Every Arrested Development fan knows there’s always money in the banana stand, but if you missed the Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana Stand Tour (and finally realized you can’t order from their Seamless page ), celebrate the May 26th Netflix premiere with a menu worthy only of a Bluth party.

George Michael's Candy Beans:

Don't you dare call them jelly beans.

Source: thebluthcompany.tumblr.com

UNLIMITED JUICE:

Only if you really want your party to be off the hook.

Lindsay's Hot Ham Water:

Step 1: Add water.
Step 2: Add ham.

Source: blog.fakeanything.com

View Entire List ›

Me hice caca en el trabajo.

Voy con un pantalón de trabajo muy duro y apretado y como fatal, aquí no saben comer, Europa es un coñazo y no saben comer pero los baños están más limpios ya acabo de resumir la emigración de un español.

La consecuencia de lo anterior, y de trabajar encorvado, tirado por los suelos (literalmente), haciendo el mono, subiendo, bajando… es que te cagas vivo. Tanto movimiento facilita el tránsito de unos intestinos rellenos de repugnante comida de mensa eslovena: carnes de la peor calidad en todas sus repugnantes formas, carnes baratas, carnes sin parar. El pescado apenas lo conocen. La verdura.. psé. Pocas. Mala comida. Trabajo físico. Pantalón apreato. Madrugón. Cafetón. Un baño (esto es, un retrete) para 40 obreros. Uno llega a creer que se va a morir de lo mucho que se caga, se pee, explota por dentro.

Era un día aciago, había empezado mal, me sentía muy mequetrefe, muy poca cosa, echaba de menos todo de España, mi casa, la de mi casa, los del otro lao, mi pescadero, los paseos jodidos por el centro de Madrid, todo. Echaba de menos hasta a los negros de mi barrio y el olor de sus repollos cocidos. Estaba en el trabajo muy inseguro y especialmente torpón, perdiendo todos los tornillos, perdiendo las herramientas, todo mal, me falta mucha mano y mucha experiencia y comparando con los compañeros que llevan 10 años tirando silicona yo soy básicamente UNA CHICA. Estaba haciéndolo fatal, me sentía un bebé inútil. En esas que bajé las escaleras del avión y en un momento dado, en un ángulo concreto de mis piernas, un ángulo mágico, la catástrofe devino, la válvula se abrió. Fue de improviso, no había habido alarma previa, no estaba yo en DefCon3 ni nada, estaba normal, con el mal cuerpo mañanero habitual y así como mohino y salió… como un pedo. Nada fuera de lo común: que se escapa un pedo en un mal paso. Incluso un pedo sonoro: a todos nos ha pasado. Fue como un aire violento, violento pero discreto, absolutamente silencioso: un mal que saliera de mí. Esos pesares, esos miedos que me afligían, salían en pedo de mí. Vete de mí. Vete, Pedro Almodóvar, de mí Y quedé sorprendido. No es normal que un pedo te deje desconcertado: esto había sido algo más. Este pedo traía mucha psicología, era un pedo Plus. Me paré al final de las escaleras.. bueno, no me paré, sólo aminoré un poco la marcha. Porque ya lo sabía, porque era imposible negarlo: me había cagado encima. Había un aire de misterio acerca de mi pedo y todos sabemos, lo sabemos en el fondo, que si un pedo trae halo de misterio al final siempre es mierda. Si tenía toda la lógica del mundo: me sentía esa mañana como un bebé inexperto, como un torpe manitas de mujer. Era de recibo hacer lo que hacen los bebés: hacerse caca. Yo sentí ese añadido… pero muy débil, muy poca cosa, apenas un detalle. Pero un extra, sin duda, ahí, ahí abajo, algo que requería mi atención, un beacon, eso es, un distress signal beacon, una baliza de radioseñal que emergía de mis profundidas, que traía un mensaje, la materia oscura ahí abajo me llamaba, vamos, Capitán Kirk, vamos a explorar, mirémosle a la cara a lo desconocido. Ni detuve la inercia de las zancadas y con el impulso de bajar la escalera enfilé de forma absolutamente natural hacia el baño: sentía claramente mi centro de gravedad mínimamente desplazado: portaba un peso extra. Había ahí abajo un momento, un momento angular: una pequeña oscilación. Algo que sobresalía. Algo que deformaba mi silueta habitual. Había un añadido y yo debía tener cuidado: entramos en terra incognita. ¿Qué mal paso podría dar que hiciera que aquello, aquel misterio, rebosara, rebasara la frontera del calzoncillo y la liara, literalmente, parda? Caminé con la gracilidad de una gacela-payaso-ninja. Fui apenas una hoja mecida por el viento. Creo, incluso, que volé un poquito, que adquirí una mínima sustentación, tal fue mi delicadeza, mi sutilidad dinámica, lo streamlined de mi dance. Nadie pudo darse cuenta de nada. Además es que ni sonó: fue algo íntimo, personal, fue casi un pensamiento mío, un estado de ánimo, ánimo cacafuti, que se había hecho sólido, la materialización de una idea. Era, si lo piensas bien, casi una cosa como de magia ¿no? De tener un poder mágico, que si sientes una cosa la creas en un interior, haces una pequeña bola con ella y sale de ti. Más que un pedo, un conjuro.

Milagrosamente encontré el camino al retrete expédito, todas las puertas abiertas (hay que tener un pase de seguridad para salir del hangar y como yo no soy oficial aún ahí no tengo y debo esperar como un chuchillo a que alguien abra) el baño bien iluminado, sus puertas entreabiertas, puertas que son piernas de mujer solícita, la loza impoluta en la temprana mañana, fresca a la nalga. Bajé todo, me lo saqué, esperando la catástrofe. Con franca curiosidad porque si bien era plenamente consciente de que, cómo decirlo… bueno, no nos andemos con las ramas, de que me había cagado encima en mi puesto de trabajo, había sido algo tal sutil, apenas un movimiento peristáltico, un pliki, muink, chipf, y sentir algo ahí, algo que no debía estar… que me preguntaba ¿realmente habrá algo? ¿no habrá sido todo fruto de mis melancolías? Pues no. Había una mierda. Pero era una mierda PERFECTA (y juro que no estoy ahora exagerando ni sirviéndome de licencias literarias): era una mierda prácticamente esférica, de superficie luminosa, regular, casi diría DELICIOSA, de un tono marrón homogéneo, una textura lisa, una mierda, en suma, sana, idílica, un mojón platónico. Estaba recubierta de una extraña película absolutamente MÁGICA que (insisto, cuento esto con absoluta veracidad) había encapsulado su mierdez hasta el punto de que mi calzoncillo, QUE ERA BLANCO, no tenía mancha alguna. Ni el más vicioso sodomita inventó jamás dieta alguna que le permitiera a uno evacuar de forma tan discreta, tan indolora e higiénica: una mierda que no mancha, que prácticamente se cae ella sola del culo. Yo creo que ni olía. LA COGÍ CON LA MANO. Con dos dedos. La miré como mira papá oso a bebé oso, con extrañeza pero con amor. Más que una mierda era un huevo. Un huevo marrón. ¿Soy ya un ave? Pensé. Su peso era perfecto, ni mucho ni poco. Cayó al agua y ejecutó trayectoria submarina con tal belleza plástica, ningún submarino rozó jamás tal perfección hidrodinámica, que no pude evitar sonreír, satisfecho, por lo que había creado. Aquello sin dura era mucho más que mierda, era una mierda hecha de pensamientos, una mierda conceptual, la idea de una mierda. Que se deposita en tu calzoncillo para contarte algo pero que ni suena ni mancha ni molesta. 

Aliviado ya en los dos sentidos pasé el resto del día libre de todo pesar y melancolía. Trabajé eficientemente, ligero. Físicamente sin molestia alguna. Trabajé como un bailarín. ¿A dónde iría aquella extraña mierda-huevo perfecta? ¿Qué aventuras estará viviendo? La imagino indestructible, surcando las aguas como proyectil fecal, quizás vehículo de algunos diminutos seres inteligentes que habitan en mi interior, que me controlan. Y ahora debo seguir con mi vida sabiendo que nunca volveré a cagar nada tan bello ni tan perfecto.

Caitlin Moran (1975-) is a British author, TV presenter, music critic, journalist and outspoken advocate for women’s rights. She currently writes a variety of columns (most of which are hilarious) for The Times UK.

Moran was something of a child prodigy. After being home-schooled (she left school after a few weeks when she was 11) she had her first book published at 15, had columns running in the Observer and Guardian at 17 and got her gig at The Times when she was 18.

This quote is taken from her best-selling memoir How to be a Woman. Her new book, Moranthology, has just been released.

Unlike Moran, I went to Catholic School for 12 years where my head was filled with all kinds of fanciful stories that I blindly accepted. Only when I left high-school and starting reading more books about science and evolution (mainly by Carl Sagan) did I begin to re-evaluate what I had been taught for all those years.

RELATED COMIC: Make the most of this life.

- Caitlin Moran’s official website.
- Thanks to Barclay for submitting this quote.

The VICE Podcast Show is a weekly unedited discussion in which we go inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people we come across. This week, host Reihan Salam talks to adult performer and VICE columnist Stoya about gender roles, homeschooling, safe sex, and the future of monogamy.

Here is just the audio from this week's discussion:

Previously on the podcast, we spoke with Ben Anderson about his thrilling new documentary, This Is What Winning Looks Like.

You can read all of Stoya's VICE articles here.

Image via Yelp.

On May 3, a 36-year-old Iraq war veteran and college student named Maribel Ramos (pictured above right) was reported missing by her family, after failing to turn up to several events in Santa Ana, California. 

A couple of days later, a friend of Maribel's named Emily C started a Yelp thread called “My friend Maribel Ramos is missing!!” in an effort to track her down. 

Somebody posted asking if Maribel's roommate had been questioned by police yet. 

This is where the roommate, KC Joy (who is pictured at the very top of this post with Maribel), joined the conversation, posting that Maribel was his BFF and giving details of the police's search of the apartment they shared. 

Then a user called Grant K joined the thread, pointing out that it was suuuuuuuuuper suspicious that KC was referring to Maribel in the past tense. 

Some other users weren't too happy with what Grant was implying and told him off.

And KC returned to explain that he wasn't intentionally referring to Maribel in the past tense, but was actually having trouble with his English, as he is originally from China. 

The next day, KC returned to the thread, and said some weird, kinda suspicious stuff.

Like, really, really weird and really, really kinda suspicious stuff.

Then a user named Daniel J came along and offered KC the (very solid) advice of shutting up.

KC thanked him. This was KC's final post in the thread. 

On May 17, exactly two weeks after Maribel went missing, Emily C returned to break the news that a body had been found.

The body was found in a canyon after people living nearby reported a foul smell in the area.

Later that day, another user confirmed that the body had been positively identified as Maribel. Her missing persons case was reclassified as a homicide. 

After voluntarily accompanying police officers to the Orange Police Department, KC was arrested and charged with Maribel's murder. 

Which meant Grant K was (allegedly) right all along. KC could have accidentally let slip that he knew more than he was letting on. 

Kinda like when Reddit tried to track down the Boston bombers, except he was actually right with his accusations and didn't ruin any people's lives. 

Unwilling to enjoy this victory in silence, Grant returned to the thread to remind everyone of his prediction and to gloat. Douchebag. 

@JLCT

More by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete:

Cry Baby of the Year 2013

I Went to California's Post-Apocalyptic Beach Town

It's Now Possible to Hire Fake Protesters

Patton Oswalt did an AMA question-and-answer session on Reddit yesterday afternoon, and a lot of important comedy stuff came up. From his thoughts on recent stand-up controversies to his favorite Mr. Show sketch, from his favorite young comedians to his plans for a second book, Oswalt touched on a variety of comedy-related topics, and we collected the most interesting answers below so that you don't have to weed through the Reddit thread for the good stuff. Enjoy!

Any chance for a second book?
I'm finishing up my second book right now. It's a memoir of my time in L.A. between 1995 through 1999, when The Largo was ascendent, the internet was in its infancy, and I was an OCD film fiend trying to figure out how to segue form doing comedy to directing films. Pipe dream as fever dream.

When you were a kid, did you have many funny friends or were you the "funny guy" in your group?
I had a whole circle of comedy nerd friends. And thankfully — and this is true today — I was nowhere near the funniest guy in my group. Made me try harder. Still does today. All of my friends are funnier than me.

You're always trying to bring new, aspiring comics to the public's eye. Who are some of the comics we don't know and should be YouTubing right now?
Emily Heller, Beth Stelling, Dominic Dierkes, Eliza Skinner, Brooks Wheelan, Whitmer Thomas, Eric Dadourian, Jake Weisman, Dave Ross, Paul Danke, Shelby Fero, Ronald Funches, Hampton Yount, Joseph Ocon, Pedro Salinas, Will Weldon and Chris Thayer

You've helped give me a different point of view on depression, and laugh when shit got serious. How's your headspace these days?
It's good, but I know the blues are always lurking. It's my job to stop 'em from darkening into blacks. Yours, too, if you've got it. It's workable, and once you realize it's a visitor that comes around every now and then, and you can wink at it and welcome it before you send it away for awhile? You'll be okay.

Is there anything you stopped caring about in the last few years that has surprised you?
I care less and less about music and films that I hate. In that, I don't listen to them instead of wasting energy telling people that I think they suck. And, along with that, I've cared less and less what people think about me. There's nearly 7 billion people on this planet — not all of them are going to like you. So the fear of not being universally loved has faded the more aware I become of the numbers.

You were the best guest star on Dollhouse. Do you have plans to work with Joss again?
If Downey doesn't do AVENGERS 2, and Joss can explain a sudden Tony Stark weight gain, I'm in line for the Iron Man part after Jonah Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Will Sasso, Bobby Moynihan, Rick Ross and Paul Giamatti turn it down. Fingers crossed!

Do you get nervous before shows even after all these years of performing?
Yep. Every time. The day I stop being nervous is the day I get boring.

Is there a TV show currently airing that you have not appeared on that you like enough that you would want to be part of?
There are so many amazing shows on TV right now. TV is more exciting that movies right now, in my opinion. Definitely VEEP and GIRLS. Also HANNIBAL. Maybe I could be an annoying haberdasher that Lecter turns into spats.

Whose body is going to give out first: yours or Brian Posehn's?
Brian's gave out in 1994. His head is sitting on a coal-powered, Mark VII Mobility Walker. If you press his elbow, his left tit expenses Orange Fanta. Try it the next time you see him.

What book or comic book series do you think everyone should read?
Michael K. Vaughn's SAGA. I'm genuinely envious of and pissed any anyone who gets to read it for the first time. I'm all caught up and have to wait month to month. I GET TO LIVE OUT MY LIFE LIKE A SCHNOOK.

What's the one question you never want to be asked again?
"What are your favorite/least favorite bits you do?" "What's it like being a comedian?" And, the granddaddy of them all, and this is asked by every print interviewer, "What can the audience expect from tomorrow night's show?"

You've hinted at meeting Bill Hicks. I was just wondering if you had any notable encounters with him, and if you ever happened to open for him.
I opened for him a few times. He was polite and pleasant but not overly chummy. The one thing he said, specifically to me, was, "You gotta walk 'em to the edge, Patton."

Which Mr. Show skit would you say is your favorite?
"The Audition", hands down.

Who were the most influential comics that impacted your career?
Before I started: Winters, Pryor, Carlin, Martin. After I started: All of my comedian friends.

Any advice for a huge fan of stand-up who doesn't know where to start writing his own material?
Go onstage. And then do it again. And then do it again. Over and over again. That's the only way it works.

Do you think the threshold for being offended by stand up comics in America is lowering and will continue to get even more frequent, or will the ability of comics to build their own audience themselves help calm this as time goes on by people being able to avoid those that offend them?
The threshold for being offended hasn't been lowered. It's just that more people have access to a public forum where they can express their ire. They were always out there, but now everyone has the microphone and the guillotine. Neither side is necessarily wrong, either. The pendulum is going to have to swoop back and forth for awhile, and whomever's left hanging on will decide the way forward.

Of all the many comedians you have worked with and been around, which have made you laugh the hardest?
In terms of gut-blasting laughs, Todd Glass

Who are your favourite clean comics?
"Clean" and "dirty" comics are meaningless categories. All that matters is "funny." Louis CK is just as brilliant as Brian Regan.

Who is the biggest piece of shit currently alive, in your opinion?
Crapling V. Turdsworth, IV

Do you ever get confused as another celebrity?
CCH Pounder. Constantly.

---

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Inna, founder of the French branch of Femen, at their headquarters in Paris.

Last Friday, I took the Eurostar from London to Paris to meet the topless feminist protest group Femen. Originally based in the Ukraine, the organization has since spread across the world. The idea was to film the buildup to Femen's next protest, but I didn't find out quite what I was getting myself into until I arrived at their headquarters—a lofty space above a theater in Goutte D'or—that afternoon.

The area has a large Muslim population and is dotted with Islamic cultural centrers, so it seems quite a ballsy (or boobsy? Is that a thing?) move to base themselves there considering a large part of their shtick is protesting against conservative Islam. Their last protest action, for example, was Topless Jihad Day—a day where Femen members got their boobs out in various European cities to show solidarity with Amina Tyler. Amina, is a 19-year-old Femen member from Tunisia who was drugged and given a "virginity test" after posting topless protest pictures of herself on Facebook.

When I arrived, the Paris HQ was plastered with banners from previous demos—one that read "Sextremism" in bright red paint covered an entire wall. A few members were trying to decide on the best slogan for the massive new banner, which a girl called Oksana was already decorating with paintings of topless Femen activists. The reason for the extended deliberation was because of a heated discussion over whether "Nazi factions" should be spelled with or without an s at the end. No one's going to pay you much attention in the protest world if you mess up your spelling.  

Femen members working on their protest banner.

Prolonging the whole thing even further, Inna Shevchenko—one of the original Ukrainian Femen members—then argued that the slogan ”Femen Action Against Nazi Factions” wasn’t strong enough. Inna started up the French branch of Femen in September 2012 after fleeing Ukraine because, in solidarity with Pussy Riot, she'd chainsawed through an eight-meter-tall crucifix in Kiev's main square. Which is something the Russian government presumably wouldn't be too happy about, when you consider that Pussy Riot were jailed for simply performing a "punk prayer" in a cathedral—a far cry from intentionally destroying a public piece of religious iconography with a massive serrated saw.

Inna was clearly the leader, but the cry of "Let's make a democratic decision!" was frequently blurted out as the group tried to conclude whatever particular thing it was they were trying to conclude. After various suggestions had been tossed around and subsequently shut down—if not by Inna, then by the other girls—we were left standing in an awkward, angry, silent void. The vibe was tense.   

The group didn't want to disclose what exactly it was they were planning in case authorities caught wind of it, giving them ample time to round the Femen members up before they could even unfurl their banners. But I'd guessed by this point (not exactly difficult, what with the all the arguing about the spelling on their banners) that the action was to be against far-right groups who were planning to congregate in Paris on May 12. 

Femen member Margueritte working on their banner.

Inna explained that the last time they confronted neo-Nazi thugs they were badly beaten, and she lost a tooth. So this time round they were planning a different, slightly more detached approach: waving their banners at the fascists from a distance. The plan was for Inna and Sarah, another core member of French Femen, to check into a luxury hotel by the Joan of Arc statue on Place des Pyramides, which is where the far-right groups were going to gather. Once the square was full of neo-Nazis and press, they'd roll down their massive banner and shout their slogans, wearing nothing but flower crowns from the hip up.

The following day, I was invited to one of Femen's weekly sextremist training sessions. As I walked in, the 11 gathered girls—most of them wearing jean shorts and Femen tank-tops—were standing in a circle and furiously screaming their mottos: "Go rape yourself!" and "Nudity is freedom!" and "Fuck your church!" and "Fuck your morals!" and "Not a sex toy!" and "In gay we trust!" and "Homohobes dégage! [Homophobes get out of the way]" and "Where is Amina? Free Amina!" in support of their Tunisian sister.

Femen members practising their protest techniques.

Marianne, another Tunisian Femen activist living in Paris, explained how Amina inspired their Topless Jihad Day. When I asked her about the Muslim Women against Femen Facebook page that was triggered by their actions, she assured me that Femen aren’t against women wearing burqas; they’re against women having to wear burkas. Accentuating the widespread female oppression in Tunisia, Marianne added that her Muslim family don't know she's a Femen member and claimed they'd disown her if they ever found out.  

A new recruit to the group was then asked to demonstrate what she had learned during her inaugural training session at the headquarters the previous week. In front of everyone present, she got into position and started screaming the slogans at the top of her lungs. Inna told her she'd done well, but that her arms went a little slack as she was screaming, before going over the technical aspects of the Femen pose: legs in a wide stance and holding the sign high, arms straight and held a little behind the ears. “We’re not promoting yogurt or beer; we’re reclaiming our bodies. This is aggressive nudity—we’re ready to attack!” Inna told her.

Action training at the Femen headquarters.

Being able to quickly get your top off before getting into position is also an essential skill for any Femen member. Some girls flashed their tits so quickly I barely even registered the fact they were undressing. After the exercise in aggressively disrobing, the members went on to their action training and everything got pretty full on. Half the girls took the role of Femen activists, the other half acted as police and security, dragging their topless cohorts across the room as they screamed slogans and practiced making their actions as visible and audible as possible for the cameras. Inna firmly pointed out that everything they do at protests is for the cameras: "The action will go on until the last camera has left," she told the group.    

The first practice attempt didn't go so well. "All I can hear is noise—you’re not coordinated. We want people to know exactly why we are here,” she said.

The second attempt was more successful, but it took me a while to discern what the girls were actually shouting through their thick accents (I eventually figured out it was "Pope no more" after listening to them for a good five minutes). 

Femen members about to be walked on.

Adrenaline was high and the girls were out of breath. Then they did sit-ups, lift-ups, and planks, all in the style of a military boot camp. After a while, some of the girls started exclaiming, “Oh putain!” ["for fuck’s sake"] at Inna’s orders, to which she replied, “15 push ups!” The girls even practiced being walked on, as is often the outcome at their protests. Pauline, a full-time French Femen activist, told me that women’s bodies are a lot more resistant to pain than you'd think. “We’re taught early on that we are frail, but we’re not! We’re probably more pain resistant than men. I’ve been beaten up during my six months as a Femen, and I’m amazed at how much violence I can be exposed to and still be able to get back up and continue the action."

I caught myself thinking out loud that they all had pretty great tits. Inna assured me there was no casting process, then blushed, admitting that she didn’t particularly like her own boobs.

When the newer activists left, Inna, Pauline, Sarah, Oksana, and another core member, Margueritte, put the finishing touches on their banner, which now bore the slogan: "SEXTERMINATION FOR NAZISM.” Once dried, they folded it into a suitcase. Inna and Sarah, who had got all dolled-up for the swanky hotel check-in, took the suitcase and hopped in a cab to kick off the action.

French fascists gathering at Place de la Madeleine.
 
The next day, I headed down to where the ultra nationalists were gathering at Place de la Madeleine. The army of flag-waving, banner-thrusting thugs in black bomber jackets—who were soundtracked by a truck blasting out dramatic classical music, kind of like the Helicopter Attack in Apocalypse Now, just a bit more fascist—were pretty intimidating. As soon as we got our cameras out, the PR guy from France's infamous Troisième Voie neo-Nazi group walked up and informed us of what we could and could not film.  

We were then introduced to the group's leader, Serge Ayoub, a buff, middle-aged man in a suit jacket with a shaved head and a crooked nose. Serge explained that they had gathered for their annual celebration of Joan of Arc, who kicked the Brits out of France, but also to protest against globalization, “which is destroying our national economy and identity.” After about an hour, the nationalist groups started marching toward the statue of Joan of Arc, where Inna, Sarah, and the other Femen were waiting with their banner.

The Femen annoy loads of fascists with their banner.

Femen had managed to get a room on the third floor of the Hotel Regina, strategically located right behind the nationalists’ sacred Joan of Arc statue. At around noon, when the most violent faction of the ultra-nationalists had arrived at the statue, Inna, Sarah, Pauline, and Oksana emerged on the balcony, bare-breasted in their flower crowns, and swiftly rolled down their banner in front of the hostile neo-Nazis. Unsurprisingly, the fascists tried to storm the hotel, but were quickly pushed back by riot police.

As they couldn’t get their fists on the girls, the nationalists reverted to Nazi salutes and angry displays of their middle fingers while yelling, “Salopes!” ["Bitches!"], “Suicide-toi!” ["Commit suicide!"] and all sorts of other unfriendly things. The girls answered by blowing kisses toward the furious fascists, all while holding position: chins up and straight arms holding smoke flares. A group of nationalist girls gathered beneath Femen’s balcony, shouting, “We’re waiting for you!”

After a little more back and forth between the two groups, a fire truck pulled up and evacuated the Femen activists down a long ladder. The girls descended, occasionally stopping to proudly salute the booing crowd, who were just about being held back from attacking the truck by an armed police brigade. Femen were then safely escorted away by the police before Serge Ayoub held a speech accusing them of being paid by the government and alleging that the tit-flashing was all a conspiracy to disturb nationalist protests. In the eyes of the Femen members, the action was a success.
 
Before meeting Femen, I was in two minds about their tactics. On the one hand, they’ve found a genius way of getting noticed. But are people too distracted by their nipples for their messages to gain any traction? Either way, they have successfully managed to get feminism back on the front pages, which has to count for something. Femen’s nonviolent, topless-protest tactics have even earned them the title of "The new face of feminism," which hasn't gone down too well with feminists who consider flashing your tits to protest prostitution and male oppression as a bit of an oxymoron.  

Angry fascist girls shouting at the Femen protesters.

Admittedly, that whole dilemma is a bit of a mind fuck, but Inna assures it's done on purpose: a wolf in sheep’s clothing type of move, just like how you probably clicked on this article because you read the word “topless” in the title. Maybe Inna is right, and the stigma surrounding female nudity and sexuality has been holding women back by objectifying them or spreading a fear of being objectified. Regardless, it's kind of amazing how much of a fuss people make over some tits being flashed. You would think that it would be thoroughly played out by now, that the tit stigma would be long gone.

Femen aren't hurting anyone and have found a form of nonviolent protest that people actually notice, so why shouldn't they be allowed to walk around topless with flowers in their hair?
 
Don’t miss the VICE documentary on Femen, coming soon on VICE.com.

Read more about Femen:

The Egyptian Feminist Who Was Kidnapped for Posing Nude

One of the great things about nature is that everything in it—dogs, flowers, snakes, whales, ants, jellyfish, crabs, toucans, everything—is either eating or trying to fuck at all times. Of the uncountable billions of organisms populating our planet, millions and millions of them are getting it on at this very second. P's are going into V's, eggs are being fertilized, the circle of life continues.

You probably didn’t learn very much about the sex lives of animals in school because your poor science teachers had enough to worry about without saying the words “elephant cock” in front of a room of teenagers. But animal sex and the evolved features of animal sex organs are often wonderful things, and there’s no reason that today’s young people shouldn’t learn about the tiny—and sometimes startlingly large—wonders that are animal penises.

So we got some of our contributors together and wrote about animal dicks. If you are excited to learn more about animal sex, we encourage you to watch Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno series. Or just go to the park and see if you can catch squirrels fucking.

Sea Horses

Photo via Flickr user jimg944

Did you emerge from the head of your father’s dick as a fully formed baby? Congratulations, you’re probably a sea horse. Sea-horse females impregnate males during one-night stands and leave them to foster their young without so much as paying child support, like a Beyoncé song in reverse.

Courtship begins when the female and male start scraping their tails along the sea floor. (Hot!) The male has his head tucked into his chest the entire time because he’s a little pussy bitch. The female circles around him, forcing him to pay attention to her colors. Then she grabs him with her tail and penetrates him. (Yesssss…) They swim face to face, locked together, as she excretes up to 600 eggs into his brood pouch. Then she fucks off forever. 

After just a few weeks, the male undergoes contractions and finally blasts a bunch of miniature sea horses out of his little sea-horse dick.

-Kara Crabb

Echidnas

Photo via Flickr user Reilly

The echidna is an endangered egg-laying mammal native to Australia and New Guinea. If you’ve ever heard of it, it was probably in the context of Knuckles the Echidna, the red guy from Sonic the Hedgehog that almost no one remembers. It’s nicknamed the spiny anteater, but people should call it the alien penis creature because look at this thing, it’s got four freaking heads on its shaft. Echidnas' dick heads are called rosettes, and all four can ejaculate. But if you're picturing these spiky beasts shooting four streams of cum as if their dicks were those sprinklers that kids play in, get that image out of your brain—it’s actually more like a gun, according to National Geographic:

The reason why the echidna’s penis has four heads is still up for grabs. The female echidna has two love canals and Stewart [Nicol, echidna sex specialist] believes that the penis works like a double double-barrelled shotgun, firing out of the two heads on one side, and then again quite quickly on the other. 

OK, but how does it pee? Does it just spray everywhere? Actually, echidnas only use their dicks for fucking. For everything else they have a multipurpose hole called a cloaca. The males poop and pee from their cloacae, and the females also use them for laying eggs, because even though these guys are mammals, they lay eggs like birds or reptiles. Truly, these are marvelous creatures. Here’s a video of a zoologist arousing a male echidna. Do not watch it.

-Ryan Grim

Slugs

Photo via Wikipedia

Slugs are gross, but the process by which more slugs are made is even grosser. When a slug gets horny, it leaves a trail of special hormone-infused slime to let other slugs know that it's DTF. If another horny slug gets a whiff of the slime—slugs are hermaphrodites and any two of them can reproduce—it will follow it to its source and give the other slug a little bite on the ass to let it know that it also wants to bone. Once they've established that they both wanna bump uglies, they set off together to find an overhang (like the underside of a branch, or the bottom of a ledge) where they can do it. 

First they cuddle up together in a little circle and start to spoon. After about an hour of this (boooooring), they produce a special rope made of mucus, which, still entwined, they slide down. 

And that's when their dicks come out. They're blue, semitransparent, and emerge from tiny little holes in the back of their heads. Their penises coil together, then fan out to make the weird blue, flower-orb thing you can see in the above photo. 

And then they hang there, pumping semen back and forth, until both slugs are fertilized, at which point they drop to the ground. 

-Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Cats

Photo via Flickr user Hunter-Desportes

The internet has given cats a wholly undeserved reputation for being cute. Sure, there are plenty of adorable felines out there in the world, but the truth of their sex lives is almost too horrible to think about. The cat penis is the most mutated hellspawn in all of dickdom. Cat sex is painful, and the cat penis is an instrument of torment and rape.

The cat penis is covered in somewhere between 120 and 150 backward-pointing penile spines, which measure around one millimeter long. (You can see some closeups here.) These spines prevent the female cat from escaping the sex act until the male has ejaculated. If she does try to run, the spines will rip the walls of her vagina asunder. This is the reason that when cats fuck it sounds like the female is being tortured—it’s because she is being tortured. The larger the spines are, the more male hormones are present in the cat. I imagine there are parties in feline society where cats measure the barbs on their dicks, though there’s an old saying between cats, “It’s not the size of the cock barb that matters, it’s how badly you maim the vagina.”

-Dave Schilling

Ducks

Photo via Flickr user Glen Bowman

First of all, all duck sex is all pretty much rape. Female ducks are not happy about getting it on and have evolved twisty vaginas to protect themselves from unwanted semen. This has led to male ducks evolving “elaborate corkscrew-shaped penises, the length of which correlates with the degree of forced copulation males impose on female ducks,” as a scientist who studies duck sex wrote in Slate. The penis also comes out of the duck’s body wayyy fast. This is what an emerging duck erection looks like, slowed down to one-tenth normal speed:

Gross. Aren't you glad you're not a lady animal?

-Harry Cheadle

More on dicks:

How to Suck an Uncut Cock

Seka, Raising Penises for Three Generations

Informerciless

Mockmentary-style television has become the preferred method for edgy, self-aware sitcoms, and now the original mockumentarian is giving TV a try. Family Tree, a BBC/HBO co-production from Christopher Guest, creator of classics like This Is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, follows Chris O’Dowd as Tom Chadwick, a sweet but aimless 30-year-old who has been laid off from his job and dumped by his girlfriend.

When his great-aunt bequeaths him a trunk full of family knick-knacks, Tom becomes obsessed with tracing his lineage, with the help of a convenient antique-store-owning pal (Jim Piddock, who co-created the series with Guest), and despite the bumbling of his dim-witted best friend Pete (Tom Bennett). The cast is filled out by Michael McKean as Tom’s dad, ventriloquist Nina Conti as his sister Bea, and Guest repertory players like Ed Begley Jr. and Eugene Levy.

Given his history, it’s no surprise that Guest knows how to get the most of the pseudo-reality style. Several minutes of the first episode are devoted to a few glaring oddities, like why O’Dowd’s character is Irish while his dad, sister, and childhood best friend are all English, and why Bea is never without Conti’s puppet sidekick Monkey (hint: it involves a masturbating bird). There is some of Guest’s trademark uncomfortable humor, much of it from Pete and Monkey, but it’s much more grounded than his films, with noticeably softer edges. While it’s never directly acknowledged, the format mimics the celebrity genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?, a massive hit in the UK that never caught on in the US.

O’Dowd is so likeable that his character’s sincere attempts at exploring his lineage are charming, but he might fit better in a light-hearted dramedy than a broad comedy that feels the need to balance his down-to-Earth demeanor with sitcom wackiness. His sister's life, for instance, is dominated by the blunt and crude Monkey (she even pushes him around in a stroller when he's on on her hand). The pair's attempt at professional ventriloquism is excruciating, but the show doesn't hint that she'll be moving on from this destructive crutch. Similarly, the buffoonish Pete can't seem to say or do anything that isn't embarrassing or idiotic. Like so many sitcom best friends, it's not quite clear why Tom keeps him around, and certainly why he brings him along on his family quest. McKean, as a distant, cheesy sitcom-loving dad works, but his awkward, borderline mentally-ill Eastern European wife exits in a different universe from the polite, well-meaning Tom.

After a few false starts and disappointing revelations, Tom discovers American ancestry and a Stateside-branch of his family. The show, like Guest himself, is transatlantic; the first four episodes take place in the UK, the last four in the US. While the show features some fantastic talent from both sides of the pond, this is a risky bet. Even the most brilliant comedic minds often can’t help playing into the most obvious UK/US clichés, making crossovers feel tedious and overplayed.

Having only seen the first four episodes, it’s hard to say for sure how Family Tree will deal with that classic culture clash. In fact, it’s hard to see where the story goes at all — Guest even said that he chose to make this a TV series rather than a film “because there is no end to the story.” With only eight episodes, that’s an unnerving choice. The show is very funny at times, though the quality is uneven given Guest’s fondness for improvised dialogue. 

Family Tree airs Sundays at 10:30 pm on HBO.

Elise Czajkowski is a freelance journalist in New York City. She's always on Twitter.

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