“I’ve always had this really strong appreciation for… dark.”

I think you’ll like this. Here’s the trailer for Jeanie Finlay’s Goth Cruise, a documentary following 150 Goths on a five day sea journey from New Jersey to Bermuda and back again. With 2,500 “Norms” for company. Brace yourselves for some coloured hair and collective non-conformism.

“I’m really not Goth. I enjoy the aspect of the music… and the dressing up. But when it comes down to it, I don’t think I fit the Goth template.”

If you possess black lipstick and a counter-cultural attitude, you’ll be thrilled to hear this year’s outing takes in Key West and Cozumel, Mexico.

Via Coudal.

Further to this, today’s Telegraph has an extract from Hyok Kang’s account of his childhood in 1990s North Korea, This Is Paradise!

I was born on April 20 1986 in a village not far from Onsong, a city of 300,000 inhabitants in the north-east of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, close to the Chinese border and Siberia. The city is divided into ku (districts) and ban (classifications) of 20 families. My parents lived in ban number three, in a semi-rural zone. The house was like dozens of others built on the same model and lined up in rows. There was a door, a single window, and a roof of curved orange tiles. The walls were white, but they had been painted blue to a height that I must have passed about the age of eight or nine. Each time the district officials came to check the hygiene of the houses, as they regularly did, they ordered us to change the colour of this lower part: to green, now blue, now light brown, but all the houses in our ban had to be the same colour; perhaps because dwellings, like everything else in North Korea, are the property of the people. That means that nothing belongs to anyone.

Via sk60, The Vice Guide to North Korea is worth watching. Shane Smith pays a visit to Pyongyang. Surrealism ensues. Part 1 is embedded below.

Parts 2-14 can be viewed here.  

Between 1988 and 1991, Daniel Laine visited the African continent, photographing its various tribal monarchs and assorted royalty.

Left to right: Oba Joseph Adekola Ogunoye, Olowo of Owo, Nigeria. Isienwenro James Iyoha Inneh, Ekegbian of Benin, Nigeria. El Hadji Mamadou Kabir Usman, Emir of Katsina, Nigeria. Salomon Igbinoghodua, Oba Erediauwa of Benin, Nigeria.

From the book African Kings: Portraits of a Disappearing Era. Via Coudal.  

Images of Saturn, its ring system and its moons.

See also: Saturn’s vortex. 

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman shares his wisdom on today’s security breach at Stansted Airport, courtesy of activists from the environmentalist group, Plane Stupid:

My first reaction was to wonder whether those inconvenienced by this self-aggrandising display would be able to demand compensation from the airport’s security provider. Using a snowplough to shift protestors is faintly amusing, I grant you, but in an age of terrorist attacks on airports, five hours is a long time to wait and firearms might have expedited matters.

A second reaction came to mind after seeing this on the Plane Stupid website: “Plane Stupid welcomes actions in its name, provided they are non-violent and accountable.” Accountable, eh? Presumably, then, the fifty or so middle-class hippies and student eco-poseurs would have no objection in principle to facing whatever legal action might be taken against them individually by the airlines, by the airport and by each and every one of the inconvenienced travellers. And, presumably, the protestors will soon be offering to personally reimburse the thousands of people affected by their actions. Even, one hopes, to the point of destitution.

Mr Hickman continues:

Actually, the effects of the protest, which began at 3:15am, are still being felt as I type, with stranded passengers being interviewed live on television some eleven hours later. Some 56 flights have so far been cancelled, affecting thousands of passengers, and disruption is expected to continue for up to three days. Mr Hickman doesn’t seem inclined to linger on the possibility that quite a few of those passengers may have been travelling on matters of urgency and personal or financial import – weddings, funerals, job interviews, business meetings, etc – and that their needless delay may have serious consequences. Instead, Mr Hickman’s attention is on much loftier matters:

Ah, the protestors wish to be noticed. Sorry, they wish their cause to be noticed.

It’s odd how some are so keen to dismiss the “normal democratic processes” in favour of undemocratic, criminal – and much more exciting – avenues. Specifically, avenues unburdened by details like persuasion, verification and reasoned argument, and which instead hold passengers to ransom with a display of theatrical onanism. One wonders if Mr Hickman would be similarly well-disposed to other fringe groups, perhaps groups antithetical to his worldview, which nonetheless deem their cause of such importance that discussion and legality are readily dispensed with.

At this point, comment is perhaps unnecessary.