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The Travel Issue

Tidbits

New American parents are the worst. They pack a Zip-Loc bag of washed grapes everywhere they go.

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KABA KICK (Tokyo)
New American parents are the worst. They pack a Zip-Loc bag of washed grapes everywhere they go, wear matching hats, have those big baby knapsacks with plastic things on it that can snap on to the baby seat, and they spend hundreds of dollars on educational toys. We need to be more like the nips and give our kids toys like this Russian roulette game, where instead of literally blowing your head off, a hippo comes out and bonks you. HIPPIE-PARENT POT DECOY (Mumbai)
Sometimes you're hanging out in your room with your friends and you want to do something unhippyish like talk about books you've actually read and stuff. God forbid you should wash yourself once and awhile and not have a fucking bush that looks like you're trying to smuggle Jimi Hendrix across the border. Of course, if your flower-power parents come in and see you haven't been smoking pot they will get all bummed out and start lecturing you about "the man." That's where this shit comes in. All you have to do is light up one of these pot-scented incense sticks every few hours, and like magic, you will hear your mom yell up, "Right on, sweetheart!" IPOD BATTERIES (USA)
The fags over at Apple have designed iPods such that they die after about a year and a half. Even the one you bought last year is now referred to as a "classic." So what are you supposed to do when the battery dies? Spend another $500? Fuck that. If you go to websites like PDAsmart.com they will sell you a new battery and give you great instructions on how to install it. When we did it a spark shot out and there was even a puff of smoke, but it still worked. LOUIS RIEL (Canada)
We tried putting this comic novel in the literary section but it just didn't make sense. This is more than 272 pages of stunning Chester Brown drawings portraying one of the most fascinating stories of revolution North American history has to offer. It's a groundbreaking piece of art, seriously. This book is as thorough and obsessive as Henry Darger, but without the mental illness. It's as consistent as Hergé but a lot more honest and heartfelt. It's perfect, really, and if you have never read a comic novel before, this is definitely the place to start. PCP SAVED MY LIFE (European tour)
Same with this thing. It was supposed to go in DVD reviews but we just couldn't do it. It's too good. And we're not talking about the main DVD, the one you're supposed to buy. That's just more of the same Jackass shit but more jockish (they even take us to Cancun for Spring Break—boyz gone wild!). No, the real gem in Out on Bail is the fucking bonus DVD. It's a documentary on Steve-O's five-day PCP trip and, whoa, is it hard to watch. You think The Office is cringeworthy? How about when Steve-O says, "Deb, you're my sister and if you don't know that I love you I'm hanging up the phone right now. I am cool and I'm going out on stage now to hurt myself to make people happy." Soon after, he's in the hotel flipping back and forth from crying about his mother to telling his friends, "At the risk of sounding gay, I want you to know you are all really good guys and I'm really glad you're in my life." By the time he is finally able to fall asleep, the antidrug message has become crystal clear: Don't do PCP. HAJMOLA (Manhattan via Dabur)
We stole this jar from one of those all-night Indian to-go restaurants where cab drivers go. It was one of those things you do when you're drunk and then you wake up with it in your pocket and go, "How the fuck did this get here?" Anyway, we started taking them regularly, and within about one week we had no idea where Times Square was, we constantly refused to go to Brooklyn, and we kind of reeked. KKK BISCUITS (Osaka)
Racism is a lot of things. It hurts and it's mean and it's wrong, but have you ever tasted it? Sorry, freedom riders, but these are delicious. SNOB TISSUES (Uruguay)
In Victorian times the toffs would turn their heads every time they passed the great unwashed and bury their high-class noses in orange-scented tissues. Times have changed. Today there are so many illegals and dirt-poor trash and people with sores that you basically have to buy scented nose tissues in bulk and walk around the city with a fucking wheelbarrow full of them. POTENZERE (Austria)
We found this at a gas station in a big tub filled with candy and toys. Just in case your eyes aren't allowing this information into your brain, what you are looking at is a plastic sperm toy filled with candy cum. In Japan kids can practice shooting themselves in the head, and in Austria kids learn that cum tastes really good. Either these countries are so wealthy and safe they can afford to be this mind-blowingly naïve, or we have just seen the first sign of the apocalypse.


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