by Christopher Staley
After the wreck, Max went home and cleaned up and went to bed. When he woke up fourteen hours later, he felt clear and clean, like his mind had been whitewashed. Like his whole life before the accident had been nothing but a bad dream, and the accident itself no more than the jarring sensation of a sudden awakening. As if Max had been caught in some sort of loop in time where the two events had been conflated.
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by Lillian Brickner
Artist Shaun Stokes is one of Tacoma’s hidden treasures, and the antithesis of the social-climbing scenesters currently in vogue with many who should know better. Recently Vex sent the fabulous Lillian Brickner – an amazing creatrix in her own right – to the Stokes’ subterranian lair, where she had the extraordinary pleasure of picking the artist’s cavernous brain.
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Fig. 27. Can you say MOOOOOOOO!?!
by Blackie
Okay, before I get into all this bullshit, I need to call out my roommate. It turns out that he’s been getting paid for “gardening,” not in actual cash, but in blowjobs. There are some individuals who should be categorized as criminally retarded.
And speaking of retarded, have you ever ridden the bus? It’s like visiting a Third World country.It’s like a whole vehicle full of Lakewood. Which brings us to my story. You see, I recently found myself in a little pickle that placed my life on a crash course with idiocy, plunging me into more encounters with the smooth-brained than I’ve been forced to endure since my 100-Dates-in-30-Days experiment went horribly awry.
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by Alex Hosea
In these days of economic woe, a quality investment seems to be the most elusive thing in the world for the discerning investor. Industries and markets that once were seen as very secure, such as mortgages and commodities, have now been turned into wild gambles, thanks to the speculators on Wall Street. Scanning today’s market brings up almost nothing but red flags and risky bets. The only thing that seems to be a sure fire win is to bet against the market and all of its failing sectors, something known as putting a short. The popularity of these so-called “shorts” has become widespread, but the problem is that making all that money betting on economic failure really can’t be called helpful at all.
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Just as every personality-type has its associated Winnie the Pooh character (though generally only Tiggers, Poohs, and some Eeyores care about that shit), so does each US state have its associated country. The examples below are likely to piss you off.
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Almost everyone can agree that for a given degree of pain there is an appropriate quantity and kind of pie that will exactly cancel out that pain. I’m sure you can recall such basic information from middle school health class. We are all familiar with the faded 1970s photo of a man in full traction holding up a big goopy slice of crabapple pie with a grin on his face that seems to scream, “Fuck you pain, I have pastry!!”
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by Ron Galaktik
Fig. 88. It’s a beautiful day in the Fatherland.
In the aftermath of the Tucson shootings, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about and the role that the media plays in ratcheting up the vitriol of its viewers. The heated rhetoric polluting the airwaves has laid waste to the political climate. The ice caps of civility have melted, deluging us with a flood of misinformation and invective. Have we become so morally deafened by the rancorous roar that we have no choice but to deaden our empathy in a saccharine media sea of porn, gore, and crass materialism?
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by Cassidy Viser
It’s a hot August night in Austin, Texas, as a large crowd draws around the stage at local venue the Mohawk. As the people fill in, three young men dressed in ratty garb crawl up on the stage and begin playing. At first the onlookers appear stunned- what is this alien-like sound raging out of these bright red guitars? The droning sound seems to grab you and pull you over a quantum wave of good vibrations into a psychedelic vortex of a listening experience. Just as your trembling senses begin to recover from the electric shock just induced, they rev it up again, going back to back between sets with a kind of energy seen previously in the likes of James Brown and Mick Jagger-esque stage presences. “We’re from Seattle” says bassist Tarek Wegner, in a raspy voice, before taking a swig of beer and jumping up atop his amp. The band is the Night Beats, one of the up and coming hot neo-psychedelic talents on the scene. The evening is not only a concert, but the split release party of the Night Beats’ album with brand new band the UFO Club, a side project of Night Beats lead guitarist and singer Lee Blackwell with Black Angels frontman Christian Bland. If the Night Beats set is any indications of the events to follow, the crowd is in for a wild ride ahead.
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by Alex Hosea
With the Tea Party takeover of congress in the midterm elections, I must say that I couldn’t wait to witness the kind of hijinks that would ensue. And CrazyCongress got off to a good start. We had a bill proposed by one of these guys in South Dakota that would have made murder not a crime if the person that you had murdered was an abortion doctor. The language used in the bill was “justifiable homicide.” Then we had a bill proposed by an asshole from Florida that would make miscarriages treated like crime scenes, where they would interrogate any woman who’d had a miscarriage to see if she had tried to induce it. And, of course, we all had to look in horror at the shenanigans of the “debt ceiling crisis,” where once totally uninteresting budgeting-as-usual became a howling partisan war.
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Fig. 69 Monkeys spanking other monkeys’ monkeys.
by Doc Staley
Have you ever stopped to think about bananas? No, not like that. Or like that either, you twit.
Bananas. It’s a great word. A great word for a great fruit. You just want to keep going with it: banananana. There are over 69 species of banana, including the Havana banana, the nasty banana, the banana-nana fofana, and the man banana. Cont. »
Los Angeles, CA – Comic actor Will Arnett gave the world’s comedy fans a sigh of fresh air today, by announcing rock-solid confirmations of planned films based on the cancelled series Arrested Development, Party Down, and Community. Arnett also confirmed that all other beloved cancelled comedies will receive movie treatments as well, including Freaks & Geeks, Andy Richter Controls The Universe, and Michael & Michael Have Issues.
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By Ruprecht Hustleblood
Who doesn’t love streaming Netflix? I sure do. My favorite feature is when I’ve just finished watching a quality flick and am INCHES away from going to bed, when Netflix goes right ahead and recommends another I might enjoy. Cases in point: watched Scarface, Netflix tossed Goodfellas my way. LOVED it. Another time I finished with Dante’s Peak, and lo and behold, a hidden gem called Volcano comes cruisin’ my way! I’m thinking this can get no better, when what does Netflix do? Alerts me to the very sad state of affairs concerning the Hollywood Action Blockbuster. Thanks, Netflix, you red-colored dickbrain.
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