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Who among us has not stubbed a toe on a table leg or the side of the bed and been instantly possessed by a red mist that drives you to commit a terrible act of violence against yourself for being so fucking stupid? Yeah, well, you know what’s worse? Standing on a landmine when you know you’re walking through somewhere that is likely to have landmines, and you are desperately trying not to stand on a landmine, because that would suck.
This is what befell Collin Mayfield, an American journalist who has covered conflict all over the world, from Ukraine to Haiti. He was on a reconnaissance mission, embedded with the People’s Defence Force-Zoland in Chin State, Myanmar, when he stepped on a M14 mine—or what is known in the warfare business as a “toe popper.” Needless to say it does not rank high on the list of Cool Things That Could Happen to Your Feet, but when we caught up with him on his recovery bed in Poland, he had an admirable sunny-side-up attitude about it all.
“If I’d stepped on it with my heel, I would have lost my entire foot. But because I stepped on it with my big toe, I just lost two toes and parts of the metatarsals. They’re not the type of anti-personnel mine where you’d need an above-knee amputation. In most situations it just blows off some toes.”
Yay!(?)
Collin unpacks this experience, in thoroughly unpleasant detail, in the full interview below:
Last week, we published what was billed as a “definitive timeline” of the hipster music era, confident in the belief that it would settle the many scraps people were having online about what it was exactly, when it took place, and who counted among its luminaries. We were, of course, extremely misguided. The piece has been viewed more times than Bonnie Blue’s tonsils and has generated more splinter arguments than ever before.
In fairness, there were a few inaccuracies or omissions on our end. We forgot to mention “fingerstaches,” for instance, and it was foolish of us to dignify “blackgaze” with any mention whatsoever.
So yes, we got some things wrong. You, dear readers, also got some things wrong. Jack White and the keyboard player from Yeasayer got some things wrong. We’re only human after all, and we’re all locked in this permanent state of nostalgia together because the slow cancelation of the future has left us with nothing to do but debate the canon value of I’m From Barcelona until we all receive state-mandated euthanasia for not having a proper pension.
Read our full list of caveats, apologies, and rebukes below:
Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE Magazine
To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)
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