Image via pictify.
Is this porcelain replica of an AK-47 any less beautiful than it was a few weeks ago? Is it any less thought provoking, challenging or inspiring?
It’s a question that is confounding the art world after it’s creator, Seattle ceramicist Charles Krafft, was ‘outed’ as a holocaust denier in an online journal. Prior to this, Krafft and his work, which also includes porcelain teapots in the shape of Adolf Hitler’s head and hand grenades, had been described as ‘ironic satire’.
Image: Samir Hussein/WireImage.
Unlike last year, there were no deaths on the track on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival – a four day horse racing event during which those residents unfortunate enough not to be landed gentry stay at home to avoid the now traditional triumvirate of verbal abuse (tits… TITS, oi luv, did you hear me, you’ve got TITS!), vehicle gridlock and vomit.
Continue reading “Carcasses On The Course: Day One At Cheltenham Races”
Image: Ian Gavan/Getty Images Europe.
Just to be clear, animal welfare campaigners are not upset and angry with Lily Allen because she raises pigs and then has them slaughtered. Many feel that this process is actually preferable to factory farming methods.
They’re upset and angry with her for not realising that to offer the right to decide over a sentient being’s survival as a prize is not only utterly demeaning to the animal, but perpetuates a message that such issues are humorous and not really worth thinking about.
I know this, because I am one of them.
Kellie Baker. Image via nydailynews.
If you have to resort to pranking unsuspecting victims to raise a laugh on your radio show, the chances are you don’t spend a great deal of time perusing the work of Robert K Merton, or more specifically his law of unintended consequence.
That’s ok though. A degree in Economics isn’t usually necessary for playing records and peppering the gaps in between with witty, crowd pleasing banter, although I must confess, I did take it for granted that at least a passing acquaintance with current affairs might be.
Continue reading “Prank Calls: The Last Resort Of The Comedically Challenged”
Dolphin slaughter, Taiji, Japan. Image via itseasytopretend.
Between the months of September and May, some 20,000 dolphins, porpoises and small whales are slaughtered off the coast of Japan. They are disoriented using sound waves and ushered into lagoons where those suitable for transfer to sea life centres are selected and separated from the rest of the pod. The remainder are stabbed to death and their corpses sold for meat.
Continue reading “Dolphin Slaughter: Offend Someone New Today”
You know what, Julie? I’m not sure that helped. But cheers anyway.
Never let it be said that age is dulling Julie Burchill’s appetite for a scrap.
Her good friend Suzanne Moore came under sustained fire from the Twitter community last week after including the line “We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual,” in a piece about female anger for the New Statesman.
Burchill, whose own career is based on an outstanding natural ability to piss off even those who admire and generally agree with her contentious opinions, did not hesitate when she saw her buddy copping heat. Hurling her truncheon to the ground, she clambered up the rickety ladder and emerged triumphant from the feminist trenches, naked and bloodied, yelling about how ‘we’ (female working class journos) are “damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs,” into No Man’s Land until the Observer’s Reader’s Editor could get a decent grip on her ankles and yank her back in.
This response is now the subject of an investigation, but it’s safe to say Suzanne Moore’s contribution to this increasingly fraught debate will, in time, become little more than a footnote.
Mission accomplished, methinks.
According to a report in the British Medical Journal, people with mental health issues in medieval England were cared for by the Crown, who worked in conjunction with the local community while “the best interests of the subject remained a prime concern“.
In 2013, we either ignore them completely, or if something really bad happens, we place them in a high pressure environment with desperate strangers whose best interests are served by manipulating imposed situations. When we’re done laughing, crowds gather to boo them when they are released.
I’m going to Skype Charles Darwin. Somewhere along the line we’ve managed to completely balls up this evolution business.
Image: DIPTENDU DUTTA/AFP/Getty Images.
Six hundred guitarists gathered at the Darjeeling Tea and Tourism Festival have dedicated their version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ to the 23-year-old student who died after being gang raped in Delhi.
Five men have been charged with the unnamed woman’s murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. Vociferous protests on the streets of India have forced the government to commit to a review of their policies on sex crimes, although the fact that the victim in this case died as a result of being raped for “more than an hour by six men in a bus travelling on main roads in the Indian capital” suggests that rather more than policy reviews are required before this kind of thing stops happening.
Still. Imagine if it did.
Image via facebook.
If members of Westboro Baptist Church reckon that “God Sent The Shooter” to Sandy Hook Elementary, surely they will understand why a bunch of Hells Angels turned up to prevent them from picketing school principal Dawn Hochsprung‘s funeral yesterday.
If not, I’m pretty sure a few of those guys will be happy to take a moment to explain.
Kelly Welles 
