The Toronto Book Launch for Wake Up and Smell the Shit: Hilarious Travel Disasters, Monstrous Toilets and a Demon Dildo is on Sat., Oct. 24th, at 3:00 PM. Jorge Miguel, one of Canada’s best Flamenco guitar players will be performing at 3:00 during the book signing, and contributor readings will start at 3:30. At Ben McNally Books, 366 Bay St.

Stand back! The 31 tales in this raunchy round-the-world romp might get you dirty. (read more…)

(This is the first article I wrote for TheBlot magazine, Wall St., New York.  It was published on Sept. 27, 2013.)

According to Cornell University Law School, there aren’t any laws in the US prohibiting cannibalism (the nonconsensual consumption of people).

In July (2013), Tyree Lincoln Smith (Fla.) was found not guilty for gorging on a vagrant. Then on Sept. 9, three Superior Court judges committed Smith to 60 years in a Connecticut psychiatric hospital. They feared he’d eat more humans if left free to roam.

Unlike Tyree Lincoln Smith, or serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer — whose flesh fetish landed him in prison — many cannibal cases are cases of survival.

Every time I fly over the Andes Mountains I look at the icy peaks piercing through the clouds and imagine the infamous 1972 plane crash survivors eating their frozen rugby teammates to stay alive.

Would I eat people? Of course I’d eat people.

But last month I tucked into alpaca steak and was overwhelmed by the maleness of the alpaca meat. My little alpaca had that masculine essence of a big buck killed by a car instead of a bullet.

Would the meat of a human male killed in a plane crash have the overpowering rankness of roadkill buck? Maybe women would taste better. And what is that man taste — is it hormonal?

I knew the perfect expert to ask, so I fired off a Facebook message to Paula Lee, PhD, at University of Chicago, author of the new book “Deer Hunting in Paris; a Memoir of God, Guns & Game Meat” and, on a more serious note, author of “Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse.” (read more…)

I understand why you shouldn’t use words such as “retarded” when you mean “stupid” – wait, that’s not right, um, when you  mean, asinine. But Upworthy has an infographic that’s being shared on social networking with suggested replacement words for common ableist expressions, and the suggestions are nonsensical. It made me crazy, so I pitched my editor at TheBlot in New York with my rant and here it is:

Dear Upchuckworthy: I am not removing the word crazy from my vocabulary, and your list of alternative words that is circulating Facebook is asinine…(read more at TheBlot magazine).

Wake Up and Smell the Shit: Hilarious Travel Disasters, Monstrous Toilets, and a Demon Dildo, published by Travelers’ Tales (USA) and edited by Kirsten Koza, is now available in both paperback and as an ebook at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, RedBrazil.com (busts Amazon’s price on paperback), and Amazon Canada, Chapters Indigo, ibooks and at fine independent bookstores.

Stand back! The 31 tales in this raunchy round-the-world romp might get you dirty. 

We’ve all had unspeakable experiences while traveling that we’re ashamed to admit, but these often become our best stories in the retelling. The writers in this collection cast inhibition aside and reveal their weirdest and worst moments and how they made the best of them. And memorable moments in exotic destinations come in all shapes and sizes: insects as big as Pam Anderson’s left tit, regrettable sex, stink-eyed officials, horrible healers, Lady Gaga’s shoes and Madonna’s special meal, trigger-happy militants, and peeping Tom rock stars.

Adventure vicariously as:

• Spud Hilton (not Monty Python) finds the Holy Grail by accident in Spain.
• Meghan Ward squats, and then the toilet grunts back, in Goa.
• Kasha Rigby proved how tough she is on National Geographic’s Ultimate Survival Alaska, but is she a match for a 90-year-old bone breaker in Guatemala?
• Namibians stereotype Chinese men as Bruce Lee—Gerald Yeung wonders if attacking baboons will do the same.
• Keph Senett (hoping not to follow in the footsteps of Pussy Riot) braves bombs, police and a Soviet-era sofa bed to play soccer at the LGBT games in Putin’s Russia.
• Jabba-the-Turd versus Shannon Bradford in an epic showdown in Argentina.

And many more…

Check out contributor trip photos and join the fun on our Facebook page.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction
Don’t Push the Button!
KIRSTEN KOZA (Editor)
Kyrgyzstan and Canada

Kap’n Cy
GARY BUSLIK
Amsterdam

You Go in the Morning, I Go at Night
EMMA THIEME
Caribbean Sea

(read more…)

My latest article in TheBlot magazine (“14 Dictators and the Dickshit Things They Said”) was a blast to research. Did you know that one of the assassination attempts on Castro involved exploding mollusks or that Putin is a member of the Hells Angels?