Vice Mail

ANTI-BULIMIA LEAGUE

Vice

,

Listen, I don't really like to read about chicks puking or starving themselves or whatever. Why would I? It's not pleasant. You may as well just print an "article" about a guy dropping a bowling ball on a woman's foot. She still suffers, right?

Then in the same issue you kill two little cockroach guys in a horrible way? Whatevah, man, that’s not cool. At least wait like two days for them to meet their inevitable death, then toss 'em in that jar.

Sorry, I just can't get into this stuff. I just don’t hate girls or small creatures. What, do you pelt little apple-faced toddlers with quarters for fun? Or incinerate flowers with a Zippo? Shit, man.

MARK

Detroit, MI

Nice spectrum of civil rights: Women and cockroaches

.

HIDEOUS MOZ

Vice..

.

Morrissey is a fuckwit to the nth degree! For him to say that carnivores are all about "me, me, me" when he has it in his rider that he won't perform in buildings where there is meat and has threatened not to play if deli-meat trays served to other artists on the bill were not removed from the building is ridiculous.

Hey Moz, your views are not the issue, but when you push them on others it is all about you, you, you.

MARK LEVY

Austin, TX

Congratulations. You busted Morrissey for being self-centered.

Vice,

Re: Good Friends cereal from the Food Issue Tidbits - it's apparently good for lesbians too.

KIRK SHELTON

Via email

Wow, these Good Friends things have been on lots of brains lately.

PS: Lesbians eat cereal?

WASTE OF TIME 101

To Whom It May Concern,

I am a history, film, and global studies student at Cal State San Marcos. I have been a fan of your mag for years and still have my friends in Canada send me issues. I am taking a class on media power and would be very grateful if someone from your staff could answer a few questions via email for a project. It's due Thursday and I really need some help. You guys are my first choice of course. Just answer them to the best of your ability and don't worry about being entirely serious… I know you don't have a problem with that. Random-selection answers are fine. Just let it flow I guess.

1. Now that

Vice

has become so huge since '94, what is its mission statement other than getting everyone laid?

2. What can

Vice

do about media democracy in the U.S. and protecting free speech whether through its publications or behind the scenes?

3. How much power do you think

Vice

holds in making an impact on the media crisis we are currently having in the U.S.?

4. Who owns

Vice

? Are your public files available for viewing?

I know these are heavy questions but you at

Vice

are good at being real so I would appreciate a response from anyone within the company. It would be great if someone in charge could respond, but to have both someone in power and someone like the janitor or something would be cool too. I don’t know what to expect from you guys but anything would be appreciated.

Thanks,

COREY STEWART

Oceanside, CA

This email was sent on a Wednesday, the night before the due date for his project. How about college kids, huh? Here at Vice we regret going to college more than we regret spending five years hooked on heroin

.

SWEDE ARMY VOGUE

Vice,

I went to the U.S. for the first time last week and found myself looking at the same camouflage green cap I used to wear during my ten-month military service in Boden a year ago. Only this time it said to me, I'm not a part of that M90 uniform you spat on, but a piece of a hip clothes collection on sale in downtown Manhattan for $12. The hardest thing for me to swallow, though, wasn't that the cap had come further in life than me, but the fact that for two months I had to wear a cap three sizes too small which I had to hold on to while marching so it wouldn’t blow off my head, because the army had a regular-size summer cap shortage. Turns out the caps had moved en masse to the United States and I have lost some money not stealing a couple and putting them up on eBay. Also, later that week I found them at Urban Outfitters in Pittsburgh so I figure they're all over the states.

ERIK F

Bergsjön, Göteborg, Sweden

You know what they say: "One man's garbage is another man's treasure," or, "One man's hat is another man's hat."

COKE & CHICKEN

Vice,

I liked Ted T-Zone’s suggestion to experience the REAL Noo Yawk and head uptown to 137th for some fried chicken cooked by that black lady who is from down South but has lived in Harlem for like a gazillion years. It’s true, every hood has a few black women who can cook up a batch of chicken and soul food that make Sylvia hurl! But the only thing he left out about doing bumps of blow was WHERE to get the yay! Any ignoramus white boy heading uptown with no connects is bound to catch a bad one. Maybe they can ask Cam’ron where he gets his white at on Hamilton Place, as it intersects with 137th and B’way. Tis true though, the best cocaine in the U.S. used to be NORTH of 155th Street, but since Giuliani’s Reich it has moved down to the lower 140s and 130s. There is still good blow on 179th Street but you gotta KNOW the dudes PERSONALLY and know how to speak Dominicano Spanish. That’s the next feature you need to do, exactly WHERE to cop the coke and who on the

Vice

staff will accompany said white boys uptown to make the introduction!! I’d volunteer but I don’t do coke any more, only salvia divinorum, which is legal! HOLLA… Uptizzle fo’ shizzle Wash Heights, NYC.

HERMAN SHEM

Via email

Drug nerds are the worst. If you tried to score coke off the street up there they wouldn’t even shoot you. They'd just point at you and laugh their heads off. Stick to your delivery guy who comes to meet you on the Lower East Side, just like the rest of us.

THE STATE OF THE SHIRT

Vice

,

This has been bothering me for some time: T-Shirts. About five years ago I started to make my own shirts. They were fun and I had to make more cuz people liked them. Now I like making shirts and having people say, "Man, that's a cool shirt," but I really don't like the business side (handling money and counting and sizes and shit). But what has come to bother me is all the fucking bags of shit who go out to Abercrombie/American Eagle/Aeropostale/Old Navy and spend good money on corny fake faded shirts that have the logo/name of a team/saying/school and have no idea what it means. You're just wearing it cuz it’s cool to have a unique shirt… YOUR SHIRT IS NOT UNIQUE. You look like a fucking poser.

I can honestly say that EVERY single shirt I own was given to me directly from the place it was made/sold/created. I never buy shirts, I just accumulate them. And I have some badass shirts; my Jerry's Baitshop shirt was sent to me from a friend in Kansas City after I visited Jerry's Baitshop. My "ugly women" shirt was given to me by the owner of Leadbelly Landing in upstate New York. One of my mother's co-workers met Puffy at Clinton's library opening and dude sent her a "Vote or Die" shirt. She gave it to me cuz she knew I collect shirts. So when you see me in the streets and you're jealous of my shirt, ask me where I got it. And when I see you in the streets (even though you're never there) I'll laugh at your $25 gay fake wrestling-team shirt you bought all faded and broke from Abercrombie… suckers. Every shirt I own has a meaning and a story, so when I see kids outside of a bar (true story from Saturday night) bragging all drunk to girls that they paid $400 for a Dolce & Gabbana shirt, I just have to laugh. $400 could buy about nine-and-a-half kegs of PBR- if you have your own tap.

PETER BOYD

Via email

Glad you were able to get that off your chest. It's really good when someone survives a life-altering trauma-like rape, child abuse, or not liking other people’s T-shirts-and is able to channel their hurt and rage into creative writing. You need to continue being brave and realize that whatever your dad did to you, it is not your fault.

FORWARD RUSSIA

Dear

Vice

,

I’m an American and have lived in Russia for years at a time. The best I can say is that Russians are wonderful at the interpersonal level: at home, in kitchens, among friends, etc. Private life is great, and by no means quiet: the parties go for days.

Unfortunately public life is corrupt, violent, and brutal. There is only the state and its power, both through official and criminal channels (the same people are involved). There is no law, only a fake set of rules meant to bully you.

You have to keep these two things in mind when trying to understand why a seemingly normal Russian dude who told you how great the Pixies sound, after a few drinks, makes demands that you must respect him, offers you his teenage sister, wants to know if you are a Jew, and brags about Russian nuclear weapons.

PUSHKIN

Via email

This, in a nutshell, is the point we were making in the Russia issue. Depending on how you want to look at it, Russia's a big bad place run by ruthless vodka-guzzling gangsters. Or it can be an untapped land of golden opportunity full of big-hearted, friendly faces. The first one throws up way more interesting stories, though.

COLD WAR

Vice,

You should all thank god you're not in Russia because you won't survive a freaking day. Your spoiled senses and fragile souls wouldn’t be able to handle all the horror and day-to-day survival and remain human. You would just degrade and succumb. And yet, Russians living there manage to preserve incredibly warm hearts, a sense of humour and are very hospitable.

WILDCAT

Via email

What, so you have to have SAS-standard survival skills to get by in 21st century Russia, while the plucky down-trodden natives are these living cliches? Could you be more condescending please?

OU EST VICE?

Hello

Vice

,

I discovered

Vice

in Australia and now I came back to France. I really miss it. Why? Because

Vice

doesn't exist in France. This is BAD. We have two or three professional wanker dickhead journalist for uban sucker magazine. They piss me off and you have to pay for this shit! We need to do

Vice

in France. We’ve got lots of Do & Don't and things like things to joke about (like the cool riots during three weeks). I met the

Vice

team in Melbourne and they told me to contact you. If you need to find someone build

Vice

France, think about me. Here are drawings I did based on

Vice

Australia. Some of them have been published in the mail and also two zines I did when I was there.

Bye bye sexy people

JULIEN

France

The good news is that Vice is launching in France soon with a unique French edition. The bad news is that we have don't have enough room to print Julien's drawings.

IMMERSIONIST CHRISTMAS CARDS

Hi,

Before this Christmas I used to own the Immersionist Issue (V2N3), but then my buddy borrowed it and when I got it back he had cut a lot of bits out of it. I asked him what the fuck he’d done, and apparently he’d made Christmas cards out of most of the pictures. So now I’m being a bit pissed, because I liked the photos too. You wouldn’t happen to have some copies left of that issue?

Kind regards,

HANNES

Via email

CALLING ALL SCANDO SATANISTS

Hi,

Please come here (USA) black metal Christian fighters and start your own broadcasting networks. On regular TV we are subjected to corpulent preachers saying weird and frightening shit about how the Israelites must be allowed to rebuild the temple on the mount so that the apocalypse can be ushered in. How rad would that be to see a TV show where these dudes roll around in vomit and feces with a goat. Then maybe we could hear a reading from some evil book. Plus the music is better then a bunch lardasses wailing away about Jesus… all I picture is those same choir people piling into the KFC after church.

JOHNNY

On

Viceland.com

RUSSIAN HUSBAND

Dear

Vice

,

I read your Russian issue recently and thought it pointed to a lot of interesting things about the place that you don’t normally hear in the media. That country is nuts but seems really interesting. My interest in Russia stems largely from the fact that I have been trying to find a Russian husband—I know that the Russian bride scene is really big and there are lots of successful hook-ups so I just thought, you know, surely there’s a nice Russian guy who would be into the idea of dating/marrying an Aussie girl. Plus, a lot of Russian guys are pretty hot as far as I can tell. Anyway, I made a few calls to agencies etc and it was as though I was the first person in the entire world to entertain the notion of getting a Russian hubby. I was met with utter disbelief every call. I just thought that maybe you had come across a similar situation and could point me in the right direction or something.

Hopefully yours

GWEN

Melbourne, VIC

Something like 14,000 women are killed by their drunk Russian husbands a year, which probably has a lot to do with why Russian girls are willing to marry men who could be their grandfathers, just to avoid marrying a Russian. What are you thinking?

TREND SETTER

Hey

Vice

,

I am a student in the midst of a fashion course in Sydney. One thing that I am frequently amazed by is how quickly a particular style of dressing can be adopted and appropriated by a large group of people who immediately take it on as their own—if you have ever been to Sydney, you’ll know what I’m on about. While kids in Sydney are undoubtedly better dressed than in Melbourne, the overworked gay-pirate-clown look can get a bit hard to take after a while. Anyhow, I thought this was worth mentioning because I picked up your Student Guide recently (which I actually related to as I am in debt up to my eyeballs for the sake of a previous course I didn’t even finish—stupid I know!) and then happened to come across someone rocking the oversized witches hat a-la your front cover. They had even taken it a step further and colour co-ordinated the reds and whites. I’m kind of hoping this is a look that sticks!

VIVIAN

Sydney, NSW

SWINE THIEF

Dear

Vice

Magazine,

My name is Hemi George and I’m writing to you from prison. I’m in Kaikohes new prison in Northland. It’s only been around for a year and I’ve been here for heaps of that time but that’s ok cause my whanau is really close and can come see me. Last time they brung me one of your magazines — fuck you guys are hard case fellas, it was crack up aye. I’m in here cause last year the supermarket burnt down and heaps of locals lost their jobs aye, my mrs was one of them and she was hapu too (having a bubs) so we were in a real stink ass situauation. To get by I had to steal pigs from some of the farms around town and sell them to the local maraes but I got snapped hard so here I am. Fucking pigs snapped me for stealing pigs! Hardcase as bro! My mate reckons I’m like a cowboy cattle rustler which I think is mean as, like that Robin Hood guy aye. Anyway, can you send me heaps of your mags, the other fellas here reckon it’s choice as too and told me to get more or I’ll get the bash.

Tu meke!

HEMI

Northland, NZ

P.S. Just so you know, there isn’t any gay stuff happening in here. Some guys do some shit but I’m not into it aye.

You win the championship trophy for the most ridiculous reason for spending time in prison. Magazines coming your way bro.

In North America

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