Dance Magers

Few things are more American than T-shirts and pissing people off for no reason. Combining the two is a long-held national pastime that makes baseball seem about as exciting as sniffing Ben Franklin’s beer farts. So I decided to have some fun testing the limits of every American’s inalienable right to conceptualize offensive ideas and pay someone to print them on t-shirts.

My aim was to create garments that the majority of the US citizenry would find offensive and, more specifically, submit designs so despicable that most custom-tee printers would refuse to print them. Still, my ultimate goal was to find a willing printer and get the shirts made no matter what. Mark Twain, perhaps the quintessential American author, once wrote: “Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.” Each entrepreneur who refused my business would define yet another instance of American indecency and chip away at the bedrock of liberty as we know it.

I began by setting some guidelines: The topics of racism, sexism, and politics were deemed too easy for this exercise, primarily because online retailers already provide a bountiful selection of knee-jerk schlock marketed to college students and bigots. I also afforded myself the luxury of ratcheting up the viciousness of the shirt designs if the printer proved too eager to accept the initial unseemly idea.

I am happy to report that the First Amendment prevailed and every one of my ideas—even when pushed past the limits of my own morals and common sense—was eventually affixed to a t-shirt for around $20 a pop (except for one pricy exception). Sure, it took enduring a little verbal abuse and a bit of shopping around, but I believe our forefathers would be proud that even today the combined forces of capitalism and free speech triumph over America’s prudish moral quibbles.

A few years ago, when every DJ in the world had “Billy Jean” and “Thriller” locked on repeat, I found myself wondering how many children Michael Jackson had actually molested and what kinds of elaborate costumes he was wearing during his rendezvous before he overdosed and died. I settled on either Al Jolson as an ice-cream man or a sequined paramilitary Easter bunny. But these types of images don’t really lend themselves to striking T-shirt design, so I simplified things.

The first printer I called was in Manhattan and had no qualms with the phrase “Baby Toucher” accompanying an image of the King of Pop but objected when I tried to add the word “Dead.” Undaunted by this initial denial, I was positive someone else would be willing to print the image exactly as I wanted, and instead of compromising or asking for an explanation I called another print shop. The nice woman on the phone thought it was a fantastic idea. The shirt was ready for pickup two days later and cost me $25.

Eric is an acquaintance of mine who screenprints t-shirts for side work. I met him through a friend, and I asked said friend what would happen if I called Eric up, put in an order for a screenprinted shirt without giving him details on the design or why I wanted it, and emailed him a Photoshopped image of him blowing his own brains out along with instructions to print it on a plain white tee. She said he wouldn’t care and might think it was all part of some elaborate joke, but I knew better.

I spoke with Eric and he was excited at the prospect of some extra pocket change but thought it was curious when I told him I only wanted a single shirt. In my subsequent email I asked him to call me to discuss a fee after he received the attached image. At 11 PM that evening, I received a call from Eric. He nervously giggled on the other end and asked, “What’s going on? Why did you send me that picture?” He sounded like he was perturbed but trying to keep calm. “It’s just for this thing I’m doing for VICE,” I dead-panned. “It’s going to be a good article.”

He then raised his voice and said, “Wait, what? This is going to be in VICE magazine? What are you trying to do to me?” Guilt began to creep into my conscience and I aborted my plans to play dumb. I gave him a half-assed summary of the article; he admitted to thinking I was a sick son of a bitch and agreed to print the shirt for $100. I bumped into him in the street the next day and things were painfully awkward, but I received the shirt soon after.

Raising the stakes, I decided some straightforward American commentary was needed on the post-earthquake situation in Haiti. I randomly selected a printer in the city that boasted a three-hour turnaround for plain text on tees and told him I wanted “Haiti? Who Gives a Shit.” printed on a gray shirt without adornment. “No way,” he said and hung up.

For my next attempt, I decided to conduct things a little more inconspicuously and commissioned my shirt through a printer’s website that allows you to preview the final product. After a day of unreturned follow-up calls and emails, I concluded that they weren’t true flag-wavers and moved on to Plan C: printers in Brooklyn, which is perhaps the most verbally offensive territory in the world. Unsurprisingly, the second Brooklyn-based place I contacted agreed to print the Haiti hate speech without objection. I couldn’t resist the opportunity and quickly spit out a few more phrases concerning Haiti that might infuriate a normal human being. He had no problem with my improvised addenda and happily told me my shirt would be ready within a few hours.

Back in 2007 when it came to light that Mother Teresa had suffered a serious crisis of faith in her latter years, I wondered whether she ever just threw up her hands and said, “Fuck this. I’m going to get the soup cook to lay some serious pipe in me after he finishes feeding the orphans.” That scenario has played out many times in my mind ever since, and I couldn’t help but wish to manifest it onto a baby onesie so that the children would be able to speculate as I have.

I warned the first print shop I called (in Queens) that the image I wanted to print was racy and that they might be offended. The associate on the phone insisted that his shop had printed many humorous and ribald images for bachelor parties and as gag birthday gifts. A few minutes later I sent the image and he responded with an email that was blank except for a signature line and a subject that read “sorry cant help you” [sic]. When I inquired as to why he was unwilling to print the shirt, explaining it was a sociological-cum-art project that celebrated our American freedoms, he responded, “Yes, there is a policy of no porn. Sorry.” Distraught and dispirited, I once again turned to a Brooklyn-based printing facility. Within ten minutes I had explained what I wanted, emailed the image, and received a quote without hesitation. I expected the clerk to give me a hard time upon my arrival, but he had it bagged up and ready to go and told me he thought it was a “good idea.”

Concert tees and 9/11 are perhaps the epitome of Americana. So, for my final design, I combined their forces. The first place I called was a print shop on the outskirts of the Financial District (which, for all of you heathens out there, is the neighborhood where the World Trade Center once stood). A nice lady answered the phone and I explained that the t-shirt I wanted to print had the potential to get a person killed, or at the very least severely maimed, if it was worn while walking around the sordid streets of NYC. She replied, “We’ll print anything. We don’t care.”

Rising to the challenge, I had my designer add a final touch: an image of a jumper careening down the side of one of the twin towers. Then I sent it off and waited for an infuriated phone call. Twenty minutes passed and my phone rang. It was another employee (or perhaps the owner?) of the print shop, this time a male. He told me he did not appreciate my sense of humor. I insisted that it wasn’t necessarily supposed to be funny and questioned his appreciation of the Constitution of the United States of America. In a fit of rage he stuttered before spitting out “You motherfucker!” and hanging up the phone.

The next place I submitted my design to never returned my multiple follow-up emails and phone calls so, in the interest of giving my business to people who want and probably need it in this dire economy, I phoned the shop that had no problems printing the Mother Teresa tee and told them I had another job for them. Again, no questions were asked and the shirt was ready for pickup the next day. When I arrived there I noticed something that didn’t catch my eye the first time around: NEVER FORGET and FDNY shirts lined the walls. I was certain I had just stepped into a trap and firemen would soon be bashing my skull in with axes, but the clerk calmly ran my debit card and provided me with the shirt and a receipt before wishing me well. That, my fellow patriots, is truly the American way.

Shirt designs by Michael De Leon and Angie Sullivan

You don't have to be a devoted aficionado of low-budget '80s action-horror flicks to appreciate the equally low-budget 2014 action-horror flick Wolfcop. But it's going to help… as is the ability to recognize the awesomeness of drunk werewolves getting in shootouts.

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Installed last year at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, this pirate ship CT scanner has proven so popular that even patients 17-21 ask to use it. And, let's be honest, we're older and we'd still choose it.

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Bangkok's New World Mall was once a shopping center, but today it serves as a giant fish pond, its waterlogged lower level completely overtaken by koi.

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For those of you who haven't already seen it in your Facebook news feed, this is a short video of a recent Jeopardy episode in which contestant Ari doesn't know the answer to the Final Jeopardy question, and gives the next best thing. What an all-star. I only hope he actually DID know the right answer, but took the opportunity to toot his own horn. I can't say I blame him. *BRAP* Sometimes you have to do it yourself since-- "Wait, was that your ass?" No, I carry an actual horn around me all the time OF COURSE IT WAS MY ASS. You're a regular Ken Jennings, you know that? Keep going for the video. Thanks to Ford, who was disqualified from Jeopardy prelims for not being able to grasp the concept of answering in the form of a question. Right? That shit's confusing.

Photo by Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust via Facebook

On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled to strike down a Massachusetts law creating protest-free “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. This ruling was a solid win for free speech—and the pro-life zealots and militant teenagers who spend their days lurking around Planned Parenthoods trying to convince women entering that they are about to make a huge mistake.

The case, McCullen v. Coakley, revolved around a 2007 state statute that made it illegal for abortion opponents to go within a 35-foot radius of an abortion clinic. The law expanded on previous restrictions. It was passed in large part because clinics in Massachusetts and across the country spent most of the 90s and early aughts under siege by pro-life protesters, whose tactics for stopping abortion ranged from aggressive harassment and intimidation to straight-up terrorism. Supporters of the law, perhaps understandably, claim that the buffer zones are necessary to protect the safety of clinic workers and patients. But anti-abortion activists say that the law violates their First Amendment right to free speech, specifically their right to quietly talk to strangers about unborn children.

In a surprisingly narrow ruling, the court agreed that the Massachusetts buffer zone law infringes on the constitutional rights of abortion opponents, but acknowledged that the state also has a legitimate interest in protecting abortion services. Basically, the ruling says that states can pass laws ensuring clinic safety and access, but not at the expense of the First Amendment. The Massachusetts buffer zone law goes too far, the court said, burdening “substantially more speech than necessary to achieve the Commonwealth’s asserted interests.”

The state asserts “undeniably significant interests in maintaining public safety on [its] streets and sidewalks, as well as in preserving access to adjacent healthcare facilities,” Chief Justice John Roberts elaborated in the majority opinion. “But here the Commonwealth has pursued those interests by the extreme step of closing a substantial portion of a traditional public forum to all speakers.”

Noting that Massachusetts is the only state to impose a blanket 35-foot buffer around all abortion clinics, the court points out that other states have figured out ways to address concerns about access to abortion that don’t put such a heavy burden on free speech. “A painted line on the sidewalk is easy to enforce, but the prime objective of the First Amendment is not efficiency,” Roberts writes.

Interestingly, the court’s ruling seems to particularly focused on protecting the rights of “petitioners” like 77-year-old Eleanor McCullen, the lead plaintiff in the buffer zone suit, who has been described as a “grandmotherly” activist who stands outside Boston abortion clinics and quietly tries to persuade women not to go inside. In his opinion, Roberts emphasizes the difference between this type of “sidewalk counseling” and the more violent, aggressive protests that the buffer zones are designed to contain.

McCullen, he writes, “will typically initiate a conversation this way: ‘Good morning, may I give you my literature? Is there anything I can do for you?’”

“Petitioners are not protestors,” he adds. “They seek not merely to express their opposition to abortion, but to inform women of various alternatives and to provide help in pursuing them. Petitioners believe that they can accomplish this objective only through personal, caring, consensual conversations. And for good reason: It is easier to ignore a strained voice or a waving hand than a direct greeting or an outstretched arm.”

For abortion supporters, it’s tempting to dismiss McCullen as a red herring, a cozy decoy that masks the real menace of abortion clinic protesters. But sidewalk counseling is actually one of the primary strategies of the grassroots anti-abortion movement. Activists like McCullen are a constant—and often the only—anti-abortion presence in front of many facilities. The goal, according to activists, is not to scare clinics out of business. They are trying to take advantage of women who may be having doubts about their abortion choice and convince them that having the baby is a better option.

“The people that are out there at the abortion clinics are out there to help women,” said Cheryl Sullenger, the senior policy advisor for Operation Rescue, one of the more militant grassroots pro-life groups that essentially serves as a training camp for pro-life activists. “They don’t want to attack anyone.”

Tactics vary: In Albuquerque, for example, an ancient activist named Phillip spends most afternoons perched on a ladder behind the parking lot of an abortion clinic. When women enter or exit the clinic, he pops up above the fence and asks if he can say a rosary. The effect is jarring and deeply weird—but Phillip obviously isn’t there to hurt anyone. Others are more proactive: “I ask women who are going into a clinic why they want to have an abortion,” Lauren Handy, a 19-year-old activist from Virginia told me. “And then I try to figure out how else we can solve the issue—sometimes they’re in a bad relationship, sometimes it’s about money. Sometimes they just need someone to tell them that they can.”

Pro-choice groups generally don’t see any difference between “sidewalk counselors” and other, more aggressive activists, lumping together any one with a rosary and a bloody fetus photo as a potentially violent threat. The impulse is understandable: After four decades of clinic bombings, death threats, and murders—including the 1994 shooting spree at two Massachusetts abortion facilities, and more recently, the assassination of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009—abortion rights activists have probably earned the right to be skittish.

“This movement has a long history of violence,” Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America said in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday. “Let's be clear: [the] decision puts women and healthcare providers at greater risk. We will work to make sure that legislatures in states are focused on making clinics safe for women free of harassment, intimidation, and violent acts." 

The truth is, though, the pro-life movement has developed much more sophisticated tactics for shutting down clinics than barricading doors and gunning down abortion doctors. Since 2011, there have been at least 73 clinic closures in the US. About half of these closures were caused by new state laws designed to limit access to abortion, according to Bloomberg data. By contrast, there is little evidence that protesters are actually driving people away from abortion clinics.

In that sense, Thursday’s Supreme Court decision didn’t do much to alter access to clinics, but rather laid what we already know about the abortion debate in America: Being cornered by strangers who want to talk about your uterus and pray for your unborn child is obviously horrifying and invasive, but it’s not illegal. Because while you may have the right to get an abortion, someone else has the right to make you feel terrible about it. 

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On November 18, 2003, Michael Jackson’s 3,000-acre primary residence, Neverland Ranch, was searched by 70 police officers from the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department after accusations that Jackson had molested some children (The People of the State of California v. Michael Joseph Jackson). Following this, Jackson abandoned his estate, saying it had been “violated," and three years later the property went into foreclosure.

While the Ranch floated in real estate limbo, a group of photographers snuck onto the grounds and explored the abandoned kingdom, returning several times between December 2007 and March 2008. I spoke to the photographers to see what they saw. (Because tresspassing is illegal and I was feeling nostalgic for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they will be referred to as Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello. A fourth member contributed photography and was not interviewed.)

VICE: What inspired you guys to explore Neverland Ranch?
Leonardo: It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I was aware that the park had been abandoned for quite a while, and I knew that Jackson was in Dubai at the time and that he wasn’t able to pay his electric bills. So, my understanding was that it would be a short-lived opportunity. I usually drive along the 101 freeway, and I decided, I have a few extra hours, I’m just going to go check it out. It just so happened that the day I was out there, it was pretty windy. It was a good cover because there were guards on-site, and the wind sort of blocked out my noise. I was able to sneak in without being heard. I had no expectation to make it in, but I just wanted to see.

What was the weirdest shit you saw?
Raphael: [Laughs]
Leonardo: Raphael is laughing because everything we saw was pretty weird. To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of Michael Jackson, but I knew that he was an important American historical figure. At the time, most people probably didn’t realize that he was part of history, and I knew that there was the potential for everything that was associated with him to be quickly lost. Without our documentation, I think it would’ve been a huge loss. So, I thought it was important to do that as quickly as we could, before it was gone.
Raphael: Are we talking about going into his house? Is that part of the story?

Please.
Raphael: We haven’t really told anyone about it... OK, the strangest thing to me was the little boy in pajamas sitting on the moon logo, everywhere. Like, it amazes me how much it resembles the DreamWorks logo. That thing was painted on the ground, like, 60 feet wide. It was on the signs, on the bumper cars, it was on the coach station where they parked the coach, one on the ground.
Donatello: That’s his creepy logo, right?
Raphael: It’s got a little boy sitting on it in those footie pajama things. Isn’t the back open, or is that only on some of the paintings? [Laughs]

Oh my God.
Donatello: The other thing was that he collected memorabilia that had his likeness on it. He had Pepsi bottles and books and other promotional material in boxes. He also had stacks and stacks of fan mail, and one piece that really grabbed me was the prosecuting attorney of his molestation case with devil’s horns drawn on. That was just laying on a tabletop—maybe a Pac-Man table?
Raphael: You read his fan mail?
Donatello: We were flipping through some of it.

How did you guys get into his house?
Raphael: We probably don’t want to talk about the details about how we entered.

Was it difficult?
Leonardo: We didn’t have to break any laws, because it was open. It was all open. The house was open.

Wow.
Raphael: One thing that really sticks out in my memory was drinking his grape soda from that walk-in kitchen storage area and then very carefully wiping the fingerprints off the bottle and hiding it in the bushes.

Wait, you drank his juice?
Raphael: I was thirsty and he had all of this grape soda, and I thought I’d just drink something from his house.

Was it actual grape soda?
Raphael: Yeah! It was actual grape soda. In the kitchen there was this “Children of the World” menu. Everything in there was geared toward children. I’m not sure he had any, but…

He did.
Raphael: That menu, on a permanently-printed chalkboard with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and macaroni and cheese, that sticks out in my mind. And the strange hodgepodge of shit that he had bought that didn’t have any relation to his house. His entire house was filled with these expensive looking, one-off, semi-artistic things.

Semi-artistic?
Raphael: These weird mirrors on this four-foot by four-foot platform. And that would be next to some Roman statue-looking thing. Next to that would be an eight-foot-tall oil painting of Michael Jackson himself. There were all of these paintings inside the house.
Donatello: There’s one where he’s leading a procession of children.

What was the vibe in the house?
Donatello: I was really on-edge and uncomfortable, mostly because I was worried that someone might find us in there and I think it’s just such a breach of privacy. It was so compelling to do it; I couldn’t not go in because the opportunity was there. But at the same time, it just felt wrong. It was this constant friction between fascination and, I’ve got to get the fuck out of here, I shouldn’t be in here.
Leonardo: That’s true. We all felt that way. We [as urban explorers] don’t normally ever go in peoples’ houses.
Raphael: It’s all usually industrial, or old schools, or things that aren’t people's personal residences. At one point, I got so fed up with the weirdness that I went outside and I tried to loosen them up by banging on the door. I had a flashlight in my hand, and made it look like I was busting them. We fuck around with each other quite a bit, but Donatello was furious that I did that.

That’s ridiculous.
Donatello: I don’t remember that. It must’ve been such a bad memory.
Raphael: I scared the shit out of you.
Leonardo: I remember that vividly, actually. I didn’t find anything that creepy about the whole thing. I found it really odd and different, but I wasn’t scared at any moment. I think none of us were really scared. Mostly we felt like we shouldn’t be invading the privacy of someone else. But I never felt like I was afraid of any of the things that he put out there. It just seemed really exotic and different. There are far more odd things in this world than what Michael Jackson was.
Raphael: The whole thing was just really an adventure, and going somewhere that nobody’s ever seen, and seeing all of this stuff, it was right after he left the country because of the molestation charges. So in our mind, it was like looking at everything more from that angle. There’s the kids’ stuff, there’s toys everywhere, there’s the huge arcade—a giant child-magnet.
Donatello: I don’t know. I don’t want the whole gist of this interview to back up those allegations toward the guy.

That’s OK. I was actually going to ask how much of the property you ended up being able to see?
Donatello: We pretty much saw everything except for the petting zoo area. We went to the arcade, the mansion, the amusement park rides, the railroad train station, all of the statue areas…

I’m shocked that you guys weren’t caught.
Donatello: We’re kind of professionals. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but… We do this a lot. We do a lot of research and recon. But also, it’s surprisingly low-key because there’s a guard truck down by the road, and we just avoided that guard truck, and once you’re past that, you’re in the valley, and you’re on your own, and it’s pretty desolate.
Raphael: Surprisingly, we just roamed about the grounds. Casually.

It’s a pretty huge space, isn’t it?
Raphael: Really big. We didn’t even get to the zoo, because it’s so far away.
Donatello: One other interesting thing—we did go in Michael's room, but both of the kids’ rooms were locked from the outside.
Raphael: We decided not to get into the kids’ rooms, because it didn’t seem right.

What about his toy room?
Raphael: It was maybe 60 feet by 30 feet, and filled with every toy you could imagine. Life-size Lego models, Darth Vader—all sorts of awesome toys.
Donatello: The other thing I remember is that there were game stations set up all around the house. Imagine those consoles for Super Nintendo that you might find at the Best Buy store, but set up with all different systems.

Was there anything adult in there? It all sounds like mostly kids’ stuff. And weird art.
[Laughter]
Raphael: There were a lot of big, lounge-y spaces with couches and all the strange art objects.
Donatello: I remember seeing really normal things, change lying on a coffee table and a little office space with a computer and typical home stuff.

Roughly how many rooms did he have? It's a mansion. It must’ve been fucking huge.
Leonardo: He probably had ten rooms, I would say. The mansion itself was not as huge as you’d think, but there were all of these other smaller buildings that we didn’t really go in.

Isn’t there a massive clock in the garden?
Donatello: Oh, dude, there’s all kinds of crazy shit in the garden.
Leonardo: Didn’t you take a picture of the clock with the hands stuck, and then you realized later on that you took the picture within three seconds of what the hands were stuck at?
Donatello: I did! There’s this clock that’s stopped around 2:55, and I just happened to snap the shot almost exactly at that same time, without even realizing it until a year later.

Pretty serendipitous. Although, how did you know that it had been stopped?
Donatello: The power had been cut off, and the hands weren’t moving.

The house didn’t have any power?
Donatello: If I remember correctly, there was no power in the mansion but the water was working.

Did you guys use the bathroom?
[Laughter]
Donatello: I think we checked the water or something because we were just curious if it worked. What’s weird is that within his house, there was no dust. It was immaculate. The carpet was vacuumed, and there was no dust on any of those crazy sculpture or statues. That’s kind of why we were on edge—like, people are here. A lot of things were covered in vinyl-type tarps to protect them. But it was obvious that someone was in there cleaning, I would say, at least once a week, by how clean it was.

But he hadn’t lived there for a while…
Raphael: I think that’s what signified to Leonardo that he was OK to go in there.
Leonardo: The house is foreclosed, it’s basically derelict, defunct. That’s when it hit my radar.
Raphael: It’s probably obvious that we really only go to abandoned and defunct sites.

You don’t seem like paparazzi.
Raphael: We're paparazzi of bridges, maybe.

Thanks, guys. 

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on Twitter.

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An armed MQ-9 Reaper drone at a military base in April. Photo via Flickr user US Air Force

On Thursday, a panel made up of former military and intelligence officials released the most thorough examination yet of America's fondness for the remote-controlled flying death machines commonly known as drones. A little over a year after President Barack Obama gave a major speech that attempted to justify his expansion of the use of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), his pals in the national security elite have detailed the strategic, legal, and ethical questions underpinning their use.

The report, released by the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, urges far greater transparency when it comes to drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere; it also calls for an internal cost-benefit analysis, the formation of an oversight commission to review UAV policies, and a concerted effort to assess future trends in drone warfare.

Warning of a "slippery slope toward continual or widening conflict and instability" across the globe, the group of ten former CIA and Pentagon honchos argue that the White House risks setting a precedent other countries, including US antagonists like Russia, might be tempted to follow.

"What we don't want to have happen is sort of sleepwalk into a new normal where all of a sudden it's totally common to be launching strikes of any kind all over the world—and now everybody else is doing it too beacuse we set the norm," panelist Janine Davidson, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration and is now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me in an interview.

"These task forces are always tricky because there's always cynicism that it'll be a report that just sits on a shelf or whatever," Davidson, a former aircraft commander and pilot, added. But even though the panelists were broadly critical of the administration's current policies, their diagnosis should carry significant weight given that many of them have been in high-level national security discussions before (indeed, they met with White House officials while working on the report). Some of the recommendations the authors make, such as having the Pentagon manage drone attacks rather than the CIA, are supposedly already in the works. And Obama seems to realize that stories of strikes on wedding parties that result in young children getting ripped to shreds do not represent good "optics," to say the least—especially as flying robots become more and more common all over the globe.

"We're coming up to a next wave where [drone use is] going to be domestic, it's going to be commercial, and it's going to be global," said Samuel J. Brannen, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There's this pretty naive view out there that the US is going to be able to prevent drone proliferation by simply deciding it doesn't want to export drones and setting up some sort of arms-control regime. That's just not going to happen. The cat's out of the bag."

Coming just a few days after the court-ordered release of the legal memo intended to justify the 2010 killing of American al Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki in Yemen, the task force's critique of the administration for its lack of of transparency rings especially true. Among other things, the authors point out that there has yet to be a comprehensive government cost-benefit analysis on the use of drones to kill terrorists and challenge the conventional wisdom that UAVs have been key to containing Islamic militancy since 9/11.

"There is no indication that a US strategy to destroy al Qaeda has curbed the rise of Sunni Islamic extremism, deterred the establishment of Shia Islamic extremist groups, or advanced long-term US security interests," the report says.

As a second-term president who has no more elections to win, Obama obviously doesn't have to worry all that much about how popular his counter-terrorism programs are. But inasmuch as these are prominent members of the US foreign policy brain trust wagging their fingers at him, one would think his almost-lame-duck administration will have a hard time simply brushing it all off as griping from peaceniks.

"Drones are neither some evil super-weapon nor some mystical magic bullet," Georgetown University law professor and former Obama administration official Rosa Brooks, a cochair of the task force, told me. "It's just another way of dropping bombs from the sky. It's just another technology, then, but it's a technology that has made certain things easier than they used to be and given rise to what we see as a somewhat dangerous fantasy that we can kill our way out of a very complex problem one bad guy at a time."

The authors of the report specifically reject the oft-repeated assertion that drone warfare is like a video game that breeds an isolated "Playstation mentality," pointing out that PTSD is disproportionately frequent among drone pilots because they spend weeks or even months surveilling their targets.

Still, the specter of endless war facilitated by UAVs (the use of which reduces the impact of combat on most Americans) is essentially the status quo at this point thanks to the sweeping powers granted to the military and intelligence agencies after 9/11.

"The problem is that it's not drones that are deciding to kill people wherever they might be killing them, it's policymakers and it's counter-terrorism policy and it's specifically the authorization of military force," Brannen, who recently authored his own report on this subject, told me.

The worst-case scenario is that the administration does some tinkering around the edges, pats itself on the back for simultaneously solving global terrorism and obeying international law, and then doesn't actually reduce the frequency of morally dubious strikes. If nothing else, however, the debate has clearly shifted onto friendlier territory for the civil libertarian crowd. Not only is the military potentially facing electoral rebuke in the form of various 2016 presidential contenders who hope to build their brands as opponents of the national-security state over the next couple of years, but—as the task force's report shows—the Beltway establishment that sticks around regardless of who wins elections is starting to wake up to an existential problem.

"When Human Rights Watch or Rand Paul says something, people have a tendency to say, 'Oh that person or that group would say that,'" Brooks said. "Our hope is that this is not a group where people think, 'Oh, well they would say that' when you're looking at the former general counsel of the CIA and the former commander of [US Central Command] and the Bush administration's top lawyer out of the National Security Council."

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

My favorite part of reading The Strain was the yuck factor. These vampires are disgusting — pieces of their body fall off and they leave trails of feces behind them. Needless to say, I'm excited to see how the TV series will handle it — but these two featurettes are quite promising.

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Here's a sobering statistic for you: according to this study, almost 16% of midwestern college students have had sex while driving (SWD), and nearly half did so while driving at speeds of 61-80 mph(!). And no, these numbers didn't include masturbation. As you might guess, SWD was reported by more men than women, and usually consisted of oral sex, although 11% of SWD participants had actual intercourse. Amazingly, none of those surveyed reported having an accident, though 1.8% "nearly had a c

The FDA is considering changing marijuana's status, so that it would no longer be classified as a drug with the highest risk for dependency and no medical benefits whatsoever. Instead, restrictions would be loosened to allow further study of its medical uses.

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Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Image via Flickr

The kind of stilted, media-friendly conversations politicians have when they know they're on camera are pretty awkward. Nobody likes a robotic politician, but ironically, it's the times when they talk like normal human beings who swear, criticize colleagues, and generally shoot the shit that land them in trouble. That's exactly what has been happening in Poland over the last week, as a series of private conversations between top politicians published by Wprost, a weekly news magazine, has wreaked havoc in government circles in Warsaw.

The conversations leaked by Wprost record Polish ministers relaxing over dinner. They were revealed on the June 14, and since then, more recordings have come out. The prize for the best quote goes to the interior minister, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz. In the first recording to be released, he tells the governor of Poland’s central bank that “the Polish state exists only in theory; in practice it doesn’t exist.” So far, he has kept his job.

The latest revelations concern Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s Oxford-educated foreign minister, who was caught dismissing Poland’s relationship with the United States as “worthless.”

“Complete bullshit. We'll get in conflict with the Germans, Russians, and we'll think that everything is super because we gave the Americans a blow job,” he allegedly says in the recording from January 2014, published in Wprost on June 23. “Losers. Complete losers.”

Obviously describing a key strategic alliance as sucking dick is the kind of thing that could get any politician in trouble, let alone a foreign minister. But it's a particularly bad look for Sikorski, who enjoys a strong international reputation and has been tipped as the EU’s next foreign-policy chief. The recording was released less than three weeks after Barack Obama’s long-awaited trip to Warsaw on June 3 and 4, at a time when Poland has been calling for increased US and Nato presence in the region at this time of uncertainty to its east.

Sikorski has been known to make blunt statements in the past. In February, following the worst days of bloodshed during the Kiev protests, which left over a hundred people dead, he helped broker a deal between Ukraine’s opposition leaders and then president Viktor Yanukovych. Sign it or “you’ll all be dead,” he was caught telling them on video. Not even Yanukovych had threatened them like that; the spokesman of Poland’s main opposition party was quick to point out, apparently jealous of the praise Sikorski was receiving.

Still, swaggering remarks like this—even if they need to be taken with a pinch of salt—aren’t exactly going to help Sikorski’s international career. He has long been tipped as a favourite to replace Catherine Ashton as the EU’s foreign policy chief, with his role in the Ukraine crisis seen as boosting his chances. But this looks increasingly unlikely since the recordings were published. This could be exactly what the people behind the leaked recordings—fearing an assertive EU foreign policy chief and a powerful Polish foreign policy—set out to achieve.

While Sikorski’s remarks may have raised a few eyebrows across the Atlantic, and contrast with Poland’s official attitude towards the US, they didn’t come as a huge surprise to Poles. Despite the fanfare surrounding Obama’s visit to Warsaw earlier this month, Poland is less enamoured in America than it was ten years ago, when Polish troops took part in the war in Iraq. Edward Lucas, an editor at The Economist, compared Polish-American relations to a “companionable marriage where convenient sharing of chores, rather than romantic passion, has become the main bond.”

If anything, Sikorski’s remarks point to genuine concerns about overreliance on the US, which has other worries besides the situation along the EU’s eastern border. As he explains in the recording, Poland’s alliance with America is even “harmful because it creates a false sense of security.” Since it joined the EU in 2004, Poland has focused more on building a strong position in Europe, with Sikorski, who has been foreign minister since 2007, working to improve Poland’s relations with Germany and Russia. (This was, admittedly, before Russia annexed Crimea.)

Both Warsaw and Washington have been quick to try and play down Sikorski’s comments. “The United States is our very important ally and partner,” Poland’s president, Bronisław Komorowski told reporters on Monday. US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said she could not comment on the authenticity of the tapes. “But more broadly, the United States and Poland have an incredibly strong relationship,” she said, mentioning their shared values.

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, has continued to emphasize the illegal nature of the recordings, rather than their embarrassing content. Last week, he did not rule out the possibility of early elections if the crisis is not solved, but has refused to fire any of the ministers caught in the recordings so far. The leaking operation “aims to destabilise and paralyse the government at a key moment,” he said on June 23, specifically mentioning the situation in Ukraine and Poland’s efforts to secure a good post in the European Commission that is being decided on now.

Unsurprisingly, Tusk’s political rivals are trying to make the most of the crisis, especially the conservative Law and Justice party. “Tusk’s corpse is already floating down the Vistula,” Law and Justice’s spokesman Adam Hofman commented triumphantly, a morbid piece of political rhetoric referring to the river that flows through Warsaw.

Meanwhile, the key question remains unanswered: Who made the recordings? The number of recordings of top level figures, made over the course of a year, points to a well-organized operation. Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish newspaper, has started to speak in terms of a waiters’ plot involving the manager of the VIP room at Sowa i Przyjaciele (literally: Owl and Friends), an elegant Warsaw restaurant where some of the conversations took place. The bugging device may have been hidden in the remote control used for summoning waiters, the newspaper quotes one of the recorded people as saying.

It is also unclear who handed the conversations over to Wprost. The magazine has only said that it was “a businessman.” The latest set of recordings were sent to it in an email mysteriously signed “Patriot”.

But there is a widespread feeling—though so far no proof—that Russia could be behind the whole thing. Causing chaos in Warsaw would be a way to take revenge for Poland’s active support for Kiev throughout the Ukrainian crisis. Recent events in Ukraine aside, it could also be part of a longer-term Russian plan to weaken Poland.

When the first conversations were leaked over a week ago, it looked like senior officials’ heads might roll. The way the situation is developing now suggests that the wounds caused by the recordings may take longer to heal and raises the potentially far more sinister scenario of involvement from abroad.

Follow Annabelle Chapman on Twitter.

In the age of the internet, amazing music has never been more accessible. Today, you can stream full unreleased albums by Aphex Twin. You can watch live performances and interviews from unimpeachable artists like Sonic Youth or Chuck Berry or Lou Reed. So much great music is right there for the taking and can serve as totally respectable reference points for your would-be band to be inspired by. Xombie, however, has chosen the road less traveled, and arguably more shitty. They are following in the footsteps of 90s rap-metal bands like Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit.

“[Our sound is] like Rage Against the Machine—but thrashier,” the guitarist Roy Galvan said to me, giving himself a compliment.

Galvan, vocalist Atom Crews, guitarist Robert “Fish” Fishkin, bassist Cadillac Mike Martabano, and drummer Eric Castillo are critically suicidal. They perform in a genre of music that is universally derided, right up there with white dudes in dreadlocks. But for them, nu-metal is not a guilty pleasure; it's just pleasure. 

As the bastions of bad taste and vulgarity, we had to share this video with you. Because it's endearing and inspiring that Xombie is committed to creating music that will probably get them crapped on by even the most forgiving rock fans. We respect that. Plus, as if just being a hip-hop-metal band wasn’t laughable enough, they somehow managed to get Kimbo Slice in their latest video. So there.

If you too have an unwavering love for the most embarrassing era in rock, you’ll be pleased to hear that this “Rock Bottom” video is only the beginning for Xombie. The very ballsy band will release their third album, Capitol X, on July 29. If you like it, we promise not to judge you, but beware, someone else will.

Where do hip-hop and metal music meet?
Rob Fishkin: It’s a tough question, because when people think of rap and metal together, they think of cheesy 90s bands. That’s a huge stigma, and you don’t want to be lumped into it.

Atom Crews: For me, it’s the vocals. You’re taking two different worlds and putting them together. Any rapper can rap over a beat, even if it’s thrashy. What you do with it is what makes it special.They’ve brought out a completely different side of me. I grew up on hip-hop, so I don’t like to be compared to Fred Durst. When I was 14, it was great. But now when I hear it, it’s corny, cheesy hip-hop.

Have you been rapping for a long time?
Atom: Like 15 years. I grew up on hip-hop. Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP is one of my classics. I did a lot of battle rapping, and I know I can hold my own my own with other rappers. 

Part of the band came together on Craigslist. What did that first ad say?
Rob: I had been looking for a band in New York for years. I moved up here to play music, but I couldn’t find a band. I tried out for shitty bands, and it was just boring. I put a post on Craigslist and immediately Roy wrote back this ridiculous email in all caps. It was like, “I THINK YOU AND ME…” I was like, This guy’s weird, but I decided to send him some of my old band stuff.

Roy Galvan: Yeah, and then I said, "Do you want to come by and jam out?" He came, we jammed, and it was like—damn.

Any advice for meeting people on Craigslist after that?
Roy: I always ask to meet at Starbucks, but I stand across the street. When they say, “I’m here” I try to look who it is to make sure it’s not a weirdo or he’s going to rob me. If he looks approachable, I’ll go. If not, I’ll just disappear.

Atom: Don’t take anything personally. People will just flake out and disappear. You’ve got to watch your ass.

Did you write this song when you hit rock bottom?
Rob: We came back from tour and we were just pieces of shit. We didn’t have jobs, money, and we lived in New York City. It’s the most unforgiving place. When you don’t have money people treat you differently.

Atom: We quit our jobs at Scholastic. We had been on tour for three months. We were really roughing it—we don’t have a label, any money, or anyone supporting us. We were sleeping in a Walmart parking lot in a fucking van.

You set up an entire tour by yourselves?
Roy: We got lucky with the Kickstarter campaign that raised almost $11,000.  I was surprised that many people supported us, but basically they made us tour. Without that we would’ve barely made it to Maryland.

Atom: I came back to a telemarketing job for $10 an hour. I wrote this song about a lot of hard shit. I had rented out my apartment, but we came back a little bit early, so I was staying with my girl, bandmates, anywhere I could for a solid month—it sucked. I have three herniated discs on my back that I’ve been dealing with from 12 years ago, and then, a month before we went on tour, my back flared up really bad and I lost sensation in my right foot. I still haven’t gotten it all back, and it’s been two years.

Rob: We had to stop on tour so he could lie down and shit like that.

Atom: I would literally lie on the side of the road on my stomach because I couldn’t sit in the van too long. We were sleeping in the van. It was a shitty situation.

But now you have a video with Kimbo Slice. What’s he like?
Rob: I picked up Kimbo Slice from the hotel. When I pulled up, I texted him to come down. I was in a Subaru, and a little bit later this huge white limo pulled up behind me. Kimbo and his brother came down—and they’re literally larger than life. They came out of the hotel and looked at this white limo like, All right, all right. I yell out of the Subaru, “Hey, Kimbo!” and pull the seat all the way back. It was super cool. I’ve seen backyard fights of him knocking a guy’s eye out, but he’s really nice.

Atom: The nicest guy. He would never even go out of his way to hurt a fly. But when he grew up, he had to learn how to fight because it was a bad neighborhood.

Rob: Super professional. He put in a long day for us. Our main actor was our size, and Kimbo is this monster! We’re like, Hope he doesn’t kill you.

Atom: Kimbo wasn’t going 100 percent, but he was going 30, and that’s still 100 percent of a regular person.

Are you into fighting?
Roy: I like boxing. I like seeing people kick each other’s ass. It’s pretty awesome.

Do you fight at all?
Atom: I used to. It’s part of the reason my back is fucked up.

How about moshing at your shows?
Atom: Someone fell on me in the mosh pit. I’ve been moshing for years, but my biggest fear is falling and someone falling on me. Most people are pretty good, people try to be safe in the mosh pit, so if you fall someone will pick you up. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It was concrete floor—wet and slippery— and I was wearing Chucks so I slipped. Before I even had a moment to get my bearings it was like, boom! Everything was disoriented, and my eye looked like it got punched by Kimbo Slice.

Do girls ever come to your shows?
Atom: We had a girl come up on the stage, dance, and pull her pants down. She was this big tall sexy girl, and she had these tight leather pants on. She came up in the middle of a breakdown and started dancing. She dropped low, got up, and pulled her pants down. There’s a video on the internet of it.

Roy: That was awesome.

Follow Lauren on Twitter.

Three New York families fought against a policy barring non-immunized children from public schools during a disease outbreak, and lost. This is a major setback for the anti-vaccine cause, and an important precedent for public health.

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Meet 26-year old Nicholas Wig. Nicholas broke into the St. Paul, Minnesota home of James Wood and stole his watch, credit cards, money and a cell phone. Plus stripped out of his wet clothes (it had been raining) and took some of Wood's. OH YEAH -- then logged into his own Facebook account and left it open before leaving. Even most grandparents know how to computer better than that. Somehow, this man has managed to not die in 26 years. That is unfathomable to me.

Wood posted to Facebook using Wig's profile, saying Wig had burglarized his home. He even shared his phone number to see if someone would call with information. Wig texted him later that day. "I replied you left a few things at my house last night, how can I get them back to you," Wood said. Wig agreed to meet with Wood later that night. Wood believes Wig was under the impression he would give him back some of his clothes he had left at his home in exchange for a recycled cell phone Wig had stolen.

Wig was arrested on his way to meet Wood, still wearing the victim's watch. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and $20,000 fines, although I suggest we just throw him into a volcano. Shit, tell him it's a hot tub and he might jump in himself. Thanks to Thaylor H and brendan, who only leave the houses they've burglarized after logging into their Myspace accounts because then then victims just feel sorry for them.

Copyright Skategypsy

A couple of weeks ago, our friends at Noisey wrote about a guy who was photographed pissing into his own mouth at a Trash Talk show in Melbourne. It might have seemed pretty gross and weird to you at the time, but it turns out it wasn’t an isolated incident. In fact, it's just one example of a worldwide phenomenon among skaters—a phenomenon that even has its own name: "bubbling."

At least that's what this friendly skater called Troy West—a.k.a. Skategypsy—told us recently. According to Skategypsy, "bubbling" originated in his native Australia but was popularized in Europe through his own skating tours.

Here's the rest of that conversation about gargling piss.

VICE: How did bubbling first start? Just how big is it in Australia?

Troy West: It's huge in Australia. It's part of our everyday life. My dad actually taught me how to do it when I was a kid.

And so you brought it to Europe?

I was on tour in Austria, and this other skater, Frido, asked me if I would drink my own piss for $136. So I explained that it's common practice in Oz, and I did it right there and then, and then again later by some lake in Italy. It took Frido a few days to master the art, though—he had a weak flow.

Fast-forward to 3:45 if you want to see a skater drink his own pee

Is there a deeper meaning behind it?

It's a pretty big statement. Try it and find the meaning yourself.

Why do you think it’s so big in the skating community?

Skaters like to provoke reactions from laymen, I guess.

Do people still tend to be shocked by this kind of stunt?

Fucking oath. I'm in a pub in Bolivia right now and just had to explain to this legendary skater Al Partanen what "bubbling" is. He was polite about it, thinks it's fucked for sure, but I have no doubt he will try it by the end of the trip.

Copyright Skategypsy

Does it make your skating better?

Of course.

Do you experiment with other bodily functions as well?

I personally don't. But an Austrian friend of mine once ate his own shit while taking a bath. The same guy also pissed on a security guard's sandwich at a Bad Brains concert. 

Thanks for the lowdown, Troy.
Bubble on!

Over the last week, there's been some pretty intense media coverage of China's Dog Meat Festival, which has become something of a tradition over the last two decades. As the name suggests—and much to the dismay of all the people who see dogs as friends rather than food—tens of thousands of dogs are slaughtered and eaten each year at the event, which takes place in the city of Yulin, Guangxi province.

I was in Yulin on Saturday, when locals once again raised glasses loaded with lychee wine to the heavens and tucked into bowls full of freshly roasted, fried, or boiled dog.

Pet-lovers across China and the rest of the world have been quick to lament Yulin's apparently boundless appetite for puppy flesh, and several Chinese celebrities have made online pleas to bring the festival to a halt. However, locals are reluctant to give up their annual gathering. When I spoke to one female vendor in the downtown Dong Kou meat market, she told me she’d lost count of the number of dogs she’d sold in the last week but guessed it was well over a hundred a day—business has rarely been better.

Shandai, from the animal-protection group Guangdong Shoushan Volunteer Center, reckoned that previous estimations of 10,000 dogs being sacrificed for the festival are too low, claiming the figure is more like 40,000. (Plus 10,000 cats, in case you're not really a "dog person.")

Walking around the city, the presence of animal-rights protesters seemed to have resulted in an unapologetic backlash. Locals filling their baskets with freshly chopped paws and tails were defensive over their dog-eating customs, one woman in the market declaring indignantly, “I’m not forcing them to eat dog, so they can't force me to stop.”

“Even more people are eating dog this year," complained Pian Shan Kong, an animal activist from Guizhou who has been observing the festival for three years. "As outsiders come to protest, locals are spurred on to resist.” Kong is currently holding four rescued pups in his Yulin hotel room—the guy who sold him them reportedly got angry when he realized they weren't destined for the dinner plate, and threatened to slice all four open on the spot if Kong couldn't match his inflated asking price. 

Dog lover Yang Xiaoyun took it one step further and purchased a total of 300 caged dogs, which she spent 11 hours ferrying back to her hometown in Tianjin. Despite her good intentions, the 90,000 RMB ($15,000) she spent buying them will no doubt continue to feed dog sellers across the region.

China’s dog-meat industry is a largely unregulated trade, with activists claiming that the animals are usually stolen pets or strays, posing a health risk to anyone chowing down. Dog dealers, however, insist that the dogs are "tu gou," a type of dog that are mostly bred on farms for their meat, and that the moral objections are therefore no different from when other cute animals, like lambs, are eaten.

An attempted demonstration by animal-rights activists took place on Saturday outside the Yulin city government building, culminating in a few banners being snatched and quickly torn to shreds. This was followed by an angry exchange of abuse between locals and protesters, before security guards were called on to disperse the crowd.

While the rest of China continues to debate the morality of putting dog meat on their plates, it’s clear that for Yulin residents no puppy-dog eyes are going to stop them having their banquet.

As one local proudly pointed out, “If you’re not talking about the World Cup, you’re talking about our festival—that can only be good for our reputation as having the best dog meat in China. In the future, Yulin will become even more famous!”

Follow Isobel Yeung on Twitter.

A stall on the Malioboro, a shopping street in Yogyakarta

If during a study-abroad trip to Indonesia you stumble across an image of the Führer, don't be surprised. Tourist stalls all over the country sell posters of Adolf Hitler, neatly displayed in between images of Kurt Cobain and European soccer teams. The swastika is also everywhere—on walls, cups, ashtrays, and T-shirts—and it's not the Buddhist kind. The strangest thing about this phenomenon, however, is that the people selling and sporting the Nazi paraphernalia often aren't confused, right-wing extremists like these guys but average locals who often have no idea who Hitler was.

To find out why so much merchandise carrying Nazi symbolism is sold on the streets of Indonesia, I got in touch with Dr. Wahid, a history professor at the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta in Java.

A ten-year old Indonesian, wearing a Nazi T-shirt

According to Wahid, the people of Indonesia are anything but anti-Semitic: “The knowledge the people here have about Hitler comes from American films; there’s not much more to it. Contrary to their European peers, Indonesian students hardly receive any history lessons on World War II. They know nothing about the persecution of Jews, for example. They see Hitler as a revolutionary, similar to Che Guevara, not as someone who is responsible for the death of millions of Jews. Of course they condemn him for his deeds—if they are aware of them—but they’re attracted to emblems of Nazi Germany because they’ve become acquainted with these symbols through punk and hard-rock videos. In their view, these symbols are a representation of rebellion.”

This unawareness does not come as a surprise to Gene Netto, an English teacher from Jakarata. He once noticed that a student of his had put a swastika sticker on his mobile phone. “He had no idea what it stands for. I sat him down to explain who the Nazis were, and what they’ve done. After that, the boy immediately threw away the sticker.”

Hitler graffiti in Semarang. Photo by Kyra Dirkssen

The thing is, that between 1967 and 1998, Indonesia lived under the authoritarian regime of President Suharto. It goes without saying that the standard school curriculum was also under the regime's control: “Students were only taught stories about the glory and grandeur of Indonesia as a country,” Wahid says. "The Ministry of Education prohibited teachers from educating students on international genocide, political violence, or racial conflicts. Most students graduated without ever having heard of the Holocaust."

However, it's likely that my surprise at all this is basically Western arrogance. The reality is that the Indonesians' ignorance of Hitler can basically be explained by what was going on in the country during World War II: After the Japanese oppressors (who occupied the country from 1942 until 1945) left, the Netherlands swooped in trying to seize control. That all ended when the Republic of Indonesia became independent, in 1949. Wahid explained, “Every history lesson that focused on the specific period emphasized the independence of Indonesia. Nobody bothered with the persecution of the Jews.”

Saleswoman holding an image of Hitler: “No, I haven’t a clue who that is,” she said.

Wahid thinks that the rise of the internet has been a blessing for the Indonesian youth. “Not that long ago we were controled by the government, but now that the internet has become a common tool, everyone has free access to information. I’ve noticed the current generation of students has a much more realistic view of the world outside Indonesia, compared with previous generations.”

Though we look back on rap-rock as a weird footnote in music culture, by the late 90s it was a full-blown phenomenon. At the center of it was Fred Durst, a pretty-boy skater dude from Gastonia, North Carolina who fronted Limp Bizkit and openly courted the sort of pop culture infamy usually reserved for serial killers and reality TV stars.

Outraged by the unsavory tactics of climate change deniers, physicist Christopher Keating says he'll give $10,000 to anyone who can use the scientific method to prove that human-instigated climate change isn't real.

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Last week the folks at Hasbro sent out a box of new Transformers: Age of Extinction toys, several of which feature simple, one-step transformations. I've taken to calling them Transformers for Dummies, and they are so disappointing.

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The world's first porn industry-targeted cryptocurrency. Photos courtesy of Titcoin

With over 275 cryptocurrencies currently trading on the market and new ones popping up seemingly every week, it can be hard to keep track of which ones are scams and which ones are simply doomed to fail. By now, you must be acquainted with some of the more mainstream coins, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and one of our personal favorites, Dogecoin. But the cryptocurrency world is about to get a proverbial boob job thanks to the arrival of Titcoin, the first porn industry-targeted cryptocurrency. Hailing from the minds of startup and finance wizards Edward Mansfield, Richard Allen, and a third gentleman who prefers to remain anonymous, Titcoin is designed to easily facilitate payment for your daily jack-off sessions.

On June 21, people who sign up early for a Titcoin wallet will get first dibs at mining what will eventually be 69 million Titcoins (why not have fun with this?) three hours before the official launch at noon that day. Evidently, the incentive to get in on Titcoin is already very real, so I called up one of the co-founders, Mansfield, to talk about why Titcoins are the tits and their fake viral video that jokingly advertised Titcoin as a barter system based on flashing.

VICE: The first time I had heard of Titcoin was the fake spec ad that was made for a contest to become Pornhub’s creative director. That video made it seem as if Titcoin was a way for girls to pay for things by flashing their tits. That’s not actually how your currency works, but would it ever be possible for me to use Titcoin that way in the near future?
Edward Mansfield: Anything is possible. It’s funny because it’s tongue in cheek and it’s meant not to be reality at the same time. I don’t think we would advocate for flashing your tits. That market already exists to some level.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure if a girl flashes her tits at the bar she’s gonna wind up getting a free drink anyway.
That’s pretty safe to say. Titcoin is mainly an idea that we came up with because we wanted to be very business minded. Sometimes we feel a bit uncomfortable talking about this matter because we’re not trying to promote pornography per se. We’re trying to promote a currency that is a conduit for that. We are walking that thin line. We are not really pornographers—we are basically business guys who are bringing in a currency which caters to a specific audience.

I must say Titcoin is a very catchy name. Was it a no-brainer for you to name it that way?
Yes, Titcoin was a no brainer. Just to give you an idea of what happened in the beginning, it was just myself and one of our partners chatting about digital currency as a whole. We’re at a bar, and somehow we start thinking about what if there was an industry-targeted currency, not one that was generic and covers a wide spectrum but something that was very specific. The adult entertainment industry quickly came to mind. I think within seconds we thought of Titcoin as sort of the perfect name. Everyone knows what Bitcoin is, and Titcoin has a very similar spelling. It’s really to capitalize on the branding.

OK. Now onto serious business. What am I going to be able to buy once I mine a fat stack of Titcoins?
Digital currency is pretty much like cash—you can’t really control what people do with cash. The partners that we are targeting are primarily online websites that have subscription-based services where you pay monthly fees for content. But there are other e-commerce sites that may benefit as well, mostly those that sell toys or adult packaged products. But we also have a lot of entertainers who have contacted us. One in particular, he’s a friend of a friend. I don’t want to give you his name because he’s actually one of the famous porn stars out there. He’s very interested in being a partner as well. Having his name on this would definitely skyrocket the notoriety of Titcoin.

How would having this mysterious person’s name attached to Titcoin help you?
It would bring things into the mainstream and help legitimize the currency. I think legitimizing the currency is the most important component in creating value in the long run. This person that we are talking to, his name is big enough that the average person will know who he is without being someone who buys porn all the time.



Mansfield (left), anonymous finance guy (middle), Allen (right)

Have you been contacted by other entertainers?
We have been contacted by a lot of performers who do webcam streaming. They’re particularly interested in Titcoin as a way to get “donations” from their viewers. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with how it works. It’s like when you go to a strip club and you throw dollars at the strippers, but online, instead of throwing dollar bills, you could throw digital currency at performers on the webcam. Viewers would pay to watch, but they could also throw Titcoins at performers.

That sounds great! Now, when it comes to who is going to be accepting Titcoins, are we talking big sites like Brazzers and Pornhub?
Yes, largely. But the ones that have reached out to us are generally some of the smaller, fringe websites, which are more than welcome to join us. We have been talking to a few of the really big players in the industry. We have talked to Brazzers at some point. In fact, we were talking to them before they started accepting Bitcoins. We kind of feel like we nudged them in that direction. But some of the other ones we are talking to are very suspicious of digital currency as a whole. It’s not surprising. These types of industries are very technologically advanced when it comes to media content and video streaming. But I feel that when it comes to the financial aspect of subscription-based services, they tend to be a little bit gun-shy.

What’s going to make Titcoin stand out from the other cryptocurrencies, aside from having a catchy name and a sexy logo?
I don’t think we see ourselves as competitors to Bitcoin per se. The way that we see it is that it gives users various payment options, like using Visa, MasterCard, or Amex. In the future, if we can imagine a world where digital currency is more mainstream, you might have a Bitcoin account with your spouse. You may not want them to see you purchasing products or subscriptions on adult sites, because perhaps this is something you’d rather keep to yourself, so having an industry-specific coin has certain advantages for consumers when they want to keep things a bit more private than they would with a Bitcoin account. Fundamentally there is no significant difference. It’s all in the branding.

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In a bipartisan vote, the House passed legislation that would prohibit the search of government databases for information on U.S. citizens without a warrant. It would also cut off funding for the CIA and NSA to build security "backdoors" into domestic tech products or services for surveillance purposes.

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The stars of both franchises are working at it. Jared Leto could step into Will Smith's shoes. Everyone's favorite character will return for Heroes Reborn. Gotham promises go deep into the comics with its references. Plus a ton of Transformers: Age of Extinction information. Spoilers now!

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This is a conceptual bed set designed by artist Claire Manganiello. The comforter looks like cheese and pepperonis, the pillows like crust, and the sheets like tomato sauce. I dunno, I feel like you couldn't get in the bed without feeling greasy. Still, it would be fun to pretend I'm a GW stuffed pizza. "Are you kidding? The monsters in your closet will devour you." Damn, you're right. SAD FACT: If I don't lay out clean underwear and pajamas during the day then I have to sleep naked because I'm too afraid to open my closet after dark and have some monster rip my penis off. Even my dog whimpers at the closet some nights and in her mind she's a f***ing hellhound. Thanks to me, for being man enough to admit the things I'm afraid of, including shitting in public restrooms.

Say hello to Miriam Burbank. Now wave goodbye, because she's deceased. And her daughters decided to send her off the way she would have wanted: attending her own kickass party. Mission accomplished. I only wish I could have been there.

With a case of Busch beer by her side, a menthol cigarette in her hand, and a disco ball flashing overhead Miriam Burbank attended her last party. Burbank's two daughters, who call their mom Mae Mae, said she was full of life and they wanted her funeral to reflect that. So they told the funeral home directors at Charbonnet Funeral Home what she liked and came up with this. Aside from the beer and menthol cigarette, Burbank is sitting at a table in a living room type setting. Also the Saints lover has her fingernail painted black and gold. Burbank's daughters said other family members seemed to enjoy this fitting goodbye.

Busch beer, whiskey, the Saints, a disco ball, and crossword puzzles? I feel like Miriam and I would have gotten along great. Hell, I even like the orchids and topiary in the back. It's a shame we never got to meet. At least she'll have a great view to watch Saints games from heaven. "The Saints play in a covered stadium." Pfft, all angels have laser vision. Rest in peace, Miriam. Oh, and make sure to use an ashtray and not flick your cigarette butts in heaven -- Jesus hates that. Thanks to blue16, who has always wanted to attend a party with a dead person. Right? They made it look so fun in Weekend At Bernie's.