Whoa, we're not sure why our beloved website decided to barf its coded entrails all over the inside of your monitor this morning, but we've got a couple people looking into it (suggestions welcome). In the meantime, if you don't want to read about an Australian "lo-fi" band who put out an album a year ago, today's short story is right here for you to dive on into. All problems aside, it's a good one. Oh also, when we asked Nick Gazin to doodle us up a little technical difficulty intertitle we forgot to specify that we wanted it horizontal/hamburger style, so we had to split the thing in two to make it fit. Click below for the bottom half...
Why forfeit the envelope money you earned by hanging out with your family over the holidays just to go see some insanely expensive show on New Year's Eve when you know damn well whether due to drunkenness of the self or others you're not going to pay attention to any of the bands? The night before the night before the new year is the best time to go see the last best show of the year. Follow that? No? OK, here, we'll make it very easy: go see Martial Canterel, Hive Mind, Damion Romero, Mike Shiflet, Telecult Powers & Bob Bellerue, Chaos Majik, and DJ Pieter Schoolwerth at Vanishing Point tomorrow.
Oh hello there. How was your holiday? Wonderful, glad to hear it. Mine was swell, except for being jarred awake at 5:30 four mornings in a row by a FUCKING ROOSTER CROWING ON MY PARENTS' PATIO! Just to be clear: My folks do not live on a farm or practice voodoo. Their house is in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood and is situated on less than an acre of land. So how did they end up with a year-old domesticated fowl? I'll tell you...
It's sweet how the law of returns can come back to fuck you. Take, for instance, that massive, soul-terror of a coal ash spill in Eastern Tennessee thanks to the Kingston Fossil Plant, which is now estimated to be 5.4 million cubic yards of nastiness, three times more intense than originally reported. Let's go back and revisit Toxic West Virginia, where we learned that the fastest way to get your grubby hands on a pile of coal is to blow up mountains. And now the waste from coal has turned back into mountains... of fucking wet ash in people's back yards that possibly contains dangerous levels of mercury and carcinogens and things that make your babies come out looking like fish. But don't worry, says a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Valley Authority--probably the water is fine. Probably. Probably you'd have to actually ingest it to get sick. Oh, so like, you'd have to eat anything that comes from the contaminated ground? Or eat a product from an animal that ate what came from the contaminated ground? Good thing the state's largest edible crop is soybeans. It's not like anyone eats that shit.
I was in a bad mood when we arrived in Chicago because my friend Rita wouldn't answer her phone. I was coming down from the night before and feeling really bloated. I was about to sever our friendship for good when she finally answered her phone and promised to take me out to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner.
Maggie Lee shares with us another package she got in the mail...
Kilroy Savage—who is this guy? I have no clue but he sent me a package of three zines, trading cards, stickers with his name on it, and drawings on stickers. Let's start with this one, Taliban Death Threats. What a sick cover.
Christmas gets worse for me each year. I think it stopped being fun when I was 11 and my mum forced me to spend Christmas day wearing a bright purple Power Rangers tracksuit (that was so big there was room inside for both me and Barney the dinosaur), which my aunt had bought and was very keen to see me wearing. Over a decade on and things are still pretty dire. Here are some of the, erm, special and heartfelt gifts I was given by loved ones this year. If you were given a worse selection of presents, you win whatever you want from the list below.
Wait… don’t take that gravity bong hit of mistletoe, there is another legal way to get high this holiday season. An herbal smoking blend called Spice Gold has made quite a name for itself since its 2007 debut on the legal highs market. Spice contains an assortment of completely natural herbs, which have been used traditionally by Native Americans since time immemorial, or so the packing states. Unfortunately the packaging is a lie, and in addition to mugwort, honey, and vanilla, Spice Gold was recently found to contain an untested synthetic drug called JWH-018. After smoking a bowl of Spice I had blood shot eyes, uncontrollable munchies, and dizzying psychedelic effects. In a blind smoke test between Spice and weed I'm sure nobody could tell the difference. And for that reason Spice was just banned in Switzerland, Austria, Canada, and is soon to be regulated in the UK.
Not to be all box of Patsy Cline tapes when you were ten and really wanted Paula Abdul and Neneh Cherry instead so you could roller skate in the driveway, but as we fade into the sunset of holiday festivities we’re going to offer up not your favoritest blog posts from throughout the year (we already did that during our last break, and wow was it depressing), but some that gave us a little chuckle. It’s called a gift so just say thank you and take it, even though we know you’ll tell us what we missed. Do you do that to your aunt when she gives you a present you don’t like, complain about what a fuck-up she is? Also, enjoy these wholesome photos from the Vice company holiday party, taken by Ben Ritter—who is not a party photographer so don't even think that just because he took pics of our bash he is one—on a classy sit-down dinner and karaoke cruise ship around the city. Thanks for that, bosses. That was fun. (There, did that just buy me at least another month of good graces/guaranteed employment? Holy shit, this post is convoluted.) Anyway, click down there for your package of goodness. We'll be gone a while so take your time...
Christmas music is the worst. We don't even have to explain why because you already know, and actually its horribleness is such a given that even pointing it out is severely lame. So why bother with this post, then? Just to tell you that Mark Treise and Liza Thorn from Bridez managed to make a Christmas song (and video) that doesn't suck. In fact, it's quite good. Genre prefixes (punk rock, polka, whatever) never make Christmas music any better, but in this case it really does. May we present to you the world's first psychedelic goth Christmas song. Enjoy.
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