Miha Furlan is a Slovenia bro who draws cars. He’s been doing it as long as he can remember. He sells prints online. Pretty much that’s all you need to know. Let’s roll the images.

Everyone’s favourite witch house / ‘rape gaze’ band are back with a new video. It sounds + looks like some sort of PCP nightmare, i.e. it sounds like Salem. Plz to enjoy.

So I was in Tokyo last week. It was great. And since I bought a bunch of local magazines I figured I’d take photos of those and post them up here. As you do…

PS. Word of advice. If you’re ever in Tokyo and you find yourself Tweeting / thinking something like – “I just stepped into Sega’s Yakuza franchise,” it’s probably a good idea to leave the bar…

I’m flying out to Tokyo this morning. It’s a 6am flight which means I have to be at the airport by 5am ish, which means I gotta be out of the house by 4am. Since I don’t usually get to bed until dawn I don’t see any point trying to sleep – figure I’ll just stay up and hang out online.

On that note, here are are some cat images courtesy of Audrey Mayerickson. They’re kinda messed up, but it’s impossible to underestimate just how much the internet loves cats.

True fact: I actually remember the very first time I heard Nirvana’s Come as You Are. It was a friend’s house party in Springwood (Brisbane) in the early 90s. I was in primary school and a little suburban/ghetto/mallrat. Anyway, the song came on and I was all, “WTF is this? It’s incredible.” Then Nirvana became huge. Then Pearl Jam came along. Then I lost interest…

20 years later we’re about due a grunge revival. I figured I’d do my bit with this Lifelounge Guide to Grunge. Warning: it contains actual facts and research and stuff alongside a bunch of videos.

OMG! How hard it is to update a website? If my effort this past week is any indication it’s just about THE HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD. Anyway, here you go. Pulp novels. More here.

A while back I used to write a blog called Giant Schnauzer, Attack! One of the regular features was something called Alpaca Wednesday. Basically, I would post an image of an alpaca every Wednesday. I did this every week for about 4 months until I ran out of alpaca images to steal from the internets. Since this blog has gotten a little trigger (and knife) happy over the last week or so, I thought some alpacas could lighten the mood. So, here they are…

I wrote a guide to ‘Hood Movies over at Lifelounge. If you grew up on Menace II Society, Above the Rim, Who’s Da Man, Juice, etc, you should go there and pretend like it’s 1994 and you’re renting videos.

People are always asking me, “Mikolai, how can I lead a creative + relevant + highly lucrative freelance writing career such as yours?” I usually reply something stupid like, “Dude, I drink several coffees and Red Bulls a day, live on 5 hours sleep and will be dead by 50.”

Later, I’ll forward them the document below. It’s a beginner’s guide to pitching articles. It’s all true. Whether or not it’s helpful is another matter.

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Okay, the easiest way to get started is to decide what you want to write and who you want to write for. What I normally do is go to the newsagent, buy my favourite mags (ones I want to write for), go to a cafe, drink A LOT of coffee and flick through the mags taking notes about article ideas. The coffee is important to this process. At the end of this I might 4-5 potential articles I can pitch.

If you don’t have a lot of material published in other mags and are starting out then simply emailing an editor and going ‘I’d like to write about this’ is not gonna work. Basically, you’re going to have to write the article and shop it around. Or at the very least, write half the article and send it to editors as a sample. If the article idea is interesting and you can write then they’ll get back to you. Or maybe they won’t. Point is, the easier you can make their job the better your chances – if the mag is going to print and the editor needs to fill a page quickly having your completed article ready to use can be a real lifesaver.

On the above note, I guess it’s sort of a given that you should be familiar with their general tone and try to stay within those parameters. This can be harder than it seems. I once spent a week at a ‘lads mag’ and they HATED ME so bad and rewrote all my copy

Most editors will ignore you. If I send out pitches to ten editors then I might hear back from 3-4. And maybe one of those will be interested in an article. Keep harassing them. I had several ideas rejected by Penthouse before they finally liked something.

Let’s see, oh, a good subject heading in your email can help. Something to grab peoples’ attention. Sometimes I like to be an asshole and write shit like ‘Super Awesome Mega Pitch’, but that really comes down to the market.

If all else fails, you can try mailing a magazine. As in, physical mail. Follow-up an email with a hand written letter and a print out of your article. It might not get used, but you’ll stand out from all the other people sending emails.

Stalk people. I go to all these shitty awesome art launches in Melbourne because it’s a good way to meet people who work in publishing / media and once you’ve met in real life it’s much harder for them to ignore your emails.

Okay, that’s all I can think of right now. Basically, you gotta keep harassing people until they crack. Do it enough and you might end up with enough freelance work to sit at home in a bathrobe drinking coffee and writing about stuff.

So I’m a little obsessed with The Ghosts. The short rockerbilly / greaser film by Eddie O’Keefe. I’ve already posted about it here, and here. I’m gonna shut up about it after this, just wanted to let peoples know about the original soundtrack. It’s been released as a free download and is avilable from The Teenage Head website. It features stuff like this.