Slide Magazine...

What's Grinding My Gears- Drug Special...

Weed, Dope, Grass, Wacky Baccy, Jazz Fags, etc
Surfing and dope: the classic media stereotype. All surfers are stoners aren’t they? Well they aren’t if they want to surf well. Weed numbs the senses, slows reaction times down and means you’ll spend most of your session marvelling at how pretty the clouds are rather than actually doing any decent wave riding. When you’re bobbing around in the splendour of nature do you really need help appreciating it? Respecting Bob Marley also means you are much more statistically likely to own a Jack Johnson record… Which can’t ever be a good thing. On the plus side stoned surfers don’t ever hassle for waves unlike those…

It's Like This Yo...

Hard drive hari-kiri...
The digital photography thing was meant to make life easier. Saying goodbye to easily damaged, temperature sensitive slide film that was readily lost in the post was supposed to be a good thing. It gave us control. No more relying on a lab to process it correctly and a repro house to scan things right. Photographers could now be master of their own destiny, you shoot it and supply your pics to the mags ready to roll… Unless, of course, the external hard drive you are storing the photos on decides to eat its self and your shots and chews them into the digital equivalent of a high-rise suicide pavement pizza. Not good. Double back up everything kids, unless you really want to know what despair is.

Flying- It's Arse...

Bad flight decorum
If you are flying internationally on a 13-hour flight then please have the good manners to shower and deodorise before you do so. If you don’t fancy that and want to travel with raging body odour then don’t sit next to me. If filling my olfactory sense with man stink wasn’t enough falling asleep with your elbow akimbo in a ‘I’m a little teapot stance’ so I can’t even sit upright on my seat without getting an elbow to the ribs was just the icing on the cake. Airline travel it’s glamourous right? Jeeeez. Also arm rest etiquette- hogging the thing for the whole flight is not way cool, not at all.

What's Grinding My Gears- Clampers

Is there anything worse than being financially raped by clampers? It stings way more than a parking ticket cos most times you get a parking ticket you deserve it. Clampers lurk in the shadows to catch you out in benign, non-yellow lined areas known as 'car parks'... places you think you are allowed to park without concern. Like the one out the back of my girlfriends house in the Big Smoke. You need a permit to park there and I have one. It lives on the dashboard. Only problem is my foil sunvisor thing had slowly but surely slipped down millimetre by millimetre over the course of four days and obscured the thing. £140 extortionate quid later my car is sitting in the exact same place with the exact same permit now visible without resorting to crazy ideas like looking in the SIDE window.

What's Grinding My Gears... Indo Special.

The Horn
In Indo the MOT consists of one test. It takes less than 10-seconds for the whole thing to be conducted. You drive your wagon into the test-bay, the inspector reaches in, honks your horn once, just a quick beep, then gives it a long, aggressive 5-second blast. As long as it makes a noise and doesn’t sound like you are running over a dogs chew toy then you pass. This is the only mandatory requirement for a vehicle in Indo. It can be a rusty death trap with no floor that is partially on fire but that’s no matter. Your horn works you’re good to go. Equally being a paid taxi/bemo driver it seems the only thing you need to know is where the horn is (that and how to do the steering wheel mime and say ‘transport?’ to every white honky tourist). All driving is based around it. This is why -with the exception of Portugal- Indo is the most terrifying place in the world to be in a vehicle. But it is arguably safer to get driven than try and drive; that is just crazy talk.

What's Grinding My Gears...

Snoring
What possible purpose does snoring have? Is it purely designed to show womenfolk you’re entirely unsuitable for breeding? Or is there a more primal reason- a defence mechanism maybe? So when we were sleeping in caves the sabre tooth tiger wouldn’t come in and have some crunchy cavemen nuggets cos of the unpleasant rasping growl/snore coming from within which was surely some ugly assed beast that could tear Mr Tiger a new one. It’s not even a fat bloke disease cos plenty of skinny surfers snore like a defective buzz saw. The ladies don’t get away scot free either as plenty of the fairer sex bust out a good snore…