THE WODKA WARS
August 24, 2009
by Virtue staff
The Vice Guide to Travel
The history of vodka is deeply entangled in European geopolitics, Cold War-era spycraft, and a trademark dispute so old it predates the printing press. In the late 1970s, Poland made a claim before the International Trade Court that since vodka was first brewed within its borders, only Polish distilleries had the right to call their product “vodka.” Everyone else had to use the slightly-less-marketable term “bread wine.” Even the Russians. Unsurprisingly, this move didn’t sit too well with heads of the USSR’s bread-wine industry, who hired a historical ringer to dig through musty old tomes for proof that they were the originators of the world’s most popular breakfast liquor. While the court sided with the Russians, the trade war over vodka has continued to this day, with accusations of forgery and recriminations and the threat of thermonuclear war hanging over the whole proceeding. In order to put all this sordid business to rest, we sent VBS correspondent Ivar Berglin on whirlwind tour of the Eastern Bloc to determine once and for all whose great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents actually came up with vodka. Wodka Wars starts August 25th, otherwise known as tomorrow.
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!
NORTH KOREA, LAND OF NO FRUIT
August 11, 2009
by TERRY HAND
The Vice Guide to Travel
OK, I normally hate it when blogs do that thing where they just run a bunch of quotes from someone else’s story, but some of the details in this Slate piece by a Chinese-American lady who went on an investors’ junket to North Korea are mind-bezonkening. Here are my three fav’rites:
“Once I walked into a grocery store on the ground floor of a residential building. The store was empty except for three 10-foot-tall heaps on the ground—one of cabbage, one of tomatoes, and one of turnips. There were no price tags and no customers.”
and…
“Pyongyang was a quiet city. There weren’t many vehicles on its wide streets, and rush hour was marked by long queues at bus stops. On three occasions I saw passengers physically pushing their bus until the engine started up again.”
and who could forget…
“On one occasion, I drew a banana on a piece of paper and showed it to a waitress; she had never seen one. She knew about apples, but she had never eaten one.”
In light of our own adventures in the hermit kingdom, it’s pretty incredible to think that somebody was actually able to make it off and back on Yanggak Island without sharing cellspace with Lisa Ling’s sister. Then again, I’m guessing the North Koreans are a little more likely to give you a little leeway when they think you’re about to pour money into their coffers versus drag their dirty laundry all over the internet.
NORTH KOREAN PRISON CAMPS ARE NOT FUN
June 08, 2009
by VBS Staff
The Vice Guide to Travel
Not a day goes by that we don’t drop to our knees and say “thankyouthankyouthankyou thankyou” that during the secret filming of The Vice Guide to North Korea none of Shane and Jamie-James’s official handlers cottoned to the fact that they were actually shooting video on their little digicam. Today the two reporters from Current who got busted sneaking across the Tumen River back in March were sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean labor camp. Thankfully they weren’t charged with spying, but it’s a pretty scant silver lining. Do you have any idea how awful North Korean prisons are? Do you?
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