donald trump

Today I Am Angry About: Guns in the USA

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

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Do you ever gaze around you and feel disgusted with the world at large yet agonisingly powerless to do a damn thing about it? Yeah, same (and if you don’t – pull your face out of your gooch, man. Political apathy is for fucking dweebs and I’ve got no time for that shit).

There are a million topics ricocheting around my cranium right now, and for the sake of my own sanity I’m going to articulate one of them below, with nice little subheadings to save you the sheer exhaustion of proper reading.

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I once fired a machine gun in Las Vegas when I was 21 years old, because I was young and I thought it’d be cool, because Hollywood. It wasn’t cool, it was boring and terrifying, somehow simultaneously. I pulled the trigger, it made a loud bang, and suddenly there was a hole in the face of a human-shaped target. Truly, a thrilling experience well worth the violent deaths of thousands of schoolchildren. More than anything, I was just very aware that I was holding a heavy metal tool that was created solely, solely­, to kill. If I aimed it the wrong way I would kill someone, or myself. Continue reading →

On The Protests in the UK and the Muslim Ban

/ Dan Hackett / 1 Comment

Yeah, this one’s about politics and the Muslim ban, not travelling. Whatever.

I’ve tried to write a political article about 5 times in the past 48 hours, and every time I’ve given up and scrapped it. My thoughts are too disjointed and frantic and plain fucking furious to put into any comprehensible order. Instead, I’ve decided to simply write a list, wherein I will answer the myriad complaints I have seen about the Muslim ban protests that took place across my homeland yesterday. You might have thought that people could not find much fault with peaceful protests for the sake of the rights of fellow human beings, protests designed to show support and camaraderie with a people that is being increasingly maligned. However, you would be wrong, for this is 2017. The Second World War is slowly passing out of living memory, and humanity, with eye-rolling predictability, seems to be toying with the idea of destroying each other once again. So let’s get into it. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – When The Devil Drives

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

I wrote an article for Unilad a while back, which you can read here, if you fancy. It’s an abridged version of the account of the virtual reality orgy thing I went to a month ago. I was paid £120 for writing the article, however I was told it could take up to 30 days for the money to go into my bank. This wouldn’t usually be too big an issue, except that for the past fortnight I’d been living off around €20.

Continue reading →