Snob

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1. Baseball Cap

I haven’t washed my hair in a week.

2. Tights

I haven’t shaved my legs in a month.

3. Hockey Jersey

I haven’t eaten a vegetable in a decade.

4. Fedora

I haven’t said anything interesting in my life.

5. Crocs

I’m willing to talk about why sandals should be antimicrobial.

6. Flip Flops

I WANT YOU TO LOOK AT MY FEET. LOOK AT THEM!

7. KONY 2012 T-Shirt

I have a limited grasp of current events.

8. Livestrong Bracelet

I have no grasp of current events.

9. College Sweatshirt

I am from the Midwest.

10. Mesh Shirt

I have never even heard of the Midwest.

11. Threadless T-Shirt

I have an OkCupid profile, and I respond to messages “often.”

12. Rolling Stones T-Shirt

I own a record player, and I don’t know how to use it.

13. Black Plastic-Rimmed Glasses

My eyesight is fine.

14. Pink Polo Shirt

My eyesight is highly impaired.

15. Ascot

I’m Chuck Bass.

16. Fingerless Gloves

I’m Kid Vid from the Burger King Kids Club.

17. Spirit Hood

I own a $400 vaporizer.

18. Jeggings

I own a Snuggie.

19. Cargo Pants

I’m packing Blow Pops.

20. No Pants

I’m happy.

More sexy fails

 

Thanks sg

Look around any toy store and you'll see hundreds of Disney characters sold as action figures and stuffed toys, so it's quaint to think that there was actually a time when Disney had trouble selling stuff. But there was.

Back in 2000, Disney's consumer products division was overstretched and underfocused, according to Peggy Orenstein in her 2006 New York Times article "What's Wrong with Cinderella?"

Disney had mistakenly triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for their core characters, and sales were dropping as much as 30 percent a year. Adding to their problem was the 1998 "A Bug's Life" movie had trouble translating to merchandising opportunities. "What child want[ed] to snuggle up with an ant?," wrote Orenstein.

A new Disney executive named Andy Mooney, who came over from Nike, was checking out his first "Disney on Ice" show in Phoenix, when he came to a solution that would save Disney from its woes.

"Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses," Mooney told Orenstein, "They weren't even Disney products. They were generic princess products they'd appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, 'O.K., let's establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they're doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.'"

Mooney and his team picked Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan, and Pocahontas to be in the new Disney Princess line. It was the first time that Disney marketed characters separately from a movie release, and it was also the first time that different characters from different movies were lumped together.

Orenstein wrote that to "ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual 'mythologies,' the princesses never make eye contact when they're grouped: each stare[d] off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others' presence."

What Mooney did worked: As of 2006, there were 25,000 Disney Princess items. Sales shot up from $300 million in 2001 to over $3 billion globally. And to this day, no Disney princess has ever looked at one other's eyes when they're displayed together as a group.

Si tuviéramos que seleccionar un ingrediente que aparece en varias de las gastronomías más importantes del mundo sería, a mi punto de vista, el cilantro. Esta hierba aromática, cuyo nombre científico es Coriandrum sativum, se puede encontrar tanto en la gastronomía mexicana como en la china o la vietnamita, entre muchas otras.

Para algunos especialistas el cilantro ha llegado a ser una de las hierba más usada en el mundo.

El cilantro posee algunas propiedades benéficas para la salud tales como, sus niveles de aceites esenciales, su efecto antioxidante así como grandes cantidades de vitaminas A, B, C y K. También posee un alto nivel de minerales como el potasio, el calcio y el magnesio.

En algunas culturas el cilandro es considerado con una planta medicinal. Este es el caso en China, por ejemplo, dónde se le utiliza para tratar malestares estomacales.

En la cocina se le usa para dar los toques finales a muchos platillos como sopas asiáticas o se le puede usar como ingrediente principal como en la crema de cilantro o el mousse de cilantro, entre otros.

Directo al Paladar| El Chicharrón de cerdo

Directo al Paladar| Los Huauzontles

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La noticia El cilantro, sus usos y propiedades fue publicada originalmente en Directo al Paladar México por Philippe Saez.

T-Bone Burnett struck folk music gold with the score for the Coen brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000, and now he’s teamed with the Coens once again for their latest flick, Inside Llewyn Davis.
Produced by Burnett, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen, with Marcus Mumford as its associate producer, the album features 12 new recordings created especially for the film and soundtrack.
Also included is a never-before-released recording of Bob Dylan performing his song “Farewell,” which was originally recorded during the sessions for his album The Times They Are A-Changin’ and is available exclusively on this soundtrack.
Timberlake, who co-stars in the film, appears on the three tracks, while Mumford appears on two.

320 kbps | 100 MB | UL | CL | MC ** FLAC

The film features Oscar Isaac in the title role as a songwriter in New York’s early ’60s folk scene. It also features Carey Mulligan and John Goodman, and is due to arrive in theatres on December 6.

1. Oscar Isaac – “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”
2. Marcus Mumford & Oscar Isaac – “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)”
3. Stark Sands with Punch Brothers – “The Last Thing on My Mind”
4. Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan and Stark Sands – “Five Hundred Miles”
5. Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver – “Please Mr. Kennedy”
6. Oscar Isaac – “Green, Green Rocky Road”
7. Oscar Isaac – “The Death of Queen Jane”
8. John Cohen with The Down Hill Strugglers – “The Roving Gambler”
9. Oscar Isaac with Punch Brothers – “The Shoals of Herring”
10. Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Marcus Mumford, Justin Timberlake, Gabe Witcher – “The Auld Triangle”
11. Nancy Blake – “The Storms Are on the Ocean”
12. Oscar Isaac – “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)”
13. Bob Dylan – “Farewell”
14. Dave Van Ronk – “Green, Green Rocky Road”

'I like the rhythm and intent of "pathetic prehistoric rage-filled inbred assclown," but that's a lot to ask of a hashtag.' Joss Whedon talks about the word feminist at an Equality Now dinner.

Some MDMA (Photo via)

MDMA has caused something of a stir here in the US recently. Ever since Miley bragged about "dancing with molly," like one of those tedious nerds who brags about ripping bongs for breakfast, columnists have had a field day analyzing why we've all fallen in love with MDMA. And policy makers, concerned after a spate of MDMA-related fatalities hit the headlines, have also started to take notice.

As you might expect, not everyone has taken a deep breath, put things into perspective, and reacted in a calm, rational manner. My alma mater, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has canceled all EDM shows on campus. They don’t want to deal with the negative headlines and potential lawsuits that come hand-in-hand with a molly overdose. Our federal lawmakers even managed to notice the drug as they staged their drawn out game of financial and political brinksmanship.

Crusty old deans and decrepit politicians fretting about whatever drugs the youth are into is no surprise, but I was a little concerned at the attitude of a drug dealer we’ll call "Tommy" I met in a Boston bar and his thoughts on what he’s selling. Despite the fact that he pushes significant amounts of narcotics, has women offer him blowjobs in exchange for coke, and has to say "no" to people who just want to give him their actual pay checks and stolen Playstations for his products, Tommy sounded as conservative as the politicians when it came to Molly.

"I wouldn’t take it because I have no idea what’s in there. I think, if you take this stuff, you’re insane, as far as I’m concerned," he said in between sips of lemonade.

Image of Pretty Lights, one of the acts that UMass Amherst canceled, by Alex Hertel. (Photo via)

Drug policy experts say the overdoses are tied to the MDMA being cut with synthetic drugs and sold as the real thing. Illegal drugs getting cut with something else you'd never knowingly put inside your body is nothing new, but some are speculating that molly demand is outstripping supply and drug manufacturers are diluting the product with synthetic cathinones—the stimulant that's most often associated with mephedrone—to meet the demand. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), meanwhile, is saying that it has seized less MDMA and ecstasy in recent years.

So why is there an increased demand? Tommy points to rappers like French Montana and Lil Wayne glorifying the drug in their songs, which would be laughably simplistic, if it wasn’t the best explanation anyone has offered to date. Others point to the increased nationwide interest in EDM. Anecdotally, Tommy says he has noticed a significant increase in demand during the last two years; some of his customers who previously preferred cocaine now only buy molly. Being an illicit drug, MDMA use is nearly impossible to document empirically, but many drug policy experts agree with Tommy’s assessment: demand is up and no one (or no one in a position to tell) is quite sure what's in the product being marketed as molly.

Stefanie Jones, the event manager at the US-based Drug Policy Alliance, told me, "I think that’s why we’re seeing more negative outcomes, more overdoses, because if you have molly that is being cut with these adulterants, it’s going to exacerbate some of the effects that are less common with pure MDMA."

"Do I think new research chemicals play a role [in the recent overdoses]? Probably, yes. They tend to be more harmful," says Missi Wooldridge, executive director of Dance Safe, a non-profit organization that promotes safety in the EDM community by offering drug testing kits at concerts, among other initiatives.

So where does that leave us? Some progressive drug policy experts say that the US government could benefit from looking at New Zealand, where the Parliament has just passed a law that tests all synthetic drugs. Ross Bell, executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, told me that manufacturers of synthetic drugs in his country can now submit to a series of tests, comparable to pharmaceutical trials. If the product is deemed safe for consumption, manufacturers can sell it on the open market. (Sales to minors are illegal under the new legislation.)

But this is America. We don’t really do level-headedness when it comes to reacting to drug trends. The federal government is nowhere near legalizing MDMA, never mind a bunch of newfangled research chemicals that archaic senators like Orrin Hatch have never heard of. So it's hard to see how the New Zealand model would work politically or be applicable to the current problem of molly being cut with particularly harmful adulterants.

Some more MDMA, this time next to a fun key, presumably to help take the MDMA. (Photo via)

Congress already attempted to outlaw some synthetic drugs last year. But manufacturers and traffickers simply changed the chemical make-up of the newly illegal drugs to circumvent the law, creating drugs that were facsimiles of ecstasy, coke, and acid, among others.

Nevertheless, we’ll likely see an escalation in the War on Drugs to the endless chagrin of drug policy experts. The authorities could go even further and try and criminalize the culture in a broader sense. Look at what happened to the rave scene in the country in the early half of the last decade, when law enforcement cracked down on ecstasy sales and possession. Arrests increased, sentencing terms for ecstasy crimes were lengthened, and so-called crack house laws were repurposed so that promoters and organizers of raves and warehouse parties could be treated as if they were operating crack houses, meaning that they are legally responsible if someone overdoses in their venue. That changed the electronic music scene in the US considerably, says Jones—licensed raves became unlicensed house parties, festivals became much more prevalent and important. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she says.

Jones thinks there will be an attempt at prohibition tactics, but the government may have an even harder time breaking the link between drugs and EDM culture than they did ten years ago. Thanks to promoters becoming more savvy and their business models becoming more complex, it's made it more difficult for law enforcement to find them legally culpable for drug-related crimes that take place at venues.

Now, Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, wants to establish an inter-agency committee of scientists to stay on top of the new synthetic drugs and maintain a list of which drugs should be considered illegal. The legislation would then make it illegal to import the substances on the list for human consumption.

Making more drugs illegal, however, is not the answer, according to Wooldridge. “The reason people are coming up with new chemicals is because the ones we know about are illegal,” she says. “We should regulate for health and safety. Everyone should know the dosages, know the risks. Decriminalize what we have—the ones we know about. And all the funding we have in this drug war should go into researching and finding out the best practices in health, prevention, treatment, and recovery.”

Follow Danny on Twitter: @DMacCash

More fun with drugs:

Internet Psychonauts Try All the Drugs You Don't Want to Try

Which is the Coolest Drug?

The Future of Drugs

You say church, I say kerk. You say pineapple, I say ananas. You say cucumber, I say komkommer. U.S. playwright Rita Mae Brown said: 'Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.'

That quote comes to mind looking at these fascinating European etymology maps of various commons words posted by reddit user sp07, which provide a kind of cultural commentary on Europe.

Ignoro si era algo incluido en los planes de desarrollo. En realidad, no lo creo, porque los tecnócratas, con sus vínculos opusdeístas, no hubiesen osado tanto, pero parece inevitable que en la España tardofranquista surgiese algo como El Palmar de Troya. Parece una especie de ley histórica que, cuando un país alcanza una fase relativamente avanzada del capitalismo, fabrica religiones como un artículo más de consumo. Es por eso que en máximos exponentes del sistema como los USA encontramos fenómenos como la Iglesia de la Cienciología o el reverendo Creflo Augustus Dollar (no, este nombre no es de coña) y que en Corea del Sur tengamos al mesías Moon y sus bodas en formación cerrada. Y es por eso que en un país secundario y en vías de desarrollo a lo más que se pueda llegar sea a un cisma, un cismita más bien; como con la democracia, España no estaría preparada hasta aumentar la renta per cápita. Cada tierra tiene sus tradiciones, y si la iglesia de la Cienciología viene directamente de la ciencia ficción pulp, la iglesia del Palmar de Troya viene directamente de la picaresca.

No me interesan especialmente los inicios de las apariciones de El Palmar, y desde luego hago caso omiso de las tesis ateas que sostienen que las niñas que las tuvieron por primera vez se las inventaron para justificar llegar tarde a casa. Me interesa la llegada al lugar, a eso de los primeros setenta, de los dos fenómenos Manuel y Clemente, empleados de una compañía de seguros, que como tantos españoles de entonces y de ahora, querían mejorar su situación laboral. Estos dos buenos católicos, pareja genuinamente sevillana a la manera del dúo Sacapuntas, desplazaron a los anteriores videntes, sangraron a chorro por estigmas (bueno, esto solo Clemente, pero en todo momento debe hablarse de pareja, según malas lenguas, incluso en el sentido carnal), se enfrentaron a una jerarquía eclesiástica reticente, lograron que un obispo vietnamita (¡un obispo vietnamita, cómo no creer!) reconociese la verdad de las apariciones y les ordenase sacerdotes, y cuando la Iglesia les excomulgó (el hecho de que afirmasen que el Papa Pablo VI estaba drogado por cardenales comunistas no pareció caer bien) tuvieron el gesto torero de erigirse en Iglesia ellos. Con un par. Hasta emprendieron la construcción de una sede mezcla de Vaticano, Pilar de Zaragoza y cortijo. En definitiva, hablamos de todo un ejemplo de emprendedores de la fe.

Luego vinieron los inversores integristas internacionales, la pérdida de la vista por parte de Clemente (sin duda para no ver la iniquidad de la España del destape y las elecciones), su proclamación como Papa, las canonizaciones de Franco, Blas Piñar y don Pelayo, entre otros, y las excomuniones de la familia real española y los espectadores de Jesucristo Superstar, medidas estas últimas por las que manifiesto mi entusiasta adhesión.

Pero conforme avanzaban los ochenta y los noventa, El Palmar conoció tiempos de tribulación. Vinieron, pues es forzoso que empresas como esta, tan contra el mundo y la carne, susciten burlas, canciones y películas carentes de respeto hacía la iglesia de El Palmar y su cabeza. Vinieron situaciones que pusieron a Clemente al borde del martirio, como su visita a Alba de Tormes. Vinieron también tiempos de apuros económicos, lo que en una iglesia con una sorprendente proporción de millonarios entre sus adeptos resulta triste. Vinieron incluso, como fruto de la proverbial ola de erotismo, acusaciones de tocamientos impuros por parte de su Santidad. Parecía que España se adentraba irremediablemente en las aguas procelosas del laicismo materialista. Pero este ingreso en la modernidad, como estamos comprobando, ha resultado falso, y ahora que más que un país en vías de desarrollo hemos logrado ser un país en vías de subdesarrollo, que tenemos emigración, conflictos con Gibraltar y solo nos faltan pertinaces sequías, ahora que los hombres de fe, como el entrañable tocinillo de cielo Juan Manuel de Prada, se sienten con la conciencia turbada por la ideas disolventes del actual Papa de Roma, ahora que hemos vuelto a la misma situación en que se originó El Palmar, debemos satisfacer las necesidades de fe de las masas afligidas con un producto nacional, un producto cien por cien marca España, que contribuya al equilibrio de nuestra balanza comercial espiritual. Y para qué inventar nada, cuando ya tenemos a la iglesia Cristiana Palmariana de los Carmelitas de la Santa Faz, como reza su título oficial.

Clemente murió, y no crucificado en Jerusalén como había profetizado. Manuel también, tras un breve pontificado. Pero El Palmar sigue en pie y me atrevo a augurarle larga vida. Si no es así, será culpa nuestra, será un invento español más al que no se saca partido, como el submarino y el autogiro.

Somehow, Watching Porn Online Just Got Even Easier

"I might be the only person who's experienced both Wigan and, say the Taksim Square occupation in Istanbul this year, so this is hard to verify: but I think these very different atmospheres shared something in common. There was something overtly rebellious and subconsciously political about Wigan. Like with a riot, or an occupation, you could tell immediately, through eye contact, who was feeling the buzz.
What we were doing, back then, was rewriting the rules of being white and working class. We knew exactly what it meant to dance to black music in the era of the National Front and the racist standup comedian. Ours was a rebellion against pub culture, shit music and leery sexist nightclubs. Our weapon was obscure vinyl, made by black kids nobody had ever heard of." -- Paul Mason describes the importance of Northern Soul.

This article is a companion to the Northern Soul - Keep the Faith documentary Paul Mason also did for the BBC's culture show, in which he revealed himself to be a northern soul fan of long standing, having regularly gone to the Wigan Casino (previously) back in the day.

Northern soul is currently undergoing yet another revival, much helped by a new Elaine Constantine feature film about the scene, which features lots of lovingly shot dance scenes.

Ron and Scott Asheton were the nucleus of the Stooges, the greatest fucking punk band in the world. Having attended high school with Iggy Pop (né James Osterberg), the Asheton brothers were hoodlum types who attracted other punks with their erratic, wild behavior. Iggy said of the Ashetons, “These guys were the laziest delinquent sorts of pig slobs ever born. Really spoiled rotten and babied by their mother. [Their] dad had died, so they didn’t have much discipline at home.”

Ron was the lead guitarist, his brother Scott was on drums, and Dave Alexander was the bassist. And, of course, Iggy was the front man and lead singer of the Stooges. That was the original lineup, and they released two amazing albums, the Stooges and Funhouse, before breaking up the first time.

When David Bowie rescued Iggy’s career in 1972, the band was reformed with James Williamson on lead guitar and Ron on bass—Dave Alexander was incapacitated by alcohol and died in 1975. Scott Asheton came back on drums and Scott Thurston was added on keyboards and electric piano. Their third album, Raw Power, was the most magnificent punk-rock record ever recorded, and remains the greatest lesson on how rock ’n’ roll ought to be played.

Unfortunately, Ron Asheton died of a heart attack and was discovered by friends on the first day of 2009. He was the best guitarist the punk world had ever seen. He was a great guy, with tons of stories. We sat down for ten hours one night in the basement of his mom’s house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the Stooges were formed in 1967.

BIRTH OF THE STOOGES

Iggy lived in a trailer park on Carpenter Road, on the fringes of Ann Arbor. His father and mother were both schoolteachers, but later his mom became a housewife. I always really liked his parents.

We would drive over there when the parents weren’t home, when they were both teaching school. One time we went over to the trailer park to use the common-area clothes dryer to dry a bunch of pot. We had a great big laundry bag with a few pounds of pot in it, and it was tumbling around the dryer. Well, we forgot about it and Iggy's father came home unannounced and went, “What's that smell?” So we're outside, squeezing the laundry bag of pot through the window of his room.

I think Iggy was attracted to Dave Alexander and my brother, Scotty, because they were stone punks. They'd just hang out in front of Discount Records in big packs of guys, cruising, looking at girls, and spitting on cars.

My brother was just kind of a thug and Dave was the first guy I knew who was drunk throughout high school. I wasn't so much a stone punk or a kinda hoodlum guy, like those guys. I was just the weird guy, you know? I was the first guy in high school to get kicked out for long hair.

It was Michael Erlewine who gave Iggy Pop his name. His real name is Jim Osterberg. In high school he was the drummer in this band, the Iguanas, and they used to joke about him. Michael Erlewine used to call him Ignacious. Then it got simplified to Iggy.

They had Iggy up on a drum riser—he was so high up there, he couldn’t even hear the band. Iggy was kind of a clown and the Iguanas played surfer-ballad kinda stuff. Iggy was still a straight guy then, he didn't smoke cigarettes, he didn't get high, he didn't drink alcohol, and he couldn't drive a car. I don't think he can drive a car now, actually. While he was in high school, he totaled three cars because he just couldn’t drive.

After high school, Iggy went to the University of Michigan, but he wound up quitting after six months 'cause he didn't like it. I wound up going through night school, but I hated it and quit, too.  So Iggy decided he was be a blues drummer and that Sam Lay, of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was gonna be his mentor. So he went to Chicago and stayed with him. That was the beginning of deciding, Well, why don't we start a band?

When he got back to Ann Arbor, Iggy would take the bus from the trailer park to our house to rehearse. He'd get here about 11 o’clock in the morning to wake us up. We'd get up and make some tea. Then smoke some joints and maybe spend an hour just bullshitting. Then we’d rehearse.

I'd fixed up the basement, put a bunch of Christmas lights around the rafters. It's an unfinished basement, but I put a Persian rug down and we had incense, so I tried to make the basement more comfortable.

In order to get some money to buy an organ, Iggy’s mother said, "I'll buy the organ for you, if you cut your hair."

So Iggy got what I called a “Raymond Burr haircut.” Raymond Burr plays the mentally retarded, insane guy with Natalie Wood in A Cry in the Night. Burr’s haircut was just these teeny, little bangs and almost a crew cut kind of thing. For some reason Iggy got that haircut and wound up wearing these baggy white pants, like a coverall.

That went on for a long time, Iggy would take the bus over to our house and we’d rehearse. Then my mother would come home, blink the lights, and say, "Time to stop."

So we'd stop at five, then Iggy would just take the bus back home.

We did that every day for a long time, but there was still no singing. When it came closer to the time of starting to play jobs, like the Grande Ballroom, I said, "Hey let's just get Dave Alexander to play the bass, I'll pick up the guitar and my brother will play whatever weird drums we got for him."

That was the first time Iggy wasn't encumbered by an instrument, at our first show. And we had invented some new instruments. I came up with a blender with a little bit of water in it and put a mic right down in it and just turned it on and let that be the whole sound. Then we had a washboard with contact mics and Iggy would put on golf shoes and just kinda shuffle around on it. That made a neat sound.

Then we had 50-gallon oil drums that my brother played. We rigged up hammers as the beaters, but it would break after two minutes, so that was always a problem. I also borrowed my ma's vacuum cleaner, which made a jet-engine sound. It made a noise like a killer tornado or hurricane or something.

The first time we played at the Grande Ballroom, the audience was utterly stunned. They were like, “Huh?” There was actually dead silence. It was like, What the fuck was that?

THE FIRST RECORD

I remember meeting Danny Fields. He was working at Elektra Records at the time and he came to Detroit to check out the MC5. We were opening for them. After the show, we kinda filtered back to our dressing room, and in walks Danny in a leather jacket and shades. He looked at the whole room and said, "How would you like to be stars?" 

Danny introduced himself, and then he took Iggy aside and kinda explained what the situation was. So Danny went back to Jac Holzman, the president of Elecktra Records and said, "Trust me, sign these guys, take my word for it; it's the best deal Elektra ever got!”

So we signed for $5,000 and then a couple weeks later, Jac Holzman and his partner, Bill Harvey, came with Danny to Ann Arbor and we played this place called the Fifth Dimension. I think we had three songs, and one of them was “I'm sick.”

Jac asked, "Well, you guys got enough material to do an album, right?" We said yes when we didn't, so we just busted our asses, and I came up with the riff to “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

When we went to New York to record the first Stooges album, Elecktra asked us again, "You’ve got more stuff, don't you?"

We said, "Oh sure!"

So I went back to the hotel and in one hour came up with “Little Doll,” “Not Right,” and “Real Cool Time.” Once I had the music, Iggy came down and listened to it, and then he went up and came up with the lyrics. The next night we rehearsed one time and then we went and recorded each song in one take.

We'd never been in the studio before, and we set up our Marshall Stacks and put the volume on ten. So we started out, and John Cale, our producer, said, "Oh no, this is not the way!" But we couldn't play unless it was high volume, we didn't have enough expertise on our instruments. It was all power chords, and the only way we could get it done was to play big and loud.

Cale kept trying to tell us what to do and being the stubborn youth that we were, we had a sit-down strike. We just put our instruments down and went in one of the sound booths and just started smoking hash. We just said, “Fuck it,” and he kept trying to talk to us and talk to us. He tried to tell us about recording. Cale said, “You can't do this with these big amps and stuff that just doesn't work, you can't record with your amps set to ten!”

So our compromise was, "OK, I'll put it on nine..." Finally Cale said, "Fuck it," and went with it.

IGGY’S COCK

Iggy would fucking whip his cock out at the drop of a dime. It got real boring. I remember sitting in hotel rooms, even before the Stooges were signed. Some girls were with us, and Iggy would whip it out, and I was going, “Oh, just put it away!” Iggy would bring girls home after a gig and they’d come downstairs crying, because he just banged 'em and said, “Get out!”

Even though he had lots of girlfriends and stuff, Iggy didn't actually fuck a girl until we had our first band house. I think he was nineteen. And just to show that it wasn't just Iggy, that was the same for me, too.

I remember Iggy was so jazzed. He came back to the house without his bicycle. He'd been in such a daze from fucking that he biked head on into a car. He flew over the top of the car and landed on his feet, but it wrecked the bike. So he came back to the house with his story about getting laid for the first time.

His dick got him into trouble a few times. We were playing this show somewhere, to a kind of a young crowd, and they had this old security guard there. Iggy was wearing his brown vinyl, Jim Morrison-type pants with no shirt. So we're just playing and it was totally innocent and by accident the whole crotch of his pants ripped out.

So he left the stage and came back wearing a towel. I guess his dick was exposed a little bit. As luck would have it, one of the girls in the audience saw it. Her father happened to be a state trooper, and the post was just down the street. She ran to her father and said, “Some guy showed his dick!”

So the state trooper told the old security guard, I guess they called the old dude and said, “Keep him there until we arrive!”

The old dude comes to me and says, “Man, you guys better get that guy outta here—the cops are coming for him!”

So I go up to the dressing room and tell Iggy, and he splits. I'm sitting up in the dressing room with some band, we wanted to smoke dope and I thought nothing was gonna happen, so I was like, “Put the dope out…”

Next thing I know the door flies open and there’s the state police with their guns drawn, and they’re looking for Iggy.

I really didn't know where went, so I said, "He left, sir, and I really don't know where he is," which was the truth.

So the cop goes, “You’re all under arrest until we find that guy!” I would’ve told them where he was at that point, but Iggy got caught anyway. He was in the trunk of a car, hiding. When he tried to make his escape by getting out of the trunk and going to get into another car, the cops got him. 

Iggy was in jail overnight. I called up his father and his parents bailed him out the next day.

So his big dick didn’t always work on his favor.

RAW POWER

One day in 1972 I got a call from Iggy, and it was perfect Iggy, 'cause he said, “Well we auditioned a hundred bass players and drummers and we can't find anybody good, so do you guys wanna come over to London and play on the new album?"

My first thought was, “Yeah, thanks a lot, asshole.”

I was pissed off for like five seconds, but, of course, I went, "Yeah, sure man, yeah, we wanna go to London…"

James Williamson and Iggy had been there for a while, they kinda hung out with T. Rex and they were partying—but when my brother, Scotty and I got there, we pretty much got down to business. I'm a night person, so Iggy said, "Well, when shall we rehearse?"

I went, “We should do it just like the Pretty Things song, midnight to six.”

So midnight to six in the morning, every night, we rehearsed. We were very regimented; we worked and practiced our butts off. I had a great time. It was mostly working, but occasionally I could slip away to the Imperial War Museum. I also went to this great restaurant, the Bagdad House, right there on Fulham Road. I met a girl who worked there who was there the night Jimi Hendrix died. She told this great Stones story about how she closed the bottom of the restaurant for the Stones and the Beatles—and she started doing it for us—closing the bottom of the restaurant. It was just cushions and low tables, and I’d sit there and get fucked up on free bottles of wine. She’d always say, “Oh, let me get you another bottle of wine!

It was really cool.

The first time I met David Bowie was the first day I arrived in London to work on the Raw Power album. Bowie was drunk, and he brought two Jamaican girls with identical, carrot-top David Bowie hairdos with him. They went down the basement to the kitchen, or the dining room area, and drank wine and stuff, and I didn't really participate a bunch with them.

Then Bowie got kinda disorientated in the house. I showed him the front door, and he grabbed my ass and kissed me.

I went to coldcock him, but then I thought, Huh? Whoa, it’s David Bowie!

So I didn't do it, but then he didn't really want to talk to us anymore.

When Bowie was rehearsing for his show at the Rainbow, we went to the rehearsal. We were watching these guys get ready for their first, big Spider from Mars show. So we were at the show and we'd gotten prime seats and he was playing, and the place was packed, and my brother and me were going, "Ah, we already seen this shit, let's go get a beer!"

We went to the bar, and there was Lou Reed. He was drunk and on pills, so he gave us each a Mandrax. The next day I got a phone call to come down to the Main Man office. Bowie’s manager Tony chewed me out for getting up in the middle of David’s show and walking out. He was furious.

I was like, “Fuck you, man. I mean every seat was full, and I just didn't wanna be there!”

But when we went over to London to work with Bowie, it was a good situation. It was all top-notch stuff. We had a muse house with four stories and a driver. Main Man, at that time, was just top notch.

I must say, Bowie helped Iggy every step of the way. I don’t know how many fucking times Bowie got him deals. If it wasn't for Bowie, Iggy would be dead. The only reason Iggy is playing music today is because of Bowie. I mean, Bowie admired Iggy—and in a way, he wanted to be like him.

When we were in England, working on the album, Vietnam was still going on, and I used to watch the news every night and they always used to say, “Search and destroy,” when they were referring to some mission in Vietnam. I thought that was really cool.

Iggy was always quick to pick up on stuff. He left the house and went to the hotel and came back with the song. James Williamson wrote the music and Iggy did the lyrics. Basically, James used standard Stooge stuff that I taught him. I gave him the Stooge style. He had more of a Stones-y, bluesy kind of sound, not the Stooge style. He wasn't a better guitar player, but he was just a little bit ahead of me. I gave him my fucking style and he ran with it, especially on “Search and Destroy.”

ANDY AND NICO

John Cale took us over to the Factory to meet Andy Warhol when we were in New York. We’d met him before, sorta. We’d played in this old, burned-out apartment building next to John Sinclair's building that we called the Castle. It was the MC5, Sam Sham and the Pharos, and Bob Seeger, and afterward there was a party at the Castle.

It was me, Dave Alexander, and my brother, Scotty. We were just sitting around talking and then we saw this weird-looking guy with silver hair and sunglasses and a leather jacket. He was just sitting there looking at us and he had a tape recorder and he was taping us. We didn't know he was taping us, so we got up and moved, but he was following us around, and my brother said, "Hope I don't have to hurt this guy."

We didn't know it was Andy Warhol, and that's the first time we ever saw him. We never talked to him, we just kept trying to avoid him and he was following us around everywhere with a tape recorder. Someone said later, "It’s good thing one of you guys didn't hit him or something man, 'cause that was Andy Warhol!”

The Factory was all tin foil, that's all I remember, it was all tin foil and kinda grungy. We hardly stayed at all, 'cause we were freaked out. We were just Midwestern kids, and it was way too weird for us.

Once we were at the Scene, one of the better clubs in New York City, and Jimi Hendrix came in. Iggy and I had a beer with Jimi, he was wearing the same outfit he wore on the “Are You Experienced?” album. Iggy was speeded out, ya know, so after we had a beer with Jimi, Iggy starts walking around with Nico.

I'm sitting at the table, snickering 'cause she's leading him around like her kid. Nico’s so tall and Iggy’s short and they're holding hands, it was real lovey-dovey. She wouldn’t let him out of her sight.

Then Iggy comes up to me and says, “Nico's coming to Ann Arbor!”

I was like, “Hey, well cool, we don't care...”

So Nico wound up actually coming to the Stooge Hall and living there for a few months. At first we hardly saw her at all. Iggy had a room in the attic and they stayed up there a bunch and the only time we saw her was when we practiced. We had a big rule that nobody was allowed in the practice room, so we resented her at first, but then she'd make these great curry dishes and just leave it on the table with really great, expensive bottles of wine. Like four or five expensive bottles of wine—and we finally broke down and let her come to our practices. That’s when we actually started to drink as a real part of our lifestyle, because of the great wine Nico turned us on to. So we all got to like her. I think she was kinda shy, and we all felt kinda weird about infringing on their thing.

Iggy never told me he loved Nico or anything. But he was like that, especially then. He’d find a girl, it would last a couple months or so, and then he'd move on to somebody else.

I remember after Nico left, Iggy came downstairs and goes, “Well, I think something’s wrong…”

I was always the kinda the guy that everyone went to for advice about health issues, even with David Bowie and Elton John. So Iggy comes down and says, "Well, something’s wrong, maybe you can tell me what this is?"

Then he whips out his cock and squeezes it and green goo comes out.

I go, "Buddy, you got the clap."

Nico gave Iggy his first dose of the clap. 

 

Back in 1975, Legs McNeil co-founded Punk Magazine, which is part of the reason you even know what that word means. He also wrote Please Kill Me, which basically makes him the Studs Terkel of punk rock. In addition to his work as a columnist for VICE, he continues to write for his personal blog, pleasekillme.com. You should also follow him on Twitter - @Legs__McNeil

Previously - Dee Dee Ramone: Portait of a Punk

A message from the administrator of the new Silk Road

Silk Road has risen from the dead. After the FBI seized the deep web's favorite illegal drug market and arrested its alleged founder Ross Ulbricht last month (for, among other things, ordering a hit through his own website), the online-marketplace-cum-libertarian-movement has found a new home and opened for business today at 11:20 AM EST.

In the wake of the original Silk Road's closure, everything became a little turbulent for its users. First, they had to get used to not getting high-quality, peer-reviewed drugs delivered directly to their sofas. (Though presumably they didn't stop getting high, instead forced back to the "mystery mix" street dealers and surly ex-Balkan war criminals who have spent years filling cities with drugs at night.) Some users were pissed off that they'd lost all the Bitcoin wealth they'd amassed, or that paid-for orders would go undelivered, while small-time dealers freaked out about how they suddenly lacked the funds to pay off debts owed to drug sellers higher up the food chain.

Viable Silk Road replacements have been few and far between. Project Black Flag, one marketplace purportedly created to fill the void, appears to have been a scam. The site's owner recently closed up shop and made off with a load of Bitcoins without sending any product out to customers. Another alternative, Sheep, has been plagued with security worries, with many vendors deciding to hold off until a more stable site is launched.        

The Sheep marketplace, one of the alternatives to Silk Road

Of those who did decide to continue selling their product—be it drugs, guns, assassinations, or tutorials on how to hack ATMs—the well-established site Black Market Reloaded seemed the obvious choice, and its popularity skyrocketed after Silk Road was closed down. However, it has since suffered a bunch of short-term shutdowns, with some seeing this as a signal that the site is on its way out. Mind you, at the time of writing the website boasts more than 6,000 listings for drugs and around 250 for weapons, which doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd see on a marketplace on the verge of shutting down. 

Now, Silk Road is back and promises to provide the same level of reliable service it did before it was busted. The site's new leader—who's taken on the title of Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), the name Ulbricht supposedly used while allegedly helming the site—was kind enough to grant me early access to Silk Road 2.0 ahead of its launch today. As far as I can see, the layout is very similar to the previous version's, allowing users to navigate through lists and subsections of a bunch of stuff you'd be unlikely to find anyone selling on the high street. Currently, the majority of listings are drugs and drug paraphernalia, but we can assume that other illegal products and services will be listed once the site is live and vendors know it can be trusted.  

The drugs section on the new Silk Road

DPR has been stoking anticipation for the relaunch by releasing a number of cryptic clues related to the site's release date, building up a furor of excitement on the forums in the process. One flirty indication was a string of binary that translates to "Feeling Curious?"; another said, in Swedish, "The person who waits for something good never waits too long."

Several other quotes released by DPR and his team—all members of the original Silk Road community—reinforce the site's libertarian leanings. For example, Nelson Mandela's, "There is no such thing as part freedom," and Dwight D. Eisenhower's, "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." Community members have been scrambling over these, pulling their efforts together to decipher what they mean.

Everyone involved, it's fair to assume, is very excited. But regardless of whether the new site can live up to its history as the deep web's go-to marketplace, it's arguably more remarkable that within just a month of the original Silk Road being closed down, another version has come into existence.

The war on drugs is familiar with these patterns of surge and bust. Online, as in the real world, any victory claimed by international trafficking police is usually followed by a setback as the demand for drugs keeps the supply chain kicking along. The most recent example is the phenomenon of legal highs and research chemicals; as soon as one substance is banned, a dozen more are created by slightly modifying the chemical structure to avoid breaking any laws.

All in all, 243 new drugs have appeared since 2009, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. This demonstrates both how futile and dangerous it is to blindly ban any new substance that emerges. It doesn't stop anyone from using whatever alternative appears on the market a week or two later, and leaves the user at increased risk. Although strikingly similar on a molecular level, these slightly modified drugs can have very different effects on users than their original incarnations.

A vendor selling LSD on the new Silk Road

These deep web marketplaces follow the same process—shut one down and the community simply migrates, or other new sites spring up within a matter of days. As such, there's a danger to shutting them down in the first place. When there's a regulated—albeit still illegal—retailer to buy your narcotics from, you can check ratings and reviews and have a good idea that the stuff you're getting has a high purity level, meaning the drug is both more effective and far less likely to kill you.

When that disappears, you're forced to either buy on the street—leaving yourself open to product that's full of cutting agents and other nasty stuff—or move your custom to a new site. And unless that new site comes with positive, reliable reviews, you might be putting more than just your money on the line. 

The online community of drug users that has sprung up around these sites is also a useful legacy of the original Silk Road. If people are going to continue taking heroin, cocaine, LSD, and whatever else they can get their hands on regardless of what law enforcement agencies do to stop them, doesn't it make sense to have a resource where people can learn how to use those substances safely? On the Sil Road discussion boards you can find advice about recommended doses and vital paraphernalia for both first-time and long-time users.

So, as today's re-launch of Silk Road shows, the War on Drugs is just as pointless online as it is in the real world.

Follow Joseph on Twitter: @josephfcox

This story is part of VICE's ongoing production of a feature-length documentary on the Silk Road's history and future, as well as the story of DPR and Ross Ulbricht's arrest. If you have legitimate information or stories to share, shoot us an email at silkroadfilm@safe-mail.net. We won't share any of your info unless we come to a formal agreement.

More stories about drugs:

Cyber Criminals Hate Brian Krebs So Much They're Sending Heroin and SWAT Teams to His Home

Mexico's Drug Cartels Love Social Media

Is a Cure for Meth Addiction Lurking in the Jihadist-Infested Jungles of Thailand?

Stalin's Story, by Victor Gijsbers, is a game combining Vladimir Propp's folktale archetypes with totalitarian manipulation. One player assumes the role of Stalin, and with it the power to dictate the rules and order executions; other players are either actors trying to beguile him with a traditional rustic tale or courtiers trying to twist the tale's elements to their rivals' discredit.

Gijsbers recently returned to Soviet-themed gameplay with Comrade Stalin, an elaboration of Werewolf that examines the consensual nature of power.

He's also a formidable designer of interactive fiction:

-In The Baron, a grim story of a father looking for his daughter, "it is left to the reader to decide which of the possible endings are the better or truer ones (thus, one cannot win or lose in any traditional sense)," and "there are moments when the player decides not just what action she will take, but also for what moral reason."

-Fate is about a young queen ringed about by enemies, with nothing but dark magic to help her win a future for her unborn child. How bright a future depends on how much she's willing to sacrifice...

-Kerkerkruip is a bit of a departure for Gijsbers: it's an interactive fiction rogue-like. Morality is de-emphasized, but choices are as important as ever: when to defend, when to strike, what gods to pray to, who to slay in what order, and how to defeat the dread wizard Malygris.

Say It With Sea Otters is a blog where adorable cartoon animals deliver difficult messages. Here are some examples: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. While the sea otter has a well deserved reputation for extreme cuteness, these aquatic weasels engage in behavior that to humans seems truly reprehensible. Of course, we humans haven't exactly treated them well throughout history. Indeed, the first scientist to describe them, George Wilhelm Steller, emphasized their valuable fur in his description of them.

So, I like yoga.


A simple shoulder stand.


Looks easy? Try it and see.


Another simple one.


Yeah! Finally one I can do well.


Upward Dog.


His and hers wheel.


Dancers pose. Not there yet either.




And a very good crow.   Note: None of them need to eat more.

 
Of all the “isolated vocals” tracks going around the Internet these days, one of the most beautiful of all, I think, comes from The Turtles’ “Happy Together.” I just stumbled across this looking for something else and man, it’s just… glorious. It’s one of the best known, most beloved, best pop songs PERIOD and you’ve never heard it quite like this before.

You could take apart every element of the song and the kernel of pure pop perfection would be found in every component part, right down to the high-hat, but nowhere more so than with Howard Kaylan’s lead vocal and the harmony he’s got going on with Mark Volman and the other Turtles. Here we have two of the greatest voices of the rock era—the harmonies of Flo and Eddie can be found on Frank Zappa albums, Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” Blondie’s Autoamerican, “Love My Way” by The Psychedelic Furs and “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” by T.Rex among many other classics—and this is so beautiful that I would imagine that it will bring a tear to more than a few of your eyes.

Thing is, you could do this to virtually any Turtles number—“Somewhere Friday Night” or “Lady O” say—and it would be amazing.

You’ll notice that in the clip below—it’s from The Ed Sullivan Show—Mark Volman “plays” a trumpet, meant to openly (and comedically) acknowledge that they were lip-syncing.
 

Ryan Duffy is the one on the left.

Right now, as in, literally right this second, VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy is answering your questions over on Reddit. If you're new here, and that tattooed tied up man in the above photo is totally foreign to you, Ryan has hosted some of our most insane documentaries, like this one about a drug that eliminates free will, and this one about men who make sweet love to donkeys. For his most recent piece [NSFW] Ryan investigated Tokyo's cuddle cafes and Yakuza-sponsored prostitution rings. He's also a host on our HBO show, for which he went to North Korea with Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters and came back with a damn fine piece of television.

So don't be shy and head over to Reddit to ask Ryan some questions—about Japanese cuddle cafes, what North Korea is like, anything you want. And then come back here and watch more of his documentaries. Like these:

Venezuelan Body Count

Portrait of a Russian Oligarch

Norwegian Prisons

 

1. That feeling right after you shave your legs for the first time in a while and you can’t stop running your hands up and down your silky marble columns and you imagine that this is what a mermaid must feel like.

2. The sleepovers you used to have with all your girlfriends where you would eat junk food, read girly magazines, and watch scary movies. (As well as the realization that you can now have the same exact sleepovers, except this time with alcohol!)

3. When you magically find a foundation or tinted moisturizer that’s in your shade. You hold it up to the sky as the clouds part and Jesus himself floats down on a ray of sunshine to be like, “It’s your time, girl. Cover those blemishes with ease and grace.” And then he butterfly kisses you and floats back up.

4. When said moisturizer doesn’t cost 60 dollars.

5. Giving yourself an orgasm and realizing, hey, I’m not with some lame guy that I have to pay attention to. I can do this shit as many times in a row as I want!

6. Sex toy parties where everyone starts with coquettish giggling and finishes handing by each other double-ended vibrating dildos and high-fiving over cocktails filled with dick-shaped ice cubes.

7. Being able to conceive, carry, and give birth to — or adopt and mother as your own — another human life. Whether or not it’s your personal choice to do so in life, it’s still pretty awe-inspiring and incredible to think about. Big ups to my mother for giving birth to 10 pound, 4 ounce baby me, and then raising me through my My Chemical Romance phase. Neither of those things could have seemed rewarding in the moment, but she soldiered through it like the boss bitch she is.

8. Boobies, and that one freakum bra that every girl has in the back of her drawer that makes them look deceptively perky and squishy and round and perfect.

9. The hours-long conversations you have with a girlfriend where you start off talking about some minor thing that happened in your day and somehow end up going through a mystical voyage through every ex you’ve both ever had and analyzing their existential meaning in the universe.

10. The feeling of riding around on your daddy’s shoulders when you were teeny tiny and feeling so high up and indestructible.

11. The weird surge of “Let me love it forever” and “Why do I want to eat it?” that flows through your whole body when you see a particularly cute baby, or a really on-point DILF playing with his little girl. (This goes triple if said little girl is dressed in a ballerina/princess outfit.)

12. Motha. Fuckin. Tea. Parties.

13. When you see a couple of little old ladies laughing and having a cocktail or a pot of tea in the middle of the afternoon, trading gossip and talking about what you hope is all the rockabilly-era dicks they tore through.

14. Imagining what it will be like when you and your BFF are both 80, gossiping out in the sun and watching people go by.

15. The relative freedom you have in terms of what you wear to the office. You’re not limited to a boring pair of khakis, or the same stifling suit (no matter how hot they may look). You can mix it up and wear everything from Michelle Obama classic jewel tones to Meryl Streep Devil Wears Prada extravagance.

16. The feeling when you’re with a good group of girlfriends and have the deep relief of being able to be fully and completely yourself. You can quote Sex and the City, you can order the chili cheese fries, and you can discuss the merits of various nail polish brands at length, without even a moment of guilt.

17. When you run into your ex and you’re wearing just the right dress, and you just flash that over-the-shoulder look like “Yeah, you hopped off this train at the wrong station. Choo choo, asshole.”

18. The five seconds before “ugh, my period” where you’re like “yisssssss, my period!!!”

19. Putting on a facial mask and enjoying the green, swamp-creature-esque look in the mirror way too much to take it off.

20. When your hair is having one of those days where everything is bouncing and curling and shining in the right proportions and, instead of just turning around to do something, you swish with all the elegance and radiance of a Pantene Pro-V commercial.

21. The days when your bra and panties match and it literally feels like you could become President as a direct result of this.

21. When you see a nice candid photo of yourself laughing and you realize, if only for a moment, that that is what is actually beautiful about you, even if you look a little silly. It’s not the makeup you’ve been buying, or the clothes that nip in just at the waist, or the time someone told you you were sexy in bed. It’s when you’re happy, and un-self-conscious, and radiating a generosity of spirit. Sure, it might fade immediately, but it’s sure a nice antidote to everyday life when it happens.

Thanks Mike (from Spain)

 

Brandy and lobster...pot pie? Sounds good to me, and so do the rest of these amazing pot pie ideas on Buzzfeed. And don't think that's the only elaborate and unique pot pie option out there. A few other highlights include a ratatoille pizza pot pie, taco pot pie and beet with goat cheese pot pie, which all look and sound unbelievably delicious.

If you want something perfect for the autumn season, the parsnip and squash one sounds nice and comforting on a cool night. 

Oh, if there is anything the Daily Fail is great for, it is hilariously dubious-seeming studies and experts, particularly in regards to shaming single women. All of whom they seem to believe are actually, definitely Bridget Jones.

This one today, however, is just the best. According to “Relationship Expert” Zoe Strimpel, Facebook could be is definitely  making single ladies physically ill. Why? Because you are dying of jealousy! Yes. Looking at all your friends enjoying “perfect lives” and getting married and having babies will probably cause you to be so sick with envy that you will likely soon fall dead from some terrible Oregon Trail-esque disease. But not tuberculosis, because that’s too glamorous and Garbo-esque for you, you pathetic crone. You will probably get dysentery.

Actually, she never mentions what kind of “bad for your health” having a Facebook profile is. It is possible that it’s the whole reason I had the flu this weekend. We shall never know.

“What [Facebook] does is it enhances the sense that your life is lacking and specifically, when you are single, you focus in on all those pictures of perfect weddings, perfect babies, perfect couples.”

Yes. Obviously Facebook is turning us all into modern-day Miss Havishams. In fact, I am sitting here, wearing a tattered wedding dress and cursing my ex-lovers as I type.

Maybe I’m just a total asshole, but I am way more jealous of pictures of delicious tacos I am not eating than I am of wedding pictures and baby pictures. I am way more jealous of my friends who are more widely published and acclaimed than I am. I am way more jealous of my friends who say some clever thing I wish I’d come up with myself. I’m also pretty sure that my life is awesome, and that I’m really glad I didn’t settle down in the suburbs and have babies with some boring-ass dude. That’s fine for some people, but it’s certainly not my jam.

Whenever I see a picture of a couple salaciously making out, I don’t get jealous. I go through a range of emotions, but I don’t get jealous. First, I think “Yeesh. That’s tacky. Not sure I needed to see that.” Then, I feel bad, because whoever posted it obviously did so with the assumption that people would go “AW! That’s so romantic! It’s great how in love you are! If only I were so in love with someone I’d met only a week ago! TRUE LOVE!” And probably no one was doing that. Probably everyone else also thought it was grotesque.

I’m not a same-side-of-the-booth-sitter, and PDAs in public or on the internet will always squick me out. I also kind of think that people who are overly aggressive about the PDAs are protesting too much and can’t actually stand one another. But I digress.

The other reason Strimpel says Facebook is bad for single ladies is because it makes us erroneously think we are somehow closer to dudes we don’t know than we are.

“You become addicted to information that you might not need to know about, say, Joe the musician who you drunkenly snogged at a house warming, but who turns out has a girlfriend. Thanks to Facebook you may know his mother’s name, the details of his last holiday, the names of his exes, who he is hanging around with. This is not healthy or helpful information, plus it gives the impression that these men are more in your life than they actually are, which is quite corrosive.”

We all know what happens after that, right? Boiled rabbits! Duh. Now, we can all get into some Facebook stalking every once in a while–both men and women–but I’m pretty sure that knowing that some dude you accidentally made out with is way fond of pancakes isn’t going to trick you into thinking you’re in a serious relationship with him. Unless you actually are Glenn Close in “Fatal —in which case, you could probably manage that without the benefit of Facebook.

 
Maria Bartiromo is a popular finance reporter who has worked for CNN and CNBC television. She was the first reporter to broadcast live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, has won a slew of journalism awards and is in the Cable Hall of Fame. She’s also someone who Joey Ramone had a heavy crush on. Joey invested in the stock market and was an avid fan of Bartiromo’s and watched her TV appearances religiously.

Joey used to email Bartiromo to ask for stock tips, as she told The Guardian in 2006:

“I started getting emails from him and he would say Maria, what do you think about Intel or what do you think about AOL and I thought who is this person emailing me? It’s crazy, he’s calling himself Joey Ramone. Sure enough it was him and we developed this friendship. And he was attuned to the markets. He really understood his own investment portfolio. Joey Ramone was a fantastic investor.”

He even wrote and recorded an ode to his money muse “Maria Bartiromo” which appeared on his solo album Don’t Worry About Me released posthumously in 2002.

“What’s happening on Wall Street
What’s happening at the stock exchange
I want to know
What’s happening on Squawk Box
What’s happening with my stocks
I want to know
I watch you on the TV every single day
Those eyes make everything OK
I watch her every day
I watch her every night
She’s really out of sight
Maria Bartiromo
Maria Bartiromo
Maria Bartiromo”

 

 
“He said to me Maria, I wrote a song about you and he said just come down to CBGBs in Manhattan, be there at midnight. I said, Joey, I’m sorry to tell you but I have to be on the air at 6am and I can’t be anywhere at midnight except in my bed, so I didn’t go.” She did, however, send a camera crew. “Sure enough, the cameraman came back with the tape and there’s him and his band with this song Maria Bartiromo and I just love it. It’s a tremendous tribute. I just love that. It’s great, just great.”

In this clip Bartiromo reflects on her friendship with Joey and what it was like to be honored in song by a Ramone.
 

50 Incredibly Tough Books for Extreme Readers. The Internet has provided us with yet another list. How many have you conquered?