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I Spent 24 Hours with a Female Truck Driver

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Dawn in a Halifax truck depot. All images by the author.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It is 4 AM and I am sitting alone, in a Travelodge outside Halifax, drinking a cup of instant coffee, and staring at a parking lot. My 24 hours as a female truck driver are about to begin and I'm so excited I hardly notice that the milk is a foil-fresh tub of wet chalk.

"I'm outside a door. Not sure it's the right one. Lol."

Kerry Hughes, HGV driver, motorbike enthusiast, horse-whisperer, and my driving companion for the next two days has arrived. She is taking me to meet my motor. I say my motor; I can't even drive. I've lost my provisional license. The last time I took a lesson my instructor's rotund father in a navy nylon blazer asked my mom out on a date and I've never got behind the steering wheel of a car since. And yet just 16 hours from this moment I would be sitting behind the wheel of an 18-ton truck, in my pajamas, turning the key in the ignition.

4 AM: As we drive through the first inky possibility of dawn towards the warehouse, Kerry and I immediately start talking about male pride. "There has been a bit of an 'only bird in the warehouse' thing before," she explains. "Not so much in this job, but I have had to deal with a few dented male egos in the past, especially when you start earning more than them, as a driver." The haulage industry is astoundingly male-dominated. In 2013 there were 300,000 truck drivers in the UK, of whom only 0.5 percent were women. And yet Suma, the whole foods company for whom Kerry drives is bucking the trend—eight of their 40 drivers are women, nearly 40 times the national average. Not that being the only bird in the warehouse particularly bothers Kerry, I get the feeling. After a Yorkshire childhood of mountain biking, horse-riding, and getting drunk in the steam room of the gym, she started working for her stepfather's business and trained to be a driver at 21. I can imagine her, in maroon fleece and steel-capped boots, walking comfortably into any room, any group—not unaware of the men, but certainly not afraid of them.

We walk through a silent warehouse, the daylight bulbs shining over rows of cardboard boxes, trolleys, and high metal shelves. No one's here. Kerry kits me out in a high-vis vest, blackened along the edges, picks up her keys, and strolls out to what she calls her "wagon." She is carrying a wadge of hole-punched delivery orders, a plastic cup of coffee, and small click-and-lock tupperware box containing a sat nav, her mobile phone, and various leads.

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I've never climbed into an 18-ton truck before. Holding onto the handles like an 86-year-old grandmother attempting to get in the bath, I swing myself up until I'm sitting at least six feet in the air. I feel like the Pope. In leggings. Kerry's hydraulic seat hisses and bounces into position as she feeds a tachograph card into a machine above her head. It looks like the tape deck of my dad's old Fiesta but apparently this machine will monitor how many hours the driver is working, when they need to take a break, and how much time is spent lifting pallets off the back of the truck.

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The author, basically in the clouds

5:30 AM: As we drive across the highest bit of motorway in the country—the M62 by Scammonden—pink clouds appear above Kerry's shoulder. "That's one thing about this job," says Kerry, her long blue nails resting on the steering wheel. "You get amazing sunsets. There's just something about the A1 in the morning, you know?" I do know. Or, at least, I can imagine. Up here, traveling at 40 miles an hour, you see far more of the world than you ever get when grinding along in a normal Fray Bentos tin of a car. Allotments, rivers, woods, and canals wind off into the horizon; this is the the time of truck drivers and badgers, of oil tankers and wild deer.

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Kerry, checking out her "wagon."

6:30 AM: Our first stop is at a small wholefood shop in Chester. "Morning!" we chorus to the owner of a newsagent, opening his shutters next door. "How you doing?" asks Kerry. "Well, I'm still here," he replies ruefully, beside display of union jack egg cups. At each stop, Kerry shunts the pole holding the walls of this curtain-sided truck out of position, undoes the row of straps along the bottom of the tarpaulin, and pulls back the sheet, like someone opening the curtain on a particularly box-oriented stage. She then slices open the cling film holding an order together on a pallet and piles the boxes on the edge of the truck for me to lift and carry into the shop. Having me there to help must save her, well, seconds at the most, if I'm honest, but it's fun to be finally doing something, clad in my high-vis waistcoat, desperate for an excuse to climb up and explore the chilled section behind the cab.

9:30 AM: This run, from Yorkshire to Merseyside via North Wales, is far more rural than you may expect of an articulated truck. We deliver to the house of a yoga teacher, tucking the giant wagon behind a hedge; we pass enormous fields of daffodils on our way to a distribution center; we pull up at a farm shop surrounded by fields and fruit pickers' caravans, our delivery scored by neighing horses and the beep of the truck's rear lift. "Would you know how to fix that if it went wrong?" I ask, pointing at the small orange box that operates the lift. "Well, I'd have a look at the fuse box first," says Kerry, as if this were obvious. "But, to be honest, if you can't fix it by hitting it with a hammer, I probably wouldn't, no."

Half an hour later, waiting outside a factory in a small industrial unit near Ellesmere Port I watch a male driver with long blonde hair and red face—a viking in orange rubber grip gloves—swing down from his cab and approach the delivery dock. When Kerry asks him if he's got much coming off he looks shocked, then confused, then offended. "Did you just tell me to get off?" he asks. The trans-pennine language barrier is alive and well, it seems.

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10:30 AM: Driving into Colwyn Bay mid-morning, Conwy Castle glows in the sunshine, blue-brown water smudges up to the beach, and we overtake a train running along the beach huts to our right. It is beautiful; significantly more beautiful than updating a spreadsheet behind an MDF desk in a grey office in central London. There's a weight restriction between us and our next delivery and so we go on a merry loop of the town before sliding onto the promenade under a 12'3" bridge. This truck is 12'3" high, but Kerry seems unperturbed by the prospect of a tight squeeze and, in fact, the only minor incident is when I drop a can of kidney beans in the middle of the road. As Kerry talks about her friends—mechanics, petrolheads, engineers—it becomes clear that she is at home in male company. And yet even she comes across problems from time to time. Like the truck stops that have just one communal shower, or trailers that continually left the warehouse loaded in reverse, only ever when she was the driver.

11:30 AM: The tachograph says we're due a break and so, pulling over in a lay-by to eat our sandwiches, Kerry and I start chatting about ex-boyfriends. A huge two-story red truck full of sheep chugs past as we discuss infidelity, drunk texts, and spare keys. My blue seat cover is slowly getting scattered in grape stalks and empty water bottles collect at my feet. A mistake, it turns out, when you're traveling along at 40 miles an hour, six feet above the nearest toilet.

We roll through Ruthin, get a thumbs-up from a giant tattooed forearm in a Ray Stewart truck outside the Patchwork Farm Shop, and head back to Chester, past The Leprechaun Guest House where, sadly, we don't stop at all.

1 PM: "Chester Stripping" screams a huge black and white sign. It's only as we move off, and a large telegraph pole moves out of view, that the word "Paint" emerges between the two. Probably for the best. Outside one house, where we're due to deliver about my bodyweight in porridge, a man comes up to the driver's door and knocks on the window. "Listen, darling, if you take right at that junction, rather than coming in past the war memorial then you'd avoid this tight corner," he mansplains, helpfully. "Yes," replies Kerry, apparently unconcerned. "I've come in both ways—it just depends on what side I'm delivering from." "Well, coming in from the right is better, because you avoid that tight corner," he repeats. "I should know," he adds, "I've brought the company car home a few times myself," He strolls back to his car, thrilled with the joke.

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3 PM: By now we are well and truly in Merseyside. Red signs for the Echo swing outside newsagents. Kerry and I have, by this point, almost emptied the van and sit drinking a cup of coffee and eating an apple next to a huge 105-pound canister of propane, a stack of squashed cardboard boxes, and a water butt you could swim lengths in with a small, sniffing Jack Russell at our feet. People, myself included, bitch and moan about being given vague delivery times by companies like Argos and UPS. But I now see just how unpredictable a delivery route can be. The search for parking, traffic, waiting for someone to open the delivery gate, hard-to-carry loads, phone calls, chasing staff for signatures; it's almost impossible to know how long you're going to take. Imagine picking up 17 mates across two counties for a night out and then you may see why giving an arrival time to the nearest five minutes can prove a problem.

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Kerry, eating her sandwich.

6:30 PM: It's now been over 14 hours since Kerry picked me up to start work this morning. I've carried boxes and lifted sacks, climbed stepladders and dragged trolleys. We pull over outside a farm, a roll of yellow signed delivery sheets resting on the dashboard and an unfortunate smell of red onion permeating the cab thanks to my salad sandwich earlier. I'm starving, despite snacking on almost an entire bag of trail mix, half a box of oatcakes, some pineapple, and a packet of crisps. Kerry has eaten nothing, except a sandwich, since we left. So, as the sun sets across the River Dee to our left we stroll up to the pub for dinner. It's one of those faux-vintage pubs with a poker table in one corner and a huge range of microwaveable puddings on the menu. I absolutely love it, but it's not quite the fry-up-in-a-porta-cabin-beside-the-roaring-fumes-of-the-M62 I'd been expecting. "Oh, I try not to eat at truck stops," says Kerry. "Because I don't want to die at 50." It's a fair point. She also, as a habit, avoids service stations because the overwhelming smell of piss in the truck parks, thanks to the hundreds of men too lazy, too cold, or too sleepy to walk the 30 feet to the toilets, is enough to put you off your chips.

9 PM: And so I zip myself into my sleeping bag, lying on top of a small hardboard shelf. Yes, tonight I am going to sleep in the cab. Right there, behind the steering wheel. My mattress for the night is a gray, Bakerloo Line-like cushion and my privacy comes courtesy of a thin nylon curtain. Kerry—who is sleeping out the back in a tent—has asked me to turn the engine over for a few minutes, to kick-start the chiller function in the onboard fridge where all the yogurt and drinks are stored for the morning deliveries. And so, in a pair of pin-striped men's pajamas I sit behind a steering wheel the size of a paddling pool and push the key into the ignition. My heart is racing as the throb of the engine runs along the back of my thighs like lightning. I have never been so excited. At last, I feel like a truck driver.

We never think of the people who bring us the things we, toddler-like, grab out for at every waking minute. We just want the stuff, from the shop, and we want it now. Until I clambered up into the crows nest of a truck, this Scalextric of ever-moving traffic delivering, unloading, checking off, picking up, and ticking over the nation's needs had barely entered my head. My only impression of truck drivers was a vague collection of macho clichés—spray paint pin-ups on cab doors, fringed curtains and football scarves, honk if you like it dirty, Yorkie bars and bacon baps, pissing in a bottle, the smell of axle grease and orange overalls, yellow teeth and an ashtray on a dashboard.

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The cab. Pretty comfy, as it goes.

Those cliches exist for a reason, of course; lots of those men grind up and down the world's motorways day and night. But there are thousands of women driving those routes, too. And the truth is, we put them there. We are the demand and they provide our supply. We want to walk into a shop and find six different shapes of pasta and never spend a moment thinking about the miles of tarmac, the flexes of bicep, the stamping on boxes, and the long, lonely miles spent getting it there.

But somebody got it there. Somebody like Kerry. Somebody, perhaps, like you.

Follow Nell on Twitter.


VICE Vs Video Games: This Is Everything That We’re Allowed to Tell You About ‘Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I went to Canada last weekend to see a brand new video game. Quebec is really nice—I met a really cool dog called Julien, and got tons of new details on Ubisoft's next entry in their Assassin's Creed series, Syndicate. Here's what I am permitted to tell you without triple-A lawyers demolishing my house with me inside of it.

Yes, it's set in London

This detail leaked a few months back when everyone thought the game was going to be called Assassin's Creed: Victory, but now the location is confirmed it's become even more tantalizing. Syndicate takes place in 1868, during the industrial revolution that transformed Britain, making this game's atmosphere very different to previous entries in the long-running franchise. Even though Syndicate takes place just 75 years after the French Revolution of last year's Paris-set Assassin's Creed: Unity, a lot has changed. The buildings are much taller, and there's order in the streets with actual pavements rubbing up against the roads. The advent of advertising has resulted in brand billboards spreading across the city, and you can see the open foundations of the London Underground being constructed. It's brilliant, and promises to continue adding to the dark yet colorful history the AC series is so well known for.

There are two main playable characters, and one is female

Along with a new time period and setting comes not one but two brand new assassins for the player to control. Jacob and Evie Frye are young twins hell-bent on bringing down the Templar reign in London. The war between the two factions, the Assassins and the Templars, is technically over at this point in time, but while the masses suffer in the infernal workhouse that is the industrial underbelly of England's capital, the 1 percent at the top profits to live a life of luxury. And, surprise surprise, they're Templars.

Jacob is the character I saw during the announcement demo, and the developers tell me he's the more volatile and hot-headed of the siblings. Evie, surprisingly, was barely spoken about—and she doesn't appear in the trailer, either, which is an odd decision—but Ubisoft has offered assurances that she will become a heavier focus of the game's marketing as we get closer to its release. The most interesting thing will be how this dual-protagonist approach effects the nature of the storytelling—will we be able to switch between the two during play, and will it add different perspectives to large-scale missions and assassinations?

The industrial revolution was brutal

For Syndicate's epic story, Ubisoft Quebec is concentrating on the masses. Of course, there will be iconic historical figures popping up along the way—we've already had Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin confirmed—but the emphasis will always be on the common folk of London. As part of a street gang called The Rooks, Jacob and Evie will have to unite the people under one banner to rise up against the oppressive rule of the Templars. We got a bit of insight into the kind of gang warfare that'll be dominating a lot of your time—think outposts from Far Cry, and as you complete certain takeovers you begin to dominate more of the game map. You'll also get a look at how deep the corruption runs, with other street gangs and the Templars getting in your way.

Related: VICE's documentary on the world of eSports

How you travel is changing

Player-controlled vehicles will feature in Syndicate. The only confirmed examples shown were horse-drawn carriages, which can be hijacked Grand Theft Auto–style and taken on a joyride through the streets of London, but more will be announced, including trains and boats. I'm pretty dubious about how these will work, as Assassin's Creed has always struggled with navigational controls, but it's an interesting way to get around town. In the demo I saw, there was also a climactic horse carriage chase through the more salubrious streets of the city, and while it didn't look entirely perfect at this stage, it's definitely a different kind of pursuit sequence from the ones we're so used to.

Combat has moved with the times

You couldn't cut around Victorian London with a load of swords, axes, and whatever else strapped to your back without drawing unwanted attention from the rozzers. Part of the modernization that Ubisoft Quebec is aiming for brings a sense of British sophistication to proceedings—assuming you consider knuckle-dusters sophisticated. The combat in Syndicate is much more about hand-to-hand brawling. In the demo there was some fantastic fisticuffs bolstered with a short Indian blade called a Kukri and a snubby revolver that's perfect for dealing with the drivers of other carriages when you're darting around in your own. But the visuals are no less brutal than before, thanks to some gloriously violent contextual kills that change depending on your environmental surroundings.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/3kGHHMc5dqE' width='560' height='315']

'Assassin's Creed: Syndicate' debut trailer.

You're basically Batman

New to your arsenal is the assassin's gauntlet, fitted with a grappling hook that allows rapid ascension of every building in the environment. It can also be used as a portable horizontal zip wire that gives you the ability to create your own aerial assassinations, even if there are no buildings nearby. It's clearly been influenced heavily by Rocksteady's Arkham series, but that's no bad thing. In the demos we saw, the L1 button on the PS4 pad was tapped to attach to buildings and shoot skywards. It'll be most interesting to see if, coupled with the new horse and carriages, whether the traditional parkour traversal of Assassin's Creed games is left in the dust with these new ways to get around. That's modernization, I guess, but I'll be sad nonetheless.

Ubisoft have learned important lessons from Unity

During my time in the studio, both the creative director and executive producer were firm and confident about the time and effort that's being put into making sure that Syndicate is properly polished when it releases later this year. That's a big deal after the disastrous/hilarious problems (delete as appropriate) that Unity suffered from in 2014. They can't be repeated by Ubisoft, ever again, or this series will nosedive. Fingers crossed, then.

It's out on october 23

Yasss.

Follow Sam on Twitter.

Abuse Against Mentally Ill Prisoners Is 'Widespread,' According to Human Rights Watch Report

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Paul Schlosser III, who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression, being pepper sprayed on June 10, 2012 by a correctional officer at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, Maine. Via YouTube.

Anthony McManus weighed 75 pounds when he died. In 1997, the mentally ill 38-year-old publicly exposed himself and was put in a Michigan prison with no psychiatric facility, where his condition deteriorated rapidly. He would frequently talk about the devil, and spread urine and feces around his cell. According to a lawsuit, prison staff would restrict his access to food and water in a cruel attempt to control his behavior. As a result, he died—partially from emaciation—in 2005.

"Animals in animal shelters are generally given more attention and care than was afforded to McManus," a prison official later testified in court.

Sadly, he wasn't the only inmate in America to suffer such egregious abuse. A Human Rights Watch report released this morning gives multiple examples of corrections officials in the United States using violence to punish bipolar and schizophrenic prisoners for exhibiting behaviors of their mental illness. This tactic violates both the US Constitution and international human rights laws, the report says.

Related: Watch VICE News' documentary about the conditions the mentally ill face in Chicago's Cook County Jail.

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To put together "Callous and Cruel Use of Force Against Inmates With Mental Disabilities in US Jails and Prisons," HRW went through hundreds of suits, combed Department of Justice investigations, and interviewed 125 experts. What the nonprofit found is that the problem of punitive force against the most vulnerable people in the system is "widespread and may be increasing."

Prisoners who are mentally ill make up about 40 percent of the population in New York City, but are involved in 60 percent of all instances of misconduct, according to the report—a gap that can be closed with better mental health care in jails, experts say.

"Prisoners with mental health problems may act out and break rules more frequently than other prisoners," explains Dr. Bruce Gage, the head of psychiatry for Washington State's Department of Corrections, "but the behavioral manifestation of their illness will decline as the quantity and quality of mental health treatment increases."

However, rather than treat the mentally ill, officials often find it easier to segregate them. According to the report, sick inmates in South Carolina and Pennsylvania are more than twice as likely to be shoved into solitary confinement as healthy ones.

Correctional facilities across the country might do well to follow the example out of Massachusetts, which in 2012 opened two maximum security mental health treatment units. Prisoners there get 25 hours of recreation per week and are taught both social and behavioral skills that help them transition back to the general population. Good conduct is incentivized. Bad conduct is penalized, but by a brief loss of privileges, rather than physical punishment. As a result, the use of force on the prisoners put in these units has dropped by 60 percent, according to the report.

In contrast, it's clear that no one at the Michigan prison that McManus died in had any aspirations about rehabilitating him. "Even the layman across the hall, an obvious layperson... could tell that McManus was suffering," an official said in a deposition. "You could see that his eyes was turning yellow. His cheeks were sunken in, the skin on his frame was just hanging off his bones like clothes on a hanger." As the court concluded in that case, "Not a single defendant made a serious attempt to have him transferred to a facility that could treat his obvious mental illness."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

VICE Premiere: VICE Exclusive: Check Out Vallens''Twin Peaks'–Inspired Shoegaze

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Twin Peaks and Genesis P-Orridge's Psychic TV project are two of the top, like, 117 or so Cool Things that you have to have at least a smile-and-nod level of familiarity with in order to hold your own conversationally at any of your finer composting parties and ayahuasca ceremonies. So when I got an email telling me about this band, Vallens, who are influenced by Twin Peaks and recorded their album with a former member of Psychic TV, I was blown away—how has something so obviously hip slipped through the cracks? But name-checking aside, Vallens is actually good. The music is shoegazey, complex, and textured—don't listen to it because it's cool, listen to it because it's a good song. Then buy their new album on Hand Drawn Dracula, a label that continues to be both stylish and full of substance.

Yayoi Kusama's ‘Obliteration Room’ Is About to Be the Next New York Selfie Destination

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Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, 'Give Me Love' (2015) at David Zwirner Gallery in New York on May 8, 2015. Photo by the author

In 2013, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room was the surprise hit of the art world, the piece that launched thousands of selfies on its way to becoming an international cultural phenomenon. By the end of her exhibition I Who Have Arrived in Heaven's run at David Zwirner Gallery in New York, the waits to see the show had grown to eight hours long. (On an average day, the exhibition received around 2,500 visitors, each allotted less than a minute of time in the space.) So the question hanging over her second Zwirner show, Give Me Love, was if Kusama could once again channel the zeitgeist.

Kusama's first visit to New York in 1957 was something of a glorious, cosmic flameout. At 28, she left her native Japan for the city like so many before and after her, with a one-way ticket and a dream. The enigmatic artist began staging a series of high-profile "happenings" that, in keeping with the experimental tenor of the era, were often laced with nudity and tinged with political and feminist undertones. Like Yoko Ono and the FLUXUS movement, Kusama created a series of instructions and "invitations" that could be re-replicated, her most famous a series of be-in style protests in the late 60s that involved naked men and women, covered in polka dots, stationed outside the UN, the New York Stock Exchange, the Statue of Liberty, and elsewhere. As the Vietnam War raged abroad, and Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, Kusama sought to spread the gospel of "LOVE FOREVER." She garnered praise for her work and met high-profile friends and lovers, like the sculptor Joseph Cornell and Donald Judd. But she was also broke, and hopelessly so.

When she began to deteriorate both physically and emotionally in 1973, she returned to her native country for treatment, to commence what would turn into a decades-long stint in a mental hospital. As she recovered, she acquired her own unique, some have said therapeutic, visual style, the most recognizable her polka dot and infinity net works. With her success of the Infinity Mirrored Room, 60 years after her initial arrival in the city Kusama finally achieved the New York welcome she'd so longed for, an adoration that extended far beyond the cloistered world of the city's arts institutions—the Guardian even called her the "world's most popular artist of 2014." So what has she done for an encore?

The new show, which will be up through mid-June, features the artist's intricate paintings, large-form pumpkin sculptures, and Obliteration Room, an interactive project inspired by a makeshift "American middle-class house." The design is based on the urban planning initiatives of Levittown, New York, widely considered to be the first suburb and prototype for many of the country's postwar communities. As part of Obliteration Room, which was previously staged in Australia, visitors are given colorful polka dot stickers to place wherever they like inside the all-white house. Eventually, the faux TV, dinner table, sofa, and desk will all become a pastiche of color swatches, transforming the calm, blank slate into a space that is overwhelming with radiant life. Gallery visitors become willing participants in both the project's destruction and renewal, in keeping with Kusama's prior themes of life, death, and rebirth.

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Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, 'Give Me Love' (2015) at David Zwirner Gallery in New York on May 8, 2015. Photo by the author

Although Kusama's work today is in high demand, just a few decades earlier Kusama was so obscure that an intern at the Paula Cooper Gallery was able to buy one of her "carbuncle chairs" at a local thrift store for a mere $250. Glenn Scott Wright, co-director of the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, is credited as being one of the first to champion the Kusama revival. "She did have a moment," Wright told me at the preview, "a rather long moment, from the early 70s to 1993 [her year as Japan's representative at the Venice Biennale]... when she was not really being looked at."

Related: Famed Street Photographer Bruce Gilden Critiques Art Photography

The most recent reason for Kusama's resurgence is the social media effect. Infinity Mirrored Room was one of the most Instagrammed and selfied art events of 2013, and perhaps of all time. But you can't measure her influence merely in likes and reblogs, says Hanna Schouwink, a senior partner at David Zwirner.

"[Kusama]'s a genius, someone who's really been able to tap into what it means to be human, whether you live in America or Tokyo or Russia," explains Schowink. "People from all over the world tune in to her message. Every museum, every single venue where these shows have shown, has broken [attendance] records for its institution. And then she breaks them doubly. It's a phenomenon that I don't think we've ever seen before."

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Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, 'Give Me Love' (2015) at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. Photo by the author

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Yayoi Kusama, 'Visionary Death' (2014) at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. Photo by the author

David Zwirner himself says, "Very few artists have this gift to really transcend the art world. It's rare. Jeff Koons has that gift, of course. What Kusama does is very life-affirming. It's very positive, and it asks you to enter. It's not opaque, and she doesn't hold back as an artist. She's had difficult times in her life, and I think that transports to the work and people really react to it."

Though the sheer volume of Infinity Room selfies puts it in a league with such tourist traps as the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, the photo-friendly nature of the exhibit wasn't a calculated move by Zwirner to court the smartphone set.

"I hate to admit it, and it dates me a little, but it hit me by surprise," admits Zwirner at the preview. "The moment I saw what a selfie would do in there I thought, Of course! But none of us had thought of it. It was just a beautiful thing that made us at the center of that world for a moment, and we loved it." (In case you're wondering, Zwirner also took a selfie, though he says, "It was probably the worst of all of them.")

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Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, 'Give Me Love' (2015) at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. Photo by the author

The day of the preview, insiders as well as super-fans like Sasha Kalachnikoff, a pint-sized, be-wigged "gallery kid" known as "little Kusama," arrived at nine to be the first to experience Obliteration Room.

While the line was relatively short, writer and journalist Antwaun Sargent predicts a surge: "The initial line is going to be people very into her work, and know who Kusama is. Then it [will become] social because of Instagram. It's a cultural currency thing in New York. The last show she had, it was about the art but also, 'Have you been to Kusama's room?' I was seeing people in my Instagram feed who had no orientation towards art, but were all going."

[body_image width='720' height='960' path='images/content-images/2015/05/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/12/' filename='infinity-room-artist-yayoi-kusama-returns-to-new-york-with-a-new-obliteration-room-845-body-image-1431441979.jpg' id='55261']Antwaun Sargent, Jiajia Fei, and another visitor at 'Show Me Love' by Yayoi Kusama at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. Photo by the author

JiaJia Fei, associate director of digital marketing at the Guggenheim Museum, who has visited Kusama exhibits from Shanghai to Buenos Aires, also anticipates a wave of buzz.

"Her shows always draw such huge crowds, there's lines around the block, worldwide," says Fei. "It's great because these are shows where you don't really need any prior knowledge of art history or scholarship to really understand and enjoy it. She's very colorful, and has all of the visual things people respond to."

But why do visitors respond to Kusama's work? Easy: "It just makes people happy," Fei said.

And as is often the case with happiness, sometimes you've just got to wait.

Yayoi Kusama's Show Me Love is on view at David Zwirner Gallery in New York through June 13, 2015 with extended hours during New York Frieze Week.

Laura Feinstein is Brooklyn-based editor and writer. Follow Laura on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Metal Gear Solid Action Figures, Now with Squishy Boobs

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Figurines are cool, but that hard molded plastic just doesn't suffice if you're the kind of person who likes to feel something analogous to a real boob when you're squeezing and prodding your female action figure's chest. Now, a company called PlayArtsKAI is creating a toy based on a female assassin named Quiet from the upcoming fifth Metal Gear Solid game. The series's creator, Hideo Kojima, tweeted out photos of the new figurine, with a caption saying, "...some soft materials enables to be pushed & lifted. lol" [sic]. There's no release date for the figurine yet, but from the photos it looks to already be in production.

Geek.com raised an interesting question about one of the upcoming male figures in the series, Solid Snake, when they wondered if he will have a similarly squishy (or maybe hard?) dick. Seems unlikely, but who knows!

Want Some In-Depth Stories About Gaming?

1. Cosplay Star Eve Beauregard Talks About Strong Female Characters in Games and Dealing with Insane Fans
2. What Video Game Morality Says About You
3. Role-Playing Games Have Been My Life Before I Even Knew What They Were
4. Why I Love, and Sometimes Hate, PC Gaming

What Exactly Is ‘Sustainable’ Wine?

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What Exactly Is ‘Sustainable’ Wine?

'Fake' Conservative Candidate Running Against Justin Trudeau Resigns in Fake Disgrace

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My name is Stephen Harper and I approve this candidate (until I learn he's a fake). Photo via Chris Lloyd's website.

A Conservative candidate's sudden resignation marks the latest chapter in an artistic performance that's now spanned over 15 years.

This morning, a CBC News investigation revealed that Montreal-area "politician" Chris Lloyd was in fact a performer, whose foray into politics was intended to "mess with" the Tories.

Lloyd—who was running in the district of Papineau against Justin Trudeau himself—has since resigned, though he told the CBC his "political career" was "not yet over."

But a background search of Lloyd's past (a step the Tories seem to have neglected) shows this new "career" was actually the latest piece in a meticulously catalogued series of artwork.

On one of his blogs, Lloyd details how he's been writing regular letters to Canada's Prime Ministers since the Chrétien era.

"I began writing daily, diary-style letters to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien while completing my undergraduate studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1999," he writes.

"The project began as a sort of character study, an attempt to determine how well I knew the PM," his post says. "How well do any of us really know our elected officials, TV stars, or sports heroes?"

Lloyd's letters have since been curated into a variety of art exhibits. The synopsis of a 2009 art show in Val D'or describes several of his projects, which include hyperrealist paintings, video montages, and objects crafted from the letters themselves, like paper planes and papier-maché hockey sculptures.

His blog also states that in a decade of correspondence, Lloyd only received about a "handful" of responses to his 2,000+ letters, "all form letters signed by PMO correspondence officers."

In a videotaped speech he gave during a Fredericton art conference (obtained by the CBC), Lloyd explains how he went from making "mail art" to becoming an actual political candidate.

According to the reports, he describes how he first reached out to his electoral riding association, telling them about an art-inspired political project and asking to attend the upcoming national convention.

Despite this disclosure, Lloyd was then given an increasing amount of responsibility, culminating in his acclamation as the official Tory candidate in a district that has never voted Conservative.

This, even though he'd initially hinted at his intentions, and despite the fact that photos of past exhibits and references to Lloyd's letter-writing are easily searchable.

Conservative Party spokesperson Cory Hann declined to comment on their candidate-vetting process, telling VICE this was "an internal party matter."

Still, parts of Lloyd's campaign do seem legitimate. In 2011, around the time he attended his first national Conservative convention, Lloyd made a $600 donation to the party (which could also be the convention costs). And his official blog is a collage of photos taken with big Tory names and partisan sentiment, including a 2011 photo of Lloyd posing between a baby and Stephen Harper, captioned "Strong, Stable, National, Conservative Majority Government."

Chris Lloyd Donations.jpg

Lloyd's true political allegiance, however, is harder to pin down. Elements like this video and his membership to anti-Harper group LeadNow suggests Lloyd's leanings are anything but Conservative.

When asked on Twitter if his resignation meant he'd now be crossing the floor, Lloyd answered: "The floor of my office, kitchen or bedroom?"

He declined to comment for this story.

Follow Brigitte Noëlon Twitter.



Behind Blanck Mass: Benjamin John Power's Fuzzy Exploration of Your Brain

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Behind Blanck Mass: Benjamin John Power's Fuzzy Exploration of Your Brain

Remaking MakerBot

Is Julian Assange's Latest Legal Setback the End of the Road for the Wikileaks Founder?

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On Monday, Wikileaks mogul Julian Assange got some bad news from the Swedish Supreme Court: It tossed out the appeal he filed against that country's warrant for his arrest over alleged sex crimes. A favorable ruling from the court likely would have meant that he could immediately leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he's been holed up since 2012. The actual decision means Assange is still facing possible extradition to Sweden.

Looming over the European legal imbroglio is the fear on the part of Assange's allies that if he ever set foot back in Sweden to face the allegations, he might be extradited to the United States for publishing leaked military secrets.

Four of the five Swedish justices who looked at the case were unmoved by the Assange legal team's claim that being being stuck in the embassy—where he's nominally protected from the rest of the planet—is a punishment disproportional to his 70 alleged crimes. "Julian Assange's freedom of movement cannot be considered to be limited in practice in such a way that it is contrary to the European convention [on human rights]," their decision read.

The remaining justice, Svante Johansson, disagreed, and wrote a dissent arguing that the motive for keeping Assange under threat of arrest didn't "outweigh the intrusion and inconvenience" to his existence in the meantime.

So has Assange exhausted his legal possibilities? And how much longer will he be making weird pronouncements from his lair?

"I think he will have a difficult time arguing that he should not be extradited to Sweden to face normal criminal charges, unless he can establish persuasively that this is an abuse of process with political motivations," Payam Akhavan, a human rights–focused lawyer and professor at Canada's McGill University told VICE by email, referring to the idea that the international community might block his extradition.

The normal criminal charges in question stem from accusations that Assange raped one woman and sexually assaulted a second in 2010.

Assange's accusers' version of events was detailed at length five years ago. In short, the sexual assault investigation includes potential charges of rape, molestation and "unlawful coercion," over the course of a bizarre ten days Assange spent bumming around greater Stockholm. This was all about two months after Chelsea Manning (at the time named Bradley) was arrested in the US for using Assange's Wikileaks organization to expose the notorious "Collateral Murder" footage, which showed Iraqi civilians being killed en masse in a 2007 airstrike, among other info.

But even after this ruling from the Swedish Supreme Court, Assange is still hoping to avoid facing actual charges via several legal avenues. Due to a quirk in Swedish law, he isn't technically facing any of these charges yet, and is just "wanted for questioning." Formal charges happen "late in the legal process" in Sweden, according to the Guardian. At this point, the distinction between being questioned and being charged is one of the rays of hope for Assange's defense.

Since 2012, Ecuador has been pushing to have Assange questioned by Swedish prosecutors in the embassy where he lives, instead of in Sweden. This prosecutorial questioning is an essential part of the Swedish legal process that determines if charges can be brought at all. In March, Marianne Ny, the Swedish prosecutor working the case, agreed to proceed with this plan. Her reasoning, she explained, was that the statute of limitations on some of the charges against Assange expires in August, so the clock is ticking.

In March, Ny told Bloomberg that performing the interview in London is likely to "lower the quality of the evidence," but, she said, it's "necessary to accept such deficiencies to the investigation, and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward, particularly as there are no other measures on offer."

Related: We talked to Julian Assange back in 2013.

Assange's Swedish lawyer said of the prosecutor's reversal, "It is a victory for us," calling it "the route to acquittal."

In addition to winning the opportunity to get interrogated by his prosecutors in the hopes, perhaps, that the sex crime allegations will be dropped, Assange is also hoping that Sweden will guarantee his safety from extradition to the US. Sweden is mulling over a formal request to that effect by Argentina. The request isn't about Assange directly, but would apply to him, and Sweden is scheduled to make a decision about this on June 15.

Extradition to the US is a scary prospect for Assange. The Obama administration has a reputation for prosecuting leakers, which spells danger for Assange, who of course has made a name for himself by publishing classified material whenever he can. In 2013, the possibility of prosecution in the US was thought to be remote, with the Washington Post citing officials in the Justice Department saying they were up against what they call the "New York Times problem." Simply put: Assange isn't the only self-styled journalist ever to publish classified material, and the Justice Department can't prosecute every one that does. Nonetheless, a multitude of reports suggest a criminal probe is ongoing.

Is there any way for Assange to go to Sweden to deal with the charges there and dodge extradition? Short answer: yes. According to a 2012 Guardiancolumn by Seumas Milne:

The solution is obvious. It's the one that Ecuador is proposing... If the Swedish government pledged to block the extradition of Assange to the US for any WikiLeaks-related offense... and Britain agreed not to sanction extradition to a third country once Swedish proceedings are over—then justice could be served.

Michael Ratner, one of Assange's lawyers, told the New York Times last year that his treatment by the UK is "astonishing," and that Assange "continues to be detained without charge, and the court concedes that this can continue for years to come."

This assertion might give them a place to make their appeal above and beyond the Supreme Court of Sweden: the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Assange's lawyers argue that unlike the Swedish Supreme Court, the European Court of Human rights will view his confinement as disproportional, and this kind of thinking about "proportionality" is a critical legal doctrine in the ECHR.

Akhavan, the human rights lawyer, thinks the claim about proportionality "would be a difficult case to make," since extradition cases at the ECHR hinge on avoiding mistreatment in another nation, in this case Sweden.

"The basic principle is that where there is a real risk of ill-treatment in another state, the obligation not to send an individual to that state is an absolute one—it cannot be claimed that public interest reasons for deporting or extraditing an individual outweigh the risk of ill-treatment on the individual's return, regardless of the offense or conduct," he told VICE.

In some ways, this is a war of attrition. In the year 2020, the last of Assange's potential charges will melt away courtesy of the statute of limitations on the rape allegation. And the Guardian cited Anne Ramberg, head of Sweden's Bar Association, suggesting the latest Supreme Court decision actually opens the door for a more generous concept of proportionality in the future. Between now and then, if he keeps himself cooped up, without sneaking out, perhaps in a car or "diplomatic bag," Assange might eventually be able to just walk out the front door. In fact, that's starting to look somewhat likely.

Then again, the UK government has claimed that British police would be within their rights to storm in and drag him out of his bed, and out of their country, at any time. They'd just have to give a week's notice first.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Comics: Kaaaanye! North Got into a Preschool Academy!

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

How Mike Huckabee Turned Running for President into a Business Empire

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The conventional wisdom around why you run for president is that you do it to become president. Maybe you're also trying to make a point, and maybe you're doing it for attention; the ultimate object of that run remains the same. But Mike Huckabee has perfected a new reason for entering the race, one that's unique among the varied candidates competing for 2016: This is just how he makes his living.

Huckabee, who recently declared his second presidential run, hasn't actually held elected office since January 8, 2007, his last day as governor of Arkansas. (Huckabee ran in 2008 and flirted with declaring in 2012, ultimately choosing not to even though he was polling near the top of possible GOP candidates.) But back in 2007, when he launched his first presidential bid, he more or less fit the conventional profile of a Republican White House candidate: He was just finishing his second full term as a governor, and he was an ideological lightning-rod, getting the stone rolling by telling a gathering of Baptists that "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

In part because of these Evangelical leanings, he managed to win Iowa's 2008 Republican caucus, gaining a new level of credibility as a potential contender for the party's nomination. Later, after Huckabee dropped out of the race, he was named as a top contender to be John McCain's running mate but passed over for Sarah Palin, thereby marking the end of his involvement in anything that could be considered actual politics.

Back then Huckabee's vibe was Man of the People, a guy with little money and few connections to the rich representing populist interests in the election. Famously, he even left the trail to go give a speech in the Cayman Islands, explaining that "you have to work for a living and pay your bills." But that has changed. Since his first run, Huckabee's become an odd feature of the new political landscape. Huckabee runs for president to support his career. And his career exists to support his runs for president.

For six years, Huckabee has focused on sharpening his brand as a pundit with the added veneer of real experience, a feel-good-family-values voice on the right whose opinion should be treated as though it has the imprimatur of authority bestowed on possible presidential candidates.

Following the 2008 race, he set about establishing his pulpits, which eventually included a syndicated radio show, The Huckabee Report, and a television program on Fox News called Huckabee, both of which ended this year. He has also written 12 books, including the most recent, Gods, Guns, Grits, and Gravy (seriously), and runs an educational company called Learn Our History, devoted to presenting the story of America "from a positive, patriotic, and faith-based perspective." And of course, like any respectable professional candidate, he has a political action committee, HuckPAC, and gets paid well into five figures for speaking engagements around the country.

This holy hustle has launched the former Every Man into the 1 percent. Huckabee made $500,000 a year from his Fox show alone, according to a 2011 report, plus more from radio and those speeches, which he often flies to on private jets — Politico reported in July 2014 that he'd racked up a quarter of a million dollars on private air travel to political events. On the side, he's earned extra cash with more questionable dealings, which included hocking diabetes cures and selling his email lists to advertisers of survivalist gear and homeopathic medicine. From these spoils, Huckabee built a $3 million home in Florida.

Regardless of what that says about Huckabee the candidate, it's very clear that Huckabee the man went to great lengths to ensure that he would never be wanting for money again after 2008. Rather than working the conventional world of politics, his punditry has enabled him to build the brand of Huckabee, centered on the large-scale Evangelical populism he favored in 2008. Under that umbrella, he's beaten the same drum in different ways from year to year, keeping himself in the spotlight.

In 2012, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, Huckabee said that "we ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?" In 2014, he suggested that Democrats insult women by "making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government." Earlier this year, he compared being gay to "drinking and swearing," and he said that Christians being forced to support gay marriage is on par with "asking someone who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli."

Unlike most of his 2016 rivals, Huckabee's influence doesn't extend to the halls of government halls of government. Real Clear Politics currently lists 14 candidates in its polling data for the GOP primaries. Of the 12 who have held political office— excluding Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina—Huckabee is one of three who left office in 2007, along with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. But while Jeb Bush's name ensures that he will never be fully outside of the proper political apparatus, Huckabee's does not—and it seems he's more than happy to embrace the role of outsider, in a slightly different way than he did in 2008. In many ways, he's a lot more similar to right-wing ranters like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck than he is to the rest of the 2016 presidential contenders.

What all this has resulted in is a weirdo hybrid of all the worst parts of our political system. Mike Huckabee is a talking head who has talked so much that his talking has become its own sort of public office. When he doesn't win the 2016 GOP primary and shuts down his campaign, it'll just be another installment of his media empire, from which he'll move on to the next one, and the next, ad infinitum.

Follow Kevin Lincoln on Twitter.

Emergence of Canadian Red Devils Signals Hells Angels Resurgence in Quebec

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A Hells Angel member in NYC. Photo via Flickr user SliceofNYC.

Six years have passed since, on the warm, clear and otherwise ordinary spring morning of April 15, 2009, 1,200 police officers stormed Hells Angels targets and systematically shut the bikers down in Quebec. In an elaborate net laid out over the course of three years, 111 full-patch members were taken in raids that totaled south of 200. Operation SharQc had the effect of utterly gutting the gang in la belle province, where the Angels ruled the Canadian leg of their underground empire.

From that bust, though, the Angels have remerged, rebirthed of a prescribed fire lit by the authorities tasked with extinguishing the gang. After 18 bikers pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit murder, only 27 of the 156 people initially indicted in SharQc had cases pending. Most of the men were sentenced to short-term stints, some time served. Like 2001's Operation Springtime, which resulted in the arrest of 122 bikers in the province, SharQc has proved more temporary debilitating than lethal to the Hells Angels.

As the dramas of SharQc continue to play out in Quebec courtrooms, the HA have motioned they are moving back into the province, a resurgence marked by the emergence of the Red Devils Motorcycle Club in Canada. Since the spring of 2014, the Devils have opened chapters in Montreal, Barrie, Toronto, Ottawa, and two over the bridge on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River.

In the confounding Canadian biker gang landscape, this has added an unknown but undeniably dangerous new variable. The Red Devils MC has chapters in nearly 20 countries and, as the official Hells Angels official support club—a kind of minor league training team for future members of the major league squad—the esoteric Devils are, by general rule, younger and hungrier than the older Angels.

In Montreal, the gang's clubhouse on the city's south shore is unwelcoming to outsiders. Det. Sgt. Len Isnor of the Ontario Provincial Police's Biker Enforcement Unit warned me against rapping on the door. Getting a warm reception, he cautioned, would be unlikely. Besides, the prospect of any patch member speaking to a journalist was low. If one did, Isnor assured, that man would catch a severe beating and be out of the club next day for talking to a reporter.

"All of the future Hells Angels are going to come from them. They recruit on loyalty—they know that the people are not police officers, they're not informants, they know that they're loyal and they'll do anything for them," he said. "Quebec is rebuilding and it's going to start again. They're looking for people to form the organization the way it was in the past and what a great way to start by forming a group that they can draw from."

As if to underline the audacious way the Red Devils move, their start in Canada spelled the end of a mostly calm chapter in Canadian biker history for the country's oldest outlaw motorcycle gang. Prompted by the insurgence of the new Devils, all 31 members of the original Red Devils in Hamilton, Sudbury, and Chatham patched-over to New Brunswick-based Bacchus MC, ending a 66-year run for the original Red Devils.

The way former Red Devil leader, now Bacchus member Ray Philp remembered the play, even police were shocked. "Times change," he sighed, reflecting on the loss of the club's logo. "It wasn't pleasing but I understand a bit where they were going. Those other guys coming in was part of the decision, there's no doubt."

Even Toronto Star journalist and gang expert Peter Edwards, who has penned a number of books on Canadian gangs and effectively has his thumb on the pulse of the underworld in this country, said he was surprised to see the original Red Devils patch over to Bacchus. He pointed out that the original Devils held a reasonably respected position over their 60-plus years on the scene. For the most part, he said, Philp and company maintained a clean front.

"They were pretty smart about not really offending people, so it was a bit odd to see them go under," said Edwards. "They were blue-collar riders who happened to have bikes but weren't troublemakers. If you looked around for a story with a lot of outrage, you'd have to go back a couple decades."

An interesting footnote of the Red Devils move into the country is timing. Why now? In 2002, Philp said he met with Red Devils MC leaders from the US and they assured him the gang would not move in out of respect for the Canadian outfit. Though the original Devils were warned the new group was backing down on that verbal agreement, no formal discussion was held last year.

Isnor said he thought that may have been part of the butterfly effect from Project Hammer, which led to a near closure of the Halifax Angels and allowed Bacchus to expand throughout the Atlantic provinces during the early 2000s. Once an ally of sorts to the HA, Bacchus was seen as moving in on their territory after the bust. Because the original Red Devils were known to roll with Bacchus, the two groups got lumped together in the eyes of the Angels.

Of course, the main reason for the Red Devils move into Canada has to be that the Angels are readying to hit the streets of Quebec again. "The Red Devils are in Montreal because the Hells Angels of Quebec opened their first chapter here since Operation SharQc," said La Presse crime reporter Daniel Renaud. "It means that the Hells Angels are back, they want to take over in the province, but it also means a change of mind."

That change, said Renaud, was as much administrative as cultural. In the '90s, the Angels in Canada were known to have any number of support clubs like the Rockers, Death Riders, and Jokers. Now, almost every member of the HA will come from the Red Devils. In essence, wherever a Red Devils chapter exists, so too will a training squad for the world's most notorious biker gang.

An isolated tactic like drawing talent from one pool is only one of the telling signs the HA are getting smarter, better, despite two major busts in less than a decade. In spite of—or maybe thanks to—the incarceration of the majority of its Quebec members, Canada's Angels have seemingly learned from some of the grave mistakes of the past, no doubt in part by studying the expanse of paperwork from the SharQc cases.

"The big thing to remember about the Hells Angels is they're constantly being underestimated and they're constantly coming up stronger," said Edwards. "For Montreal the Hells Angels are kind of essential for the mafia. The Hells Angels have a better link than the old Rizzuto family with the Haitian gangs."

For many reasons, the Angels and their minor league Devils would set the tone for how things played out in the Canadian outback, according to Edwards. In addition to being essential to the mafia's operations in Montreal, the Angels serve the role of mediator between many of Canada's shady types. Because puppet clubs like the Red Devils can have non-white members, they have the advantage of being able to do business with black street gangs.

While there's no denying Operations Springtime and SharQc had an immediate impact and marked a huge blow to the Angels, there's also no denying the Angels are readying for a renaissance in Quebec. An obvious example of the club's new life is the sight of the Red Devils MC patch in a growing number of Canadian cities. Lately, the Devils are readying to move in on Hamilton, home turf of the original Devils.

From his post at the original Red Devils clubhouse—a tough but welcoming spot at 30 Arden Avenue on the Hamilton Beach Strip—Philp didn't hide his disappointment. Though it wasn't his door kicked in on that fateful April morning six years ago, it may well have been.

He'd lost a patch worn on his back like a tattoo since 18 and, worse, watched the care-free Canadian biker way of life he loved stripped for parts before his eyes.

"It used to be you get on your bike and ride and party," he reflected. "Maybe you'd get into a little mischief but it was all about the fun. It's unfortunate."

My Time as a Hostess in a Sleazy Chinese Karaoke Den

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"You'll wear a party short dress. No loose dresses, please. Great if it's a V-neck without sleeves, or even half sleeves are alright. If you have a habit of wearing stockings, don't. And above all, your best high heel shoes. Not the boots kind."

"That's fine," I reply submissively to the stranger on WeChat, China's largest messaging platform. He's got me a secret side-job at a KTV (karaoke) place in town, paying 600¥ (about $100) per evening for serving drinks, flirting, and looking foreign. It doesn't sound like much money, but since one evening would be half my month's au-pair wages, I'm curious. Besides, it goes a long way in China, where instead of a load of pissed-up clubbers staggering out at sunrise to yell at minicab drivers, there's the majestic KTV.

The phenomenon covers the world's fourth biggest nation, and like its food, tastes are regional: Mando-pop in the northern coastline cities, militant revolutionary songs in the barren east, aching love ballads further south. Although KTV's a widespread leisure pursuit among elites, its employees are seen as depraved ne'er-do-wells, hence the secrecy: My wealthy host family would die of face-loss if they knew their little treasure's live-in English teacher was also a KTV hostess.

I always wondered how easily my ethical judgment could be swayed by money, and here I find myself clawing for a bit of work that's only offered to one gender, one race, and is fully conditional on one's appearance. Clicking on the ad makes me flinch in self-disgust, and WeChatting the guy I start to feel more like a commodity than a human. But reassuringly, he says the duties entail "creating a happy atmosphere... that's all. No weird stuff. There's option for weird stuff too which pay comes different." Encouraged by his honesty, I say I'll come on Saturday.

I turn up looking like a tourist, with a change of sexy clothes in my backpack. A Sri Lankan guy takes me to the third floor of the swanky multiplex, and the KTV layout is instantly recognizable: plush, snaking corridors upholstered in wine-red carpeting and numbered doors, a bit like a hotel. Behind each of those is a KTV "cabin": parlor-like, exquisitely decked with sofas, cushions, en-suite, a table garnished with fruits and cigarettes. To one side, there's a pulpit with a small screen to select your power ballad. Front-facing it all is the room's showpiece: an elephantine TV screen. All of this for upward of $4,500 per evening (hot company is extra).

The contrastingly grungy girls' changing room doubles as the treasurer's office. He's there thumbing through his stacks of paper Maos while the girls strut or lie around looking swanlike and indifferent. The Sri Lankan puts my valuables in his locker and shows me to a bathroom to get dressed in private, a privilege of not being a Chinese employee. I try to make myself look equally swanlike and indifferent, but outside the floor manager looks at me and sighs, "It'll do." After confiscating our mobile phones, she bustles me, a Nepalese, a Russian, and a Ukrainian girl in a line behind the Chinese swans who enter a cabin before us. We follow them in and stand facing a bunch of middle-aged emperors and three chosen girls. The manager whispers into the chief's ear, pointing at each of us in turn; but as he looks at his mates with a derisive expression it becomes clear that none of us are wanted.

The Ukrainian and I are escorted to an empty cabin and told we're going to have to wait for some guests who've booked us. They chose us from pictures, apparently, like garden furniture in an Argos catalogue. After waiting for an hour, chatting to the Ukrainian about life ("I don't understand why in my country there is war. We are friends with Russia!"), four youngish Chinese men arrive and cheerily greet us. One of them, an albino guy, goes straight for the mic, and tears into a couple of Mandarin songs with an unexpectedly lark-like voice. After a bit of whiskey and coercion, I join him for a duet rendition of Westlife's "You Raise Me Up." Then I light cigarettes and top up glasses, trying to simultaneously piss around in Chinese and understand things. Later, I unveil the only Chinese song I know, and, at an unholier hour, it's Britney, bitch.

Some of the Swans join us and start caressing the main guy around the face and groin while he sings badly. The albino guy cracks one about me going back to their place for fucking and we all laugh, until they realize it was a joke, and they start to leave with the more acquiescent girls. Later, the Sri Lankan gives me some "good feedback" but tells me to wear higher heels and more "party-ish clothes" next time. He hands over the cash, which feels dirty and good, and forbids me to keep contact or sleep with any of the clients, who are all inconceivably rich, otherwise we could get into deep judiciary shit, probably with some mafia with government links or something. Who knew that karaoke could be so shady?

Scootering through the city at 4 AM I get to the shabby digs arranged for me and bunk up in the cold. The next morning I hand over my keys and envisage a life of funding Chinese classes with complementary KTV hostessing, and with hopes and ambitions anew, head out to buy a pair of massive stilettos.

The following week, my KTV flesh-peddler warns me that there are no cabins and no work. Turning up anyway, I'm bustled around hastily and overhear the manager say "Quick, get the white girl in the big one." I'm pushed into the big one, and on learning I'm English, the businessmen inside roar with delight and sit me next to a paunchy bespectacled man because apparently we'll be able to chat. This turns out to be untrue. The group is a lot more lad-y than last week's—they've bought an overabundance of girls and are karaokeing communist war-chants and songs about maternal piety, maybe the equivalent of belting out "Rule Britannia" while eyeing up girls at Wetherspoons.

When the room goes black, the flaccid-faced daddies are dragged up by the snow whites who are pretending to be exciting. One works here six nights a week, juggling a boyfriend and day job as an assistant podiatrist. The frenzied room manager starts shoving couples together to everyone's palpable embarrassment, giving it all a school disco vibe. If porky hands search for my butt I artfully wiggle it over to the song selector and try to make everyone's hearts go on with some Celine Dion; they usually leave me alone after that.

Related: TOXIC: Linfen, China.

Each shift is Groundhog-esque: skimpy clothes, Lady Gaga, xenophilia, jujubes, molestation, repeat. There's not a single female guest during my service; they're all businessmen, and when I tentatively ask what they do, they breeze over a vague answer like, "Moving things. Logistics." Other highlights include seeing slender Chinese girls being told to lose weight, bitch-glares for my preferential treatment, and the sheepish managers attempting to undersell me several times, making me feel like a sucker. I'm also told to sing more crappily because otherwise clients get bored. You can't "create a happy atmosphere" without masochism.

One evening it all goes tits up. Bored myself, I take advantage of the gorgeous scotch I usually pretend to drink and snatch up the mic to massacre some Chinese tunes. There's a hairy male yelling at me to sing "Let It Go" while he claws at some poor girl's breast because his kid loves that song. The room spins and I feel barfy.

I don't remember what happens next. The following morning in my rented hovel I wake up to a WeChat group message announcing I was an "embarrassment to both staff and clients." Smelling of sick, this is the "retched" end of my debut KTV hostess career: I'm not wanted back, used as an example to the other girls of the dangers of drink-partying. I guess I done bad—quite an accomplishment at a place that cheapens female students and hard-up ambitious girls for perverse hobbyists and commercial profit. Being laid off would have more dire consequences for them. There's pressure to conform to the oversexed materialism of a new China, steeped in aesthetic and financial competitiveness, whereas for a westerner these kinds of jobs are easy pickings. Having shriveled men pay for their company is a bizarre validation of the fun-loving, baby-doll image these girls must pursue. As for the men, perhaps the best way they can flaunt their fortune is by renting girls for a singalong. Maybe the strain of "moving things" for lots of money necessitates such a change in tune from blissful married life.

Oh well. It's not the only KTV joint in town, and it's not the only town in China. Comforted that there's a dodgy backup job for when I end up dead broke, I take my glad-rags, my priceless windpipes, and my leave.


Gambian President Says He Will Slit Gay Men's Throats in Public Speech

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Gambian President Says He Will Slit Gay Men's Throats in Public Speech

Hostgator M. Dotcom's Struggle to Regain His Face After Selling It to Internet Companies

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All photos courtesy of Hostgator M. Dotcom. We first spoke with him in April 2013, when he was still gaming for a Guinness World Record, and then again a month later, when he was still trying to sell more tattoos.

What do you do when you're broke, Christmas is around the corner, and you need to buy gifts for your five kids? If you're Hostgator M. Dotcom, you do what you've gotten into the habit of doing and sell advertising space on your face to someone via eBay .

Since 2005, Dotcom had been slowly auctioning off parcels of his skin to companies, acquiring more than 30 tattoos in the process. At first he got thousands of dollars a pop by directly contacting companies with the offer, which kept his family out of the streets for an extra month or two each time. But the real estate value of his body declined. Finally, around 2008 (Dotcom can't quite remember, because the meds he now takes make dates fuzzy), it plummeted to rock bottom: $75 bucks for a face tattoo. Not even enough to pay a phone bill, let alone save Christmas.

He went through with the deal anyway. "I had to do it, because I didn't want to go against the eBay policy," the 34-year-old tells me. "But it was really hard."

Dotcom became famous as an early online curiosity in the mid 2000s, but after the media attention faded away, the poverty and mental illness that drove him to sell his face remained. Today he's trying to turn his life around, but before he can do that he needs a clean slate, literally. And the sad irony is, now that "Billy the Billboard" needs the attention more than ever, he can't raise the money he needs to erase the tattoos and get a fresh start.

Read: A Q & A with Hostgator When He Was Still Looking to Sell More Space on His Body

Before he was Hostgator Dotcom, he was William Gibby, a white kid with holes in his clothes who grew up in a poor neighborhood in the Bay Area. His father, Mel, was a meat manager at Safeway, and his mother, Sandra, worked in a fast-food restaurant until heart problems forced her to quit. After they divorced, the then 16-year-old decided to move with his ex–merchant marine dad to Anchorage, Alaska, where he got his GED and made a life for himself.

As a young adult, Gibby spent a lot of time meeting people on Yahoo Messenger and in chat rooms. Six years after the move, in 2003, Dotcom started chatting to Myra Avila, a 18-year-old high school senior. The two eventually married and had a son. A couple years later he started talking to a 34-year-old woman named Kathy Lee who needed a kidney—and who would become his motivation for his initial sponsored tattoo, for GoldenPalace.com, an online casino. He donated his kidney to Lee, and used the money from the tattoo to finance his recovery time.

At the time, his altruism made headlines—in 2005, it was unusual to get to know someone via the internet, let alone decide to give them one of your kidneys. But Gibby seemed sanguine about the sacrifice . "I figure the more people I can help, the better place the earth will be," he told Bloomberg News.

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Gibby wasn't the first to join the so-called skinvertisting trend. That title would have to go to boxer Bernard Hopkins, who in 2001 wore a GoldenPalace.com temporary tattoo on his back during a match, which earned the fighter a reported $100,000. (The gambling site made this sort of stunt a hallmark of its advertising campaign in the early 2000s.) In 2003, a 22-year-old Illinois man named Jim Nelson got a permanent etching of a web hosting company's name on the back of his head and another guy sold temporary advertising space on his forehead; in 2005 a Utah woman got a GoldenPalace.com tattoo on her forehead in exchange for $10,000 that she said would go to private school for her son.

Gibby's motives seemed purer than those of other skinvertisers, but his manic generosity had a flip side, Avila tells VICE. She remembers him sliding into deep depressions, drinking and cheating and being all over the place emotionally. "If he missed one day of work, he'd say he ruined everything and couldn't go back," she says. "He would be so excited about stuff and then just so down. I told him to get help, and he said nothing was wrong with him."

In 2006, the couple separated, according to Avila. Gibby wasn't destitute—he boasted a 19-0 record on the local Alaska boxing circuit and balanced that with jobs as both a mail clerk and liquor store clerk—but like most working-class people, he could always use extra cash to help make ends meet. So he decided to sell his chest to the highest bidder on eBay. Although he says now that companies like Toyota expressed interest at his idea, no one bit.

Then, when the economy tanked in the late 2000s, Gibby was laid off from his two jobs. He knew what he had to do to keep his kids of the streets. "I didn't want to get tattoos on my face, but I kept thinking, I'm gonna get old anyway, and I'm gonna look like shit anyway someday, " he rationalizes. "You have to be willing to sacrifice for your children. I didn't want them to be homeless and live on the street."

Several adult companies cut him checks, he says. But the money struggles didn't end there. After all, who would want to hire someone with XXX etched onto his face? The only choice, then, was to get more tattoos. In 2009, Avila finally filed for divorce, according to court records. His money problem apparently grew worse, with creditors taking him to small-claims court soon after. In 2010, he sold his name to Hostgator.com for an undisclosed sum.

Through all this, he was dating a woman named Mailyne, whom he met when they both worked at Sam's Club. They would later marry and have two kids.

"The first time I saw him, I was thinking bad things about him because of his tattoos... But he's got a big heart once you get to know him." —Tonya Muse, a co-worker of Dotcom's

By, 2012, when Dotcom appeared on ABC's 20/20 to tell his story, his face had been inked more than times; some of the domain names scrawled across his visage contained words like "porn" and "fart." When the segment was being filmed, a company called Pawnup had just paid $4,000 to colonize his forearm. "What kind of company would pay to advertise like this?" host Nick Watt asked. "Isn't it taking advantage of people in bad circumstances?"

Read: Another Interview With Hostgator When He Thought Companies Were Going to Pay to Have His Tattoos Removed

Actually, Dotcom attributes his decisions to rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, which he was diagnosed with a couple of years ago at the Anchorage Community Mental Health Center. Now he's medicated, has a job counseling other people with mental illnesses, and is struggling to make his way back into the working world. "The first time I saw him, I was thinking bad things about him because of his tattoos," a co-worker named Tonya Muse remembers. "But he's got a big heart once you get to know him. You can tell he really cares about his kids."

Even though his mood swings have evened out, every time Dotcom looks in the mirror he's depressed. A study published in the Annals of Plastic Surgery in 2005 found that people who had experienced facial trauma had a lower satisfaction with life, as well as higher incidences of unemployment, substance abuse, and marital problems, than a control group. Dotcom could be said to have facial trauma of a sort—albeit a self-inflicted trauma spread out over the years. Now he's working on getting his face back.

So far, the mental health center has helped him get a $2,000 grant to remove most of the tattoos on his cheeks. "I have about 15 on my head and maybe eight on my face of varying shades," he says. "When you wear makeup you can barely see them, but I feel like a woman." Now he walks around in a hoodie and baseball cap even when it's the middle of summer and is desperate to start fresh.

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Hostgator always wears a hat to cover up the darkest of his tattoos. The rest he obscures with makeup and blurry selfies.

To that end, in 2013 he offered to sell other areas of his body to raise money to get the face tattoos wiped, but there weren't any takers, though a porn site did pay to have some of the tats removed. Last year, he started a crowdfunding campaign, but he noticed that the media that had covered him as a freakshow was less interested in the aftermath. The attention faded away, and he was only able to raise $20.

When he looks in the mirror, he doesn't even recognize himself. But for some of his kids, their tatted-up dad is the only dad they know.

"My daughter knew I wanted to get them removed and she was like, 'No! I don't want you to get your tattoos removed,'" Dotcom says. "And I'm like, 'Sweetie, no, it will be better for us. I can get a better job and take care of us better.' She'll cry, because that's all she's known."

Now he both wants to get the tattoos off and change his name back to something that won't raise eyebrows on a résumé. To take care of the former, he's started another crowdfunding campaign. (Progress is slow, and he's only raised $5 in 24 days.)

But technically, he could have already changed his name. He says that the hosting company has changed owners, and he doesn't really have a contract with them anyway.

So why doesn't he?

"It's just like, people laugh about it," he says. "I don't really care what people think, but it's fun to see their reactions."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

You can donate to Hostgator M. Dotcom's crowdfunding campaign here.

Portraits of Belgrade's Immigrants and the Phones They Can't Live Without

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This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia.

Thousands of immigrants from Asia and Africa pass through Belgrade every day on their way to what they hope will be a better life in one of the more stable European countries—like Germany or the United Kingdom.

Their stories are tragic, sad, and often unbelievable. Hanging around Belgrade's Central Park alone or with their families, often hopeful but sometimes hopeless, there is one thing they all have in common—they never stop staring at their mobile phones. The phones help them keep in touch with their families and friends back home, as well as local contacts that are their key to reaching their ultimate destinations. Sometimes though, they just need those phones to play Candy Crush Saga.

Photographer Aleksandra Ajdukovic spent a day in Belgrade's Central Park getting to know these tired and bored-looking travelers who spend their days waiting for a sign that it's OK to move on.

The Most Outrageous Parts of Last Night’s Panel on Ontario’s Sex Ed Curriculum

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Heaven forfend! Photo via Flickr user romana klee

Ontario recently instituted a new, slightly less out-of-date sex education curriculum, and hoo boy, are people mad. There are a lot of people who are really mad about this horrible sexual education their children are getting. Unfortunately for everyone, those angry people also seem to be misinformed about the very thing they're so mad at.

A good case in point is Feras Marish, who appeared with sex educator Nadine Thornhill and erstwhile Sun News host Michael Coren (more on him in a bit) on Ontario public TV news show The Agenda to talk sex and kids. But not sex with kids.

Marish, who organized the Facebook group Parents Against Ontario Sex-Ed Curriculum, had a lot to say about the new curriculum, and also about how he doesn't actually oppose sex ed wholesale. Oh, no. He definitely wants kids to be educated about sex! It just happens that the things he does oppose are either outlandish or so vague that they do, effectively, mean he opposes the entire idea of sex ed in public schools.

Below, we've compiled the best ("best") parts of the panel. If you want to watch for yourself (and who could resist), skip to the time marked by each. Thornhill doesn't figure very prominently below because everything she said was well-grounded in fact. She's probably a great sex educator.

Learning about masturbation will make kids sex offenders (5:22)
"When I see a statement to Grade 6, and a teacher is telling them, 'You can explore yourself and it's not harmful,' well, we know a lot of researchers that say masturbation is harmful when it goes beyond a certain level," Marish said to astonishment from around the table.

According to Marish, masturbating is an addiction, and when kids start doing it they don't stop there! They become sex-crazed monsters intent on fornicating with everyone they see. One has to wonder if he thinks that of all masturbation or only of masturbation given the tepid approval of a public-school teacher.

"They're gonna get even more and more charged, and they're gonna start becoming sex offenders," he said, citing a "November 24, 2015" case from the UK wherein a young boy raped a classmate after a sex ed class.

This logic is hard to follow: kids will become sex offenders if their teachers say it's okay to masturbate, but not if teachers don't say that? Is that because kids won't masturbate at all without a teacher condoning it, or is it the teacher's approval that turns them into sex maniacs?

Sex-related fear-mongering aside, we could all learn a thing or two from sex ed opponents like Marish about respecting the awesome powers teachers hold over their students.

Sex ed is okay! But parents are the only people who should do it and actually you know what? It is bad (7:55)
Marish says he "absolutely" agrees that there's a difference between promoting and teaching about sex, before essentially disagreeing completely. The new sex ed curriculum is "promoting [sex], because there are adults that are not able to control themselves."

Here, Marish has deployed the time-honoured tradition of putting two things together and pretending they're connected. "This is promoting sex rather than teaching about sex" is not at all related to the idea that "there are adults who can't or don't control themselves sexually." Those are just two separate ideas floating in the universe, like "my favourite day is Thursday" and "chocolate is sweet." While those two things may be true, I can't reasonably argue that chocolate is sweet because my favourite day is Thursday.

"There are resources out there that we all receive in our emails, that talks about using vegetables to try masturbation, or doing this or doing that. What kind of a classroom would that be?" (8:30)
Are there? Do we all receive these "resources"? Is he talking about porn?

These are just a few of the many, many questions one could ask after hearing this statement. Michael Coren asked if this was a part of the curriculum, at which point Marish said no, because obviously, this is not a part of the curriculum. But just because it's "not a part of the curriculum" and is in fact "just a thing Feras Marish made up" doesn't mean it's not a cause for concern!

"It's not in the curriculum," Marish admits, "but it's a resource that will be used."

So, you know, be worried.

Michael Coren was a progressive voice of reason (throughout)
One of the most upsetting aspects of this panel has to be that Michael Coren, formerly a reliable arch-conservative, was forcefully and consistently on the side of reason. He took a well-placed shot at the Catholic church from which he's only recently converted (to Anglicanism, so he's not exactly starting an anarcho-atheist commune), he called out the homophobia undergirding the curriculum's opposition, and he repeatedly pointed to the curriculum as fact-based and mainstream. He even cited Europe as an example to follow, for god's sake.

Is Coren finally shedding the hideous pupa of conservatism to reveal his beautiful socialist butterfly wings? Only time will tell.

It's cheap and easy to assume that people who disagree with you are intellectually lazy or inferior, and if your aim is to build some sort of consensus or working relationship across ideological lines, it's not helpful. But Marish's statements, which echo larger concerns in the anti-sex-ed-reform movement, just don't make sense. Faced with opposition so misinformed—or, perhaps worse, willfully ignorant—it's hard to know what to do other than throw up your hands in despair and keep teaching kids about sex.

Hopefully the kids educated under this new regime won't be so prudish about using vegetables as teaching instruments.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: A Red-Headed Terrorist Allegedly Wanted to Assassinate Prince Charles So a Ginger Could Be King

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Photo via Flickr user DVIDSHUB

Yahoo News reported today that conservative extremist Mark Colborne allegedly plotted to "put a bullet in [Prince] Charles' head" and earn red-headed Prince Harry a shot at the British throne because he felt gingers were a discriminated minority. Police found details of the plans in a notebook seized from Mark Colborne, a red-headed English man who is accused of planning terrorist acts before his arrest in the summer of 2014.

In the notebook, Colborne wrote that he wanted people "to see [his] transition from poor red-haired victimized minority that is constantly walked over to a fully transformed military terrorist." Unfortunately for Colborne's alleged plan, Prince Harry wouldn't become king following the assassination of Charles—the crown would pass to Charles's oldest son, Prince William. If William died, it would go to his oldest son, George. If George died, William's daughter Charlotte would be queen. Harry's fifth in line for the throne.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About Gingers?

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2. This Woman Is Trying to Save French Gingers from Extinction
3. 'Kiss a Ginger Day' Was Just an Excuse for Perverts to Be Perverts
4. Would You Rather Be Ginger or Unemployed?

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