Snob

We’ve already recorded an episode on The Muppets, but Jim Henson was such a neat guy we delved into him even further. Learn all about the man behind the Muppets who was so much more than just a master puppeteer in this episode.

Here you see what 294 adults between the ages of 25 and 54 who aren’t holding down a job are doing with their time, according to data from the American Time Use Survey. The chart is interactive at the site. It’s no surprise that women without outside jobs spend a bigger chunk of their time doing housework or caring for others, while men spend more time looking for a job than women do, as it comes down to the different reasons that people are non-employed. Women are likely to do without a job in order to care for young children or elderly relatives, while men are more likely to be either training or looking for another job.

A data visualization article at the New York Times divides the participants by what individuals spend the most of their daytime hours doing, which sometimes points to the reason they aren’t on the time clock; for example, those who spend more time on education than anything else are probably in school. What’s astonishing is the gender imbalance for the number of people who spend their greatest time watching TV or other leisure activities. -via Digg

Mejor menú del año: Culler de Pau

Para mi una de las grandes experiencias del año. Yo recomendaría que le pegaseis una visita (llamando antes dado que está con los líos estos de la reforma del restaurante).

Y de dar una visita .... aquí viene mi segundo problema:

Mi perdición del año: los menús con maridaje

pido la opción de maridaje con el menú en los restaurantes

 Normalmente no es tremendamente cara. Este año he estado oscilando entre 25€ y 40€. Y aunque parezca un poco alto, lo cierto es que por este dinero uno tiene la opción de probar una gama de vinos más amplia que yendo a botellas. Y por otro lado: lo más importante, el maridaje lo decide un experto.

De mis maridajes favoritos va tambien para Eduardo Camiña Ucha, el sumiller (super jovencito) de Culler de Pau:

Este año me he liberado y he decidido empezar a hacer cosas distintas. Ponemos vinos muy raros. Iniciamos el maridaje con un Jerez, que es algo muy poco común en Galicia, pero muy acorde a la nueva gastronomía. Y también vinos de Canarias, de Galicia, de Francia, de Alemania... Es esencial explicar qué aporta cada vino a un plato porque puede el contenido de la copa puede hacer que una experiencia buena se convierta en excelente.  

Eduardo Camiña Ucha: un sumiller de élite con edad de aficionado al botellón

Platos favoritos del año:

Ambos platos son de estos de especáculo a la hora de servirlos: la quesadilla viene con una cúpula de chocolate preciosa, y es en el plato con el mole negro cuando se abre y ves el interior. Es muy espectácular y la verdad es que la quesadilla es muy interesante. (Es dulce y si no dulce, parece un postre, y curiosamente es el primer plato del menú).



En cuanto a la mojarra, el pescado se fríe delante tuyo (le hacen el rebozado y luego le vierten por encima aceite hirviendo y así se prepara). El pescado es excelente, pero sobre todo, este plato me dejó enamorado de los esquites. (No me gustan mucho los esquites hervidos que se venden con mayonesa en la calle, pero los que están salteados sí).


O aguachile de navalla e xurelo marinado que fai Diego Lopez no restaurante La Molinera en Lalín. O aguachile é un plato do norte de México. Teño probadao algunha que outra vez alá, pero o meu favorito é o de Diego. A algún mexicano pareceralle mal porque non é moi purista, pero o certo é que pegalle moi ben o sabor ácido e lixeiramente picante (ten picante pero non abrasa, ahí estivo moi fino Diego).  Un dos platos galegos do ano, hai que probalo. ¿Sabedes onde está o Molinera? Pois xa tardades.

Este plato curioso que preparou Pepe Solla en Casa Solla (Poio): uns falsos tallarines (non sei seguro que eran, eu creo que eran algún tipo de vexetal) con vieira e pesto picante. ¡Divertido!

Casi se me olvida, el increible postre que tomé en México, en el Merotoro: Chilacayota con helado de panal y polen.  La chilacayota era crujiente y dulce como la miel. Irrepetible.


No es un plato pero otra de mis aficiones este año fue la coctelería. Por ejemplo tengo un recuerdo muy agradable de una peligrosa combinación (por lo fuerte y anisada): el Harvey Wallbanger que me tomé en el Rosebud (en París).

Pero espera, tal vez el momento más memorable en cuanto a cócteles es aquí en Galicia, el Brandy Alexander de Cardenal Mendoza que preparan en Coctelería Algalia (Vigo). Bestial.


Y bueno, voy parando un poco. Extenderé el post con otros temás culinarios. Ya me leereis.

El área compostelana registró 269 nuevos desempleados, de los que 150 corresponden a la capital gallega

When a workout promises that it’ll shrink your belly, banish arm jiggle, or whittle your whatever… it’s not being totally honest.

i.imgur.com

gifbay.com

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Officially coined only a few months ago by blogs like Gear Junkie, America's latest incarnation of masculinity, the lumbersexual, is fundamentally a bearded hipster with a penchant for plaid, tattoos and cold brew — both coffee and beer. Read More

What was once a relationship milestone is now a cheesy relic of the aughts. According to a BuzzFeed News poll, about 40% of twentysomethings refuse to put their relationship status on Facebook.

BuzzFeed

There was a time, perhaps not so long ago, when two tech-savvy humans would meet, mash their parts together, fall in love, and make a display of their blissful commitment to the world: making it "Facebook official."

People fretted over that step, agonized and analyzed over when was the right time to ask their partner about changing their status to "in a relationship." In many ways, it was the digital version of the traditionally analog process of "defining the relationship" and thus the source of late-night TV show jokes and wine-soaked goss-seshes among besties. It was the new symbol of how our anxieties over our digital lives impact our real ones. The most important website of this century had given birth to a completely new step in the millennia-old tradition of finding another human to dock genitals with for a few decades until you die.

But it seems "Facebook official" isn't what it used to be. This week, BuzzFeed News ran a poll, "How Do You Use Facebook's Relationship Status?," asking people whether or not they display their relationship status on their Facebook profile, and some of the social etiquette around it.

A few notes about the data: As many as 80,000 people responded to the 16 questions (People tend to drop out of these polls: 80,000 answered the first question, but only 40,000 answered the last). The last question was about age demographic, which as you would imagine would significantly impact relationship status. Only 11% of respondents were over 30, and 14% were high-school age (14 to 18). The other 75% were 19 to 29 years old. So consider that these results are MOSTLY about twentysomethings. However, each question is not broken out by age.

Also, please keep in mind that this poll was in no way scientific. Take it for what it is: a large sampling of Facebook users who self-reported their habits in a BuzzFeed News poll designed to be entertaining.

Qualifications aside, here were some of the most surprising findings:

However, there's a little bit of wavering here. For example, 34% of respondents said "Ew, never" to the question of "How long into a relationship do you change your status?" A few questions later, though, it jumped to 43% saying changing their status is something they'd never do. Later, 41% said that even in a serious relationship, they don't put their status.

I blame this discrepancy on poor poll design by yours truly. My attempt to make the poll fun to take turned out to be at odds with creating an accurate poll. It essentially asks the same question a few times, but with differently worded answers, and sometimes more middle-ground, nuanced answers. So sue me, Quinnipiac.

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Punk's not dead: Scientists have named a particularly spiky-looking snail after late Clash rocker (and environmentalist) Joe Strummer. Alviniconcha strummeri "lives in clusters around deep-sea hydrothermal vents" and its shell "is a myriad of colors due to chemicals found around the vents, and sometimes features Mohawk-like spikes."

Read more...

Documenting a vibrant and diverse Indianapolis area punk/new wave scene from 1976-1983 and featuring a mammoth lineup of 38 bands and 46 tracks, mostly original material, many unreleased and few available elsewhere today.
Includes Zero Boys, MX-80 Sound, Jetsons, Repellents, Dow Jones and the Industrials, Gizmos (original and later version), Latex Novelties, Last Four Digits, Panics, The Future, Your Parents, Hoosier Daddies, Dancing Cigarettes, Video Kids, Positions…
Carefully sequenced to flow from metallic punk and artsy new wave to revivalist garage, girl group, rockabilly and ska. Thematically centered on the beloved Crazy Al’s club from Indianapolis which closed in 1982.

320 kbps | 318 MB  UL | MC | HF ** FLAC

TimeChange Records is a new label focusing on archival releases of vintage Indiana music.

CD1:

1. Jetsons – Genetically Stupid [02:09]
2. Dow Jones And The Industrials – Can’t Stand The Midwest [01:17]
3. Your Grocer’s Freezer – We’re All Gonna Die [01:16]
4. Repellents – Technorama [01:40]
5. Repellents – AFC! [01:02]
6. Slammies – P-U-S [01:04]
7. Cheeses From France – Heart Of Gold [04:47]
8. Gizmos – Mean Screen [02:13]
9. Gizmos – Mommy’s In The Kitchen With A Sales Pitch [01:35]
10. Joint Chiefs – I Hate Pretty Girls [03:51]
11. Zero Boys – Commies [01:03]
12. Zero Boys – I’m Absent [02:01]
13. We’re Jimmy Hoffa – Rock ‘n’ Roll [01:40]
14. Panics – I Wanna Kill My Mom [01:21]
15. Latex Novelties – Kiss And Make Up [03:31]
16. Dow Jones And The Industrials – Ain’t Good Enough [02:13]
17. Dancing Cigarettes – Pop Doormat [02:39]
18. Last Four (5) Digits – Don’t Move [01:57]
19. Cast Of Thousands – War Maker [02:06]
20. Amoebas In Chaos – Have You Slugged Your Kid Today? [01:00]
21. Last Four Digits – Meet The Parents [02:16]
22. Amoebas In Chaos – Ronald Reggae [06:15]
23. E-In Brino – Watch Alarm [02:56]
24. Observers Observing Observables – Next Available Date [03:21]
25. Vibrato Fetish – Surf Bandits [02:55]

CD2:

1. New Avengers – Mary’s In A Coma [03:24]
2. The Positions – Follower Of The Space Race [03:12]
3. The Future – The Standing Joy [02:43]
4. Video Kids – Born Too Late [02:57]
5. Young Brandos – Doesn’t Get You Nowhere [03:21]
6. The Tools – Come With Me [02:10]
7. Your Parents – Whiplash [01:13]
8. Hoosier Daddies – New York Shuffle [02:56]
9. The Race Records – Baby Take Me Back [02:20]
10. Lip Service – Money [02:07]
11. MX-80 Sound – Paint It Black [01:55]
12. The Future – Everything’s OK [03:21]
13. Johnny And The Piledrivers – You Keep A Knockin’ [02:46]
14. The Obvious – Feelings Of Love [02:10]
15. Art Thieves – Bohemian Girl [04:45]
16. Hugo Smooth – Won’t Play Bumpum Cars [04:11]
17. The Positions – Get Up [01:42]
18. Club Pressure – Slinkin’ [03:47]
19. Abstractions – Why Can’t It Wait? [02:51]
20. Your Parents – No Substitutions [01:57]
21. The Shouts – Gloria [02:18]

Atlantic Records was one of America’s great soul labels, but as soul and R&B went through a transitional period in the early ’70s, some of the label’s stars found themselves lost in the shuffle, and while Atlantic doubtless had the best of intentions when they signed the great New Orleans soul diva Irma Thomas in 1971, they clearly didn’t know what to do with her once they had her. Atlantic cut six sessions with Thomas over the course of ten months, but only two tracks were ever released, on a single issued by Atlantic’s subsidiary label Cotillion Records. Full-Time Woman: The Lost Cotillion Album features both sides of that 45 as well as 13 other songs that the label felt weren’t up to snuff. Heard decades later, it’s hard to imagine what the Atlantic and Cotillion A&R staff…

320 kbps | 110 MB  UL | HF | MC ** FLAC

…were thinking — while not every track here sounds like a smash, Thomas is in great voice throughout, the material is well suited to her abilities, and it’s not hard to imagine “Waiting for Someone,” “Our Love Don’t Come That Easy,” or “It’s Eleven O’Clock (Do You Know Where Your Love Is)” racking up some radio play with their upbeat, dance-friendly arrangements and Thomas’ outstanding vocals. And while her version of Styne and Cahn’s “Time After Time” and the very dramatic string intro to “Shadow of the Sun” would be a bit much for most radio programmers, Thomas shows she works well in sophisticated settings, and her cover of Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy” is a tough, insouciant gem. Full-Time Woman isn’t quite a lost classic, but these unreleased tracks confirm Thomas was still one of the great voices of Southern soul in the early ’70s, and anyone who loved her latter-day work for Rounder is a sure bet to enjoy this.

For more than ten years Soul Jazz Records have been exploring and documenting the sound of New Orleans Funk. Now they turn their attention to the flipside of this musical coin – New Orleans Soul.
These two musical forms share a lineage that begins with the city’s enormous rhythm and blues explosion in the post-war 1940s and 1950s. New Orleans Soul incorporated the soulful vocals of the gospel church, the driving beat of rhythm and blues, as well as traces of the second-line parade bands and the latinized rhythms of the city.
Here you will find New Orleans soul in all its glorious variations – from the deep, deep soul of singers Aaron Neville, Willie Tee and Robert Parker to the storming northern soul of Maurice Williams and Eldridge Holmes, the funky soul of…

320 kbps | 134 MB  UL | HF | MC ** FLAC

…Eddie Bo, Lionel Robinson and Ernie K-Doe all alongside the Crescent City’s finest soul sisters – Irma Thomas, Betty Harris, Jean Knight, Inell Young and more!

The main force behind New Orleans Soul is Allen Toussaint, a virtual one-man hit-making machine in the 1960s, writing, arranging and producing hit after hit for an unending list of unbelievably talented local singers such as Eldridge Holmes, Maurice Williams, Betty Harris, Ernie K Doe and Diamond Joe all of whom are featured.

New Orleans is also a city of great musical families. Vocalist Aaron Neville was the brother of Art Neville (who formed The Meters) and later in the 1970s joined with brother Cyril to form The Neville Brothers. Soul vocalist supreme Willie Tee is also known as Wilson Turbinton, who alongside brother Earl, formed the super-heavy funk band The Gaturs and backed the Mardi Gras Indian group The Wild Magnolias.

Also included here are rare, lost and killer soulful tracks from New Orleans artists Eddie Bo (and protegee vocalist Inell Young), Jean Knight, Jimmy Hicks, Francine King and more!

Primero fue la muñeca sexual casera a base de cinta adhesiva y pedazos de cartón unidos con pegamento, luego llegó la muy terrible ducha romana...

(Video Link)

We have begun a new year. There are fresh opportunities for us to find joy and make a mark on the world. But as we embrace new experiences and continue our journeys, let us remember those who are not accompanying us: fallen friends that we met, loved, and lost while binge-watching on Netflix last year.

Hot Topic, a company that understands what it means to be classy and tasteful, brings us this memorial video somberly reminding us of those we left behind.

Spoiler alert: the entire video pretty much consists of spoilers for television and movies from 2014.

-via Fanboy

[body_image width='700' height='598' path='images/content-images/2015/01/06/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/06/' filename='how-to-embrace-your-aging-vagina-367-body-image-1420542395.jpg' id='15667']

Illustration by Katie Horwich

Women, I have some bad news.

According to Shape, a fitness magazine that largely interprets "fit" as "actively losing weight" just as your face starts sagging, "your lady parts will inevitably change over time."

Oh God, it's almost like your vagina is part of your body and it's going to age like the rest of you! We truly are living in a nightmare world. "7 Ways to Keep Your Vagina Young" is, as Jezebel notes, one of many, many pieces on "vaginal rejuvenation"—the hot new buzzword aiming to get women everywhere feeling terrible about the effects of time on an exciting new body part.

Shape offers advice on keeping your vagina shiny and droop-free, with hot tips like "stop riding your bike" and "swan around on a bouncy ball for 15 minutes a day." And if you're not worried about your vag like you're worried about your face (you're worried about your face, right?), you soon will be—the mag notes changes like lost fat around the outer labia can start as early as your 20s, with "changes inside your vagina (hello, stretching!)" following around the time of menopause.

While the increased popularity of vaginal rejuvenation procedures in the US is notable—the number of operations performed rose 64 percent between 2011 and 2012—it's also worth remembering that plastic surgery in general is on the up. Reuters recently published a report suggesting a relationship between the rise of the selfie and a reported 33 percent increase in surgical consultations during which the patients brought out self-snapped images.

The selfies-as-causation claim is dubious—it sounds like patients are simply bringing in photographs of the facial features they would like altered—but the statistics are a reminder of contemporary culture's obsession with youth and a normative standard of beauty. Last year Americans spent $12 billion on cosmetic surgical procedures, with more than half of the surgeons Reuters polled reporting an increase in patients under 30.

Ultimately, of course, it's your body. Your choice. Want to chop off bits of your labia? Go ahead! Planning to pump yourself full of hormones to keep that middle-aged pussy a gentle neon pink? Be my guest. But the not-so-implicit message of articles like Shape's is a classic, one-two punch of ageism and sexism: Older women aren't allowed to be sexy—or, worse, sexual.

Personally, I'm not particularly worried about the toll of the years on my baby bank. I plan for my vagina to age like Susan Sarandon (fabulously and with the aid of marijuana).

It's the same sort of thinking that turns the MILF into a comedy character in films and has everyone losing their shit at the idea that Helen Mirren is managing to remain attractive and alluring into her later years. "A sagging hoo-ha can be a confidence killer in the bedroom," Shape warns, and one has to wonder how women's confidence would be affected if they weren't being bombarded with articles about their tragic, aging nethers.

Personally, I'm not particularly worried about the toll of the years on my baby bank. I plan for my vagina to age like Susan Sarandon (fabulously and with the aid of marijuana). But what options are left if we refuse to invest now in creams, potions, and "vajacials" to keep things spry? How to put your graying, hangy-outy vagina to use now that you're "in your 20s" and your bits are already over the hill? I'd like to humbly offer a few suggestions:

CULTIVATE A SENSE OF ADVENTURE
It's not sex, it's "spelunking"; it's not "fingering," it's "a walk in a lady Sahara"; it's not "avoiding intimacy," it's "pretending we're never going to die."

ON-THE-GO STORAGE
Sneak a novelty-sized Toblerone into the cinema, or keep a tube of lip gloss in there—so you always have some when you need it. Then, feel great shame about your body and the natural processes of aging.

TOTAL GYM DOMINANCE
Never wait in line for the cross-trainer again! Simply engulf the surly teen hogging the machine in your massive horror-gina, surrounding them completely (hello, stretching!). Proceed to work out for the next three to six hours, because for God's sake, you're falling apart, woman. Simply scoop out your vaginal prisoner when you're done!

SANTA CLUNGE
Paint a tiny, fur-trimmed hat—Christmas is never far away where your aged pubis is concerned!—and jolly face above your tatty gray pubes. Ask your partner if they've been naughty or nice this year, then close your legs, you elderly hag—that's disgusting.

CLASSIC INHERITANCE ENDURANCE CHALLENGE
Sure, your relatives can have all your money... if they can spend the night in your creaky, dusty, probably haunted vagina. Your vagina is scary like ghosts are scary!

But what to do with your saggy old balls? Whatever you damn want! Teabag a 21-year-old! Send your intern a dick pic! Scoop them off the ground and drape them over the eyes of the decades-younger actress playing your love interest!

Stiiiiilllll got it.

Follow Monica Heisey on Twitter.

Thumbnail image via Flickr user Patty Mooney.

More vagina stuff from VICE:

Should Designer Vaginas Really Be Illegal in the UK?

I Steam-Cleaned My Vagina

'Anatomy of Hell' Was the Film That Made Me Fear My Own Vagina

'Every year for the past few years, Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has put up a list of works that should have gone into the public domain on January 1st'. Should have, that is, 'had Congress not massively expanded the law. As a reminder, when these works were created, the creators knew the terms under which they were created and knew that they would have gone into the public domain by now -- and they found that to be more than enough incentive to create those works.' 'Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author's death, and corporate "works-for-hire" are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1958 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2015, where they would be "free as the air to common use." Under current copyright law, we'll have to wait until 2054. And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in other countries are different—thousands of works are entering the public domain in Canada and the EU on January 1.'

"Most of the works highlighted here are famous—that is why we included them. And if that fame meant that the work was still being exploited commercially 28 years after its publication, the rights holders would probably renew the copyright. (This is true for most of the works featured on this page, though even the shorter copyright term exceeds the commercial lifespan of a surprising percentage of successful works.) But we know from empirical studies that 85% of authors did not renew their copyrights (for books, the number is even higher—93% did not renew), since most works exhaust their commercial value very quickly.

Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Up to 85% of all copyrighted works from 1986 might have been entering the public domain on January 1, 2015.
That means that all of these examples from 1958 are only the tip of the iceberg. If the pre-1978 laws were still in effect, we could have seen 85% of the works published in 1986 enter the public domain on January 1, 2015. Imagine what that would mean to our archives, our libraries, our schools and our culture. Such works could be digitized, preserved, and made available for education, for research, for future creators. Instead, they will remain under copyright for decades to come, perhaps even into the next century."

'What a trove of books—imagine these being freely available to students and educators around the world. You would be free to translate these books into other languages, create Braille or audio versions for visually impaired readers (if you think that publishers wouldn't object to this, you would be wrong), or adapt them for theater or film. You could read them online or buy cheaper print editions, because others were free to republish them.'

It applies to books as much as to music, film, scientific papers and other published works which are supposed to enrich our culture and encourage inspiration and participation. 'A distressing number of scientific articles from 1958 remain behind paywalls, including those in major journals such as Science and JAMA. You can't read these articles unless you pay or subscribe. And the institutional access that many top scientists enjoy is not guaranteed—even institutions such as Harvard have considered canceling their subscriptions because they could no longer afford the escalating prices of major journal subscriptions. It's remarkable to find scientific research from 1958 hidden behind publisher paywalls.'

'Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the current copyright term is that in most cases, the cultural harm is not offset by any benefit to an author or rights holder. Unlike the famous works highlighted here, the vast majority of works from 1958 do not retain commercial value, but they are presumably off limits to users who do not want to risk a copyright lawsuit. This means that no one is benefiting from continued copyright, while the works remain both commercially unavailable and culturally off limits. The public loses the possibility of meaningful access for no good reason.'

"We will have screens everywhere, in the kitchen, in the restrooms, in the office, in the streets." Marguerite Duras was asked in 1985 what she thought the future would be like.

The interview was recently discovered by Antoine Wojdyla who translated Duras's answer from French to English and passed it on to Fusion's Alexis Madrigal, who wrote about the author's unnerving prescience in his Five Intriguing Things newsletter.

by Megh Wright

Parks and Recreation returns for its farewell season in one week, and to amp up the emotion NBC released the above video of Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Chris Pratt, and the rest of the Parks and Rec cast looking back on shooting the final season together. Watch a sneak peek of next Tuesday's season premiere below:

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Here’s something you might not know: don’t boil your dildos. Or, at the very least, consult the manufacturer’s cleaning instructions and warnings before boiling your dildos. This important caveat was disregarded by Reddit user thegrandplatypus in Today I Fucked Up, who—when attempting to cleaning his wife’s dildos—accidentally started a chemical fire.

My wife and I had a minor argument last night, so I figured I’d start the day on a positive note. Get some cleaning done, tidy up around the house, make everything extra nice while she relaxes. Among other things that needed cleaning, we had several sex toys (silicone dildos) that we’d neglected to attend to. Wanting to be thorough, I brought these downstairs, set them in a small pot of water to boil (element on MAX setting), and headed upstairs for a moment to call my dad and wish him well. Quick convo with my dad turns into an involved talk with mom and dad, and about 15-20 minutes later, suddenly my smoke alarm is loudly going off.

It was then that the melting dildo opened a smokey portal to hell.

Having completely forgotten about the dildo boil, I casually get up and prepare to disarm the “false alarm” taking place in my house… until a huge waft of black, inky smoke winds its way around the bedroom door. I immediately think “WHAT IN THE EVER LIVING HELL IS BURNING” and at the same time hear my wife scream “<MY NAME> WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!”. I rush downstairs into a kitchen billowing disgusting, black smoke, and see a massive pillar of flame exploding upwards out of the tiny pot, which by now has been boiling dry for probably a few minutes. Wife is panicky, trying to activate the (luckily right at hand) fire extinguisher, failing with it, hands it to me and I finally manage to blast the noxious dildo blaze with the entire contents of the extinguisher.

Fortunately, his house and family survived the Great Dildo Fire of 2015. Just think, only a hundred years ago, before modern extinguishers and construction techniques, such a dildo fire would have consumed a whole village. But now, only a noxious cloud of chemical ash hovers in one’s living room. Progress.

[h/t Uproxx | Reddit | Image: Shutterstock]

¡Felices reyes! Como nos encanta esta fiesta, aquí tenéis nuestro regalo: un podcast express comentando los juguetes que han traído los reyes a los niños y niñas de todo el país. ¡No podíamos faltar a la tradición! ¡A reír, a reír con las cosas de los Viruete!

Mrs. Hardita, El legendario Super Agente 86 y yo mismo comentamos los juguetes detacados de la página de  Amazon, que podeis encontrar aquí para seguir nuestra conversación, en donde se dan cita, entre otros muchos personajes, Chayanne, Ursula K. Le Guin, Pablo Iglesias, Avril Lavigne, Antoni Daimiel y, cómo no, Spiderman.

Ayer mismo no teníamos claro si hacer el podcast. Pero nuestros amigos en twitter y fbook nos convencieron de que merecía la pena, a base de amenazas y chantajes. Eso sí, al final nos hemos partido la caja haciéndolo.

Y de propina, una foto de la famosa MANTA FURBY, para que  comprobéis que efectivamente, existe y tengo una. MENUDO SOY YO. Todo un hombre y caballero, de profesión camionero.

Que los Reyes os traigan muchas cosas y este podcast, muchas risas. ¡Esperemos!

 

O Portal das Palabras, promovido pola RAG e a Fundación Barrié, designa "corrupción" como palabra do ano. Na votación popular organizada a través de Facebook a verba vencedora foi "crespo". En Portugal, corrupção tamén se impón no certame organizado para buscar a verba do 2014.

[body_image width='1200' height='799' path='images/content-images/2014/12/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/23/' filename='the-dying-art-of-japanese-hentai-735-body-image-1419299595.jpg' id='13636']

A collection of hentai magazines. Photo by Miki Yoshihito via Flickr

"People get the wrong impression of Japan—it's a conservative country," said Peter Payne, Skyping me from Gunma Prefecture, 60 miles north of Tokyo.

The hentai cartoon porn I'd been looking at didn't seem to support that statement: There was a naked girl lying on the ground with four guys standing over her; a boy fondling his stepmother's double-H breasts over the breakfast table; and a boy dressed as a girl with a huge erection bulging through his pants.

Seems pretty liberal to me, and also fairly bizarre. But I was prepared to take Payne's word for it—he owns the online store J-List, which sells hentai DVDs and comics as well as plenty of non-adult anime products. An American who's lived in Japan for 23 years, Payne originally moved there for a year to be a teacher—but "that didn't work out" and he ended up staying.

When the internet boom began in the late 90s, he told his wife he was going to start up an online international mail order company for fans of sci-fi and anime, and the business grew from there.

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A bookshelf in Japan full of hentai. Photo by Ignis via Wikimedia Commons

In a display cabinet over his shoulder were a bunch of Star Wars figures. He seemed excited about the forthcoming films, as only a genuine sci-fi fan could be. But hentai (the Japanese word for "perverse" or "bizarre") isn't like other sci-fi or animated popular culture; it's been accused of both promoting the sexualization of children and being aggressively misogynistic.

That's because a good amount of hentai involves cutesy schoolgirls (drawn to be more European-looking than Japanese) with unfeasibly large boobs and big doe eyes who are inevitably sexually assaulted by bad boys with anger-management issues and deep-rooted psychosexual problems—or by actual demons or alien, ogre-type characters from other planets who use phallic tentacles to penetrate the girls' various orifices while they squeal and beg not to be penetrated by tentacles.

Hey Japan, what's up with all the tentacles?

"Tentacles exist because you can't draw a penis without censoring it," Payne explained, citing the 1907 censorship law that still holds firm. "It's the same thing with bukkake—you can see it as either really sick or really artistic, but here it's kind of passé."

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Hokusai's The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife

That multiple men ejaculating all over a woman's face is old hat in Japan isn't particularly surprising, considering tentacle sex has been depicted in Japanese art for more than 200 years. Last year's shunga exhibition at the British Museum, for instance, featured an 1814 print, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, in which a couple of octopuses are making love to the titular wife.

But classical Japanese art is one thing—a thing to be enjoyed by men and women who own personalized wax seals and imported antique katanas. Cartoons, however, are for kids—surely?

Tell that to Toshio Maeda.

In 1986, Maeda introduced tentacle porn to Japanese anime, which had always featured titillating shower scenes but nothing overtly explicit. His creation Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend, invented the hentai genre.

[body_image width='768' height='928' path='images/content-images/2014/12/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/23/' filename='the-dying-art-of-japanese-hentai-735-body-image-1419300406.jpg' id='13638']

Toshio Maeda. Photo by Yves Tennevin via Wikimedia Commons

I tried to contact Maeda while researching this article. In fact, I contacted several Japanese hentai illustrators, but they never got back to me. Payne explained why.

"First, the idea of contacting a Japanese person, because I do this for a living... almost every Japanese person will say: 'An email from a foreigner... I can't possibly reply to that.' Even though they've spent six to ten years learning English, they're just too embarrassed they'll get something wrong. It's very difficult to talk to them except at a convention. It's a major barrier.

"Second, hentai and anime in Japan is kind of a dying industry—animators earn so little here; their salaries are around $9,000 a year on average—that nobody does it as a career anymore, so all the illustrating and production gets outsourced to companies in Korea, China, and the Philippines."

§

Payne showed me a graph of the wage structure. Animators are right at the bottom of the pile, even though their job requires real skill and a ton of work. Meanwhile, at the other end of the food chain, the hentai voice actors (often stars from the film industry) are paid six-figure incomes.

I'd set out to find a Japanese hentai illustrator to interview so I could ask them whether this was the career he'd envisioned while studying at art school, and whether he had any moral issues about the work they do. But as my search went on it became clear I would have to look to Korea for answers. Eventually, I found an animator working for a tiny graphics company just outside Seoul, who agreed to talk to me on the basis that he would remain completely anonymous.

"My parents don't know I do this," he told me in broken English on a long-distance phone call. "They think I design posters. I do design posters, but I like doing this, too—it's a bit of an obsession for me."

It sounded like it was as much a hobby for this young man as it was a profession.

"This is better than real porn," he told me. "Some of the things I get to draw are really beautiful and sexy, and some things are kind of... not OK, you know?"

[body_image width='680' height='470' path='images/content-images/2014/12/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/23/' filename='the-dying-art-of-japanese-hentai-735-body-image-1419300759.jpg' id='13640']

Photo by Dave Fayram via Wikimedia Commons

I asked whether it got boring doing hours of monotonous production work, drawing frames and sending them to Japan to be assembled. He admitted it was repetitive, but added, "The scripts and trends are so strange that you can't really get that bored with it. The Japanese are a little bit crazy."

When I put it to Payne that even Japan's neighbors believe their popular culture to be a little bit odd, he said, "One problem is when you look at a thing and you don't really know it yet, you just know a few key things about it. Like the Netherlands: People know about the cafés, pot, the red-light district, and tulips. It's not logical to assume that tulips are everywhere in the Netherlands. It's the same with hentai. You've noticed the tentacle monster porn more, but that's what I call distortion based on the lens of the internet. The really weird parts of Japan are often made to push our buttons."

So why are the characters so young-looking? In Sweden, in 2011, Simon Lundstrom, whose job was translating hentai comics, was convicted of 39 counts of possessing child pornography. Despite the images being imaginary cartoon characters, the Swedish supreme court upheld the decision in 2012, rejecting his appeal, and ruling that the images depicted underage children having sex.

Payne didn't have much of an explanation. "It's not seen in that light here," he said. "They would tell you all the characters are over 18. There's creative license taken. There are standards in the industry and a morality standards group, which bans incest and things like that. It's just that high school, for some reason, is the setting for most stories."

He was keen to stress that there is a hugely diverse range of hentai, not just the stuff on porn aggregator sites.

"There are hentais you probably haven't seen," he told me. "There's yuri, meaning 'girl's love', which are stories about two girls falling in love—and it's not even very sexual. There's an amazingly rich set of gay hentai porn called yaoi, 'boy's love,' which is not for gay guys at all—it's almost entirely watched by straight girls who like the drama. There's another type of gay hentai, enjoyed by girls and guys, called bara—'rose' in Japanese—and that's basically muscular gay 'bear' porn."

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Photo by Sam Clements

I stumbled upon the latter on the website of an artist called Gengoroh Tagame: big gay men with rippling muscles and veiny dicks choking each other or tying each other up in bondage ropes.

I emailed Tagame but, unsurprisingly, got no response.

Is being gay accepted in Japan?

"It is in the cities," said Payne, before telling me about another style of hentai, otonoko ("trap"), which is sort of like transvestite porn: pretty, effeminate boys drawn to look like girls, but when their skirts are ripped off their massive cocks are revealed.

§

And what about the rape-y aspect of hentai?

"They definitely go overboard with that more than in other genres, but it's not really typical—there are fetish shops for that stuff," said Payne. "Usually porn here has pretty girls being treated like idols, or weird things like putting her in a tanning salon."

Finally, how does conservative Japanese society respond to all of this?

"They have a phrase they like to say: shikata ga nai, or, 'It can't be helped,'" Payne replied. "The number of people who would object to a breast scene in a cartoon here would be zero. The attitude is: Of course guys like boobs and panties."

Follow Josh on Twitter.

Bored? Like Adventure Time? Try playing one of these many, many Adventure Time games.

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Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, The Clash. Photo via.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Julien Temple is the great British music documentarian. He began his career filming the Sex Pistols and the Clash's earliest gigs in 1970s London at now-legendary venues like the 100 Club and the Roxy. Later, he turned the footage into the feature films The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and The Filth and the Fury. Eventually, Temple would put together the 'Best Of' and 'Greatest Hits' films for the likes of the Rolling Stones, Blur, Bowie, and the Culture Club.

After sitting on some of his early Clash footage for almost 40 years, Temple has just put together a new film called The Clash: New Year's Day 1977, centered around a gig they played on January 1 at the Roxy. The documentary contextualizes that moment in time and space for punk by pitting chaotic live footage of the band alongside regular Londoners talking about their hopes and fears for the new year.

I talked to Temple about how the film pays homage to Joe Strummer, the Clash's frontman, who died 12 years ago last month.

VICE: What are your earliest memories of cinema and how did you get into filmmaking?
Julien Temple: I didn't really see any movies at school—apart from maybe A Hard Day's Night , which everyone saw. But when I was 18 I went to see a film with some friends of mine, Jean Luc Godard's Les Mépris, or Contempt. I hadn't seen any art films, so I was kind of shocked. Apart from Brigitte Bardot reclining naked across the cinema screen, I couldn't understand any of it. I had to go back five or six times, secretly, to get my head around the grammar of it. I ended up really liking it. And so that was the first film I really got into.

Later, I was studying architecture at Cambridge and got very bored with it, so started a film society. My college, King's, was the only college without one. It meant we could then see 75 films a week on 16mm prints because all the colleges hired free movies and you could swap them around. That way, you could spend all of your time watching films.

The first film I actually made was called The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng, which was a John Skelton poem about a witch who brewed psychedelic ale at the top of a hill. I made that with a bunch of students and friends and, with it, got into the National Film School. I was studying there when I came across the Sex Pistols.

How did you first meet them?
I used to go walking in the East End and the docks on Sundays. It was great because they'd just been closed down so it was this wonderfully derelict, atmospheric space with rusting cranes and ships. Ghostly quiet. One summer afternoon in 1975, I heard the sound of a Small Faces song on the wind and followed it to an old warehouse. The door was open and I went up these rickety stairs and, as I got higher and higher, I could hear some people just destroying this song. They were shouting, "I want you to know that I hate you. I don't love you."

When I got to the top of the stairs it opened up into this kind of loft and my head poked up from the stairwell with a worm's eye view of this extraordinary, silhouetted band who seemed like nothing you'd expect a band to be; spiky hair, skinny legs, mohair stripe jumpers in black and yellow and black and red. They looked like weird cartoon monsters from space.

No other band was like that. This was a very, very new sensation.

Did you speak to them?
I asked them what they were doing, and they were just rehearsing. They hadn't played a gig, actually, so it was a very fortuitous encounter. I asked them if they might be interested in doing a soundtrack for my little student film that was set in the 60s—because I loved the Small Faces—and they told me to fuck off. But they did say they were going to do a gig, so I watched them rehearse for a bit and went back to West London and told all my mates I'd just seen this incredible band. They asked me their name and I realized I'd forgotten to ask.

[body_image width='1280' height='720' path='images/content-images/2015/01/05/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/05/' filename='an-interview-with-punk-documentarian-julien-temple-273-body-image-1420464506.jpg' id='15431']Still from The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple, 2000)

How did you find them?
I spent weeks looking in music papers trying to see a name of a band that could possibly be them. As a result I missed the first gig, but I later saw this thing saying "Sex Pistols" and I thought that it must be them because it was such a great name.

When I went to the second gig I realized I should film it. It was at the Central School of Art [now Central St. Martins' old Holborn campus]. Sid was there, and Susie. The audience was tiny but theatrical—the same as the band. It was very clear that this was something great. I got a key cut to the film school camera room so that I could take a camera out at night as long as I put it back in the morning. There are 50,000 iPhones at a gig these days, but back then I was the only person with a camera.

Amazing. Did you go on to strike up a relationship with them because you filmed them so often?
Well, yes, I suppose so. But I was a middle class cunt and they were very keen to point that out at every opportunity. They would kick me whenever they could, spitting at the camera and hitting the lens. But yeah, we did develop a friendship—or an understanding, certainly.

How did your first feature film, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle , come about?
The Sex Pistols became huge—or at least hugely notorious—so various people were making films about them. Only, they kept coming and going. They went from Ken Loach for a moment to Stephen Frears for a moment, and then Russ Meyer did it while I was his assistant, and then that all fell apart. Princess Grace of Monaco refused to let Twentieth Century Fox—of which she was on the board—make that film, so we were left with the film I'd shot over time and bits of stuff from television and so on. We made this kind of Godardian, ten-lessons-in-how-to- swindle-your-way-to-the-top-of-the-music-industry type film. Me and Malcolm [ McLaren] wrote and made it together.

[body_image width='400' height='687' path='images/content-images/2015/01/05/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/05/' filename='an-interview-with-punk-documentarian-julien-temple-273-body-image-1420461580.jpg' id='15416']

How did you come across the Clash?
Well I knew Joe Strummer from the squats in West London, or, rather, I knew of him. He knew of me because there was one house that bizarrely still had milk delivered to its doorstep among all these squats. So, if you were up late or hadn't gone to bed, you could always find a bottle of milk for your tea. I would meet Joe Strummer approaching this doorstep and either he got there before me or I got there before him. So we were aware of each other. I also knew his band. I used to go and see them at the Elgin pub in Notting Hill.

[body_image width='1024' height='768' path='images/content-images/2015/01/05/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/05/' filename='an-interview-with-punk-documentarian-julien-temple-273-body-image-1420463035.jpg' id='15428'] Still from The Clash: New Year's Day 1977 (Julien Temple, 2014)

How do you remember him?
He was kind of a hippy at that point. I next saw him outside the 100 Club in Oxford Street at the Punk Festival with the Pistols, and he was standing there with short, bleached hair like Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar—like, too much bleach on his head—and I thought: He's this hippy guy, he's never going to make it. I didn't think he could possibly pull off being like the Sex Pistols. But then we went downstairs where the Clash played a gig and he was extraordinary.

Your film about them aired for the first time on New Year's Day this year. Why only now? After so much time?
I was allowed for a while to film the Clash in that autumn of 1976 up until early 1977, and then I was told by their manager that I couldn't, that I had to choose between the Sex Pistols or the Clash. Bernie [ Rhodes] was like that. He'd issue ultimatums. I'd filmed them for six weeks rehearsing and working up their songs, and then they were on the Anarchy Tour with the Pistols and he wouldn't let me carry on filming. There's also the fact that I'd filmed on a really early reel-to-reel video thing—you wound the tape on yourself and it was on your shoulder as you were filming, so it's a really funky quality, shall we say.

So the whole thing was aborted. I've had the footage lying around for 40 years. It's a unique thing because it's the last film artifact of British punk that hasn't been seen. It's an interesting insight into that period of time, before punk broke. It's been very nice to be able to finally make something of it. Especially as this is the time of year that Joe died. So really, it's dedicated to him.

Watch The Clash: New Year's Day 1977 on BBC iPlayer

Follow Amelia on Twitter.

2,400 MS-DOS games playable in-browser, courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Un año más seguimos con nuestro repaso a lo mejor de ese 2014 que acaba de salir por la ventana y parece que no acaba de caer al suelo. Ya ha sido el turno de mis compañeros y esta vez me toca a mí repasar los mejores cómics del año pasado. 


Manifest Destiny 

Pocas series han...eh... serieado como esta serie de... series... sí, eso, en la que un grupo de vaqueros luchan contra horrores inimaginables. Y parece así como europeo que siempre da puntos. Así que aquí está nuestro obligatorio población del interior de estadosunidos y referencias a los antiguos que vamos a decir todos lo bien que está.

Shutter 

A ver esta que salía en varias listas de lo mejor del año de otra gente y, claro, ¿cómo no va a salir en la mía? Mira, leerla no lahe leído pero por lo que veo en la portada y dice la parte de detrás es algo así como viajes planetarios y periodismo y creo que ese es el Gato Felix o algo así. En realidad pensaba que era un Slice of Life sobre el mejor editor que ha tenido Marvel pero parece que no. Bueno, da igual, ya está puesto. Aquí queda.


Batgirl

De esta le han cambiado el disfraz hasta por lo menos que llegue Jurgens a la serie y ya tenemos la imagen en los archivos de ADLO! así que... ¿cómo no meterla?



Hobgoblin 

Aquí tenía que ir Deadly Foes pero resulta que se ha terminado y era de la anterior así que he buscado lo más parecido y, además, tiene un bocadillo en la portada y esas cosas. Eh, además meter algo de Marvel siempre queda bien porque es así como edgie y correspondent y chamullering.


Bitch Planet 

Oh, un clásico que se me olvidaba. incluir una serie de la que solo hemos visto el primer número. Sí, eso tiene que decir algo. Si es controvertido cuela.

 
Alex + Ada 

Te buscas a unos tipos que tienen un estilo así como reconocible que hagan algo que en los mangas se ha visto mil veces pero que en el cine independiente americano parece que descubrireron ayer, eso debería de servir...

Secret Avengers 

¡Chistes sobre que MODOK es cabezón! ¡¡¡Eso nunca pasa de moda!!! Venga, otro para la lista. Jo, está siendo más sencillo de lo que pansaba.
 
Gotham Academy 
Venga, vamos a demostrarles que todo el mundo puede sacar enseñanza de lo que se mueve realmente. Que si el manga, que si hacer remakes encubiertos de cosas que ya ha publicado tu editorial.¡Y meter la palabra GOTHAM! Que de momento solo hemos tenido Gotham Central, Gotham Underground, Gotham Gazette, Gotham Nights y Gotham Girls. ¡Y el año próximo Gotham Pizzería! 

Andre the Giant  
Por supuesto lo siguiente tiene que ser algo así como biográfico, ¿podremos colar a alguien chupi? ¡Ah, claro! Mira, esto que es como una biografía de André el Gigante que tiene que molar porque, a ver, por un lado era un luchador como esos de la WWF o salir en películas encantadoras como... ehm... Conan el Destructor. Así que venga, que esto marcha.
The Shadow Hero 
Espera, aún no hemos demostrado que no somos racistas. ¡Y es el Día Español de Pintar a Gente de Otro Color! Pues eso lo arreglamos con una aproximación de esos señores que venden cosas culturetas a los supes que es lo que de verdad vende al chavalerío. ¡Y así nos quedamos con todos! Ja, ja, ja. ¡Seguro que ya están pensando en adaptar Tigerman!
Ms. Marvel 

La clara cercanía de la Marvel al público que se demuestra por lo superchupi que son todos sus tebeos y lo mucho que nos gustan, como en esta versión actualizada y femenina de Plastic Man nos demuestra lo happy que es el streaking de la ip que puede sacar porque es que son los mejores y no les decimos lo suficiente lo buenos que son y lo muy guays y cuánto les queremos y nosotros les haríamos los artículos en sus cómics a por lo menos la mitad porque cobramos en copias de prensa. Jo.

Rai 

Molonísima superproducción que auna en un marco incomparable los más reconocidos efectos que la industria estadounidense nos puede traer a los espectadores desde el otro lado de la orilla. Acción a raudales, bien tejida emoción y una intriga a prueba de balas. ¿Te lo vas a perder?

En Contra:  No es malo pero te ríes, aunque le sobran cinco minutos porque parece un corto alargado.

A Favor:  El trabajo de iluminación del colorista realza las imaginativas aportaciones de los personajes. Y, además, es de Valiant. Garantía de calidad.

Gustará a quien le guste: Mujeres occidentales disfrazadas de orientales, megatecnología chachi, señores mayores con enormes pistolones y, en general, todo lo que hizo grande a Hollywood en los noventa del pasado siglo.

The Wicked + The Divine