Angelina Jolie, scion of Hollywood beauty, has gone under the knife for medical, rather than cosmetic reasons and guess what – it’s news! Angelina’s double-mastectomy, undertaken because she carries the BRCA1 gene which doctors have estimated gave her an 87% chance of having breast cancer, and a 57% chance of having ovarian cancer, is pretty…
The Boston Bombers: American Terrorists
I’ve been loathe to contribute to the ever-increasing canon of American experts who feel that their unique and exceptional opinion about the Boston Marathon Bombers is important and worthy enough to merit yet another shittily written blog post or op-ed. “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre,” says Kurt Vonnegut, obviously with his…
The Retro Husband
The companion piece to New York Magazine’s ‘The Retro Wife’. When Damian Schwarzberger was a little boy, he didn’t really envisage the future at all. Damian liked to play video games, and think about losing his virginity. After he lost his virginity at fifteen, he instead imagined a fabled future time when he would…
beet me love me
We’d been drinking at King Eddie’s for about eight hours straight, and when those two crazy bitches asked me for a ride I sent them to my husband instead, placated him with the lure of a hot meal when he got home. Well, it was kick-out time at Eddie’s when we lolled drunkenly out the…
Cameron Russell: Winner of Genetic Lottery, Another Liberal Loser
Let’s set aside my issues with TED talks for the moment to… Oh OK, since you asked the $6,000 price ticket and the fact that TED is primarily geared towards the economically privileged (neo)liberal elite backslapping each other, ruthlessly networking and competing over who is the better human being makes me think that it’s a…
Valentine’s Slave
When you tell Angelenos you live in a van they tend to exhibit signs of envy, probably because I emphasize the “waking up in a new place / next to the ocean / in a forest glade / near a creek” type scenario, as if we roll out of bed and into the wonders of…
the chickens come home to roost
This article also appeared on Counterpunch, and was profiled on the front page of Reddit. My first experience of the LAPD was as a child back in Wales, staring at the TV screen in horror and fascination, watching a grainy image of police officers beat a black man to a pulp. I’d never seen anything…
the loneliest and saddest kind
This is how Billy writes to the world via Facebook: Found my self in downtown Los Angeles tonight giving my rendition of a pentecostal preachers sermon to the feeding frenzy homeless gathered at a public park. It was concerning me having dashed my gifts and talents in vice, gaming tables, horse flesh and worse.They –…
The Boat
I lived on a boat when I left college. I had no money and too much debt and leaving the warm waters of grants and loans and Cambridge for a world where you didn’t get a government check to read books was as much a shock as I always thought it would be. I still…
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." ~ E. Hemingway