¡Miles de mujeres que perdieron a sus maridos e hijos por la peste a un click de distancia! #PornoSigloXVII
Samu ha hecho un GIF de unos tweets muy tontos míos.
Los 7 pecados capitales: haigas, oyes, haver, tí, con migo, la calor y follarse a un ex. ^^
By Chiclett4u
(Image Via WFAA)
Increased risk of fire, exposure to toxic mold, and toxoplasmosis due to animal waste exposure are all risks you run living life as a hoarder, but the most common risk is the one that recently took the life of a Dallas man- death by suffocation or crushing, when giant piles of junk come crashing down on top of you.
The 67-year-old Dallas resident was buried under what neighbors described as “a ten foot high wall of trash” so police had to enter the home through the roof, searching for two full days because the dogs were unable to sniff out the victim's body beneath all the trash and rotting animal carcasses.
The only good thing to come of this tragic incident is the fact that his dog Buddy survived the ordeal and found a new home with one of the victim's friends. They should probably change his name from Buddy to Lucky!
-Via Gawker
Las películas de Wes Anderson no son cupcakes, son recetas de cupcakes. Cupcakes teóricos e imposibles donde el tell se come al show aunque parezca mentira.
Gran Hotel Budapest. Hugo Guiness & Wes Anderson. 2014.
El dibujante ha venido a presentarnos su 'Cuaderno de frases encontradas', un proyecto muy personal que inició en un blog y que ahora se ha convertido en libro y en exposición, nos ha explicado cómo nació esta idea y cómo la ha trabajado, de paso hemos ido por Madrid en busca de nuevas frases que nos inspiraran. Además repasamos con Jota Lynnot las otras películas del Capitán América y las canciones que ha protagonizado. Jesús Marugán nos trae, literamente, los libros que esta semana son noticia.
How fast can a veterinary team perform a physical exam on a baby Polar Bear? At Germany’s Zoo am Meer, it took only four minutes for the staff to examine, vaccinate, determine gender, and weigh a cub and return the baby to her anxious mother.
Photo Credit: Zoo Am Meer
The female cub was born on December 16 to first-time mom Valeska, age 9, and father Lloyd, age 13. Since then, the cub has remained in the den with Valeska, who has proven to be an excellent mother to her cub.
Zoo staff members describe the cub as playful and energetic. At her exam, the cub weighed 18 pounds (8.5 kg), and has a lot of growing to do – adult female Polar Bears weigh 400-700 pounds (180-370 kg). She’ll remain behind the scenes with Valeska until late in April or May. At that time, she’ll learn how to swim and explore the outdoors.
Polar Bear populations are imperiled by climate change. Polar Bears require sea ice as a place to stand while searching for passing seals to hunt. Many Polar Bears are malnourished because their hunting season – which occurs in winter when the sea is filled with ice – becomes shorter every year, preventing them from building fat reserves to survive through the summer, when hunting is not possible.
See more photos of the cub below.
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Actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are best friends. Stewart often posts on Twitter photos of the two of them together, palling around in their signature derbies. Here's one that he just put up. It shows them in front of the Stonewall Inn in New York City.
The Stonewall Inn is an historically gay bar in Greenwich Village. Police raided it on June 28, 1969. Gays fought back in an event known as the Stonewall Riots. Many historians regard this resistance as the birth of the gay rights movement in the United States.
P.S. Be sure to check out this hilarious animated .gif showing Stewart and McKellen. It mashes up a scene from the latest X-Men movie with their photos together. In the movie, Stewart and McKellen play Professor X and Magneto, longtime enemies.
Snob<3 Brutal!
Sesión desde nuestro garito subterráneo excavando hondo en busca de polvorientos singles olvidados a cargo de grupos como The Charts (Ooba gooba), Hugh Barrett (There was a fungus among us), The Tabbys (Hong Kong baby), The Hollywood Flames (Strollin on the beach), The Swanks (Ghost train), The Invaders (Cats eye), Ron Thompson and his Rowdy Guitar (Switchblade), The Loafers (Crazy talk), Jape Richards and the Echoes (Monkey song, you made a monkey out of me), Glenn Reeves (Tarzan), The Invasion (The invasion is coming), Lord Luther ad the Kings Men (Teenage creature), Fabian (Tiger), Jimmy Winter and the Shadows (What are little girls made of), Wild Tones (Shut up), Richard Berry and Group (The big break), Charlie Baker (You crack me up), Screamin Jay Hawkins (I put a spell on you), Stormy Gayle (Flipsville) y The Bobbettes (I dont like it like that).
I find it really attractive when a woman asks me how my day’s been in a non-transactional way.
“That’s a nice cardigan.”
My crush sits behind me in class. When I let her touch my hair, she always tells me how soft it is.
“You don’t act like a virgin.”
Any time a girl says she thought I was cute but also thought I was gay.
“You’re so funny! Where do you come up with this stuff.”
Whenever a girl compliments my cardigan.
“Have you seen Franklin and Bash? You look like that guy from Franklin and Bash. Amber, doesn’t he look like that guy Franklin and Bash?”
She didn’t say anything, but I pushed a girl in the mud and she cried.
Prom night, my girlfriend of 2 months said “I love you” as we slow danced to Green Day’s Good Riddance.
“You don’t look Jewish”
“I think we should just be friends.”
“I’m attacking you with my Blood Paladin and also with Trachor, Harbinger of Silence. He’s +8, +8 and cannot be blocked.”
“You look like an Asian version of that guy from Franklin and Bash. Hey, Amber! Doesn’t he look like that guy from Franklin and Bash, but Asian?”
“Hey, fat ass. You’re a disgusting piece of shit, you know that? Yeah, keep walking you cardigan wearing fucktard.”
It was nap time and I was lying next to Beth, so I pulled her hair. She said, “Stop it, Tommy.” I liked the way she said my name, so I pulled her hair again and she cried.
The elderly waitress called me Muffin several times.
I had just received a poor grade on my geometry test and the teacher said, “You should come by during lunch, and we can find a way to get that D up.” She wasn’t hot or anything, but the incidental euphemism was like YO.
“Is that with a PH or a V?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like that guy from Suits? Not the main one, but that other guy.”
I been working in my father’s pizzeria for my whole life. I was making chit-chat with this cute girl lives down the street. She says, ”Are you working today? We should get coffee.” I was working, so nothing came of it. But I did jerk off my pepperoni to her later. Ay! Pizza!
“It’s so big. Too big. I don’t think we should do this.”
Something about the way girls ask for my algebra homework gets me sweaty. It’s like woah woah. Hands off the cardigan, ladies! But I don’t really mind. There’s enough Seth to go around.
At my sister’s birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese’s. She was ignoring me so I punched her in the stomach and she said, “I hate you! You’re the worst thing to ever happen to this family.”
“You look like that one guy from Entourage. Not the main one, but his friend.”
“Are you getting hard? No? That’s fine. Really, don’t worry about it.”
There I am reading in my favorite cafe when this immaculate doll takes a seat in the chair opposite me. She smiles. We exchange bashful glances. It’s too much. I giggle and spill my coffee all over my lap. She laughs and says, “Oh, poor baby! You made a mess. Let me get you something to clean that up with. You know, I’ve seen you in here before and have always wanted to say Hello. But I didn’t think anything I could say would interest you in the slightest. And here we are! I’m practically in your lap! Take me out tonight. I don’t care if that sounds crazy. And I don’t care if you’re virgin at 37, going on 38. I just want you inside of me. Even if you can only last a moment. Because none of that sex stuff is important to me. I’m just so happy to have met you. So what do you say? Let’s be lovers?”
I kicked my therapist at the youth correctional facility and she said I kicked like a man.
“Love that cardigan!”
“You look like the black guy from Psych. Hey, Amber! Doesn’t this black guy– where’d she go?”
Whenever a girl says I have nice eyes.
I was with this Robofluxor. She forms a dual-plasma transmission arc across my Verifuel™ Chamber, and is like “ACCESS DENIED”.
The nurse in the ER– “Wow, he is big for his age. He’s gonna be a stud in a few years.” “Karen, he’s a child!” “Oh, come on. He’s asleep. He doesn’t know what we’re saying.” “Oh god, it just twitched.” “I saw.”
“Nice Cardi!” 
    
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As far as character showcases go, it doesn't get much more elaborate than Kroll Show.
When Nick Kroll's sketch series on Comedy Central returned for its second season in January, it was clear that he had set his sights firmly on the pseudo-celebrity culture of reality television, with a lineup of characters inspired by the most despicable monsters that crawled out of the Jersey Shore and Real Housewives muck: the Guido womanizer Bobby Bottleservice, the psychopathic publicists of "PubLIZity," the man-child toilet-baby C-Czar, the self-destructively vain Rich Dicks, etc. But if the first season served to introduce the freakshow, the second season unleashed them out into the world… and onto each other. The result was a series of interweaving narratives within a rich, ever-expanding alternative reality TV universe, for which Kroll offered a term when he last spoke with us:
There’s a term that Seth Meyers coined when he did an interview with us, half-jokingly, but I think is very good, which is “sketch-uational comedy.” It sounds kind of cheesy, but it’s actually a really good way, I think, to describe what we’re doing with the show, which is sketch but it’s really more narrative and long-form storytelling.
Nick Kroll's "sketch-uational comedy" is a breed all its own. A half-hour episode feels like watching a condensed, Mr. Hyde version of a primetime block on TLC or Bravo, with a barrage of reality programming segments, promos, title sequences, and commercials, broken up occasionally by Kroll riffing with one of his writers/co-stars — Jenny Slate, John Mulaney, Ron Funches, Chelsea Peretti, Joe Wengert — an improvement from the monologue rants of Season 1. Season 2 revolved around a half-dozen or so arcs: C-Czar's paternal education in "Dad Academy," Liz B.'s pregnancy (it's C-Czar's, of course), Dr. Armond's murder trial, "Wheels Ontario" star Bryan LaCroix's "NTR 2 Win" contest to lose his virginity, Bobby Bottleservice venturing into male prostitution in "Gigolo House," Ref Jeff's search for friendship, and the Rich Dicks, as always, partying and doing a lot of drugs. Beyond the usual suspects were some great new pieces: "Pawnsylvania," a Philly/Pittsburgh-based Pawn Stars send-up, halftime rocker Nash Ricky trying to reassemble his band Sloppy Secondz, and some hilarious one-off bits like "Cake Train" and "The Legend of Young Larry Bird." And of course, all of Kroll's buddies turned out in droves: Amy Poehler, John Mulaney, Jenny Slate, Seth Rogen, Pete Holmes, Zach Galifianakis, Bill Burr, Andy Milonakis, Jason Mantzoukas, Zach Woods, Carrie Brownstein, Marc Evan Jackson, Brian Huskey, Rebecca Drysdale, Jordan Peele, Brett Gelman, and several others. Mike Birbiglia was nowhere in sight, but a Katy Perry cameo was a suitable consolation, I suppose.
And yes, "Too Much Tuna" came back, and a little bit of mercury poisoning didn't slow down Gil and George's "prangkt-ing" one bit.
Perhaps the most fun part of the viewing experience of Season 2 was watching Kroll, Jon Daly, and his writers gradually weave all the threads together. The meta elements built slowly early in the season, with Mr. Show-style transitions, Easter egg jokes in lower thirds, and a wide-spanning, Stephen King universe of supporting characters, like Ron Funches as an easygoing defense attorney and Carrie Brownstein as a physician. With major characters increasingly venturing outside of their spheres — the stars of "Wheels Ontario" hosting a Canadian American Idol called "Show Us Your Songs Toronto," Dr. Armond and Funches guesting on "Dad Academy" — eventually the storylines collided in a season finale that impressively brought all the arcs to a close — at least, in the type of contrived, superficial climax that reality TV producers try to pass off as a kind of universal moral or lesson learned without really saying anything at all.
That is, of course, a weakness in Kroll Show — at least for viewers seeking a simpler, more variety-based sketch experience like SNL or Key & Peele. By entrenching itself so deeply in the dumbed-down storytelling, sugary editing, and larger-than-life personalities of reality programming, Kroll Show occasionally feels nearly as obnoxious as the real thing. It's obviously parody, but it's mercilessly accurate parody. If those Real Housewives screaming matches make your flesh crawl, there's a good chance the "PubLIZity" girls will too. But that unwavering commitment to its subject matter is ultimately Kroll's strength. It's great TV posing as awful TV. That clever masquerade may be lost on people watching clips of the show online, who hopefully at least appreciate Kroll's uncanny versatility. But because it's a show about how low the bar has sunk in cable television, Kroll Show really needs to be watched in its full half-hour form, on a television screen.
Nick Kroll finds himself in a crowded field of great alternative TV comedy these days, with Comedy Central alone also boasting the gold-standard Key & Peele, as well as innovative concepts like Nathan For You, Review, Inside Amy Schumer, and Broad City — not to mention the stellar Portlandia, Comedy Bang Bang, and The Birthday Boys on IFC. It used to be that if you wanted to do sketch on TV, you had to go through the SNL circuit. That's no longer the case, and it's giving opportunities for stars like Kroll to share his voice — or voices, rather — with us. Hopefully, Kroll Show season 3 will expand its freakshow universe to even greater depths. Given the current state of American television, that shouldn't be too difficult.
Erik Voss is a writer and performer living in Los Angeles. He hosts the Evil Blond Kid podcast and performs on the house team Wheelhouse at the iO Theater.
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Article reposted with permission from Business Insider
Noah is arguably the first hero to those who observe Judeo-Christian traditions.
When the descendants of Adam and Eve slid down that slippery slope of wickedness, God found favor in Noah.
From Genesis, chapter six (New Revised Standard Version):
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. 6And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ 8But Noah found favour in the sight of the Lord.
Most people know what happened next. God told Noah that he planned to destroy everyone on earth. He then gave Noah instructions on how to build an ark, told him to fill it with his family and a pair of every animal on the planet, and then made it rain for 40 days and 40 nights.
“And the waters swelled for one hundred fifty days … At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated; and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.”
Everyone and everything come out of the ark, Noah builds an alter and sacrifices some animals, and God makes a rainbow.
From Genesis, chapter nine:
20 Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. 21He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent.
This is a detail that most children from Christian homes won’t remember from Sunday school.
It gets weirder.
22And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. 24When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25he said,
‘Cursed be Canaan;
lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.’
26He also said,
‘Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave.
27 May God make space for* Japheth,
and let him live in the tents of Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave.’
This is truly one of the oddest stories in the Bible. There are obviously a lot of details that have been excluded.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible offers some annotations based on hundreds of years of scholarly research.
22-23: Some have speculated that Ham had sex with his father, since nakedness refers to incestuous behavior in Lev. 20.17. Nevertheless, a more common expression for sexual intercourse in Leviticus is “uncover nakedness” (e.g., 18.6, 20.18) or “lie with” (e.g., 20.11-12). Moreover, the description of Ham’s brothers’ contrasting behavior in v. 23 (their faces were turned away) makes clear that the problem with Ham’s behavior was that he did not look away.
The annotations note that passing out naked was not uncommon in the old days.
In the ancient Near East, sons were expected to protect the honor of their father through caring for him when he was drunk (with no negative judgment being attached to getting drunk). Ham here does the opposite, both looking upon his father naked and telling his brothers about it. Such behavior is an example of the same kind of breakdown of family relationships that was seen in ch 3 (see 3.8-13, 16-19n.) and ch 4 (see 4.1-15n.).
Volumes have been written about this. But we’ll leave it at that.
Anyway, Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah” opens today.
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Jon Stewart’s brutal takedown of missing plane coverage
Earlier this month, Haven Middle School in Evanston, IL notified parents that girls would no longer be able to wear shorts, leggings or yoga pants, due to the fact that wearing such clothing would distract boys from their schoolwork. They’re not the only ones. Schools across the nation are banning girls from wearing leggings, skinny jeans, yoga pants, shorts and the like, for the same reason.
The thinking here is this “boys will be boys, and since we can’t control what they do, we will control what girls are allowed to do.” Which is pretty much the same logic other countries use to insist that women have to wear burquas and are not permitted to leave their houses without a male relative. It’s the same line of reasoning people use when they ask a victim what she was wearing when she was sexually assaulted. It all comes from the same place. Women are regarded as the gatekeepers of male purity. If they fail, it is our fault, not theirs.
Note, of course, that these schools are of course not banning boys from wearing shorts. No one would suggest that a boy wearing shorts or any other sort of clothing would serve to distract girls. Because boys are not considered sexual objects the moment they hit puberty.
It is hard enough being a 12- or 13-year-old girl without being told that whether you like it or not, your legs are an object to be fetishized. That their bodies were built for sin. That boys have the freedom and the right to wear whatever they choose and you do not. The only time boys clothing is policed is when it’s too feminine. Ergo, feminine things are wrong and dirty and sinful, masculine things are good and pure and wholesome. The only thing that makes men unwholesome is women.
When I was in middle school, I had, essentially, zero clothing options. I was super tall for my age, but hadn’t gotten hips yet–and back in the ’90s, jeans that weren’t made specifically for kids had hips built into them. So my options were either “highwaters” or giant weird fake clown hips made of air and acid washed denim. I went to a school where it was a rule that your shorts or skirts couldn’t be shorter than three inches above one’s knee–which might have been fine for girls who were still under five feet tall, but I was dealing with a 34-inch inseam and there was literally no such thing as shorts that were that long.
I got sent to the principal’s office for dress code violations on nearly every hot day because of it, with my mom trying to explain to the vice principal that not only could she not find shorts or skirts that were long enough for me, but that I was a 12 year-old who was just trying to not die of heat exhaustion, not “distract” boys with my gangly-ass legs. And that it shouldn’t be my job to not “distract” them in the first place.
That’s a thing that stuck in my head and affected my thinking for a long time. It was not something I should have had to think about at the age of 12 or 13. I shouldn’t have had to think of myself as any kind of sexual distraction in middle school. I should have been able to think of my legs as innocuous body parts built for walking and running and playing and not some sort of fetish object attached to my body without my consent. It should not have been my responsibility to be a gatekeeper for the sexual morality of boys my age. But I was told, in so many words, that it was.
By banning something as perfectly innocuous as leggings and yoga pants, schools are telling girls that it is their fault if boys sexually objectify them. They are telling girls that it is their job to keep the boys in line because they don’t want to have to bother with the harder lesson of teaching boys to respect their female classmates. It isn’t their job. It is the job of boys to keep themselves in line, it is their job to learn to not sexually objectify their classmates, and it is the teacher’s job to make sure they do learn this.
Via Flickr user David Shankbone
There are certain villains of society whose relative merits no one will defend. Anyone standing up for child molesters, serial killers, or members of the Bush administration would be publicly pilloried, and justifiably so. But there is another group that seems to have been added to the list, and though he is without champion, it’s about time that someone stand up for him. This aggrieved class of human is none other than the American Bro.
Just last week on this here website, the American Bro was deemed “the worst guy ever” in a scathing attack that called into question not only his behavior but also his existence. This article paints the picture of a man who lives only to consume and impress, someone who wants to leave his mark on everything, not just the women whose tits he jizzes all over and the gutters that he vomits into after one too many craft beers, but on everything at every moment. He is loud and aggressive, not because he actually has something to say but because he wants to steal that moment—and your attention—for himself.
And what is so wrong with that? That is what men do. That is what men have always done. The problem is not the bro but the society in which he lives. This used to be a great country, a country that made things. America used to produce crops and clocks and cars. Who made all these things? Who ran the farms and worked union jobs in factories and provided for their children? Who were the bikers, cowboys, construction workers, and other Village People archetypes we prized? Men. They got to take this atavistic need to stamp a little bit of themselves onto everything and put it out there into the world. They made your cotton, soldered your TV sets, and tightened the bolts on the first space craft to make it to the moon. They not only manned the tanks that rid the world of Nazis, but they drove them too—a dozen men in uniform with their bodies pressed against one another fighting for freedom.
Now our only major exports are more episodes of Two and a Half Men and orange powdered cheese. What do you expect all these men to do? They’ve taken jobs in the financial sector where they shuttle bits of phantom money and units of “risk” back and forth and try to make more phantom money. This is how America creates wealth now. We don’t make things; we create illusions. And the bros do it for us. Since they are no longer creators and territory markers, they vent their aggression and brute strength in their social lives. They redirect their biological imperatives to letting their big dicks flop around in basketball shorts while they do squats at the gym, grunting so that everyone who isn’t looking at them knows that they are there.
Via Flickr user torbakhopper
Who is going to save this country from drowning in a sea of Chinese debt and high-fructose corn syrup? Not the mild-mannered hipsters obsessed with mustache wax and crafting artisanal honey in their urban sanctuaries. No, they only create small batches of things, trying to leverage their modesty as authenticity. Modesty did not cure polio. Authenticity didn’t win the Cold War. Honey isn’t going to get Putin out of Crimea.
That’s why we need our bros. They are the spirit of can-do American ingenuity. They are the chest-thumping alpha males who will keep other countries from trying to knock us off the top of our colonial heap. That’s why they’re doing so many bench presses. It’s because our supremacy rests squarely on their broad shoulders. They’re sculpting their obliques to look statuesque and formidable, to keep the scrawny Iranians and Pakistanis from fucking with all of these Captain Americas.
And it’s silly to make fun of the bro’s wardrobe like that take-down article tries to. What is wrong with tank tops? If author John Saward spent as much time doing biceps curls as he did cowering behind his keyboard, he might have some tickets to the gun show himself. But he’s jealous, imagining these he-men flexing in their toothpaste-stained bathroom mirrors, running their wide hands over there undulating abs right before they take a #fitlife photo for Instagram. He wishes he could look like that instead of staring down as his pasty paunch.
The article also seems obsessed with bros’ johnsons. “To him, everything is a dick pic, a flex, a look-how-hard-I-get, a watch-me-fuck-the-universe,” it says. He is right, dick pics aren’t about the recipient—they’re about the sender. When these dudes fluff their meat up to make it more distinguished, they’re just trying to reclaim the tenuous masculinity that has been decimated in our culture. When they get fully hard and press their packages up against remote controls, shaving cream bottles, or Red Bull cans, it is a way to make themselves not more attractive to women but more appealing to themselves. Their very way of life is being threatened by these attacks, and if we can’t look at their throbbing cocks and tell them that they look wonderful and large and juicily appealing, we have failed a whole generation of our young men.
As the cultural tide seems to turn against them, the bros only have one another to turn to. They always travel in packs to insulate themselves from the naysayers. Or maybe it’s because the only company they can find that is as handsome as they are is their own. Yes, they totter down the street, their toned arms around each other’s shoulders as they drunkenly stumble from one destination to the next. They swat each other’s butts when they score anything—a basket, a sale at work, a hot new piece of ass. They shake hands and embrace one another with the left arm, wishing they could hold longer. Just wishing that, in our world, they could pull their fellow bro toward them, their gym-honed torsos, like two bodies in competing underwear ads, rubbing against each other, their heads close together, their mouths only inches apart from one another as they draw their heads back, staring into each other's eyes and wondering what might happen if just this once they leaned in and met their bro for a stubbly kiss as the last game of the NBA playoffs blared in the background of whatever sports bar they’ve been in all night.
Via Flickr user CAHairyBear
We need to support these men, our finest specimens. The ones whose asses bounce in their jock straps as they strut toward the shower in the locker room. The ones who jog shirtless through the park, the sweat cascading in rivulets into their sopping shorts. The ones who sit with their legs wide-open on the subway, calling attention from all quarters to the fleshy mass in their shorts that is just dying to be sucked. These are our champions, and we really should be championing them.
I’ve certainly done my part. One night, back in college, I was driving home with my bro friend Dave, who was majoring in econ and pussy pounding. He'd a bad night with one too many green Jell-O shots (green is always the worst color), and the girl he'd been getting handsy with had had the audacity to reject him. He had made a big scene about how it didn’t bother him, how he had bigger and hotter girls, and how he got as much ass as he could ever want. But in the car he was different. He was despondent, clearly lingering on his rejection. “You OK?” I asked. “Yeah, brah. You know, bitches,” he said. “Yeah,” I replied putting my hand on the knee of his jeans. I left it there a little too long, and when he looked at me, I didn’t know what to expect.
“Dude, will you do me a favor?” he asked. “Will you tickle my back?” He took off his white baseball cap and pulled his T-shirt over his head, his rippling muscles flexing and relaxing in astounding patterns as he bent over in the passenger’s seat. I rubbed the tips of my fingers across his smooth skin for what seemed like hours. Eventually he sat up, and I moved my hands. “Keep going,” he said, letting me cup the firm contours of his chest, the stiff prickles of his nipples, the trail of hair that led into his jeans. I rubbed everywhere, down onto the crotch of his jeans, which was now propped up with what those “bitches” didn’t want. I let my hands rest on the button of his jeans, unsure of how to proceed, thinking as much about his own pleasure as what was happening in my own jeans. I hovered there a minute, and he sat up straight in the chair, his head back and eyes closed, waiting to get what he wanted—no, what he deserved.
“What are you waiting for?” he said, remaining still.
Man, there is nothing better than fucking a bro.
A tank monument in Tiraspol, Transnistria. All photos by the author
“Yes,” she says, handing over a copy of the local paper, “'I like it here in Tiraspol,’” making quote marks in the air with her fingers. Then the young woman I’ve been interviewing shuts up—a van has pulled up, and a couple in suits have gotten out, and some unnamed threat is hanging in the air. Everyone on the street is staring at me and my guide, so we leave to catch the next bus out of Transnistria. I can’t help thinking that we’re getting out in the nick of time.
Tensions are running high in Transnistria—known locally as Pridnestrovie—a quasi-communist unrecognized state that straddles Moldova and Ukraine. On Wednesday, the day I arrived, it was reported that Russian soldiers had recently carried out military maneuvers there, sparking further speculation in the Western media that the region will be the next Crimea, another victim of Vladimir Putin's sudden desire to put the Soviet Union back together.
There was a note of “The Russians are coming!” hysteria to some of the concerns about Transnistria being under attack, but they’re definitely not completely unfounded: Russia has more than 2,000 troops stationed in the region. General Philip Breedlove, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, recently claimed that Russia is ready to “run” to Transnistria should the call be made, and this week Transnistria's parliament sent a message to Moscow asking if their state could become part of Russia. The region, a narrow strip of land barely 15 miles wide but 100 miles long, has been more or less autonomous since the 1992 Transnistrian War, but it’s long had close ties to Russia—in 2006 a referendum showed that 97 percent of voters wanted to join Putin’s country.
But Eastern European politics are notoriously murky, and understanding Transnistria's situation from afar seemed impossible, so I got on a bus and headed in.
Tiraspol is just a bumpy hour-and-a-half drive from Chisinau, Moldova's decaying capital. It's a flat, sprawling city of 130,000 that looks every bit the Soviet throwback—from tanks and battered trolleybuses to a statue of what looks like Lenin posing as Batman. The region's green-and-red flag still bears the Hammer and Sickle, and the parliament building—a hideous deep-red lesson in Brutalist architecture—is called the Supreme Soviet. Tiraspol's main street, Ulitsa 25 Oktober (a reference to Transnistria's independence day), is a vast, vacant runway, the sidewalks of which barely anyone treads save for a few pensioners. The few cars that roll by demonstrate a gaping divide between haves and have-nots. Cheap GAZ vans and Lada four-doors brush sides with $100,000 Mercedes.
It’s a quiet but pleasant enough town on the surface. Open-air markets are thronged with old people selling everything from gas lamps to second-hand undies. Beyond the rows of old junk is a park containing a giant statue of Alexander Suvorov, the Russian who founded Tiraspol in 1792, and a billboard that, roughly translated, urges Tiraspolians to “Love Your City, Whatever!” A plastic yellow toy train carries kids along the banks of the Dniester River, which separates Transnistria from Moldova, the nation it officially belongs to. Young men smoke and throw fishing lines into the tideless water. There are two discos in town but, by and large, there's not much to do in Tiraspol. (Not that there are many people of partying age here—senior citizens make up almost a third of the population.)
Though Transnistria is not recognized as a nation by any member of the UN, in truth it has long been forgotten by Moldova, itself a poor country still struggling to cope with the fall of the USSR. Transnistria was incorporated into Russia until the early 20th century, when it was deemed a part of Soviet Ukraine, later the Moldavian Soviet Socialst Republic. While Moldova remained agrarian and exported fruit, Transnistria became an industrial hub and attracted workers from the east who spoke Russian instead of the Romanian dialect of their neighbors.
Today those factories remain, providing Transnistria with the bulk of its proclaimed $1 billion GDP—though, in reality, Russia props up the Transnistrian economy by providing it with billions of dollars in subsides, including a scheme in which Russia buys gas for a Transnistrian company that then sells the gas and keeps the profit. According to the Warsaw-based Center for Eastern Studies, “Transnistria is almost completely devoid of any of the internal prerequisites necessary for economic growth.” The economy is controlled by the state, there are almost no small businesses, and a lack of good jobs has caused young people to emigrate en masse.
A statue of Lenin outside the Supreme Soviet, the headquarters of the Transnistrian parliament
And then there's the smuggling. Once our bus crawled across the Transnistrian border and my documents were checked several times over, a small blue hatchback pulled up beside us, and the driver opened up our bus’s trunk and started pulling out cartons of fake Marlboros. “This happens every time,” said Vlad, my guide and fixer. Millions of counterfeit brand-name smokes get smuggled from Moldova into Transnistria, then down to the Black Sea via the Ukrainian city of Odessa.
But cigarettes are just the tip of the iceberg—human beings are trafficked along the same route by the thousands, and in 2011 Moldovan officials arrested six people, including two Transnistrians, for selling 2.2 pounds of enriched uranium to undercover cops posing as North African outlaws. (There was a similar incident in 2012.) There's an estimated 30,000 tons of Soviet-era conventional munitions hidden within the region’s borders, and chances are a lot of that stuff is for sale.
“No one needs that sort of weaponry,” Moldova's prime minister, Iurie Leanca, told me in Chisinau. “Of course it concerns us… Of course it makes us worried about what the future might hold.”
Since Crimea became part of Russia, Leanca hasn't heard from Yevgeny Shevchuk, Transnistria's president, despite repeated attempts to contact him. “It's in everyone's interest to keep stability, and not to allow the situation to degenerate,” he said. “We don't need that.”
That sentiment wasn’t shared by ordinary people I spoke to in Tiraspol. At a covered market in the center of town I met Lyubov, a 60-something woman from Ukraine who sells apples she imports from the Caucasus. Kiev's Euromaidan revolution was “the wrong way to do it,” she told me. She also believed that the Ukrainian revolutionaries were mainly right-wing nationalists, a narrative advanced by the Russian media. “We want Russia to come here and protect us from the fascists.” She seemed concerned that I’m an American. “We're at war with them,” she said, while her husband looked anxiously from side to side.
In a small park crammed with Russian Orthodox monuments I spoke to Konstantin, who was assisting in the construction of a brick church. He told me he feels like Transnistria is “trapped in jail” between Moldova and Ukraine, and that Russian occupation would give him more freedom.
But it's hard to get a straight answer in a place the watchdog group Freedom House describes succinctly as “not free.” When I met 58-year-old Fyodor Nikolaevic on the bus from Chisinau and asked to talk to him, he twisted his black handlebar moustache and looked about nervously. He used to dream of being a host on television, but today he runs a bus company that transports people between Moldova, Transnistria, and his home country of Ukraine. He's been in Tiraspol meeting business partners and arranging new routes; according to him, not everyone is eager for Russian rule. “They're sitting and waiting to see what happens,” he said. “But some of them really want to get into the European Union.” Fyodor himself is skeptical of an alliance with the West, especially in light of all the economic problems that have hit the EU. “Why would we want to go to Europe?” he asked. “The Greeks are broke, and even the Bulgarians don't want to do it any more.”
Though Transnistria's government and many of its people may want to become Russia’s latest acquisition, the Kremlin isn't paying attention, or at least not outwardly—officially, Moscow doesn't even recognize Transnistria's independence from Moldova.
After a few hours of walking around talking to people, Vlad grabbed me by the shoulder. Time to go. The people have realized that I'm a journalist, not an innocent tourist, and we could be in a lot of trouble if we don't reach the border. The state security apparatus has stepped its game up after Ukraine's “fascist” coup; Transnistria even claims to have shot down a spy drone from Kiev this week. Foreign journalists asking about how much people here like the authorities are decidedly not welcome.
A nearly empty road in Transnistria
As we're leaving we meet a young Moldovan soldier, Vasili, in the truck-stop town of Bendery. He works with the Russians as part of Transnistria's tripartite military force, and he says they're too preoccupied with Crimea to think about conflict in Transnistria. “Everything is calm,” he says, smiling.
But everything isn't calm. Most pundits and most of the locals expect Russia to continue its push west. And while that push won't likely reach Transnistria for a while, the consensus in Chisinau—and Tiraspol—is that it's only a matter of time. As Fyodor bluntly put it, “We were expecting the Russians to take Crimea. Soon Ukraine will be cut in half; it's only a matter of time. Crimea, Odessa. They won't take Transnistria yet, though. Later.”
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SnobEu son SYRACUSE, NY!
As orixes do tiramisú son incertas: hai que di que se inventou nun burdel para “animar” aos clientes, outros din que se lles daba ás mulleres que acababan de parir, ou aos mariñeiros de cea, cando chegaban de traballar. “Tira mi su” vén sendo algo así como “levantáme” en italiano, así que ten sentido para todas esas explicacións. O que si é seguro é que se trata dun postre moderno, dos anos 60, que se orixinou no Veneto e o Piamonte, malia que xa está estendido por toda Italia e máis aló!
Unha receita clásica, que se pon de moda cada certo tempo e que é moi doado facer na casa. E ademáis, non cómpre forno! Como é unha receita tan popular cada casa ten as súas versións. Esta é unha mestura entre un par de recomendacións de amigos italianos e os consellos deste artigo.
O de montar as claras é para que quede máis lixeiro, e se queredes que saia aínda máis leve, non engadades as xemas. Tamén podedes quitar o alcol, ou a pel relada do limón. O caso é ir probando ata que deades ca versión perfecta para vós!
Ingredientes (para 6- 8 racións)
400 gr. de queixo mascarpone
4 ovos
200 gr de biscoitos tipo savoiardi – tamén chamados de ovo, ou lady fingers por algunhas marcas
200 ml de café recén feito
75 gr. de azucre
2 culleres de ron dourado – tamén vai ben o viño de Porto
Cacao en po sen azucre, ao gusto de cada un
Un belisco de sal
Un chisco de pel relada de limón ou de laranxa – opcional
Utensilios: molde pouco fondo (mellor se é transparente), batidora de variñas.
Coñecedes máis versións do tiramisú? Contádeo nos comentarios!
El cambio de hora en Galicia solo ahorra 1,2 millones en energíaOs reloxos deberán adiantarse unha hora esta próxima madrugada -ás 2 serán as 3- unha medida que reverte en 300 millóns de euros de aforro en España e que algunhas organizacións cren insuficiente e incluso contraditoria con outras actuacións […]
O cambio de hora en Galicia só aforra 1,2 millóns en enerxía en GCiencia.
Photo by Isabelle Andarakis
Porn isn't a hard sell. In fact, it's pretty much completely self-sustaining, in that there aren't many other avenues you take when you're planning to spend some time with yourself. And if you can think of anything else, there's probably already porn of it.
It is a little harder to actually advertise it on posters and billboards, though, which is presumably why PornHub is running an online competition for a new creative director, getting the entire internet to pitch concepts for adverts at them, and hiring whoever submitted the best one. At the moment, it's a bit of a mix between some good ideas and a dumping ground for visual puns involving hot dogs and donuts.
I wanted to know how people in a half mile radius of me would handle the position of creative director at a big porn website, so I walked around and asked some of them.
VICE: How can porn be improved?
Will, 27: I don’t think there's enough loving porn. There's a lot of violent porn and porn that people aren’t having a lot of fun with. God, I don’t know—that sounds pathetic. But Jesus, there is a sadness that fills my heart when I see the sadness in everyone’s eyes.
Why do you think they look so sad?
Maybe that's purely my judgement. I guess the position they're put in? But I don't know. I’ve never shot porn. I’ve never been in that position. Maybe they feel completely empowered and happy to be where they are, but often I don’t get that impression.
So how would you combat that?
Maybe support amateurs. Get amateur couples who enjoy filming one another and like sharing that with people. But there's so much porn. It'll be difficult to make a real change, since there's a niche for everything as much as there's a market for everything. As much as I might want to see a loving couple make love beautifully, there will be someone who wants to see a girl fisted by eight guys.
That's a very valid point. Are there any niches that you would champion if you were to, say, take control of a porn website?
I've certainly never gone online and been like, Why can't I find this thing? Because it's remarkable what you can find. I’ve certainly gone online and thought, How the fuck is someone into this thing? I guess I’d like to see less weird stuff—no donkeys, no one getting upset or hurt. I'll ask myself some questions about it tonight.
How can porn for women be improved?
Lucy, 19: I think it should portray more accurate sexual relationships, and not some kind of warped view of what it should be like in the bedroom.
Can you give me an example?
I suppose violence. I think that too much violent pornography could lead to that being taken back to the bedroom and end up in people having quite unrealistic views of sex. Also, I think that it can affect you much more if you're exposed to pornography from a young age. You grow up with a different view of relationships from what they actually are.
If you were the new creative director of a big porn site, what kind of videos would you focus on?
I don’t know—I’ve never really thought about it before. I think maybe something where women aren’t in such a demeaning position. Pornography is probably often aimed much more towards men. But I don’t know—I’m not really a pro.
You're the new creative director of a huge porn site. What's your first move?
John, 27: It’s a difficult question to answer, but I would continue doing what's going on now and find ways to make it even better. I'd help the business grow using social media.
That's a sensible enough answer. What about the content?
I’m not a regular user. I don't watch porn that often.
OK. Anything you're not a big fan of?
Not particularly. There's usually a lot of advertising, but I understand that's how it's funded and stuff.
Yeah. How about introducing new stuff? Are there any niches that you feel don't get enough exposure?
Any niches? No, I think the internet covers most things.
What would you change about porn?
Jack, 24: Well, a lot of gay porn—and I'm sure other porn—is quite violent. A lot of people are into that stuff. I personally don't like it at all. It gets a bit graphic with all the fists and bums and stuff like that. I’d never watch that.
So what changes would you make as the new creative director of a porn website?
Probably less of that and less of the old people and pooing. I don’t know why that ever became a thing to sexually arouse anyone.
So you'd introduce a maximum age limit for performers?
Yeah, definitely. Old sweaty balls being thrown around the set is just so horrible to watch. Even if you just catch it at the side of the screen, it's a big turn off.
What are your personal porn watching habits?
I watch it alone. I’ve watched it maybe once or twice with somebody else. But yeah, usually very much alone.
Say you became the new creative director of a porn website, what would you do?
Anonymous: Make it safer for women. Get reputable companies who use reputable models, and you don’t get any exploitation or dodgy dealings. I don’t know whether porn companies or producers would have to get some sort of accreditation. Is the industry regulated by authorities? Can the regulation be improved?
That's a good question. What about the more consumery stuff, rather than actually making porn?
Are we talking hardcore porn of softcore porn?
Whatever you want.
I guess there's the argument: Should young people be exposed to pornography? And if you paid for porn, would it not be better if they gave the user a little sneak preview so you could actually see whether it's the type of porn you'd actually like? There's one porn site that's actually free. You can access free videos.
I think there's a lot of those kinds of sites.
Well, that obviously negates the need to pay for it. So maybe there's a lot of porn providers out there who are being screwed by the free providers.
You land a job as the new creative director of a porn site. What do you spend your first day doing?
Daniel, 25: The biggest problem with most porn is that it's very unrealistic, and a lot of young people get completely the wrong idea about what's in store for them, which is usually difficult and awkward and clumsy, initially. I like stuff that is real, that isn’t staged. The plumber who ends up having sex with every woman in the house is ridiculous. Those terribly acted storylines leave me completely cold. If there's a new director coming in, it’s difficult, because you can’t exactly say, "Get better actors," because that's not the point. And I’m an actor.
So what can you do? How would you improve porn for your consumers?
Place more emphasis on what comes before it. Those things are usually more exciting, just from my own sexual experience. Anything that comes before it is the real excitement, and anything after that is obviously fantastic. Make people invest in the romance of it all, I suppose. There's little romance in porn. There are a few things, like couples on their wedding nights, but it’s all bullshit. I'd try to make the people a little more realistic. Just a dude and a woman, rather than steroidy, veiny monsters.
Outro dos galegos detidos tras a manifestación das Marchas da Dignidade denuncia o trato da Policía e asegura que foi arrestado sen motivo mentres abandonaba a mobilización ao virar "nun ambiente que xa non era pacífico".
