SNOWED IN: MY KENTISH GULAG
December 23, 2009
by CHRIS O'REAL
If you’ve spent any time in the past week watching the news, you’ll know it’s been snowing recently. You probably Tweeted about how disappointing it was when we didn’t get #snowday, and that’s because if you’re the kind of person who’s ever been a child, or watched a movie, you probably have really happy memories of snow and think that snow has the naïve, wide-eyed charm of a phone advert (minus the small print about £££s), and, in general, is a good thing.
Well I’m 24, I live in Maidstone, and I have actually been SNOWED IN for four days now. I can tell you that not only is snow itself rubbish, but being snowed in is completely shit.
I’d always imagined that being snowed in meant that the snow was piled so high against your front door that you physically couldn’t open the door, and that it only ever happens to people in wooden huts four million miles north of Moscow. The reality is far more depressing and far less dramatic. For a start, front doors open inwards, so you can always get out. No one who is snowed in is ever totally housebound. Also, I live on a suburban cul-de-sac, not in a wooden shack, and it is less earnest and noble when covered in snow. The only notable imagery surrounding my experience of being “snowed in” is an increase in the number of garish cagooles slipping across the canvas.
Read more at viceland
R.I.P. BABY WALRUS
September 02, 2009
by AMY KELLNER
The Cute Show
It is with heavy hearts we report that Akituusaq, the two-year-old walrus who starred in the baby walrus episode of The Cute Show, has died of complications from pneumonia. Our hearts go out to his family at the New York Aquarium, who worked around the clock in attempt to save his little walrus life. He was an excellent baby walrus and it is a sad day for mammals everywhere, be they marine or land-based. 2009, know ye no mercy!!!
MY DATE WITH LEDUFF
August 28, 2009
by BABY BALLS
VBS Meets
Have you ever been to Michigan in the middle of the summer? It’s retarded. I grew up in the pollen-choked flatlands of the Bible Belt so I thought I knew from heat and humidity, but Detroit, a city widely believed to reside in “the North,” completely put me through the wringer. If you’ve ever spent a full day working(/talking to people while some poor asshole points a 20-pound camera at your greasy mug) outside in 95-degree direct sunlight, it does this thing to your body that basically turns beer into gatorade. Anyways, not to put too fine a point on it, but it might add to the viewing experience of “today’s chat”: if you shotgunned a couple Millers before hitting play and maybe hung out in a gas station parking lot with the Nation of Islam’s mayoral candidate for the afternoon or something.
TENT CITY, 1-2-3-4!
August 27, 2009
by CHRISTIAN THOMPSON
Rising high above the Arizona desert, looking down on a sea of men and women in black-and-white prison stripes (and wearing the mandatory pink underwear), a pink neon sign flashes the word “VACANCY” from a 50-foot tall “SkyWatch” tower manned by armed guards with semi automatic rifles. In the interest of journalism—and that fact that I have been fighting my DUI for the last eight months and may end up here—I drove out to the Maricopa County Jail Complex on the west side of Phoenix down near the river bottom to see what was going on in Tent City.
America’s toughest jail—Tent City in Phoenix, Arizona—puts out a welcome mat of tall razor wire fences with the added touch of “stun” electricity, facial recognition computer software for inmate identification, K-9 killer dogs and security guards carrying multiple armaments. While it’s become “the crib” for drug dealers, car-jackers, and petty thieves alike, its arms are wide open and welcoming to anyone arrested in Maricopa County for a DUI.
BEHIND THE CERNS
August 24, 2009
by TOM LITTLEWOOD
Motherboard
If you haven’t hit your nerd limit with today’s episode of Motherboard, here are some more pictures from our trip to the CERN Gigantic Earth Destroyer—sorry, Large Hadron Collider…
PRETEEN AFGHANI BRIDES ARE JUST ALL RIGHT WITH ME
August 19, 2009
by VBS Staff
The Vice Guide to Travel
- Stephanie Sinclair
It’s a known fact that girls mature faster than their boyier counterparts, so what’s the big deal with pairing up a winsome little pre-teen with a swarthy, middle-aged Afghan man? For starters it’s a much better way of settling bets than giving up a year’s crops and trying to convince an Afghan judge that your wife starved to death from refusing to have sex with you instead of from starvation. It’s also way easier to deal with an autistic child or two from the groom’s aging sperm than a Down’s baby from some 35-year-old crone’s wizened, prunelike ovaries, and on top of that, even if your prepubescent bride refuses to get pregnant right after her nuptials, you can always starve her to death until her prepubescent eggs learn their lesson.
All right, look, we’re not saying it’s “cool” or “in” to deny food to the 10-year-old sex slave you bought off a desperate farmer and are somehow legally allowed to rape at your leisure, we just think all the haters and naysayers need to step off. Europeans used to do this shit all the time in the Middle Ages and just look at how their society turned out. Pretty danged awesome is how. Besides I’m sure “If she doesn’t fall down when you hit her with your cap, she’s old enough to marry,” probably makes far more sense to your average rural Afghan than some shit involving grass and fields and playing ball. In any case,
Hey, how great would it be if they hired one of these guys to play their daughters child wedding. Afghani child-sex hat trick!
BYE BYE DUBAI
August 18, 2009
by VBS Staff
VBS News
Not to get too schadenfreudey about the whole deal, (especially considering where we live and what it’s becoming) but watching a monstropolis built on credit, slave labor, stolen sand, Dickensien debtor’s laws, and the oil riches of complete fucking assholes turn into the City of Brass is pretty satisfying. It feels a little odd to give “Victorville”: a leg-up on anywhere, but at least its acres of abandoned McMansions have sewers.
VBS ON ANDY CAPPER ON VBS
August 17, 2009
by VBS Staff
Rule Britannia
Andy Capper is a mysterious ginger who edits Vice UK, shoots all of the Britishy things you see on VBS, and moonlights as a “journo” or “bloggo” or some other ridiculous anglic term for “guy who does word stuff.” We sometimes forget about the semi-regular pieces he writes for the Guardian on account of them usually assigning him reviews of sub-awful pap like Glasvegas, which is in fact the very reason why we missed out on his dispatch from Liberia last week. Well that and the seemingly inhuman sense of mystery which permanently envelopes his every act and has led certain theorists to the conclusion that he is not actually a real person, but rather the constructed public face for a secret confederation of this generation’s greatest literary talents and media critics. Anyways, we’ll let you get on with reading his “Postcard from the edge” (we guarantee you they picked that corny title for him) without a whole bunch of spoilers and innuendo. OK fine, just a couple. Frozen strippers. General Butt Naked. General Bin Laden. Handwash. Now git ’r read.
DANES FOR DECENCY
August 14, 2009
by SIGURD KONGSHØJ LARSEN
You know who’s number two on those Charts of Peace? Denmark. Except that they just had a kind of violent outbreak of citizens concerned about their country’s policies regarding foreigners. Will that bump them down to number three next year?
Wednesday night, cops in riot gear entered a church in Copenhagen to nab 19 rejected Iraqi asylum seekers. They had found sanctuary in a Brorson church with their families for the last three months. This is first time in Danish history that police have knocked down doors and messed with the holy vibe of the church.
HELP SAVE AMY'S ARM
August 12, 2009
by VBS Staff
The Cute Show
Amy Kellner, the lady responsible for bringing you The Cute Show, has one of the greatest tattoos adorning any person dead or currently living. It is a lascivious-tongued kitty-kat on her right shoulder beneath which is a ribbon containing the cursive word “Pussy.” Simple and magnificent.
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