NEW YORK - LOVE 4EVER, CHARLES MANSON

Who the fuck puts together an art show based on love letters and opens it on Valentine’s Day? Two ladies in Toronto who used to run a gallery, and then stabbed each other in the back over proprietorship and lawsuits, that’s who. (This is all hearsay, though, don’t quote us, and we’re not even giving concrete details and names so anyone who might be offended should just chill the fuck out.) Now the love letter show, which was called “Love Will Tear Us Apart” before it actually did, opens tonight, thanks to one sane curator in the bunch who scooped up her artists (if you care about art, names like Douglas Gordon, Terence Koh, and Kathy Grayson probably put ants in your pants) and brought them to Queen and Shaw. The wildcard is Charles Manson, who wrote a letter to any and all potential readers/followers, urging us all to pretend we’re not pretending to pretend and to love one another and...basically, it’s a Manson letter. Written on lesbian Wiccan stationery. Yep, that's it up there. It’s pretty wee (sheesh, art gallery owners sure can be paranoid) but you get the jist.

CANADA - THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY SUMMER JOB YOU CAN DO!

People who leave a stove out to rot on their curb while they remodel homes are not, as a rule, the most concerned with the environment. I learned this while canvassing for the Sierra Club two summers ago. I've never been a particular advocate for the environment because I am unable to conceptualize total global decimation, but I am an advocate for having more than change in my piggy bank. That's how I was enticed by a Craigslist ad promising anyone with a resume A Great Summer Job While Saving the Environment! When I asked the overzealous human prawn who interviewed me if this was some horrible door-knocking gig, his reply was: "It's not horrible. Who told you it was horrible? They lied. Canvassing is the most revolutionary thing you can do!"

NEW YORK - WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON AROUND HERE

Well, besides the guy with the flamethrower torching tar on our roof right now, we thought we should bring to attention the new episode of From the Pages of Vice, about Jason Crombie’s experience with a sex machine you might know as a Segway and the ultimate in pretend-cock battle, the lightsaber. The words in today's featured story were not enough to fully explain how uncoordinatedly dorky and inappropriately kneaded with boink innuendo the whole thing was. There was the loud pop of a ping-pong paddle on a bum. There was mention of tit energy fueling the earth. Someone needed to pee. Just go watch it. Another thing that’s happening right now is a brand new Black Lips track with GZA (photo and embedded listening one click below) that's just sitting there on our server, waiting for your sweet ... wait. This is getting weird. That’s enough, we’re shutting the curtains now.

THE INTERNET - LAST CALL ON THE CLICKING

We're not even going to pretend like we're simply mentioning that there's a new episode of Epicly Later'd while coyly mentioning that it's been nominated for a People's Choice Webby in the sports category, which is what we've done the last two weeks. This is a transparent declamation that if you're a human who's ever heard about skateboarding or Patrick O'Dell, you should go vote for us. Ballot-casting ends today at midnight New York time, so go ahead and knock yourself out clicking at 11:59 PM--there's nothing like the exhilaration of the last second to really put the thrill in a task--but just make sure you do it.

STOCKHOLM - MOM'S GUIDE TO COOL

Remember how your mom, even though she no longer got to dress you, kept nagging about what you should wear? Which eventually led to you storming back to your room screaming, “Leave me the fuck alone!” and slamming the door in her face. Moms are like the most embarrassing thing ever when you’re 12. Back then you’d rather swallow a cockroach and host its babies in your tummy than take her advice. That was ages ago and we’re feeling a little bad about our shit behavior, so we decided to go back and actually hear them out. Maybe they had some good advice? Here’s what happened to some friends and people we work with when they asked their moms for advice on how to look cool. 

TECHNOLOGY ISSUE EXTRA - EMPIRE OF DOTS

Around the same time the NSA began monitoring your phone calls, texts, and internet activity without a warrant in 2005, similarly secret shadowy government officials birthed a campaign of print surveillance that’s still going strong today. Whereas wiretapping discourages the casual subversive exchange, this parallel campaign infringes on the basic right of every psycho across this great land to publish anonymously and shit-talk freely. The modern printing press--your standard color laser printer--is programmed to print a matrix of tiny yellow tracking dots, invisible to the naked eye. The dots are arranged in a pattern that can be encoded to contain anything from the printer's serial number to the exact time that the document was printed. With a scanner and Photoshop anyone who wants to can see the dots and, with some knowledge and patience, decode them. That means if you’re in Beijing and someone finds the Falun Gong newsletter you printed on your HP 2600n, expect to have your genitals mutilated by the Chinese police.

JAPAN - THIS J-POP SCANDAL ISN'T A BIG DEAL

To fans of salacious cock stories: scandal has hit Japan this week as Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (that's him front and center), singer in phenomenally successful pop mega b(r)and SMAP tarnished his and his bandmates’ previously untouchable careers by being arrested for getting smashed and streaking through a park in central Tokyo, screaming at strangers while waving his dick. For a band whose name sounds a lot like a euphemism for beating off, perhaps it’s unsurprising. However, as the clean-cut forbearers of Japan’s J-pop generation, SMAP’s social duties prior to Kusanagi’s outburst have been limited to releasing endless, identikit pop singles for bored housewives, looking pretty and available for bored housewives, hosting cooking and variety shows for bored housewives, and occasionally proving their street cred by hanging out with "cool" Western bands--a sight so transparently shit it was dismissed by just about anybody on the planet except for the aforementioned bored housewives.

MONTREAL - EAT SHIT

I ran into Tanya outside a metro station. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, so we had the whole “What’s up with you?” conversation. I answered with my usual - work, school - and figured she’d say the same but instead, she told me, “Oh, I’m a dominatrix now.”  She told me that she was on her way to an appointment with a guy who liked it when she stepped on his dick. I called her last week to see how the dominatrixing was going.

Vice: Why did you become a dominatrix?

Tanya: I wanted to make some money. I looked into the Montreal Mirror to see if there was any ads and there was a phone number. I called. I thought it was gonna be easy but no, it was hard to start.

LONDON - A FIST IN THE FACE OF GOD ON ILDJARN

Fisters of God, welcome once again. I have been mulling over this post a little too much today so that I can serenade you all with something that may leave you temporarily shadowless: Ildjarn.

DICKHEADZ #5 - CHAVVY MCSPAZZ AND KING BISCUIT

Against all better judgment, I once worked in a cupcake shop self-described as "magical." The vomitous use of magical, however, was only a garnish to the misplaced apostrophes, syntactical catastrophes, and excessive exclamation that already made the help wanted ad alarming enough, never mind that a job requirement was to "like pink!!!" and the unit of quantitative measure was “galore.” Galore? What was I thinking?