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John Oliver Bought Russell Crowe's Jockstrap for a Blockbuster in Alaska

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Earlier this month, Russell Crowe followed through on a not at all unusual plan to auction off millions of dollars worth of weird shit he's collected over the years to celebrate finalizing his divorce. You couldn't help but wonder who would actually want to buy all the bizarre memorabilia he offered up to the public—from this plaster cast of Muhammad Ali's face to a life-size prop horse from Gladiator—but, apparently, the sale was a big success.

After the dust settled, questions abounded about the mystery buyer who picked up what was, hands-down, the oddest item on offer: a protective leather jockstrap Crowe wore in Cinderella Man. Now, finally, the purchaser has stepped out of the shadows, and revealed himself to be... John Oliver.

On Sunday's episode of Last Week Tonight, the host said he shelled out $7,000 of HBO's money for the gargantuan thong, which—as he admitted—is "a big price to pay just to find out what Russell Crowe's balls smelled like in 2005." He also announced that instead of, say, sporting it under his suit pants or framing it in his living room, he'd be donating the thing. The lucky recipient? One of the few remaining Blockbusters on Earth, located in Fairbanks, Alaska.

As if spending $7,000 on a jockstrap weren't enough, Oliver said he also snagged Crowe's leather hood from Robin Hood, his vest from Les Misérables, and Denzel Washington's seat back from the set of American Gangster, among a few other gems. Everything is that lonely Alaskan Blockbuster's for the taking, as long as the manager calls to claim the merch before Wednesday.

You might be surprised to hear such a store still exists, but even though Blockbuster mostly closed down its brick-and-mortar operation years ago, a handful of franchises survived. And in Alaska, perhaps thanks to the state's spotty WiFi and general desolation, the movie store has remained something of a standby.

For his part, the manager of that Blockbuster told the Anchorage Daily News he's down to take the haul from Crowe's auction. It'd be tough for him to part with a gift from John Oliver himself, but who knows—if he can find someone willing to pay big for a whiff of Crowe, maybe the store will make it through another winter.

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Related: Blockbuster Video Has Become an Alaskan Tourist Attraction

This article originally appeared on VICE US.


A Black Man's Guide to Not Getting Shot by the Cops

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As the same ol’ living-while-black series goes, two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks for being quiet, seated and minding their own business last week. A store manager apparently called the police on the duo because sitting and waiting for a friend is an intimidatingly criminal offence. While these guys managed avoid being shot by trigger-happy cops, others have not been so lucky. We can rewind to March 22, when a black unarmed Cameron Brewer was shot and killed by deputy Danny Ray Thomas for walking with his pants down on a Houston intersection.

Under these tired circumstances, I’d normally present a connect-the-dots relationship between skin colour and these cases in regular thinkpiece fashion. I’d try to explain to white folks why this shit hurts, and why so many cops suck at de-escalation. But let’s not waste time here. You people have already heard the same words I have; systematic prejudice, racism, fear, blah blah blah. Folks like me just wanna live a non-prejudiced, non-shot-at, racist-free life for a damn change. But since that’s not going to happen anytime soon, a writer like myself just may have to create a handy survival guide for dealing with the cops in the meantime.

Comply with orders
Tensions are high on both sides when the police get involved. We have to remember that they’re here to help. So when a cop asks you a question, answer, and follow directions down to the microsecond. Your tenseness isn’t a factor next to a trained cop. So when your name is Philando Castile, and you tell this officer that you’re reaching for your wallet, not your registered gun, it’s up to your non-trained, regular-citizen ass to make this fidgety professional with a firearm feel at ease even when following directions.

Don’t “not” comply with orders
Don’t stop to reason, plead your case or try any of that rational shit. In a case like Eric Garner who was tired of being harassed by police and ended up in a fatal choke hold, you probably shouldn’t even breathe. Some cops aren’t into that black and breathing shit.

Don’t breathe
See above.

Don’t be big
To be big and black at the same time is a lethal combo. Terence Crutcher died because he turned his back on scared Tulsa officer, Betty Shelby. He was a large man, who before his death was described as a “bad dude” by a cop in an overseeing helicopter. Mike Brown Jr. was also killed by officer Darren Wilson who saw an 18-year-old kid as a “hulk” despite sharing similar heights.

Don’t be small
Charleena Lyles, a 30-year-old black woman weighed less than 100 pounds when she was killed by officers within her own apartment. She also happened to be pregnant when she apparently displayed a knife in self defense just before calling the police herself to report a burglary.

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Don’t hold an object
I get that officers have tasers with great de-escalating, limb-aiming abilities, but if you’re rocking a screwdriver that’ll put the fear in three or more able-bodied crime fighting professionals, you brought this on yourself. Pierre Coriolan, a black man, was shot and killed last June outside his apartment in Montreal while going through a mental episode while holding a screwdriver. The same happened in New York City, when Saheed Vassel brandished a pipe like it was a gun, officers rushed out of their cars without issuing commands or orders of surrender, and began shooting without knowledge of whether the item was a gun or not.

Don’t run while unarmed
The key is how you’re unarmed. Your black body is scary enough to white folks, so don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t feel fear and run due to the idea of being killed. Do away with that human emotion shit and stay in one place. Learn from Stephon Clark who fit a description back in March, and ran away from officers before being shot up in his own grandmother’s backyard. The same happened to a running Walter Scott in South Carolina, who was stopped, shot and killed for a non-functional brake light by Michael Slager.

Don’t be scared
See above.

Don’t play with toy guns
If you don’t have a badge, you shouldn’t be holding anything that remotely resembles a gun, NRA member or not. You aren’t a trained de-escalating cop here. Plastic or no, you’re liable to frighten an officer skilled in the ability to spot lethal situations. John Crawford had a BB gun borrowed from an Ohio Walmart, and was shot and killed just for playing with said gun. Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was also gunned down by an experienced cop, even tho they received warnings that the “gun” was probably a toy. Just be a regular, no gun playing citizen.

Don’t own a legal gun
See the “comply with orders” section above involving Philando Castile.

Don’t sit in public
Because you wouldn’t want to intimidate a Starbucks manager.

Don’t drive
Poor, middle class or rich, you’re all the same if you drive anything above a Ford Pinto. Blacks are about 30 percent more likely to be pulled over by police than whites according to Bureau of Justice statistics, so it came as no surprise that even legendary comedian Chris Rock tweeted a series of incidences of being stopped while black. Sam Dubbose in 2015 was fatally shot during a 2015 traffic stop. And Sandra Bland made the mistake of changing lanes without signaling before ending up dead. Hell, I’d say try a bicycle, but a Utah man in Salt Lake city was stopped for riding one, and ran before being gunned down by two officers.

Don’t ride bicycles
See above.

Be white?
It’s what they’re hoping for, right?...

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Rick and Morty Made a Bizarre Appearance on 'My Little Pony'

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As the wait for the next season of Rick and Morty drags on, fans are scraping the bottom of the barrel to get their fix of the nihilistic super scientist and his grandson. Over the weekend, dedicated viewers plunged their heads into the toilet that is the internet and swam back with paydirt from an unlikely destination. Somewhere between Rick and Morty's bender in Bendigo and their foray into the fantasy world of Dungeons and Dragons, the jaded inventor and his adolescent sidekick made a pit stop in the My Little Pony-verse.

Eagle-eyed Redditor Roxopenguim spotted Rick's blue-gray hair spikes and Morty's yellow shirt and frown in the most recent episode of My Little Pony, improbably titled "Grannies Gone Wild." At first, that sounds like an episode Rick would've gladly guest-starred in—but it turns out it's actually about a bunch of elderly mares taking some young pony to an amusement park.

The horses catch a brief glimpse of a couple of Rick and Morty-looking equines apparently on vacation, waiting in line for "the fastest, most thrilling ride of all time," situated in that den of pony sin and consumerism, Las Pegasus. Any superlative is an easy way to reel Rick into an adventure—remember the best marriage counselor in the universe?—but it's doubtful he and Morty would portal gun to the end of a line of any kind.

Most of that Reddit thread is devoted to complaints about the cameo. But there's already been a fair amount of cross-pollination between the two shows, including Rick and Morty performances from My Little Pony's Tara Strong and Patton Oswalt, along with a number of animators and production folks. And that's not to mention the YouTuber who imagined this crossover would happen way before it even aired.

There's no way to know for sure, but the duo's appearance in MLP could be a subtle nod from a Rick and Morty fan or alum who works at Hasbro Studios and wanted to give the fans who watch both shows a little treat. Since MLP's viewership has a widely-reported skew toward male 25 to 44-year-olds, there's probably a lot more overlap than these angry Redditors would have you believe.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Watch the Deeply Disturbing New Trailer for 'Hereditary'

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A24's upcoming horror movie, Hereditary, is gearing up to be one of the scariest movies of 2018. The thing already waged "pure emotional terrorism" on Sundance this year, but we won't have to wait until its June release to find out just how brutally unnerving the movie really is. On Tuesday, A24 released a new trailer for Hereditary, and it is so deeply disturbing it might scare you out of becoming a parent.

The movie, which was written and directed by Ari Aster, tells the story of a mother, played by Toni Collette, who is forced to deal with her family's demons—literally—once her own mother dies. The new trailer gives us our first real look at Collette's character's daughter, Charlie, a strange and unsettling young girl who seems to have inherited her grandmother's dark side.

In the trailer, Charlie—played by Milly Shapiro, of Matilda on Broadway—creeps around, cuts the heads off of birds, and somehow manages to make eating cake look like some kind of ghastly endeavor. She also works on some terribly weird art projects, including some freaky-ass dolls that no innocent child should ever be allowed to craft. Get this kid some construction paper and a set of paint pens, for Christ's sake.

The dolls made an appearance at SXSW, when they showed up on some lucky audience members' doorsteps. But now some of her fucked-up twig and button figurines are up for grabs on Etsy—if you're into that kind of thing.

Hereditary has already been praised as "a new generation's The Exorcist," but it seems like Charlie is also in the running for this generation's Damien from The Omen, as the new reason for parents to secretly fear their children. You can catch Hereditary in theaters starting on June 8 if you're ready to start flinching in terror every time a kid looks at you weird for the rest of the summer.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

'Cold-Blooded Killer' Grandma Accused of Murdering Her Husband and Doppelgänger

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Grandmas might seem like sweet, innocent saints who make you cookies and send you nice cards for your birthday, but that's part of what makes them shockingly effective murderesses—if you're not careful, those baked goods can kill you. Just take the case of Lois Riess, a 56-year-old grandmother from Minnesota who allegedly murdered two people, stole a woman's identity, and dropped off the grid, kicking off a nationwide manhunt for her arrest.

Riess has been on the lam since late March, when her husband mysteriously stopped showing his face in the small town of Blooming Prairie, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports. When the cops came by the family's farm to investigate, they found him dead—killed by several gunshot wounds. Now, they're hunting for his wife—who they say murdered him, emptied $11,000 from his bank account, and disappeared.

Police say Riess fled Minnesota for Iowa, where the allegedly gambling-addicted grandmother stopped at a casino. Before investigators could catch her, she made her way to Fort Myers, Florida, where police say she befriended a woman who looked like her in order to steal her identity. In footage the Lee County sheriff released Monday, you can see Riess and her doppelgänger, 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson, chatting casually at a Fort Myers bar. A few days later, Hutchinson was dead.

Cops say Riess scammed her way into Hutchinson's condo, shot her in the heart, and emptied out her purse. Armed with Hutchinson's ID, credit cards, and car keys, she allegedly high-tailed it to Texas—the last place anyone's spotted the sedan she allegedly stole.

Police have described Riess as "armed and dangerous," and—with murder, grand theft, and identity fraud charges pending against her—they're combing the country to track her down before she can claim another victim.

"She smiles and looks like anyone’s mother or grandmother," Carmine Marceno, the undersheriff of Lee County, Florida, told NBC News. "And yet she’s calculated, she’s targeted, and an absolute cold-blooded killer."

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Related: Grandma on Treadmill

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Surveillance Video Catches Man Masturbating at Windsor Subway

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A man was caught by surveillance cameras in a Windsor, Ontario Subway restaurant exposing himself to a female employee and reportedly ejaculating on the floor. The part-time employee, 21-year-old Jenna Moisenko, was alone behind the counter working around 8:30 PM on Saturday, March 28 at the time of the incident, CBC reports.

The video, which was shared on a Windsor community page on Facebook, has been viewed over 73,000 times. The person who submitted the video claims to be Moisenko’s father. The post urges anyone who recognizes the man in the video to contact police.

“[The man] asked if she could charge his cell phone, he had been recently kicked out of his parents house,” the April 3 post reads. “He was texting with a girl he said. My daughter was nice enough to charge his phone for him.”

In the video, a man wearing a hooded jacket, backpack, and baseball hat lounges in a booth in a Subway, then walks up to the kitchen doorway next to the counter. Moments later, he emerges from the doorway, turns to the side, and a blue box is now censoring his genital area.

“As you can see in the video, he had his penis out of his pants and he ejaculates on the floor while saying some dirty things to my daughter,” the original post reads. “She screamed, he turned, left in a hurry.”

Soon after the incident, Moisenko reportedly called her father and 911.

According to CBC, Moisenko said Subway agreed to give the surveillance footage to her father, who then submitted it to the Facebook page Spotted in Windsor. Spotted in Windsor is a page “dedicated to the general sights, good, bad and amazing experiences, news and funny happenings in the wonderful city of Windsor.” An assistant manager at the Subway told CBC that they couldn’t comment about the video because the case is under investigation.

Moisenko commented on the Spotted in Windsor Facebook post about the incident.

“I am the girl that this happened to. I would like to say thank you to those who have shared the post and taken the time to read what happened. I truly appreciate it. That being said, I would like you all to know, I am ok. Thank you for all of your kind words and concern.”

“I’m not defeated,” the comment continues. “In fact, I am inspired to catch this piece of garbage and hold him accountable for what he has done.”

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A 'Totally Unlivable' House Near Silicon Valley Just Sold for $1.2 Million

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The roof is full of holes, the ceilings are infested with mildew, and no one can live inside it. But buyers still lined up, cash in hand, for a condemned house in Fremont, California, the Bay Area News Group reports, because of its proximity to the tech industry.

The buyers, who dropped $1.23 million on the three-bedroom that the realtor himself called "totally unlivable," aren't buying the house in the usual sense, of course. The property comes with the 9,400-square-foot lot, and the owners will pay to have the house torn down to build a new one in its place. The sale just proves that any patch of dirt near Silicon Valley is worth an astronomical sum: Fremont is across the bay from Palo Alto, and this property, while a condemned, is in a favourable school district.

Still, the price—which was a quarter-million bucks over the asking price—shows how insane housing has gotten in the Bay Area. The real estate agent selling it, Larry Gallegos, said he got "nonstop" calls and emails about the uninhabitable listing, and at least three people offered to pay in cash. That makes a certain amount of sense, since Gallegos told SFGate that a newly built 2,000-square-foot property on the lot would be worth more than $2 million.

Home prices in the region have long been out of reach for middle-class residents, but lately it's gotten to the point where not even tech workers—the relatively wealthy caste that has attracted a lot of resentment—can afford to buy homes near their employers. The median home price in Fremont, according to Zillow, is just above $1 million, up 12 percent in the past year. Cross the bridge to Palo Alto and that number jumps to $3.2 million.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Meet the Heiresses Who Funded an Alleged Cult’s Legal Battles

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When it comes to the charges against alleged cult leader Keith Raniere, there’s a lot to wrap your head around. Yes, women were branded with his initials, and at least one woman VICE spoke to said she was blackmailed with naked photos and damaging information that she submitted as “collateral”—to prove she’d never talk about a secret group. And yes, Smallville actress Allison Mack is accused of co-founding and recruiting women into the group. But all this is only one relatively recent chapter of the Raniere story.

In the case of Raniere’s 20-year-old company Nxivm, which was first accused of being “cult-like” way back in 2003, many of us have been left with a nagging question: how come it took so long for all this dark stuff to come to light? Sure, the branding and blackmail came relatively late in the timeline, but based on US prosecutor statements and reporting by the Albany Times Union, Raniere was allegedly abusing young women and girls long before the FBI came after him. (The allegations against Raniere have yet to be tested in court.)

Part of the reason Raniere’s alleged abuses have stayed under the radar so long is his company’s history of aggressive lawsuits ex-members say were used to silence and intimidate whistleblowers. Over 15 years, the company launched countless legal fights in Canada and the US for everything from breach of confidentiality agreements and defamation to criminal mischief, hacking, and extortion.

Many of those lawsuits have been made possible thanks to two of Nxivm’s wealthiest and highest-ranking members, Clare and Sara Bronfman. As heiresses to the (Canadian) Seagram’s whisky fortune, the sisters have funnelled “untold millions” into what one ex-member facing legal action called a “litigation machine.”

VICE has attempted to contact the Bronfmans, but has not been successful.

The Bronfmans first joined Nxivm in 2002, a time when the organization was mostly focused on selling “executive success” training to aspiring entrepreneurs via multi-level marketing. Then 23, Clare left her career in competitive horse jumping and moved to Albany with her sister to be closer to Raniere. Sara, then 25, was “desperately looking for some purpose in her life,” one family friend told Vanity Fair.

Barbara Bouchey, who was formerly a financial planner to the Bronfmans and on Nxivm’s executive board until 2009, says she’s witnessed the torment caused by the Bronfman-powered litigation machine both from the inside, and later as a target of several suits. She says she spent over $700,000 defending herself in court, lost over 70 percent of her financial planning clients, and filed for bankruptcy in the process—which she says took until 2017 to pay off. All cases against her were eventually dropped or dismissed as of last year.

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Bouchey was an insider during one of Nxivm’s first legal battles against cult expert Rick Alan Ross. Ross was sued for publishing parts of Nxivm’s course materials on his website, along with analysis by two renowned doctors. Nxivm students sign non-disclosure agreements, and sharing class materials breached those contracts, the suit alleged. Nxivm also sued the students who handed over the materials for copyright and trade secret violations and one of the psychiatrists for his “defamatory” evaluation of the company’s “cult-like elements.”

Ross was represented pro-bono for 14 years before a judge finally dismissed the case last year. “I can tell you I went for many long walks with Keith about his lawsuit, and what I would say to him is I think it’s a waste of money, I think it’s ridiculous,” Bouchey told VICE. “His response was always that he wanted his name exonerated. He wanted Rick Ross to write an apology, to say he was wrong—that he wasn’t a cult leader nor was Nxivm a cult.”

Bouchey says her own legal trouble started soon after she and eight women confronted Raniere about “unethical practices and abuse of his leadership status to sexually manipulate women” in 2009. She decided to resign, and maintained 17 boxes of the Bronfman's financial records. Bouchey says Nxivm and the Bronfmans went after her because her records contained emails and documents she says “would not be favourable to them.”

Since 2009, Bouchey says she’s been dragged into 14 legal cases with Nxivm and the Bronfman heiresses either as a defendant or witness. She stood before eight judges in four different states, accused of breaching fiduciary responsibility, breaching client confidentiality, and colluding with adversaries to wrongfully defame. The Bronfmans personally sued her three times, at one point seeking $10 million in damages. Clare also went to five government agencies to file a criminal complaint of extortion, based on Bouchey’s resignation letter, which requested Raniere return a $1.67 million loan.

“It was a very effective strategy,” Bouchey said of the never-ending lawsuits. Her business struggled, her credibility was seemingly ruined, and Nxivm supporters actively spread false rumours of her guilt. Looking back, Bouchey told VICE she thinks she was tormented in part because Nxivm wanted to make an example out of her—to show what would happen to anyone who tried to blow the whistle. “Anyone who left Nxivm was terrified to talk to me,” she said.

That theory held true for Vancouver actress Sarah Edmondson, who revealed shocking branding and blackmail allegations to the New York Times last year. Edmondson told VICE Clare personally flew to Vancouver to file a criminal mischief complaint against her after she left Nxivm. Vancouver police did not pursue the charge.

Though the sisters have reportedly lost at least $100 million to Nxivm business ventures over the years, the Bronfmans appear to remain loyal Raniere. US authorities say Clare followed Raniere to Mexico last year, and she defended the accused sex trafficker in a December statement on her personal website. “I’ve seen so much good come from both our programs and from Keith himself. It would be a tragedy to lose the innovative and transformational ideas and tools that continue to improve the lives of so many,” she wrote.

Clare confirmed in her post she is not part of the secret “sorority” that branded women and allegedly ordered them under threat to have sex with Raniere. She also rebutted allegations that women were coerced into giving damaging information and nude photos. “I find no fault in a group of women (or men for that matter) freely taking a vow of loyalty and friendship with one another to feel safe while pushing back against the fears that have stifled their personal and professional growth,” she wrote. “It’s not for any of us to judge how they, or anyone else, choose to advance their lives and values.”

Raniere will meet a federal judge on April 27 at his preliminary hearing for sex trafficking and forced labour charges. An ongoing FBI investigation into Nxivm’s business dealings could still see other Nxivm insiders meet the inside of a courtroom—whether or not that includes the Bronfmans is, uh, not for me to judge.

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The Seven Best 'Game of Thrones' Memes

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It's seven years to the day since Game of Thrones first aired on HBO. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss took a huge gamble in adapting George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, written with the intention of being unadaptable, to the small screen. And with reports they spent 55 days shooting a single battle sequence and are acting out decoy endings to keep spying fans from spoiling the ending, season eight is shaping up to be the most ambitious yet.

What they've created is now more than two days, 15 hours, and 30 minutes of blood, lust, and betrayal—it's a cultural cornerstone. Game of Thrones memes have advanced the language of the internet to the point that a stranger can assert their fan identity by simply announcing, "Winter is coming," after a chilly November gust. A presidential primary candidate referenced the show in explaining why he didn't win, for Christ's sake.

To honor the seven years defined by seven seasons following seven kingdoms worshipping seven gods, we've gathered seven of our favourite memes. These are beautiful instances where a joke lands so well that it's still funny in the off-season. Did we miss your favourite meme? Don't whine about it, tweet the ones you like most to @VICE.

1. Winter Is Coming

2. Love Malfunction

3. Distracted King in the North

4. Daario Na-Who?

5. Khaleesi Complications

6. Fools in an Open Field

7. The Most Murderous Man in the World

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

A Pet Raccoon Got High as Hell and Firefighters Had No Idea What to Do

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It should go without saying, but you probably shouldn't try to turn raccoons into pets. The little trash pandas tend to carry rabies and diseases that make them walk around like zombies, and they eat pretty much anything they can get their scratchy little paws on. This detail was an important lesson in pet ownership that one Indianapolis woman learned last week after her pet raccoon somehow ingested a bunch of marijuana and wound up stoned out of its mind.

According to local NBC affiliate WTHR, the woman, realizing that her domesticated raccoon was a little more lethargic than usual, frantically tried to get some help. Instead of alerting the local vet or whatever, she went down to the fire department at 2AM and started ringing the doorbell. When they opened up, they found the woman and her pet raccoon, blazed as hell, exhibiting symptoms of someone who's "been exposed to marijuana," Wayne Township Fire Capt. Mike Pruitt said.

"The raccoon was very lethargic," Pruitt told ABC affiliate RTV6. "She started explaining what had happened. There wasn’t really much we could do, it was just the sort of thing that was going to take time."

While the firefighters tried to figure out how to handle the stoned raccoon, a team of dispatchers scrambled to help. Soon rumors started swirling on the radio that the critter might have overdosed on meth, or maybe heroin. Someone even suggested spraying the poor beast with Narcan before everyone decided the whole situation was just too bizarre to deal with.

Eventually, the firefighters gave up on trying to rouse the raccoon from his THC-induced coma, and sent him home to sleep it off. At the end of the day, the whole situation was a little more than the emergency services could handle. Fishing chubby raccoons out of sewer grates is really more their speed.

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Related: Dogs Eating Weed

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Racists in Florida Kept This Man From Becoming a Lawyer for 30 Years

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The following has been adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning author Gilbert King's new book Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found, out April 24 on Penguin Random House.

By 1900, most of the Seminoles of America’s Southeast had been wiped out in battle, succumbed to disease or starvation, or been relocated to Indian territory west of the Mississippi. The population of Florida, at slightly more than half a million residents, was the smallest of any state in the South. In what was essentially still “pioneer country,” settlers dwelt largely in rural homesteads that stretched from the plantation belt in the Panhandle down to the swamps of the Everglades. In central Florida, cow hunters still roamed the swamps and prairies. Hardy men, they abided the swampy, mosquito- infested terrain and defied the frequent hurricanes, not to mention the indigenous bears, panthers, alligators, and wild boars. To protect themselves against the sun and rain, they wore thick, slouched wool hats and wide pants tucked into tall leather lace-up boots that shielded them from the razor- sharp leaves of saw grass and the plenteous rattlesnakes. What most notably identified them, though—and was said to give them and this rural “cracker country” their names—were the long, braided rawhide whips they cracked to drive cattle from the scrub to the trails and thence to the coastal markets that had been carved out over the past century.

This was the country where Virgil W. Hawkins worked as a day laborer in Lake County’s grueling turpentine camps, alongside other blacks who were being exploited by a convict-lease system that thrived in the decades following the Civil War and ensured cheap labor for the industry. Hawkins managed to avoid falling victim to debt slavery and saved enough money to purchase, for two hundred dollars, a ten-acre homestead in nearby Okahumpka, on which he built a modest wood-frame house. He married Josephine Brown, and together they set out to build an independent family farm, while Virgil took seasonal work as a citrus picker or as a laborer in the nearby kaolin pits. They started a family.

Their life together took some of the sting out of the oppression suffered by blacks in Florida, but they could not ignore it. Between 1882 and 1930, Florida had the highest per capita lynching rate of any state in the nation. Like many Southern political leaders of the time, Florida governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward considered his white voting constituency to be unconcerned with the economic plight of blacks, but the lynching did concern him, as a threat to “civilization and Christianization.” He therefore proposed that the United States purchase some “foreign territory” where blacks could be deported, in order “to protect the white man from his own temper.”

To increase the opportunities for his children to advance in and beyond their community, as well as to elevate his own stature, Virgil served for years as a deacon at Okahumpka’s Bethel AME Church. Virgil Jr., bright and verbally adept, seemed the best suited of his sons to follow him into the clergy, once he’d finished his schooling. But it was law that interested Virgil Jr. Accompanying his father to the Lake County Courthouse, he observed the patent fear and helplessness of poor black defendants who were paraded before a judge without understanding the legal proceedings or their rights. “At that tender age,” Virgil Jr. would remember, “I didn’t know what a lawyer did, but I knew I had to do something.” He promised God he would someday defend “those who don’t even know what the word ‘guilty’ means.”

When he let slip his ambitions, Virgil Sr. exclaimed, “This child is going to hell for lying. Says he’s going to be a lawyer!” The revelation afforded the family a good laugh, yet they and other relatives were soon turning to Virgil Jr. when legal matters arose. “Go get Virgil,” Josephine would say. “He’ll know what to do. He’s going to be a lawyer.” His father began referring to him as “my little lawyer.” When he finished tenth grade—the final year of public education for blacks in Lake County—his parents decided to send him on to complete a high school curriculum at the AME-run Edward Waters College in Jacksonville. Though heavy on Bible studies, the school’s rich curriculum included courses on the history of civil rights, which accounted for its reputation as a site for future “race leaders.” No less vital than the classroom experience were the freedoms Virgil Jr. enjoyed in being part of Jacksonville’s thriving black community.

After graduating in 1930, Virgil headed north to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, whose alumni included Thurgood Marshall and Langston Hughes. But the Great Depression made it impossible for him to continue, and he returned to Lake County. There he met and married Ida Frazier, a schoolteacher from nearby Ocoee. They settled in Ocala, and for years Virgil commuted more than 50 miles a day from there to Groveland’s dilapidated black elementary school as he worked himself up from a lowly teaching position to principal.

At the age of 37 and still without even a baccalaureate degree, Virgil chanced upon an opportunity to keep his dream of a legal career alive when he was offered a position as director of public relations at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach. There, he was able to attend classes and continue his education. His engagement with the intellectual community reawakened his passion for the study of law, and he resolved to honor the promise he’d made to God. The University of Florida in Gainesville had the only public law school in the state, however, and it admitted only whites. He and Ida, both of them Florida-born-and-bred, neither wanted nor could afford to live up north.

Between 1882 and 1930, Florida had the highest per capita lynching rate of any state in the nation.

A Daytona Beach attorney, Horace Hill, knew the NAACP was looking for plaintiffs to challenge discriminatory policies in public education, and he believed Virgil Hawkins would be an ideal candidate. So, in 1949, along with four other black aspiring law students, Hawkins applied to the University of Florida College of Law, and the NAACP started preparing their case. Predictably, the State of Florida denied them admission, and the Legal Defense Fund filed suit. No one in the plaintiff’s camp anticipated the fallout that followed.

The Florida Board of Control, the government agency first in line to respond to the suit, did so by offering Hawkins a full scholarship—on the condition that he agree to attend an out-of-state law school. Bethune-Cookman College meanwhile received notice that the school’s business loans would not be renewed unless they fired Virgil Hawkins. Stores where Ida shopped in Daytona Beach refused to issue her any further credit, and banks called in their loans. Threatening letters arrived regularly in the Hawkinses’ mail. Their neighbours were harassed.

Portrait of Virgil Hawkins via Getty Images, 1956.

The struggle began to take their toll on Virgil and Ida both. They decided to publicly feign a marital separation in order to remove Ida from the malign eye of harassers. Ida returned to Lake County, where she taught high school and lodged with Virgil’s family. To escape detection, Virgil would drive the 70-plus miles to Okahumpka in the middle of the night and sneak into his parents’ house by crawling under the floorboards. “We’re older than you,” his brother Melvin would tease him. “Why is your hair whiter than ours?” Virgil had a quick reply: “While you’re in your beds sleeping at night, I’m running, ducking, dodging and hiding under houses.”

In June 1950, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Sweatt v. Painter that a black applicant, Heman Marion Sweatt, must be admitted to the University of Texas School of Law, a decision that would pave the way for the landmark segregation case Brown v. Board of Education four years later. The State of Florida had filed an amicus brief in support of the State of Texas in the case, so the ruling was in effect a rejection of Florida’s arguments. Except that Florida defied the Court’s order by writing an opinion that upheld its plan to establish, as the University of Texas had attempted to do, a law school for blacks at Florida A& M. The Florida Supreme Court, meanwhile, delayed issuing a final order in the Hawkins case. Thurgood Marshall lambasted Florida’s contempt for the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling as the Fort Sumter of “an undeclared second civil war.” But the Court itself was not disposed to consider Hawkins’s case, as Brown v. Board of Education was already in the pipeline. Virgil Hawkins had no choice but to wait.

Of the Florida Supreme Court in the 1950s, one historian observed, “It is doubtful that any institution in the South was more resolutely racist."

In May 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its unanimous ruling in Brown, thereby declaring racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. One week after the ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Hawkins’s writ of certiorari: In light of the Brown decision, the Florida Supreme Court’s judgment was vacated. Thurgood Marshall assigned the case to Constance Baker Motley, a 34-year-old attorney who’d graduated from Columbia Law School and was working at the Legal Defense Fund in New York. On the drive down to Tallahassee, her toddler son was denied use of a bathroom, a precursor to the racial antagonism the attorney would encounter in Florida when arguing before “a group of stone- faced white male judges.” Of the Florida Supreme Court in the 1950s, one historian observed, “It is doubtful that any institution in the South was more resolutely racist. No Southern court fought desegregation longer or harder.” Baker Motley was nonetheless astounded when the Florida Supreme Court finally rendered its opinion that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to clarify further the federal enforcement of school desegregation (in what became known as Brown II ) allowed the University of Florida to defer admission to Hawkins for whatever length of time the State might require to “evaluate the potential harm to the public” that he might pose.

Once again Hawkins was denied his dream of a legal education and career, but he drew strength from three significant women in his life—his wife, Ida; Constance Baker Motley; and Mary McLeod Bethune, a founder of Bethune-Cookman College, who urged him “to fight until it’s over. Never stop. If you stop now, it might be a generation before somebody else comes along to take up the fight. Why not this generation?”

It would be nearly two more years before the Supreme Court—on the same day that Strom Thurmond unveiled in the U.S. Senate his Southern Manifesto against public racial integration—handed down a per curiam (unanimous) decision in regard to Virgil Hawkins. The Court determined that Hawkins was within his rights to attend the University of Florida College of Law and was “entitled to prompt admission under the rules and regulations applicable to other qualified candidates.”

The Supreme Court’s decision “horrified whites throughout Florida,” and Governor Leroy Collins, up for reelection, felt compelled to promise that “every legal recourse will be followed to avoid integration.” A hastily assembled “State Conference to Stop Integration” produced a message to President Eisenhower that Collins himself drafted, emphasizing that the State of Florida was committed to the “tradition and customs of segregation, which are as rooted in this state as in any other Southern state,” even as it warned that Florida was “experiencing a serious deterioration of racial relations.” It pledged formally to “use every legal means to avoid integration in the schools.” That did not stop Collins from being branded by his opponent as “the friend of the N-double-A-Cee-P” in the ensuing campaign fray. Hawkins was falsely accused of brutally beating two schoolchildren back when he’d taught school in the early 1940s, a charge that could bar him from the law school on legal and moral grounds. Although two former school officials stated they had no recollection of any such incidents and the accuser could point to no other substantiation, the state continued to refuse to comply even after the case returned to the Florida Supreme Court and then went to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in Hawkins’s favour. The State of Florida simply refused to obey the mandate of the highest court in the nation.

But the legal writing was on the wall, and after throwing up roadblock after roadblock, the state of Florida eventually had to read it, and bow to the inevitable, but not without inflicting an additional indignity on the long- suffering petitioner. In June 1958, it agreed to begin accepting qualified black applicants to the University of Florida College of Law without delay—on condition that Hawkins would withdraw his own application. Unwilling to deprive other black students the opportunity of a higher education, Hawkins selflessly accepted the deal, and in September of that year, the College of Law admitted its first black applicant. Hawkins “opened the door but he never walked through it,” said W. George Allen, the first black man to earn a law degree there, in 1962. “He was my hero.”

In 1976, 27 years after Virgil Hawkins was denied admission to the University of Florida College of Law because of his race, he returned to Lake County bearing the law degree he had finally managed to obtain, from the New England School of Law. But his application for admission to the Florida Bar was rejected, on the grounds that the New England School of Law was not accredited when he’d graduated there in 1964. Hawkins fought the decision, and once again his case reached the Florida Supreme Court. The debate was heated, but the court finally ruled in his favour. After a 30-year struggle, Virgil Hawkins was sworn in to the Florida Bar as a member in good standing.

“This is the proudest day of my life,” he said, indicating that he would return to Leesburg and Okahumpka to represent indigent clients. But, at seventy and in poor health, Hawkins was not equipped to begin a law career, and the pace of high-stakes criminal defense work soon overwhelmed him. One client, convicted of assault and sentenced to prison, argued in his appeal that Hawkins had botched his defense. It was Hawkins’s first felony case. The bar agreed with the client. Hawkins was also reprimanded for ethical complaints over client billing and placed on probation. In tears, he resigned from the bar.

In 1988, Hawkins suffered a debilitating stroke. With his wife, Ida, unable to care for him in Leesburg, he languished in an Ocala hospital, where he died penniless. “I know what I did,” he said before his death. “I integrated schools in Florida. No one can take that away from me.”

A Florida attorney named Harley Herman, one of the few whites to attend Hawkins’s funeral, was appalled by the state’s treatment of the Okahumpka native. At his own expense, and against considerable resistance from the legal community, Herman began pressing for Hawkins’s posthumous reinstatement to the Florida Bar. In October 1988, the Florida Supreme Court complied, noting that Hawkins’s heroic struggle for equality under the law should be recognized and apologizing for its “great mistake” in having barred Hawkins in his efforts to gain admission.

From BENEATH A RUTHLESS SUN by Gilbert King. Published by arrangement with Riverhead, an member of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2018 by Gilbert King.

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This Teen Kept Playing 'Fortnite' While a Tornado Destroyed His Neighbourhood

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In case you somehow have yet to encounter it, Fortnite is a cartoon-y video game about a massive storm that kills off most of the Earth's population, and the group of zombie-like enemies that comes to pick off the survivors. Its player-versus-player version, in which 100 gamers compete against one another to be the last one standing, is both free and astonishingly addictive, apparently causing preteens to wake up at 6:30 AM for a fix and NBA players to stay up until dawn. But for all that we already know about the the third-person shooter's transfixing qualities, one teen in North Carolina has taken his Fortnite Battle Royale game to a new level—choosing to imperil himself and his family in an attempt to play a match to completion during an actual life-threatening storm.

On Sunday night, the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, declared a state of emergency in anticipation for a storm that ultimately uprooted trees, tore down power lines, and left one person dead. It also destroyed at least seven homes, including some next to Anton Williams's house, where the teen was competing inside an ever-shrinking map, and coming closer, and closer to victory.

So great was Williams's focus, that when he spotted some of his neighbours' roofs flying off around him during the tornado, he was unable to tear himself away from his video game controller.

"I was sitting at home and I was playing Fortnite, and all of sudden, I hear a bunch of noise," he told an NBC affiliate. "I look out the window and I started seeing the roof come off the houses in front of me. I sit back down because I only have a couple people left in my game, and I was going to try to finish the game."

Williams said that he finally decided to move his sister and nephew to safety once he saw power lines coming down, and they all wound up safe after the storm. When asked what was going through his head as he was barricaded in the bathroom with his family, the gamer smirked and answered truthfully.

"Honestly, I was thinking about the game," he told the reporter. "But I was hoping everyone was OK around me."

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The Weed Week Bracket Round 2: What's the Best Way to Get High?

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In honor of 420 this year, we're asking our readers to vote on the best way to get high. We've created a March Madness–style bracket to determine the winner, and you can vote for your faves on the VICE Twitter account. The results of the first round of polling are in, and now it's up to you, dear readers, to vote in round two. Here are the marijuana ingestion methods that remain in the running for the title of "Best Way to Consume Cannabis":

Make sure your voice is heard in the second round of voting, which we've kindly linked you to below:

PIPES

DIY

EDIBLES

23RD-CENTURY SHIT

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

2 Chainz Smokes the Priciest Weed Money Can Buy on 'MOST EXPENSIVEST'

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It's Weed Week here at VICE, and all week long we're coming together to bring you programming that celebrates all things pot. To help ring in the high holiday, VICELAND is dropping a special episode of MOST EXPENSIVEST, tapping 2 Chainz to personally sample the finest weed, cannabis technology, and THC-inspired accessories money can buy.

This special one-off episode of MOST EXPENSIVEST airs Tuesday at 10 PM on VICELAND. Find out how to tune in here.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Seven Years of Syria

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This article originally appeared on VICE Australia.

In March 2018, VICE traveled to the Beqaa Valley with photojournalist Andrew Quilty and World Vision Australia to document stories of refugees on the seventh anniversary of the Syrian War.

There are tents everywhere in the Beqaa Valley. Drive along any side road and you’ll see them—ramshackle sprays of tents, fashioned from UNHRC tarp. Butting right up against the tenderly managed vines of the valley’s famed wineries, where Lebanon’s super rich stop in for cellar door tastings. They are home to some of the million or so Syrian refugees who’ve spilled over the border into Lebanon since the war began. Here, the influx of people has compacted class divides. Tents fill empty fields beside stately holiday homes that look more like mansions.

It's hard to imagine that just a short drive across the border, Syria is imploding.

Last weekend, dozens of civilians were killed in a deadly chlorine gas attack in the town of Douma, just outside the country's once-glorious capital Damascus. The photos that eked out of the rebel-held enclave were horrific—dead children, foaming at the mouth, their skin burned by poison. In retaliation, US President Donald Trump launched airstrikes against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, alongside the UK and France. Russia, unflinching in its support of the Syrian president, has promised there will be "consequences" for all three countries.

This year marks the seventh anniversary of the Syrian War. The country remains, after all this time, in absolute chaos.


WATCH: VICE Meets the Syrian Teens Growing Up in Lebanon's Limbo


But across the border in Lebanon, the days move more slowly. Many of the war's youngest refugees have weathered the conflict here, mere hours from hometowns they cannot return to; They are in a sort of limbo. Keeping busy is a survival skill in the Beqaa. The last thing anyone needs is more time to think about what they’ve gone through, or what might come tomorrow. Purpose can distract from the creeping anxiety about food, supplies, and money—at least sometimes.

"Sometimes I feel the pressure," says Ibrahim, a 20-year-old from South Aleppo. As one of six kids, he’s the oldest sibling living in the Beqaa. His two older sisters, both married, live back in Syria. “I'm the only one here providing for my family," he says.

It's lunchtime, and we're sitting in the gutted remains of the house he's painting today. The floor is littered with chips of concrete, and the windows are all blown out. Images of those bombed-out homes of Aleppo come to mind. But this building is being renovated, so the landowner can rent it to refugee families who can afford more than just a tent. Ibrahim's is not one of those families.

"Now I am working and saving up so I can pay the rent for the tent. The tent owner comes and demands his money," he explains. "You don’t even get a chance to rest. Not a day off to recover or relax. We can’t, we keep working. And sometimes, there’s not even enough work to cover expenses for food or rent. You know, it’s hard. It’s a really difficult situation."

An ITS in the Beqaa Valley. Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty

Syria’s implosion has pushed the number of forcibly displaced people globally above even the heights of World War II. Around five million Syrians have fled their homeland since the war broke out on March 15, 2011. According to the UN, some 900,000 of them have been registered in Lebanon, stretching the country to its breaking point. According to the locals, the number of people who fled across the border is more like two million. With this many refugees, shelter is a buyer's market. In the Beqaa, landowners are charging up to $100 a month—an almost unfathomable amount of money for someone who's just lost everything to war.

The pressure families are under to make rent has forced Syrian kids out of school en masse in Lebanon. According to Sana'a Maalouf, who works in the Lebanon office of non-profit World Vision, there are some 200,000 Syrians under 18 in the Beqaa. The UN estimates around three percent make it to high school. Drop out rates are through the roof.

"When I first came here to Lebanon... I realized that the most important thing is to complete my (high school) studies," says Ghoussoun, 19, who fled from Aleppo with her family in 2012. "My dream was to grow up and study, and go to a university because a person without their education is not worth the same. Sometimes though, the circumstances make it difficult."

Ghoussoun (left) and her sister. Photo by Andrew Quilty
Ghoussoun at a vocational cooking course she's been taking at World Vision's Beqaa office, hoping to find work in a local restaurant. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Ghoussoun tried to stay in school after she came to Lebanon, but the long journey there and back proved the breaking point for her parents. Daughters are kept close in the refugee camps of the Beqaa. Sexual violence isn't an imagined threat. According to the UN, "married girls, including child mothers, adolescent girls, unaccompanied and separated boys and girls, women and girls with disabilities, older women, female heads of households, and socially marginalized groups continue to be the most at risk."

"It’s not reasonable to follow my dream now because sometimes our circumstances don’t allow us to pursue or achieve our dreams," Ghoussoun says, sitting in the modest living room of her family's tent. Everything is immaculately clean and cared for. She says she wanted to become an architect, but is now readying herself for marriage.

"I’m not going to lie, when I was in Syria I wasn’t planning on being in a relationship at this age... I mean, I am 19 years old," she says. "I wanted to study first and then think about marriage after I finish studying. When we came here, and I realized that we aren’t doing anything, I told myself there’s no longer a reason to postpone my marriage to focus on studying."

I ask her if here, in the Beqaa, it feels like her life is on pause.

"It’s not exactly like that. How can I phrase it? Well, if a person does not have a dream or a goal they are actively pursuing, then there’s no point," she says. "I mean, yes, at the moment our lives are based on hope, but if I don’t have a goal that I’m working toward, then I’m living with no purpose. And here, right now, there’s nothing that I am pursuing or trying to achieve. As I have said, our dreams have died, in terms of studies or otherwise. Everything is gone."

Hamad, 18, building a shelter in Beqaa. Photo by Andrew Quilty
Hamad, 18, building a shelter in Beqaa. Photo by Andrew Quilty

According to Sana'a Maalouf, the situation for Syrian refugees in Lebanon is getting worse, not better, as the war stretches on. The world has moved onto other conflicts, other tragedies unfolding—in Bangladesh and Uganda. "The impact of the funding cuts have started to show in the increased vulnerability of refugees in terms of having less food security, less assistance," she explains. "Families are resorting more to taking children out of school so they don't pay any costs that they might be incurring, and so that children support in income."

For young people with no education, work usually means manual labor. And according to local NGOs, most displaced Syrians in Lebanon are only earning $2 to $3 a day. “Lebanon runs on cheap Syrian labor,” a young Lebanese aid worker told me, his face souring.

It’s not rare to see boys, young boys, picking their way up rickety scaffolding—paint tin hanging from one arm, brush in the other. Mothers and their children toil in the green fields of the Beqaa, tending to the vines of the region’s award-winning wineries. In Beirut, kids build the homes and office buildings of the capital’s elite, pour roads, and fix sewers. Syrians are everywhere in Lebanon, at once invisible and inescapable.

A mother watches her children inside their tent in the Beqaa. Photo by Andrew Quilty

So why don’t they leave? Well, their answer would be: and go where?

For most, despite news reports of people returning to Aleppo, going home to Syria is still too dangerous. There are no jobs, no schools, Hospitals lack vital supplies. And that’s in the cities that aren’t being bombed into the ground by the Assad regime, or taken by Turkish forces, or still being held by IS.

“We can’t go back now. If the war does not end in Syria, then we cannot go back. I’m 20 years old, so I’ll be facing army conscription,” Ibrahim says. “If you're 20 you'll be called for army duty, to fight.

"I don't want to fight. I don't want to walk toward death with my own two feet."

Passage to Europe with a smuggler is now almost attainable only by the rich. Plus, the Mediterranean's death toll during the 2015 migrant crisis won't be soon forgotten. "It would be dangerous to travel by boat and very expensive," Ibrahim explains. "For one person it would be around $7,000, and they would have to go by sea. There is no guarantee they will live. They have to risk their lives."

But staying comes with its own risks. Tension has been rising between Syrians and Lebanese locals for years, as the country strains under the weight of having the highest per capita concentration of refugees in the world. There are more than a million Syrians in Lebanon, plus 500,000 Palestinian refugees who’ve been sheltering from their own conflict for decades—this in a country that had a population of just four million before the war.

A Syrian refugee, 18, holds his baby sibling. Photo by Andrew Quilty
A Syrian man tends to his pigeons in the Beqaa. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Can you imagine that happening elsewhere? There would be like six million refugees arriving in Australia, or some 81 million pouring into the US, in the space of just a few years. There would be riots on the streets.

The history between Lebanon and Syria is fraught too. In 1976, Syrian troops entered Lebanon under the pretense of stabilizing a country rapidly tumbling into civil war. They stayed for nearly 30 years, a period many Lebanese see as an occupation. Only in 2005, after the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, were Syrian forces pushed out by protestors who believed their government was complicit in Hariri's death. Then, just a few years after the soldiers left, millions of Syrians came fleeing back across the border.

Photo by Andrew Quilty

But somehow, Lebanon hasn’t descended into chaos. In many ways, it’s incredible to see how the country has sheltered wave after wave of Syrians driven from their homes. Even as the influx of people has seen rents rise, hospitals overflow and electricity blackouts become commonplace. The country’s garbage crisis—a can kicked down the road since the end of its civil war nearly 30 years ago—now spills onto streets and beaches.

It’s estimated that the Syrian refugee crisis has cost the Lebanese economy $18.15 billion, hitting young people very hard. Youth unemployment is between three and four times that of the broader population rate. In Wadi Khaled, on the country’s northern border near the Syrian city of Homs, it’s hit 58 percent.

Even in Beirut, among some of the country’s most privileged young people, there’s growing discontent about their future if the war continues. Students coming out of the country’s top school, the American University of Beirut, struggle to find work—and that’s with the help of wasta, two young Lebanese men told me in a dim bar in Gemmayze, explaining the complex system of favors, friendships, and bribes that makes Lebanon tick.

I asked them if there was a direct English translation for wasta. An AUB student soon to graduate, chuckled. “Corruption,” he explained, simply.

Some boys smoke hookah in the Beqaa. Photo by Andrew Quilty

His friend, a young lawyer at a big four accountancy firm, weighed in, stone-faced. “You need to tell the truth of what is happening here,” he said to me, laying out how hard it had been to find a graduate job in this economy.

And the truth of what’s happening here is that, in a country that runs on wasta, serious problems will come when young people graduating from the country’s most elite university worry they’ll never find jobs. Smart young people with very few prospects are starting to question why things are the way they are. In May, many of them will vote for the first time ever in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections, which haven’t been held for eight years.

We finished up our drinks, but the student stopped me. There was something he wanted to clarify. His problem wasn’t with the Syrians, he explained, but the bigger forces at play here that are wreaking havoc on all their young lives. “I didn’t choose to be Lebanese, just like they didn’t choose to be Syrian,” he told me. “It’s just like I didn’t choose to be Shi’a or Sunni, and neither did they.”

The frustration these young men feel is echoed in the Beqaa. There’s a whole generation of young people there who’ve spent the better part of a decade waiting for their lives to begin again. They are Syria’s “lost generation,” as the media has taken to calling them. It’s not clear what being an adult is meant to look like when your youth has been destroyed by war.

Aahed, 19, in her tent. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Aahed, 19, lives in one of the Beqaa’s many ITS’ with her parents, brother, and her young daughter, Douaa. “It means prayer… In Islam, we make douaa, or call upon our God,” she explains pulling her toddler into her lap. "My husband chose this name, not me.”

Her husband died in Aleppo when a bomb fell on the home they shared. If things had been different, she would have mourned his death for months, not really speaking to anyone outside her family as tradition instructs. But every day the war was getting worse. "There was no one left for me over there," she says.

With a seven-month-old Douaa in tow, Aahed set off from Aleppo toward the mountains that divide Syria from Lebanon. The plan was to find her parents, who'd fled to the Beqaa Valley a year and a half before. In the mayhem of war, a trip that should've taken hours stretched out into days. Eventually, the family was reunited, something Aahed says she'd thought might never happen on the day her parents left Syria.

Su-ree-yah. There’s melancholy in the way the name sounds in Arabic.

Douaa and Aahed

How many other ways are there to tell the story of the Syrian War?

In the seven years since it began, so many journalists have tried to pull this matted conflict apart. Each and every thread followed, across the Middle East, into Europe, and beyond. They gave the world a front row seat as refugees risked life and limb—facing beatings, persecution, unimaginable tragedy, racism, and the crippling bureaucracy of the world's humanitarian resettlement program—all in desperate search for somewhere safe. But there's escaping the constant threat of death, and then there's actually living.

"They just destroyed Syria, you know?” my driver in Beirut told me, quietly, as he wove through the city's streets, signaling each lane change with a blast of his horn. I didn’t feel the need to ask who they were. Everyone has their own theory of who should be blamed for all this horror the world is still grappling with seven years later.

In some ways, the Syrian War is a story of how the people who professed to love a country actually destroyed it. How a leader with despotic tendencies fears being overthrown, rebel infighting, the rise of a new global terror threat, and ruthless proxy wars literally tore a country apart.

Douaa and her grandfather play with the family's cat. Photo by Andrew Quilty
Aahed's mother Sourayya, Douaa, and Aahed. Photo by Andrew Quilty

In other ways though, this war has become the story of how a country can never really be destroyed. How something persists—even through the chemical attacks, the abductions, mass rapes and beatings, the bombings, torture, murders, through crucifixions, the fire of hell cannons, the disappearances, and the public executions. How some things can’t be killed because they were smuggled out across the border long ago.

“Syria is my mother,” Aahed’s mother, Sourayya, told me one afternoon in the small kitchen at the back of their family's tent. Nearby, Aahed lit a portable stove to make lunch for Douaa.

“There's a lot I will tell her about Syria,” Aahed chimed in, motioning to Douaa. “I'll tell her about the way we were living. The way our lives were, and what they became after the war. All the beautiful parts of our lives that we experienced before.”

She stilled—she looked, for a moment, like a 19-year-old kid.

“I hope her life will be a lot better than ours,” Aahed continued, looking at her daughter, “by the will of God. I wish I could return to Syria. I would go today, if I could. I hope to see the situation there settle down, so we could go back to the way it was, and make it even better.”

Photo by Andrew Quilty
Aahed's brother and the family cat. Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty
Photo by Andrew Quilty

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This article originally appeared on VICE AU.


Superfan Filmmakers Tell Us Where Movie Fanfic Is Headed

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From dancing plushies and Funko figures to officially licensed phone cases, Gremlins and its lead character Gizmo still have somewhat of a furry toehold on pop culture's consciousness, despite the fact that it's been close to thirty years since the last official entry into the horror-comedy franchise. Though rumours of another sequel pop off every once in a while like progeny off of a Mogwai's back, Gremlins 3 has languished in production hell in for so long that LA-based independent filmmaker Ryan Patrick decided to give fans the cute-but-gory goods himself last year. His short film, Gremlins: Recall, is a fun and frenzied snapshot of a highway diner being terrorized by the titular green-skinned monsters, and has racked up over 162,000 views on YouTube since being uploaded in December. Beyond the built-in audience that comes with expanding upon a pre-existing fictional world, part of the reason the tribute works is that Patrick went all-out on the effects, paying professional sculptor Eric Fox to build a convincing band of latex-covered, animatronic misfits to wreak havoc on screen.

"The reason you don't see a lot of Gremlins fan films is, at the end of the day, how do you do the puppets? If you're not a sculptor or a creature maker yourself, where do you go to make something that doesn't look like you just bought a puppet off the shelf," the director tells VICE of why he tapped Fox's MORB-X to make high-quality gremlin puppets, which grin and shoot guns during the 11-minute short. Others melt apart gruesomely under the incandescent light of a bug zapper.

Though reboots and superhero cinematic universes are big business, a growing number of independent filmmakers are giving people comparatively low-budget alternatives, often ahead of the official channels. A pair of respectable, but unlicensed Deadpool and Black Panther team-ups, for instance, pre-date either Marvel Comics character's respective box office-smashing feats; Adi Shankar's Power/Rangers bootleg has reached 21 million views since being uploaded in 2015, and arguably influenced the gritty direction of 2017's official Power Rangers. Gremlins: Recall is just one of the many recent additions to the unofficial canon.

It can be legally tricky to put your own twist on heavily copyrighted material, though. Director Mike Pecci was given a cease-and-desist order from Marvel in 2013 during the production of The Dead Can't Be Distracted, a take on the Punisher (the fictional figure was given a fully sanctioned, critically lauded Netflix series in 2017). And while Gremlins: Recall creator Patrick has heard through various channels that Gremlins director Joe Dante has apparently seen and enjoyed his fan film, executive producer Steven Spielberg isn't afraid of being litigious, evidenced by his recent Twitter cease and desist to restaurant chain Carl's Jr. after it began marketing "Spielburger" sliders. For his part, Patrick isn't too worried about getting a letter from Amblin Entertainment over copyright infringement.

"There's always that fear of them saying 'oh you've got to take this down, you've got to put this away. Don't show this to anybody.'" Patrick admits, though he adds that the precedent set by a litany of online fan tributes allayed his concerns. "They can take it down for a few days, but I think, ultimately, studios and copyright holders appreciate fans making these things. We're not out to make money off of these, we're doing this purely for fun."

Patrick says the entire production, which was mostly self-financed, "cost about as much as a new car." Like many fan films you'll find on YouTube, the short includes a disclaimer reiterating that its purely a non-profit experiment "in NO way endorsed" by Warner Bros., which possesses the copyright on Gremlins proper. But while he hasn't monetized the fan film— Gremlins: Recall runs adless on YouTube—the unofficial creature feature has built up Patrick's brand. Shortly after the mini-movie was unveiled online, he signed up with the William Morris Agency, and he's been taking meetings with various film execs from major studios and streaming services to figure out his next step.

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Not all fan films are as obvious a success. "Chains of Betrayal" is a BC-made fan episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that's being toasted with a 10th anniversary screening next month at Vancouver's Fox Cabaret, despite only yielding 4,000 views since being uploaded to YouTube in 2009. With that in mind, episode co-writer Racan Souiedan, who stars as Spock, clearly isn't the first person that comes to mind when you think of pop culture's favourite Vulcan. Considering Leonard Nimoy had often beamed into the Lower Mainland for TV shoots and Sci-Fi conventions before passing away in 2015, and Zachary Quinto has come through to film parts of the rebooted Star Trek film franchise, Souiedan's even a couple rungs below in a local sense.

The passion project began in 2005 when Souiedan and then-roommate Derek Howard, both fans of Next Generation's seven-season run from 1987 to 1994, conceived a stage recreation of "Unification," a two-part political nail-biter from 1991. After some thought, they decided to continue the storyline on their own as a film project, which was shot in 2008.

"We figured if we're going to put that much into it, why not just write our own script?" Souiedan recalls, explaining that they rallied together Trekkies from their friends groups to film "Chains of Betrayal" at Simon Fraser University's downtown campus. The ethos of the amateur production, Souiedan explains: "We'll just shoot and do quick cuts and close ups, and that'll hide all of our flaws as performers."

Despite the noble attempt, the flaws are front and centre in "Chains of Betrayal." Produced on a budget of less than $200—a green screen was loaned out for a case of beer, while Souiedan and Howard already had a handful of Federation uniforms handy for their castmates—it's low-budget to say the least. One particularly harsh review on YouTube reads: "Even for a fan production this is bad. VERY bad."

Though inspired by the rich characterization of the original series, Darren Bot's William T. Riker is over-the-top and hammy. Other cast members stumble through their dialogue. Rather than cast a Patrick Stewart lookalike, Souiedan's had his flapping lips superimposed over old production stills of Captain Jean Luc Picard. On the production end of things, actors' limbs often disappear into the short's greenscreened set pieces. Souiedan adds of the cut-rate scenery, "For the Bridge stuff, we found somebody's Flickr account of their travel photos visiting the Next Generation set. We just raided those. We never heard from that person...hopefully they're cool with it!"

"Some people really didn't like the production, they couldn't get past that. They thought we were just taking the piss," Souiedan continues. "And then there were other people who, I don't know, they seemed to embrace it—the low budget, the characterization, the humour."

There are certainly slicker Star Trek fan films on the market—check out the dutch tilts and hi-def camerawork of the New Voyages series— but some will find the warts-and-all approach of "Chains of Betrayal" endearing. A sold-out premiere at Vancouver's Astoria Hotel in 2008 helped finance a small run of DVDs, while the episode has also been shown at events in Toronto, Panama City Beach, Edmonton, and Atlanta.

Howard has since gone on to film a few documentaries, including 2013's My Prairie Home documentary on cult Canadiana singer Rae Spoon. Souiedan works as a private investigator, but still flexes his fanfic chops on occasion. While he's currently working on a script involving once-famous bro rock outfit Puddle of Mudd and the soon-to-be revived XFL, last fall he premiered a stage production of a self-penned episode of M.A.S.H. Without an official reboot in sight, where else was he going to get his fix?

"When we watch a show we love, we always get attached to the characters, and we're sad to see them go. So on some level, [fan fiction] satisfies that urge," he says of the drive to keep old characters alive. "The story doesn't have to end, right? You can still check in on these people and they'll still be around. They're doing OK, you can follow them on their new adventures."

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PornHub Now Accepts Cryptocurrency

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In the real life crossover episode the internet has been waiting for, Pornhub has combined everybody's two favourite past times in 2018—watching porn and trading cryptocurrency. The adult entertainment powerhouse has announced it will now let premium subscribers pay for their accounts with crypto coin Verge (XVG).

In the past, Pornhub premium members could only pay by PayPal, e-wallet company Paxum, credit card, or cheque. These options often show up on statements and invoices—and can link usernames and bank details to the subscriber.

Those who choose to pay with Verge will now be virtually anonymous. Basically, it’s the adult version of ordering porn on Foxtel with the least porn-sounding name.

“It’s an anonymous additional form of payment,” said Pornhub’s vice president Corey Price. “Offering privacy-focused payment options is something we have been looking to do for a while”.

Verge had been hinting at a large partnership for a while now, and managed to collect 75 million coins (XVG) in a crowdfunding campaign last month. The cryptocurrency's worth increased by over 20 percent in the hours before its Pornhub collaboration was officially announced, according to Fortune.

Verge’s founder, Justin Sunerok, seemed excited about the new partnership. “Pornhub is a global organisation with nearly a hundred million daily users," he said. “This partnership represents an enormous market with a global reach that will compete with fiat currencies."

Adult gaming site, Nutaku, and Pornhub partner, Brazzers, have also taken on Verge payments.

According to Wired, using crypto coin masks a user's unique IP address (which can be traced back to you) by bouncing it through a network of computers throughout the world, a practice called peer-to-peer routing. Verge subscribers can choose to either make their transactions public or private.

In a trailer for the new partnership, Pornhub says that “porn [has] always been the tipping point with online payments, video streaming, VR—this [is] no different."

For the time being, Pornhub is sticking to just one crypto, but plans on expanding coin options in the future.

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This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

French Man 'Feeling Well' After Receiving His Second Face Transplant

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The first person in the world to receive two face transplants says he is feeling well after receiving his third face.

Currently recovering in a Paris hospital, French man Jerome Hamon seemed happy about his procedure. “I’m 43. The donor was 22. So I’ve become 20 years younger,” he told french TV.

Hamon suffers from Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), or von Recklinghausen’s disease, a genetic condition that caused severe tumours on his face. He first underwent a face transplant in 2010. However, five years later his body started showing signs of rejecting the new face. Hamon developed necrosis—essentially, the face started to die while still attached to him—after a reaction to antibiotics he was taking for a cold. Last year, that face was removed.

Waiting for a donor to be found, Hamon spent two months in hospital unable to see, talk, or hear. Then he had the blood drained from his body and treated before the second transplant could take place, a procedure which took a month.

Professor Laurent Lantieri, who conducted both transplants for Hamon, described his patient's ordeal as like “going through a nuclear war".

“We were very concerned about the possibility of a new rejection,” Professor Lantieri said.

It's now three months since Hamon's second face transplant. His new face remains motionless, but it'll gradually align itself with his skull and skin. The doctors are hoping an immunosuppressant will stop his body from rejecting the new face this time around.

“I feel very well in myself,” Hamon told reporters, “ I can’t wait to get rid of all this.”

This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

The Reality of Having a Large Penis, From People Who Know

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This article is supported by Durex.

In Greek mythology, Priapus—the well-endowed god of fertility—was thrust off Mount Olympus, strongly disliked by other gods for his extra-large, permanently erect penis and foul-mindedness. Way back when, smaller penises were the preferred kind of phallus, larger member’s being associated with dirty, naughty, dare-we-say it… lust.

Fast forward 2,000 years and Priapus would probably be a porn legend. Pornography has produced fabricated social norms that a big penis equals a good penis, a big penis means great sex and a big penis will give us the most pleasure. In a time where penis pumps share the shelves with paracetamol, has anyone stopped to wonder—what are the logistics of having a large penis? What pants does one wear? What condoms will fit? What will happen to your partner if your penis is “too” big? We’ve done a bit of digging to find out about the everyday realities of living with an extra-tight package. Here, we hear from a sex therapist, a doctor, a tailor and a guy.

A Sex Therapist

An award-winning counsellor, Timothy McMichael of Timothy Works has a special interest in sex therapy, from sexual dysfunction to sexual fetishes. Here, he shares his thoughts on the psychological and anatomical impacts of a big penis.

How do these conversations about XL penises usually start with your patients?
The first thing people talk about with these kinds of issues is that it actually feels uncomfortable anatomically for them to have whatever they consider to be a large penis. Guys think it’s going to look a bit silly if they’re wearing tight-ish trousers, so they’re actually feeling uncomfortable about the appearance and shape of their penis. So that’s one side of being uncomfortable and the other side is actually around anatomical pain. What I’ll always do, before we get into any issues, is ask whether they need to go and see a GP to make sure that from an anatomical perspective, everything’s okay. Almost always, that won’t be the case. Anatomically, everything’s okay, but there's a psychological message that actually they are unusual.

And what distressing thoughts can stem from this psychological message?
Either “I’m too big” or “my penis is too big”. The feeling that “I’m too big” is more about an individual’s narcissistic sense of themselves, whereas the fear that "it’s too big" comes from an authentic place of concern that the size of their penis is either going to be uncomfortable [for himself] or too uncomfortable for a sexual partner and what goes with that message is “I’m going to hurt them”. You can normally do some quite easy education around that, do some reality checking, so that's easy to manage.

So mentally and psychologically, what kind of strategies could a man and his partner use to push past psychological concerns around the penis?
It’s about communication, it’s about saying “I like you, you like me, we both want this to work. Let’s not worry about some amazing scenario, let’s take this slowly, you give me feedback”. Typically what we’d be seeing is that the partner with the larger penis might be lying down and the receptive partner sits on top, because that immediately gives the receptive partner a lot more control, a lot more confidence to be sure that they’re taking it at a pace which is right for them. Despite what the porn magazines and porn films might perpetuate about the guy being on top, it’s about getting past that social norm. It’s about encouraging both partners to take full control and give lots and lots of feedback. Even if a penis is hard, it’s actually a soft tool so it’s really unlikely you’re going to be hurt.

A Doctor

Choosing to remain anonymous, this Auckland-based Urological Surgeon gives us the run-down on the medical factors of being XL.

What is considered a large penis?
Measurements are often reported as flaccid, flaccid stretched or erect as well as the circumference at these various states. The average stretched flaccid penile length is reported to be around 13cm with standard deviation of 1.8cm, suggesting any penis longer than 16 to 17cm is at the extreme of the spectrum.

Are there any health issues associated with large penises, for men or women?
It’s hard to give an answer to this. A 2010 study in the Journal of Archives of Sexual Behaviour reported that in a survey of over 1,000 men who have sex with men, penis size was positively related to satisfaction with size and inversely related to lying about penis size. The authors suggested the disproportionate number of viral skin-to-skin STIs (HSV-2 and HPV) suggest size may play a role in condom slippage/breakage. [i.e The bigger the penis, the more chance there is of condom damage.]

Are there any medical reasons why you couldn't have sex with a woman if your penis was very large?
I cannot think of any medical complications related to naturally occurring erections, regardless of penile size. However, there are some complications which are seen in men who require oral or injected medications or penile pumps to obtain erections. These can include low blood pressure, dizziness, visual disturbances and in some instances cardiovascular complications such as heart attacks or strokes.

Is there such a thing as a too-tight condom?
It is reported that up to a third of university-aged young adults may avoid condoms because of discomfort, including tightly fitting condoms, vaginal irritation, or loss of sensation. The risk of breakage may be 3-4 times higher for men who experience discomfort when using condoms.

A Tailor

Murray Crane is the founder of bespoke men’s tailoring and fashion brand Crane Brothers, launched in 1999. Too tight in the crotch? With 30 years of experience, he’s your guy.

With finding the right fit, is it common to have to adjust pants for an extra-large penis?
We definitely have clients that do have an issue with their trousers being too tight through what we call the fork or the crotch and we do quite often have to let trousers out through there or have them made with more length. Recently, there has definitely been a trend towards trousers being more fitted and quite tight, so that’s become more of an issue than what it probably used to be when trousers were a lot looser, a lot more comfortable and not as fitting.

What style of pants would you recommend for a very well-endowed man?
Technically, the best style would be something that’s higher in the rise, more length in the rise, and possibly has a pleat, so had more volume so that it was not so fitted. Still tailored, but not tight through the groin or the crotch.

And what would you say to men who maybe feel nervous to come into a tailor to talk about these issues?
Oh, they shouldn’t, because most of the men that we see have got something that they’re not comfortable with or something that’s not quite what they perceive as being “normal”, but after thirty years of measuring men and working with guys, I can tell you that nobody’s “normal”, everybody’s got something; a big bum or no bum, different length arms, shoulders that are different heights. But I guess there is a reasonable amount of stigma around men and their penises, I guess it’s something that they probably don’t feel comfortable talking about in the same way. Interestingly, they’ll normally talk about their testicles more than their penis to be honest.

A Guy

Chris lives in Auckland and according to the local rumour mill fits the XL category, so we got in touch for a first person perspective on the issue.

So, just how big are we talking about?
I’m a bit over 8 inches [20cm] long, and about 5.5 inches [14cm] thick.

When did you realise you were on the bigger side comparatively?
I didn’t think of myself as larger until around 13 years old when you start to change clothes more in front of your mates for sports and stuff. I was always very modest about being nude, so just didn’t think much about it

What do you think being well hung has meant for your sense of identity?
For my identity, nothing. I’m happy it makes others happy, and I guess I’ve never been insecure about it, so I guess it has been helpful in that regard. Society celebrates big dicks so if nothing else there is that.

What kind of comments do you get about it?
People always comment on the size, though in the scheme of things it’s not a record holder or anything. Still, it is always a positive response and that’s great. It also has a bit of a curve so I get comments on that as well.

Have you had to adapt your style of dressing to accommodate it?
No, I’m a pretty casual guy anyway. I do have to be conscious of the fact that it will show through my pants if I don’t restrain it with briefs. No boxers for me—unless I want to who it off. Which doesn’t happen except for those night out where I know it will have the appropriate audience.

Is it ever a handicap sexually?
The curve in it has been divisive at times, but that’s really it.

Would you change anything about your penis if you could?
I used to want to have a nice straight penis like what I felt was “normal”, but as I’ve matured I realised all penises are different and overall I consider myself fortunate so am happy now with what I was given.

Anything else you'd like to share about your penis?
Yeah, I like my penis and that’s a good feeling.

This article is supported by Durex. Always read the label and use as directed. Reckitt Benckiser, Auckland.

This article originally appeared on VICE NZ.

10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask Someone With Misophonia

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This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

Nobody likes the sound of someone chewing loudly, or slurping their way through a drink, or sniffling endlessly instead of just getting up and getting a tissue and blowing their nose like an adult. But for people with the rare condition "misophonia", certain everyday sounds are not just annoying, but can cause an extreme emotional and physical response pain; it's a deep hatred for basic noises that is believed to affect around 6 percent of the population.

I spoke with Yaell, 22, from Gent, east Belgium, who has hated the sound of chewing since it made her scream at her mother when she was five years old. She explained what it's like to live with misophonia, why crisps are the worst food in the world and whether she'll ever get treatment for her condition.

VICE: When did you figure out you were suffering from misophonia?
Yaell: According to my parents, I was around five years old when I first started reacting badly to certain sounds. For example, one morning before school, I started shouting at my mum because of the noise she was making as she chewed on a sandwich. After I was done screaming at her, I punched a wall and ran upstairs and locked myself in my room. And it sort of carried on from there, really. I would shout at people, hysterically throw things around or just refuse to eat. My parents couldn't work out what was wrong with me. For a while they thought I might be autistic, but tests showed that I wasn't.

What's the worst thing you can hear someone eat?
Even though I love eating them myself, it's probably crisps. It just makes so much noise. Listening to other people eat popcorn is also pretty horrible. Aside from that, I think people who slurp their soup or drink have been sent from hell to punish me.

So how do you react now when you hear people chewing loudly?
I've obviously stopped throwing things around like I did when I was younger, yet I still can't help but feel really angry. The easiest thing to compare it to is like a fire alarm going off in my head – it makes me want to run away from wherever I am as fast as I can. If it's someone I know who is chewing loudly then I'll say something. But if I don't know them, I won't, because I realise it's a bit rude to complain about how someone else eats.

Do you hate the sound of your own chewing?
Not when I eat stuff like crisps, but I do hate it when I'm eating away and I suddenly hear my jaw grind. Most people don't really notice it, but for me it's horrible. At that point I have to stop eating.

Have you considered getting therapy?
No, because I'd rather not have to think too much about having misophonia. For now, it is what it is, but who knows what will happen in the future – maybe people chewing loudly won't even bother me in ten years time.


WATCH: 10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask the Wife of Britain's Most Notorious Prisoner


Is it just the sound humans make that bothers you, or animals as well?
I hate that disgusting sound my dog makes when it licks its own genitals. It's so gross.

Are there places you tend to avoid, like restaurants?
No, I think it would be way too hard to give up restaurants forever. But some are worse than others. One restaurant I will never go to again is this ribs place in Antwerp I visited a while ago with my ex and my parents. I appreciate that the other customers couldn't really help it, but the sound of them digging into the bones just made me so angry.

Do you do anything specific to help you cope?
As I've gotten older, I've developed a technique for almost shutting down mentally when things get really bad. It's almost like I'm psychologically building a wall between me and the other person.

Are there any other sounds you find disgusting?
I find nails scratching over a chalkboard pretty insufferable. As a child I used to hate the sound of a towel in my ear when my parents dried me after bath time. I also hated the sound of satin pyjamas rubbing together, and the same with corduroy trousers. Luckily, I'm over most of that now.

Does the sound of oral sex bother you?
Honestly, yes – especially during one-night stands. When it's just about the sex then I tend to focus on all the little details around me. Sure, I can still enjoy a guy trying to give me an orgasm, just not as intensely. But it's not as bad when I'm actually in love because I'm not only focused on the sex, but all the other emotions that are rushing inside me.

This article originally appeared on VICE NL.

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