“The chiefs are putting the best face on this they can. But think of this: that next property crime could involve a junkie who killed someone the night before.”
-Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, discusses the way that budget cuts have reduced the ability of police departments around the nation to respond to crime. On the plus side, maybe this will cause Peter Parker to realize he has a responsibility to use his powers for the good of society.

Turn me on, Science!

Mathematics may not sound sexy, but the right measurements determine sexual attraction within milliseconds for men, it has been revealed.
New Zealand anthropologist Barnaby Dixson studied what the sexes found attractive in a partner across cultures and over history using a method of eye tracking.
The usual suspects of personality, breast size and weight apparently do not figure.
Instead, Dixson found the same formula for what men favoured in women came up almost every single time: a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7.

Dixson theorizes that this ratio tells men that they are looking at the perfect body to put a baby into. The Daily Mail-because where else would this report come from-helpfully includes a pointer on how to calculate your own waist-to-hip ratio (sourced, amusingly, to eHow) so that you can determine whether or not you have the kind of body men would want to put a baby into. I hope you do! Because otherwise you are going to die alone with only your mismatched hips and waist to show that you ever existed. Good luck!

[Image via]

Here’s how ancien terrible Julie Burchill sets up a disquisition on smoking v. drinking: “Everyone’s got their own Something Nasty In The Woodshed, and mine is Madonna’s muff. Not in the flesh, you understand — rather, hand-held in black-and-white, glimpsed a whopping EIGHTEEN YEARS ago when some commissioning clown thought it would be a right laugh to give sensitive, sheltered me her book SEX to review. Visions of that greasy muff, which one could easily have fried an egg on without the benefit of oil, haunt me till this very day.” She also regrets not having taken part in “Celebrity Big Brother.” You’ve still got it, Jules!

The title track to MGMT’s recent album is a nice song that sounds like it could have been on Beck’s Mutations. The new video is, I think, even better-although it’s very sad. Imagine if The Sheltering Sky took place on Tatooine.

I don’t have much to say about John Boehner’s ridiculous speech yesterday, the one in which the House Minority Leader “declared that it was time for Obama to sack his entire economic team, because the members are not sensitive enough to the needs of business,” except to point out that it pretty much exemplifies the absolute absurdity of the political world in which we now live.

Boehner himself fascinates me, though. I know we shouldn’t judge on appearances, but just look at the guy! With his love of tanning and smoking-and, you know, good for him-he is the color of something that would provide good camouflage on an episode of “Jersey Shore.” But dressed in one of his customary suits he seems like something designed by the Democratic party to show what they’re up against. Put it all together with the kind of speeches he makes and the word that immediately comes to mind is an old one (which may explain his curious affect; he is an evil of an earlier order): flimflam. The guy makes me think of Professor Harold Hill, but at least Harold Hill was pretending to sell something: Boehner can’t even be bothered to peddle his own fakery. And the saddest part is that he probably doesn’t have to.

University Cancels Event with Target

Hmm! St. Louis’ Washington University “backed out of a partnered event with Target Corp. after the retail powerhouse received heat for a donation it made to an organization backing a Minnesota gubernatorial candidate with a history of staunch opposition to gay rights.”

“Even fending off advances from male cadets can create problems. ‘You can’t say, Sorry guys, I’m gay,’ the senior said. ‘And if I say, I have a boyfriend, I’m breaking the honor code.’ Breaching the Cadet Honor Code-’a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do’-can result in serious discipline.”
–A fascinating look today at how cadets at West Point in the era of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell live like they’re in a Jason Bourne movie. This thing is going to look so crazy in the history books: it could almost be seen as a president’s peccadilloes seeping into official state policy. It’s like Clinton made everyone in the military say, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” for twenty years.

Rick Scott is now the Republican candidate for governor of Florida. Have you read Rick Scott’s Wikipedia entry recently? It’s really amazingly off-putting! It’s unfathomable that you could read it and think something like: “Yes! This man has my best interests at heart!” In any event, he spent $50 million and now the Republican party has to support him. Actually, according to his campaign, he won because of this: “We had a campaign of people who were tired of the traditional establishment. They are tired of the same old thing.” But I guess they’re not tired of billionaires who provide “Starbucks-style” medical care to the vast market of uninsured people while lobbying against healthcare reform.

by Paul Hiebert

On May 29, 2008, summmer138 joined YouTube. Now she has 593 YouTube subscribers. Her real name is Monica, she lives in Denver, and she grew up in Dillingham, Alaska, which she refers to as “DillingHOLE,” population roughly 2,500. She is 22 years old, a high-school graduate with a bit of college education, and a fan of “True Blood,” in both book and television form. Her only love is filming and editing videos, which she does through her production company, depRAVEd wONderland productions. I have no reason to believe that her production company involves anything more than-until recently-a video camera, laptop computer, and pink-themed YouTube account with a black-and-white background that resembles the hide of a cow.

Summmer138 uploaded her first video, Bitch Hoez, on July 26, 2008.

This video features her boyfriend, Killa T, performing his own style of horrorcore hip hop at a local club before a crowd of about a dozen people. Killa T’s face is lean, his head is shaved, and there’s an undecipherable tattoo on the left side of his neck. He paces back and forth across the stage with a cordless microphone in his right hand. He is wearing a silver Hatchetman necklace, the logo for the Insane Clown Posse’s Psychopathic Records, and what appears to be a XXXXL white t-shirt.

Killa T’s lyrics include lines such as, “We the real killaz in the game, and all y’all bitches be the motherfuckin’ same / Don’t hate me cause I’ll be shit, and all y’all hoes straight suck a dick.” Profanity aside, it’s not always easy to understand what he’s rapping about, but you can hear the animosity in his cadence. The song ends with Killa T yelling, “Fuck the police” a couple of times.

That video has 182 views. Many of summmer138’s videos show her lip-synching to songs that she feels express her current mood, such as “In My Room” by Insane Clown Posse. This song contains the lines, “Without you I’d bring a shotgun to school and I will if you want me to for any reason / I hate that you leave when the lights come on and if I had it my way the fucking sun would be gone.”

Other videos are recordings of Killa T’s live performances, where it seems like there are just as many people on stage as there are in the audience. In his song “The Kill,” Killa T maliciously repeats the succinct chorus: “Kill motherfucker, kill motherfucker, kill, kill / Kill motherfucker, kill motherfucker, kill, kill / Kill motherfucker.”

Video montages, like ABK Gang Related, show summmer138, Killa T and their group of friends clad in bandanas and tilted baseball caps. They are rolling joints, drinking in the street, flashing gang signs with their hands, flaunting a small arsenal of high-powered guns and generally getting all up in the camera’s lens. At one point, a friend sits on the floor attaching a circular saw blade to a wooden handle with a thin rope. He’s later seen testing the makeshift weapon by swinging it in the air like a badminton racket. With 17,782 views, it’s one of the most-watched videos in summmer138’s catalogue.

Most outsiders only notice the horrorcore culture when members within it do something egregious. When an exceptionally violent fan commits a crime or Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope make the transition from singing about daring someone to stab a stranger and steal his wallet to singing about the magnificence of giraffes, pyramids, rainbows and magnets in their sentimental jam “Miracles,” we hear about it. Otherwise, the world of Juggalos and Juggalettes is not discussed much.

Most lately, the Insane Clown Posse and their devoted followers have been in the news for the recent Gathering of the Juggalos music festival in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, at which attendees cut the face of B-list celebrity Tila Tequila by hurling rocks, beer cans, rubber dildos and, allegedly, a chunk of watermelon saturated with urine and feces at the artist during her musical performance. Similar audience behavior resulted in Wu-Tang Clan member, Method Man, receiving a slit cheek during his set at the festival.

I came across summmer138 somewhere between reading Vice’s excellent first-person article about 2007’s Gathering of the Juggalos and listening to host Tom Scharpling and company breakdown an infomercial for 2009’s Gathering on WFMU’s The Best Show. A preview for one of her videos popped up after I watched the epic 17-minute-long infomercial for this year’s Juggalo jamboree, and I clicked on it.

In that video, entitled Gathering of Juggalos 2010 Who needs a ride from me, summer, summmer138 does just as the title promises and offers not only a seat in her car but also a spot in her hotel room to anyone who lives along the way from Denver, Colorado to Cave-In-Rock, Illinois. She has straight, blond hair and blue eyes that bulge whenever she rolls them due to feelings of annoyance or anxiety, which she seems to experience quite often-especially during the precise moment when she extends her invitation. Her eyelashes are long, her nails are manicured, and she has a silver barbell piercing directly above her right cheekbone.

The three-minute segment begins with a clip from a song about the drug oxycontin, regarding which summmer138 shakes her head, mouths the words “Fuck that” (while giving the finger with both hands), and rolls her eyes. She explains that she’s no longer addicted to the opium-derived painkiller.

Summmer138 stands up to display her thickening (yet still quite thin) body underneath her blue and white floral dress. She says she’s glad her breasts are filling in, and a moment later suggests she might have sex with whoever decides to take up her offer. Throughout the video, she says the words “fuck” and “shit” more often than most people use prepositions.

Summmer138’s third video, Money, shows more than $5,000 in cash arranged in rows across her off-white living-room floor. All this money, she explains, is “going towards my boobs.” She sits cross-legged at one end of the pile of money while Killa T films from the other. He zooms the camera in on her chest. She wears a pink Hustler t-shirt, and her blond hair contains streaks of black and pink. The young couple express their ambivalence about spending this much money on cosmetic surgery. In a rare tender moment, even Killa T admits that it’s a shame.

It becomes evident after a short while that summmer138 works as a stripper and struggles with Xanax abuse. In summer and xanax COMMENT ON XANAX BITCHES, she mentions getting home after a bad day at work, and how she hopes to feel better after swallowing some prescribed Xanax. She tilts the camera down away from her face, showcasing her new cleavage along the way, and stops to reveal her right hand, which is full of pills.

But a year and a half later, we are introduced to a more mature summmer138. She talks about the “hardest five days of her life.” She tried to get off Xanax over the Christmas season. She says in the video that she plans to make a documentary about what it’s like being hooked on painkillers to help others caught in addiction.

Not all these videos are so personal. In one video, a big friend does the Worm in her living room while she laughs behind the camera and Killa T clasps a bong off to the side. Another shows summmer138 at her most content: she’s standing beside Killa T without any makeup and her hair in a ponytail. Both of them are smiling, and both of them are wearing identical Hatchetman necklaces. The two are excited because Killa T is holding a giant rectangle of Rice Krispies Treats, bought from 7–11, that extends beyond the width of his shoulders. Killa T rips open the shiny blue package while simultaneously cursing at whoever may be watching. He takes a bite from the corner as summmer138 watches and laughs, and then she takes a bite herself.

Commenters post messages on summmer138’s site ranging from “hey what’s up babe” to “watt up juggalette family hit me up drop a line ninjas” to the popular “WHOOP WHOOP” greeting often heard within the Juggalo community. Many comments are accompanied by the acronym M.M.F.W.C.L., which means “Much Mother Fucking Wicked Clown Love.”

Some commenters take a less formal approach to courtship and simply post statements like “can i suck yer titties.” Summmer138 logs into her profile often, her latest visit occurring one day ago.

On December 17, 2008, three days after uploading the Rice Krispies video, summmer138 posted another video. In it, she stated that she and Killa T have broken up. She mixes photographs of herself and Killa T with video of her lip-synching in front of a gas fireplace to a gentle song about remaining loyal and trustworthy to a friend. The song is “Always” by Zug Izland, a former band on Psychopathic Records. Whenever Killa T appears in the video, he looks uninterested, even bored.

There is a period of quiet. Summmer138 doesn’t post anything again until February 14, 2009, when she wishes everyone a happy Valentine’s Day. Five days later, she’s back with another video, in which she tells everyone that “life’s pretty shitty.”

Then comes a series of posts taken from various raves held in different parts of the country. There’s many images of shirtless men twirling green glow sticks, dancing young people in white pants and shirts that look purple underneath the glow of black lights, and copious amounts of girls making-out with one another, including summmer138 with her best friend, Marissa. Summmer138 also makes a compilation of footage from 2009’s Gathering of the Juggalos, with a guest appearance by Killer T, who now sports two-inch braids on the top of his head. He’s briefly seen swearing in the backseat of a car, and taking a jovial shot to the forehead from another Juggalo armed with a red octagon from a dismantled stop sign. Throughout these video segments, it’s notable that summmer138’s skill at editing, music dubbing and overall filmmaking has improved.

In two of her most recent videos, summmer138 has started a video log, titled The Diary of a Stripper named Summer. She tells her viewers that Killa T and her ended their relationship because he constantly accused her of doing “extras” on the side for men who frequented her strip club. Also Killa T threatened to shut her mouth with his fist if she didn’t shut up. She also relates how mean the other girls at work are to her.

One coworker in particular told summmer138 to “stop coming to work faded” after a strap on one of summmer138’s translucent and extremely high heels broke, causing her to fall to the ground in the dressing room and spill everything she was carrying in her hands. In the next installment of her video log, summmer138’s sister, Tantra, who’s also a dancer, is set to appear as a special guest.

DJ Clay, in the infomercial for the 11th Gathering of the Juggalos, said something interesting. “Fuck yeah, cause ain’t no two Juggalos alike, truthfully. Everybody came from different background, grew up in different places, and listen to different music.”

And Violent J raps in “Miracles” that he’s seen “85,000 people all in one room together as equals,” and I think that’s one aspect of what being a Juggalo is about. That’s the reason why summmer138 was offering a ride to the festival: she didn’t want to go alone.

In her most recent YouTube post, from late this month, summmer138 says she didn’t make it to the Gathering. After driving for 800 miles, she got a flat tire. She was also pulled over on four separate occasions in Kansas alone.

She is shooting from her Android, because her camera has been stolen, apparently, though she says in passing that her TV was stolen. “lol no of my shitty phone def not hd someone stole my hd cam my 1600 lap top and also my 1300 ( maybe more hd flastscreen tv. karma is a bitchg,” she explains in the comments.

Then, in the video, she rebukes Tila Tequila. Summmer138 is wearing a black dress with spaghetti straps, and pans down to show her own chest. She argues that not only did Tila Tequila get what she deserved, but that she should be sued for her salacious behavior. “You’re hot, I would fuck you, but how about we sue you,” she asks, “for fucking baring your breasts to underage people?” The video lasts exactly one minute and is cut off prematurely.

Paul Hiebert lives in New York City and attends classes at New York University.

Believe it or not, if you make a viral video of a bear dancing to rap music, that does not necessarily mean that the editors of this website will automatically post it. In fact, even if you have argued with them for longer than it took to even make the video and upload it to YouTube, they still won’t agree to post it. But you know what, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands and share your gift with the world. So I present to you: “Dancing Panda Bear” by David Cho.