- Sep 13, 2002
- 94,021
- 190,159
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Of course you do:
The story is almost too bizarre for malice, honestly. I genuinely want to understand how and why the sublimely named Joshua Chubbs allegedly got started in the illegal dick surgery business. (Unfortunately, as of this writing, he did not respond to my interview request.)
Let's have some sympathy for the devil. Here is a young man trying to make a living like the rest of us. He doesn't want to give up his saltwater joys to go to the city or the mainland and get a quote-unquote "real" job; he wants to burn around the bay with his buddies forever, as the good Lord above intended. But it's a brutal racket these days to live the Newfoundland dream, so you've got to hustle if you want to make it on the hard knock streets of Carbonear. Chubbs is allegedly making a go of it the only way he knows how: by performing under-the-table cosmetic surgery on his friends' foreskins.
It's an old problem. When Norwegian anthropologist Cato Wadel studied rural communities in Newfoundland at the height of Resettlement, he noted it wasn't strange for un- or underemployed men to trade their skills for favours down the line in the outports' largely cashless economy. The spirit of this Masterless Man, free of the burdens of needless red tape and/or health and safety licensing, has largely been lost in the island's jarring transition into modernity. The idea of a semi-trained mortician's assistant slicing up his buddies' mangly old birds at a cabin in the woods may seem nightmarish, but it hearkens back to the hardscrabble way of life that made our people great.
www.vice.com
The story is almost too bizarre for malice, honestly. I genuinely want to understand how and why the sublimely named Joshua Chubbs allegedly got started in the illegal dick surgery business. (Unfortunately, as of this writing, he did not respond to my interview request.)
Let's have some sympathy for the devil. Here is a young man trying to make a living like the rest of us. He doesn't want to give up his saltwater joys to go to the city or the mainland and get a quote-unquote "real" job; he wants to burn around the bay with his buddies forever, as the good Lord above intended. But it's a brutal racket these days to live the Newfoundland dream, so you've got to hustle if you want to make it on the hard knock streets of Carbonear. Chubbs is allegedly making a go of it the only way he knows how: by performing under-the-table cosmetic surgery on his friends' foreskins.
It's an old problem. When Norwegian anthropologist Cato Wadel studied rural communities in Newfoundland at the height of Resettlement, he noted it wasn't strange for un- or underemployed men to trade their skills for favours down the line in the outports' largely cashless economy. The spirit of this Masterless Man, free of the burdens of needless red tape and/or health and safety licensing, has largely been lost in the island's jarring transition into modernity. The idea of a semi-trained mortician's assistant slicing up his buddies' mangly old birds at a cabin in the woods may seem nightmarish, but it hearkens back to the hardscrabble way of life that made our people great.
Newfoundland Was Having a Great Week Before These Unlicensed Dick Surgery Headlines
A hit Broadway musical and a massive curling victory were no match for one weird crime.
www.vice.com
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