Vivid Suicide in So Damn Thirsty

• INTO: “I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.” – Audrey Hepburn “All of my Hummingbirds have alibis, and a hundred profound virtues cover my body.” – Max Ernst
• NOT INTO: Falling from grace.
• MAKES ME HAPPY: Cheap champagne with strawberries, the color pink, smeared lipstick, biting lips.
• MAKES ME SAD: Lack of forward momentum.
• HOBBIES: Driving cars fast and boys wild.
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Coffee, vodka, sketchbook, iPod, cold apples with peanut butter.
• VICES: This isn’t self destruction …it’s evolution.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Sinking ships and loosening lips.

Get to know Vivid better over at SuicideGirls.com!

by Mentalrage

It might be decades since you could pick up a copy of Black Mask, but anyone thinking that hardboiled fiction has disappeared is clearly mistaken. One of the names you should be paying attention to is Christa Faust, creator of femme fatale Angel Dare, and author of hardboiled pulp gems Money Shot and more recently, Choke Hold.

[..]

by ExAddict

Listening to: “Cinema” w/ Benny Benassi [Maurizio Gubellini Remix] [feat. Gary Go] (Available on iTunes)
Dispatch Location: @OrangeYYZ, ING Direct Cafe, Toronto

Hipster (from Hipster.com) is an application not unlike Instagram which applies filter effects, lighting screens, text, GPS integration and borders to all your iPhone or iPad photos and makes them available in your custom photo stream on Hipster.com and is instantly exportable among other social media platforms including Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Facebook, and Foursquare.

The unique thing about this “program” (although I recognize we are diverging from the use of that term) is that the app presents photos as postcards. I like the general look of this as it is presented in my photo roll on the Hipster.com website. I prefer this Hunter S. Thompson-inspired layout rather than the boxy square-tab presentation offered by Instagram. The postcards are better suited for writers or journalists augmenting their tweet-style with “notes from the front” as the GPS functionality looks tight as hell if you are broadcasting reality or your pseudo-reality.

While Instagram weighs in with a mighty 1783 ratings versus just 10 for Hipster, I prefer the latter for ease of use. User settings and menu options are easier to manage in Hipster compared with Instagram, and I also enjoy that my tweetstream is updated with references to #Hipster, which makes me feel, well, like a #Hipster. Plus, it’s one of those apps that instantly logs on with your Facebook ID meaning no extra password nonsense.

There are 14 sweet postcard filters to start with and the developer emailed me this week to tell me that a new batch of postcards would be available soon, including Christmas-themed styles. There is a certain adventurous fun to being the first in your area to populate the Hipster website with your own local postcards. I hope you can appreciate this app. It’s super fun for writers and us citizen journalists!

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Over the past decade or so Lisa Crystal Carver has made an industry out of Drugs Are Nice with an album, a DVD and now a book subtitled A Post-Punk Memoir. The book now out from Soft Skull Press chronicles Carver’’s life in the band Suckdog, her major problems with her family and of course, lots and lots of drugs.

Read our exclusive interview with Lisa Crystal Carver on SuicideGirls.com.

Phoenix Suicide in Back To The Wild

• INTO: Epiphanies, art, editorial photography, watching stylish pretty girls dancing to music, sex, reading philosophy.
• NOT INTO: Ego, especially when it’s unconsciously flaunted as a virtue.
• MAKES ME HAPPY: Sunny days, those waking moments when ideas just come to me and I jump out of bed to get started on them, eating organic produce.
• MAKES ME SAD: Everything is beautiful in it’s own way.
• HOBBIES: Dancing, dreaming, watching documentaries, nature shows, and the odd action movie.
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Art, sex, books, music, love.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Looking at naked women.

Get to know Phoenix better over at SuicideGirls.com!

by Tarion Suicide

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.

This week, in preparation for the coming apocalypse, Tarion Suicide gives us the 411 on SG’s Zombie Hunters Group.

Members: 2,824 / Comments: 20,073

• WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: This group has threads covering everything you need to know about zombies and the impending apocalypse. It ensures that every member has a “zombie plan” and the best possible chance of survival. Members discuss everything from the best choice of weapons to the most effective safe house. If you’re into zombies you will find info on the best books, games, movies, and TV shows right here!
• DISCUSSION TIP: This is a fun group, so don’t be too serious.
• BEST RANDOM QUOTE: “Do not set zombies on fire! They will run around and catch everything else on fire!”
• MOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD: The Walking Dead! Official TV Thread – everyone has an opinion on this show!
• WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: All those who want to survive the zombie apocalypse.

[..]

by Jensen

So, you may or may not remember, but a little while back I did a blog on here with Chris a.k.a. Ocell (of FoodWeChew.com/) about bagel making. Well, we decided to have a reunion and make doughnuts! We are both big fans of breakfast pastries. And holes. And breakfast pastries with holes. So we made some. I liked making blogs with Chris because A) he usually makes things while I just stand around and take pictures/throw in commentary and B) he is precise and by-the-book with cooking and I’m scattered and more willing to try things that will potentially turn out fucked up but could also turn out amazing. Actually, I think I’m like that with most aspects of life. But anyway, we’re the good cop/bad cop of cooking.

He found this recipe on AllRecipes.com and we only changed one thing. We also halved the recipe, which you can easily do at AllRecipes automatically.

What You’ll Need

Doughnut Ingredients:

• 2 (.25 ounce) envelopes active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup bacon grease
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 quart vegetable oil for frying

Icing Ingredients:

Preparation:

So we start to put together all of the ingredients and Chris goes, “I don’t think I have shortening. What is shortening?” And I tilt my head to the side and say, “Whaaaaaa? You really don’t know? Do you know what Crisco is?” I was literally amazed. It made me realize how much of a fatty I am for being so extremely familiar with Crisco. We ponder for a second and Chris says, “Do you think bacon grease will work?” And I say, “YES. BACON GREASE WILL WORK.” And he pulls a fucking jar of bacon grease out of his fridge, like this is a normal thing to have lying around. And thus, bacon doughnuts were created.

To start, you just mix the yeast and water in a bowl. We were a bit worried about this because his yeast was a little old and it didn’t get super fizzy like the recipe said, but it turned out fine in the end. After this is done you mix in the rest of the ingredient (sans the flour), then slowly add the flour in. I tried to knead the dough with my hands and it was a sticky disaster (another thing that had us worrying that the doughnuts weren’t going to turn out), but then he kneaded (well, sort of kneaded) it together with a wooden spoon and it turned into that nice texture we were looking for.

After the dough is a nice firm, fluffy looking texture, you let it rise for a bit. I don’t remember the exact amount of time; just wait for that shit to get nice and puffy.

Once the dough is puffy, you roll it into a long rod (I’m having bagel déjà vu here and feel like I shouldn’t recycle the “rod” job I definitely remember using last time). You’re supposed to use a doughnut punch (cookie cutter looking thing), but who the heck has a doughnut punch? We just stretched them into circleish squares, and they turned out just fine.

This is just a recipe break to post a picture of my second favorite cat, Chris’s kitty. SO. FUCKING. CUTE.

Mix all of the icing ingredients together over heat. The icing starts out looking really gross and sickly, but it turns into the super sexy sugary pile of awesomeness. Don’t freak out when it starts out all chunky and gross!

So you fry up the doughnuts until they’re golden brown, then slather them in that sexy icing you just made. Leave them on a rack to cool/let the icing harden. If you want to get crazy, you can put another layer of icing on them after the first layer is dry. That’s your call, bro.

They weren’t the prettiest things in the world, but they were super delicious! You could taste a very faint bacon flavor. Not overpowering, just a little bit of smokiness. For a first try at doughnut making, I’d say we did a pretty fucking good job.

I ate the fuck out of a doughnut.

So moral of the story, a lot of things didn’t go exactly as planned with our doughnut making extravaganza, but they still turned out super delicious. So if you’re worried about trying them out, don’t be! Because I’m pretty sure anything full of bacon and butter and sugar and carbs is going to turn out fucking amazing. That’s the last blog Chris will be working on with me (I mean, unless you guys can come up with more breakfast pastries with holes), so say bye and give him a big thank you :]

[..]