of death—that which we do not understand.” Similarly, we are instinctively drawn towards the mystery of what, exactly, lies inside of us. What are we extracting? What is this foreign body under our skin? As my favorite Reddit comment so eloquently concluded, these zit-popping videos are poignant reminders that we’re all just made of shit. 

We figured there would be good music in Newcastle, but we didn't expect to encounter such a diverse, awesome, and positive music scene that welcomed us into the fold of their trendy sound-making like the fish out of water, confused Canadians we are. In this episode, we hung out with the lovably gothy post-punk outfit Retriever. We saw them practice at their post-apocalyptic studio space then hit the town for brown ales and live gigs. We also got to hang out with a more upbeat (but still drearily influenced by the grey Newcastle weather) band called Yellow Creatures. Don't miss this one. Newcastle has a ton of culture to soak in.

Photo by Jake Lewis

It’s hard to use the phrase “self-improvement” these days without people assuming you’re a demagogue, a fraud, a sex offender, or, probably, a combination of the three. Pick-up artists, Deepak Chopra, Fight Club, and Geri Halliwell’s yoga DVDs have sullied the concept. Understandably, we're now suspicious of plans that will "improve" our lives—too many people have been conned out of money or into mass suicide for us to really believe in them.

But having an interest in prolonging your life rather than cutting it short in an alcoholic squib of stress-related "glory" doesn’t make you a psychopath. It just means you’re smart enough to realize that the 5,000 people you're nominally friends with on Facebook won't be there for you when you’re wired up to an ECG in some desolute hospital ward. Attempting to prolong your life isn’t hippie shit, it’s actually an anti-spiritual, pro-science move, a mindset that eschews the invisible rewards of a "life on the edge" for the visible benefits of not dying at the age of 37 with your liver in a bag next to your head.

Even Christopher Hitchens, the feckless godfather of Reddit atheism, once said that he’d “hold it down on the cocktails and smokes” if he could have his time over again. Nobody’s saying you need to get into Tibetan ear candles and black seawater enemas, but while you're here, it might just be worth trying to keep the shit as far away from the fan as possible.

As somebody who’s recently joined a gym, ditched their iPhone, and stopped saying, “Call your guy, I'll pay for it” at 3 AM, I think I’ve made a few giant leaps forward in my life. At the risk of sounding a bit like someone who's eventually going to try to sell you a collection of healing crystals, here’s what I've picked up from things I’ve read, things I’ve done, things I haven’t done, and a few great minds.

Photo by Robert Harper

Dying Young Is Lame
You know who's a great actor? Michael Caine. He’s consistently churned out great films in every decade, started fashion trends, won two Oscars, made a fuckload of money, married beautiful women, and has lived a life that’d be the envy of anyone on Earth.

You know who overacted in a couple of teensploitation movies and died covered in cigarette burns at the age of 24? James Dean. You know who was also kind of melodramatic? Kurt Cobain. You know who’s pretty cool? Sixty-five-year-old Brian Eno. Nelson Mandela got quite a lot of shit done after he was 30, didn't he? The list goes on. Because while some young deaths are—of course—tragic and unavoidable (still got love for you, Biggie), a lot of people need to understand that the “live fast, die young” mantra is total bullshit that’s been sold to you by record labels and clothing companies.

Wanting to live as long as possible in as good health as possible doesn’t mean you’re on the road to becoming one of those people who's always talking about yoga. It just means you’re somebody whose understanding of the human condition goes beyond wanting to join “the 27 Club.” Try to live as long as you possibly can, dickhead. Life might be kinda shitty, but you only have one.

Photo by Jamie Taete

Get Rid of Your Smartphone
Thanks to a chance encounter I had with a couple of tough guys on the mean streets of England a few weeks back, I don’t have an iPhone any more. And I haven't gotten it replaced. Instead, I found myself gravitating towards the words of Mark Fisher. When, at a recent talk in London, the all-round top bloke of British Marxism described iPhones as “individualized command centers” it made me wonder what part of a human being really needs a smartphone. Who's insisting that we have them? Who's telling us that we must be able to respond to emails at all hours of the day? Who actually gives a shit about our Instagram accounts? People who don’t like you, that’s who. Which makes smartphones nothing more than a tool of self-loathing.

Essentially, we’ve all been sold a massive, techno-capitalist lie about the necessity of these things. I never thought I’d find myself saying things like this—and I’m certainly not some kind of preaching neo-luddite—but smartphones kill your concentration, your conversational ability, and perhaps even your cognitive skills. And for what? FOMO and stress.

Throw away your smartphones and reclaim your life. You can always run Twitter off a laptop.

Unplug Yourself from the Entertainment Matrix
At the risk of this turning into a massive love-in, there’s a bit in Fisher's seminal Capitalist Realism where he tells the story of a student who insisted on keeping an earphone plugged in throughout one of his classes. When Fisher asks him to take it out, the guy tells him that it’s OK because there’s no music playing from it. Fisher theorizes that the boy is doing this because he wants the comfort of knowing that he’s connected to “the entertainment matrix”: “To be bored simply means to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, YouTube, and fast food," writes Fisher, "to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand."

I think it's healthy to take yourself away from such things for a while. We’ve become completely attached to this matrix, and when removed from it we turn into incapable, agitated wrecks who can’t deal with a bus journey without the technological blanket of Candy Crush. Learn to live without your communication comforters, because these polar vortexes are only gonna get worse, and you’re going to be crappy at dealing with them.

Photo by Rory DCS

See the Horizon
In the bleak, remorseful morning after some godforsaken, coked-up house party, a wise person once told me that human beings don’t see the horizon enough. Not in a philosophical sense (although there is probably an argument for that, too) but in a very literal one. Because so many of us live in cities where we can't see beyond the next Starbucks, we have very little understanding of the scope and size of the world we live in. It can render us paranoid, selfish, unimaginative, and depressed.

Cities are obviously beautiful places, and I don’t think many of us are quite ready for that move to a cabin in the woods just yet, but try to get out in the world every now and then and get a sense of just how small you are. It can be humbling and scary to consider such things in a society that tells us that we are our own gods, but you'll feel a lot better about that passive-aggressive Facebook comment or unfinished report for doing it.

Read Books
Again, clichéd advice, but clichés are repeated for a reason. You aren’t going to become a great of your generation if all you do is scan UpWorthy twice a day and zonk out to Netflix. Reading more will enrich your life, whatever you do. Read on buses, read on trains, read at lunch. Read fiction and nonfiction. Read George Packer, read George Saunders, read the memoirs of disgraced steroidal baseball players. Read to learn and read to live. Just don’t turn into that person who insists on making a really big deal of reading this year's National Book Award winner on the subway.

Parents
Once you've crawled out the other side of the blizzard of hedonistic self-indulgence that is (or at least should be) your late teens and early 20s, it's easy to feel like you've become a little untethered from Who You Really Are. Your school days are long gone, innocence has been eagerly traded for experience, and you can't talk to your old friends anymore because they're too busy being married. So to whom do you turn? Back to the people who know you've been taking drugs all this time but who'll promise not to talk about it just as long as you calm down a bit.

Eventually, you’ll come to realize that your parents aren't the scourges of fun you grew up thinking they were. They too are alone and confused in this world, but with the benefit of having already been through the same shit you’re dealing with now. Treat them as broken crash test dummies for your own existence—look at them and talk to them rather than dismissing them as fuddy-duddies who wouldn’t let you listen to The Chronic in the car.

Photo by Matías Uris Rey

Exercise Is Cool
You’re not at school any more. You don’t have to live out this ridiculous idea that physical fitness is the preserve of witless jocks while your lifestyle of sedentary dandyism makes you the beautiful, shining, enlightened one. You’re not; You sweat on your way to the bus stop and even if you’re still waspishly thin, your arteries probably look like Slim Jims. 

Exercise is an enriching, intellectual pursuit as well as a physical one. It clears your mind and it’s a great way to look at the world at a new pace. Haruki Murakami wrote a book about jogging, Camus was a goalkeeper and Kari Stefansson, arguably the world’s leading genetic scientist, is an obsessive basketball player. The list is endless. NASA research has shown that people who engage in regular physical exercise are much better at making decisions than those who don’t. Exercise doesn’t make you stupid—sitting around and doing nothing does.

The truth is that people who don’t exercise are the stupid ones, and the proof backs it up. The idea that exercise is solely for people who’ve just got out of prison and Antipodean gym bunnies is one of the most dangerous of our time, and is mostly perpetuated by people who retweet Richard Dawkins and say stuff like: “Football? It's just millionaires chasing a pig's bladder around a field, isn’t it?” 

Always Drink
At the end of the day, life is fucking hard. It’s relentless, and it doesn’t stop until it really stops. How else can we divert our minds from our own existences? Alcohol is nature's way of slowing us down and making us feel good when our circumstances dictate that we shouldn't. It's the elixir of life, the juice of love, and almost every great moment of my life is somehow tied to it. Life is bigger than you are, try to fight it and you'll lose. Without booze in your life, all you’re doing is trying to headbutt God.

@thugclive

Chart via.

In 2012, the Conservative government introduced legislation that allowed employers to pay foreign workers 15% less than their Canadian counterparts. These rules applied explicitly to workers who came to Canada as a part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), here to work on a short term basis with no path to permanent residency or citizenship.This legislation was remarkable in that it skipped the usual left-wing arguments for immigration and multiculturalism as a humane form of nation-building and jumped immediately into the right-wing scenario of immigrants arriving in Canada to work for less money than their domestic counterparts. Only in Canada, where it's commonly believed that immigration is necessary for economic sustainability, could a right-wing government implement an immigration policy that plays directly into the fears of reactionary conservative paranoia.

Even a cursory glance at statistics on the predatory employment policies migrant workers face are alarming: According to a Citizen and Immigration study conducted by the government in 2011, 22 percent of temporary foreign workers were paid less than minimum wage, 25 percent did not receive pay information that showed a record of deductions or hours worked, and 39 percent of workers who worked overtime hours never received overtime pay. Another 32 percent received overtime pay "rarely" or "sometimes."

Officially, the TFWP is meant to fill holes in Canada's labour market, providing workers for industries in which Canadians themselves were unwilling to work. In every case, the employer of a foreign worker must provide evidence that there were no Canadian workers available for a given position by requesting a Labour Market Opinion from the government. For a brief time the government actually gave employers a monetary incentive to bypass Canadians and hire cheaply from the international labour market, so it's hard to believe that any business involved in the program was actually encouraged to try to find Canadian job candidates. In order to further understand this policy and the reasons behind it, I talked to Jeffrey Reitz, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto who has written extensively on Canadian Immigration policy: “There's been a lot of criticism about it and it's difficult to understand how the government is not undercutting Canadian workers when the plan is exclusively allowing them to pay less.”

Cut to April 2013: The CBC reports that the Royal Bank of Canada laid off dozens of workers and replaced them with temporary workers from India. In British Columbia, a Chinese mining company advertised for jobs that required the knowledge of Mandarin. When they couldn't find enough Mandarin speakers in Western Canada (big surprise), they brought in 201 temporary workers from China. “What's been done has been to use the extensiveness of advertising as the evidence and so the employers put forward that they've advertised here and there and all the normal places and haven't had any applicants,” said Reitz. “But even that, it's very difficult to know whether they've actually done that or what's the credibility of the information submitted, so it's a very murky area.”

After a series of controversies, the Conservatives were forced to create new rules for the program which came into effect this year, including a $275 employer fee for a permit, the right for government officials to conduct workplace inspections, and the cancellation of both the two-tier wage system and the accelerated labour market opinion, which allowed for a sped up process to bring in workers. But at this point, Conservative reforms are like poorly applied band-aids on self-inflicted wounds. Since taking office, the TFWP has tripled in size, even growing during the recession. In 2011, nearly half a million temporary foreign workers came to Canada while the Conservative government cut down on family reunification visas and made it harder for refugees to get healthcare.
 

Photo via.

There are now more temporary workers coming to Canada every year than permanent workers. Many of them come to Canada with little understanding of their rights, leaving them vulnerable to workplace abuse. Even though government officials can now legally inspect workplaces to prevent abuse, the new regulations that went into effect at the beginning this year have also dropped the ban on providing temporary foreign workers to employers with criminal convictions in human trafficking, sexually assaulting an employee, or causing the death of an employee. A shift in policy like that can only raise questions the safety of these low paid workers and whether or not the government is encouraging work environments that are up to Canadian standards.

“When the government puts out the figures on the number of temporary foreign workers being brought into the country, what are the skill levels of those workers?” said Reitz. “In many cases, they'll emphasize that many of them are high skill. But exactly what the skill breakdown is, is not something for which, as far as I'm aware, reliable statistics are available.” While government officials might emphasize the presence of high skilled workers, many can be found in low skill environments, including the oil, agriculture, and construction industries. The CBC even interviewed a McDonald's franchise owner in Fernie, BC who used the program to staff his fast food restaurant.

This is the dark side of Canadian immigration policy. Workers from the developing world are brought to Canada to work for low wages on a temporary basis while immigrants that could set up roots in this country are discouraged. With the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, the Conservative government is facilitating the worst practises of economic globalization. We're used to the idea of outsourcing work to another country, but the Conservatives have allowed international outsourcing to occur within our own borders, forcing Canadian workers to compete with an international labour pool that has a far lower standard of living, causing “downward pressure” on wages and discouraging employers from providing training or incentives to hire.

Canada is unique in the world in that our citizens broadly recognize that immigration is necessary for our economic survival. The Conservatives have abused that broad support of immigration. They've used it to implement a policy that licks the boots of its corporate donors, providing them with cheap temporary labour, rather than a policy that would help build the country and give immigrants a chance at a better life.

@alanjonesxxxv

Tensions between Canada, Russia and a few other nations competing for Arctic control are growing as cold as these waters. Photo via.

You might think the only bad blood between Russia and Canada is over some hockey game, but since about 2007 the Canucks and Russians have been in a diplomatic pissing match over Arctic land sovereignty after Russian explorers planted a tiny flag on the Arctic seafloor and the Canadians called bullshit. Now that the Northwest Passage is melting and becoming a potential Arctic Suez Canal with possibly billions of dollars in fossil fuel for the taking, the Canadian government is looking to cash in, making an aggressive claim at the United Nations in December last year to extend its northern sea boundary, along with four other competing states: Russia, Denmark, the U.S., and Norway. As you can imagine, Harper’s move rattled Russian leader Vladimir Putin who’s now vowing to beef up his military presence in the Arctic amid bold Canadian diplomatic actions.

Legit Arctic claim or not, it hasn’t stopped Russia from spying on Canadian assets in anticipation of mounting tensions. Historically Canada has played host to foreign agents, from the bag wearing Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko in ‘45 revealing mass Russian infiltration, to the 1,000 spy espionage network the Chinese allegedly ran on Canadian soil in 2005. When it comes to the Arctic, rival states may see the potential in once again cherry picking secrets from Canada. And it doesn’t seem so hard: In 2011 Canadian Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle made off with stolen naval secrets on a USB stick he simply plugged into his DND work station, then later sold to the Russians. Speculation is the Delisle cache may have included Arctic intelligence. Then in December 2013 a Chinese spy was found stealing design plans for Canadian patrol ships potentially destined for missions protecting Arctic sovereignty. Rob Huebert, an Arctic expert at the University of Calgary, says both incidents demonstrate the growing interest in Canadian strategic plans. “In Canada we tend to think that nobody pays attention to us. But a lot of people pay attention to us.”

“For Canadians, the Arctic has always been a source of major nationalism,” said Huebert. “Most recent Canadian governments see this as an opportunity to demonstrate how much they are willing to defend Canadian core interests.”There’s no doubt Harper strategists view the Arctic as a potential cash cow and the lynchpin of future Canadian economies. If that ends up being true, the Canadians may want to wake up and take the Russian threat seriously. Nowadays, some estimates even put one-quarter of the world’s energy resources in the Arctic crust, giving the Canucks a second oil baby after the tar sands.“The real reason driving all of the competing Arctic claimants, is, of course, oil and gas,” said Huebert.
 

An aerial view of an oil and gas extraction plant in Alaska. Photo via.

The Harper government has carefully crafted a public relations strategy for their sovereignty claims. Besides his Arctic tours every summer where Harper admires Inuit art and Canadian Forces stealth snowmobiles, he sanctioned a failing search for the lost wreckage of Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to establish a historical Canadian precedence to the North Pole. This isn’t the first time Canada has pulled desperate moves to maintain Arctic rule: In the 1950s the feds forcibly relocated Inuit all over the High Arctic region to show it was actually inhabited and under Canadian law. By comparison Siberia is actually inhabited with several cities over half a million people, while the three Arctic territories barely boast 100,000 combined.

Publicity stunts aside, the Arctic region won’t be decided on Harper’s political ploys, but on cold consideration of geological facts by the United Nations. “It’s a science based determination,” said Huebert. “Based on a formula.” It will factor in considerations like soil thickness and slant to determine where the continental shelf ends. After scientists have made their conclusions diplomats will go to work drawing up the new Arctic map. “Everybody is just saying ‘OK we think that there might be oil and gas in this region, we don’t know. But we want to make sure we have the fullest maximization of the area we can claim.’”

Yet after the science and the diplomats, it’s going to be about who carries the proverbial big stick in a logistical competition over sea control. Given the Canadian government is an amateur at arms purchasing, as evidenced by the F-35 procurement circus– the Russians have the undisputed upper hand. While Harper continues the protracted acquisition of Sea King helicopters and rushes to build new ships for an aging navy, Vladimir Putin is stocking up on super-sized icebreakers, 40 new naval vessels, including a brand new nuclear attack submarine, and a new intercontinental ballistic missile system ready by 2018, all the while refurbishing old Soviet military bases in the Far North.  It’s not that the Canadians will ever go to war with Russia, beefing up your army is an old Russian diplomatic trick of intimidation to get what they want. Let’s not forget about the Chinese either, they’re playing the classic long-game when it comes to Arctic sovereignty: Playing nice by resisting an aggressive claim while beefing up their maritime power, cloaking attempts at buying into Arctic lands in Iceland, and investing in Greenland. They know the money train at stake and want a piece of the Arctic pie.

Countering Russian and Chinese aggression in the coming years may require the help of CSEC spies (who’ve been practising on Brazil) or from our classic American neighbour with its own competing Arctic claims and naval arsenal to boot. Unfortunately for Harper, some invisible snowmobiles and finding some old, long-forgotten ship probably won’t cut it.



@BMakuch

VICE Canada is excited to premiere “1992,” from Toronto’s 6^th Letter, whose first tape in three years, NorthernplayalisticGetHighMusik is set for release sometime in 2014. Produced by his Bakers Club comrade and massive jerk poutine fan Raz Fresco, “1992” is a funky stoner jam imbued with the unapologetically boom-bap sound that has been 6th Letter's trademark long before it became a blog-rap trend.

"1992" is full of flavour and stirring internal rhyme schemes that 6th nimbly manages to make sound as effortless and easy as Raz Fresco's retro revivalist production. When 6th says, "I talk jewels and spit diamonds, I been shinin' / And the crew phat, show me a rapper that ain't shinin' in it," we know he's speaking the truth. Noisey interviewed Bakers Club affiliate Eric Dingus a few weeks ago after his "Worst Behaviour" caught the attention of Drake's camp.

Get into your best b-boy stance, light one up, and peep 6th Letter's ode to the year of his birth below.

@jordanisjoso

Image by Cei Willis, corner graphic by Sam Taylor

Indie dudes in indie bands: Can you just put everything down and stop for a second? Literally everyone else making music: You are OK. Carry on with what you are doing. Jazz singers, old guys in shitty blues cover bands, art kids layering their voices into shimmering soundscapes using Melodyne, next-levelers coming up with drone metal/Philly disco hybrids, Satanic choirs, DJs who perform using wind-up gramophones… literally everyone except indie dudes in indie bands, just keep on keeping on. (Note: for the purposes of this article, girls can be dudes too.) This A-to-Z is of no use to you. You are already saved: go treat yourself to a Snickers.

Now, indie dudes, I've got something for you to read. Print it out and put it on your fridge Or just continue to stare out of the window, composing lyrics about your ex who won’t give you your skateboard back and coming up with chord changes that even that bald Mormon sex-case Will Oldham would have thrown away for being too insipid. The choice is yours.

A is for Anarchy: In all creative enterprises there is no authority greater than yourself. The second you start chasing fads you are dead in the water artistically. Plus, unless you’re extremely lucky, it won’t do you any commercial favors either. For example, if your unsigned band has a triangle in its name as a replacement for the letter A, why not instead form a new band that dresses in giant turd costumes and hats made out of plastic dog shit and rename yourself Fecal Fred and the Fucking Turd Hats? You will literally have more of a chance of getting signed and acquiring an audience than you will by chasing after 2009’s lamest and most insubstantial trend. Think for yourself—it doesn’t cost anything.

B is for Bullshit: Don’t believe in rock mythology. None of it is true. Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips penned such classics as "Should We Keep the Severed Head Awake??" and "Oh My Pregnant Head (Labia in the Sunlight)," but do you know how many times he took LSD ever? Four times. When I was in a band (who you will not have heard of), we used to take LSD at every practice. The more scientifically-minded among you will be able to find some correlation between these two facts.

C is for Cats: I see you, sitting at home at 4 AM firing up another joint and cutting out cat heads from JPEGs and photoshopping them onto pictures of your buddies’ bodies as part of your "art." Just pack it in already. This has nothing to do with your music. You are not Jai Paul. Your name is James and it’s time for you to go to bed.

D is for Doges: See C.

Photo by Nick Gazin

E is for Electric Wizard: You are not in Electric Wizard and you never will be with that haircut. Sort it out.

F is for Figures: Most truly great bands look like action figures of themselves. Slayer, Throbbing Gristle, Public Enemy, Mayhem… No one’s going to make an action figure of you while your look can be described as "Guy on the bus who isn't sure if he missed his stop."

G is for Grindstone: Get your nose out of the baggie and apply it to the grindstone. What’s that? You’re going out for a game of pool? No you aren’t—call a band practice. What’s that? You’re going to a farmers market on your skateboard to buy some eggs? No you aren’t—call a band practice. What’s that? You’re going to take some DMT and watch Gravity at the movie theater? Shit… that sounds awesome. Can I come? (John at the quietus dot com). But afterwards—get to fucking band practice.

H is for Heroin: Do you know how old Charlie Watts was before he got stuck into the horse? The dude was in his 40s. So until you’ve got several million in the bank and your lead singer is such a colossal asshole that murder or a crippling opiates addiction are the only coping strategies you have left—stay away from the fucking skag.

Pete Doherty, asleep in his Rag & Bone shop. Photo by Dan Wilkinson

I is for Irony: I know it’s tough facing up to the fact you’re never going to be in Underground Resistance, Sunn O))), LCD Soundsystem, Wu-Tang Clan, or Sun Ra’s Arkestra, but that doesn’t give you the right to be in a knowingly woeful garage band that sings songs about Garfield and smoking weed. What's the point in setting out to be a wilfully shitty slacker who doesn't care about anything? If it helps focus your mind, imagine your own funeral after a car crash. Pay particular attention to how hysterically grief-stricken your mother becomes during the priest’s eulogy, when he says, “Dave was the bass player in Rizla King, who were kinda like JEFF the Brotherhood but without the hooks. Also, almost all their lyrics involved jerking off.” Your mom doesn’t want you to be in Rizla King. I don’t want you to be in Rizla King. Sort it the fuck out.

J is for John Doran is a fucking idiot: You shouldn’t be listening to anyone—least of all me. See A.

K is for King Krule: Dude. People love you more than money right now. So why do you look like a kid sitting in the back of a Prius in a parking lot forlornly eating chips?

L is for Largactil: Except for prescribed antidepressants, exercise, and therapy, you need to immediately cease of all of the stuff you do to paper over the cracks in your psyche. Lying in a Codeine-assisted coma until it's late enough fror you to get drunk? Uh uh. Nine pints of cheap beer every night at your local bar? Forget it. Smoking so much ganja that you become convinced that Drake is a really important musician? Stop right now. From this point on, outside of what your doctor says, your music is the only therapy you need.

M is for MENA: New ground is still being broken in music all the time. It might not be happening in Brooklyn or London but it certainly is in Syria, Egypt, and Algeria… start casting your net further afield.

N is for Naked: As an experiment, you and the rest of your band should spend an entire night naked in a room which is empty apart from beanbags, a pack of cards, a riding crop with a feather taped to the end, and a bag of ketamine. You will learn a lot about one another.

O is for The Occult: Take a record that sounds like it was recorded by Katy Perry. Transcribe the notes onto a spell sheet written in the ancient Nordic runes of Elder Futhark and only play the songs at special rituals held on sacred days in the Pagan lunar calendar that culminate in blood sacrifice and speaking in tongues. Unfortunately for your record, it still sounds like it was recorded by Katy Perry.

P is for Post-Punk: The most important thing when it comes to heavily-mined scenes from the past is to take inspiration from the spirit, not the sound. If you’re in a band in 2014 that sounds exactly like Gang of Four, PiL, or Joy Division, then you have spectacularly failed to grasp what was special about the post-punk movement.

Q is for Queen: If you at least aim to be in a band as awesome as Queen and put a lot of effort into it over a two-year period, then I guarantee that you will, at the very least, be loads better than King Krule.

R is for Romance: I love you. I really do. That’s why I want your band to be good and succeed. A world with more great bands than I have time to listen to is my idea of paradise.

S is for Shock: You are suffering from intense need of deprogramming. You have spent your entire life suffering from the misapprehension that Pet Sounds is “important.” Fuck that shit. The notorious CIA-funded proponent of mind control and psychic driving, Dr Ewen Cameron, would probably have recommended several hundred courses of electroshock therapy followed by weeks of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation, paired with a steady diet of LSD, barbiturates, tranquilizers, PCP, and amphetamines. A more realistic course of therapy would consist of you sitting in your bedroom in the dark, occasionally huffing some poppers, and thinking to yourself, "God Only Knows" is kinda boring, isn't it?

Photo by Andrew St Clair

T is for TL;DR: For all the many faults that they may have, artistically successful musicians don’t sit around the internet leaving snide comments—they don’t have time to. Boil down 90 percent of all troll posts and they all have the same message: Stop creating. Stop making music. Stop writing. Why did you even bother? Why isn’t this person dead? TL;DR—which boils down to, "You have been creative, and this offends my prematurely ingrained sense of failure and apathy"—should be antithetical to how you think, no matter how much it flies in the face of prevailing trends. What I’m saying is, be militantly optimistic, have unshakable faith in your own vision, and be radically creative at every opportunity. It will probably help to get off the internet altogether. You won’t miss anything. It sucks. It’s full of stupid cat pictures, ashen-faced and bewildered soldiers getting beheaded by the Taliban, painful-looking sex, and that Doge thing. If it was up to me I’d switch the entire thing off and go and feed the ducks down at the park.

U is for Ugandan Discussions: Be more sexy—it’s not going to kill you. And if it literally does kill you, well, at least it's something for future generations to talk about.

V is for Volca: Check these little beauties out. An analogue drum machine (kind of like a pocket TR-808) called Volca Beats, an analogue polyphonic synth (kind of like an even more pocket-sized Micro Korg) called Volca Keys, and an analogue bassline composer (kind of like a pocket-sized TB-303) called Volca Bass. They’re plug and play, you can record with them, you can sequence them, as soon as you link them with a headphone cable they sync up, and they only cost $150 apiece. Right now you’re saying, "But I’m in an indie band—why do I need this punchy, affordable, portable gear for making acid, crunk, techno, and footwork?" To which I say, "Yes. Exactly."

I don't really know what's going on in this band photo but I want no part of it.

W is for What Is Your Major Malfunction? So your band is a democracy where everyone gets an equal say? OK, good luck with that, Chumbawamba. You don’t necessarily need to be ruled by a control freak who dictates every aspect of the group, but you do need a drill instructor figure who will ensure that regular practice happens, people turn up on time for gigs, and no one "accidentally" drinks a bottle of poppers half an hour before a big show.

X is for The X in Xmas Is a Substitute Crucifix for Christ: If you are in a guitar band with any ambitions towards originality whatsoever then you are in that smallest and most melancholy of groups: people who should not, under any circumstances, listen to the Fall.

Y is for Y-Chromosome: Why aren’t there any girls in your group? Serious question.

Z is for Zacharia: One day—it will be relatively soon, in the grand scheme of things—the last broadcast of electronically recorded music will happen. These final radio messages from Earth will be the inside edge of a circular ripple of radio waves created during the 20th and 21st centuries that will travel outward into the cosmos for all eternity, as if caused by a tiny pebble dropped into a perfectly still pond. And, eventually, long after the seas have boiled dry, the mountains have crumbled to dust, and the last human being has died, this thin, elegant wave will contain the only remnants of what we were. In it will be all of our films, radio and television programs, and other electronic communications. All of our art, history, news, and entertainment—in all of its stupidity, glory, inconsequence, and brilliance—will head outward across the void to the end of time itself. And riding this wave, out past the Shoulder of Orion, through the Tannhauser Gate, way out into the Hubble Deep Field, will be the tiny pulse of information that your band transmitted. Millions of years after the initial transmission, a life form will pick up this fragment of information, and this will represent humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization. And this alien being will think to itself, What the fuck is this shit that sounds like Death Cab for Cutie on a bad day? Come on, indie dudes—the entire cosmos is listening. Step up your game!

Click here to read the rest of the articles in The VICE Guide to Making 2014 Better Than 2013.

On February 5, the new Ms. Marvel series will hit the newsstands, and the lead character will be—drumroll please—Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani Muslim girl living in Jersey City.

You can get a little better acquainted with her before February, since she made her debut yesterday in the All-New Marvel NOW! Point-One #1.

Kamala isn’t sexed up—we mean not in the typical comic-book sense as her boobs are not bigger than her head, but she is totally badass, chock-full of ‘tude and here “to take out the trash.” Kamala comes from a family of four, with a tall brother named Aamir, her father Yusuf (who is always drinking tea), and her benevolent but stern mother, Aisha.

Standing in a mountain-high dumpster with her puzzle-patterned rubber boots, she encounters her first obstacle. Her mother calls to yell at Kamala for being late for her cousin’s mendhi.

The comic book is off with strong momentum. Kamala fan art has popped up everywhere from Instagram to fashion sites selling plastic yellow lightning bolt Ms. Marvel earrings. There’s been some negative online chatter: Conan O’Brien who Tweeted: “Marvel Comics is introducing a new Muslim Female superhero. She has so many more special powers than her husband’s other wives,” but deleted it soon after. There has yet to be an apology.

Written by Muslim author G. Willow Wilson, who said the series breaks the rules around super heroics but Kamala isn’t meant to be a full representation of Muslims. “She’s not a poster girl for her religion and she doesn’t fall into any neat little box,” she told Wired. “She’s very much her own quirky, unique, wonderful person.”

The idea came about when Marvel editors Sana Amanat and Steve Wacker spoke about Sana's upbringing as a Muslim-American. They then worked together to help bring that perspective to light with the help of Canadian comic artist, Adrian Alphona.

Kamala already has critics. There has been some backlash since the book was announced last November . “There’s been some hate from people who don’t read comics, which I ignore because in terms of this medium, they are illiterate,” Willow Wilson told Wired. “There’s this sense that [Muslims] shouldn’t even be there because it’s somehow un-American… Especially in comics, because [comics] are seen — by people who don’t read comics—as this wholesome, 100 percent “truth, justice, and the American way” product. They’re not thinking about manga; they’re not thinking about all the changes that have occurred in comics over the last decade or so. They don’t know the history of the medium that well… and the medium has evolved.”

Willow Wilson said there is still apprehension from the Muslim community, whether Kamala is a stereotype “for whitewashing.”

“I think lot of Muslims have gotten fatigued by the way Muslim characters, even “positive” ones, are portrayed in the media,” she said. “But I think that [apprehension] will go away when the book actually comes out, because no one’s actually read it yet! It’s something that we really put our heart and soul into. I’ve spent my entire adult life in Muslim communities of various kinds both abroad and here in the U.S. and these are issues that are really close to my heart. So I hope people will be pleasantly surprised.”

Willow Wilson, who spent time living in Cairo as a journalist, writes on her website that Kamala is a girl living in two different worlds. “She wants to make her parents proud, and at the same time she wants to fit in with her mainstream American peers. That’s a lot for a 16-year-old to handle, especially at a time when there is so much scrutiny and suspicion surrounding the Muslim community in the US.”

A mother of two half-Egyptian children, Willow Wilson worries how they will grow up as Arab-American Muslims “at a time when the world is telling them they can’t—or shouldn’t—be proud of those identities,” she said. “It’s my hope that Kamala will—in some small, entirely symbolic way—help to right those wrongs.”

@nadjasayej

It's time, once again, to despair at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Jenny Lauren

Jenny Lauren, photo via Twitter 

The incident: A woman's seat wouldn't recline properly on a plane.

The appropriate response: Complaining.

The actual response: She attacked two flight attendants, causing the plane to make an emergency landing.

Jenny Lauren is a jewelry designer and also Ralph Lauren's niece. Earlier this week, she was on a transatlantic Delta flight from Barcelona to New York. 

Early in the flight, she discovered that her seat was faulty and wouldn't recline properly. A flight attendant attempted to help her, but Lauren told her to "get the fuck out of my face."

The attendant complied, and got herself the fuck out of Lauren's face. But this wasn't good enough for Lauren, who chased the woman down the aisle of the plane and into the first class cabin. 

Once there, Lauren shoved her into a wall and called her a "fucking ugly blonde bitch."

Then, witnesses said, Lauren told the attendent that she was going to "go ballistic," and shoved her into a wall a second time. 

A second flight attendant attempted to intervene, and Lauren threw a modified version of her earlier anti-flight attendant diss at her, calling her a "fucking ugly, unhappy, blonde bitch."

At some point, she also told the pilot of the plane that he was "an asshole."

The plane made an emergency landing in Shannon, Ireland. At a reported cost to Delta of $43,158. As the plane made its landing, Jenny continued to abuse flight staff. 

Once on the ground, Jenny continued her shitty behavior, telling the Irish police officer who arrested her to, "repeat that in English."

Appearing in court (well, not really a court, her trial was actually held in a bar because the area doesn't have a courthouse), Jenny admitted to mixing medication with several drinks before boarding the flight.

She was fined € 2,500 ($3,400) and released.

Cry-Baby #2: Trestin Meacham

The incident: Utah allowed gay couples to start getting married.

The appropriate response: Nothing. 

The actual response: A man went on hunger strike, vowing not to eat again until gays were banned from marrying.

Last month, US District Judge Robert Shelby ruled that Utah's ban on same-sex marriage violates the consitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples. 

Predictably, applications for marriages skyrocketed in the state, with gay couples rushing to tie the knot. 

This didn't sit too well with a 35-year-old Mormon named Trestin Meacham, who announced that he was going to go on hunger strike until the state reversed the decision. 

Like many bigots, Trestin attempted to hide his intolerance behind an excuse. In a post on his blog, he explained that his objection to the judge's decision is actually a result of it being unconstitutional, rather than his own homophobia. He wrote, "Unfortunately, the Judicial Branch of the government is more concerned with activism than it is with actually following the Constitution."

Appearing on ABC News on January 2nd, Tristan explained that he hadn't consumed anything other than bottled water and vitamin pills for 12 days. "Actions speak louder than words, and I'm taking action," he said. 

Fifteen days into his hunger strike, the Supreme Court put a hold on the same-sex marriage decision, and Trestin, unfortunately, started eating again. He claims he lost a total of 25 pounds and had to punch a new hole in his belt.

Speaking to the Daily Beast, Trestin said that next time, he will give up football rather than food. 

Which of these fools is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll right here, unless you think it'd be unconstitutional to do so:

Previously: The French bar that was fined for letting customers return empty glasses versus the woman who stabbed her fiance over their wedding's color scheme

Winner: The social security guys who fined a French bar for letting customers return empty glasses!!!

@JLCT

I don’t know if you’ve ever met any of your untouchable, godlike, rock ’n’ roll heroes. But I have, many times, and it usually sucks. They’re never as impressive as when you first saw them in a magazine, and I should know—I’m a photographer, and it’s my job to make rock stars look cool in magazines. I’ve been disillusioned over and over, but in 2003, when I met Pantera’s guitarist, Dimebag Darrell, things went differently. I had done a few photo shoots with Dimebag for a guitar mag, and after the second one, he invited me to his home in Arlington, Texas, to attend a Christmas party.

On Christmas Eve, I arrived at his house—it was obvious which was his because it was the only one in the neighborhood with a huge Confederate flag on the roof. I was expecting a bacchanalian drug fest fit for a metal god, but when Dimebag’s wife, Rita, answered the door in an apron, I realized this was just a straight-up Christmas party. I drank countless “blacktooth grins,” his signature drink of Seagram’s Seven Crown, Crown Royal, and a tiny bit of Coke. There were dudes with ponytails and women in mom jeans, and Dimebag was beneath a black, upside-down Christmas tree passing out presents like spice racks and potpourri.

“Matt!” he yelped when he saw me. “Welcome to the party!” Not long after, the lights dimmed and a smoke machine spewed fog from the base of the tree. Someone threw Black Sabbath on the stereo and the party really started. A random buddy brought a crumpled stop sign he’d knocked down during a recent drunk joyride in Dimebag’s beat-up truck. Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains came late, strolling in holding a fist-size Ziploc of white powder in a decorative holiday bag with a rolled-up dollar bill taped to it. It was a white Christmas for all.

I’ve had these photos stuffed in a drawer since then, but I guess it’s time I shared them. A year after they were taken, Dimebag was shot and killed by a crazed fan, and I figure we should remember him in his true element: surrounded by a bunch of women in mom jeans, novelty drinks, and suburban raging.

BLACK KNIGHTS
Medieval Chamber
Record Collection

I was 12 years old when I saw the Black Knights open for Wu-Tang at the Agora Ballroom, one of Cleveland’s many famous shitholes. I don’t remember much about their set, except that they went on at about the same time I started to get a contact high and that at some point my crotch grazed against the big butt of a Wu groupie. Ever since that formative experience, I’ve been the kind of Wu-Stan who’ll cherish bloody used condoms, Japanese toxic waste, and Rob Ford’s skid-marked drawers as long as somebody slaps a W on ’em. This album is way better than any of those things, not to mention it has beats by junkie guitar god John Frusciante. Wu-Tang-affiliated projects are forever, motherfuckers.
CAPTAIN QUEEFHEART
 

AZEALIA BANKS
Broke with Expensive Taste
Interscope/Polydor

I used to know a couple who were really into roofie-ing each other. We’d all be at some dive bar and the chick would dust her dude’s Peroni with Rohypnol while he was in the bathroom. Then, five minutes later, she’d have a grin on her face and the guy would be all, “Wait—did you just roofie me? You did, didn’t you?” Then they’d go home, and she’d rape him, and the next day he’d be grumpy at brunch because he’d lost a round of their “game.” They were a really happy couple, but I’ve always wondered: What if the assaultee wasn’t in the right headspace to be date-raped that night? Would he or she just go along with it, for love? I don’t think I’ll ever really know, but after being forced to listen to this record, I did learn one thing: even if you’re kinda in love with somebody, sometimes you’re just not in the fucking mood.
BENJAMIN M. SHAPIRO
 

TY DOLLA $IGN
Beach House EP
Atlantic/Taylor Gang

I’m pretty sure Ty Dolla $ign is an actual angel. I can’t remember if it’s seraphim or archangels who have their names tattooed on their necks, but he’s one of those, because LA rap is good again, and Ty’s a big part of why that is. His beats are so rolled-out, you start reflexively chewing the inside of your mouth when he comes on, and his sing-raps are so saccharine, you almost forget he’s talking about making girls eat his poop. Ten gold rap stars.
DERU
 

MIND DYNAMICS
Precision Instruments
1080p

Mind Dynamics is butt deep in a hot tub of digital detritus situated up on the patio of glitchy zen heaven, where mechanical squeals and dead-end dance beats morph into pseudo-ambient stretches with garbled pop snippets just long enough to trick you into chilling out. But as soon as you’re not paying attention, they steal your data and throw your wallet into the back of their spaceship with a bunch of cracked iPhone cases and fake cashmere sweaters. Get into it.
GREY GOO
 

THE BLACK AND WHITE YEARS
Strange Figurines 
Modern Outsider

I’ve got a doinker swinging between my thighs, but in my life I’ve had a handful of conditions that typically affect women, including toxic shock syndrome and a yeast infection in my belly button. TSS was a major pain in the ass because I had to get a spinal tap, but the icky purulence of a yeasty innie stands unrivaled as the gnarliest thing that’s ever happened to my disgusting body. Pretty sure my finger still smells from the one time I stuck it in there to see what was going on. I don’t know how my girlfriend deals with these things all the time, but I’ll tell you one thing: she does not listen to sappy greaseball trash like this.
GORDON LIGHTDONG
 

NO BRA
Candy
Self-Released

No Bra is the music/performance project of Susanne Oberbeck, a “not gay” gay icon from rural Germany. On her second full-length, she continues her signature deadpan delivery over a disjointed mush of brown horse rock ’n’ roll. The result is totally mixed-up gender fucks mumbled by a topless woman with a blond mustache. If you aren’t gay already, it’ll do the hard work of coming out for you.
DUKUS P. TEKUM
 

VEX
Sanctuary: The Complete Discography
Sacred Bones

It’s getting really boring mechanistically assigning classic status to every fucking thing Sacred Bones puts out. I hate grave-wave co-option as much as the next ex-goth, but the last time I tried to call bullshit on these guys I felt like the principal in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. You’d think that once in a while they’d slip up and dook out a clunker, but then they go and drop a dark and feverish anarcho-punk reissue I’ve never heard of, and I limp home like a stupid weenie.
RENFIELD
 

HOLY WAVE
Relax
Austin Psych Fest

Hey, man, listen: if you’re gonna enter the “good vibes zone” (a.k.a. my man cave), you need to check your bullshit at the door. That means no talking about cats, no snacks that aren’t brown or yellow, and no critiquing the tunes. Yes, we all have day jobs and wives, and yes, this whole psychedelic revival is as tired and desperate as an Instagram of you at Dave & Buster’s, but come on. This new Holy Wave album isn’t the worst background music for smoking doobs and trying to forget about that time I accidently pulled my queer son’s arm out of its socket.
TIMOTHY BEERY
 

MOGWAI
Rave Tapes
Sup Pop

If you’re like me, the mention of post-anything makes you wish your mom had balls so you could kick her in them for subjecting you to this terrible world. Post-rock is the worst. It’s just a bunch of older drunks with floppy hair hunched over their instruments making loud, dramatic songs full of feedback and pedal effects. Mogwai, however, have always been a bunch of drunks with floppy hair hunched over their instruments, but they’re still making interesting music and not singing all that often. This album is more of that, which makes it better than 95 percent of whatever else you listen to.
TONY BARMAN
 

YOUNG THE GIANT
Mind Over Matter
Fueled by Ramen

For the last two months I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with this Russian-Turkish bathhouse. Here’s my routine: six days out of each week, I brutalize my body. Then, on Sundays, I get up at 8 AM and drag myself down some stairs into a moist, dingy basement that smells like Joe Spinell’s deepest scrote wrinkle. I sweat it out in silence with a bunch of nude Hasids for six hours and stroll out into the brisk afternoon air looking like a baby seal, free of toxins, impurities, and hatred. However, ever since I heard this haughty West Coast shopping music disguised as alt-rock, I’ve been unable to feel truly clean, and no amount of sweating will get their potted dissidence out of my system. Thanks for wrecking my shvitz, asshats.
BORIS AND DAVID
 

THE LAWRENCE ARMS
Metropole
Epitaph

Shitting on Lawrence Arms is like shitting on the staff at the deli closest to your apartment. You’re really going to waste precious hate points on these mopes? For pop-punk tuna and Bugles, you could do much worse. Sometimes fries with mustard, when I specifically asked for onion rings with ketchup are all I can hope to deserve. When I was 19, I went seven months without calling my mom even once.
MARTHA BARNER
 

ALCEST
Shelter
Prophecy

An American Tail would have been a shit-ton better if the main character weren’t a whiny bitch of a mouse named Fievel Mousekewitz. Maybe they should have focused on French multi-instrumentalist Neige. You could follow him from his teenage days as a session drummer for satanic, blackened tape-rapists Peste Noire to the time he led the post-industrial, postpunk, atmospheric black-metal gloom providers Amesoeurs. Then he starts this post-rock, post-metal, post-shoegaze, neo-AOR skyscraping solo project, which is pretty much exactly the sonic equivalent of his testicles’ dark journey of recession into his body cavity, set to a breathtaking soundtrack of crying violins, delicate finger plucks, and primal moans born of a breaking, aching self. It’s like a film within a film within a can of rotting garbage outside Katz’s Deli, and it’s a shoo-in for this year’s Palme D’Turd.
SEAN & BEN
 

SCORPIONS
MTV Unplugged—Live in Athens
SONY/RCA

No, this isn’t a review beamed in from 1988, and no, you’re not high (unless you are, stoner). The wizened, leather-rock lifers in Scorpions have emerged, wraith-like, to release their most dizzyingly anticipated record since Love at First Sting. Just kidding. This is a bunch of fuzzy, decrepit foreigners pooping out subpar acoustic renditions of 30-year-old sleeper hits for a bewildered crowd in Athens. They also play really slowly because their fingers would probably fall off if they tried to double-tap.
SE7VEN SISTERS
 

BEST COVER OF THE MONTH

PANGEA
Badillac
Harvest

Finally, a garage band with some fucking balls. Let ’em fly, motherfuckers.
MARY-LYNNE CRUSHER
 

HOSPITALITY
Trouble
Merge

I was told recently that Hospitality had to “accept silence” in order to make this record, which isn’t exactly the hard sell on why I should drop ten bucks on it. “Hey, so when we were making this thing, we spent a bunch of time not listening to our music, or any other music for that matter. We just sat in a corner eating string cheese very quietly. After six months of doing that every day, we blatted out an album. I hope you like it! It’s called This Is What It Sounds Like to Eat String Cheese in Silence.” Here’s what they should have said: “This album is really good. It’s poppy in places, but eerily self-reflective and melancholy in others. It’s not what you expect from Hospitality, but rather something far more meaningful. You will probably listen to this album a lot after breakups and around tax season.”
AMATEUR PUBLICIST
 

AGAINST ME!
Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Total Treble

The sad truth is that this record would only get positive reviews no matter what, because music writers don’t want to be caught trashing a lady who used to be a dude. Luckily, I’m spared lying to you because the album utterly slays. After a few major-label snoozers, Against Me! sound like a punk band again, and one that I actually want to listen to. So let’s all thank transphobia for making Against Me! rad again. Bravo, transphobia. You can stop existing now.
CITY BABY ATTACKED BY ZACKS
 

WARPAINT
Self-Titled
Rough Trade

This album is so spooky that it makes me think that the cast of American Horror Story: Coven got together to form a band. There’s a song on here called “Biggy” that literally sounds like someone trying to raise the dead. If this were Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1600s, they’d be burned at the stake for writing songs that conjure up visions of a cocktail party in Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s dorm room. Good thing it’s 2014, and burning people for being weird isn’t nearly as popular as it used to be. In summation, these gals can ride my broomstick any time they want.
BONES JUSTICE
 

WORST ALBUM OF THE MONTH

BOY & BEAR
Harlequin Dream
Universal

Do you know what a “pup in a tub” is? It’s a mage-level sex act wherein a man inserts both of his testicles into his partner’s vagina or butthole, so-named because it’s harder to do than keeping a dog in the bathtub. After slogging through 11 cuts of wimpy Australian folk rock, I can safely say that finishing this album was harder than the GREs, the SATs, and the cram-your-nuts-inside-a-vagina test combined.
BSHAP
 

DOG BITE
Tranquilizers
Carpark

Somehow these dingbats managed to convince their publicist they made a “soul” record, but really Tranquilizers is what happens when chillwave burnouts play too fast and loose with the Oxycontin and decide they’re the second coming of Kevin Shields. I guess you could put this on for your next overdose, but with so many Q Lazzarus songs in the world there’s just no point.
ERIC PUNDERMANN
 

DUM DUM GIRLS
Too True
Sub Pop

My girl isn’t so keen on putting her tongue on another vagina, but I definitely think she’d dump my ass to get a piece of Dee Dee Penny. We’ve seen Dum Dum Girls twice together and the eyes she gives Dee Dee are just offensive. And what’s fucked up about it is that Dee Dee isn’t some megastar who’s guarded by security 24-7 and only eats prechewed turquoise M&Ms like a baby bird. She’s a cool chick who plays in a band. You could walk right up to her after a show and be like, “Hey, I like your tunes,” or, “Damn, you guys rocked.” Except my chick would just be like, “I date a needle dick. Wanna murder this turd with me? Then we can take a bath in his blood while we listen to ‘Cult of Love’ on repeat.” The worst part about this whole scenario is that I wouldn’t even get to watch.
WILBERT L. COOPER
 

WORST COVER OF THE MONTH

AUGUSTINES
Self-Titled
Votiv

You know that anything-is-possible last bit of Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising that makes you feel like the recession won’t last forever, and that you are America, and that you’re about to get a little weepy during the closing credits of Barry Levinson’s new movie about your life? Imagine if that was an entire album. This isn’t stem-cell research, guys, it’s a simple formula: write a good song and move on. Otherwise all your songs sound the same, and you’re absolutely no one’s favorite band. (In the industry, this is referred to as the “Cake effect.”) Anyway, these Augustines chodes are trying so hard to nail blind feelings of Bush-era indie uplift that it starts to get straight-up anachronistic, and reminds me why I started listening to a bunch of Pissed Jeans after the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act was vetoed.
JOHNNY WENT-LIGHTLY
 

STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS
Wig Out at Jagbags
Matador

Let’s all sack up and collectively acknowledge that “indie” “rock” in 2014 is about as fresh as putting “everything” “in” “scare” “quotes” (this is an inside joke to our copy editor, who “really” “loves” “scare” “quotes”). And sure, one might postulate that Stephen Malkmus is at least partially responsible for this sort of stink, and that he’s the reason we have to listen to bros in flannel croon about their daddy issues. But also, fuck you, because Stephen Malkmus didn’t bastardize indie rock—you did. Next time you get angry about some new buzz band, ask yourself one question: What do you hate? The world as it is, or yourself? Can you even tell the fucking difference anymore, you self-centered piece of shit? Why don’t you go cry on Twitter about it?
KT SLAYER
 

ARMON JAY
Everything’s Different, Nothing’s Changed
Self-Released

True story: this record shares a nom de suck with the 151st episode of Desperate Housewives, which begins with Beth on life support after trying to kill herself. Her last wish is to donate a kidney to Susan, but they’re barely friends, and Paul isn’t just going to sit by while his wife is butchered. Mike, however, knows the law is on his side, and he’s not going to back down to Paul. Then, Armon Jay has a creative breakthrough: he comes to terms with his adult ADD diagnosis, marries Sally, and hops on the Oregon Trail with a wink to the sky, finally comfortable living in his own skin... on his own terms.
GURDJIEFF/DE HARTMANN
 

ABRAM SHOOK
Sun Marquee
Western Vinyl

According to his Facebook profile, Mr. Shook used to work for Apple and is now a cook at some upscale Austin sushi restaurant. After stalking him online, I listened to his album and tried to reconcile this image of a tech-savvy Texas chef with this collection of synthy, Napoleon Dynamite–esque surf rock. Honestly, this album is pleasant as fuck—a serious, continuous summer wet dream with songs that all sound somewhat similar and have names like “Hangover,” “Coastal,” and “Lifeguard.” Hopefully I can make it out to Austin in time to get some tempura udon from this dude, though this album makes me wonder if he’s spiking the California rolls with synthetic mescaline. If so, I’ll take two please.
JACKSON HOWARD
 

BROKEN BELLS
After the Disco
Columbia

A great man once cleared his throat and said, “After the party is the after-party. And after the party... [pause for emphasis] is the hotel lobby.” This begs the question: What is “after the disco”? If my experience in and around Denver’s swinging nightspots is any indication, the answer is a little scenario I like to call “Swedish siblings passed out in my bed and a bunch of whipped cream drying on my nipples.” Nothing that awesome is on this album.
KATE HATE
 

BEST ALBUM OF THE MONTH

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Killed by Deathrock Vol. 1
Sacred Bones

If—all these years later—there’s simply too much drama in your Christian Death, too much makeup in your Xmal Deutschland, too much cheese in your 45 Grave, too much glam in your Alien Sex Fiend, and generally just too little left to fan the sad, pissed-off flame burning in your black little heart, then there may simply not be enough raw, unknown gems on this fantastic comp to keep you from chugging a bottle of Mr. Clean while watching Nekromantik. Thanks anyway, Caleb.
SPEWPUKE
 

LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO
Always with Us
Self-Released

In the year 2000, Nellie Shabalala, the wife of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s founder and conductor, Joseph Shabalala, recorded a few tracks with her South African gospel group. She died two years later, and those sessions were never released. Then, in 2011, Joseph and the rest of his nine-member vocal group went into the studio and enveloped her vocals in teak-warm, mbube-style harmonies as a tribute to her life, their collective love, Jesus, and everything good. The result is probably the best record ever made to give your in-laws for Hanukkah, especially if they boycotted South African wines to protest apartheid. It’ll have them in dashikis in no time, sashaying around their Mamaroneck living room. They may be in such bliss that they’ll never even realize they’re listening to the South African equivalent of Creed.
DEEP DISH
 

PAINTED PALMS
Forever
Polyvinyl

My boss uses Siri, so I feel weird sharting on it publicly, but I’m just sick of hearing him shouting things like “Siri! Remind me to come out to my parents!” or “Siri! Remind me to return those heirloom carrots to the farmer’s market, they were all nubby!” Hey Fatty McFat-Fat, are your fat fingers too fat for the touchscreen? Stop eating marshmallows and keep the banalities of your life to yourself. Lately, when this has happened, I’ve just thrown this album on and let the SF duo’s molten good vibes—like the Beach Boys screwing with some synths under a Christmas tree—make the rest of the world disappear. Last week I did it on a plane and it was like my own private TWA Flight 553… through the airspace of my mind.
KTB
 

THE AMERICAN PROFESSIONALS
We Make It Our Business
Charlie in the Box

Look at that album cover. These guys are on some Huey Lewis “Hip to Be Square” trip, trying to co-opt the mechanisms of state control in a vain stab at self-empowerment. Thing is, their songs sound like late-period Piebald, which doesn’t exactly set them up to critique much of anything outside of good taste.
TAD FREND

Our new year’s resolution for 2014 is butts. That’s what it says on a notecard amid the papers on the massive table that our editors use as a shared desk. “NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: BUTTS!” We don’t know what it means any more than you do, but we’re pretty sure we’re doing a kickass job following through on it—our first issue of 2014, the Horse Is a Horse of Course of Course Issue, features posteriors galore.

There’s the cover by David Choe, of course, which as you can see is very derriere-centric. Then there’s Wilbert Cooper’s deep dive into the epidemic of ass implants sweeping America—as he documents, fake rear ends are becoming more and more popular, and women (and some men) are frequenting back-alley doctors to get illegal butt injections, which can make your cheeks larger and more shapely but can also lead to life-ruining complications. Is it a good idea to pay thousands of dollars to have silicone shot into your hips? Maybe not, even if you are a stripper at an ultra-glamorous Miami strip club, like some of the women Wilbert talked to.

Then there’s the (slightly less serious) investigation a pair of our correspondents did into the asses plowed by Fidel Castro. Is the Cuban leader the greatest lover of all time? Probably.

Other questions asked in this issue include:

Can marijuana cure cancer in children? (Yes, according to the people giving extremely powerful THC pills to an eight-year-old girl.)

What’s it like to be one of the few female cadets at an elite military academy in Pakistan? (Pretty fucking exhausting, but also rewarding, as the soldiers told documentarian Aeyliya Husain.)

How fucking stylish is vintage ski equipment? (Very fucking stylish—just look at that fashion shoot by Graham Dunn.)

What does it take to create a worldwide network of atheist churches? (A couple of English standup comedians are hoping that being really, really nice will do the trick.)

How does it feel to know that the man who kidnapped you and murdered two UN soldiers during the Lebanese civil war 34 years ago is now freely selling ice cream in Detroit? (Not good, writes Steve Hindy, who was an AP reporter in the Middle East before he founded the Brooklyn Brewery.)

Here’s one last question: Why the heck aren’t you subscribed to our magazine? Do that shit here. If you’ve got an iPad, get our app for free here, and enjoy the extras that come with every article.  

The Red Scorpions' logo, via Facebook.

The Red Scorpions, a notorious BC gang, look like the kind of dudes you’d see at high school house parties ‘roided out in MMA brand T-shirts, drinking crappy beer and acting hard, while selling weed and blow wrapped in squares of computer paper or cigarette foil. When all the beer and drugs were gone, they might have left quietly, or, depending on the mood of the evening, sucker punched the host and fled laughing in their parents’ Lincoln.

Yes, the Bacon Brothers—Jonathan, Jarrod and Jamie—who founded the Red Scorpions may have come up with the name of their gang during an afternoon recess in grade six, but by the first few years of the new millennium, The Red Scorpions were getting pretty serious.

Comfortably born and raised in Abbotsford to a father who taught special needs kids and a mother who worked at a credit union, they didn’t exactly have a background that might typically lead to a so-called thug life. The Bacons were more of a “gangster next door” kind of criminal. Former classmates at W.J. Mouat High School speaking anonymously to the CBC described the Red Scorpions’ founder Jonathan as “a pretty nice kid,” while youngest brother Jamie was a high school wrestling champ. So by the sounds of it, they were essentially just jocks, and probably bearable unless you crossed them.

However, by the time the first of three began to graduate in 1999, the Brothers Bacon had definitely chosen a criminal path. The allure of gang life to kids with these backgrounds—says Michael Chettleburgh, a recognized and oft-consulted expert on Canadian gangs—isn’t based on the more typical risk factors like poverty; it’s simply about making fast money and pumping their own tires.

“For some of the middle-class BC knuckleheads,” Chettleburgh said. “It’s not about basic needs, but more about advanced ‘self-esteem’ needs: respect, achievement, recognition. So gang life and the über-lucrative BC drug trade is seen as a shorter path to success than the workaday lives of successful parents, who have toiled for years to achieve.”

In a relatively short period of time, the Bacon Brothers’ Red Scorpions had established a network of like-minded individuals from a variety of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, through an equation of violence = power = money. They turned their non-traditional (for a gangster) and privileged upbringing into a significant force in the lower mainland’s drug trade, by moving BC bud south in exchange for guns and cocaine.

But the very factors that made the middle class Bacons' rise (or fall) into BC gangsterism unique in the late 90s is apparently becoming a much more common characteristic of Canada’s underworld. “Today's street and mid-level gangs in Canada are mostly hybrid,” Chettleburgh told me. “Which means, among other things, multi-ethnic composition… and members with ‘non-traditional’ risk factors. This is a feature in the BC lower mainland but we see it increasingly elsewhere, that is, young people who aren't from the hood seeking to flex their muscles in the game.”

By the mid 2000s, the Bacons’ likely ‘roided-out biceps were certainly flexing. With the money and violence on a steady incline, the Red Scorpions had begun to attract the attention of law enforcement as well as the ire of one particular and similarly composed rival. Based out of Chilliwack, a community neighbouring Abbotsford, the United Nations (a reference to the gang’s inclusivity to all ethnic backgrounds) was founded by Clay Roueche, who, if maybe a tad more blue collar than the Bacons, also originated from middle class surroundings. Rolling Stone recently featured him in a six-page article, dubbing Clay as a Pablo Escobar of BC bud and a guy who “changed the marijuana game forever.” There’s also a rumour out there that he’s the only white guy to ever be a full patch member of the Triads. Roueche also had close ties with a Chinese man who went to jail for murdering a guy in Niagara Falls, with two daggers, while dressed in a ninja outfit.

With a “this Fraser Valley ain’t big enough for the two of us” attitude, The Red Scorpions and UN engaged in an all-out, very public war. Numerous targeted murders led to Abbotsford being temporarily known as Canada’s murder capital. Jamie and Jonathan survived numerous assassination attempts (including one in the driveway of their parents’ house), and in 2007 the well documented "Surrey Six" massacre—where two innocent witnesses were brought into an apartment and shot to death, along with four UN gang members—brought the lower mainland’s gang warfare into the national consciousness and the Bacon brothers a long way away from their suburban roots.
 

A screenshot from Clay Roueche's bizarre website, via his bizarre website.

It all started to catch up at the turn of the decade. In April of 2009, Jamie Bacon was arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder for his involvement in the "Surrey Six" murders. The trial is currently underway while Jamie sits in jail, subsequently convicted of other firearms related charges. In November of that same year, Jarrod Bacon was arrested after agreeing to buy 100 kilos of cocaine from an undercover cop, and was recently sentenced to 14 years in prison. Then, in 2011, with both of his younger brothers locked up, Jonathan Bacon (alongside a Hells Angel he was riding with) was gunned down and killed outside of a Kelowna casino. Meanwhile, also in 2009, Clay Roueche was picked up trying to cross the border into Mexico, and is currently serving a 30 year jail sentence in the States for drug smuggling and money laundering—though he recently announced on his Facebook page that he’s applied to serve the rest of his sentence in Canada.

Given all of these murders and prison sentences, and considering the UN Gang’s alleged interim leader is being deported back to Iraq this year, it would have appeared that the heads had been cut off the proverbial snakes and things were quieting down in the world of BC gang violence… until last week. 

On January 3^rd at 3:45 in the afternoon in the parking lot of an auto mall, Matthew Gordon Campbell, who the Vancouver Sun reports was the current leader of the Red Scorpions, was stabbed in the neck and died of his injuries. The very public and brutal attack is a reminder of the violence that until then seemed to have subsided. This obviously leads to several questions: Will this assassination be the end of the Red Scorpions, or will it blow the lid off simmering conflicts and send the lower mainland spiraling into another round of dangerously public gang warfare?

“The answer to the Red Scorpions and how long they’ll be disabled is that there is instability for sure when a leader goes down, but most of it is internal strife.” said Cathy Prowse, a criminal anthropologist with the University of Calgary who spent 25 years working intelligence with the Calgary Police Force. “When a leader is taken out, the bottom line is that it’s a significant hit. That’s your mobilizing figure, that’s your connected individual. So the higher the person is on the organizational structure, the more the impact there is on the group. But if that leader has really multi-stranded ties that are very, very strong, long and enduring, then the leadership will quickly resurrect.”

Michael Chettleburgh insists there will be bloodshed. And the Red Scorpions, despite two of their leaders being killed in the last four years, won’t be going anywhere.

“Tit for tat defines the gang world, no challenge goes unaddressed. I would expect retaliation. The Red Scorpions aren’t going anywhere. It’s a game of whack-a-mole. There is a fiction that if you cut the head off the snake—or the scorpion as the case may be—the gang dies. It generally does not. For a relatively sophisticated and hungry mid-level gang like RS that has solid connections to traditional organized crime, and that moves a lot of weight on the street, there will be other soldiers that will step up; but it is possible the crew will morph into something by a different name with different or complimentary relationships.”

“It is very dynamic in BC, but I would not hold your breath expecting that the Red Scorpions will ride off into the night never to be seen again. There is just too damn much money to be made in the game and RS/UN et al are resilient. Death, prison, and rip offs by rivals are simply conditions of employment in gang life, not reasons for leaving.”

The retaliation may have already begun, as earlier in the week there were simultaneous shootings, one at a nightclub and the other outside a convenience store that had “all the hallmarks of the shootings that marred Metro Vancouver during 2009’s drug war.” Whether these shootings are a flash in the pan, or the introduction to another sustained period of violence, remains to be seen. But one should probably be advised that if you plan on going out to any nightclubs that the UN or Red Scorpions are known to frequent, it would be wise to invest in a vest.
 

@ddner

Deborah Reed looks like one of the sweetest women you could ever meet. She’s blond, hazel-eyed, tiny, and bright. I first met her in a small town that borders the Black Forest in Germany this past summer and my immediate thought was of a canary, small-boned with a harmonious voice. This image was further solidified after I heard her give a reading the following evening. In spite of the thick, humid July heat, total lack of AC, and the jet lag, Deborah’s voice was clear and spirited as she read a vivid passage from her then-unpublished novel, Things We Set on Fire.

Don't let her looks fool you—this is a woman who can throw a pretty decent punch. Born to blue-collar parents in Detroit, she eventually ended up in Florida, where she spent much of her days drinking, fighting, singing, and playing music with her large Southern family. “Sure, one could say that growing up with a bunch of hellions who beat the shit out each another one day and then professed their love and protection the next—yeah, that could have given me some insight into complicated human nature,” she told me when I asked about her upbringing.

Deborah’s writing is complex, layered, diverse, and, much like the writer herself, a bit paradoxical. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on what’s happening, everything falls out from under you. When I was reading her first novel, Carry Yourself Back to Me, I was delighted to find that things took a turn for the worse when I least expected it. Maybe I'm a little cynical, but I prefer when books and films present some sort of emotional realism, which she does with ease. At times, her works seem reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone or Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine.

Her work isn't comprised of pure tragedy. Sure, people fight, people cheat, and people die. But people also live (she's not trying to go all Lolita on you). Her characters are complicated and flawed, but that’s precisely what makes them real, likable, and human.

She's currently working on her fifth book, a novel written under her pseudonym, Audrey Braun—the name she uses when writing psychological thrillers. We sat down a few weeks ago to discuss her newly released novel, her childhood, the richness of Florida, and how she learned to say “vaginal bleeding” in German.

VICE: You have said that your latest novel, Things We Set on Fire, took you nearly two decades to flesh out. Can you describe what the process of writing this book was like?
Deborah Reed: It took 16 years to get right. Frankly, it was hell. The last thing I wanted was to put a novel out there that could be construed in any way as cliché or downplayed as “chick lit” just because it’s a story about women written by a woman. But more than that, the story is very emotionally complex and I did not want to get it wrong lest the characters veer into stereotypes against my will. I had to figure out how to tell a story that closely resembles life—where not everyone can be wrong and not everyone can be right—where the misconceptions, prejudices, and family secrets that haunt us all in real life could be held up to a light and examined for what they are, giving everyone a chance to have her say. I wrote three other novels while continuing to work on this one. It was extremely emotionally draining.

It seems like it was worth the wait. It was the top seller in the literary section of Amazon’s Kindle store. Do you feel any relief since it's come out?
To be honest, no. Not really. This stuff never gets easier. It’s too nerve-wracking to think about how it’s being received, so I just keeping working and worrying about the book I’m writing now, whether it can measure up, whether I can pull it off, and whether I’ll actually finish it. I’d rather have my nervous energy go toward writing a new book than have it disperse into thin air over things I can’t control.

Things We Set on Fire has a similar setting to that of your earlier work, Carry Yourself Back to Me, and there is even a brief mention of a character from that novel in this new story. Does Florida hold any specific significance for you?
Yes. I came of age in Florida. I moved there from Michigan as a teenager and the strangeness fully captured my imagination. I’ve never been able to shake it. To go from the stoic suburbs of Detroit to lizards in the sink, snakes in the trees, gators in the rivers and lakes, flying cockroaches, sharks, manatees, and hurricanes? I mean, God almighty. Florida also makes for a great backdrop on the page. It’s full of texture and sensory details and has a built-in tension with the heat, humidity, and man-eating creatures.

The characters in both novels are very troubled and very complex, yet you seem to have a good handle on all of them. Do they relate to the people you grew up with?
Originally, I’m from Detroit, and I moved to Westland with my parents a few years later, “the only city in the country that was named after a mall,” as Charlie LeDuff put it in Detroit: An American Autopsy. My parents divorced soon afterwards, but my dad was always around, even after my mother remarried. When I was 17, we all moved to Florida. Most of my family is originally from the South. Nearly everyone played an instrument. And nearly everyone liked to drink. Our food was Southern; our stories were long and drawn-out and loud and funny as hell. Lots of fighting. Classic country on the radio and on the guitars my father and uncles would play and we’d all sing along. Lots of Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings. My father has an insanely beautiful baritone voice. I spent a great deal of time outdoors and barefoot all summer long. I was a tomboy through and through. I’m convinced at some point my parents must of thought I was gay. I turned into a more feminine heterosexual when I became a teenager.

But I was always a brooder, a watcher, a reader. I imagine the combination of these things was good training for a writer.

In your work, both familial and romantic relationships are complicated and often destructive. Do these relationships mirror any of your own?
Yes and no. My imagination and sense of empathy come into play more than anything. The layering of complicated, destructive behavior and emotions comes from all kinds of sources, be it witnessing a mother holding her child’s hand in a market square or a couple trying not cry as they break up in a restaurant. It’s all right there in the world for the taking. No need to stay close at home.

Since you're not attached to a certain location, does that give you the freedom to move around?
I spent many years living in Germany, raising my first child after a short marriage and speaking very little of the language. My first year there was one of the worst of my life. I had severe morning sickness and was losing weight and began having early contractions at five months, so I spent the majority of my pregnancy on my back in a hospital bed and could not speak a word of German. Everyone I’ve told this story to says, “But, of course the nurses and doctors spoke English…” No. They did not. None of them. The nurses were brought in from various Asian countries to fill a shortage and spoke French instead of English. The doctors, whom I rarely saw, also spoke French, if not Polish or Russian. I was on my own, having to learn German as best I could. I became versed in the German words for fevers, vaginal bleeding, vomiting, and my weight. Other than that I was at a loss until after my son was born and I was released into German society. I’m now fluent, by God, and wear it like a badge.

When did you move back to the US?
The first time I returned to the States was in the early 90s when my son was five years old. Years later, I married an American who ended up taking a marketing job in Germany and we moved back for another three years, and I’d already had another young son. Both of my boys lived in Germany until they were five. It was a very strange coincidence. I spent nearly a decade living over there, and now I return every summer to teach at the Black Forest Writing Seminar in Freiburg, Germany, where I would love to live full-time someday.

What compelled you to write A Small Fortune and its sequel, Fortune’s Deadly Descent, under a pseudonym?
The truth is somewhat embarrassing to admit, but here it goes: I’d never tried my hand at writing a thriller and had no idea if I could pull it off. I decided to use a pen name in case it flopped so that no one would know it was me. It never even occurred to me that if it were a success, no one would know it was me either. Live and learn.

The books you've written under your pseudonym are vastly different from those penned under your birth name. Does your writing process differ depending on which genre you’re focusing on? When you’re writing as Audrey, do you get into a different mental state?
Yes, the process is quite different. When I write as Audrey Braun, I feel a sense of freedom that comes with focusing a bit more on plot, less on the murky nothingness where literary fiction finds writers fumbling around, grasping for something, anything, to help get to the next page. As Audrey, I have this innate sense of not giving a shit about anything. I don’t judge or self-edit nearly as much as when I’m writing as Deborah Reed. It’s quite liberating, and dare I say, fun.

I recently came across another Deborah Reed on Amazon who apparently also writes thrillers. Please tell me that this isn’t your other alter-ego...
Oh, God, no! But isn't it weird? Same name, but she appears to be Australian and her books are similar in title to the ones I write under my pen name. I'm pretty sure she self-publishes. The covers are hilarious as well, they're kind of like 80s glamor shots.

Do you enjoy writing one genre more than another?
Not really. I like both for different reasons. Writing literary fiction is more of an art form and takes a lot more out of me in the process. It's terribly hard work. But the flip side of that is that finishing the work is extremely rewarding. Not to say that writing thrillers isn’t, but carefully constructing a complicated world using an artistry that requires me to go very deep over a period of years to get it right is in a category by itself. Writing thrillers is simply a joy. I write much quicker, and there is nothing quite like allowing my imagination to run off into foreign countries where the stakes are terribly high and the sex is wild and crazy. It’s a riot, albeit a bloodthirsty one.

Things We Set on Fire isn't a thriller, but it does start off with a murder. Was that a difficult choice to make? Did you always know the intentions behind that murder, or did you find them out as you wrote the story?
I used to have a different prologue that began the story instead of that murder, though the murder was always a part of the plot. I shifted things around a lot over the years until I realized that single act affected everything that came after and I chose to put it up front because the reader doesn’t understand it any more than the characters do, and therefore everything unfolds for everyone at the same time.

When discussing As I Lay Dying, Faulkner said, “I set out deliberately to write a tour de force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” Not to place you in the shadow of a literary giant or anything, but is this how it is for you?
John Irving says the same thing as Faulkner. I don’t write like that. It’s all pretty murky for me from the start. I tend to begin with more of a feel or tone of something than any kind of storyline and I find the story by writing the story. That’s just me. I do a little more plotting when I write thrillers, but even then, things always take turns and the characters do what they want anyway, so who am I to dictate? That may sound trite, but I’m serious.

Well, as a writer myself, that definitely brings me relief. Since we’re on the topic of literary giants, who are some of your favorite writers?
Per Petterson, Kent Haruf, Kate Atkinson, Marilynne Robinson, William Gay, Donna Tartt, Raymond Carver, William Trevor, John Banville—who also writes crime novels under [the name] Benjamin Black—and Kate Walbert.

What is next for you? Are there any new books on the horizon for us to look forward to?
I hope to be done with the new stand-alone Audrey Braun novel sometime next year. It isn’t part of the series I started. I’ll try and get to the third in that trilogy after I finish this one. Either that, or I’ll start a new literary novel that you might hear about in a few years.

Deborah Reed’s latest novel, Things We Set on Fire, can be purchased here.

Photo via Flickr user Bordecia34

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

-For those of you gentle folk who hate my guts and want me to die for daring to write a weekly compendium of racist news stories, you may get your wish sooner than you think. According to a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine done by researchers at the University of Maryland, the exposure to racism and abuse can and does prematurely age black men. The study examined the life expectancy of 92 black males between the ages of 30 and 50 and found that the stress from discrimination and prejudice can lead to a shorter life span. Dr. David H. Chae of Maryland's School of Public Health said, "Stop-and-frisk policies, and other forms of criminal profiling such as ‘driving or shopping while black’ are inherently stressful and have a real impact on the health of African Americans." At least now I have a scientific basis for my complaint that writing this column is giving me gray hair, bags under my eyes, and something I like to call "Droopy Ball Syndrome."

If you've never been the victim of racism or prejudice, then I'm sure it's hard to empathize, but any form of stress can lead to physical deterioration. A link between emotional trauma and physical deterioration was first found in 2004, so these revelations are not all that surprising, but it's still important to remember the totality of racism's impact. Black males are already expected to live shorter lives than their counterparts in other ethnic groups, thanks to increased rates of heart disease, cancer, strokes, and other maladies; black men are also the demographic most likely to be murdered. Obviously, environment and diet play a large part in those discrepancies, but with this new information it will be harder to ignore the connection between black mortality and prejudice. I'm giving this story a 7, which is the number of times I've been called the N-word in the last year.

-Chinese government officials are demanding an apology from a Spanish TV station for a racist depiction of a Chinese restaurant worker that aired during a New Year's telecast. Huang Yazhong, a Chinese diplomat stationed in Spain, wrote a caustic letter to the channel Telecinco:

“In the show titled Mesa para Dos [Table for Two], a clown wearing strange ‘Chinese clothes’ jumped up and down, making all sorts of exaggerated gestures. What’s more, the other actors openly insulted Chinese people using words so vulgar it would make any educated person blush.”

Spain's Chinese population is miniscule, but according to Huang, that's no excuse to be hateful:

“Perhaps Telecinco is a commercial TV station and only cares about ratings, so 180,000 Chinese people is a small enough audience to ignore, but I would like to draw your attention that behind these 180,000 Chinese people stand another 1.3 billion Chinese people from the world’s most populous country and second largest economy! Even if you don’t care [about] damaging your country’s reputation in China, at least please observe basic civility and social image of a broadcaster.”

Does that sound like a threat to you? Kinda sounds like a threat. I miss the old days when a cultural misunderstanding could lead to a long, bloody, senseless global conflict. I give this story an 8, but I give the People's Republic of China a 10 for its brazenly arrogant statements. I can still feel the breeze on my face from the country swinging its dick around so much.

Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons

-In a speech pretty much no one asked for but had to listen to anyway, Meryl Streep condemned the very dead Walt Disney for being both racist and sexist. Streep was presenting an award to Emma Thompson for her portrayal of Mary Poppins author PL Travers in Saving Mr. Banks, which is about the Disney film adaptation of her book. The movie has been criticized for sugarcoating Travers's displeasure with the way her work was changed for the cinema, but there's been less outcry over the way Walt Disney, a real human being with real flaws, was sanitized into a cuddly mascot of the variety that wanders the amusement parks that bear his name. The veracity of these rumors of Disney's racism is up for some debate, and Vulture did a handy fact-check around the release of Mr. Banks that attempted to shed some light on the real Walt Disney, and the evidence is fairly damning.

It's heartening to hear someone fight back against the whitewashing being done to Walt Disney's reputation, but a snoozefest awards ceremony is not the best place to take a stand. Giving this story a 4, because saying controversial things about race is what Twitter's for...

The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:

New name for a sand nigger, dune coon

— Landyn Ragan (@LANRAG_16) January 8, 2014

JOKE: Nigger and a gun joke - why do niggers hold their guns sideways?..... cause that is the way they found it... http://t.co/DsF10jr7VL

— Pinoy FUN ZONE (@PinoyFZ) January 10, 2014

My boss asked me why I was chink eyed this morning lol

— Freshly Baked (@shetokesup) January 10, 2014

Race mixing whores beat teen until she will have sex with some nigger. http://t.co/EGPOEyGCb4

— DiversityKills (@DieVersityKills) January 10, 2014

I want a white bitch to call me a broke nigger while we having sex its so sexy to me

— Monkzilla (@willyroast2) January 10, 2014

@dave_schilling

Image by Courtney Nicholas

Everyone seems to be talking about Blackfish, the new documentary about killer whales trained to do tricks for humans at amusement parks. More specifically, it’s about orcas in captivity at Sea World that have violently turned on their handlers and spectators. The reason being, the more politically incorrect among us might posit, is that they are killer whales. 

You could say this is an activist film of sorts, but the animal rights messages of the film are well taken because they are brutal and demand attention from the viewer. And is it that crazy to think that giant, highly intelligent marine mammals should not be placed in captivity? They live in familial units that are arguably tighter than human families, and they even speak in their own language and dialects. So, when individuals from different pods are mixed together and sandwiched into tight performance pools, things can rapidly become tense and hostile.

It’s all unpleasant but equally compelling stuff, but at some points I was left wondering the point of it all which has left me with a series of lingering questions: Does the documentary take aim at the wrong target, Sea World? And if we extend what seems to be the film’s thesis to the hypothetical extreme of all Sea Worlds and similar waterparks being closed, leaving no killer wales in captivity, would this solve all the whales’ problems? I’m no specialist or expert on the subject, but many of the whales’ natural habitats have been damaged or destroyed over the years, so if we save the hundred whales in captivity as the documentary seems to be pushing for, would we really be doing anything meaningful? Or is the doc’s purpose to get us on the ethics of keeping animals captivity for human amusement, especially extremely intelligent species? Maybe that's the point of the film?

And this just leads to more queries and quandaries, all of which speak to the film’s power. It’s already directly effecting Sea World’s bottom line; just yesterday country music star Trace Adkins followed suit with acts lower on the bill and canceled his appearance at the park’s forthcoming Band, Blues, and BBQ event. There’s a good reason why everyone will be watching and talking about it, and I don’t think it’s because we’re all secret whale lovers. Of course, how it tugs at our humanity is part of it—the whales are posed as the loveable underdogs, abused and imprisoned against their will—but I think the main reason the documentary is so compelling is because its entertainment value is rich because of the very whale/human killings that it purports to critique.

Blackfish could’ve easily been yet another monotonous “save the whales” documentary where they give us all the facts about the human-created plights of whales both in and out of captivity. Instead of preaching and using pretty but uninspired long-lens shots of whales frolicking peacefully in the ocean, the documentary, like so many successful action and crime movies, relies on visceral violence in the context of the age-old battle of man versus Mother Nature. This is amplified by the film’s main setting, an amusement park ostensibly designed for parents hoping to instill joyful memories in their young children. Is the severe trauma of a relative handful of impressionable kids worth the happiness of those who were spared what on the surface are lovely ballets of beast and human but under the waves and splashes are constructs of abuse and violence? When you fuck with animals, it’s inevitable that every once in a while the wild underbelly rises to the surface and someone is killed, and sometimes it’s in front of the children! In the age where there are so many choices for entertainment, it’s overwhelming (and one where, as far as I can tell, young children are more entertained by iPads than anything else), do we really need to be training animals for human amusement anymore? I am not here to answer that question, but it’s not going to do you any harm to ponder it and decide where you stand.

When one watches the National Geographic Channel, what do we want to see? If you’re honest, the answer is something like “I want to see the fucking lion chase down the antelope and tackle it and rip it apart, piece by piece, because I too am an animal. Deep within, I have these tendencies—to destroy things and savagely take what I want, when I want—but society keeps me in check.” If you go deep down, past humanitarianism and the mistreatment of animals, this is the reason the film is so compelling. Some balance and relief is provided by ruminations from the sweet and well-meaning former trainers who talk, some with great emotion, about their experiences working with killer whales at Sea World. For the most part, their testimonies make Sea World out to be a place that provides great care and love for its animals, albeit within admittedly tight quarters. Is the outcome that the filmmakers used these former trainers as dramatic personae with an agenda to make Sea World an evil empire rather than a place that employs specialists at the top of their fields who may sometimes have to turn a blind eye to outdated practices? I’ll let you answer that question.

Either way, golly gee it’s exciting to watch the ensuing meltdown as the slick, cheesy, family-oriented façade of Sea World’s advertising is pulled away through haunting testimonies, spooky music, and mind-searing found footage of the whales attacking humans. It’s like reality TV set in the Roman Coliseum, achieving the convoluted  experience of inducing pity for the animals, outrage against the institution that seems to be mishandling these majestic creatures, all the while stealthily building anticipation for the scenes where we get to see the horror of beast on human attacks. The documentary does a good job of showing some but not all of the horror, like Werner Herzog’s earlier, masterful documentary using found footage, Grizzly Man, we don’t see the moments of death, but in a way this approach is much more poignant and haunting.

In the end, Blackfish is a “save the whales” documentary reimagined as Moby Dick: you still get the excitement of the high seas, and it’s easy to hate the “bad guys” who are hurting the animals. Also, I don’t have kids, so I don’t have much desire to go to Sea World anytime soon. And even though I would never admit it, if I did buy a ticket to watch the orca show, it would be for the same reason I would ever consider watching a NASCAR race:  I will be waiting—maybe even morbidly hoping—for something to go wrong. Blackfish delivers this secret, dark wish without much guilt. You get to feel bad for the whales, and just like the Sea World audiences who pay good money to keep them in captivity, watch them put on quite the show. 

Is Toronto ready to take the reins from a crack aficionado and hand them to a pothead? Maybe. Photos by Victoria Polsoni.

Last week, I reported that a man named Al Gore had entered the running to become the Mayor of Toronto. Unfortunately, over the past few days it has been made clear that the Al Gore who used to ghostride the whip with Bill Clinton in the White House is not the same Al Gore who will be trying to clothesline dear ol’ Robbie Ford off of his cracked out pedestal. Inconvenient truther or not, as of today there are at least 21 people running for the mayor of Toronto and it’s only January 10^th. One of those candidates is Matt Mernagh, a guy who I interviewed last year for his very notable accomplishment of nearly making weed legal in Canada. 

Given the already farcical spectacle that municipal politics in Canada’s largest city became sometime between the news that Rob Ford’s crack tape existed, and the confirmation that Rob Ford’s crack tape exists, I wasn’t sure if Matt was serious about running for mayor or not. But I was curious nonetheless, so I gave Mr. Mernagh a shout and we talked about his political ambitions.

VICE: Why did you decide to run for mayor?
Matt Mernagh: To change the mayoral personality discussion everyone is bogged down in to a political one. My skills as a cannabis advocate are transferable to the mayor's office and when you understand the true responsibilities the mayor has—they aren't too much of stretch for what I am currently doing.

My skills speaking to the largest voting block—the non-voter—will really help me get votes where other candidates see none. I'm the non-voter voter candidate! Since announcing the amount of people who told me they've never voted before, but they're voting Mayor Mernagh, has been enough of a reason for me to run. More people voted for cannabis legalization in Colorado than voted for President Obama. So my thinking is a pot person might be able to bring people to the polls who otherwise might not vote. Eight days into the campaign, Ford is talking cannabis.

Why is being a weed smoker better than a crack smoker?
Cannabis makes people productive, peaceful and creative while crack heads are angry, loud, sketchy types with very poor interpersonal skills.  

Right. What do you want to see changed in Toronto?
Nothing drastic. A friendly city with shiny happy people who are led by a mayor who listens to residents, city staff, counselors, and most importantly is a visionary consensus builder.

How easy is it to run for mayor?
Too easy. Typical elections require a candidate to have nomination signatures. Much to my shock the municipal election doesn't require any signatures from residents. We planned to use a New Year's Eve party to get needed signatures. This simple step (50-100 signatures) would add credibility to the process. The ballot is going to be a legal sized sheet of paper by the time this is done.

What are the essential principles of your platform?
Number one: The provincial funding shortfall our city experiences is enormous and it's everywhere from social housing, public transit, road maintenance, to even how we vote. We're a neglected city provincially, except during election years. We shovel gas, sales, and provincial income taxes into the provincial coffers at such a large rate that respected political thinkers have pondered a Province of Toronto. I am not going this far, but I think we need a discussion on this funding imbalance. Mayor Mernagh will bring home the cash because without it we can't reduce local taxes.

Number two: Reigning in our biggest expense, the Toronto Police Service budget. Twenty-four cents of every dollar our city spends goes to what is referred to as Toronto emergency services. The biggest slice of that spending is spent on policing, but no one wants to even talk about it. For every dollar Toronto earns twenty-four cents is spent on protection! Until we reign in our biggest expense we can't reduce residential and business taxes or freeze the land transfer tax.

How serious are you about actually competing in this race? Because you sound pretty serious.
To me and my team, we are as serious as the candidates who are labeled contenders by big media. One of our biggest advantages is people don't take my work seriously and look what happened last time: the government almost lost their laws on marijuana prohibition. My work demonstrates when I do something, I am very serious.

My campaign manager Chris Goodwin helped revive Ontario's Freedom Party. In the last provincial election the party under his leadership had candidates in all but one riding. That’s a huge and admirable grassroots political undertaking. He has a great grasp on campaigning within the law, which Rob Ford and his campaign team has had trouble with in the past.

Tracy Lamourie is a campaign manager who most recently managed an Ontario NDP campaign in 2011, and she's been involved in all level of politics for twenty years. Like Goodwin and myself, she's much more than just a cannabis advocate and has skills to market a cohesive political message.

Photographer Victoria Polsoni made me look very mayoral in my first campaign photo shoot and image is more than half the battle… To be the mayor you have to look like a mayor.

Then there are the skills and talents of the many people who have come forward to volunteer on our campaign. By end of January we'll have a list of 100 names!

Did you know there's already a neo-nazi and a man named Al Gore in the running? What do you have that they don't?
We actually anticipated this more than six months ago when we first began plotting our campaign. We knew I was going to get lumped into this category and it was the key reason I wasn’t going to run. My friends believed in me and we have decided we are going to come closer than any non-established candidate has gone before in a municipal campaign.

The team we are assembling is going to make me very competitive on the campaign trail, but we are going to be hampered by funding compared to the so-called contenders. Unlike the other fringe candidates you mentioned, we actually intend to campaign like we know how to do—and issue civic policies just like established candidates.  

Contrary to popular thought, we are running a civic campaign that just happens to be fueled by cannabis.



What have you learned so far from your brief political career?
City staff do most of the heavy lifting, while the mayor is mostly a figurehead at city hall. The mayor is really only responsible for casting a tie breaking vote and assigning counselors to boards. A mayor technically does not have to attend a single meeting unless required to cast a tie-breaking vote. Mayors become very important when there's an emergency or not one—because it's their job to declare something an emergency or not.

How do you plan on spreading your campaign philosophies?
By using the grassroots campaign methods of Ron Paul, Hunter S. Thompson and the NDP. The Killin’ Time Band is writing our campaign theme song jingle. Look what Aimee Allen's “Ron Paul Revolutionary Theme Song” did for Ron Paul.

Digital media is awesome at spreading a message and my team and I have excellent experience at creating online media that is engaging.  When it comes to digital campaigning, we're going to be the team to beat. If we establish a digital dominance and achieve modest funding, we could be serious contenders in the fall.

We're also going to do the good ole fashion walk and drop. I love walking Toronto neighborhoods! We need to raise the funds to leaflet neighborhoods with campaign literature and then follow up with a door knocking campaign. Standing at subway entrances meeting the voter –used by the NDP with their leader in the Toronto Centre by election—will be employed when it's much warmer. I'll be attending more civic functions and social gatherings. Invite me!

What can we expect from 2014's mayoral race?
The candidate who raises $1.3 million in campaign funding (the maximum amount that a Toronto mayoral candidate is allowed to raise) will be the winner unless my grassroots campaign is hugely effective. Candidates who spend the maximum allowed in an election are often—but not always—the winner. The politician getting the media mayor push now isn't going to be the same person the political elites and media are campaigning for in the final days of fall.

Well, good luck, man!

@patrickmcguire

Arnold Frolics is a Toronto based photographer who uses nudes, skewed perspectives, floods of light in darkness and subjects who often appear withdrawn and almost defeated to create lonely but magical and dizzying environments. His photos are imperfect but beautiful and haunting. If you ask him about his work and inspiration he’ll gush about how important his friends and the people around him are, and that they continually inspire him to do more. It’s comments like that that speak to just how fresh Arnold is to his craft. His freshness, which is often a detriment to most artists, is used to his advantage. I was able to sit with Arnold recently to talk about composition vs. intuition, the sexuality of nude subjects and the sacrifices inherent in living for your work.

VICE: Let’s talk about your nudes. I think that what makes the naked body interesting, for the most part, is that we’re conditioned to see it as sexual or pornographic. The nudes that you have here aren’t necessarily sexual, but there’s something disarming about them.
Arnold Frolic: It bothers me when people say that there is a sexual aspect to my photos and I’m glad you say that they’re not so sexual. Having to make a response or having to react to that kind of interpretation is weird to me because when I come up with these ideas, sexuality is not what I’m thinking about. So I don’t know if it is or isn’t sexual. For me it was just something that made me feel something. I don’t know why a nude had to be in there, it just felt right. As for the other photos where people aren’t nude, they felt right to me as well. It was an organic process, that’s where my interests suddenly were and I just went with that.

What about the change in perspective? Like, the idea of turning a photo upside down to make it right side up.
We get to create our own narratives and stories to a certain extent and our realities can be so boring. As a kid I was excited about space and superheroes and telepathy or something crazy, reality isn’t as interesting as all that. So if I’m doing something creative, I might as well create an alternate reality. One of the first composed photo shoots I did was under water where the sense of orientation doesn’t exist anymore, it’s like being in zero gravity. It’s hard to place what’s up or down, there’s no reference point so you can skew it in any way. And that always intrigued me. Looking at it in that way just felt more appropriate.

I particularly like the photo of the woman on the structure with the white sheet.
Yeah. I really love photographing places that don’t exist anymore. Like, structures that are going to be demolished. A lot of photographs I did were only structures for a couple weeks, so no one will ever photograph those locations ever again. Yeah, that orientation just felt like it worked.

I noticed a lot of your subjects hide their faces, their hair is in their face, they’re lying down, they’re not facing the camera.
Looking over three years worth of photos you get to see a thread and there’s definitely a feeling to the photos I chose to share. It’s not just something that’s present in my nudes but also the other photographs, there’s this sense of being catatonic. I don’t know what the origins of that are. I don’t think when I’m taking a photograph; it’s a state of meditation, as ridiculous as that might sound. That style, that feeling that you see in those photographs, I can’t explain it. It’s to the point where it’s subconscious. It’s a habit. I never leave the house without a camera and still when I see something beautiful I photograph it right away. And I don’t want to be alive to see the day that I don’t do that and go through the effort and the energy to make that happen.

I think a lot of people would be an existential mess if it wasn’t for the fact that they could create stuff.
I used to feel similarly and I still do, to a certain extent. Taking photos, making music, drawing, painting, all these things helped me remain balanced and sane. The photos I took, the nudes included, strained a lot of my relationships so it made it such that it wasn’t unilaterally positive. My genuine love of photography has outweighed the negative experiences. I can’t imagine my life without it.

Check out more of Arnold’s photos here and here.