Snob

¡Esto es lo que yo estaba esperando! ¡No puedo creer que exista gente como ellos! (Alan Vega, a la salida de un concierto de Ramones en el CBGB, 1974).

¡Es esto!, ¡Es esto! (Chris Frantz [Talking Heads], exultante en el CBGB, 74).

¡Me declaro su primera fan! (Debbie Harry [Blondie], mismo sitio y año).

(Yo no te hubiera conocido si no llega a ser por) los Ramones. (Pistones, Madrid, 1982).

En 1974, Arturo Vega, un artista mexicano afincado en Nueva York, se hizo con un stock desechado de camisetas. Había estado fabricando abalorios para los New York Dolls, una catastrófica y fascinante formación de imitadores glam de los Rolling Stones, y ahora se preguntaba qué podría hacer con tanta tela. Sus nuevos compañeros de piso, Joey y Dee Dee, también tenían un grupo que estaba siendo la sensación de la ciudad, con sus primeros conciertos en un tugurio llamado CBGB, donde antes de ellos y un grupo de rock de arte y ensayo, Television, no quería tocar nadie, porque allí solo se hacían lecturas de poesía beatniks y actuaban artistas country. Arturo, entusiasmado con la imagen y el sonido del cuarteto, empezó a decorar camisetas para sus amigos.

Los testigos de estas actuaciones afirman que durante los apenas veinte minutos que duraban, se tenían que agarrar al mobiliario igual que si estuviesen en una montaña rusa, de la onda expansiva que salía del escenario. El grupo, con evidentes limitaciones técnicas, tocaba a una velocidad endiablada. El sonido era una vorágine en la que se encadenaban temas de un minuto y medio, o dos como mucho. Jon Savage los describe en su libro, «canciones tan breves que reflejaban la fragmentada capacidad de concentración de la primera generación de televidentes» (1).

Joey se había pedido ser el batería, pero Tommy, un talentoso ingeniero de sonido que oficia estos primeros años de manager y cerebro del grupo, ha recomendado que sea el cantante, mientras él se queda con los tambores, aunque nunca los haya tocado. La razón es obvia: Joey llama la atención por donde va, ya que aparte de medir dos metros de altura, es un tipo muy especial y su voz es realmente característica, producto de una sinusitis crónica. Joey ha comenzado a variar su imagen de artista glam por una versión más rockera, y de su antiguo look con camisas de raso, guantes y botas de plataforma fucsia, solo conserva el pelo largo y las gafas de miope con cristales de color rojo oscuro. Arturo adora a Joey, como lo vamos a adorar varias generaciones de headbangers, y le ha regalado una camiseta con el logo de la marca de pegamento Carbona.

En 1975, a Dee Dee, el bajista, le serigrafía una camiseta con la foto del príncipe Carlos para llevar la contraria a los Sex Pistols. Si esos ingleses tan arrogantes eran antimonárquicos, ellos serían pro familia real. Dee Dee iba a ser el cantante, pero ha desistido pronto, porque bastante tiene con aprender a tocar un Danelectro que destrozará en pocos meses. Lleva el mismo pelo de Bruce Lee y es toda una personalidad, como la estrella de cine, pero en versión buscavidas de Queens. Tiene auténtico talento para escribir canciones y meterse en líos, trapicheos de drogas y peleas de las que conserva algunas cicatrices. Ha tenido los empleos más dispares, hasta el de peluquero. A veces le corta el pelo a Johnny, el guitarrista, un tipo serio y calmado que luce una cuidadísima melena, muy parecida a la de Keith Relf de los Yardbirds. Esa melena y su primera guitarra Mosrite de cincuenta pavos (como las que tocaban los Ventures) pasarán a la historia. Bueeno, los estilismos capilares de Fred y Dennis de los MC5 también han influido en los peinados de Joey y Johnny.

Estaban en Washington haciéndose fotos, y Arturo se fijó en las banderas y los emblemas, omnipresentes por toda la ciudad. Recordó la obsesión de Dee Dee por la parafernalia nazi —uniformes, soldaditos, esvásticas— de cuando vivió de niño en una base en Alemania por su padre, teniente del ejército, así como la problemática educación de Johnny, que terminó a trompicones la secundaria en un par de academias militares.

Lo vio claro. El sello del presidente, con el águila imperial agarrando las ramas y las flechas, era perfecto para ellos.

Pero había que realizar algunos cambios: «En lugar de la rama de olivo, dibujé una rama de manzano, ya que ellos son tan americanos como el pastel de manzana. Y como Johnny era un fanático del béisbol, puse al águila sosteniendo un bate». Con el nombre del grupo en grandes letras mayúsculas, alrededor del sello estampó los del cuarteto: Johnny – Joey – Dee Dee – Tommy. El lema que sostiene el águila en su pico ya no era «E pluribus unum». Es el lema que medio mundo lleva encima y posiblemente, ahora tiene la misma idea sobre su significado que como si fuera el otro en latín: «Hey Ho, Let´s Go». (2)

Este es el origen del logo de los Ramones y su camiseta, prenda que ha sobrepasado la música y los hechos de uno de los grupos más emocionantes de la historia del pop. Nunca un logo ha sido tan descontextualizado, tan vaciado de su intención primaria para convertirse en un simple adorno, sin más mensaje que el atractivo del dibujo y el curioso nombre. Este fenómeno es común a otras muchas camisetas que han usado y usan millones de fans para celebrar su devoción por su artista favorito. La de Nirvana, que tiene unas letras muy parecidas, y no por casualidad, va por ese camino, así como las de Guns´n´Roses y otras bandas conocidas. Todas se pueden encontrar en la zona joven de unos grandes almacenes, lugar donde no hace mucho tiempo hubiese sido imposible imaginar uno solo de estos objetos. Pero por encima del resto de prendas tristemente desprovistas de su sentido y su sensibilidad, hemos visto a media humanidad vestida con la camiseta de los Ramones, desde famosos de segunda en Hollywood a personajes de tercera en España. Y el pueblo llano. Lo mismo la luce un candidato a «Granjero busca esposa» que un coolhunter, el vecino o la señora del súper. Se ha fabricado en todos los materiales posibles, la tela en colores flúor, en formato vestido, para bebés y hasta para mascotas… Incluso otros grupos la han remodelado para anunciar su propio nombre, por no hablar de la cantidad de bares y asociaciones que la han usado, con interpretaciones más o menos afortunadas. Ha vendido millones de copias, primero en las tiendas de memorabilia rock, pero ahora lo mismo la ves colgada en los mercadillos de frutas e imitaciones de perfumes que en franquicias de ropa. Dio a su creador, Arturo Vega, que falleció el año pasado, fan acérrimo y amigo leal, royalties para vivir cómodamente hasta entonces. Los discos de los Ramones, evidentemente, no han tenido ni una cuarta parte de ese éxito comercial.

Los fundamentalistas se enfadan porque a los Ramones los lleven en su pecho gente que jamás los ha escuchado ni lo hará nunca; es más, que si lo hiciera, se horrorizaría. La mayoría no sabe lo que significa ese dibujo, si se trata de una agrupación política o una peña de amigos (4). Se enfurece el fan cuando lee en los suplementos de moda articulines sobre la camiseta o ve a un famoso de esos de la tele ataviado con la prenda en una tertulia del corazón. Pero esta confusión sigue siendo igual de divertida y estúpida como cuando el movimiento punk lucía en bloque la camiseta. Un símbolo que tiene un aspecto, reconozcámoslo, marcial, genuinamente americano y no muy airado, poco que ver con los lemas que el avispado modisto Malcolm McLaren hacía lucir a sus criaturas para vender ropa, tipo la camiseta con la cruz invertida y la palabra «Destruye» de su tienda. Sí, imprimirse el sello del presidente de los Estados Unidos con unas modificaciones pop era muy típico de la época y los de Ramones, burlones hasta el final, pero ellos también se ponían otras camisetas en las que se podía leer «Let God Kill´em All», un lema utilizado por los boinas verdes, que podía ser una ironía en el caso de Joey, mucho más distanciado que sus compañeros con las instituciones (como hicieron cientos de artistas de su generación, los primeros en enfrentarse a hechos de la historia reciente desde posturas ambiguas, humorísticas o esteticistas), pero también una declaración de principios de Dee Dee, como en su fabuloso «53rd & 3rd», tragicomedia al estilo Taxi Driver. Junto al nihilismo que compartían con la nueva música, había en ellos otros mensajes que muchos no han querido asimilar, como cuando Johnny declaró, ya de mayor y con el grupo disuelto, su adhesión al partido republicano y la gente se rasgó las vestiduras, como si antes nadie lo hubiese sospechado. (3)

Ahora igual. Provoca bochorno al tiempo que carcajada leer en las webs de moda el apartado «T-shirts de música» (las de AC/DC y Iron Maiden también son un clásico de la descontextualización), como outfit para combinar en un evento (no estoy segura de lo que significan estas palabras). En una de ellas, por ejemplo, y no hace ni un par de meses, leo a una bloguerette que dice que le encanta su T-shirt de los Ramones, pero que no iría jamás a un concierto suyo, salvo «superbien acompañada», supongo que de un criado fornido para una sesión de ultratumba. Con casi todos los Ramones muertos, y todavía hay gente que se asusta de artistas que se vestían de delincuente juvenil hace cuarenta años.

A mitad de los años setenta aún era raro ver en los conciertos un puesto con camisetas, sobre todo si el grupo no era Kiss. Pero cuando explota el punk, la camiseta estampada con la foto de un grupo o un lema (muchas veces, escrito a rotulador o boli) adquiere una dimensión tan importante como la propia música. Era un gesto social que te señalaba afecto a unas ideas, demostraba tu malestar y tu gusto. Tenías algo que los demás no compartían y además les desagradaba. Llevabas puesta una (anti)estética, la ropa envolvía y señalaba la idea, tu situación contra el mundo. Los actuales libre-defensores del consumo de camisetas malas de los Ramones, solo porque es genial que ya nadie sepa qué encierran los mensajes que una vez alguien creó con una intención, ya que se ha generado la demanda y eso es lo más sagrado, están defendiendo una ideología muchísimo más agresiva y oscura que la que exhibe el que se pega un demonio en la cazadora, porque le gusta a rabiar el heavy metal, y también, por supuesto, porque combina con su peinado y los pantalones.

En mi seguro que distorsionada percepción de la realidad, creo que se empieza por no tener ni idea de qué va el muñeco que llevas de adorno en el outfit ese, y terminas votando en las elecciones con el mando de la tele, como si mandaras un mensaje para ganar un viaje a Torrevieja. (Sí, creo que necesito psicoterapia. Incluso un tratamiento de shock).

Los Ramones pasaban el rato en la Heladería Jahn en verano y en invierno en las escaleras de los pisos. Para divertirse, iban a los almacenes Alexander´s a ver cómo compraba la gente. (Richard Hell).

Los Ramones no eran revolucionarios de salón. No leían ensayos europeos de tipos que, tras vagar borrachos por la calle, luego se inventaban no sé qué rollo de ir a la deriva. Simplemente invocaban algo que llegaba de forma instantánea a cuantos los escuchaban: el aburrimiento de la adolescencia en la segunda mitad del s. XX, el que te llevaba a dar vueltas por la calle sin saber qué hacer, estar tirado en un sofá viendo la tele, escuchando la radio o leyendo cómics. El sentimiento de ser un rechazado, porque las chicas no te hacían caso y los demás pensaban que eras un idiota a causa de tus pintas y tu comportamiento. Por eso, porque eras raro, había que llevar la contraria, porque esa es la actitud cuando no tienes expectativas y no entiendes nada en un mundo que está, como tú, desquiciado. Ellos compartían una visión inteligente y caótica sobre la realidad, por eso mezclaban las imágenes de la película mondo La locura americana con las de Patti Hearst cuando posaba como una estrella delante de la pancarta del Ejército Simbiótico de Liberación. Patti y las monjas karatecas resultaban igual de absurdas y risibles. La Familia Manson se hilaba con un show de los Ice Capades, y la máquina de soda del Burguer King con el Ku Klux Klan; un universo pop plagado de contradicciones, violencia, locura e infantilismo.

Los Ramones no eran cuatro cretinos sin luces que habían reducido los tres acordes del rock a uno y medio y lo acompañaban de letras que nadie con dedos de frente hubiese escrito. Esa definición se puede aplicar a la mayoría de sus irritantes explotaciones, cientos y cientos de grupos por el mundo, pero no a ellos. Desde 1974 a 1976, fecha de publicación de su primer disco, fueron demoliendo —deconstruyendo, creo que dicen los empollones— sabia y cuidadosamente, como aparentando que no tenían ni idea de nada, la herencia del pop desde los años cincuenta, el beat, el sonido Phil Spector, las baladas melodramáticas de las Shangri-Las y las canciones que salían del edificio Brill, la música high school, el glam, el surf, la psicodelia, el garaje, e incluso manifestaciones de rock adulto como Lou Reed, los Stooges y algunos dinosaurios del hard rock, hasta reducirlo todo a su mínima expresión, temas de menos de tres minutos en un aparente caos de velocidad, ruido y coros sixties, con historias protagonizadas por personajes salidos de La matanza de Texas y de Marvel, detallando la frustración y la rabia de los chicos y las chicas, la insoportable cotidianeidad de la clase media de Forest Hills, donde no nunca pasa nada, pero, a veces, en el sótano puede vivir una encantadora pareja de pinheads.

Hay incontables trazas de la herencia de los Ramones, por desgracia no reconocidas en la mayoría de los casos, a veces por maliciosa omisión y otras por puro desconocimiento. Y lo peor de todo, reducidas en la actualidad a un mal chiste: la imagen, elaborada por ellos mismos contra el look de los hippies (chupas de cuero, pantalones rotos a propósito, zapatillas Keds, camisetas dos tallas más pequeñas, melenas y flequillos pop…), su actitud sin igual en el escenario, la forma esquemática de presentarse ante el público, descolgar guitarra y bajo hasta la rodillas en obstinada declaración de antivirtuosismo, y, por supuesto, las canciones… elementos de un pasado remoto, donde solo permanece una camiseta que nadie sabe qué significa, en un mundo manejado por cretinos, pero ahora de los de verdad. Tommy Ramone decía que no a todos los grupos aficionados les sale un primer elepé como el de los Ramones. Las copias de las copias de las copias son como las camisetas que se estropean a los dos lavados.

_______________________________________________________________________________

(1) Savage, Jon: England´s Dreaming. Los Sex Pistols y el punk rock. Barcelona, Reservoir Books, pág. 133.

Todas las citas sobre los Ramones son de la biografía escrita por Jim Bessman en 1993, The Ramones: An American Band (Ed. Griffin). También son muy recomendables De gira con los Ramones, escrito por Frank Meyer y Monte Melnick, su tour manager (Ed. Munster, 2009), y Hey Ho, Let’s Go: Story of The Ramones (True Everett, Omnibus Press, 2005), así como los documentales Ramones Raw (BMG, 2004) e It´s Alive 1974-1996 (Rhino, 2007).

* En 1996, Galactus y yo, editores de Mondo Brutto, escribimos un libro sobre los Ramones titulado así, 20 años de cretinismo ilustrado que nunca llegó a ver la luz por razones desconocidas. Auto homenaje, por tanto, en la cabecera del artículo. Y en su espíritu.

(2) El lema y el sello han cambiado. Pintado a todo color, rezaba «Look out below» (frase de Spiderman), y la ramita tenía unas manzanas rojas que luego se pintaron en dorado. El nombre de Tommy fue sustituido por el del nuevo batería, Marky, y también hay una camiseta, rara, con la del breve Richie «Beau» Ramone, sustituto en una mala época de Marky. Poco después, Dee Dee, en un pronto descomunal, dejó paso a C. Jay para comenzar su inexplicable carrera de rapero. El fan sabe qué camiseta es la buena según los nombres que aparecen, si la auténtica con Tommy o la del final con C. Jay. El que nunca llegaría a aparecer en las camisetas es el batería de Blondie, Clem Burke, que tocó varias veces con ellos cuando Richie dejó el grupo y a punto estuvo de convertirse en Elvis Ramone.

(3) Son célebres las broncas entre Ramones, que terminaron por no dirigirse la palabra, pero especialmente sus peleas por cuestiones de ideología. Johnny y Dee Dee, adscritos a un pensamiento que tacharíamos de muy conservador: el primero, por convicción; el otro sospechamos los fans que por chifladura, y Joey en una posición de militante de izquierda, a la americana, eso sí. Los pilares del grupo eran personajes maravillosos en la ficción. Como personas, nunca, nunca quieras conocer a tus ídolos.

(4) Llamarse «Ramones» podría haber sido un homenaje anticipado al enorme éxito que tendrían sus conciertos en países como España, México y Argentina, donde los fans los idolatraban, pero no, es un guiño a los Beatles. Paul McCartney firmaba como Paul Ramone para pasar inadvertido en los hoteles. Apellidarse con el mismo seudónimo es un gesto de estilo incomprensible cuando los músicos se tomaban demasiado en serio y tiene más que ver con telecomedias como los Munsters y grupos como los Bay City Rollers, también reivindicados por los Sex Pistols.

Every year is a busy one for independent Swiss label Voodoo Rhythm Records. 2013 was such that Beat-Man, label founder and operator, felt the need to put together Vol. 4 in Voodoo Rhythm’s compilation series. This particular release features songs by thirteen of the label’s artists, mostly from releases dropped over the course of the last two years, give or take. What’s more, a lot of genres and subgenres are represented on this comp, from garage punk, primitive rock’n’roll, and wild trash, to a Zydeco and rockabilly team-up, bizarre psych rock, one-man and one-woman bands, and outsider folk.
Voodoo Rhythm Records Vol. 4 comp opens with “Into the Primitive” by one of the label’s most recently signed bands, a South African garage…

320 kbps | 89 MB | UL | OB | MC

…rock explosion and catchy punk trio called The Future Primitives. The closer is Menic’s folk blues original “Waiting for Zero.” And between these two slices of sound are the blues and rock’n’roll of The Juke Joint Pimps, Hank Haint’s freakout punk and garage noise, an outstanding song from Becky Lee and Drunkfoot’s reissued debut, a piece of Weimer jazz whirlwind by The Pussywarmers, a collaborative effort from Cajun rockers Mama Rosin and British rockabilly band Hipbone Slim and the Kneetremblers, and an offering from the material of New Zealand native and very talented singer/songwriter Delaney Davidson. And no Voodoo Rhythm comp would be complete without the inclusion of at least a couple of Beat-Man’s many projects, which in this case are Die Zorros and The Monsters.

1. The Future Primitives – Into the Primitive [03:15]
2. Die Zorros – Good Bye Baby [02:03]
3. The Juke Joint Pimps – King Roland’s Prayer [03:11]
4. Hank Haint – Blackout [02:54]
5. The Monsters – Blow Um Mau Mau [02:11]
6. Roy and the Devil’s Motorcycle – Six Pink Cadillac [02:34]
7. Becky Lee and Drunkfoot – Old Fashined Man [04:14]
8. The Pussywarmers – Le Nen la Bambele [03:07]
9. Heart Attack Alley – Too Hot Blues [02:41]
10. Mama Rosin & Hipbone Slim and the Kneetremblers – London Zydeco [01:55]
11. Delaney Davidson – Windy City [03:22]
12. The Goon Mat and Lord Benardo – What It’s All About [01:55]
13. Menic – Waiting for Zero [04:19]

Some of Scurvy Crew's Spanish opium

Dread Pirate Roberts captained a ship that many thought was unsinkable. But when the FBI seized the original Silk Road on October 1, 2013, and arrested the alleged kingpin—29-year-old Ross Ulbricht—the online drug empire began to capsize. Its hundreds of thousands of customers scattered across the Deep Web, and up to seven known Silk Road vendors were identified and arrested.

As the chaos unraveled into the mainstream and stories of Dread Pirate Roberts’s (DPR) alleged murder-for-hire antics made headlines, one prominent Silk Road drug syndicate sat in their European safe house with a ton of opium and a decision to make—would they cut their losses and disappear into the ether while they were still ahead, or keep their lucrative online drugs network running in the midst of all this extra attention?

The displaced drug syndicate, known on the Deep Web as the Scurvy Crew (TSC), decided to go back to work. For them, back to work meant laundering Bitcoins, vacuum-packing drug parcels, and jumping the Moroccan border with bags full of uncut drugs. Silk Road may have died a sudden death at the hands of the authorities, but as one of the highest-rated vendors before the FBI shut-down, the Scurvy Crew saw its demise as an opportunity to diversify.

After six months of negotiation, via encrypted email and several phone calls from throwaway SIM cards, the boss of the Scurvy Crew agreed to meet me. He told me he would explain to me the inner workings of his Deep Web drug venture, from its humble beginnings to the near million-dollar profits it now apparently generates. Known to me only by the pseudonym "Ace," the boss claimed to represent a new breed of drug dealer.

“I don’t do this just for the money,” he wrote to me via email. “I like to provide a premium service.”

Ace agreed to meet with me because he wanted to prove that the world of high-end Deep Web drug dealing is a network of complex, unique, and even respectable operations—not the underworld of fumbled contract killings and Bitcoin scams that the media often focuses on. I wanted to write about how someone (who’s still currently at large) becomes a successful Silk Road businessman, and Ace was exactly that. I’d also discovered that he was possibly the last person to communicate with Ross Ulbricht before he was arrested last October in a San Francisco library.

I was told to fly out to somewhere in mainland Europe, but I had to be vetted before I could meet Ace. He asked for my full name, date of birth, flight numbers, arrival times, passport number, hotel address, and even what means of transport I’d use to get from the airport to the hotel. I gave him what he asked for and was told that Scurvy Crew associates were “running” my details.

After a few days of radio silence, the Scurvy Crew made contact again. When the message they’d sent me decrypted, the only words written were: “Don’t move from the airport until you have instructions." It seemed a little ominous, but I decided to take a flight out to the agreed location and wait.

Arriving at the airport, I did as I was told, waiting for a phone call from the gang that, in Silk Road's early days, was supposedly responsible for 30 percent of the money that flowed through the website. After 20 minutes, my phone rang. It was Ace.

“Make your way to the nearest train station,” he said. “My guys are nearby.”

I left the airport and made for the train. As it pulled off, Ace rang me again to confirm that his guys had just seen me get on the train and that everything was running smoothly.

“One of my people is on the train with you as well.”

Five minutes later, another call came in. Ace instructed me to alight at the next station and walk into the plaza nearby. I sat around for a few minutes and tried to guess who, out of the hundreds of people walking around me, could be the Scurvy Crew footmen on my tail.

Another call. Ace.

(Click to enlarge)

“OK, I can see you now,” he said. “When I walk up to you, just say hi and follow me.”

Within a minute of hanging up the phone, a tall but otherwise nondescript white guy of about 35 approached me and nodded.

“Ace?” I asked.

The man grinned and shook my hand, while I remained preoccupied by the fact he looked more like a hungover accountant than your archetypal drugs boss.

I followed Ace for about 15 minutes as we walked to a more secluded area of the city, eventually making our way into a small dingy bar, where some tables and chairs were set out upstairs. Ace asked me to empty my bag out onto one of the tables. I unzipped the duffle bag and poured out my stuff. He searched through my crumpled shirts and notepads, combed through the inside lining of my bag and asked me to hand over my passport and my phone. The battery was removed from my phone and my passport was scanned over, presumably to check that the number I’d given previously corresponded with the one on the hard copy.

After a few minutes of precise security checks, Ace was happy I was who I claimed to be.

“It’s nothing personal,” he said. “You just can’t be too careful in this game.”

Was he the real Ace, though, or was this one of his footmen trying to trick me?

To prove he was who he said he was, he pulled out a small laptop and logged in using the same PGP key we’d been communicating with for months. He also logged into the Scurvy Crew user account on the new Silk Road—Silk Road 2.0, a replica launched on November 6 that’s supposedly run by former staff members of the original site. While it serves a purpose, Silk Road 2.0 is riddled with errors, Bitcoin theft, internal drama, and hacking attempts.

However, it still seems to be the main point of business for Deep Web drug dealing, something that quickly became apparent when Ace showed me his seemingly never-ending order list for that day—requests for Spanish opium, Moroccan hash, and crystal LSD stacked up one after the other as he scrolled down the screen. 

I wanted to know how this guy ended up working his way down a path that eventually led to Silk Road notoriety and a flourishing business of international drug trafficking. Ace rolled up his sleeves, anxiously looked around the bar, then sat down opposite me. As he began to tell me his story, his demeanor switched; he took on the role of a professional in his element, like when a wealthy gambler explains the intricacies of his winning technique.

Some of The Scurvy Crew's acid

It turns out that Ace started his narcotics career in a more traditional way: small-time street dealing. “Me and group of guys were [dealing drugs] out of a European city, I guess about four years ago now,” he told me. “We were selling what everyone wanted—coke, weed, pills. We were a group of four runners, and I was organizing them and getting the restocks in. Eventually, one guy got arrested, then another guy got arrested, and then we figured it was too much of an expendable business doing it that way. So we gave it a break. Each man went his own way and we started trying to make a living in a more legit way.”

However, the legitimate path proved boring for Ace, so he went traveling with the proceeds of his previous job. In 2011, a couple of years into his trip, he was lured back into selling drugs after learning about Silk Road from a group of Australian tourists he'd met in Spain. 

“In Australia, it’s hard to get decent drugs at a decent price, so these girls used [Silk Road] a lot," he said. "I took on board the idea [of dealing on the Deep Web]. I did about four months' research. I did quite a few purchases and saw that this was a viable option. So I then started thinking about what I could sell. Being in Spain, where I was at the time, it’s quite well known that Bayer grows opium there, in tightly controlled, private military-guarded fields."

Ace was referring to the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, whose chemists were ironically the first to produce and market heroin to the public in the late 1890s. Ace claims to have it on good knowledge that the company still grows high-quality opium in Spain, which they cultivate for use as an ingredient in some of their products. When I tried to confirm Ace's allegation with experts, one drug researcher told me that it actually isn’t all that unlikely; pharmaceutical companies, via third parties, supposedly buy poppies from all over the world to extract opium for scientific or medicinal use. And when I contacted Julien Little, Bayer's UK spokesperson, I was told that, while they themselves don’t grow opium, it’s “possible that Bayer use closely monitored contract farming” for cultivating opium.  

So Ace may well have stumbled upon a crop of somebody’s premature golden brown. And going by the incredibly high-quality opium and armed guards he said were at these poppy fields, he was certain he'd found a professional pharmaceutical supplier's camp, even if there was no way to verify it completely.

“To find such fields you’ve got to study the news articles that come out [about them]. Then you’ve got to either bribe reporters for the locations or you’ve got to be ‘in the know’ with certain farmers,” he said. “As soon as you’ve got the rough area, then you drive around while the flowers are in bloom and come back two months' later when the poppies are green but the petals have fallen off.”

Equipped with his newfound knowledge of Silk Road, a machete, and a sack, Ace decided one night in 2011 that he’d take the risk and sneak into one of these fields. After a night trawling through the dirt and the poppy stems, he came home with a sizable amount of opium to extract, quickly going on to sell his product on Silk Road and reaping modest but steady profits. To avoid drawing attention to his new line of work, he set up a small limited business to launder his Bitcoins through. After the first month, Ace was sold. Silk Road would become his battleground in his war against the War on Drugs.

To keep up with demand, he eventually hired a few local friends to help with the poppy cultivation. It was at this point, as people sat in the comfort of their homes ordering Ace’s opium over the internet, that the danger of his new line of work became all too real. Late one night, as Ace and his associates crept through the opium fields, scoping out the maturity of the poppy heads, they heard gun shots ring out from the distance. Bullets skimmed past above them and tore through the brush. The private security guards were close by.

(Click to enlarge)

“I thought to myself, ‘They can’t be firing at us,'” Ace told me, recalling the night with a look of horror. “So we started crawling around on our hands and knees; then suddenly my friend screams. He’d been shot in the leg.”

His friend writhed around on the ground with a hot bullet hole in his thigh, before Ace and the others grabbed the injured party and dragged him through the poppy field: “We were begging that these crazy cunts didn’t see the poppies moving,” he told me.

Driven by the adrenaline and the fear of catching a bullet, Ace and his friends made it the short distance out of the poppy field to their car. “We dumped him in the back of the car," he recalled. "It was lights off all the way to the end [of the path] through these olive groves to get out the back. My friend's bleeding out in the back of the car, so we took him to a vet we know who stitches us up if we get into trouble.”

His friend survived. Ace thought about this for a minute and said: “I don’t think [the private security] even thought there was anyone in the fields... they just thought it’d be fun to fire into the poppies.”

This close shave made Ace realize that risks had to be taken to get the best drugs. So instead of shying away from the task, he decided that a trustworthy crew of hard workers was needed to progress to the quality of business he’d set his sights on.

“The Scurvy Crew properly started on a hash run from Morocco to the south of Spain,” he said. “Basically, I joined a couple of friends who decided to see what the hype was about, because everyone at that point was smuggling hash in from Morocco as a little earner on the side. Me, coming from the coke and MDMA business previously, didn’t really have any clientele when it came to selling bulk amounts of hash, or even single deals—but now I had Silk Road. So I then used that as a way to sell what I’d bring back from Morocco.”

Ace was at the top of the Scurvy Crew, allowing him not to rule with an iron fist but to demonstrate the premium service and integrity he believed could be applied to the drugs game exclusively through the use of Silk Road. Sure enough, his crew became a trusted and reliable name on Silk Road. Judging by their feedback, you can see that what they branded as their "Bayer opium" was the best out there. Plus, no one else was selling it—and probably for good reason. As Ace put it, “Not many sellers have got the balls to go into an armed field and steal opium.”

The money increased, and the Scurvy Crew matured. Ace now had runners and packagers working for him; within the space of six months he’d gone from a one-man seller crawling around in the dirt to having a team of people helping him shift his product. The opium and the hash moved out almost as quickly as it came in. Ace couldn’t handle all the volume himself, so he purchased two safe houses to process his product. Soon, the business was a well-oiled machine with even more dedicated staff members.

“We have a team of our guys go out to the fields. They collect the opium and dry it, which is about a ten-day process—you have to knead it all the time, like dough, to get all the air out. Then you get the moisture out. The drier the opium, the higher the quality,” explained Ace.

“Then, inside the safe houses, the opium is heated up; it’s rolled into a thin layer using a pasta machine and comes up to about cardboard thin. As soon as that’s ready, it’s cut up into blocks. We use a guillotine to slice it—each square being a gram, or five grams, or ten grams. As soon as the order comes in in the morning [from Silk Road], the address is printed for that order. And then it goes into two layers [to be packed]. One is a vacuum-sealed layer, and the other’s an MBB [moisture barrier bag] layer. Then it’s put into a letter and sent on its way all around the world. It’s a production line. And if we’re talking about sending out, say, 1,000 grams a week now, maybe we’re losing 10 or 20 grams [to customs], so it’s definitely worth it.”

Taking around $14 profit per gram, the Scurvy Crew is now making around $14,000 a week on their opium alone.

Even by the end of 2012, after roughly one year in business, Ace was making “far too much money” for his limited company to be a viable option when it came to laundering his profits. Normally, to find an accountant dodgy enough to help him wash that much money, he’d have to mix in circles he just didn’t have the criminal prowess to get into, even if he’d wanted to. Again, though, thanks to the endless connections from Silk Road, Ace was only a few mouse clicks away from someone who could lend him a hand.

“I found a very good forger who has always helped the Scurvy Crew with a good ‘cash-out service,'” said Ace. “He’s created us accounts in America, Switzerland... and what he does is utilize the main three Bitcoin exchanges [to sell the Bitcoins]. The cash goes directly into the faked accounts in Switzerland and the US.”

With money coming in fast, the Scurvy Crew lived a more comfortable lifestyle. They ate well, they bought property, and they traveled often. But thanks to Ace’s ethics, he claimed, the people he bought his hash from also became wealthy.

Some of The Scurvy Crew's Moroccan hash

“Over the years we made personal relationships with the [hash] farmers in Morocco,” said Ace. “What I noticed is that there was quite a lot of farms that were completely derelict—they didn’t even have toilets. [The people there] were just shitting in a hole in the ground.”

While trekking out to Ketama and Azila in the Moroccan mountains to buy this high-altitude hash, Ace decided he’d give something back to the farmers who had helped him make his small fortune. “We made exclusivity arrangements with the farmers, because of the amounts that we buy. So we decided to give them a lump sum at the beginning to help them improve living conditions,” he said.

One mutually helpful deal specifically stuck out in his mind: “One of the farmer’s wives was really sick and couldn’t afford the medical help, so we made an agreement with this farmer where we’d pay for his wife’s medical care and some basic refurbishments, as it gets really fucking cold up there in the winter. So we installed basic heating, a toilet, got his wife seen to, gave a bit extra to install an irrigation system. So eventually, when the first crop was ready after three months, we took that for free in exchange for the help we’d given. Now we have a great working relationship where, as soon as the hash is ready, we’ve got someone who goes over and pays the farmers up front for it. We bring it back. That’s been going really well now for two years.”

With the opium and the hash flowing, thousands of customers on Silk Road were now consistently buying the Scurvy Crew’s products and leaving positive feedback, commending their drugs and also the stealth and speed in which they arrived. Business was good, their reviews were excellent, and Dread Pirate Roberts himself was happy with Ace’s progress. The two spoke often. It was a “working relationship.”

“We stayed in good contact,” said Ace.

The first time I actually saw Ace’s name on Silk Road was while trawling the forums in the wake of Ross Ulbricht’s arrest. The forums are now gone, but Ace—as far as I could see—was the very first person to raise a red flag about Dread Pirate Roberts before news of the arrest hit the media. On October 1, 2013, Ace made a comment that effectively said: “I think something is wrong with DPR." Around 30 minutes later, the forums were awash with the news of Dread Pirate Roberts’ alleged capture.

Naturally, Ace was cagey when I asked him about this. “I had a feeling something was up,” he said.

Judging by the time and date that Ace was chatting to Dread Pirate Roberts, he believes they were literally “halfway through a conversation when [Ross] got arrested.”

(Click to enlarge)

“I think one message that I sent to DPR was answered by him, and the next message I sent one minute later was answered by an FBI agent,” he explained. “It was the weirdest thing ever. We were in the process of discussing adding a couple of features to the site—I could tell it was him because it was the normal way that he used to speak—then the next message I got was in a completely, completely different manner of writing.”

Ace said Dread Pirate Roberts suddenly asked for a copy of his ID. This isn’t that unusual, as it’s known that DPR would gather personal information on those working in his inner circle, but to drop it into conversation at random was unsettling for Ace.

“I just cut the conversation there. That minute I got on the forums and said, ‘Hey guys, I think something weird is going on.' The thing that struck me as really weird was that [the message] was encrypted with [DPR's] PGP key, and his key-ring was still open, so I know from that moment they were on his computer.”

This was also the moment when Ace's business hit the rocks. The original Silk Road was seized by the FBI, and all the Bitcoins resting in its escrow service were swallowed up with it. That’s an estimated $28.5 million of Silk Road booty taken by the authorities.

“The Scurvy Crew lost over $500,000 in the fall of Silk Road 1,” said Ace, looking pained about his losses even now. “The troubles [of the Silk Road seizure] didn’t last long, though,” he continued. “I think within two weeks of it shutting down we were up and running on both the other markets.”

The “other markets” were the alternative online drugs bazaars at the time: Sheep Marketplace and Black Market Reloaded. Both had been operating at the same time as Silk Road, but remained in the shadow of Dread Pirate Roberts and his superior marketplace. With that ship sunk, however, Silk Road users migrated to the former competitors. The influx was almost unmanageable.

Backopy, the founder of Black Market Reloaded, had to close new registrations for three days after his traffic increased from around 2,000 new users a day to over 5,000. Sheep Marketplace went from having 500 drug listings to 1,500, just a few days after Silk Road’s departure from the Deep Web. Both markets, however, have now fallen into the abyss. Sheep Marketplace went AWOL with thousands of its users' Bitcoins, and Black Market Reloaded shut down completely on December 23, 2013. Backopy’s reasoning for this was that his marketplace couldn’t “hold another wave of refugees” after Sheep Marketplace disappeared. He said on the Black Market Reloaded forums that “Tor can't support any site to be too big,” allowing time for his 30,755 registered users to escape with their Bitcoins.

Sheep Marketplace, one of the alternatives to Silk Road

With a flawless track record, the purest opium and hash on tap, and a position so trusted on the original Silk Road that Dread Pirate Roberts’s associates still had contact with Ace, the Scurvy Crew has managed to weather each Deep Web drug storm exceptionally well. The crew is now on Silk Road 2.0, rebuilding its client base (many of whom loyally follow the Scurvy Crew around the Deep Web) and looking to branch out into selling other drugs.

However, while Ace is still currently at large, his position as boss means he rarely has to get his hands dirty any more. “I get up in the morning and check the shitloads of messages I always have,” he laughed. “I go through them and create a work list, which I split into two, because the opium and the hash are stored at different safe houses. I send one of the opium lists over to the opium safe house, which means all the packages need to be made ready for that day. I send the other list to the hash safe house, and I expect both of [the packages on the list] to be posted by 4 PM that day. Then the cycle repeats itself. I spend the rest of the day talking to my team and organizing the business.”

At this point Ace again demonstrated (perhaps to prove he wasn’t bullshitting) that he really is "about that life," flicking through several big orders on Silk Road 2.0 that he’d just received. By this point there was little doubt in my mind that Ace was who he claimed to be. He seemed genuine enough and always eager to show me evidence of his statements. He was clearly proud of the business he’d built and the money he’d managed to make himself and the others he's recruited to help.

“Do you know what it’s like to be able to get up every morning and decide that you want to go have dinner in Paris?” he asked me. “Or buy a new car because you’re bored of your old one, or have houses in loads of different places? It’s a life I never thought I’d have.”

He said this not with a bragging tone, but one of astonishment. I sensed that it was cathartic for Ace to have someone to speak honestly to about his business. He was clearly work driven and living the life of Riley, but the dark, tired rings around his eyes hinted at the toll a lifestyle of such secrecy has on a person.

“The downside is the lies,” he said. “There are days when I’d rather do the nine-to-five than have to constantly watch my back, constantly worry about who’s knocking on the door, or where I can go, or whether someone is following me down the street. I don’t know what details the FBI have got of me—all I know is I’ve got to keep going and have fun while I’m doing it; otherwise it’s not worth it.”

He finished our interview with the caveat that he was more scared of losing the fight against the authorities than spending his life in prison. Having spoken to my fair share of criminals, I’d heard this spiel a hundred times—only, Ace might actually have meant it. There was no boasting and no self-trickery, just a matter-of-fact honesty. He believed in what he did.

After two hours of chatting, it was time to leave. I collected my stuff and thanked Ace, and while I was most likely being watched, I was allowed to leave the bar unescorted.

When I eventually found my way back to the train station, something caught my eye. I looked up and saw a huge rotating Bayer sign.

There is no suggestion that Bayer buy opium for any illegal purpose or market any illicit drugs.

There is also no suggestion that Bayer knew about the shooting at Ace or would condone such activity.

Follow Jake Hanrahan on Twitter.

(Collage by Marta Parszeniew)

There's a pretty thorough list of national stereotypes stashed away in the collective consciousness. French people love bread, the Swiss are born dull, Americans don't understand humor, Britain doesn't have any dentists... etc, etc, etc, until the whole globe is just a sphere of tired cliches spinning around in space.

We need a new way to make sweeping assumptions about entire populations, and what better place to start than drugs? After all, there's so much you can tell about a person from their drug of choice. Wouldn't it be great if we could apply the same logic to entire countries?

Luckily, this year's Global Drug Survey has just been released. The people who put it together gathered feedback from nearly 80,000 drug users and clubbers in their 20s and 30s, from over 40 different countries. Yes, the vast majority of them seem to be middle-class people without crippling dependency problems, but nevertheless it provides a unique insight into international drug habits.

You might have noticed the press going nuts the past few days over the revelations that people still like drugs and alcohol and that more and more of them are buying that stuff over the internet now. But what with all the hand-wringing and hysterical headlines, you might have been denied the chance to find out some of the meatier stuff. So, here are seven things that the survey told us about drug habits across the globe.

(Photo by Chris Bethell)

BELGIANS ARE THE SMUGGEST COKE USERS
Unsurprisingly, given that it's mostly stuffed with inert adulterants and a substance that can give you a chemical form of AIDS, cocaine was voted the least value-for-money (VFM) drug in the world. However, there were a few countries that didn't seem so hung up about wasting money on bags of teething powder, speed, and Levamisole—like Belgium, which was the most satisfied with their cocaine.

Already spoiled with some of the best beer, chocolate, and waffles in the world, Belgians awarded cocaine a 5.5 out of 10 value-for-money rating. Which seems shitty, but the world’s biggest gak grumblers—the Australians—gave the drug an average 2.3 out of 10. To rub their Antipodean noses in it, the cocaine in Belgium is the cheapest on the list, at an average of $72 a gram. In Australia it’s four times the price, at the equivalent of $320 a gram. Which is just fucking ridiculous.

Why the difference? Eight million containers pass through the port of Antwerp every year; it's one of the major cocaine turnstiles into Europe, with the drug regularly smuggled—sometimes in shipments of bananas—from South America. But where there’s a will, there’s a way: despite its quality and price, the survey found that Australians took just as much coke as the Belgians.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO GET BEATEN UP WHILE BUYING WEED, BUY IT IN THE NETHERLANDS
Globally, around one in 20 cannabis users said they had been subjected to violent behavior while trying to pick up. The most likely places to get attacked while buying weed were Germany and France, while the most dangerous places to buy MDMA were France and Switzerland. I guess there must be something about that high altitude Alps air that makes people want to punch ravers in the face.

Of course, a regulated market is a safer one. In the Netherlands, where buying a draw is as easy and as legal as buying a cup of coffee, less than 2 percent said they had experienced violent behavior while trying to buy bud. If you're stoned and in Amsterdam, I'd imagine this is around the same level of risk you're at of getting run over by a tram.

In fact, dealers generally appear to be more peaceful across the board in the Netherlands, as it also boasts the lowest rates of violence experienced by people trying to buy MDMA.

(Photo via)

THE COUNTRY MOST LIKELY TO KICK UP A FUSS ABOUT A TOBACCO SPLIFF IS AMERICA
We already knew this, of course, but now it's official: Americans are offended, disgusted, and confused by spliffs that contain tobacco.

The survey found that only 7 percent of Americans mix cannabis and tobacco in their spliffs. Throughout the rest of the world, an average of 75 percent view a joint as something that's made out of tobacco and cannabis. In Switzerland, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Hungary, more than 90 percent saw tobacco as a necessary part of using cannabis; in the UK it was 80 percent. In Europe, it's joints elongated and mellowed by tobacco, passed around leisurely; in the US, it's all quick-fire hits on a crumply, potent roach.

America’s closest cannabis cousins are stoners in New Zealand, where only 24 percent of people use tobacco in their joints. This gives us a clue as to why tokers in these two countries smoke the healthier, tobacco-free joints: they both have a historical abundance in domestically grown weed, which doesn't need tobacco to burn—unlike hashish, which, until the mid-2000s, was the most common type of cannabis in Europe. 

IF YOU WANT TO BE CAUGHT WITH WEED ON YOU, GO TO SPAIN
Nearly a quarter of Spanish drug users have been caught with cannabis on them. That number may be connected to a recent drive by the current Madrid-based government to step up its war on drugs in an effort to head off cannabis regulation plans by the regional parliaments in Catalonia and the Basque Country.

The second most likely country to get caught with cannabis, with one in five users getting rumbled, is Switzerland. Despite its relatively relaxed laws when it comes to punishment, it's thought that new laws that replace prosecution with an on-the-spot fine may have led to a money-led drive to pick up more users.

Of all the countries where the survey was carried out, America and Hungary have the worst implications were you to be caught with a bag of weed. Around a quarter of people arrested for cannabis possession in these two countries had their ability to travel freely affected, as well as the arrest impacting their job and studies. 

(Photo via)

BESIDES IRELAND, THE WORLD DOESN'T DRINK THAT MUCH DURING THE WEEK
A surprisingly low 35 percent of interviewees said they'd been hungover at work during the last year, while only 64 percent said they had ever been hungover at work. These results might be understandable if the survey was carried out among pilots and heart surgeons, but it wasn't—it was mainly answered by drug-using professionals in their 20s and 30s. I'm afraid I don't have an explanation as to why nobody's drinking during the week, but maybe it's because they're too busy taking drugs.

Flying the flag for hungover workers are the drinkers of Ireland, but even there only 50 percent say they'd gone to work hungover in the last year. Among the least likely to be hungover at work were the Spanish. Maybe because no Spanish people actually have jobs?

In terms of dealing with comedowns at work, the Dutch—probably because they're the biggest users of MDMA and amphetamines—found themselves stuck in the grasp of crippling, drug-induced depression more often than anyone else. It's probably not a coincidence that the Dutch were also the biggest consumers of caffeinated soft drinks.

Those least likely to turn up to work with comedowns (i.e: the biggest squares polled for the survey) were New Zealanders and Americans.

MEXICANS SMOKE A BUNCH OF WEED
The survey found that 77.5 percent of Mexicans questioned had used cannabis in the last year, compared to a global average of 48.2 percent. America (69.9 percent) and Brazil (69.5 percent) take the runner up spots, with the UK trailing behind at 53.6 percent.

Weed has been used in Mexico since pre-colonial times and has a deep traditional-medicinal use. Thanks to that, the public perception of cannabis there is that it isn't a "hard drug," which could have a direct link to higher use. Of course, another potential reason is that truckloads of the stuff—around 20,000 tons annually, according to the government—is grown there.

IF YOU LIKE MDMA AND LIVE IN NEW ZEALAND, MOVE TO THE NETHERLANDS
The Dutch gave MDMA pills the highest VFM score—eight out of 10—in the world. Mind you, they do have the cheapest pills in the world, at $6.75 a pop. MDMA powder in the Netherlands also has a high VFM rating, at 7.5 out of 10 (joint top with Denmark) and is, again, the cheapest in the world, at just $33 a gram.

Unfortunately for MDMA fans living in New Zealand, the country has the lowest global VFM rating for MDMA pills (four out of 10) and powder (five out of 10), and the pills cost $38 while a gram of powder comes in at $243—the most expensive in the universe.

It’s the perfect example of how drugs become more expensive and adulterated the further you get from the main distribution networks. It's also the reason New Zealand had the world’s first booming legal high market in the 2000s—in the form of the ecstasy mimicking "party pills," BZP—and explains why DIY drugs, such as crystal meth, took off over there and in places like rural America.

If people are unable to buy decent drugs, they will just make them themselves. 

Based on the experience of almost 80,000 people who took part in the Global Drug Survey 2014, the High-way Code is the first guide to safer drug use, voted for by people who take drugs.

Follow Max Daly on Twitter

Mafia members identified by the Italian police

Last year the ‘Ndrangheta—a criminal organization from Calabria, a region that forms the toe of Italy's boot—raked in more than $75.3 billion. Which, as reported by the Guardian in March, is equivalent to revenue of McDonald’s and Deutsche Bank combined, or 3.5 per cent of Italy’s GDP in 2013. It did this through, among other things, extortion, usury, gambling, prostitution, and the trafficking of both drugs and humans.

At least, that's according to the Demoskopika research institute in Italy. It has become a habit of Italian research insitutes to come out with stuff like this and their methodology is not always that scientific. In one of his papers published on GlobalCrime, Francesco Calderoni—an Italian researcher from the TransCrime research group—points out that the tendency to increase these figures conforms to the “Mythical Numbers” theory. Basically, the theory states, a lot of these numbers are over-hyped bullshit that get passed on from publication to publication without anyone checking them—they're kind of like the urban legends of the stats world but get talked about as if they're accurate.

A more rigorous evaluation might drastically lower the numbers. And in fact, one has done just that. For a truly reliable estimate, we should wait for the Organized Crime Portfolio to report back at the end of this year, but until then, the most valid appraisals come from TransCrime. The crime research center reckon that in 2013 Italian mafias took in around $1.5 billion, or roughly 0.7 percent of last year's Italian GDP. Of this, $5.5 billion ends up in the 'Ndrangheta syndicate's hands. So, even without those "mythical numbers," it's still making a tidy wedge.

So how does a southern Italian crime syndicate—one worthy of FBI sanction under the US's Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act—manage to protect its massive turnover and influence politics, all while dodging the slings and arrows of state investigators and the judiciary?

Unlike the world famous Cosa Nostra from Sicily and the Camorra from Naples, for years the ‘Ndrangheta has largely managed to avoid the attention of the media. It's a tight-knit family affair and members have done their best not to make too much noise, while police informers have always been a rare breed. Its name comes from the Greek for "courage" or "loyalty" and aptly its well observed code of silence gives investigators a hard time.

The arrest of Carmelo Galico, the 'Ndrangheta's man in Barcelona

The 'Ndrangheta has come a long way since it was denounced as a “sect of wrongdoers” way back in 1888. Between 1970 and 1991, besides usury and extortion in Calabria, the ‘Ndrangheta was mainly involved in kidnapping for ransom. The most famous case was that of John Paul Getty III, the son of Paul Getty and grandson of the industrialist Jean Paul Getty, founder of the Getty Oil company. The 'Ndrangheta ended up raking in a ransom of around $3 million for Getty III after kidnapping him in Rome in July 1973, before releasing him onto the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the ‘Ndrangheta siezed the moment and the cheap assets, moving quickly to expand its operations in former Soviet bloc countries and turning its operation global. The syndicate dealt heroin and cocaine and became a reliable ally of the South American drug cartels. Last year, an investigation linked its operation with an IRA money laundering scam.

It is well known that Mexican drug gangs Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel are in business with the ‘Ndrangheta, and recent joint operations by police in Italy and the US—code-named “Crime 3,” “Reckoning/Solare,” and “New Bridge”—uncovered an elaborate logistical network. Operation “Crime 3” showed that the ‘Ndrangheta exercises absolute “hegemony over cocaine trafficking in Europe based on the alliance with Colombian traffickers in Europe and Los Zetas in the US.”

"The 'Ndrangheta can and has to be considered one of the most powerful organizations in the world for the handling of international drug-trafficking," said Raffaele Grassi, head of Italy's national anti-racketeering division in February. He said that operations like “New Bridge” prove once more that the ‘Ndrangheta has expanded far beyond its place of origin and its activities in Northern Italy, and “is looking for criminals beyond the borders, invading new markets to make profit.”

Nicola Gratteri, an anti-mafia Calabrian public attorney (Image via)

Back in 1992, while Cosa Nostra in Sicily was openly challenging the state by killing the two judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the ‘Ndrangheta pulled out from its campaign of violence and focused on business instead, tightening its cozy links with the legal system. The local government in Reggio Calabria had to be dissolved because it had such strong mafia connections – that's how thoroughly the gang infiltrated the political establishment.

But this insidious approach has, at times, given way to open confrontation. Earlier this year a secret weapons factory was discovered in the province of Reggio Calabria, and the investigators have no doubt: those weapons were destined to be used in an attack against a State official. Italy’s national anti-mafia prosecutor, Franco Roberti, declared: "the situation in Calabria is utterly alarming. As in 2010, ‘Ndrangheta is ready to attack."

Operating across borders has a key advantage for the syndicate: The crime of "mafia association" only exists in Italy, which leads to major problems in coordinating investigations between police taskforces of different European countries. But the ‘Ndrangheta's influence stretches well beyond Europe anyway. Nicola Gratteri is a Calabrian Public Attorney who has been working for years in investigations on the organized crime in Calabria. “The ‘Ndrangheta,” he says, “is the only mafia that can be found in all five continents. We could define it as the only ‘globalized' mafia.”

They might shoot your face off for saying it but‚—in one way, at least—it seems the 'Ndrangheta really has become the globe-straddling McDonald's of mafias.

Follow Luca on Twitter. 

 

Photos by Steven Smith

Somewhere along the great corporate coastline of the North American highway system a truck driver is hitching-up his pants and sauntering across the asphalt to his rig. Behind him, golden arches eclipse the setting sun. He is an elite member of an army of civilian road warriors, transporting somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 billion pounds of meat per year to restaurants and supermarkets across the country.

According to every environmental expert out there, producing that amount of meat is completely unsustainable. The average American eats 270 pounds of meat per year, putting us in second place (behind Luxembourg, oddly enough) as the flesh-eating capital of the world.

According to the EPA, the factory farming industry is responsible for 28 percent of global methane emissions, thanks largely to cow burps. That methane, which contributes greatly to global warming, can and has caused severe droughts in portions of the country where cattle, and the corn necessary to feed them, are raised and grown. And they screw up the water supply, too. From the EPA: “agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution was the leading source of water quality impacts on surveyed rivers and lakes, the second largest source of impairments to wetlands, and a major contributor to contamination of surveyed estuaries and ground water.”

Long story short: We need to find viable, palatable, nutritious alternatives to traditional meat.

With that in mind I decided to replace one meal per day for seven days with sources of protein that can be purchased alive from a pet store.

At this point I should note that I’m not some granola here to chew your ear off about how fucked up factory farming is. In fact, I eat a lot of meat myself. I’m from northern Michigan, where there’s only one day in the Christian calendar year when most folks will intentionally choose fish, and I’m the type of heathen who doesn’t even abstain on that day. So this little experiment was done for my own sake, to know what sort of animal-based dishes I can look forward to when hamburgers are enjoyed exclusively by the one percent.

Before beginning the diet, I consulted my doctor to make sure I wasn’t about to spark some Contagion-type situation. As I told him about my plan he put his chin in his hand and nodded politely, but seemed pretty unconcerned.

“Isn’t there anything I should be worried about?” I asked.

He shook his head with an offhand warning against eating mice intestines. “Make sure to take those out.” 

“Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to eat their poop.”

After a pause, and without irony, he told me where in town I could find the best price on regionally raised beef tenderloin.

And so, with my doctor’s blessing, I drove to the pet store to buy some groceries.

Day 1: Crickets Pancakes

Nutritional Facts: 1 serving equals 100g of crickets. Each serving contains 121 calories, 12.9g protein, 5.5g of fat

Ingredients

4 cups of flour
1 cup of roasted crickets

Directions

Place your crickets in the freezer for 1-2 hours, then boil briskly for 1-2 minutes. Strain and cool. Place clean and cool crickets on a cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes.

Remove antennae and legs gently; they fall off easily. Crush collected crickets using a rolling pin or mortar and pestle until they are ground into small brown specks. Insufficient grinding will result in their small faces peering out at you from the batter L. Use flour in pancakes.

First Impressions

Crickets smell fishy—an aroma no doubt exacerbated by their placement in my local pet shop in thick plastic bins against a backdrop of blue fish tanks. In an effort to outwit my better instincts I told myself that the shrimp-like aroma wafting from my hotcakes was actually almonds.

Taste

Crickets taste like almonds, if you think of almonds, and shrimp if you think of anything other than almonds. This flavor is subtle, but when you place it in a pancake drenched in syrup, it becomes amplified. I recommend incorporating the cricket flour into a savory pastry, instead. Like nuts, they add a satisfying crunch.

Day 2: Mealworm Fries

Nutritional Facts: a single mealworm can be broken down as 10.63% protein, 3.1% fiber, 420 ppm calcium, and 10.01% fat.

Ingredients:

1 fresh Idaho potato (russet)
2 dozen mealworms—boiled
1 cup chopped scallions

Directions

Place mealworms in the freezer for at least one hour. Remove from freezer and boil two minutes. Slice your russet lengthwise into long slender sticks, skin on. Heat oil in a deep pan. Drop fries, meal worms, and scallions in together. Fry until worms and potatoes are golden brown. Remove and season with sea salt, chili powder, and cayenne pepper to taste.

First Impressions

Mealworms aren’t exactly protein-packed and iron-stacked compared to beef, but they occupy only half-an-inch of space and require virtually no resources. Also, the little plastic container mine came in is totally recyclable, and they stiffen in the freezer, so handling them doesn’t feel perverse at all.

Taste

Everything tastes good fried, and mealworms are no exception. The deep fry and the cayenne really mask any potentially off-putting flavor, but the worms themselves have virtually no odor before you cook them, and they become light and crunchy afterward, perfectly complementing the soft insides of the potato. This was also one of the quickest-to-cook meals on my menu, which gives it bonus points.

Day 3: Mice Pie

Nutritional facts: Mice are 55% protein and 19% fat, according to feline-nutrition.org. Which, incidentally, has one of the most wonderful website banners I’ve ever seen. Seriously, just go check that thing out.

Ingredients:

4 dead, flayed, skinned, and boiled mice

2 boiled potatoes

¼  cup of shredded cheddar cheese

½ cup of mixed veggies (in my case, from a can)

Directions:

Learn quickly why beef and poultry are excessively processed and packaged (without their heads) by attempting to remove the innards from a distressingly soft, malleable creature that reminds you of how much you once loved Fievel.

Once you’ve carefully removed the salvageable sections of mouse meat located mostly around the hindquarters (use clean nail scissors if your household utensil selection isn’t equipped for gutting rodents), toss the scraps in boiling water while you prep your shepherd’s pie (boil taters, shred cheese, open the veggie can—it’s not rocket science). Bake all ingredients together for 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

First Impressions

Ideally, you should buy your mouse alive from a pet food store. Do NOT, under any circumstances, buy a mouse bred to be a pet for your pie. When I tried to do that the lady at the store told me pet mice are “pumped full of antibiotics” and will kill whatever animal you feed them to. Those words of wisdom may have saved my life.

Unfortunately, many pet stores don’t carry live feeder mice. Mine didn’t, and I had to scramble for a substitute. I’d read catching and eating the wild mice that run through walls and grassy fields is unwise because there’s no telling what they’ve eaten, so I decided to try a favored alternative: Arctic mice.

I chose to ignore the ominous “not safe for human consumption” label on the little blue box of dead mice the pet store kept in a subtle mini-fridge next to the bearded lizard’s aquarium. The frozen mouse company doesn’t want to be responsible for my choices, but those little guys were raised in a sterile lab, which is more than you can say for your average chicken nugget.

Taste

You want to believe that mice taste “just like pork!” But they don’t. Considering how little I managed to salvage from their sad small bones, the flavor of my mice was potent, almost gamey, and much more like an overripe rabbit than a pig, which makes sense, really.

I spent most of the night afraid I was dying of a zoological disease, a dire consequence according to the box. I could taste mouse in the back of my teeth throughout the next day.

Day 4: Banana Worm Muffins

Ingredients

½ cup shortening
¾ cup sugar
2 bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup chopped walnuts
2 eggs
¼ cup dry-roasted mealworms

Directions

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Bake in greased cupcake pan at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

First impressions

Banana muffins are easy as hell to make, and adding worms is quick. This time I bought the “giant” ones instead of just large. If I had planned ahead, I probably would have done it the other way around (XXL meal worms work better next to fries).

Taste

Banana worm muffins are surprisingly delicious. Mine were a bit dry because I let them stay in the oven for a full hour, which is what the original recipe called for. Stick to my abbreviated cook time, and you’ll love them. All banana flavor, no wormy texture. Will keep you full all morning.

Day 5: Battered and Fried Minnows

Nutritional facts: Similar to silversides, but packed with protein (especially by comparison to other fish). Minnows can be eaten whole, so that’s what I did.

Ingredients

1 dozen live minnows

Equal parts flour and cornmeal (enough to dredge each minnow completely)

Vegetable oil

Directions

According to Craig, my friendly bait slinging salesman, minnows’ lives are best ended by adding salt to their water. This seems intuitive, but wasn’t all that efficient. My minnows persevered, and started doing this creepy lunging thing like they were eating the insides of the Styrofoam bucket. Or their fallen comrades.

I wanted to put them out of their misery as soon as possible, so I dumped them into a strainer, covered it with a plate, and plugged my ears while they flopped their way to suffocation. I recommend cutting to the chase and killing them in this fashion sooner than later.

Once the minnows are dead, rinse them off in cool water and dredge them in the combination of flour and cornmeal you’ve prepared and set aside in a nearby bowl. Heat oil in a deep pan, and drop the minnows in a fryer until they are golden brown. I let mine get extra crispy, which turned out to be a good choice.

First Impressions

By mid-week my enthused confidence had waned. People, I thought, aren’t going to eat these recipes if they require Little House on the Prairie-style prep time. An exaggerated analogy, maybe, but one that our microwave-meal culture legitimizes (in 2009 sustainable food firebrand Michael Pollan wrote, “the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation”). My deep-fried minnows were a well-timed reminder of how simple it can be to create new cooking habits. If I had known in advance the most efficient way to kill them, I would have discovered a meal that required less time and attention than boxed mac and cheese.

Taste

About halfway through I ate one that actually tasted fishy. It unsettled me, and sent me down a dark path of thinking about eyeballs and fragile fish bones. Up until that moment I had considered this meal downright delicious.

Crisp and hot. Pairs well with beer.

Days 6: Cricket Pad Thai

Ingredients:

4 oz rice stick noodles
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons fresh squeezed lime juice
2 tsp. sugar
Peanut oil
1 cup crickets
2 cloves of garlic
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup scallions, finely chopped
1 cup bean sprouts
¼ cup fresh cilantro (cilantro tastes like soap, but if you like it…)
Crushed peanuts to taste

Directions

Combine fish sauce, soy sauce, lime juice, and sugar in a bowl and mix. Heat peanut oil in a wok or skillet, and cook the crickets over medium-high heat. Scramble the eggs on the other side of the wok. Remove crickets and eggs and set aside. Add garlic and scallions and fry briefly.

Add sauce mixture, crickets, and eggs back into the wok and warm thoroughly. Cook rice noodles for about ten minutes in boiling water. Remove and drain noodles, and add to wok or skillet. Add bean sprouts and toss thoroughly, top with peanuts and cilantro.

First impressions

By day six, I’d become so old hat at buying crickets that when the kid behind the counter asked me if I wanted “cardboard or paper for these” I knew exactly what he meant and what my answer would be. (Pro tip: cardboard gives the crickets something to cling to so they don’t jump around the bag and give you the creeps.)

Actual Taste

This was the meal I was most looking forward to, and I blew it. I was expecting the fishy flavor of the crickets to pair well with this classic dish, and I’m sure it would have. My first bite was overpowering and salty, and at first I thought the soy sauce was the culprit. It turns out that peanut oil isn’t exactly like every other oil. I didn’t see it burning, but it was. A disappointment, but also the reason I’ll probably revisit eating crickets after this experiment has ended.

Day 7: Chocolate-Covered Crickets

Ingredients:

Semi-sweetened chocolate chips for baking

Crickets

Directions:

Take roasted crickets (like the ones used in the cricket flour), and dip those fellas in melted chocolate.

First Impressions

Day seven happened to land on my birthday, so I thought I’d treat myself to something sweet. Chocolate, much like fryer grease, can make anything delicious.

Taste

Yes. The chocolate somehow divested the crickets of their evil shrimp-like powers and turned them back into crunchy almonds again. The perfect way to end my diet.

Conclusion

Eating mice, bugs, and worms isn’t as bad as our first-world privilege would lead us to believe. If you have the right recipes, it can be downright delicious—even healthy. Over the course of my weeklong diet I lost 3.5 pounds. My energy level actually improved over the course of the experiment, and I didn’t experience nausea or any other forms of sickness.

Unfortunately, we’ve all inherited the habits built by a long and thoughtless series of unsustainable choices. The great cheeseburger gravy train established generations ago is pulling into the station as I write, and probably won’t be around for our children—who would do well to develop a taste for alternative meats at an early age. While the deeply flawed system wasn’t our doing, the burden of fixing it is on us, and replacing a couple of meals per day with some tasty bugs might not be the worst place to start.

Obligatory disclaimer: Consult your doctor before eating weird stuff from pet stores.

I first took photographs at a Romanian fairground in 2008, in the city of Rosiorii de Vede. I hung out with the kinds of people who draw their living from following the fair: merchants, grill masters, and craftsmen, all of whom were unavoidably covered in a weird mixture of glitter and grime.

I also watched the crowds arrive, dressed to impress—many in their Sunday best, girls in bright colors and high heels. When I saw these clashing identities, I quickly understood that the fairground was a place where I could witness firsthand the modernizing of Romanian traditions and rural culture.

Since then, I’ve been to many others across the country—in Fieni, in Lapusani, in Bogdan-Voda, in Calarasi, in Pietrari, in Galicea, and many other places. It never ceases to amaze me how much can change while basically remaining completely the same.

See more of Ioana's work here and here.

Click through for more of photographs from Romanian Fairgrounds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

El Peter Pan de Loisel es una recreación libre del relato clásico de J.M. Barrie, que en vez de adaptar la historia realiza una adaptación libre de los personajes, una especie de "precuela" de la historia clásica original que ya conocemos todos (la mayoría a través de la versión infantilizada de Disney o por la posterior "secuela" en el Hook de Steven Spielberg).

Así, en el primer álbum de la serie nos situamos en el invierno de 1887, en los bajos fondos de Londres, y vemos como el jovencito Peter, hijo de una prostituta alcohólica, conoce al hada que bautiza como Campanilla.

A lo largo de la serie veremos como llega por primera vez a la isla de Nunca Jamás, la traumática razón por la que se hace llamar Peter Pan o cómo reúne por primera vez a los Niños Perdidos. Conocemos también al Capitán Garfio cuando todavía tenía las dos manos y ni siquiera se le llamaba por ese nombre, veremos como pierde la mano y el inicio de la peligrosa obsesión de cierto cocodrilo por el pirata. También conoceremos a las sirenas y a los indios, a la tripulación pirata de Garfio y a toda una miríada de criaturas fantásticas que pueblan la isla, desde centauros a faunos.

Además de ser respetuosa con el original, la obra de Loisel es un relato inteligente y meditado que añade nuevos elementos y matices y una visión sin edulcorar de la perfecta metáfora para adultos sobre la magia, la vida y el no querer crecer que es la obra original de Barrie. (información sacada de guiadelcomic.com)

Idioma: Español.
Editorial: Glenat
Guion: Regis Loisel  
Dibujo: Regis Loisel 
Tradumaquetador: Titanico, Nachof [CRG]
Archivos: 6 
Formato: CBR
Tamaño: 109.6 Mb



Descarga:

• Peter Pan

A raíz de un viaje en 1993 del grupo Siniestro Total a Memphis (USA) para grabar un nuevo albúm, empezarón a conocer e interesarse por un viejo blusero llamado Jack Griffin. Las escasas pistas diseminadas entre las polvorientas enciclopédias del Blues y a lo largo y ancho de los garitos y estudios de grabación mas tirados del Mississipi, han servido a Siniestro Total para rastrear y localizar las doce piezas que componen su disco ‘La Historia del Blues’, editado en el año 2000. Además del disco, se edita el documental ‘Vida y Tiempo de Jack Griffin’ (Mike Clemente, 2000) y se pública el cómic La Historia del Blues (Undercomic, 2000), con prólogo de Diego Manrique. Siguiendo los pasos del disco, una serie de dibujantes han recreado, cada uno a su modo, diversos momentos de la vida del artista: Juan Del Peral Pineda, Santiago Sequeiros, Víctor Aparicio, Daspastoras, Javier Olivares, Juan Carlos Pérez, Bernardo Vergara, Álex Fito, Miguelanxo Prado, José Luis Ágreda, Calo, Antón Patiño y Miguel Ángel Martín.

La Historia del Blues
Dibujo y guión: Varios
68 páginas color
Descarga

Una avería en la cadena de ensamblaje de chinos ha interrumpido bruscamente la producción de nuevos ciudadanos, según admitía hoy el primer ministro del Gobierno chino, Li Keqiang. Ubicada en Pekín desde tiempos inmemoriales, la máquina de hacer chinos (中国制造商) empezó a fabricar...... Leer más

Hola, ser miope y borracha me proporciona bastante felicidad, la verdad PERO no siempre, NO SIEMPRE.

Resulta que follamos y al terminar pillo unas toallitas húmedas porque yo en lo más íntimo no quiero Chily quiero semen pero luego también quiero limpiarlo que mucho se hartan las madres de decir “cámbiate de bañador que se te sube el frío a los riñones” pero nunca nadie dice nada de secarte tras follar o coges cistitis y esto es verdadverdad, a lo que iba que cojo la toallita y en un momento de buena samaritana o algo, levanto miembro y empiezo a limpiar como una Cenicienta pero en cerder cuando veo que su sonrisa empieza a mutar a mueca:

- Qué cojones es eso que pica.

- Que va a picar, si son toallitas para niños. Uy pues algo de reacción sí que te está haciendo, te duchas o traigo hie

No me dio tiempo a acabar la frase cuando estaba dentro de la ducha mientras solo decía “pero tía, pero, pero, qué era eso”, así como muchas veces, TANTAS que ya cojo el paquete para llevárselo y tranquilizarlo cuando leo “Pronto toallitas limpiamuebles”, hay que quererme así y oye, polvo limpie al fin y al cabo. 

Moraleja: Quédate con aquel que tras liarla en vez de hacerte sentir mal, te mete a la ducha y te folla. ^^

Tu mensaje ha sido enviado, leido, ignorado y olvidado con éxito. ^^

By Chiclett4u

Pic by Miauriaw

If you do this, we can no longer be friends.  Tell us other sneaky game moves you’ve encountered on our Facebook page.

Este cómic es de broma. El jazz me gusta.

Esta es Scarlett Johansson


Este es un dibujo de Jeff Scott Campbell


Esta es la cabeza de Scarlett Johansson pegada sobre un cuerpo jeffscottcampbellizado


Esta es Scarlett Johansson al natural


Estos son los comentarios de algunos usuarios de Twitter (cuyo nombre omitimos) tras ver la foto anterior






Aprended la lección: una vez os jeffscottcampbellizais, ya no hay marcha atrás. JEFF! is even better than the real thing!

Rabbit enthusiasts in Prague just got into the Easter spirit (whatever that means) by holding their annual bunny jumping competition. It’s kind of like horse jumping, but with rabbits. And unlike with horse jumping, in which only the most able-bodied, graceful horses are encouraged to fling themselves over obstacles, the bunny jumping competition seems to take special glee in the category of chubby, floppy-eared bunnies that barely heave themselves over the pathetic little gates confronting them. Of course there are also jackrabbits getting some seriously impressive air.

But this regional event in Old Town Square, Prague wasn’t exactly the Olympics of rabbit jumping—that would be the Rabbit Grand National, held in Yorkshire England in June. Watch highlight from Prague’s event below.

Image

Over the weekend, a Dutch teenager named Sarah had the hilarious idea of tweeting a “joke” at American Airlines, that was essentially an ominous threat. Obviously, it didn’t go so well, and she was quickly arrested. On the bright side, before her account was suspended, she gained more than 30,000 Twitter followers. A big Twitter following makes you really popular in prison.

Possibly in protest regarding Sarah’s unfair treatment, and/or perhaps in an attempt to cynically gain thousands of followers themselves, dozens of teens started tweeting bomb threats at the airline’s Twitter account.

All of the tweets have since been deleted, but not before the Washington Post caught a bunch:

@AmericanAir the bomb goes of in 3 hours

— Alden Fernandez ♥ (@AldoFernz) April 14, 2014

@AmericanAir I have a bomb under the next plane to take off

— Army Jacket . (@ShyyLicious) April 14, 2014

@AmericanAir I’m gonna bomb your 737 jet

— ▲ demi ▼ (@ddlovatosteddy) April 14, 2014

@AmericanAir You really seem to not care that i’m about to bomb your plane that’s headed to Paris. Btw, my name is Ahmed.

— Allie (@ComedyBatman) April 14, 2014

@SouthwestAir @WesleyWalrus is gonna bomb your next few flights

— donnie cyrus. (@MileyFawLife) April 14, 2014

@Politie_Rdam @YourAnonCentral @AmericanAir release her or I’ll bomb your HQ. you gonna arrest me now?

— admrl. anonymous (@nonfreak) April 14, 2014

@AmericanAir Hello Am From Iraq i Want 1Million Or I Will Plan A Bomb To Your Next Flight To Paris !! Bye Bye America ”

— The Real Slim Shady (@WaleedMeshari) April 14, 2014

@AmericanAir Hello, I’m eduardo. ago a couple of weeks were warned, i´m ignored. you will pay the consequences. Bomb! HAHAHAHA

— eduardo (@eduardo37276391) April 14, 2014

.@SouthwestAir I bake really good pies and my friends call me ″the bomb” am I still allowed to fly?

— Kale (@KalenRiley10) April 14, 2014

It’s all fun and games, until someone named “@ComedyBatman” blows up a plane.

h/t Washington Post

As is more common in lesser civilized areas in the globe, such as Far Eastern regions and Florida, communities have been challenged by the substandard hygiene and behaviors of those who take big, greasy shits in public.

As is the case in India, the United Nations launched an online campaign, replete with video game and infectious hip-hop track (embedded below), starring mascot Mr. Poo, in which the chorus “Take the poo/to the loo” will stay with you through happy hour.

Well, hopefully it’ll stay with you longer than that if you’re one of the derelicts who keeps dropping bombs in the wrong places.

h/t Topless Robot

A British woman vacationing in South Africa decided to download “Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits” on her phone. Unfortunately, she forgot to take into account her phone’s data charges, and now owes $4,350 on her bill—that’s $4,350 more than anyone should spend on a Neil Diamond album.

Worse: It turns out Katie Bryan, a math instructor, isn’t even that big of a Diamond fan. As she explained to the Telegraph, “People were playing music through their iPads or on phones through an iPod dock. Someone had put on the Traveling Wilburys but I just fancied hearing some Neil Diamond. I don’t know why. He’s more my boyfriend’s musical taste and I’m more of a James Blunt fan.”

She downloaded Neil Diamond’s greatest hits for what was supposed to be $15, but unfortunately didn’t factor in that the 326MB download would cost her $8 per megabyte once she exceeded her 10MB monthly foreign data allowance. Ouch.

“I feel it is morally wrong to be expected to pay this sort of money for a Neil Diamond album,” Bryan said. Let this be a lesson to everyone: Don’t listen to Neil Diamond.

h/t Yahoo News, image: The Whole Note

Someone, fetch me my smelling salts! A new study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern Universities is showing that, although America is always going on about how it is a Democracy, it is, in fact, an Oligarchy. Or, rather, it is a Plutocratic Oligarchy, meaning that the vast majority of decisions are made to benefit a small amount of very rich people.

The researchers studied 1,779 policy changes made between 1981 and 2002, and judged them based on what the super rich people wanted, versus what the median voter wanted, versus what powerful lobbies wanted. Shockingly, the rich people and their lobbies got their way the vast majority of the time, with the median voter really only getting what he or she wanted when it was in line with the wishes of the affluent.

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

So, basically what this study is saying is that, quite honestly, your vote doesn’t count for shit, and although apparently we’re supposed to be under the assumption that lobbying groups speak for us, the people, and that the rich people who purchase our elected leaders have our best interests at heart, they do not. Big surprise.

After analyzing various kinds of governments, the researchers came to the conclusion that the term that best represents our current situation is Economic Elite Domination (or, you know, plutocracy).

“Economic Elite Domination theories do rather well in our analysis, even though our findings probably understate the political influence of elites. Our measure of the preferences of wealthy or elite Americans – though useful, and the best we could generate for a large set of policy cases – is probably less consistent with the relevant preferences than are our measures of the views of ordinary citizens or the alignments of engaged interest groups. Yet we found substantial estimated effects even when using this imperfect measure. The real-world impact of elites upon public policy may be still greater.”

Given that this study only measured policy changes that were enacted between the years 1981-2002, it is highly likely that things are even worse now than the study suggests. Certainly, rulings like Citizens United and McCutcheon are going to have a profound effect on our oligarchical situation here, and it’s going to become even more profoundly ridiculous that any of us thinks we have a say in our government. Which, let’s face it, with the electoral college it already kind of is.

Do I have a solution for this? Not really. I’d like to go the Ralph Nader route and eliminate private money in public campaigns entirely. I’d like to eliminate PACs, corporate contributions and soft money. I’d like to get rid of Citizens United and McCutcheon. I just don’t think a rich person ought to have any more say in government than a poor person does, and that includes having the opportunity to finance the politician he or she supports. But alas, these ideas are merely pipe dreams. Perhaps we ought to suck it up, admit we have a classist society and do like England where we have a House of Lords and a House of Commoners, instead of pretending as though we all have some kind of equal opportunity here.

Just a little over seven years after making its debut at Vertigo, Jason Aaron and R.M. Guerra’s Scalped is coming to television, according to The Hollywood Reporter. WGN America (Salem) is adapting the series under Banshee showrunner Doug Jung, the report indicates.

The series would bring the story of unreformed badass Dashiell Bad Horse, who returns to his home on the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Oglala Lakota people. What the reservation (and Lincoln Red Crow, the crime boss and killer who runs it) doesn’t know is that Bad Horse is an undercover FBI agent, looking to solve a decades-old murder which could point to corruption in his own organization.

The dark – sometimes grim/messed up/wrenching – series ran for 60 issues at Vertigo before ending its run in 2012. As much as the book is about Dash’s undercover investigation, it’s also about the continuing struggles of native people to maintain their culture and identity, living in a nation that seems to have abandoned them to crime, drug, and poverty-ridden reservations depicted in the book. Its twelve arcs – shifting between the present and the American Indian Movement of the ’70s – would make five very, very solid years of TV programming, if WGN plays its cards right.

At this point, the only thing left for fans to do is start aggressively fan-casting the series.

HT: The Hollywood Reporter

13 Gods of the Internet Featuring Listikles, Faprodite, Poseodon...

Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain. "The pain of women turns them into kittens and rabbits and sunsets and sordid red satin goddesses, pales them and bloodies them and starves them, delivers them to death camps and sends locks of their hair to the stars. Men put them on trains and under them. Violence turns them celestial. Age turns them old. We can't look away. We can't stop imagining new ways for them to hurt."

What's Wrong With Sentimentality? A conversation with Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

An Interview with Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison previously: Fog Count

A Medical Actor Writes Her Own Script

Why We're in a New Gilded Age Paul Krugman reviews Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, and discusses the renewal of the importance of capital in preserving inequality across generations.

Tienen derecho y la mayoría quiere el descanso eterno en el claustro

A praza Roxa antes da reurbanización do ano 2005.

1. This room is filthy/he probably has an STD based on this information alone.
2. Will he be big?
3. Wait, what’s that thing for?
4. Wait, is that his cum or mine?
5. Please just cum already, jesus.
6. Seriously, can you cum now?
7. Scandal is on in 10 minutes. I need to get out of this in 5 to 8 minutes.
8. Okay, now my legs are starting to give out.
9. Wait, you’re still wearing the condom right?
10. Penises look so funny with condoms on them LOL!!!
11. Gays: I hope he’s a top.

12. Gays: I hope he’s a bottom.
13. Is this being videotaped?
14. Okay well I’ve never seen THAT shape of dick before.
15. Did he really just ask me to “Suck that dick like a bitch”?
16. Hi, can you actually go easier on the balls?
17. Do I look fat? Do I have a double chin?
18. I hope I don’t pull out and have some weird vagina shit on my dick.
19. I am awesome.
20. Whoa, s/he is so good at this.
21. Can s/he tell I’m bored?
22. FUUCKKKKKK

23. Wonder how I measure up?
24. God, can his roommates hear us?
25. What am I going to wear tomorrow?
26. DON’T BE AFRAID. NO DART TONGUE! MORE PRESSURE. LESS PRESSURE. DON’T STOP. KEEP GOING. WAIT WHY ARE YOU STOPPING???
27. Is this an awkward angle?
28. OMG I forgot about that pie I have in the fridge!!!
29. Can I actually have the other side of the bed?
30. What’s the best way to avoid the wet spot??
31. I should have at least rinsed before but was not expecting to get laid.

32. Okay now my jaw is getting tired.
33. Seriously I’m getting exhausted.
34. OH SHIT IS THAT A HERPES OUTBREAK??
35. So you’re sure you’re “clean,” right?
36. LOL why is s/he making that face?
37. Why am I even doing this?
38. Wonder what/who is s/he is thinking about?
39. Did not know I was capable of that type of sound.
40. Well that was not a good idea.
41. Hmmm I never noticed that spot on the ceiling before. Should prolly call the landlord about that tomorrow.

42. The cat has been watching us the whole time.
43. Do I let her pee first or do I go now?
44. What’s the nicest way to get rid of him/her?
45. Oh god she wants me to stay over.
46. Oh no she doesn’t want me to stay over :(
47. How long should I wait to call/text?

Read more great writing on sex and dating here.

1. Kan-CHO!!!

Looking to prank your friends, preferably in a way that will leave both of you irreparably traumatized? How about Kancho, the Japanese prank “performed by clasping the hands together in the shape of an imaginary gun and attempting to insert the extended index fingers sharply into an unsuspecting victim’s anus, often while exclaiming ‘Kan-CHO!’” Sounds like a great way to liven up the office!

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2. The Laughing Epidemic

As someone who likes to smoke a lot of weed and read Philip K. Dick, I’m fascinated by mass hysteria and shared psychological illnesses. Therefore I was riveted by the Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962, a Tanzanian laughing plague that started, like any good hysterical outburst, at an all-girls boarding school (I can only imagine the CW Network was prominently involved). The epidemic affected a large portion of the students and the school was even forced to shut down.

Even more outrageously, “the children and parents transmitted it to the surrounding area. Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started, the phenomenon died off. The following symptoms were reported on an equally massive scale as the reports of the laughter itself: pain, fainting, flatulence, respiratory problems, rashes, attacks of crying, and random screaming.”

Six to eighteen months of laughter-induced flatulence and random screaming? Sounds like my sophomore year of college.

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3. The Secret Language of Twins

I’ve always been creeped out by twins, as they seem to be God’s way of saying, “Try to explain the meaning behind this one, you jackasses.” I’m even more disturbed by them after reading about cryptophasia, the “phenomenon of a language developed by twins (identical or fraternal) that only the two children could understand.” That’s like the plot summary for the most terrifying episode of Sister, Sister imaginable.

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4. The Man Who Wrote Everything Down

An American dude named Reverend Robert Shields chronicled every five minutes of his life via diary entries from 1972 to 1997, comprising 37.5 million words.

“Believing that discontinuing his diary would be like ‘turning off my life,’ he spent four hours a day in the office on his back porch, in his underwear, recording his body temperature, blood pressure, medications, describing his urination and bowel movements, and slept for only two hours at a time so he could describe his dreams.”

A sample entry from July 25, 1993:

7 am: I cleaned out the tub and scraped my feet with my fingernails to remove layers of dead skin.

7.05 am: Passed a large, firm stool, and a pint of urine. Used five sheets of paper.

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5. Yo Momma

Remember Yo Momma, that unspeakably atrocious MTV show Wilmer Valderrama hosted? Well, sorry for mentioning it, but it was all I could think about after reading up on The Dozens, “a game of spoken words between two contestants, common in African-American communities, where participants insult each other until one gives up.” I thought we called that a marriage?

I like Wikipedia’s sample exchange, which appears to escalate rather quickly:

Participant 1: “I hear your mother plays third base for the Phillies.”

Participant 2: “Your mother is a bricklayer and stronger than your father.”

Participant 1: “Your mother eats shit.”

Participant 2: “Your mother eats shit and mustard.”

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6. The Great Stink

In the summer of 1858, London was plagued by the Great Stink, “during which the smell of untreated human waste and effluent from other activities was very strong in central London.” This article is filled with delightful tidbits about how waste was basically dumped right into the water supply at the time and mentions Toshers, which were commonly whole families who “scavenged through the sewers looking for anything of value.” The 19^th century, ladies and gentlemen!

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7. Butt Hash

Jenkem (a.k.a. butt hash) is fermented poop that people huff to get really high, or, presumably, to look cool at parties.

“The effects of jenkem inhalation last for around an hour and consist of auditory and visual hallucinations for some users. In 1995, one user told a reporter it is ‘more potent than cannabis.’ A 1999 report interviewed a user, who said, ‘With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But with jenkem, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead and I forget about the problems in my life.’

Oddly enough, RC Cola has that same effect on me.

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8. Animal Hookers

People always bring up how there’s like one species of animal that has sex for pleasure or that commits murder or whatever, as if finding traces of human behavior in nature validates us. Well, maybe those same people can make a case for legalized prostitution, as “studies have been used to promote the idea that prostitution exists among different species of animals such as Adélie Penguins, chimpanzees, and crab-eating macaque.”

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9. The Worst Poet in History

William Topaz McGonagall was a 19^th century Scottish fellow and possibly the worst poet ever. Wikipedia notes rather bluntly, “He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers’ opinions of his work… Throughout his life McGonagall seemed oblivious to the general opinion of his poems, even when his audience were pelting him with eggs and vegetables.”

Below are some examples of McGonagall’s atrocities, which paint him as sort of a Victorian-era Fred Durst:

He was a public benefactor in many ways,

Especially in erecting an asylum for imbecile children to spend their days.

Black Beard derived his name from his long black beard,

Which terrified America more than any comet that had ever appeared.

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10. Death Boner

I know that people often poop themselves upon dying, but apparently that’s not the only potential humiliation God has in store for our final mortal moments. The death erection “is a post-mortem erection, technically a priapism, observed in the corpses of men who have been executed, particularly by hanging.”

Well, there’s something that could’ve made Weekend at Bernie’s II at least 20% more hilarious. And apparently no one is safe from rigor mortifying hard-ons, as “art historian and critic Leo Steinberg notes that a number of Renaissance era artists depicted Jesus Christ after the crucifixion with a post-mortem erection.”

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11. George Bush’s Turd Blossom

I knew that George Bush had a penchant for referring to people by nicknames, but it’s wonderful to have an unverified and likely apocryphal list of them. My favorites:

Russian President Vladimir Putin – Pootie-Poot or Ostrich Legs

Karl Rove – Turd Blossom

Chris Christie – Big Boy

Republic Congressman John Sweeney – Congressman Kickass

Director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center Cofer Black – Flies on the Eyeballs Guy

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12. Let Us Trim Our Hair In Accordance With Socialist Lifestyle

About ten years ago, North Korea had a TV show called, Let Us Trim Our Hair In Accordance With Socialist Lifestyle, a title that probably should’ve been the chorus to Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair.” The program “was part of a North Korean government propaganda campaign promulgating grooming and dress standards in 2004–2005.”

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13. Vagina Teeth

Although Wikipedia assures us that the idea of penis-biting vaginas with teeth is pure hokum, it does note that, “In rare instances, teeth may be found in a vagina…Dermoid cysts occur most commonly in the ovary. If it ruptures there, the teeth may migrate through the vagina.” Enjoy your 45 minutes of compromised, nightmare-plagued sleep tonight, gentlemen!

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14. The World’s Worst Video Game

Penn & Teller made an unreleased video game for Sega CD (lol) titled Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, featuring a variety of mini-games that allowed the game’s owner to trick or con their friends. That is simultaneously a wonderful and awful idea for a game. Especially of interest is the mini-game “Desert Bus”:

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45 mph. The feat requires 8 hours of continuous play to complete, since the game cannot be paused… If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, he scores one point. The player then has the option to make the return trip to Tucson for another point, a decision he must make in a few seconds or the game ends.

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15. Your Genitals Are Not Disappearing

As a grown man who still reads R.L. Stine and eats Gushers, I’ve occasionally feared that my penis is disappearing. I thought I was the only one, but Koro is a syndrome “in which an individual has an overpowering belief that his or her genitals (e.g., penis or female nipples) are retracting and will disappear…mass hysteria of genital-shrinkage anxiety has a history in Africa, Asia, and Europe.” The page goes on to list several large-scale epidemics affecting thousands at a time, usually men who listened to a few too many Maroon 5 songs. It also makes a delightful foray into the Middle Age superstition that a witch could steal a man’s penis. “Witches were said to store the removed genitals in birds’ nests or in boxes, where ‘they move themselves like living members and eat oats and corn.’”

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16. Iceland’s Penis Museum

I’ve saved the best for last: The Icelandic Phallological Museum, which “houses the world’s largest display of penises and penile parts.” Any time a Wikipedia page opens with the term “penile parts,” I’m in. I can’t help myself. The 8 greatest things I learned about Iceland’s Penis Museum:

• “Founded in 1997 by retired teacher Sigurður Hjartarson and now run by his son Hjörtur Gísli Sigurðsson, the museum grew out of an interest in penises that began during Sigurður’s childhood when he was given a cattle whip made from a bull’s penis.”
• Furthermore, an animal penis is apparently called a “pizzle,” which gives me a new anatomical appreciation for several Snoop Dogg songs.
• “According to Sigurður, ‘Collecting penises is like collecting anything. You can never stop, you can never catch up, you can always get a new one, a better one.’”
• “The museum claims that its collection includes the penises of elves and trolls, though, as Icelandic folklore portrays such creatures as being invisible, they cannot be seen.”
• “The museum also contains sculptures of 15 penises based on the Iceland national handball team.”
• “The museum has so far received pledges from four men – an Icelander, a German, an American and a Briton – to donate their penises. Canadian film-maker Zach Math comments that the American ‘is an ordinary guy but he has this quirk where he thinks of his penis as a separate entity from his body – Elmo. He has this dream that he wants it to be the most famous penis in the world.’ According to Sigurður, the American donor ‘wanted to have his penis cut off even during his lifetime and then visit the museum.’”
• “In July 2011, the museum obtained its first human penis, one of four promised by would-be donors. Its detachment from the donor’s body did not go according to plan and it was reduced to a greyish-brown shrivelled mass pickled in a jar of formalin.”
• “Sigurður has described the collection as the product of ‘37 years of collecting penises. Somebody had to do it.’”