[body_image width='614' height='866' path='images/content-images/2015/03/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/23/' filename='white-supremacists-are-trying-and-failing-to-win-over-a-sleepy-aberdeenshire-town-499-body-image-1427109758.jpg' id='38711']One of the offending stickers. WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The North Eastern Scottish town of Inverbervie (colloquially shortened to Bervie) is sort of a quiet, unassuming place. Not quite Twin Peaks or Summersilse from The Wicker Man, but it's a village definitely with a Ballykissangel vibe—pretty, but not a lot happens. There's your typical countryside fare—a big Protestant church, a post office, the relatively famous The Bervie Chipper, and an annual gala that has a football tournament that I was never invited to play at. There's a beach that stretches on forever; there are nice country walks. It's just a quaint, cozy place: near enough Aberdeen's oil jobs to make it worthwhile as a commuting community, and not far enough from Dundee to rule it out as a viable option for people to travel there to and from work. All in all, nice enough. Except now, it's being targeted by the weirdest white supremacists you've ever encountered.

As reported in the Mearns Leader by the excellent Lee McCann, a group called Creativity Alliance have taken Inverbervie into their melanin-deprived arms as a bastion of white supremacy. Creativity Alliance, which purports to be a quasi-religion, stemmed from the Midwestern US in the early 1970s, living by a rule that what is good for the white race is the ultimate good, and what's bad for the white race is ultimate sin. Why they've chosen to go under a name more apt for an arts charity is probably best explained by their FAQ, which states that "White people are the creators of all worthwhile culture and civilization." To summarize: Creativity Alliance are a whole new level of fascist fantasists.

The Creativity Alliance attempts to recruit from the working class, primarily. This makes Inverbervie somewhat of a strange choice, with a population largely indebted to the North East oil industry and a decent standard of living, all-around. Aberdeenshire is represented by a strange mix of Tory, Lib Dem, Labour, and SNP. Sure, some wacky racists have run for election here before—Britain First and the like—but they've never stood a chance. Politically, Aberdeenshire isn't ready for white supremacy.

Creativity Alliance have been hanging their flag in the town and putting stickers onto bus stops, including one particularly delightful effort, which is of a white, blank-faced man, putting a razor-blade to his closed eye with the caption, "Sometimes opening your eyes might be the most painful thing you have to do." Mate, ever queued for a jumbo haddock in Bervie on a Saturday evening? You don't know pain.

[body_image width='682' height='485' path='images/content-images/2015/03/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/23/' filename='white-supremacists-are-trying-and-failing-to-win-over-a-sleepy-aberdeenshire-town-499-body-image-1427109787.jpg' id='38712']A Creativity Alliance flag

Let's be real—Inverbervie isn't really the place to start a race war. It wouldn't be so much Brixton Riots as "Kerfuffle outside the Chipper." Bervie is overwhelmingly white and Scottish. While you could argue that's perfect for recruitment, you're talking about an educated populace who never really experience any of the so-called negative effects of immigration. Nobody from a war-torn country in the far-flung corners of the world ever packed their belongings and told their family "my loved ones, we're going to start a new life in Inverbervie." It's a bit like looking to start an Enya fan club at an Agoraphobic Nosebleed concert. A needle in a stack of chips.

"We actually had a different story in Bervie that week," McCann explained to me, over a black cup of tea. "The Bervie gardening group is going to be taking part in the BBC program The Beechgrove Garden. So it's a bit of a ying and yang, if you want to call it that, to have really positive news about gardening and then this group sticking flags and stickers about white supremacy up here out of nowhere."

"Bervie's just a lovely wee Royal Burgh. You wouldn't expect anything like this at all."

Whether it's your typical "lone nutter printing out stuff from the deep web" or a concerted approach from a group of American white supremacists who make American History X look like Frozen, the supremacist propaganda machine definitely came out of nothing. The Creativity Alliance are also anti-Semitic (again, not really a big "thing" in Aberdeenshire) and believe in a form of socialism that doesn't punish private property. They encourage, charmingly, "total war against the Jews and the rest of the goddamned mud races" (!!!!) and commemorate the British landings on Australian soil in 1788. Essentially, then, they're pissed off white guys on a very dangerous scale.

Thankfully, Bervie residents have met the half-hearted Fourth Reich with zealous negativity.

"The general reaction has been one of disgust. It's worth mentioning that some locals have taken down—and I mean scratched—these stickers off of bus stops. They didn't want anything like that to be associated with the town," McCann added.

It's not clear whether this is all just a bit of a big racist laugh, or it's a conscious attempt to provoke race war in a village that's almost universally white. Either way, it's not sticking. The office of Nigel Don, MSP for Angus North and Mearns, told VICE that he, "strongly condemns any form of racism—it is never acceptable. We would encourage anyone with information to contact the police."

So, in summary: there's now a police investigation about a white power group from the USA inciting racial hatred in a Scottish town with a population of less than 2,000 people.

For Creativity Alliance's part, a representative from the church, Reverend James Mac, contacted the Mearns Leader to refute claims that the church promotes white power. "On the contrary," he said, "adherents to Creativity advocate Racial Separation—the very opposite of 'white supremacy'—and that white people, both locally and on a global scale, simply look out for the best interests of their own kind. We call this Racial Loyalty and Solidarity."

"I would further like to note that the content of the stickers that appear in the piece is perfectly legal," he added. The stickers are legal, people.

Whether the Creativity Alliance's attempts at Bervie occupation are coming from CA HQ or just a lone Scottish wolf, it's heartening to see locals standing up to it—there's been a concerted campaign of scratching out stickers and complaining about them on Facebook. Of course, you'll get the odd internet commentator espousing the need for a "frank and open discussion about race," but for now it seems that this small Aberdeenshire town isn't about to embrace an obscure mid-western US philosophy on white supremacy.

Follow Euan on Twitter.

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Canadian soldiers. Photo via Canadian Armed Forces

On Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveiled his plan to extend his bombing campaign against the Islamic State, putting Canada on a short list of nations that have opted to launch airstrikes against the strongholds near the caliphate's capital.

Harper announced that Canada would be contributing personnel and planes to the mission until March 2016, and that Canadian fighter jets would be hitting targets in Syria for the first time.

"Canadians did not invent the threat of jihadi terrorism, and we certainly did not invite it," Harper said in the House of Commons. "Nor, as this global threat becomes ever more serious, can we protect our country or our communities by choosing to ignore it."

Canada has spent the past six months of its mission in Iraq, dubbed Operation IMPACT, conducting air reconnaissance, training Iraqi and Peshmerga fighters, and launching air strikes against Islamic State targets on the ground.

Since September, when the mission began, Canada's fighter jets have flown roughly 400 bombing missions throughout Iraq, often in support of Iraqi Security Forces missions.

But the mission hasn't been without controversy. Canadian special operations forces have engaged in firefights with Islamic State fighters, despite assurances from the Canadian government that ground personnel were there purely on an advise-and-assist mission. Those special forces, of which there are around 70, have has been doing laser targeting of Islamic State positions from within Kurdish-controlled territory. Last month, one of the special forces was shot and killed in a friendly fire incident after Peshmerga fighters mistook him for the enemy.

Those stories have driven opposition to the mission back at home, especially from the NDP, which is Canada's official opposition party to Harper's Conservatives. The NDP have opposed the mission from the outset, arguing that the mandate for the mission has been vague, and has led to dangerous and secretive operations on the front lines.

"They say that truth is the first casualty of war. It has become clear that the current government has taken that saying to heart," Mulcair told the House of Commons.

But there is appetite to do more. Several ex-Canadian Forces soldiers have joined Peshmerga fighters in Kurdistan, including the son of one Conservative politician.

Around 60 percent of the Canadian public supports the mission, and most of them supported extending the mission in some way.

Tuesday's announcement puts Canada in a club of only six nations—America and six Middle Eastern allies—who've chosen to extend the mission into Syria. Their campaign has targeted northern border towns like Kobani and Raqqa, the nerve centre for the Islamic State.

Yet, while the Iraqi government has given the international coalition permission to strike Islamic State targets, the government of Bashar al Assad hasn't given any such permission, nor has the United Nations Security Council or NATO signed off on the mission. The Americans' legal cover—that bombing Syria is necessary to protect Iraq—is pretty shaky.

Harper did not explain just how the mission in Syria is exactly legal, except to say that "in expanding our air strikes into Syria, the government has now decided that we will not seek the express consent of the Syrian government," adding that Ottawa will be working closely with Washington and its coalition allies.

Nevertheless, Canada's contribution is significant. While Ottawa is sending fewer planes than the Americans, Canada's presence in the mission is roughly the same size as coalition partners like Australia and Denmark.

Ottawa has kicked in six CF-18 fighter jets, two surveillance aircraft, two strategic lift planes, a refuelling craft, and about 600 ground crew, all located on a coalition base in Kuwait.

Canada's surveillance planes, the Aurora CP-140s, have become much sought-after hardware. The 30-year-old aircraft, which were originally intended for maritime patrol, underwent extensive upgrades in recent years and have become tactically useful in scoping targets and assessing the impact of airstrikes. "We are one of the best equipped assets here to do a surveillance mission," the Canadian commander for the Auroras told VICE from the coalition base in Kuwait.

The mission to kneecap the Islamic State, however, still needs a ground component. Conspicuously missing in Tuesday's announcement was more money and weapons for the Kurdish and Iraqi armies.

When VICE asked Jason Kenney, the minister for National Defence, in February about the shipments, he wouldn't commit to increasing arms sales to Canada's allies fighting the Islamic State. "That would be a question that we will consider," he said.

The Kurds have been asking Canada for more weapons for months.

"We need tanks, we need armoured personnel carriers, we need Humvees, we need anti-tank missiles in order to win the battle. Our enemy has it. We don't have it," the foreign minister for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq told Motherboard last November.

Kenney's office has yet to return a request for comment on upping arms sales to coalition partners on the ground.

Canada has, however, kicked in humanitarian and non-lethal aid to its allies in Iraq, as well as transporting Soviet-era light arms from Eastern European partners.

After the prime minister laid out his case for the mission expansion, Canada's two opposition leaders stood up to deliver their reaction.

Mulcair said Harper had misled the public on every part of the mission and hadn't made the case for an extension.

"It is simply not enough to say that we have to do something; we need to ask ourselves what is the right thing to do. The question shouldn't be the combat role or nothing. It's a false choice offered by the prime minister," Mulcair said to much jeering from the government side of the House. Mulcair went so far as to say that Harper had forged an "alliance of sorts" with Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau also stood to oppose the mission, contending that "involvement in direct combat in this war does not serve Canada's interests, nor will it provide a constructive solution to the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the region."

Trudeau added that bombing Islamic State assets in Syria "could very well result in Assad consolidating his grip on power in Syria."

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I remember the first time I realized my anxiety had become a problem. I was with friends in a popular Glasgow bar watching Sunday afternoon soccer. It was quiet, and alongside our table stood three vacant chairs: two with sturdy wooden panels fixed to the space between the top of the backrest and the cushion, and one without. I was sat closest to the seat missing the support and could see that, although otherwise identical to the others, there were no screw holes or any obvious signs that this chair ever had a support panel, or was supposed to have one attached at all.

Why was this, I wondered. Why was this chair missing part of its intended structure? Why had the support not been fitted? Or why was it taken off? Where was the missing support now? How could someone have noticed this defect and not have fixed it? I became entranced and angry. My blood boiled and my palms began to sweat. One eye on the soccer, one on the ill-fitted chair. I eventually went outside to catch some fresh air and to calm down.

I was being irrational, but I couldn't help it. When you suffer from anxiety it's not uncommon for people to doubt your condition. Some folk don't get it, assuming those who exhibit anxiety are seeking attention, or should simply calm down, or chill out. Some of you reading this might scoff at how an inanimate object got me so riled up, whereas some of you might recognize what I'm talking about. Even those who sympathize I find, at times, struggle to accept the condition, given how difficult it can be dealing with someone who's always whinging or worrying. I might be a general pain in the ass, but I'm not lacking in insight.

Medication helps me govern my now-diagnosed nervous disposition, but for many in a similar position the thought of consulting a doctor and seeking remedial treatment can be a daunting prospect. For long enough it was for me.

"I've had anxiety problems for as long as I can remember," explains Irish developer Owen Harris as he showcases his Oculus Rift VR game Deep at EGX Rezzed, an expo for indie games held in London in early March. Using a virtual reality headset, headphones, and a custom-built self-calibrating belt that matches the player's breathing patterns with on-screen movements, Deep is in essence a digital version of a diaphragmatic exercise. By breathing deeply, a reticule in the center of the screen expands and contracts causing the player to ascend and descend respectively around a beautifully rendered underwater expanse full of magnificent cliffs and glittering coral.

I wanted to build my own little isolation tank... for myself. It never really occurred to me to be showing it to other people.

"At some point I came across these deep belly breathing exercises, which is something that hasn't cured my anxiety but has just made everything much easier to manage," continues Harris. "When I do get very stressed out I just go into a quiet room and focus on my breathing and take ten to 15 slow breaths. It doesn't cure the problem, but it'll bring me down from a six down to a four, or a four down a three, and that's a really great thing to have.

"When VR finally arrived—I've been waiting for VR for the longest time, I even got to try out some of the earlier iterations in the 90s—I knew exactly what I wanted to do: I wanted to build something where at the end of a stressful day I could just go to, and it'd become my own little isolation tank. I was building this thing for myself—it never really occurred to me to be showing it to other people, but when I brought it to our local developer, Meetup, people were into it. About six months ago I teamed up with a Dutch artist, Niki Smit, and that really accelerated the game so much and now it looks beautiful, it plays beautifully, and I'm starting to be able to use it therapeutically for the first time, which is really great."

Via the virtues of the Oculus Rift, Deep is as much about exploring a vast, unadulterated underwater seascape as it is about utilizing a potential occupational therapy tool. For the player it's simple, yet it's hard to explain how much better it made me feel. I wasn't entirely stressed out during my day visit from Glasgow to London, however just five minutes strapped to Harris's breathing device felt remarkable.

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Harris tells me how he became pent up following a few tough meetings at GDC in San Francisco the previous week, and how he turned to Deep as a way of calming himself down. By spending 20 to 30 minutes in Deep while sunk into a beanbag, Harris was able to de-stress and get on with his day.

Perhaps one of the most significant and touching tales of Deep in action is one told by indie developer and regular mental health speaker Christos Reid. His first encounter with Harris's creation profoundly moved him following a presentation alongside Depression Quest designer Zoe Quinn about video games and mental health. While chatting, Reid had a bit of an epiphany after inadvertently divulging something he realized he'd never said out loud before.

"I came off stage, as it were, and I felt like I was heading towards a really bad panic attack," explains Reid as we chat over the phone. "I needed to calm down and I was just really wired. Whatever I was doing wasn't working. I'd spoken to Owen earlier about Deep who suggested I try it now. I said sure, and he put the belt and headphones on me.

I'm wondering if Owen has any idea just how much this game could do for people. Stuff like this is life changing.

"It was weird – I was trying to watch the game, but I had tears at the bottom of the Oculus headset because it calmed me down more than anything ever has in my entire life. I took it off after five minutes or so and he's looking at me—he'd been at the mental health talk and he knew my input was valuable—and asked, 'What do you think?' It was really intense—I just started crying. I was just trying to get the words out because I was so emotional because I had never had such an effective anxiety treatment before. Nothing has ever helped me the way Deep did.

"I cried, and then he started crying in response—there was just these two developers stood crying in the middle of a cafe. It was brilliant. I then eventually got the words out and told him [ Deep] had helped me more than anything. It was just this really emotional experience and since then we've kept in touch."

Reid's story perfectly outlines just how powerful Deep is and could be. His self-confessed fragile state prior to testing Deep may have seen his emotions running higher than "normal," yet the relief felt following his time deep breathing underwater stands testament to the game's wide-reaching potential.

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After all, Reid is but one player. He notes how he genuinely cannot wait to get a VR headset sorted and for Harris to set him up with a custom controller, yet at the same time stresses the importance of getting Deep out to the masses. This is something he truly hopes Harris recognizes—that Deep could touch so many people's lives.

"The amazing thing about it is that people find it interesting in general, they find breathing exercises interesting in general," adds Reid. "But what I'm wondering is if Owen has any idea just how much this game could do for people to help their anxiety. Stuff like this is life changing, because people don't always want to go to CBT, people don't want to take medication, and to be able to put a headset on and just relax and explore and just have an experience that's purely focussed around your well being—it's so rare.

"He built a custom control to teach people deep breathing, which is hugely important because breathing exercises are a massive part of coping with panic attacks. I really hope that this is the start of something incredible because I think this is the sort of thing that people should be paying attention to in a big way, because I think Owen could be a colossal force for good in games development."

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Approximately two to five percent of the world's population has anxiety in some way or another. It's also said that Generalised Anxiety Disorders count for as much as 30 percent of the mental health problems seen by GPs. Like Reid says, though, many people won't receive treatment from doctors, therapists, or counselors for anxiety, and thus won't receive medication.

But video games? Around 44 percent of human beings with internet access are now playing them—that's roughly 700 million people, according to the Spil Games industry report of 2013—and the total number of players worldwide is well over a billion. Surely a medium so accessible, interactive, persuasive and expressive is something Deep needs to be part of on a macro scale. I ask Harris how he plans to market this sleeping giant.

"We really don't know," he says, frankly. "On one hand, my favorite thing to do is travel. The game has taken me on five or six trips already, so it's already wildly successful as far as I'm concerned. The game may continue on as more of a museum or exhibition piece, or an installation piece, or we might see if the interest is there to produce a commercial version of the controller and see if it's the kind of thing people would want.

"That's a ways away, but these are questions we'll be asking ourselves nearer the summer time. Our design challenge that we set ourselves is that the game should be able to sit without change in a place of value: in a therapeutic center; in a game show, like Rezzed; Burning Man; or an art gallery. It should have a place and a value in all of those places—that's what we're trying for."

More information about anxiety and how it can be treated can be found here.

Follow Joe on Twitter.

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An annotated poster for the pantomime.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

About a month ago, massive images of 1990s comedian Jim Davidson's face began appearing on posters dotted around Glasgow, bearing the news that his latest theatrical tour de force, "adult pantomime" Sinderella 2: Another Scottish Romp, would soon be rolling into town. It didn't take long for the city's sharpie-wielding pranksters to start making their own additions to Jim's smirking face.

Sadly for Jim, having "RACIST" and "CUNT" daubed across his forehead right next to his own stage door was not the end of his troubles at Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre. On Friday, the show's run there came to an abrupt end, with a statement citing "health and safety and staffing concerns" as the reason for its cancelation. However, it soon emerged that Jim had only gone and broken the "golden rule" of the performing arts—specifically the one about not fucking off to the pub mid-performance while still in costume and with the second half remaining. There were also allegations of abusive behavior towards theater staff, which Davidson strenuously denies. He has admitted the thing about slipping off to a pub over the road during the interval though, but is putting the blame for the show's cancellation on poor ticket sales.

Davidson has said his "Scottish romp" will never be performed again, which is a tragedy for everyone who enjoys watching has-been 90s entertainers make tedious knob jokes, painfully unfunny analogies about periods, and "Asian shopkeeper" impressions that should have died with Davidson's career.

It's just possible that you may have missed the hit touring production that was Sinderella, Jim Davidson's original X-rated spin on the panto classic. Either way, this was the sequel, a brand new "strictly for ADULTS ONLY" production, which promised to be "saucier, sexier, and even more sensational" than its predecessor. It was also set entirely in "bonny Scotland," providing an endless ream of parochial, shortbread tin nonsense for the "story" to reference amid the dick jokes.

Beyond a short spell in HMP Barlinnie, it looked like about the most unappealing way possible to spend two hours in Glasgow on a Saturday evening. But my complete lack of self-respect and morbid voyeurism eventually got the better of me and I caught one of the show's final performances before it became consigned to the annals of "adult pantomime" history forever.

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The poster for the show alone could keep an undergrad gender studies class occupied for months, with Jim's unnerving smirk topped only by the pained, forced smile on the woman half his age whose legs he's clutching on to—the kind of gratuitous, Carry-On style sexism that's no longer a mainstay of popular culture.

Thankfully, Jim Davidson isn't a mainstay of popular culture anymore either, despite somehow clutching victory in Celebrity Big Brother last year. Davidson does have his fans though, and while the theatre was far from sold out, there was a decent enough showing of pensioners and middle aged couples who'd forked out £20 ($30) for the privilege of watching their comedy hero cavort around on stage for two hours making jokes about wanking.

Most of Jim's reference points are set firmly in the 1990s, given that jokes about Linford Christie ceased to be topical about then. The token "Scottish" theme meant continual references to Braveheart were as predictable as they were mind-numbing, while the show's musical repertoire included choruses like "We're all alcoholics, and we have lots of fun / So shove the fucking English up your arse!" Say what you like about Davidson, but he sure knows how to appeal to the Glasgow audience.

This show would have been bad enough had it been performed competently, but it continually veered into oblivion as no one could quite remember their lines. That seemed ostensibly to be half the fun though, as the actors exclaimed to each other, "We need to find someone with a script!" or, "We need to rehearse more!" to fits of onstage laughter. At least the backing dancers, who were either the object of Davidson's leering eyes (the women) or nod-and-wink homophobia (the men) throughout, were professional enough to have a grip on what they were doing and managed to, you know, actually complete their choreographed dancing.

Obviously Davidson sets out to offend and his audience have a certain expectation of getting some of his edgy, boundary pushing jokes that the banter-police at Ofcom, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the tastes of commissioning editors and the general public don't allow on television anymore. The plot itself focused on Sinderella's bid to go to the ball to meet "Bonnie Prince Long Cock." The twist in the story—SPOILER ALERT—is that Sinderella can't go to the ball because, get this, she's on her period! This led on to what was one of the most unrelentingly awful scenes of the entire show, with Davidson adopting a faux-Asian accent as he mimicked being a shopkeeper who wouldn't sell her any tampons. The punchline involved something about a naan bread, which had the audience in hysterics. Asians! Periods! Long Cocks! I didn't know which to laugh at first.

Despite running into trouble for broaching the subject last year, Davidson didn't shy away from making a gag about his Operation Yewtree arrest either, telling two of his onstage companions that they had "better fill in a consent form, 'cause I don't wanna get nicked again."

The whole performance was punctuated by references to the pub over the road, with Davidson regaling the audience with tales of how the cast had drunk the bar dry earlier in the week, how much he was looking forward to a pint after (or indeed during) the show, and inviting everyone over for a drink at the end. Little did he know at the time that the same pub would end up being the show's downfall. Much like Jeremy Clarkson, a performer known for goading the Political Correctness brigade has had the curtain pulled down not for his outlandish opinions, but for his behavior. Unlike Clarkson, I doubt there would be much publicity value in a Guido Fawkes style intervention to get him back on the stage.

Follow Liam on Twitter.

"There's different flavors of these guys," private investigator Derrel Sims began, offering a brief taxonomy of alien species. "There's the little guy. There's a bigger guy, looks just like him, called 'The Doctor' sometimes. There's a Nordic guy, a reptile guy, a praying mantis guy, and a Bigfoot."

The woman beside me grew agitated at Sims's exclusion of orbs from the list. Everybody at this year's UFO Congress, in McDowell, Arizona, had their own ideas about who our cosmic neighbors are and what they want. For several days in February, I wandered around the convention talking with self-proclaimed UFO eyewitnesses and abductees for my World Dream Atlas project. I wanted to learn more about our celestial brethren from those who were (allegedly) the most intimately acquainted with them.

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Derrel Sims: My first experience was in 1952 when I was four years old. I sensed something was in my room. I sat up in my bed. There was this skinny creature with this bizarre bulbous head. He was pure white. Big black eyes. He didn't shapeshift; instead, he tried to change the image in my head of what he looked like into a clown.

That's why many abductees have clown phobias, and they don't know why. I had fear like I never had before in my life. They like to extract the emotions and passions of people. It's the reason they sexually assault women, for example, and torture animals. Our emotions are like a drug to them.

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Connie Gehl: I don't call them aliens. I call them light beings. My mom thought they were from the Devil. I said, "Oh no! These beings are pure and good, and they have wings." They came and sat on my bed when I was a kid. They were my guides—my angels and protectors. Even though I had a very difficult life with a lot of abuse, it didn't affect me. They taught me how to fly in dreams, and they took me out into the galaxy. They taught me about kindness and how to look into someone's heart. And they taught me how to smile.

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Mike Knox: The things I saw in the Air Force were absolutely real. I worked on the radar, and I used to talk to airplanes sometimes when they chased UFOs. I was involved in situations where we had civilian airlines flying over Lake Superior and UFOs were circling them. I was working one time when we were chasing a UFO that was over one of our sites. They busted off two F-106s that do Mach 2. As the planes approached the UFO, that sucker started climbing. The pilot kicked in their afterburners, but it was gone. I wrote up about 30 sightings for intel over a two-year period.

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Bridgette Marten: I was ten years old, in the mountains with my dad, my sister, and my little dog. We saw a UFO come over the top of a mountain and just hover there for 15 minutes. It was a rotating sphere with blue lights at the bottom. It was really, really big. No noise. I don't know who was driving it. I'm OK with the Greys, but I'm not OK with the Reptilians. Have you heard about them? The Reptilians are not nice. They have these massive underground cities from California to New York. They're the ones that are doing all these experiments on people, and yet our government is working with them. I still can't understand why our government would let them do that to us.

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Paul Cook: I don't remember being abducted, but I've got all kinds of indications. One time an implant fell out of my nose at work. I held it up and thought, What's a little BB doing in my nose? I had this compulsion—I went straight to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.

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James Gilliland: I just remember being taken on the ships and having conversations and medical work. I remember coming back and my body just vibrating. I wasn't quite in my body yet... One of the initiations I went through with an Orion Council of Light being was the return of my memories to me. So I have most of my memories of my past lives. In one of my Pleiadian lifetimes, I was a warrior. I had a ship and would go and liberate planets from the Greys and Reptilians. Some of the past lives on Earth were funny. In one, I was a Mexican road bandit and I had a woman in every cantina. I got hanged at 24, though, so even now I can't wear ties. It freaks me out.

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Grandmother Wisdom: The creature that I'm working with now came to me first in a lucid dream. He looked like a lion with big ringlets instead of regular fur. The face was kind of a black, shiny leather, like a gorilla but more human. This creature came into my cat when it was being neutered and it was unconscious. There was a soul exchange. The personality of my mild little cat was totally different afterwards. It was more like a lion. The creature is here to help me with creating awareness—letting people know that there is so much more than what our senses are picking up. We are not alone and we are absolutely interconnected with everything including the creator. We need to be more loving and kind.

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Susan Stockton: My abduction was in 1989, in Miami. I lived on the 24th floor of a high-rise. I remember being in a wind tunnel or funnel, and I just swirled straight up. I went through this opening, and all of a sudden I was in this room. I was medically probed by two beings. Do you know Gumby? They were that color green. They had no hair, or genitalia, but I knew immediately that one was a woman and one was a man. The woman communicated with me telepathically the whole time.

She said, "Don't worry."

The next day, I felt like a Mack truck had hit me, but the woman was all around me telepathically, healing me, I think. She communicated with me the rest of the time I was in Miami. It was very interesting at first, because I would ask philosophical questions, but she didn't really want to talk about that. Mostly, she was trying to direct everything I ate. I would go to the store and she would tell me to buy things. She told me to eat chicken livers.

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Charlie Foltz: I found myself lying flat on my back, struggling to lift my head up. I noticed my toes, and I thought, Where are my socks? Where are my shoes? Where are my clothes? Where the hell am I? Everything was incredibly bright, fuzzy-edged, and I couldn't see far. But I could see my three friends, nude, side-by-side looking straight out like they were waiting for a bus or something. And I'm screaming, screaming, screaming, but I can't make a sound. At that moment, this head leans down. The face was what many people refer to as a Grey. Large eyes. No facial features. In my mind, I was told to cooperate.

"Comply and no harm will come to you."

And I accepted that, just as if I had been told that by my best friend in the world.

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Jo Ann Richards: Even though my husband has been formerly stripped of his rank, I still consider myself an officer's wife. He was falsely charged with masterminding a murder in 1982, so he's been in prison for over 30 years. We know that the shadow government just wants him out of their hair. My husband grew up knowing pretty much everything, lots of big secrets. He used to play with the Kennedys' children and he's been around aliens ever since he was a kid. He was trained in the US military and the Raptor military.

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Jan Harzan: It was 1965. My brother and I actually saw a craft 30 feet from us hovering in our backyard. It was bright orange and like a tank. The landing gear were like corrugated dryer hose—cobalt blue with black suction cups on the bottom. As I looked closer I could see that there were no rivets on it. It was perfectly smooth, with no windows and no doors. I thought, How do they get in and out of this thing? I ran into my house to get a camera, but by the time I came back it was gone.

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Celeste Korsholm : Ashtar is a Galactic peacekeeper. He runs the Ashtar Command. His job for our sector of the galaxy is to try and keep peace and order. The command is not going to land on earth and save us, but they want us to know that we're not alone. Up in the higher dimensions, they're not really male or female, but it helps us relate to them when they have bodies, so that's how they look when they communicate with me. I just love him so much! Him, and St. Germaine, and Lady Master Portia—I'm in love with all of them. They teach that if you go high enough, ultimately we're all one. What you do to somebody else, you do to yourself. We all feel so separate down here, and they're always telling me, "Lift your focus." I was looking for love my whole life and I never found it until I met them."

Follow Roc's project collecting dreams from around the globe at World Dream Atlas.

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Look at Steven Weissman's blog and buy his books from Fantagraphics.

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Photo by Joe Ridout

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Thanks to a fortuitous combination of the irresponsible banking culture of the 80s and having a great big gob, my dad managed to hustle his way off a South London council estate and nestle himself in the warm, tweed bosom of the financial elite. That's how I was lucky enough to start life in a really nice house in a really nice bit of England: the green-gardened home county of Kent, where the upper echelons of society are busy keeping the "cunt" in countryside.

Problem was, my parents being new money scum n' all, we weren't fully paid up members of the hunting-shooting set. This didn't particularly faze my mom and dad; they were proud that their upwardly mobile daughter was doing her best to covertly "yah" her way into the Jack Wills Rowing Club, in a way that, to remember it now, makes my eyes water with shame. I don't know how I thought I could get away with it at the time. To my new "friends," I might as well have been carrying a tray of cockles through the streets of Tunbridge Wells, singing "Who Will Buy."

At the age of 11, being fucking dense enough to fail my exams, I managed to cheat my way out of the Kent grammar school system. My parents decided to send me to private school for my own good, which is where my short career as a wannabe schweffe began as I found myself gravitating towards the most feckless students private school had to offer. If you've ever peered into a Foxtons office and wondered where on God's earth these twats are manufactured, I can tell you, because I spent a lot of my youth trying to get off with them.

You could say my attempts to ascend the British class system were less like climbing a ladder and more like walking under one and getting crushed by it. I'm ashamed to say that, in my abject desperation to fit in, I didn't chuck my fist in the face of those who thought it was cool to nickname the only black guy in our year "token." Another grim insight provided by my adolescence was that the people running this country are the same ones who spent their teenage years forcing blunt objects up other boys' assholes as a way to initiate them into sports teams.

In the absence of a double-barreled name I adopted a sort of "fake it to make it" attitude. I didn't actually have a pony, but quite enjoyed the intoxicating cachet of the local pony club, where horsey girls with names like Muffie and Harriet would send me out into the field to pick up their horses' shit.

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Photo by Joe Ridout

Once those teen hormones got raging through my system, though, I quit my poo-picking career and set my sights on the top of the food chain within the local boys' public school. This place had serious draw for me because it was a bit like Hogwarts, except instead of spells, these young wizards were learning how to cry-wank and patronize their cleaners.

It wasn't just the men in uniform I was hot for, it was all those exotic words. Tuck shop, civvies, mufty, tufty, matron. Sick bay was called "the san"! Plus all the boys had such friendly nicknames, they sounded like 101 Dalmatians. Rolly, Poly, Raffles, Woffles. And even names with "dog" on the end! Corndog! Brewdog! "Come on Dogdog!" I'd shout supportively from the touchlines. Oh yeah, I was a sucker for the homoerotic sports I didn't understand. On Saturdays my only friend Hannah and I would spend hours choosing the right pashmina and denim skirt combo, then, collars popped, we'd hotfoot it down to the school rugby field where we would scale the pitch cheering for our boys: the ones who didn't know our povvo names.

Occasionally I would be invited to a house party with a fun theme, like "Pimps 'n' Hoes" or "Chavscum": an exhilarating event in any pubescent socialite's calendar. These shindigs were mostly organized by someone's guilty boarding school mom (or, as she was formally known, the "silly old twat"), who, if you sliced down the middle, would doubtlessly be made entirely of jam and cream sponge.

I never will really understand why anyone would leave 30 horny 15-year-olds in an entire wing of their Georgian pile with an icebox full of Bacardi Breezers. And why you'd do it again once you'd already spent a morning scrubbing watermelon vomit off the William Morris wallpaper.

Once in a while, parental supervision at these dos would arrive in the form of an inappropriately flirty Jeremy Clarkson Dad character with red wine lips. He'd stumble down to the party pretending to look for a black lab with a woman's name—rich people fucking love calling their dogs Amanda. Once he'd done some racist jokes and jealous if "I were 20 years younger" back-slapping with the boys and located Molly or Tilly or Bessie or Amanda, we'd be left to our own devices. This involved cracking open the antique drinks cabinet and getting off our tiny, triangular tits on vintage port and doing "three-way snogging" with other girls, which was basically licking each other's faces.

At these functions, blending into the crowd was futile. These other girls were something else. They would compare their hockey tour hoodies adorned with hilarious nicknames, hair like shimmering clouds of bleached yellow candy floss. I felt like Wellard on a day trip to Crufts. They would strut from group to group with ease, gliding effortlessly into conversations about equine rugs and tit wanks and from their concealer-stained lips would flow consequence-free statements like, "Daddy doesn't care for the Jews." I stood and watched on, marveling in mutual horror and admiration at their conviction.

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Photo by Nick Pomeroy

Despite my best efforts at putting the "rah" in to rah-rah skirt my early career as a rival seductress didn't get off to a flying start. Once I'd given the crowd my eye contact dance rendition of Xtina's "Dirrty" up against a barn I had nowhere sexier to go. It didn't help much that I only had one friend at school and unfortunately for me she was a pliant sort with big norks. This meant she'd regularly leave me for dead AKA head-bopping through the remix to "Ignition" hand-pocketing balls on a pool table while she struggled with a zip on some fucking red trousers.

When I wasn't going it alone I'd be keeping it real with that curious type of posh boy who seems to hit puberty and middle age at exactly the same time. The ruddy, guffawing kind who is more likely to have suffered from gout than acne in their teens. The Tory politicians of the future. These were the guys I was routinely left with at a party. This was actually alright for me, as post-Aguilera I had become "quite good banter for a girl"—mainly just because I couldn't work out the elusive sweet spot between frigid and slag.

In an attempt to capitalize on my ultimate ladbantz status I started drinking pints and offering to arm wrestle people. Maybe your first whitey was somewhere normal, like in a park with a load of junior skateboarders. Mine was from a Cuban cigar, and if you must know where I was sick, it was in the pool house.

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With the Breezers in their sails, all Kent's hottest young couples would shotgun spots in the parties' communal sleeping areas as I changed into my jim-jams. Toes curling in the bottom of my clammy sleeping bag, I would lie in the heavy darkness of the billiards room while blonde backcombed heads were plunged into crotches like cafetieres. One particularly harrowing night, I top and tailed a creaky leather sofa with a girl on the receiving end of a frenetic fingerbang. Her genteel suitor all the while desperately assuring her I was asleep. Fraser: I was not asleep. No one was.

Once we got a bit older and could legit get away with fooling our parents we were going out for dinner, the bright lights of the King's Road called to us. We had enough intel through older siblings and Tatler to work out where all the coolest cats would be on a Friday night, so we'd pull on our pointiest cowboy boots and ride that smooth South Eastern railway all the way to Toff Town. The significance of our footwear is not lost on me, as blood beating in our ears we'd finally muster the courage to fling open the doors and stride into the Cadogan Arms like it was the OK Corrall. There we'd order "one glass of wine please" in a quivering voice and just as quickly as we'd entered the building, the doors would be swinging behind us and it was back on the 10PM train to Sevenoaks with a bag of Skips.

I was so desperate for these people to like me because they were powerful rich and clever and mean and it scared me out of my senses. I wanted a slice of their innate and unbreakable conviction so much I forgot what I was all about. But eventually, tired of being eloquently insulted by people who might in retrospect have been trying to fuck me, I fled the scene and started hanging around with normal boys. Ones who didn't have silly names on tags sewn into their underwear.

Now we're all grown up, the fusty rugger buggers are a distant memory, but I still dread bumping into one of those super-safe-sick festiwankers who is so scared of his coke dealer he calls him bruv. They're always undercover at a "music night" where they love to talk about their ironic urban T-shirt startup "Realtings" or their Fulham-based dub label. Their almost Stanisklavskian interpretation of a poor person quite convincing if it weren't for the signet ring tan line.

The ghosts of my misspent youth still appear sporadically on episodes of Made in Chelsea and of course in my newsfeed, where their entire lives appear as a continuous loop of them jumping backwards off a yacht. In some ways suppose it's actually quite lucky I was never invited. I imagine I would get very seasick on a yacht.

Follow Lucy on Twitter.

Earlier this month the government of Victoria, Australia, lifted its ban on cage fighting. The ban's reversal has attracted all sort of criticism, including from the Victorian Police Commissioner, Ken Lay, who told the Herald Sun that cage fighting is "extreme violence masquerading as entertainment." The combat sport industry, however has long claimed that MMA fights are less violent inside cages, since they makes it impossible for fighters to be thrown out of a ring.

I wrote an article on cage fighting a few weeks back and the president of the Melbourne-based Australian Fighting Championship, Adam Milankovic, invited me to check out the sport firsthand. So I teamed up with my photographer friend and we headed to the Melbourne Pavilion on a warm Sunday afternoon.

The Australian Fighting Championship (AFC) had hoped theirs would be the first cage fight in Melbourne, but rival MMA company, Hex, beat them by a week. Even so, Sunday's event sold out, with an audience of over a thousand. Demographically it was what you might expect: mostly male, mostly between the ages of 20 and 40, mostly white.

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Beau (left) and Joel (right) head into the pavilion

Tattoo artists and combat sport aficionados Beau and Joel recently had to travel to Albury to get their cage fighting fix, so they were thrilled it's now back in Victoria. "It has a reputation for being a brutal sport," Beau told me, "but they're martial artists; they train hard, they study for years. They're not going to go out and fight in the street, these guys. They're professionals." Beau rejected the suggestion that the sport is aggressive. "It's like chess," he said.

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John "The Animal" Beirouti has a CC and dry after the match

John "the Animal" Beirouti described any talk of the cage provoking a more brutal fight as just hearsay. "It's just the term cage that gets people going," he told me. "If it was made out of flags or something people might think differently, but yeah, there's no barbed wire or anything, you can tap out when you want. It's all safe."

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The source of all controversy

Safety, safety, safety. Everyone wanted to deliver the same line, which is stupid because clearly cages exist to look badass. And then the first fight began and my judgment looked validated: The cage allowed fighters to corner their opponents between the canvas and the fence and really pummel the shit out of them; a technique known as "ground and pound." The Animal used it effectively against his opponent, choking him with a guillotine hold until the guy lost consciousness. The crowd loved it. After a few snaps my photographer overheard an official say, "He's not dead! He's blinking," as if there was very real possibility that the guy could die. That said, it was one of only two KOs on a 12-fight card, with a lot of tap-outs and times when the action just looked like intense hugs.

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Nick Davis proposing to his partner Hannah

The Animal celebrated his win by whooping around the hexagon (which is what they call the ring) with a piece of paper in his hand, hollering in a wavering voice that he held the memorial card of his deceased best friend. For a night built around testosterone, that wasn't the only unexpected display of emotion. Families cried in the stands, friends hugged in celebration. After losing his bout, fighter Nick Davis proposed to his partner Hannah in the middle of the hexagon. (She said yes.)

I asked Hannah later if she was scared seeing him in the cage. "Tonight I was really nervous," she replied, "but maybe it was pregnancy nerves." She explained she was always nervous that he could get hurt, but "it's what he loves doing, so I'll always support him."

In general, AFC 12 turned out to have a strange undercurrent of love and warmth, which Joel and Beau were keen to highlight as we left. "Look at this", Beau said, gesturing at the crowd dispersing quietly into the neighborhood. "We've been sinking beers all day and look at it out here. No fights. Imagine what it would be like if we were all leaving a club?" He was right. The crowd hadn't turned on itself in an orgy of violence-inspired-violence. But then on the other hand, the cage hadn't offered all that much extra. As Kit "the Killer" Campbell told me earlier, beyond safety it basically means a slight shift in tactics.

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The MMA journalist after an encounter with security

I was midway through deciding cage fights were A-OK when a journalist from an MMA magazine approached us. He wanted my photographer to take capture his pummeled face after he'd been bashed by security. It was the most blood seen from a face all day and it reminded me that even if cage fighting is considered barbaric, at least the fans and fighters of MMA are willing participants. Not everyone is so lucky.

Photos by James Gouldin

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Karl Ove Knausgaard is the author of the six-volume autobiographical epic novel My Struggle. The winner of many major international awards, he has been hailed as "Norway's Proust" by Time, but he could also be understood, perhaps, as literature's Linklater, similarly exploring themes of romance, boyhood, and the passage of time—but with way more death and diacriticals. My Struggle is candid and compulsively readable, with moments of searing insight and bold shifts through narrative time. Its scope is both ambitious and modest; its range aggressive and tender. VICE is proud to present this standalone excerpt from the upcoming fourth book of My Struggle, out April 28 from Archipelago Books.

—James Yeh

You Mustn't Believe Anything Else

The following afternoon I went to Dad's. I had put on a white shirt, black cotton trousers, and white basketball shoes. In order not to feel so utterly naked, as I did when I wore only a shirt, I took a jacket with me, slung it over my shoulder and held it by the hook since it was too hot outside to wear it.

I jumped off the bus after Lundsbroa Bridge and ambled along the drowsy, deserted summer street to the house he was renting, where I had stayed that winter.

He was in the back garden pouring lighter fluid over the charcoal in the grill when I arrived. Bare chest, blue swimming shorts, feet thrust into a pair of sloppy sneakers without laces. Again this getup was unlike him.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," I said.

"Have a seat."

He nodded to the bench by the wall.

The kitchen window was open, from inside came the clattering of glasses and crockery.

"Unni's busy inside," he said. "She'll be here soon." His eyes were glassy.

He stepped toward me, grabbed the lighter from the table, and lit the charcoal. A low almost transparent flame, blue at the bottom, rose in the grill. It didn't appear to have any contact with the charcoal at all, it seemed to be floating above it.

"Heard anything from Yngve?" he asked, of my older brother.

"Yes," I said. "He dropped by briefly before leaving for Bergen."

"He didn't come by," Dad said.

"He said he was going to, see how you were doing, but he didn't have time."

Dad stared into the flames, which were lower already. Turned and came toward me, sat down on a camping chair. Produced a glass and bottle of red wine from nowhere. They must have been on the ground beside him.

"I've been relaxing with a drop of wine today," he said. "It's summer after all, you know."

"Yes," I said.

"Your mother didn't like that," he said.

"Oh?" I said.

"No, no, no," he said. "That wasn't good."

"No," I said.

"Yeah," he said, emptying the glass in one swig.

"Gunnar's been round, snooping," he said, of my uncle. "Afterward he goes straight to Grandma and Grandad and tells them what he's seen."

"I'm sure he just came to visit you," I said.

Dad didn't answer. He refilled his glass.

"Are you coming, Unni?" he shouted. "We've got my son here!"

"OK, coming," we heard from inside.

"No, he was snooping," he repeated. "Then he ingratiates himself with your grandparents."

He stared into the middle distance with the glass resting in his hand. Turned his head to me.

"Would you like something to drink? A Coke? I think we've got some in the fridge. Go and ask Unni."

I stood up, glad to get away.

Gunnar was a sensible, fair man, decent and proper in all ways, he always had been, of that there was no doubt. So where had Dad's sudden backbiting come from?

After all the light in the garden, at first I couldn't see my hand in front of my face in the kitchen. Unni put down the scrub brush when I went in, came over and gave me a hug.

"Good to see you, Karl Ove." She smiled.

I smiled back. She was a warm person. The times I had met her she had been happy, almost flushed with happiness. And she had treated me like an adult. She seemed to want to be close to me. Which I both liked and disliked.

"Same here," I said. "Dad said there was some Coke in the fridge."

I opened the fridge door and took out a bottle. Unni wiped a glass dry and passed it to me.

"Your father's a fine man," she said. "But you know that, don't you?"

I didn't answer, just smiled, and when I was sure that my silence hadn't been perceived as a denial, I went back out.

Dad was still sitting there.

"What did Mom say?" he asked into the middle distance once again.

"About what?" I said, sat down, unscrewed the top, and filled the glass so full that I had to hold it away from my body and let it froth over the flagstones.

He didn't even notice!

"Well, about the divorce," he said.

"Nothing in particular," I said.

"I suppose I'm the monster," he said. "Do you sit around talking about it?"

"No, not at all. Cross my heart."

There was a silence.

Over the white timber fence you could see sections of the river, greenish in the bright sunlight, and the roofs of the houses on the other side. There were trees everywhere, these beautiful green creations that you never really paid much attention to, just walked past; you registered them but they made no great impression on you in the way that dogs or cats did, but they were actually, if you lent the matter some thought, present in a far more breathtaking and sweeping way.

The flames in the grill had disappeared entirely. Some of the charcoal briquettes glowed orange, some had been transformed into grayish-white puffballs, some were as black as before. I wondered if I could light up. I had a packet of cigarettes inside my jacket. It had been all right at their party. But that was not the same as it being permitted now.

Dad drank. Patted the thick hair at the side of his head. Poured wine into his glass, not enough to fill it, the bottle was empty. He held it in the air and studied the label. Then he stood up and went indoors.

I would be as good to him as I could possibly be, I decided. Regardless of what he did, I would be a good son.

This decision came at the same time as a gust of wind blew in from the sea, and in some strange way the two phenomena became connected inside me, there was something fresh about it, a relief after a long day of passivity.

He returned, knocked back the dregs in his glass and recharged it.

"I'm doing fine now, Karl Ove," he said as he sat down. "We're having such a good time together."

"I can see you are," I said.

"Yes," he said, oblivious to me.

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Dad grilled some steaks, which he carried into the living room, where Unni had set the table: a white cloth, shiny new plates and glasses. Why we didn't sit outside I didn't know, but I assumed it was something to do with the neighbors. Dad had never liked being seen and definitely not in such an intimate situation as eating was for him.

He absented himself for a few minutes and returned wearing the white shirt with frills he had worn at their party, with black trousers.

While we had been sitting outside Unni had boiled some broccoli and baked some potatoes in the oven. Dad poured red wine into my glass, I could have one with the meal, he said, but no more than that.

I praised the food. The barbecue flavor was particularly good when you had meat as good as this.

" Skål," Dad said. "Skål to Unni!"

We held up our glasses and looked at each other.

"And to Karl Ove," she said.

"We may as well toast me too then." Dad laughed.

This was the first relaxed moment, and a warmth spread through me. There was a sudden glint in Dad's eye and I ate faster out of sheer elation.

"We have such a cozy time, the two of us do," Dad said, placing a hand on Unni's shoulder. She laughed.

Before he would never have used an expression such as cozy.

I studied my glass, it was empty. I hesitated, caught myself hesitating, put the little spoon into a potato to hide my nerves and then stretched casually across the table for the bottle.

Dad didn't notice, I finished the glass quickly and poured myself another. He rolled a cigarette, and Unni rolled a cigarette. They sat back in their chairs.

"We need another bottle," he said, and went into the kitchen. When he returned he put his arm around her.

I fetched the cigarettes from my jacket, sat down and lit up. Dad didn't notice that either.

He got up again and went to the bathroom. His gait was unsteady. Unni smiled at me.

"I teach my first course at gymnas in Norwegian this autumn," she said. "Perhaps you can give me a few tips? It's my first time."

"Yes, of course."

She smiled and looked me in the eye. I lowered my gaze and took another swig of the wine.

"Because you're interested in literature, aren't you?" she continued.

"Sort of," I said. "Among other things."

"I am too," she said. "And I've never read as much as when I was your age."

"Mm."

"I plowed through everything in sight. It was a kind of existential search, I think. Which was at its most intense then."

"Mm."

"You've found each other, I can see," Dad said behind me. "That's good. You have to get to know Unni, Karl Ove. She's such a wonderful person. She laughs all the time. Don't you, Unni?"

"Not all the time." She laughed.

Dad sat down, sipped from his glass and as he did so his eyes were as vacant as an animal's.

He leaned forward.

"I haven't always been a good father to you, Karl Ove. I know that's what you think."

"No, I don't."

"Now, now, no stupidities. We don't need to pretend any longer. You think I haven't always been a good father. And you're right. I've done a lot of things wrong. But you should know that I've always done the very best I could. I have!"

I looked down. This last he said with an imploring tone to his voice.

"When you were born, Karl Ove, there was a problem with one of your legs. Did you know that?"

"Vaguely," I said.

"I ran up to the hospital that day. And then I saw it. One leg was crooked! So it was put in plaster, you know. You lay there, so small, with plaster all the way up your leg. And when it was removed I massaged you. Many times every day for several months. We had to so that you would be able to walk. I massaged your leg, Karl Ove. We lived in Oslo then, you know."

Tears coursed down his cheeks. I glanced quickly at Unni, she watched him and squeezed his hand.

"We had no money either," he said. "We had to go out and pick berries, and I had to go fishing to make ends meet. Can you remember that? You think about that when you think about how we were. I did my best, you mustn't believe anything else."

"I don't," I said. "A lot happened, but it doesn't matter anymore."

His head shot up.

"YES, IT DOES!" he said. "Don't say that!"

Then he noticed the cigarette between his fingers. Took the lighter from the table, lit it, and sat back.

"But now we're having a cozy time anyway," he said.

"Yes," I said. "It was a wonderful meal."

"Unni's got a son as well, you know," Dad said. "He's almost as old as you."

"Let's not talk about him now," Unni said. "We've got Karl Ove here."

"But I'm sure Karl Ove would like to hear," Dad said. "They'll be like brothers. Won't they. Don't you agree, Karl Ove?"

I nodded.

"He's a fine young man. I met him here a week ago," he said.

I filled my glass as inconspicuously as I could.

The telephone in the living room rang. Dad got up to answer it.

"Whoops!" he said, almost losing his balance, and then to the phone, "Yes, yes, I'm coming."

He lifted the receiver.

"Hi, Arne!" he said.

He spoke loudly, I could have listened to every word if I'd wanted to.

"He's been under enormous strain recently," Unni whispered. "He needs to let off some steam."

"I see," I said.

"It's a shame Yngve couldn't come," she said.

Yngve?

"He had to go back to Bergen," I said.

"Yes, my dear friend, I'm sure you understand!" Dad said.

"Who's Arne?" I said.

"A relative of mine," she said. "We met them in the summer. They're so nice. You're bound to meet them."

"OK," I said.

Dad came back in and saw the bottle was nearly empty.

"Let's have a little brandy, shall we?" he said.

"A digestif?"

"You don't drink brandy, do you?" Unni asked, looking at me.

"No, the boy can't have spirits," Dad said.

"I've had brandy before," I said. "In the summer. At soccer training camp."

Dad eyed me. "Does Mom know?" he said.

"Mom?" Unni said.

"You can have one glass, but no more," Dad said, staring straight at Unni. "Is that all right?"

"Yes, it is," she said.

He fetched the brandy and a glass, poured, and leaned back into the deep white sofa under the windows facing the road, where the dusk now hung like a veil over the white walls of the houses opposite.

Unni put her arm around him and one hand on his chest. Dad smiled.

"See how lucky I am, Karl Ove," he said.

"Yes," I said, and shuddered as the brandy met my tongue. My shoulders trembled.

"But she has a temper too, you know," he said. "Isn't that true?"

"Certainly is," she said with a smile.

"Once she threw the alarm clock against this wall," he said.

"I like to get things off my chest right away," Unni said.

"Not like your mother," he said.

"Do you have to talk about her the whole time?" Unni said.

"No, no, no, not at all," Dad said. "Don't be so touchy. After all, I had him with her," he said, nodding toward me. "This is my son. We have to be able to talk as well."

"OK," Unni said. "You just talk. I'm going to bed." She got up.

"But Unni... " Dad said.

She went into the next room. He stood up and slowly followed her without a further look.

I heard their voices, muted and angry. Finished the brandy, refilled my glass, and carefully put the bottle back in exactly the same place.

Oh dear.

He yelled.

Immediately afterward he returned.

"When does the last bus go, did you say?" he said.

"Ten past eleven," I said.

"It's almost that now," he said. "Perhaps it's best if you go now. You don't want to miss it."

"OK," I said, and got up. Had to place one foot well apart from the other so as not to sway. I smiled. "Thanks for everything."

"Let's keep in touch," he said. "Even though we don't live together anymore nothing must change between us. That's important."

"Yes," I said.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes. It's important we keep in touch," I said.

"You're not being flippant with me, are you?" he said.

"No, no, of course not," I said. "It's important now that you're divorced."

"Yes," he said. "I'll ring. Just drop by when you're in town. All right?"

"Yes," I said.

While putting on my shoes I almost toppled over and had to hold on to the wall. Dad sat on the sofa drinking and noticed nothing.

"Bye!" I shouted as I opened the door.

"Bye, Karl Ove," Dad called from inside, and then I went out into the darkness and headed for the bus stop.

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I waited for about a quarter of an hour until the bus arrived, sitting on a step smoking and watching the stars, thinking about Hanne.

I could see her face in front of me.

She was laughing; her eyes were gleaming. I could hear her laughter.

She was almost always laughing. And when she wasn't, laughter bubbled in her voice.

Brilliant! she would say when something was absurd or comical.

I thought about what she was like when she turned serious. Then it was as if she was on my home ground, and I felt I was an enormous black cloud wrapped around her, always greater than her. But only when she was serious, not otherwise.

When I was with Hanne I laughed almost all the time.

Her little nose!

She was more girl than woman in the same way that I was more boy than man. I used to say she was like a cat. And it was true there was something feline about her, in her movements, but also a kind of softness that wanted to be close to you.

I could hear her laughter, and I smoked and peered up at the stars. Then I heard the deep growl of the bus approaching between the houses, flicked the cigarette into the road, stood up, counted the coins in my pocket, and handed them to the driver when I stepped on board.

Oh, the muted lights in buses at night and the muted sounds. The few passengers, all in their own worlds. The countryside gliding past in the darkness. The drone of the engine. Sitting there and thinking about the best that you know, that which is dearest to your heart, wanting only to be there, out of this world, in transit from one place to another, isn't it only then you are really present in this world? Isn't it only then you really experience the world?

Oh, this is the song about the young man who loves a young woman. Has he the right to use such a word as "love"? He knows nothing about life, he knows nothing about her, he knows nothing about himself. All he knows is that he has never felt anything with such force and clarity before. Everything hurts, but nothing is as good. Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity that doesn't hurt so much, but nor is it as good.

Only a 40-year-old man could have written that. I am 40 now, as old as my father was then, I'm sitting in our flat in Malmö, my family is asleep in the rooms around me. Linda and Vanja in our bedroom, Heidi and John in the children's room, Ingrid, the children's grandmother, on a bed in the living room. It is November 25, 2009. The mid 80s are as far away as the 50s were then. But most of the people in this story are still out there. Hanne is out there, Jan Vidar is out there, Jøgge is out there. My mother and my brother, Yngve—he spoke to me on the phone two hours ago, about a trip we are planning to Corsica in the summer, he with his children, Linda and I with ours—they are out there. But Dad is dead, his parents are dead.

Among the items Dad left behind were three notebooks and one diary. For three years he wrote down the names of everyone he met during the day, everyone he phoned, all the times he slept with Unni, and how much he drank. Now and then there was a brief report, mostly there wasn't.

"K. O. visited" appeared often.

That was me.

Sometimes it said "K. O. cheerful" after I had been there.

Sometimes "good conversation."

Sometimes "decent atmosphere."

Sometimes nothing.

I understand why he noted down the names of everyone he met and spoke to in the course of a day, why he registered all the quarrels and all the reconciliations, but I don't understand why he documented how much he drank. It is as if he was logging his own demise.

—Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett

My Struggle: Book Four will be released in the U.S. on April 28 by Archipelago Books ($27). It is available in the UK from Harvill Secker (£17.99).

Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968. For My Struggle: Book One, Knausgaard received the Brage Award in 2009, the 2010 Book of the Year Prize in Morgenbladet, and the P2 Listeners' Prize. My Struggle: Book One was a New Yorker Book of the Year, and Book Two was listed among the Wall Street Journal 's 2013 Books of the Year. My Struggle is a New York Times Best Seller and has been translated into more than 15 languages. Knausgaard lives in Sweden with his wife and four children.

Don Bartlett has translated novels by many Danish and Norwegian authors, among them Jo Nesbø, Roy Jacobsen, Lars Saabye Christensen, and Per Petterson. He lives with his family in England.

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Photo by the author

Last year, VICE reported on what could be the crime of our young century: In May, Andy Pascali of Bucharest lost his entire house in a robbery. That is, his summer residence was completely replaced by corn.

There are obviously a lot of questions that come with a theft like that, starting with how? but also why? Can you sell entire houses, or parts of houses, on some bizarre black market? Was the crime a kind of prank? Pascali wasn't sure, but when VICE Romania spoke to him he warned everyone who owns a house, "You never know when you might wake up to find it missing."

The scary thing about Pascali's warning is that he's right. Since 2010, there have been at least four cases of what we might call housenapping, and the crime is by no means a modern invention. The earliest example I could find comes from a 1874 New York Times story with the headline "A House Stolen."

It's not always easy to decipher from the news coverage just what possessed these master thieves, but I found some trends and sorted housenapping into a few broad categories:

Con Jobs
Back around the turn of the last century, there was con man named George C. Parker, who claimed he was selling New York landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge to his victims, a scheme that apparently worked because people were stupider back then. (He's where we get the phrase "and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.")

He wasn't the only criminal in history to specialize in property fraud on a massive scale. In Montreal in 1936, police were tricked into helping some clever thieves when someone pretending to be a building owner asked them to supervise the demolition of a large residential building by 500 "unemployed," as the New York Times referred to them. Three of the unemployed, wound up being arrested when the real owner clued the police into the fact that they were supervising a heist.

In 2006, a Pennsylvania woman must have been trying for some similar sort of long con when she tried to trade some bad checks for a house. This did not work, because people are usually pretty cautious when it comes to giant real estate transactions.

Finally, last month in Klamath County, Oregon, a good samaritan reported to the local sheriff that a 1,200-square-foot log cabin had vanished. Law enforcement notified the owner, and the international media got involved. "I was getting calls from the AP [and] the BBC," Sheriff Frank Skrah told a local TV station.

Two days later, the house was found a half mile away, having been moved by someone else claiming to own it. That person had apparently bought it at a rock-bottom price from a third party, leaving the actual ownership of the house in serious dispute. A classic George C. Parker job.

It Wasn't Nailed Down
Casey Friday used to blog a lot about his "Tiny House," which is exactly what it sounds like—it's a cheap living space that's small and on wheels. Modest though it was, someone evidently coveted Friday's diminutive domicile and, last December, stole it. (Luckily, it was recovered a few days later in fine condition, though Friday and his wife eventually decided not to live in it.)

Friday's tiny house theft seems to be the first of its kind, but there were tiny homes long before there was a Tiny House movement. In 1990, a 14-by-20 cottage in Mississippi was lifted onto blocks in preparation for delivery. But then some extremely clever crooks trucked the house away—and even used an old permit to convince the police to give them an escort out of town, according to an AP story.

Just three years ago, the unassembled parts of a prefabricated house in Callala Beach, Australia, were stolen from the site where the house was going to be built. The Lee family had forked over Aus $35,000 for the prefabricated home of their dreams, but people dressed as a construction crew snatched the house parts away, and the dreams along with it. Reported the Illawara Mercury: "One neighbor saw what they said looked like an orange car trailer and others heard what they thought were road workers, and a truck but thought nothing more of it as there had recently been road works in the area."

A fair number of the house thefts of yore targeted modular homes, like the one the Lee family hadn't yet put together. In 1959, a prefabricated house in London that was slated for demolition was carted off, and the manager of the firm that was working on the property told the press, "It was made of reinforced concrete, and it weighs about 14 tons in all."

Fuck You, We're Taking This
One of the most brazen house thefts in history was documented in a 1890 New York Times story titled "A House Stolen by Italians." That year, on July 20, "the greater part of the old Washoe Tool Works" in Newark was stolen. How did that happen? As the Times reported, in the middle of the afternoon, "A large crowd of Italians gathered at the old building, which had been deserted for several years, and began tearing it down." This went on for two hours, and then "Police Captain McManus learned what was going on and he sent a couple of officers to the place. When questioned, the Italians could give no reason for their acts."

Two men were arrested, according to the story.

House thefts this outlandish have become a rarity, unfortunately, but around the turn of the century, they seem to have been carried out from time to time, and—like the one above—involve Italians, for whatever reason. "Four Italians—three men and a woman—were arrested yesterday," begins one such story, from 1911, about people who slowly carried away an entire three-story frame house "said to be owned by a Polish priest who lives in Brooklyn."

But skip ahead to 1975 and there was an anachronistically brazen theft in Tacoma, Washington. A wrecking crew showed up on an otherwise normal Thursday, demolished a house, and carted away the rubble. Which leaves you wondering how they could have possibly benefitted from stealing a bunch of rubble.

That last incident might also fit into my last category:

The House Just Had to Go
Many buildings that get housenapped were abandoned or neglected long before they were stolen.

Take the case of John Thoms, which occurred back in 1981 near Spokane, Washington, and was written about in an article titled, "Man Really Burned Up to Find House Missing." When Thoms discovered his vacation home had burned down after visiting it for the first time in two years, he launched an investigation personally and and uncovered what he believed to be a conspiracy. Apparently, some kids from the area had made it a habit of breaking in to dick around inside it, and local officials had failed to extinguish the fire, file a report, or notify Thoms that his house had burned down—proof, Thoms thought, that the were trying to protect the kids from prosecution.

That on its own might not indicate a cover-up, but then a neighbor flattened the remnants to the ground, leaving just an empty plot. An insurance investigator told the Spokane Daily Chronicle that how the fire was set will probably never be known because "all the evidence has been pushed into a whole and covered with a bulldozer."

That sounds a lot like what happened to Andy Pascali, that Romanian guy with corn instead of a house. As he told VICE Romania:

The house was broken into before in 1996. Back then, they stole the fridge with everything that was in it. I look at the people living in that village and see that they don't have jobs—poverty is very high there. The house is in the village but not in the middle of it, and the neighbors aren't so close.

They didn't steal the house so much as they slowly gutted it until it fell apart. "They cut whatever they could with a blowtorch and left a pile of gravel behind," he said. As for the corn, another neighbor in that impoverished village notified Pascali that he wanted to plant corn on the vacant lot, and did so when Pascali didn't specifically forbid it.

"I'm lucky," said Pascali, "because I live in Bucharest and have two houses—I have all I need."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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A couple of years ago, a clip of the Australian comedian Aamer Rahman (then part of the comedy duo Fear of a Brown Planet) skewered the absurdity of "reverse racism" when it was put up on YouTube. In it, Rahman, whose parents are from Bangladesh, admits that yes, "reverse racism" could exist, but only if Europe had been colonized by the rest of the world and not the other way round. The clip went viral and Rahman has since established himself as one of the sharpest, funniest voices on race, religion and life in the West.

His current show, The Truth Hurts, isn't afraid to engage with reality in a way that most comedians would rather avoid in their desperate scrabble toward the panel show circuit. It's very funny but ends with a devastating story about asylum seekers and detention centers. If that sounds too heavy, fine—there's plenty of Michael McIntyre and Russell Howard to be going around.

I sat down with Aamer over a mocha (for him) and a cinnamon bun (for me) to ask him, amongst other things, about racism in Australia and the place of politics in stand up.

VICE: I wanted to start by talking about your background...
Aamer Rahman: Well, I was born in Saudi Arabia and spent my childhood moving between Australia and the Middle East. My dad's an engineering professor and my mum's a kindergarten teacher, so there's a strong emphasis on education in early adulthood.

Were you a studious kid or did you rebel against that?
There was no option. You were a studious kid, whether you wanted to be or not... Rebellion is possibly what's happening now!

A lot of anger runs through your work. When did you start feeling angry and when did you realize that comedy could be a vehicle for that?
I think I felt angry growing up in Australia because of the racism. And then I naturally got involved in political campaigns about immigration and stuff like that. I think comparatively I started comedy quite late—I was 26. People start a lot earlier because they want to be comedians but it never crossed my mind that I could do comedy.

Were you a funny kid?
Yeah, I was a pretty weird kid. I was a strange child—I wasn't necessarily a class clown but I did love comedy—I loved sitcoms and Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Bill Hicks.

When you talk about racism in Australia, was that something that you felt directly, in a personal way? Was it that as well as the institutional racism?
Both. I went to public schools and private schools. Public schools, it was direct, in your face... Even if the school was racially mixed, there was plenty of racism. Then, in the last two years of school, I got a scholarship to a very elite, prestigious school, which was also quite mixed. That's where I really felt institutional racism. There was this idea that I wasn't supposed to be there, but someone wasn't going to come and punch me in the face over it.

I think especially in respect to race, people forget that Australia's a colonial state and they don't realize that black and brown people weren't allowed to migrate there until the early 1970s. The whole dynamic and history of the place is like a weird experiment contained on an island. It's like a strange experiment in race.

Were your parents political?
Well, it turns out that my dad was actually quite radical. But this is all stuff I found out much later. Fundamentally, they both lived through a liberation war, which was not drilled into our heads growing up. We'd hear stories and stuff, but it was kind of like background noise...

What do they think of your comedy?
They like it. They're torn because they have that very South Asian insecurity about their children being financially stable or whatever. But politically, I know they agree with what I'm saying, even if sometimes they pretend not to or pretend it's over the top.

Your bit about reverse racism skewers an idea that's been around for a while. How do you deal with being serious in comedy?
In political comedy, you're always walking a fine line between what might be funny and what might be a boring speech. So it's a real balancing act. But, the reverse racism clip—a lot of people assume that bit is designed to speak to racists, to educate them—but it's not, it's meant to entertain people who already understand. It's like, let's laugh at the racists and confirm what we already know. It's very much preaching to the converted. I'm not ashamed of that in any way.

I read that the clip basically saved your career. Why was that?
As a performer you're at the mercy of people who book you and Australia is just a very small audience. Even though I was connected online with a lot of people I just wasn't getting any bookings.

How would you define your audience?
My audience is the same around the world. The majority are people of color and, out of that, maybe a quarter of them are Muslim—politically-minded Muslims. Overall, my audience is left-wing types. They're everywhere.

I know, we just crawl around the globe attending comedy shows...
Exactly! So that was it. It just financially wasn't working and I thought maybe it's time to do something else and pay bills and that kind of stuff.

And then the clip got you out of Oz... Are there Australian comedians that you like?
Absolutely. There are some political comedians that I've worked with for years. There's Matthew Kenneally, Toby Halligan—they're all guys my age that I came up with.

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In your show you describe Australia as like Britain if it had been ruled by UKIP for 200 years. It should be so rich for satire.
I've analyzed it non-stop and I can't figure out why but there's not much political comedy out there and there's not much of a push to get it mainstream. There has been great satire and really good satirical shows but again, you're dealing with a very small population.

You get laughs in your show just by pointing out the absurdities of Australian life...
Laughing at Australia is something permanent in the UK and I find that really, around the world, people just laugh at Australia. I don't think Australians realize how deeply there is a sense of Australia being this redneck outpost in the corner of the planet.

What do you think about Dieudonné's sentencing in France and the relationship between free speech and comedy?
With France it's become such a ridiculous, inverted scenario because their brand of secular liberalism is itself so extreme. To suggest that [some of Charlie Hebdo's] cartoons are satirical—that is a joke. To purposefully provoke a bullied minority about things that you know are fundamentally sacred to them—what kind of institutional power are you critiquing? I think it's really a part of being white—not being able to differentiate and recognize differences in power. Magically, everyone is equal and everybody is fair game.

There's a bit in your show that's like classic old school comedy where you talk about stereotypical south Asian parents, and there's a certain kind of internet warrior who might be like, "Come on Aamer! We have been fighting these stereotypes!"
Absolutely. I probably was one of them myself. But now I have enough credits in the bank that I can finally unleash! I do genuinely find some of that stuff funny though, because if it's told in the right way and it's told from our own perspective, I think it's funny. In Fear of a Brown Planet I always had to do very staunch, hard-line material, so now I'm going solo I have room to breathe and do slightly sillier stuff. Even then, I'm very careful about it. I can't bring myself to do accents.

And yet, Aamer, you do a white person accent in the show. How dare you... I'm shaking my head over here.
[Laughs] It's OK to do it with your friends.

When I first saw your stuff, I thought of Stewart Lee...
Who I'm a huge fan of. My favorite thing about Stewart Lee is his pace. He will take as long as he wants—especially in comedy, where there's pressure to deliver laughs, that helps me a lot because some of the stuff I talk about takes a while to explain. To be able to see comedy that takes its time was a big thing for me.

What made you want to end the show on a serious note?
I wanted to tell the story and the reality of the story is that it's so heavy that you can't do it in the middle of the show and then go back to jokes. You put it down and the audience just has to deal with it. But there's also a part of me that really loves dumb slapstick, like videos of people falling off their bikes and stuff. Like Stewart Lee's bit about how there's nothing funnier than a fart. I don't care how serious and political you are, you can't deny that.

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Did that rat pay for that carrot or is it going to drop a smaller rat on the floor and run out? Photo via Tambako the Jaguar.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I think we can all empathize with the man who pulled a rat out of his pocket at a restaurant in England in an effort to avoid paying his £7.25 bill [$10.79]. Because we all hate paying for food, don't we? It's just fuel, isn't it? Tasty fuel with salt on it. And we all like a deal, don't we? We all like Groupon.

But imagine you didn't need to sign up for Groupon's interminable emails to get a good deal at the Borneo Bistro, in Sunderland, England. Imagine that instead all you had to do was get drunk, smuggle a live rat into the restaurant in your track pants, and then, at an opportune moment, drop the rat on the floor and go, "AUGH, A RAT!" and immediately turn to the waiter and say: "That's a rat. I am not paying £7.25 for a plate of buffet food when there is a rat on the floor."

Such is the reality for Christopher Baker, who was up in Sunderland's Magistrates' Court today charged with the above. He was charged £60 [$90] plus a buffet fee of £7.25 for his efforts—which took place on Valentine's Day—after CCTV footage quite clearly showed him taking a rat out of his pocket.

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"On February 14 —Valentine's Day—Mr. Baker has attended the restaurant, ordered a buffet for one and a bottle of water," prosecutor Lee Poppett said. "He picked his food up and found a seat at a table on his own at the back of the restaurant.

"At shortly before 4:00 PM he suddenly jumps up and shouts, 'It's a rat. I'm not eating here, I want my money back.' And indeed, there is a rat on the floor."

Here's what Willie Johnstone, the man tasked with defending this act, told the court today: "Christopher, on that day, had been drinking heavily and unfortunately he decided to buy a rat for his daughter by way of a present.

"Unfortunately, he then decided to go for a meal. He sat down and ate his meal. When he had finished the meal, he took the rat out, and said it bit him. It jumped to the floor. He panicked and left the restaurant. He is very remorseful for his behavior."

He also conceded: "We do deal with some unusual cases from time to time."

When you are next looking for an icon, look not for Cher, or Beyoncé, Sting or Freddie Mercury, Nelson Mandela or Malcolm X: turn instead to Christopher Baker, a man who was willing to sit in a restaurant with a live rat in his pocket for a number of wriggling minutes while he ate a plate of buffet food and then didn't pay for it. Because, truly: that is dedication to not paying £7.25. A pet rat alone costs anywhere between £5 and £7, as-is. Keeping it in the pocket of your trousers for up to 20 minutes sounds like a kind of torturous, Room 101-style punishment. And yet, Christopher Baker did this, all for one delicious plate of what the Borneo Bistro website promises to be: "International Authentic Dishes from Filipino, Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, Caribbean, and African FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST."

"People like him deserve the death penalty."

Less impressed was Borneo Bistro restaurateur Kevin Smith, whose reputation Christopher attempted to ruin in his bundled attempt to cheat his way to a plate of Malaysian beef. "He is just the scum of the earth," Smith told the Sunderland Echo. "He could have destroyed the reputation I have built up over seven years." A fair, if hyperbolic, assessment.

"People like him deserve the death penalty," he added. "As far as I'm concerned, he shouldn't be in our society. He is no use to anybody and he's caused nothing but grief."

That might seem a tad harsh, but hear the man out. I mean, sure, there's quite a lot of debate over whether or not capital punishment truly discourages crime. Last year, a study from the National Research of the National Academies, based on 30 years of data, came to the conclusion that the idea of the death penalty as a deterrent from crimes such as murder is fundamentally flawed. If you're going to go so far as to murder someone, the repercussions are probably not going to trouble you too much: you're not thinking too clearly. But what impact might it have on the rate of men taking rats out of their pants and dropping them in restaurants? Maybe you'd think twice about dropping a rodent in an Asian fusion restaurant if there was a chance the court might doom you to the oblivion of the chair instead of slapping you with a £60 fine and a 12-month community order with supervision. All Kevin Smith is saying is: maybe let's have that difficult conversation about hanging people by the necks until they die. Let's throw it to a vote.

The rat, sadly, was taken by Acord Pest Control, who asserted that it was probably tame—a conclusion also arrived at by Kevin Smith, who told reporters, "It was very clean, like it had just had a haircut"—but released it into the wild anyway.

It is probably dead now. The restaurant remains open, and £60 richer.

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It's 1968 and I'm with a couple of friends from back home. We take a tab each of orange sunshine LSD and we're laughing at pretty much everything, sitting on a window ledge, about five feet up, watching people on Hollywood Boulevard. My childhood friend, Robert, is untamed and mostly a jackass in his interactions with girls and minorities. The sidewalks are crowded and when a small group of Asian tourists walk by Robert jumps in front of them and bows from the waist. "Ah sooo, ah sooo!" He says. "Suki Aki, motherfucker." I'm hallucinating and a little confused but mostly I think Robert is a dick.

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It's 2007 and I drive to Hollywood Boulevard with a little Konica Minolta point-and-shoot, my first digital camera. I'm tempted by the yellow hues of sleaze to the east but the tourists go westward and crowd around Grauman's Chinese. I park on a side street and walk up past Highland on the north side and stop just short of the costumed superheroes. Vacationers pose with the animated locals and pay for the privilege with dollar bills. They get down on the ground and take selfies with the Walk of Fame. I hang where I am and I ask people if I can take a picture of them making funny faces.

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"What do you want a picture of me for?"

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"I like the way you look. Here, let me get you to stand over here. All you gotta do is make a funny face."

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I expose and say thank you. "That was great."

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Darth Vader comes over to ask me what I'm doing. I guess he's feeling territorial. I tell him I'm taking pictures of people making funny faces and he wants to know what the catch is. I tell him no catch I'm just doing what I'm doing for something to do. He seems dubious but goes away.

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It's 1980 and I'm living in an apartment with Leslie, behind the Aquarius theater on Sunset. I walk down to the Hollywood Ranch market to get a pack of smokes and when I return Leslie's had a miscarriage. The little critter is six weeks old and intact so we put it in a sandwich bag in the freezer to take to the clinic tomorrow. Still awake at 4 AM I walk up Vine to Hollywood Boulevard. An LAPD patrol car pulls to the curb and wants to know what I'm doing. I tell him I'm on my way to Grauman's to put my feet in Clint Eastwood's foot prints. He tells me he doesn't want to see me next time he comes around and I tell him I don't want to see him either.

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It's a Sunday in 1978 and Danielle and I go to Pickwick book store on Hollywood Boulevard where I buy Cockpit by Jerzy Kosiński. We walk down to Chris and Pitts for barbeque and when we're done we leave a big tip and skip the check. It makes for a nice Sunday so we do it again for the next three weeks.

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2012, Saturday night and Linda is driving and it's raining on Hollywood Boulevard and I'm taking pictures from the passenger seat. We go west to Highland then Sunset and park at Carney's train-car for hotdogs. Some guy drives by and flips a cigarette butt out the window. Linda picks it up and throws it back at the open window. "The world is not your ashtray, asshole." We get hotdogs and fries and Linda drives us back across the other side of the boulevard and then home.

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It's 2015 and I'm on the sidewalk taking pictures of the storefronts and shop windows. Two teenage boys are loitering in front of a little Italian joint. Pedestrians pass by and the larger boy says "Hey, can you help us we need a bus ticket back home." No one gives him as much as a look. A clean young couple pass by and he says, "Hey, girl, you got one hot ass. Hey dude, your bride got one hot ass. You better be hittin' that shit, bro." He's wearing a thick armor of belligerence and he's looking for a fight. I'm headed the other way but I stop and take a picture.

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The kid talks with a twang. "Why you taking pictures for?" I tell him you know, I just take pictures and he says no, he doesn't know and I'd better not take a picture of him. Boy number two speaks up and tells his friend he's too fuckin' ugly for pictures. I tell him that's a point well made.

A young Asian woman walks by and boy number one says, "Hey hottie, slow down, give me a better look." She doesn't slow down but speeds up, eyes forward. Boy number one yells, "Hey mamma san, me so horny, me so horny. Love me long time." Boy number two laughs, but not like he means it and I wonder if he thinks his friend is a dick.

Scot's first book, Lowlife, was released in 2011, and his memoir, Curb Service, is out now. You can find more information on his website.