Snob

Why would I make such a pronouncement?

Well…

One of those cheapy publishing houses took this idea and ran with it… right over a cliff. I saw this recipe “book” or “magazine” or… “leaflet” (?) in the impulse magazine holders right by the check-out at a small town grocery store in Texas. Move aside ramen taco and ramen burger, we now have 55 recipes featuring ramen noodles. From the looks of this publication, we can now learn how to make anything, even a cheesecake crust, out of packaged ramen noodles.

Sorry guys… at this point I don’t think any creative new ramen noodle recipe is going to go viral. The trend is over. Ramen noodles are totally normcore. Onto the next food blog craze!

flight-to-mars:

Vincent In The Tiki Caves (2014) by Devon Devereaux

This is all I require in art.

It looks like a tarantula, but what you're actually seeing is a contortionist covered in body paint. She's bent over backwards in a bridge position. You can see her move like a spider in this video.

(Video Link)

Isn't that amazing? This is the work of Emma Fay, a body painting artist in the UK. She recently hired two contortionists to serve as models. Lowri Thomas spent 5 hours undergoing this makeup transformation. Jonathan Macauley photographed it. You can see more photos of their work here, including these contortionists appearing as a giraffe and a seahorse. 

Content warning: artistic nudity.

-via Fashionably Geek

Via The Trials and Tribulations of Needle The Weedle comes a form of public chastisement we can get behind: d20 shaming.

Read more...

Como quiera que es la primera vez que hablamos por estos lares de Brüno, me váis a permitir que invierta estas primeras líneas de la reseña de ‘Tyler Cross’ en desmigar lo imprescindible que resulta la lectura de la práctica totalidad de los trabajos del dibujante alemán, aunque sólo sea por asomarse a la impresionante labor que el artista realiza en todos y cada uno de ellos (otra cosa es el guionista de turno que le toque en gracia). Con la fantástica ‘Nemo’ a la cabeza, un homenaje a Julio Verne de la que es autor completo, los títulos en los que Brüno se ha visto implicado, y que en España hemos podido leer gracias a la labor de Dib-buks y de la extinta Glénat, muestran a un consumado narrador de marcado sesgo cinematográfico que se crece, y de qué manera, cuando la página queda desnuda de diálogos.

Dichas virtudes, que hablan mucho y muy bien del superlativo manejo de los mecanismos del arte secuencial con el que está dotado el artista, quedan perfectamente expuestas en esta primera entrega de ‘Tyler Cross’ que nos hizo llegar Dib-buks hace tres meses, suponiendo el volumen, junto a la citada ‘Nemo’ lo mejor que le hemos podido leer al teutón, algo a lo que no es ajeno, qué duda cabe, el trabajo que realiza a los guiones ese Fabien Nury del que tanto y tan bien pudimos llegar a hablar el año pasado con ocasión de la magistral ‘Érase una vez en Francia’, el MEJOR cómic europeo publicado durante 2013 en nuestro país, una calificación que ya indicamos tanto en la selección de lo mejor del año que podéis ver aquí como en la reseña que le dedicamos el último día de los pasados doce meses.

Historia que mezcla con singular maestría cine negro y western, y en la que tan abundantes son las referencias cinematográficas que los autores han incluido un exhaustivo glosario de las mismas a la finalización de la narración, ‘Tyler Cross. Río Bravo’ sigue las andanzas del personaje que da título al cómic, una suerte de afortunado encuentro entre Humphrey Bogart, Jack Palance y el Parker de Richard Stark (y no lo digo yo, que son Nury y Brüno los que afirman tal cosa) que tiene mucho tanto de la personalidad del personaje que Darwyn Cooke tan bien ha sabido entender en sus magistrales adaptaciones como del aspecto físico de las dos estrellas de Hollywood, un hecho que el guionista aprovecha para describirlo como un cabrón irredento que sólo se preocupa por una cosa: él mismo.

Metiéndolo de lleno en una trama de traiciones, muerte, pueblos polvorientos controlados por caciques y muy diversos ajustes de cuentas, Nury consigue dotar de voz propia a su Tyler, tanto por los diálogos que pone en boca del rudo personaje como por la contraposición de éste con el resto del “reparto”, alejándolo conforme avanza la lectura de cualquier influencia externa que pudiera haber sido considerada de partida. Dicha voz confiere al protagonista de un carisma incuestionable ante el que uno no tiene más remedio que caer rendido, un hecho éste, el de caer rendido, que guión y personaje comparten con el soberbio trabajo de Brüno, al que poco o nada le queda ya por demostrar en cuanto a composición de la página, tratamiento del color, caracterización (que será todo lo simple que queráis, pero cómo funciona) y ritmo narrativo. En definitiva, una lectura que raya el sobresaliente y de la que esperamos ansiosos nuevas entregas.

Tendemos a prejuzgar a gran velocidad a la otra persona en cualquier nuevo contacto social. Evaluamos su forma de vestir, la forma de su cara, cómo nos mira, cómo habla. Todos son pruebas para dictaminar si nos podemos fiar o no de esa persona. Por ejemplo, los rostros redondeados infunden más confianza que los rostros cuadrados.

Somos más benévolos en nuestros prejuicios si la otra persona pertenece a algún grupo social o ideológico semejante al nuestro. Por ejemplo, si nos cruzamos con alguien que acude al mismo mitin político que nosotros, sentiremos más cercanía emocional con esa persona. Si alguien lleva la camiseta de nuestro equipo de fútbol favorito, lo mismo. Pero ¿es una forma eficaz de valorar a los extraños?

En un estudio realizado por investigadores de la Australian National University y la Universidad de Hokkaido, de Japón, a un grupo de voluntarios se les ofreció la elección de tomar una suma de dinero procedente de un miembro del mismo grupo, o de otro diferente (advirtiéndoles que tanto los de un grupo como los del otro les asignarían el dinero para que lo distribuyeran como estimaran oportuno). Incluso en el caso de que los miembros del mismo grupo mostraran características más negativas, los voluntarios escogieron mayoritariamente la opción del grupo con el que se alineaban.

La gente espera ser mejor tratada por los miembros del mismo grupo al que pertenecen. Pero si esto no se produce, entonces nuestro cerebro recurre al estereotipo, según explica David DiSalvo en Qué hace feliz a tu cerebro:

Pero cuando se les dijo a los participantes que el donante del dinero del grupo simpatizante no sabía que ellos formaban parte de su mismo grupo, la situación cambió. Cuando sucedió eso, los participantes establecieron su elección basándose en el estereotipo. Es decir, si el grupo de los simpatizantes manifestaba una postura más negativa, entonces los participantes preferían acogerse a la opción del grupo con el que no simpatizaban, y viceversa.

En consecuencia, generalmente empleamos criterios muy endebles para elaborar juicios sobre los demás. Pero no podemos evitarlo porque es un rasgo impreso por la evolución, que se rige por el satisficing (satisfacer de manera suficiente).

Imagen | xorna

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La noticia ¿Por qué me caes bien? fue publicada originalmente en Xatakaciencia por Sergio Parra.

Between 1955 and 1965, Americans were obsessed with “Tiki culture,” the lifestyle they perceived was led in Hawaii and the rest of Polynesia. It boomed with the stories brought home by World War II soldiers and the hit musical South Pacific. The trappings of the tropical lifestyle invaded bars, restaurants, and eventually homes. It exploded when Hawaii became a state in 1959. Sven Kirsten, who has written several books on the subject, tells us about the rise and fall of Tiki culture, which gave us the trappings of paradise without any real understanding of the actual culture of Polynesia.

Collectors Weekly: Where did the word “Tiki” come from?

Kirsten: Tiki was a mythological figure in Polynesia, a region defined by the Polynesian Triangle: There’s Hawaii in the north, Easter Island in the east, and New Zealand in the southwest. In the middle of that triangle are islands like Tahiti and Samoa. All of these islands share some common heritage and a similar language. They also had a religion based on ancestor worship, where their ancestors were deified in stories and myths and became their gods.

Tiki was like the Polynesian Adam, the creator of man, but he was sort of half-man and half-god. Eventually, all carvings and depictions that had human features became known as Tikis. The word “Tiki” was used in the Marquesas and by the Maori in New Zealand. In Hawaii, they’re called Ki’i, and in Tahiti they’re called Ti’i, because of the language variation. For example, the Hawaiian word for Tahiti is Kahiki (which was also a great restaurant in Columbus, Ohio), because the T becomes a K in Hawaiian. But that didn’t really matter to the Americans in the 1950s—basically all the different carving styles became members of the happy Tiki family, including the Easter Island Moai statues.

Read how Tiki culture took over America, as the fantasy of a stress-free paradise that never really existed, at Collectors Weekly.  

(Image credit: Sven Kirsten and Taschen)

Artwork by Brian Walsby

Kara Crabb: one sophisticated ass lady

After my two-year-old butt sex article went viral recently for some weird, perverted reason, I decided to look it over again. Upon review, I was absolutely horrified. Not because of what I had written, but what I’d forgotten to mention. There are so many better, more obvious reasons why girls should literally only have anal sex and nothing else. I’m sorry for being so neglectful. It was truly an irresponsible disposal on my account, focusing solely on sensory delight and passivity—in reality, there are far more relevant reasons why every female ought to be prohibited from all sexual acts excluding anal intercourse.

They are as follows:

NO PREGNANCY

Never mind the purely selfish reasons why you wouldn’t want a human larva ruining your life—let’s look at this from a socio-environmental standpoint. The human population is expected to reach 8 billion by the year 2025. We have no way to feed all of these people, and what would we do with the sewage if we could? Even now, with 7 billion people on Earth, more than 200 million tons of human waste goes untreated every year.

Think about that before you freak out over a little poop on your boyfriend’s peener. It’s a small price to pay for not living a literally shitty existence. Overpopulation is a colossal nightmare that we, as a species, can no longer physically withstand. That is exactly why anal sex is so important.

You can’t grow a baby in your ass, but you can have an orgasm if you try a little.

If girls were to engage only in anal intercourse, there would be fewer humans on Earth, and therefore less resource depletion, and perhaps a better quality of life for the rest of civilization. Only through these swollen, pulsating lips may we still find our planet hospitable. Forget those stupid solar roadways—anal sex can single-handedly lead us toward a future of sustainability and hope.

I am the bearer of objective truth.

LIMITED DISEASE TRANSMISSION

One might prefer the “stinky” to the “pinky” for one's non-propogational preclusions, but blowing loads into rectal tissue is practical for many legitimate reasons that further help control our steadily expanding population!

Diseases were predetermined to regulate human population densities on Earth because humans are gods and the universe clearly revolves around our existence, right? Now think about this: It’s easy to poison yourself with shit: cholera, hepatitis, Clostridium difficile (Hawt! New!). These are all cool, fun things you can get from digging around in people’s assholes. What a positive influence on our demography! Girls should really only be having the dirtiest, most-unprotected, anal-sex ORGY PARTIES because infectious disease is a material privilege in this short, sweet life. I should be canonized.

PHANTOM PHALLUS

I must especially apologize for failing to recognize the possibility that receptive males may also want to engage in anal intercourse with penetrative females.

While the act is commonly rejected in most het-cis relationships, I can personally attest to its reality. One time I met a guy off Craigslist (that story is not really relevant). He was comfortable with his sexuality (there’s no need to delve in my personal life right now), and he was interested in prostate orgasms (I don’t want to encourage unwanted attention by sharing this story).

I still believe that sexual dominance and pain are extremely fun and gratifying under the right circumstances—but thrusting an inorganic penile into another autonomous human being can be pretty all right, too.

PRESERVING OUR HERITAGE

Men, women, and children have all been players in the anal-receiving game since antiquity. In fact, it is debated whether academia itself grew from the edges of a child’s sphincter.

Pederasty was a socially accepted form of education wherein young male students developed erotic relationships with their teachers in exchange for private mentorship. Cultural views on actual penetration, however, are confused.

While depictions of anal sex in Greek and Roman art suggest that penetration was reserved only for slaves and whores, there ARE accounts of celebrated anal intercourse among companions throughout a variety of ancient civilizations.

Regardless of whether males were actually INSERTING their penises into their friends' buttholes or not, posterior stimulation bears definite cross-cultural synchronicity. It makes me wonder: Without anal sex, would democracy ever have been born? What about linguistics? Or spectator sports? Militaries?

In this vein we should all open ourselves to the fact that every race, creed, age, and sex are unified under ANAL SYNERGIC TRANSCENDENCE!!!

On that note—males, I would like to address the fact that many of you are messaging me, telling me how you’d like to convince your girlfriends to have anal sex with you. Why? Why? Why would you do this?

Why would you email someone you don’t know and tell her these things? Why would anyone care about this? Why? Why?

Follow Kara Crabb on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Francis Storr

In the modern world, it’s impossible to live ethically without going off the grid or killing yourself. If you did live off the grid­ (or didn’t live, period), you wouldn’t be reading this right now. But you are. Which means you—yes, you, in spite of your Prius with the "Coexist” sticker and your love of same-sex marriage and free-range poultry—live unethically.  

Indeed, every single thing you do is unethical. Where'd you buy the clothes you're wearing? Somewhere unethical. What’d you eat for breakfast? Something unethical. Did you take a shower this morning? How long did you take? If you didn't just dab yourself with a wet, Dr. Bronner's–covered rag, you fucked up. You continued to be part of the problem.  

It’s a nice gesture for you to drive the Prius with the “Coexist” sticker. After all, you could be driving a Hummer with a “Fuck Differences” sticker. The Prius makes you feel better about yourself, like you’re raping Mother Gaia a little less than the other guy. Naturally, this fills you with a fair amount of self-righteousness. Your self-righteousness, however, is unfounded. In spite of your best efforts, you’re still ruining the world.  

No matter what you do and how you do it, you’re tangentially supporting Koch Industries. The second-largest privately held company and the fourteenth-worst air polluter in the US, Koch "started in the heartland, and has expanded to nearly every state." A fair amount of their $115 billion in annual revenue is spent on lobbyists, who in turn ensure a fucked future for us all by paying politicians to look the other way while Koch contaminates waterways and blackens the air.  

To know Koch Industries is to hate it. "You may not always see [their] name on the products you use,” their promotional video reminds you, “but [they’re] working every day to make better food, clothing, shelter, transportation, hygiene supplies, technologies, and other necessities." The video’s imagery—a diapered infant waddling, an old man on a horse—reminds you that, from the cradle to the fucking grave, by virtue of simply existing, you're contributing to their bottom line.  

Koch-provided or not, well intended or not, the staples of your life—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, hygiene supplies, technologies, and other necessities—are all inherently immoral. Let’s discuss.  

Photo via Flickr user John Morgan

Food 

Organic produce, while more environmentally friendly than traditional produce, is still produce. Which means it’s still picked by farm workers who, while not having to suffer the health hazard of being exposed to pesticides, nevertheless suffer long hours, oppressive working conditions, and low wages. The USDA’s list of organic standards includes no rules about labor, which means organic farms have carte blanche to treat their employees as poorly as traditional ones. You may feel better, eating that organic arugula, but the back of the woman who picked it doesn’t. 

The artisanal-ification of restaurants—muddling cocktails, over-complicating ingredients—is making the act of eating out more and more cost-prohibitive to people who don’t have tech jobs or take money from their parents. Every boozy brunch you attend distances you further and further from the lower classes and, by proxy, reality. Every family-run restaurant that gets priced out of its lease and turned into a shticky bistro further fragments us. Every hip Korean-Mexican fusion food truck with a punny name puts a taco truck out of business.  

Photo via Flickr user Gaudencio Garcinuño

Clothing 

You dress like a bohemian. But your faux rags, your artful affectation, were assembled by someone in real rags, working Christ knows how many hours a week for Christ knows how little pay. You wonder how those stores in the mall can sell things so cheaply. It’s easy: low overhead. 

Even if you don’t shop at the mall, even if you buy your clothing secondhand at a thrift store, you’re depriving people poorer than you from purchasing it. You got a great deal on that skirt. But did you need to get a great deal? You could have afforded to pay more—much more.  

Shelter 

Gentrification works thusly: You show up. You displace. You repeat. Wherein your parents once fled from the city, you now flock to it. Because, like, the suburbs fucking suck. In doing so, you’re essentially committing reverse white flight. The people forced to stay in the cities, the people abandoned by their former neighbors who got the hell out of Dodge as soon as they made enough money to buy a Dodge, have been keeping Echo Park, the U Street Corridor, and Beacon Hill warm for you. Now you want those areas back. So you take them. Where do they go once you, and people like you, kick them out and fill their neighborhoods with vinyl-only record stores? That question does not cross your mind.  

Photo via Flickr user Marshall Astor

Transportation 

Sure, you can go to the desert and do mushrooms and connect with your Earth mother, but how'd you get there, numbnuts? You drove a fucking car. You filled the tank with dinosaur bones, threw a Chinese-made tent in the trunk, and bought some shrooms from your dealer, who also sells harder shit smuggled across the border by murderous cartels.  

Hygiene Supplies 

I was in a co-op the other day, the sort of place in which one would witness a man burn honest-to-Goddess sage without comment, after smoking DMT, again, without comment. Despite the overwhelmingly hippy ethos of my environment, the hand soap in the shared bathroom was made by Procter and Gamble. A package of disposable razors I noticed in a woman’s bedroom were made by the same. Procter and Gamble is a major donor to the Republican National Committee. The Republican National Committee hates hippies, and hippies hate the Republican National Committee. Yet there I was, in that co-op, using their hippy-hating soap.  

Photo via Flickr user Robert Scoble

Technologies 

Sure, your iPhone was “Designed by Apple in California,” but it sure as shit wasn’t constructed there. It would cost a mere $4 per unit to manufacture in America, but cost isn’t the reason why the labor has been outsourced to China, Taiwan, and Korea. It’s because there’s something about borderline slave labor that makes manufacturing things so darned fast! The folks over there can crank these babies out like crazy!  

Which reminds me of a delightful story: Steve Jobs decided he wanted the iPhone’s screen to be made out of glass very shortly before its launch; in America, the time constraints involved would have made it an impossibility. Not so, however, in China! A factory made its own dorms to facilitate employees working 12-hour shifts, making 10,000 iPhones a day. Steve got his wish! He could die happy!  

If you don’t have an iPhone, but you have ethics, you're probably upset about Google raping and pillaging San Francisco. You write tweets about it on your Droid. Which is filled with conflict minerals.

Photo via Flickr user Marisa McClellan

Other Necessities 

While it may seem as though that $6 cold-brewed coffee you just bought is a necessity, I assure you it is not. It’s liquid privilege.  

You’re slightly different than that theoretical Hummer driver. But only slightly. So the next time you pat yourself on the back for being such a good person, a caring citizen of the Earth, do me a favor: don’t.

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

The prospect of writing about Woody Allen has loomed large over my writing since the inception of this column last year for many reasons. First, I hold the non-unique position in considering him the greatest comedic director to ever work. Second, the last year has not been particularly friendly to Mr. Allen press-wise and I had little interest in stepping in those murky waters. However, it remains important that Allen is one of the most influential comedic directors and probably the most respected by the academy and The Academy and given that his new (not particularly inspiring seeming) film is coming out later this month, it seemed high time to say something about the importance of his work within the comedy film canon.

Of course, another factor in my decision to hold off on writing about Allen for so long is his intimidatingly complete body of work. Pinpointing an access point into his style is a daunting task. Does one attempt a career overview of an over 50-film catalogue? Should I focus on one period in his career, such as his early slapstick period, his 70s New York period, or his current European adventure period? Ultimately, I believe the best place to begin with Woody is with Annie Hall, his most well-regarded work, the film of his I first saw, and what can be considered the pivot point between Woody Allen the comedian and Woody Allen the filmmaker.

For it’s massive popularity and highly accessible and iconic central performance from Diane Keaton, Annie Hall, is surprisingly experimental in its film style. Allen makes no bones about his biggest inspirations — Ingmar Bergman and other European art filmmakers — which seems like an odd style reference for an American comic but in fact gives his work a stylistic freedom unparalleled by his peers. From the very first shot, Allen breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the viewer, a choice that is both alienating in that it establishes a non-linear narrative structure and welcoming in that it implicates the viewer in the choices the main character makes. From there, Allen makes a series of extradiagetic style choices that includes text on screen, an elaborate analog split screen set-up, and even animation to add a personal, whimsical, fun form of expression to what is both a fairly traditional and prototypically neurotic love story at its core.

Woody Allen uses a split screen two times in the film, both times to illustrate the differences between Annie’s waspy psyche and Alvy’s Jewish psyche. In the first, Alvy is at dinner with the Hall family, which is a well-lit, well decorated, neatly composed scene. The characters are all sitting symmetrical distances from one another, each has a place at the table, everyone seems relaxed except for Alvy. The split screen wipes in to reveal Alvy’s family, previously seen in their home underneath the roller coaster in Coney Island, in a dark, low-lit, crowded frame. The characters are sitting shoulder to shoulder, Mrs. Singer is serving over them, the table is crowded, the food is messy and the people unkempt. Annie’s mother and Alvy’s mother talk to one another through the split screen, discussing the differences in their homes.

In the second split screen, we see Annie on the left and Alvy on the right with the frame split directly down the middle. Annie sits erect in a modern therapists office, again well-lit, with a similar grey and off-white color palate as her family home. Alvy on the other hand lies in a more academic appearing therapists office, lit like a scene from The Godfather (apropos given that the films share a cinematographer in Gordon Willis). Like his family home, the cluttered office has a brown and black palette.  Again, the characters on either side of the split screen interact with one another, this time responding massively differently to the same questions posed by their doctors.

The contrast and interplay are the two most important elements in the scene. The spaces appear to be completely different and opposing and the people occupying them have contrasting opinions about what is being discussed. To serve this importance, Allen made the choice to create the split scene set up in an analog set rather than in the edit. The sets are built next to one another with a black wall set in the middle and slightly off to the left with the camera set in the middle of the two, straight on. Through this set up, Allen was able to perfect the timing of his scenes in a way that shooting the two set ups separately would not have accomplished. The characters could see the opposite situations they were responding to and the lines places, paced, and timed expertly. The result creates a fascinating choreography in which two characters interact and comment on their unique experiences in a particular space or situation with the comfort of occupying that space but the ease of sharing a scene in person with another actor.

The visual bits that fill Annie Hall (as well as later works including Purple Rose of Cairo, Zelig, Deconstructing Harry, etc.) such as text on screen, breaking the fourth wall, and animation could feel like tricks in a lesser work, but Allen commits so wholeheartedly to this experimental style that it actually makes the film feel more accessible and personal than a traditionally linear narrative might serve. Throughout his career, Woody’s willingness to speak directly to his audience through aggressively breaking the realism rather than hiding what he is trying to say in a-personal drama is what has made him a larger than his films character in real life.  He projects such a vulnerability in his directing style that encourages his audience to laugh in the face of his characters’ motivations and neuroses.

After social media unanimously cried out for the blood of unabashed animal poacher Kendall Jones, it wasn’t long until the Internet Outrage Industrial Complex set sights on a new target.

We’re not sure if this Facebook user has the driest sense of humor on the planet or if he’s just that unaware of the fact that the Triceratops hasn’t existed for tens of millions of years, if it even existed at all.  Either way, the caption and some of the subsequent comments are gold.

This is, by far, the best screed in the comments section, and involves the commenter calling Steven Spielberg a disgusting, inhumane prick for his cold-blooded murder of a prop from the early 90s blockbuster “Jurassic Park.” Bravo, Internet!

If that pic of the dead dinosaur enough to get people up in arms, then let’s hope animal lovers don’t see this candid shot of the time Spielberg sexually harassed a poor innocent shark.  Talk about a disgusting, inhumane prick.

Will this man’s blood lust ever be sated?

h/t Dangerous Minds

Studio legend Carol Kaye laid down the bass on some of the most iconic songs of the twentieth century. From the undulating grooves on Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” to everything on The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” to playing guitar on Richie Valens’ “La Bamba,” she was everywhere in classic pop.

Her style and everything she represents was pretty much the polar opposite of Gene Simmons, the misogynistic bass player for Kiss who was always as short on sweet grooves as he was long on tongue. So it’s pretty funny to see her giving Gene a bass lesson in this outtake from the 2012 documentary “Sample This.”

She’s clearly the superior player. After watching Carol noodle Gene eagerly asks her to teach him how to play a particular lick. He’s not exactly an ace student, but it’s fun seeing a rock star with that much unbridled enthusiasm on his instrument.

H/t: No Treble via Aram Bajakian | Image

Arron Hendy and Ruari Barratt, two journalists from the UK newspaper The Argus, probably thought they were in for a plum assignment went they were sent off to the eatery Burger Off in Hove, England. What’s a better perk to being a journalist than being a fed a free meal and then getting paid to write about it?

However, the two reporters weren’t served just any old burger, but the “XXX Hot Chilli Burger, ” a burger that makes pepper spray seem benign by comparison.  

That’s not an exaggeration. Pepper spray supposedly ranks between 500,000 and five million on the Scoville scale, a scale widely accepted as the measure of “hotness” in any chili pepper related product. Nick Gamardella, the owner of Burger Off, claims that the “XXX Hot Chilli Burger” ranks in the 7 to 9 million range, effectively making the burger more a biological weapon than a tasty treat. 

Hendy and Barratt reportedly experienced the effects of the burger almost immediately and were taken away in ambulance after just one bite.

It seems Barratt experienced the most extreme effects seeing as how he suffered “severe stomach pains which increased. He lost the feeling in his hands, his legs were shaking and his eyes rolled back in his head.”

Barratt told The Argus, “It was hard to walk. I needed to drink milk to neutralize the burning, which was hard because I was hyperventilating so much my hands had seized up.”

Barrett’s colleague, Hendy suffered a similar fate.

“I was in so much pain I was telling people I felt like I was dying,” he told The Argus.

Gamardella seems pretty unfazed by the fact that he serves up a dish that could essentially be classified as an act of war. For starters, he absolves himself of any possible responsibility by having customers sign a waiver upon ordering the burger.

“I spend about as much time convincing people not to try one as I do selling them. I tell people it will ruin their weekend,” the  proprietor told The Argus.

According to ITV, Gamardella recently declined to sell a burger to man carrying an infant, which is prudent considering that the burger apparently causes people to lose use of their limbs.

“I told him you will not be able to look after yourself let alone your baby if you try this.”

What a saint.

Gamardella also revealed a certain contempt for his customer base when he revealed to ITV that sales are down for the burger because he is “running out of idiots to try it.”

Anyone who isn’t convinced that Gamardella is a great guy might want to take a look at this shot from the establishment’s Twitter account.

ITV, The Argus

As if things couldn’t get any more embarrassing for the Brazilian National Team after Tuesday’s incredible 7-1 loss to Germany, German players are now revealing that they basically pledged to go easy on Brazil in the second half. And they still ended up scoring two more goals on them.

Maybe they were just being magnanimous in wanting their host country to be able to walk out of the match with their dignity intact. Or maybe the Germans wanted to avoid a riot and hoped to walk out of the match with their limbs intact. Either way, Mats Hummels says the team made a pledge in the locker room at halftime not to humiliate Brazil in the remainder of the game.

“We just made it clear that we had to stay focused and not try to humiliate them,” Hummels said, according to Daily Mail. “You have to show the opponent respect and it was very important that we did this and didn’t try to show some magic or something like this. It was important we played our game for 90 minutes.”

“We said we had to stay serious and concentrate at half-time. That’s something you don’t have to show on the pitch if you are playing,” he said. It’s not clear whether he means you don’t have to gloat on the field because it’s in poor taste, or whether he means you usually don’t have to pretend like you’re concentrating if you are actually playing your hardest. Either way it seems a little embarrassing for the Brazilians. Win lose or draw, you never want to hear that your opponent was going easy on you.

Germany then reemerged from the locker room and scored two goals on Brazil in the second half as Brazil scored a single, redemptive goal on Germany.

“After our second goal they got confused,” Hummels said. “They were not organized on the pitch and after that we didn’t miss a chance until we scored the fifth goal. This doesn’t happen too often. You just have to enjoy it.”

Though he insists they’re not getting cocky about Sunday’s final with Argentina. “We must enjoy what happened, but if we lose the final, this semi-final will not be worth anything.”

As for the Brazilians, they can forget the World Cup and move on to the business of addressing militarized gentrification—which seems like a much bigger problem.

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Hace muchos años que se habla de la adaptación cinematográfica del Manga Death Note. Y si nuestra fuente, The Tracking Board, no se equivoca, el director elegido para este proyecto es nada más y nada menos que Gus Van Sant, cineasta de marcado carácter independiente que jamás ha trabajado en ninguna superproducción de Hollywood.

Death Note es un manga muy popular que cuanta la historia de Light, un adolescente que se encuentra un cuaderno que tiene el poder mágico de matar a todo aquel cuyo nombre es escrito en él. Ryuk es el demonio guardián del libro que trata de ayudar a Light para que use el poder del libro para hacer el bien. Sin embargo el muchacho, según va pasando el tiempo se va volviendo más hambrienta de poder. por eso entra en escena L, un detective y genio de las computadoras que persigue a Light para investigar las muertes que suceden a su alrededor.

¿Es tan sorprendente que Gus Van Sant se haga cargo de la realización de esta película? Van Sant es conocido por películas como Mi Idaho privado, El Indomable Will Hunting, Elephant, el remake de Psicosis y Mi nombre es Harvey Milk, entre otras. Veremos qué tal se maneja rodando una película de este tipo.

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