Iceland’s got a lot going for it: fresh, clean air, perfect water, jaw-dropping scenery and gorgeous, gorgeous inhabitants. They don’t go in for comically death-defying fattening foods like we do here in the States. It’s not their style. But generally speaking, you can find better food in a pet store than you can in Iceland.

I’m exaggerating for comic effect here, of course. Having once learned the hard way that Gravy Train does not secrete anything close in flavor to real gravy when you add water, I do know the difference.

It’s just that because Iceland is so far away from everything and everyone else, and a country made of Arctic tundra, there’s no such thing as fresh local produce. Whatever is grown locally is grown in geothermal greenhouses and everything else has to be flown in from Europe. This drives up prices for pretty much everything on the island. And it makes for some seriously strange sandwiches that cost at least ten bucks. Like this one, snapped at a gas station outside of Vik:

I emailed a few Icelandic acquaintances, just to make sure I was reading the label correctly. That last letter isn’t one we have in English, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a cognate game-changer. They all wrote back, saying essentially the same thing: “Yep, that is a Bacon Nacho Sandwich.”
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Last week, I posted about the giant mashed-up colorform graffiti on the New York Subway system. The post got picked up by Gawker, Art Fag City, Neatorama and some others, garnering a little attention.

A few days later, I got a comment that said:

i know the guy who does this stuff. i can get you more info and pictures of the originals if you’re interested. these pics don’t do the originals justice. you have pics of them after they’ve been tampered with …

I got a bunch more photos out of him, and he’s right … these are way, way more fun, especially this Iron Man remix:

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Listen: transdimensional travel already exists. It’s not as dramatic as ripping open a hole in the fabric of space-time and shaking hands with some lizard men on the other side, or painting a pentagram in infants’ blood on the floor of a church and conjuring up a smoldering slobbering demon.

I was walking back from a bar in Clinton Hill this summer, and even though I’d had a pretty good evening, I was feeling kinda sorry for myself. I’d just moved to New York and my work had dried up, my girlfriend had dropped me, and I was sharing a bedroom with another grown man. I’d had a decent dinner and a few drinks and was flagellating myself internally for spending money, any money at all, when my resources were at such a rapid dwindle.

A breeze kicked up and a piece of paper hit my foot. I picked it up and fell through a wormhole in my own reality to a serious realness congruent to, but utterly different than my own. The letter was from a guy in prison to a friend on the outside. Although technically written in English, the words were in a language I barely spoke.

You can see the letter itself here:

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