It’s late afternoon, and though he’s been drinking since he woke up around noon in a squat in Brooklyn, Suvy now plots his next beer. He’s sprawled with some of the usual guys on the sidewalk next to the abandoned falafel shop on St. Marks Place, a piece of prime real estate if you hang out on the street. Suvy squatted inside for a while, until a man came in one night, found him in his sleeping bag, naked and wasted, and kicked him out. “I guess I didn’t pay my rent.”

You can’t get away with anything around here anymore. “St. Marks used to be, like, a punk block,” Suvy says. “It used to be overrun with punks. Now it’s like fucking BBQ Chicken and fucking Chipotle, whatever that fucking store is.” John Varvatos has taken over CBGB. Trash & Vaudeville peddles overpriced punk trinkets to tourists. That very day in Tompkins Square Park they’ve set up a big stage, and there’s an infestation of tweens in dance uniforms and glitter paint and families with juice bottles preening on the benches—a far cry from the park’s glory days as a tent village for the city’s lost and broken. “Everyone used to live there,” Suvy says. “But then the cops came and bulldozed it, and now it’s pretty much just a cop hot spot.”

The halcyon days of the punk movement were over before Suvy was born, of course, but each year as the weather warms, hundreds of kids like him descend on St. Marks. They’ve learned the names of the bands. They’ve memorized the lyrics. They’ve carefully crafted the look, gotten the piercings, the tattoos. They come hoping to tap into a scene that no longer exists, but in the process they’ve accidentally created a new one, an ersatz summer camp of misfits and would-be rebels. Some come from the boroughs or the suburbs; for others, it’s a stop on a migratory circuit that includes Portland, Oregon, and New Orleans. Some are fleeing broken families, others just looking for adventure. The common denominator seems to be not family, not class, not race, but merely a highly evolved sense of teenage angst, for which punk provides a ready-made, if recycled, outlet.

There are glam punks and goth punks and skater punks and ska punks. Suvy’s squatting partners Greg and Jamie are crustie punks—that’s punk with a dash of hippie. Jamie’s girlfriend, Jazmin, is a metal punk. Their friend Miquel is a hobo. And Eric is a rockabilly punk who combs his green hair back fifties style.

Suvy calls himself a gutter punk—the closest thing, he says, to the original version. He was kicked out of his home in Philly about a year ago because, he says, “my parents are metal heads and they hate me.” He dropped out of school, couch-surfed for a while, then got picked up for breaking into houses. After seven months in juvie, he had only one plan: getting himself to St. Marks Place. “I heard about St. Marks in a Casualties song,” he says, “so I’m like, ‘Wait a second, I want to hang out there.’ ” That’s what he was doing when he met Greg, who showed him places to squat. He sometimes sleeps in an industrial building in Williamsburg, sometimes in the park, sometimes under a bridge by the East River, sometimes even with women who warm to his cherubic features and haphazard charisma. A few more years of living this life and he won’t be so pretty.

“Hey, what’s up?” he calls out to a girl walking past in plaid pants and a Casualties shirt. She pauses long enough for him to know he might have a chance. “You’re really hot. Come over here.”

Up close, she’s not as cool as she initially seemed. She tells Suvy that she’s a freshman at a high school in Brooklyn, which means first of all that she goes to school and second that she probably lives with her parents. Then there’s the striped glove she’s wearing on one hand, which besides being impeccably clean is exactly the type of merchandise you purchase if you want to look punk. Still, she’s cute, voluptuous and freckled, and Suvy aims to impress.

Full Story

Now women, gay men, curious dogs, and homophobic bro-dudes who aren’t “fags, bro!”, have to make sure the manplasma they’re gargling is clear of HPV, or else they could develop throat cancer. The question that arises in this new baneful reality is: Can they live without the taste?

It’s the leading cause of cervical cancer and is now believed to be the major cause of oropharyngeal (throat, tongue and tonsil) cancers.

The human papillomavirus — more commonly known as HPV — causes more oropharyngeal cancers than tobacco and alcohol use, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

“This is important because previously HPV was thought to be one of the risk factors for this type of cancer along with tobacco and alcohol use, and now we know that it is the leading cause of this type of cancer,” said Dr. Aimee Kreimer, a professor at the National Cancer Institute and one of the study’s authors.

Oral HPV is transmitted during oral sex and people with multiple oral sex partners are at the greatest risk for contracting the disease, said Kreimer.

Study participants who reported having more than six oral sex partners in their lifetime were 8.6 times more likely to develop the HPV-linked cancer, the study showed.

Smoking increases the risk of developing throat cancer three-fold and alcohol increases the risk by about 2 ½-times.

HPV was present in the tumors of 72 percent of oropharyngeal cancer patients enrolled in the study and is believed to cause about 60 percent of oropharyngeal cancers and about a third of all oral cavity and pharynx cancers in the United States.

Kreimer said alcohol and tobacco are still considered the leading causes of cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx.

The use of alcohol and tobacco combined with the presence of HPV did not appear to increase the risk of contracting oropharyngeal cancer, according to the study.

Oropharyngeal Cancer Rare

Oropharyngeal cancer is rare and currently affects about 11,000 people nationwide. Most people who get oral HPV will not develop the disease, Kreimer said.

Still, there is currently no test available to determine whether someone has oral HPV so regular dental visits are important in the prevention of throat and related cancers, said Kreimer.

“The dentist is the first line of defense against oral cancer,” she said. “The use condoms or dental dams during oral sex are always a good idea because HPV isn’t the only disease that can be transmitted through oral sex. There are other STDs out there as well.”

She said she and other researchers are currently studying oral HPV to better understand it.

“There’s still so much we don’t know about it,” Kreimer said. “We’re trying to characterize it and understand what it looks like and how it behaves in the oral region.

In addition to oral sex, oral HPV may also be transmitted mouth-to-mouth and can be transmitted by skin contact and in the mucus of the genital tract, and in saliva, urine, and semen, the study said.

Although the FDA has approved the vaccine Gardasil for the prevention of genital HPV infection in girls and young women, it has not been proven effective in the prevention of the oral infection, said Kreimer.

“The important thing is that we know what’s causing (the cancer),” she said. “Now you can go on to learn how to screen for it and how to treat it.”

Full Story

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Now might be the time for New Yorkers to take advantage of the free condom campaign the city promotes. A new study by the city’s Health Department found more than a quarter of adult residents are infected with the herpes virus.

According to the study, 26 percent of city residents have the virus that causes genital herpes, an incurable sexually-transmitted infection that can cause painful genital sores and can double a person’s risk for HIV.

Nationally, 19 percent of the population has the infection, according to the department.

More specifically, the study showed that the rate is higher among women than men – 36 percent compared to 19 percent – and was higher among blacks than whites – 49 percent versus 14 percent, respectively.

It also found the rate was higher among gay men than heterosexual men – 32 percent compared to 18 percent.

“Genital herpes alone will not cause serious problems for most people,” said Dr. Julia Schillinger, Director of Surveillance for the Health Department’s Bureau of STD Prevention and Control and lead author of the study. “But some people will have painful genital sores and the infection fosters the spread of HIV. We advise New Yorkers to protect themselves and others. Using condoms consistently will help you avoid getting or spreading genital herpes.”

The data come from the city’s Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which used door-to-door interviews and in-person medical exams to assess the health of New Yorkers on a variety of measures, from diabetes to depression, according to the department.

The study was the city’s first measurement of those infected with the virus. Herpes is not the only STD above the national rate in New York City. Rates of Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and infectious syphilis were also higher than the national rate

Click Here for source

CHECK IT OUT!

elul21 = 1 … Comcast = 0

 

“As of Thursday May 29th, www.comcast.net is still down. All you see is a Network Solutions “web page under construction and coming soon” page. But several hours ago there was a nice little message from the writers of the Warlok virus:

KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST
sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven and Slacker.”

 

Full Post

“It seems the importance of using a very strong password for emails is a must because the hacking of Comcast email service shows security issues. Many users do not understand obviously how important it can be, even though internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast using some of the most advanced email security solutions, wonders never cease to amaze because hackers can and will get through.

I have visited www.comcast.net this morning and it seems the site is down with a message on the homepage saying This Site Is Under Construction and Coming Soon but thankfully it is back up and running again, oops so no chance for you to go to Comcast net sign in to login. We all when going to a service like Comcast and other email providers that they use cutting edge email security appliances, but the whole truth of the matter is that much of the Web’s infrastructure is hacked together legacy equipment. In simple terms it is fair to say users should protect themselves from having their online identity compromised, the bottom line is that users should change their passwords frequently and then maybe this hacking problem may ease a little.

Let me say now that anyone using this service that has had the same password for some time now should really consider changing it, the current problems with Comcast web email security solutions proves that it’s vital for us to protect ourselves with effective online caution. Word of warning for those wanting to change passwords, DO NOT use birthdates, pet names or even family names, USE mixed up letters and numbers even down to using uppercase and lowercase characters. I would recommend you changing passwords once a month to be on the safe side,

You should be changing passwords weekly, but even security freaks don’t do it that often. Once or twice each month is really not sufficient, but it’s a lot better than nothing. It’s a simple email security solution that will help you avoid the problems that Comcast email users are having right now.”

 

Full Story

To the douches intending on tattooing their eyes: the terrorists have won…

Full Story

“A US woman who spent almost 60 years in an iron lung has died after a power cut shut down the machine that enabled her to breathe, her family says.

Dianne Odell died at her family house some 80 miles (129km) north-east of Memphis, Tennessee. She was 61.

Family members say they were unable to get an emergency generator after the power failure knocked out electricity.

Ms Odell had been confined to the apparatus since she was diagnosed with polio as a three-year-old child.

“We did everything we could do but we couldn’t keep her breathing,” Dianne’s brother-in-law Will Beyer was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

“Dianne had gotten a lot weaker over the past several months and she just didn’t have the strength to keep going,” he said.

Ms Odell was diagnosed with “bulbo-spinal” polio several years before a vaccine was discovered that later largely stopped the spread of the crippling disease affecting children.

Despite being confined inside the iron lung, she managed to get a high school diploma, take courses at a college and write a book.

Iron lungs – or negative pressure ventilators – were first used in the 1920s.

They work by producing pressure on the lungs that causes them to expand and contract so that patients can breathe.

They were largely replaced by positive-pressure airway ventilators in the 1950s.

But Ms Odell had a spinal deformity, meaning that she was unable to use a more modern, portable apparatus.”

Source Link

This could be fun. It could also suck, and create a new paradigm for college party intellectual/br0dude intercourse (see: Donnie Darko, Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club, Life Aquatic, etc).

 

LA CROSSE, Wis. – A La Crosse teen faces felony charges involving nude photos of a 16-year-old girl that he posted on his MySpace page, according to the Associated Press.
Seventeen-year-old Alex Phillips made an initial appearance Tuesday in La Crosse County Circuit Court on charges of possession of child pornography, sexual exploitation of a child and defamation.

Authorities acted last Saturday on a tip from police in Janesville and confirmed that there were two photographs of the naked girl on the Web page.

According to the criminal complaint, Phillips was told he could be jailed for posting the photos but told police he would still keep them on the page.

 

Full Story

It was announced yesterday that Massachusetts Senator and drunk Irishman paragon, Edward Kennedy, the youngest (last remaining) Kennedy and Chivas brother, has a malignant tumor in his brain. The doctor’s prognosis? Dead in 9-14 months. All jokes aside, this is terrible news for Democrats, political satirists and bartenders alike. The dynasty is over, and I know I’m not the only one shaken up about it. 

“At least I wasn’t assassinated, brah!”