Photo via Flickr user Oliver Holzbauer

Read: The Man Who Photographs Plane Wrecks

This summer, a major domestic airline will start powering its jets with alternative fuels for the first time, cutting down carbon pollution in an industry that is one of the fastest growing contributors to global warming on Earth.

The New York Times reports that United Airlines will begin testing fuel made partially from refined animal fats and farm waste—read: animal poop—on a flight from LA to San Francisco. For a two-week trial, United will run four to five California flights a day on a mix of 30-percent biofuel and 70-percent jet fuel. If all goes according to plan, United will then start to blend the biofuel into their overall supply.

On Tuesday, United announced that they're investing $30 million in Fulcrum BioEnergy, one of the world's largest producers of sustainable jet fuel. That's the biggest investment an airline has ever made in the field of alternative fuels.

Fulcrum told the New York Times that their biofuel can cut an airline's carbon emissions by 80 percent compared with standard jet fuel, which is a big deal—carbon is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas pollution, and carbon emissions lead to a rise in global temperatures, a rising sea level, and an uptick in natural disasters, heat waves, and droughts, according to the EPA.

In 2013, United agreed to buy 15 million gallons of biofuels from AltAir fuels, the dudes who turn animal shit into gas. The first five million gallons, which AltAir will deliver to the airline this summer, are going to help power United's flights to San Francisco. While five million gallons might sound like a lot, it's really only a drop in the bucket for United, which used up 3.9 billion gallons of jet fuel last year.

Nell Zink's books aren't for everyone. They're freaky. They're upsetting. They're far too smart. Every suspicion I had about Zink—that she's probably a genius, that this is all some sort of game she's playing with us, laughing down at her keyboard with that long, gray-brown hair twitching across her face—was confirmed during our two hours together in the backyard of a grotesquely overpriced coffee shop on the Upper West Side. She was staying at Jonathan Franzen's place a few blocks away—"It's not bad," she said, with a poorly-contained smile. Franzen was off birding with his wife, somewhere on the African continent. Usually, Zink lives in Bad Belzig, Germany. She refers to the town as "infrastructure," and gripes only about her downstairs neighbor, a little person (she shows me by estimating his height with her hand) who blasts his television far too loud and likes to pull his trousers down to the edge of his pubic hair, as an intimidation tactic. Zink guesses she'll move soon. At 51, she carries herself like a 27-year-old: with curiosity and cocky grace.

Zink was stateside for just a few weeks, in anticipation of the publication of her second book, Mislaid. We met the day after her New Yorker profile was published. She had just sold her third book, titled Nicotine and written in three weeks this March and April. In her breathable fabric tanktop and cargo pants, it could fairly be said that the author was riding a high.

And why shouldn't she be? Has any woman over the age of 35 burst onto the scene with as much deserved bravado as Zink? Has any recent small-press novel—by a woman, about a woman—gained as much unexpected attention as The Wallcreeper? And would anyone among us—male, female, of any race—living in America dare to write a novel wherein a hot young lesbian co-ed shacks up with a gay playboy poetry professor before running away with her daughter to the backwaters of Virginia, pulling a Dolezal and pretending to be black? I think not. Because to write a book like Mislaid, you have to simultaneously be aggressively assured of your own cultural experience and have, truly, zero fucks to give. You have to be ready for the eggs to hit you, if they get thrown. And you have to have the rare smarts and narrative chops that can pull off a book that reads easy while methodically knocking at the reader's conscience. In an age where our major authors are focused on writing the stories of their post-9/11 Brooklyn lives, Zink has written the story of the South in the 1970s and 80s, from a studio apartment in Bad Belzig, Germany. The woman is riding a high she has earned.

VICE spoke with Zink about all the best things: money, sex, and feeling empowered in the face of literary-male mediocrity.

VICE: Where were you before you moved to Belzig?
Nell Zink: I was living in Southwestern Germany, in this perfect, dirt-cheap apartment. But I got involved with somebody who lives in Northeastern Germany and, what do you do? Because the thing we do together in the summertime is hang out by these lakes with very idyllic, very clear water.

That's very romantic.
It's a fine line between the romantic and other things that are unthinkable.

I read that you finish each book in three weeks—
I have this three-weeks fetish. Everything takes three weeks in my life. That's how long I can keep working, and then I feel like wrapping it up.

Are you just cranking the work out during those three weeks, or does that include editing and rewriting?
Cranking and rewriting. I tend to sort of work full-time during that period, and then I stop. My plan for my next book is to just do it the way everyone else does it, which is to do that several times in a row and have interrelated stories. A lot of people's so-called novels are actually cycles of novellas, or even short stories. Maybe there's a certain amount of time they can concentrate on a work of a certain size.

When you're working as a writer, you tend to expand that size. You get better and better at keeping what's going on. Breaking the 100-page mark is hard. Keeping a 100-page thing in your head. Still having an overview of what happens on every page. You get to a point where you can do that for 300 pages, and it's just practice.

The next book is going to be really big, and so deep and so important, and get a really mind-blowing advance and all the prizes. I have a whole plan for world domination.

And you've been practicing forever, now.
I've been practicing. The Wallcreeper... the first 50 pages I wrote in four days. Ten hours a day, with revisions. It got cranked out. I don't think I changed a word after that. When I wrote the rest of it, I didn't look at those first 50 pages. Writing The Wallcreeper was something very private that I was doing for myself. I started writing that book in August, and I finished on New Year's Eve.

Is that when you're going to write your next book?
Well, my next book to be published is one that I wrote in March and April. It's already written. But the next one is going to be really big, and so deep and so important, and get a really just mind-blowing advance and all the prizes. I have a whole plan for world domination.

You're coming from the Franzen school of knowing how to describe a book you're working on...
Is that how he describes a book he's working on?

Back in the day he said he was working on the Great American Novel.
He makes a mistake, saying "the" Great American Novel. You've got to define American. Of course, people want the Great American Novel to be one that includes a war. But the minute you include a war, it's not just American. I think that's something he's getting at. But if we're talking about a conflict, something global, something international, it's not the same as when [Franzen], in Freedom, sits down to say: "What are we doing to our mountaintops?"

There was a period when nobody was listening to me when I talked, so I could just go around saying, "Oh, I don't like anything written after 1930." And nobody cared if I said that or not. Now, this is not something I really want to go around trumpeting.

Because those are your peers now?
It's also not true. I like my own books. They're new. I was so heavy into dead writers, because I liked Expressionism and when it's done now, it's so kitschy. I like Bruno Schulz, but it's annoying when Nicole Krauss or Cynthia Ozick tries to be Bruno Schulz.

So I was heavy into all these dead guys. Then all of a sudden I began to know—beyond my friend Avner—other people writing novels in English, who are themselves thinking in a very serious way, What should a novel be? What kind of novel should I be writing? People like Keith Gessen, or Franzen, who are thinking these thoughts. Not thinking about a specific agenda they want to advance, but really thinking about the novel, which is what gets Franzen into trouble. It's like, who died and left him boss of the novel?

People look to the tall white guys to be our avant-garde because they're the ones who are not obligated to be political, in the sense of advancing some agenda.

I guess his thinking is: If other people aren't thinking about the novel, why shouldn't he?
Well, it's a boring topic. But it's just the classic thing that because he's a tall, educated, white guy. In a weird, contradictory sense, he feels like he's the avant-garde. People look to the tall white guys to be our avant-garde because they're the ones who are not obligated to be political, in the sense of advancing some agenda. There's no great collective injustice that Franzen is trying to right. You know, R-I-G-H-T. He's the one who can say, "OK, I'm in good condition. I can talk about the novel."

It's easy for anyone to adopt that pose. It's just a pose. It's an artistic position.

Would you like your work to not have the burden of righting any wrong?
No, not at all. I try to be as political as I can! These art-for-art's-sake novels, like I said, I haven't read that many. But I read both novels by Ben Lerner and they're very... art for art's sake. And I read the Jenny Offill thing and thought, OK, I guess she's the girl in the Ben Lerner novels or something.

They are sort of like companion books, aren't they?
I mean, [both novels feature] people very much concerned with their own lives and questions of domestic affairs, in the narrowest sense.

People are so excited about your voice because it's distinct and different from that cluster of writers. Is that because you're all the way off in Belzig?
Often I would say yes. People are social animals. If I had lived in Brooklyn surrounded by women or men writing these very domestic works concerned with existential questions, those would be my friends and acquaintances and I would probably position myself in that field. But the epigraph to Mislaid is that thing from Poe. "Among the rabble, men"—not that Brooklyn is the rabble—"Lion ambition is chain'd down... Not so in deserts where the grand, the wild, the terrible conspire..."

That's what I was getting at. Tidewater, Virginia, was a desert. And Germany is definitely a desert. And so my ambition knew no bounds. Not up, not down: I could be as coarse and stupid as I wanted, as lovely and poetic as I wanted, and write about anything I damn well please. That's not necessarily the case if you have an editor looking at you, or a workshop reading you, or friends who care, or any of that.

With Mislaid, you were no longer writing without an editor, without an audience. You were writing for a major publishing house and a serious audience. Did that change the experience of writing, for you?
When I wrote Mislaid, I was a lot more careful. And when I was editing it, when it was being edited by other people, I just... made a game out accepting all those suggestions.

Really?
Really. I just said, "Well, OK, she doesn't like this scene, I'll cut it out and see what I can do with what's left." I didn't care. I wanted the money! Are you kidding? Because when I sold that book, they said, "Well, we'll have to revise it over the summer." And then my translation customers would say, "Can you translate a book in June?" And I couldn't. If you say no to a freelance customer once then it's over, you'll never work for them again.

So you just did whatever the editors wanted.
I wouldn't say that, because I trust myself to rebel. I know from experience, if I do my very best to submit and do everything everybody tells me to do exactly the way they tell me to, it won't happen. I'm just too perverse that way.

So if somebody deletes a scene I just say OK, I can get that material in somewhere else. I ended up compacting and compressing things that people didn't seem to be getting. When I'm writing to an audience I know they're going to be reading it, and I want them to keep reading it, not throw it down.

You want [your plot] to be gripping, to make total strangers read it and not put it down, because you can't get an editor to look at it unless they don't want to put it down. And it won't be reviewed unless the reviewer failed to put it down. So you have to go to great lengths to make every page just like, "Read me, read me, read me." I don't want to be Dan Brown, but I need to be a little bit of a mix between Nell Zink and Dan Brown if I want to sell some books. And I would like to do that because I like this job. This is definitely the best job I ever had. I do not want to quit this job.

Is there as much pleasure in writing that way as writing when you don't have to worry about your reader "getting it"?
When you write something and you're revising it completely to your own tastes... well, it's very simply a question of power. When the second New York Times review appeared for The Wallcreeper, I was empowered. It was that simple. That was the moment when I could say, "No." From then on, I feel like my status with the people I work with in Literary Land... it was like a switch was flipped that day.

Does that bother you at all?
Why should it?

I know that's how the world works, but...
Writing, creating art, is something I'd been doing on my own time all along for fun. Completely free. If I want to play the game of getting advances in New York City and making a living, I'm going to play that game.

I don't want to be Dan Brown, but I need to be a little bit of a mix between Nell Zink and Dan Brown if I want to sell some books.

Do you feel like the discipline you acquired as a bricklayer is part of what keeps you going?
No, I was raised to be a worker. And to... abuse willpower to get things done.

So you've always been that way?
When I was young, I would start a new job, realize it was really bad, and then I'd submit it to the "Gulag Archipelago" test. I would stick with the job if it didn't involve being barefoot in Siberia in the winter. I had very low expectations, so I did very terrible jobs. If I had said no and quit a lot more, I'd be way better off.

Do you think you'd be writing full-time earlier? How would you be better off?
People I know who were just spoiled a little more as children, they're the ones you run into and ask what they're doing and they say, "Oh, I'm beta-testing video games." Because if you offered them a job digging ditches, they'd just look at you like, "What?" Whereas I didn't apply any sort of class standards to myself. I would do any job anybody gave me. I don't know if if was a self-esteem thing.

You seem like you have lots of self-esteem.
I wouldn't claim I was blessed with... look, I was profiled in the New Yorker yesterday. You're probably seeing my self-esteem at an all-time high. Because as the social psychologists know very well, self-esteem is just social status.

It takes incredible strength of character to stick to your principles and ideals if your social surroundings don't support them. That's why even AIDS activists are constantly going to conferences. Why? To get the social reinforcement to keep them going.

I saw Yoko Ono speak a few days ago. She said something to that effect, about how she'd been working as an artist, unrecognized, for 40 years—
Oh yeah, Yoko Ono was alone in the wilderness with no one to encourage her work. That chick is out of her mind!

From the VICE archive: Leave Jonathan Franzen Alone by Emily Gould

To talk a bit about Mislaid, I found the ending to be frustratingly neat, until I started to see the bigger picture. Were you going for a Shakespearean comedic tying up of ends?
Hell yeah! Yes. Yes.

Was the ending a touch sarcastic, then? None of the characters do anything to resolve their situation. Life just brings everyone together. Or did you mean it in earnest, that sometimes in life everything falls to hell and then life resolves itself?
It was mostly just... I don't like suspense. I have to force myself to put suspense in when I'm writing. I like seeing the same movies over and over. I could watch Vincente Minnelli's Gigi day after day. I know how it ends.

When you go to see something like Shakespeare, you know how it's gonna end. Shakespeare isn't the only example. You know the end of Oedipus Rex, but you might see it anyway. At the end of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you know what's going to happen, too. In Mislaid, you know very well where it's headed, and what I was playing with was the disconnect between the characters and their attitudes toward what's going on. Because the reader knows what's going on, I can suggest perspectives of different characters on it and show how completely they exist in their own world.

It's not straight-up realism, but it has the trappings of realism, to make it readable, and also partly because I was pulling my punches when I wrote it. I was writing about things that I regarded as controversial. If I were sitting down to write the same book now, I would be a lot more direct about some of the themes. I wouldn't be oblique.

Why not?
Because I realized that if you're oblique, people aren't necessarily gonna get it. If you have something to say, you should probably say it.

If you enter into a life partnership, you have to—half the time, at least—subordinate your desire to somebody else's. If the other person wants to have pygmy goats, you have to live in the country and take care of those goats.

And what were you trying to say?
For example, some points about the subtlety of racism in the South. There was a review in the Chicago Tribune where the person said, you know, "Racism has no adverse consequences for little Temple and little Karen—she gets a minority scholarship!" OK. These people are run off their land, forced to live in a rental project. Temple, who is a completely brilliant guy, he doesn't get a good elementary education, he doesn't get a good secondary education. He goes off to college absolutely unprepared and is unable to even come close to thinking about achieving what he wants to achieve, which is to work at the State Department. To pass that test, to work at the State Department, you have to be from the loftiest family and have gone to the best university. He doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell, and he doesn't know it until he's there.

Many of the disadvantages that Temple has are the same disadvantages that you have if you're just a white outsider, if you're white but you're not a member of the Bush clan. White and not a Kennedy. I made certain things subtle or I made them crass, but in misleading ways. You know, just playing my usual games as I'm writing. And this amuses the living tar out of some people. They'll read it and just be laughing their asses off the entire time. But if you want to make money, you can't write for those 15 people. You have to make the story work on several levels, and not foreground the subtle level quite so much.

Like how Sesame Street works for kids and for grown-ups.
It's a matter of practice. It's still a game for me. With the thing I wrote in March and April [Zink's next novel, Nicotine], I was like, I've done it. I've taken the Porsche and put it in whatever gears Porsches have and not lost contact with the road.

In both of your books, female characters' lives are often played out as the consequence of their partners'. Is there a warning against marriage in your work?
It's definitely not a generational difference because God knows in my generation women slept around. But I think it's fair to say that people underestimate how much a strong sex drive leads to pair bonding. People have this image that a guy with a strong sex drive will be fucking everything that moves. Well, that's not what a guy with a strong sex drive typically does. [Instead] he'll jump on somebody and stick to her like glue and drive her out of her mind with his endless demands for sex.

Women's sex drives can lead them to think obsessively about babies, night and day. And to want stability and someone they can count on. People have this image: "Oh, if your sex drive is really strong, you'll just go out to a bar and pick up somebody different every night." That's not the reality. I think in Mislaid what ties Peggy to Lee initially is her sex drive and his. And then: There they are.

God knows I've known enough women who got pregnant and ended up tied to a guy, financially dependent. Some of them didn't want to be at all. They're like, "I'm gonna raise this child alone," and then seven months into the pregnancy, they say, "What was his phone number again? I think I wanna call him up now." Then they end up living with him.

A baby is a powerful thing.

Maybe you should say the question again.

These days if I hear a guy say, 'I want to marry her,' I hear it as an act of aggression. Somebody who wants to marry you wants you to have fallen in love for the last time already.

Is there a warning in your books?
A warning about what?

Is it inherent that if a woman marries—if a woman ties herself to a man—no matter how progressive the partnership is (because the Mislaid partnership is pretty progressive, especially for its time), the will of the woman will be largely subordinated to the will and drive of the man?
I don't think you have to say woman and man. If you enter into a life partnership with anybody for any reason, you have to—half the time, at least—subordinate your desire to somebody else's. And no matter how benign that person is, no matter how nice, you're not going to have everything in common. You're going to have your own wishes and desires. And it will change you. Sometimes very radically. It determines where you can live, what kind of work you do. Economic partnerships very strongly affect your choices about jobs and so on.

You know, if the other person wants to have pygmy goats, you have to live in the country and take care of those goats.

Is that always a bad thing?
Well. The choice I've made in my own life, to not be in that kind of partnership, sort of speaks for itself.

But you've entered those partnerships.
Yeah, but it depends. I know married people where it totally works. I just don't happen to be that person. I tend to accommodate someone I'm with, and get real freedom only by having time to myself. If you're like that, then you have to guard yourself.

VICE Meets Miranda July:

You're sort of freaking me out. I got engaged earlier this year, and I'm 22. And he lives in England.
You're 22 and engaged? Are you drunk?

Something like that.
You're thinking of moving to England.

I'm eventually going to have to.
Do the smart thing. Marry this guy. Move to England. Have two children.

What?
Do it when you're 24. Get it out of the way. You'll be 40 with adult kids! It will be so much fun!

That sounds terrible! Once you have kids, you can never do anything again!
Don't get married. I swear to you: Do not get married. It changes nothing about your relationship, but it makes breaking up impossible—really a huge pain in the ass—where you need, like, an act of Congress. There's no reason on God's Earth to get married in this day and age because it changes nothing. If you do have a child, it changes nothing. It doesn't even change alimony if he gets rich while you're together. There is nothing that it helps and a lot that it hurts because it will drive you apart when you have some stupid fight because...

Because you're stuck.
Feeling trapped is something I can't stand. Falling in love is the most wonderful, enjoyable thing I personally have done, probably. These days if I hear a guy say, "I want to marry her," I hear it as an act of aggression. Somebody who wants to marry you wants you to have fallen in love for the last time already. He wants you to never fall in love again! He wants you to take this highest pleasure that God above has created for the consolation of mankind and he wants you to never do it again! Because you can't fall in love with him.

The super mega-rush of falling in love with him for the first time, you're not gonna have it. What you're gonna have is stuff like, "We haven't had sex in two and a half months, maybe this weekend we should go to Ischia? Maybe if we fly to Ischia it will turn us on?"

Oh no! That's not what it's like.
Well, not for everyone. Marriage is a strange American institution where people say, "I'm gonna have hot sex with the same person for the next 50 years!" What the fuck planet are you from?! Are you homo sapiens? Is this space aliens talking? Read some Walt Whitman or something. I'm not entirely sure that's what humans are made to do. And of course, there's no pot so crooked there isn't a lid to fit it. My mother said there are people who do not have people giving them the eye every day, and they find one person who's willing to touch them at all and that's it. Looking at you, I'm not sure you're in that category. You're gonna have guys getting crushes on you from now until forever.

And now I can't fall in love with them.
You will fall in love with them. That's the problem. And then you'll suffer, and suffer, and suffer.

But aren't there so many other forms of suffering people get themselves into?
Yeah, but not all of them you do to yourself by signing on the dotted line that you'll never love anyone else.

That's the medieval version of class! It's fascist. It's like we have citizens and non-citizens.

I think you know far more than I do, given our respective times on Earth, but...
I know a lot about being me. You have to respect that some people don't have a sex drive that makes their lives this complicated. Plenty of people just placidly enter into the marriage bond and are perfectly happy.

You talk about sex well. You also write about sex very well. Basically better than any other writer I've read.
I've had friends remark about that too. Female friends say that when I talk about sex it's not embarrassing because I never make it pornographic. I never make it... sticky, squirmy. I don't know why that is. You know, my total lifetime consumption of pornography is probably three minutes or less. Maybe that has something to do with it.

At the end of Mislaid, the kids are all right. Do you think that children are resilient, in general? What these kids have gone through is beyond difficult, but they both turn into lovely young adults.
I think many people are lovely when they're young. So when you say they're all right, I think,They're all right. For now.

Bertie, the boy, he's the moniker of all he surveys in college. And Karen lives in this weird little world of her own. I give her this crazed self-confidence and self-assurance because she's just been left to herself so much. She's just a little tiny loner.

And she turns out beautiful.
Right. I suppose she's an incarnation of a figure that I've always sort of liked, something from Christian iconography: The triumphant baby lamb. There's the conquering lion of Judah, and there's also the conquering lamb of Judah. She carries a spear with a flag on it. In my animal stories, I always have the little baby lamb, who with her little flinty hooves fights off the anaconda. It's sort of like Hello Kitty with a flaming sword, or the Powerpuff Girls. The icy stare of defiant, outraged innocence that pierces armor.

Mislaid takes on a topic that makes Americans uncomfortable: class.
When you talk about class, it's a way of blaming the victim. That's something I try to bring out in Mislaid. Black people were disenfranchised, robbed, driven off the land. We don't need reparations for slavery—we need reparations for the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. I wrote Mislaid based on my own very vivid memories of the weird, unjust society of Tidewater, Virginia, with these good-old-boy assholes running everything. When I was in college, they tore down the black section of downtown Williamsburg and ran those people out of town. They gave them little apartments to live in, in a place that's still not on a map, not incorporated. When it comes to class, we discriminate against people who have been raised with no resources, given no education, provided no extra-curricular activities, housed in slums, and treated like shit every day.

It's difficult for me, coming from Germany. Of course Germany has an entrenched class system, but at the same time, an unemployed German has a constitutional right to his own apartment and 400 euros a month to eat. You don't get desperate poverty. You don't get people trapped in lives of crime because they have absolutely no other option. There's class here [in America] partly because if you've been convicted of a felony, you can't work again and you can't vote! And what is a felony? It's if you steal something worth $1,000. Didn't it used to be $5,000? I think they lowered it!

That's the medieval version of class! It's fascist. It's like we have citizens and non-citizens. But I think it's important to distinguish between that and class prejudice.

I found it interesting that you write a book that forced readers to think about class and you wrote it from outside the country, while a lot of our writers living in New York—who are surrounded by American class injustice everyday—aren't taking on those topics.
[If I were living in America], it would be very hard for me to write down a long scene with dialogue set in a black household in Georgia. I would have to research it in a way that other people would find distasteful. I would have to copy dialect from black authors, see how they spell certain things. It would get real hairy real fast. So you end up writing about your own milieu, and some people take it too far and write about people just exactly like them in every way.

Some people don't have that sort of ballsiness that I have partly because, in the distance, nobody's going to throw eggs at me for writing this way. In Belzig, they have no idea that I'm doing this. I could take risks and be conscientious in my own way by just trying to be accurate about certain things I remember about black culture. Like when I say Temple's mother is a "master of laundry chemistry." That's something I find amusing. Black moms knew how to use bleach. You'd see these people in these white shirts that are just like, Whoa! It's just incredible. My mom wouldn't know bleach if it bit her in the ass.

Other writers, if they're working within a system where they're constantly being published and trying to get their stuff into literary magazines and they know editors and they know other writers, they always have something to lose.

But now don't you have something to lose?
Well, I don't know. People write really revolting shit all the time and get away with it. I don't want to give the wrong examples but, you know...

[Zink proceeds to give an off-the-record example of a prominent dead male author's writing, which includes vivid descriptions of incest and assault. In Zink's words, "Like American Psycho, but worse."]

So you're telling me I should be afraid to write anything? Obviously, I have nothing to lose. In any case, when I look at what passes for literature—for literary fiction—what am I gonna write that's gonna even compete?

So you're just free!
I'm damn free! I could scrape the inside of my mind and try to find the grossest stuff in there before I could even compete. I refuse to worry about it.

Nell Zink's Mislaid is out now from Ecco.

Follow Jennifer Schaffer on Twitter.

Don't wait until your loan bills pile up like this! Just don't! Photo via Flickr user me and the sysop

You've graduated high school and been accepted to a university or college. Congratulations! Higher education is a requirement for many jobs, especially the more lucrative ones, and aside from that it's a great experience in learning and growing (sexually and drug-experience-wise) for many people. But how will you pay for this incredible opportunity?

Because Canadian universities still charge tuition (which they don't need to do!) you will need several thousands of dollars each year in addition to your living costs. Some people are lucky enough to have parents with the means and willingness to cover their education, while others work to pay their way through school. There are also scholarships and bursaries, of course, but for many of us, at least some of the money for our education will come from student loans. The average student debt load upon graduation is about $27,000.

Students can get government loans from either their province, the federal Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP), or both, depending on the province or territory. (Private loans from banks are also available, but data is harder to find on how many Canadians are borrowing from them and how much they're borrowing.) Loans are interest-free until you graduate or leave school, or if you switch from full- to part-time status. Upon graduating or leaving school, everyone has six months before they need to begin repaying their government loan.

If you're one of the growing number of people who faces uncertain employment or low-wage work, though, repaying your student loan can be an intimidating thought. We spoke to Lance Lochner, a professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario, about what happens if you don't pay your loan and what your options are.

Lochner said that the horror stories we hear about American students leaving school with six-figure debt loads are actually quite rare in the US, and almost unheard-of in Canada (though not that uncommon for specialized programs like medicine or dentistry). However, a much more common $20,000 debt is going to be difficult to repay if you're working at Starbucks between freelance gigs. So what do you do?

Don't panic and decide to just ignore your loan!If you fail to make nine consecutive payments on your loan, it will go into default. That's very, very bad. Lochner said there's some discrepancy between what can happen and what does happen, but the can is pretty scary: the government can send debt collectors after you, take you to court, and seize your income-tax returns. And, of course, your credit will be ruined.

The good news is that CSLP has a program designed specifically for this situation. It's called the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) and if you're worried about your financial situation it is a godsend. You tell CSLP how much money you're making, and if it's under a certain threshold—around $20,000 for a single person with no children, according to Lochner, which is below the $22,700 poverty line—you don't have to make any payments on your loan. No one is entered into the program automatically, and you have to resubmit your information every six months, but if you qualify for a zero-dollar payment, CSLP will cover your interest over those six months. So while the amount you owe isn't going down, it's also not going up.

"It's really a big reduction for people earning less than $30,000, less than $20,000," said Lochner. Unless your debt load is especially high, RAP mostly benefits people making under $25,000. Once your income starts moving past that, into the $30,000-$40,000 per year range (or higher, if you should be so lucky), your payments are scaled according to your income up to about 20 percent. If they get large enough, you can also move out of the program and just make the regular payments calculated for you by CSLP (those are based on taking ten years to pay off your loan).

If you're low-enough income for long enough, you'll move into "stage two" of the repayment assistance process. In stage two, Lochner explained, it's not just your interest but your principal that RAP helps you pay down. This happens once you've been on reduced payments for five years or, if that doesn't happen, after ten years of you paying down your debt (and if you're approved for the Repayment Assistance Plan for Borrowers with a Permanent Disability). From the CSLP website:

"In Stage 2, the Government of Canada and your provincial government will continue to cover the interest owing that your revised payment does not cover and will start to cover a portion of the principal amount owing."

An important note for potential returning students: once you enter stage two you are no longer eligible for education funding from the government.

After 15 years, another happy milestone awaits: any outstanding debt is forgiven. Or, more accurately, the stage two payments made by the government are structured so that you have no debt after 15 years. So if you take one thing from this piece, make it this: all you have to do is be miserably poor for 15 years and you won't have to pay a dime on your student loans!

But, as Lochner said, "it's not a great outcome that anybody wants." Obviously the government doesn't want everyone getting free money, and more obviously, nobody wants to spend more than a decade living below the poverty line. As tempting as it might be in theory, there aren't going to be hordes of post-grads purposely living on Wal-Mart wages for a decade and a half.

But it is comforting to know that in Canada, there are ways to mitigate your student loan payments and the debt won't be hanging over your head for the rest of your life.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

Taylor Schilling as the still-living Piper Kerman. Image via OITNB Season Three Trailer on YouTube

By now, you, human streaming television viewer, have probably finished the third season of Orange Is the New Black, assuming it is a show that you're interested in. (If you haven't, turn back now because spoilers abound.) Unlike the previous two seasons, which delivered fairly standard "Prestige TV" narratives and generally adhered to the rules of logic and reality, season three said "fuck it" and threw damn near everything but the kitchen sink at the viewer.

Some of it was great, but more on that later. There were elements of distinct, focused insanity, like the subplot involving a full-on cult cohering around the silent Norma. That stuff was flat-out ridiculous, and not in a "fun ridiculous" way like a USA Network show, just in a "punctured the suspension of the viewer's disbelief" ridiculous. Characters were dispensed with left and right—the wise-ass recovering heroin addict Nicky got sent down the hill to maximum security, and the one-legged, one-penised guard Bennett skipped town after getting freaked out by the knowledge that he was going to have to raise an inmate's baby. Other elements of the show (Crazy Eyes becoming an unlikely erotic fictionalist, the ill-fated romance between prison cook Red and Counselor Healy, and the put-upon Warden Caputo turning heel after having sex with former Warden Figuerosa) were just plain bizarre.

Perhaps no character exhibited the show's encroachment upon shark-jumping better than erstwhile principal Piper Chapman, who in season three finds herself relegated to a bit player on the show. Having already cultivated a crop of bad vibes by getting her ex Alex sent back to the slammer, Piper spends the majority of her screentime transmogrifying into the most unlikable version of herself. While in the first two seasons Piper functioned as an audience surrogate in the strange land of prison, or—and this is an uncharitable view—as a robot programmed to act in the most awkward and clueless way possible, the Piper of season three bucks her programming, going rogue. She begins her unlikely road trip to Walter Whitesville by starting an illicit used-panty business with her brother Cal, dumping Alex for Stella, a tattoo-covered femme fatale who ends up robbing her (but not before she gives Pipes a prison tattoo that says "trust no bitch"), and then gets said bitch sent to maximum security by planting contraband in her bunk. Not to mention she has a tenuous relationship with the inmates who were assisting with her business, who have unionized in an attempt to get paid.

This pattern, of sending a main character completely off the deep end, is one that series creator Jenji Kohan also followed in the later seasons of Weeds, when she completely uprooted mom-pot mogul Nancy Botwin, banishing her from the exurbs on a wild-goose chase to Mexico. Weeds essentially asked viewers to remain invested in its characters long after it divorced them from the show's initial concept, which involved selling weed in a sleepy, manufactured Orange County town.

With Orange Is the New Black, Kohan has again accomplished this, albeit in the inverse. She's kept the location and concept the same, but sent her main character down a path that made her as unlikable as humanly possible. Now that Piper has shown herself to be selfish and probably more evil than anybody else she's in jail with, Kohan is asking us to hang on because of our love for everything surrounding Piper.

Related: The Real Nancy Botwin

It's a shame that Piper has become some sort of reverse-self-actualized jail cyborg, because the ensemble surrounding her has become that much more interesting. Danielle Brooks's Taystee comes into her own as a leader in the prison, and the viewer learns to sympathize with Pennsatucky, whose troubled history is delivered in unflinching detail. Litchfield Prison becomes privatized and converted to a for-profit institution, which offers an illustrative look into America's complicated relationship with the prison-industrial complex. By the end of the season, a whole host of new inmates are being bussed in, effectively doubling the prison's population.

It remains to be seen what these new inmates will be doing. Will they simply serve as obstacles to be navigated by the characters we already know? Will they inject new life into the show, offering new stories to be told? Perhaps one of them will shank someone. Perhaps one of them will shank Piper.

Now, I do not wish death upon anyone, even a fictional character. But at this point, Piper Chapman is deadweight on a show that was at first strictly about her. She's been painted into a corner. She's become a villain. This could be forgivable if she was still fun, but at this point the viewer's sympathy for Piper has all but evaporated. There's nothing left for her to do, no redemptive arc that could justifiably bring her back from betraying everyone close to her. If she gets released from Litchfield, that means we're going to be stuck with her for yet another season as she attempts to reintegrate into society, probably getting back with her equally distasteful ex Larry, who used Piper's unfortunate situation to gain literary fame. They're both shitty people, and they deserve each other. But there's no way the show can survive if we're asked to hang out with two simpering assholes for much longer.

There's always the possibility that Piper can get caught running her secret used-panty business (will the spurned Flaca turn snitch on her?), but that's no good either. She'll get sent to the maximum-security prison down the hill, which runs into the same problem that we're faced with if she gets released: that Piper takes screen time from characters who are genuinely interesting.

That leaves one option. She's gotta go.

Charlie Sheen, who played a character who is now dead. Photo via Wiki Commons

Killing off a show's main character is bold, but not unprecedented. Recently, the ever-confounding Game of Thrones axed Jon Snow, perhaps the show's only possible hero. As with any show featuring a robust cast of characters with byzantine plotlines, the show will be fine. After Charlie Sheen took his private shitshow public in 2011, Two and a Half Men killed his character off and threw Ashton Kutcher in his place. The show actually saw a ratings bump following Sheen's departure. The powers that be killed off Marine-turned-terrorist-turned-spy-turned-terrorist-turned-spy Brody in season three of Homeland, though the show's audience being jerked around seems to have led to a decline in the show's popularity. The Wire, of course, killed beloved characters off with seeming glee.

Orange Is the New Black has, perhaps, already set Piper's death up. She's pissed off a whole hell of a lot of people by turning on her girl Stella and firing Flaca from her business for trying to unionize. Cal, her panty-man on the outside, has developed a formula for making new panties smell used, so it's not like he necessarily needs Piper to keep sending him contraband. It's very possible that he could cut her out, leaving Piper's employees angry that their money has been fucked with. One of them could kill her in retaliation, or Stella could send word up the hill for someone to take Piper out. There's also Piper's ex Alex, who ends season three with a gun pointed in her face by a crooked guard who was sent in to assassinate her for snitching on the drug kingpin Kubra Balik. She's crafty, and it's not out of the question she could convince the guard to let her go in exchange for murdering Piper instead.

There's all sorts of ways this could go down. All Kohan has to do is pick one and take the rest of us out of our misery.

Follow Drew on Twitter.

Hosers we can get behind. Photo via Flickr user GoToVan

Happy Canada Day, fuckers!

Most of you are probably planning to get wasted off your face (or take drugs) and watch fireworks to celebrate tomorrow's midsummer stat holiday. But to really amp up the patriotic fervour, there's really no better way to celebrate our great nation than some neurotic hand-wringing about what it means to be Canadian. Navel-gazing made this country great, and don't you forget it.

Thankfully, just in time for your day off, Historica Canada commissioned an Ipsos-Reid poll to see how some classic Canadian clichés hold up in the harsh light of social science. These folks are the descendants of the organization whose Heritage Minutes convinced an entire generation of Canadian children that smelling burnt toast meant they were about to have a brain seizure, so you know that they're legit.

They surveyed just over 1,000 people online and weighted the results by age, region, gender, income, education, and family size to make it as representative as possible. Most of what they found was about what you'd expect.

It turns out that almost 60 percent of Canadians are pretty big on hockey, and a full 18 percent believe it's the greatest sport on earth. We can only assume that the 13 percent who said they're "sick to death of hearing about it all the time" work for ISIS (and will be soon featured in a Conservative attack ad targeting Justin Trudeau) and have already been removed by the Mounties to an undocumented black site. Even the Soviets had the decency to enjoy hockey.

About 65 percent of people have seen Canada's mascot—the noble beaver—in the wild, and more than half have also seen either a moose, a loon, or a bear somewhere in the great outdoors. However, people in Atlantic Canada or the West were slightly more likely to have gone outside (likely for nature in the West, or getting fucked up in the East). Those pulling in upwards of six-figure incomes were also marginally more likely than us plebs to have either seen one of our fine national animals in their natural habitat, or gone canoeing (88 percent) or dogsledding (16 percent). Indulging yourself in rustic Canadian authenticity takes a lot of money, I guess.

Speaking of national symbols, other surveys have shown that Tim Hortons is neck-and-neck with the Monarchy as a venerable Canadian institution. But I guess the pollsters figured that asking anyone what they thought about the great (mostly US-owned) Canadian doughnut shoppe this year risked triggering a flurry of racist threats on Twitter.

Celine Dion (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) was the artist 38 percent of those surveyed were proudest to call Canadian, and it spiked to 63 percent in la belle province. It's tempting to read the fact that only six percent wanted to give the throne to Drizzy as a another damning indictment of the country's whiteness, although then again, they didn't ask about Rush at all, so maybe it's just bad polling. I mean, how in the fuck you run a respectable survey about the Most Canadian Musicians without bringing up Geddy, Neil, and Alex is totally beyond me. Lord tunderin Jesus, indeed.

Close to 30 percent of people nationwide aren't planning on doing anything to mark Canada Day, although this goes up to 49 percent in Quebec. Vive les patriotes!, and Moving Day and all that. Only 14 percent of East Coasters plan to skip the day's festivities—proper thing given there's shit all to do and the Holy Canadian Trinity (The Tragically Hip, Our Lady Peace, and City and Colour) are usually in town for the region's One Big Show for the Year. Even in Newfoundand and Labrador, where we spend the morning in sombre reflection on the grotesquerie of war and the tragic folly of Man, we still manage to get the barbecues and beers going by the early afternoon. It may be less a celebration of Confederation's birthday than giving the Rock's lost generation an eternal Irish wake, but hey: a party's a party.

A full 81 percent of Canadians have "eh" as part of their regular linguistic rotation, although only about a quarter drop it in everyday conversation. Half of us only blurt it out occasionally, and another six percent only use it when they want to play themselves up as a hyper-hoser dancing bear for Americans. This is actually the only question in the survey that even comes close to broaching the subject of anti-Americanism, which is weird, because kneejerk hate for the USA is actually the most defining feature of Canadian identity. Aside from constantly over-analyzing Canadian identity, anyway. Sorry.

Confederation was built on "not being American." The Revolution in 1776 was a civil war and the British loyalists who carved a country out of northern North America never got over the loss. We chafe at these kitschy stereotypes of Canada as a nation of poutine-munching liberal lumberjacks, even while we wrap ourselves up in them. One of the highest watermarks in patriotism during the past 20 years was the Joe Canadian commercial, and that was just a dude disputing the same tropes Historica polled for in an effort to one-up the States. We need to neurotically preen ourselves for Uncle Sam because otherwise we have to get down to the brass tacks of working out exactly what this country stands for. Stuff like rectifying the fact that the country was built on genocide and stolen land, figuring out how the fuck we're supposed to get along with Quebec, assembling a society that actually welcomes refugees and immigrants instead of cutting them adrift, or settling the cultural Cold War that's been simmering between Calgary and Toronto for the last 60 years. You know, the fun stuff.

But that's some pretty heavy shit. In the meantime, there's no harm in taking the day off to think about how far we've come, how far we have to go, and how best to blow up some blunts at the fireworks display with your gay-married, multiethnic friends. And on the off chance you get too drunk and overdo it, they'll pump your stomach for free. That's pretty fucking rad.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter

Photo via Flickr user Elvert Barnes

Read: Predicting the Digital Apocalypse with Author Douglas Coupland

Every few years, a group of scientists tasked with keeping an eye on standard, universal time tack on a "leap second" to make up for the extremely gradual slowing of Earth's rotation and keep our clocks on track. Tuesday is one of those days. Though we won't notice that today lasts a little longer than normal, the leap second has a history of throwing off computer systems, stock markets, and online marketplaces that rely on a synchronized measure of time. The 2012 leap second crashed Reddit, Foursquare, and LinkedIn and delayed dozens of Qantas flights when their reservation system failed.

Tonight's leap second will be the first to go down during stock market trading hours since the markets went electronic. About $4.6 million is traded around the world every second, and exchanges across the globe are trying to find ways to avoid any glitches that could compromise an insane amount of cash transfers.

At 7:59:59 PM EST on Tuesday, clocks will not roll over to 8:00:00 as God and all natural law intended. Instead, for a single second, they will hit 7:59:60, before turning 8 PM, which may befuddle computers and send them spiraling toward some sort of technological apocalypse. Luckily, we can see this coming, so US exchanges are ending after-hours trading early and international markets are recalibrating their clocks before the leap second hits. Things will probably be OK.

If you are looking for a way to spend your extra 00:01, John Oliver's got you covered.

All photos by Mansi Choksi

Suresh Agalian Bose was sitting at the entrance of a fair near a railway station in eastern Mumbai, under an enormous watercolor cutout of a Hindu celestial nymph. It would be another hour before the fairgrounds would open, when grown adults would tumble inside the cars of a Ferris wheel like clothes in a washing machine, couples would aim their air-guns at balloon arrangements, and the pong of marijuana coming from the magic tricks counter would eventually dissipate into the smell of sweat.

Bose was sitting here, lamenting the depravation of Indian society: violence against women, classism, youth unemployment, terrorism, sectarian conflict, and misinterpretation of hip-hop culture.

And yet, Bose had brought me to the fairgrounds because it somehow summed up what he wanted to convey about himself and his work: "We start our day with the problems we carry on our backs. But we are here in this carnival 'cause you should feel free to connect and get happy whenever you can."

Bose, who goes by the names Sean YKV, Slimstyler Sean, and Seansta, is the founder of South Dandies Swaraj, a Tamil-Hindi-English hip-hop group of three men who were raised in families that moved to Mumbai from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. These families had come in search of the economic promise of a city giddy with circulating money, but disappointed by the limited opportunities in Mumbai, they improvised to meet whatever jobs they could find.

The Dandies rap about street life, the distribution of opportunity, slumlords, prostitution, recycling, heartbreak, and Tamil pride. But their music also carries the optimism that "at the end of the day, no matter all the struggles, happiness is the main stream of life."

In the mid-1980s, the success of the Hindi film song " I Am a Street Dancer" signaled the arrival of hip-hop in India. It took another decade for the popularity of American hip-hop to generate a following in major Indian cities. By the early 2000s, rap had been incorporated into Bollywood music, graffiti had festooned street corners and entire thoroughfares, and b-boying had become a separate genre on Indian TV dance shows. 50 Cent and Mobb Deep had performed in India and Snoop Dogg had appeared in a song, turbaned, and bejeweled, in the Hindi film Singh Is King. Hip-hop had gained a foothold in India.

Beats Beyond Bhangra: Ten Rising Producers from India You Should Know

"Hip-hop is one of the fastest growing cultures in India. B-boy and b-girl crews are emerging from the shadows of the oppressed and what is known as India's slums, uplifting the young with social change," wrote Vijaya Supriya Sam, an assistant professor at the Loyola College in Chennai, in her paper True to Words: Hip-hop and the English Language. "This is hip-hop's true form, as a vehicle for social change in an oppressed society."

This is certainly true for the members of South Dandies Swaraj. Bose, for instance, grew up in Dharavi, among the world's largest slums in Mumbai where over 600,000 people, packed in or on top of thousands of tenements, run small businesses selling clay pots, snacks, trinkets, and embroidery, generating approximately $650 million each year. His address has been a source of both inspiration and irritation, providing the experiences that define his music but also the frustrations of being labeled "slumdog."

"I'm not concerned about this place at all. I'm alone with my music. I'm rich and wealthy from my heart and will always be," he said.

For more on India: VICE travels deep into the remote villages and towns of Southern India to uncover an ancient system of religious sex slavery dating back to the 6th century.

Bose has a light goatee, a triangular chunk of scanty hair that extends below his chin, and when he raps his new song "Kacheri Vibe," he wears an expression so focused and so measured, it conveys nothing at all.

On Bose's left, there is Ranjit Shankar, or Kushmir. He tells me he's chosen the name because "kush means marijuana"—a name fit for a hip-hop artist—even though he doesn't actually smoke it himself. He's a short man with a muscular upper body and a Llyod Banks beard, who taps his thigh and fuses in and out of the song. Shankar's day job is load control management at the international airport.

Then there's Rahul Prasad, whose stage name is Tamil (after his native tongue). Prasad, who has a pencil-thin mustache, is squatting on the steps, making an inverted S with his hands (S for South Dandies Swaraj) and bobbing his head.

"At the end of the day, we're Indian. That's what we are feelin' and tryna represent," Bose explained, after rapping a few verses. "We are doing our job, what is real hip-hop culture, it's about our roots, we are tryna get to our own roots."

We're not talking about babes and bitches. We're talking real stuff. – Ranjit Shankar

When a Hindu devotional song began playing from a speaker behind the celestial nymph announcing the opening of the fairground, the Dandies snuck past empty ticketing counters with signs that said "India is Great," high-fiving, cracking up.

The Dandies are inspired by 2Pac, Jay Z, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, MIA, Eminem, Michael Jackson, and the Indian composers A. R. Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja, Shankar told me. But the group is also about celebrating their ethnicity with vernacular lyrics, classical beats, and issues they cared about: Mumbai, gangsters, rag-pickers, rape, and the Tamil Tigers, the militant group that fought for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka between 1976 and 2009.

"We're not talking about babes and bitches," Shankar said. "We're talking real stuff."

Meet Priya, a comic superhero fighting the social stigma of rape in India.

Some of that talk is in a mash-up of Hindi, Tamil, and English slang: They use Tamil words like "seemaati" and "raakkamma" (which translate to "baby girl" and "sweetheart," respectively) alongside Hindi words, like "ek number" (which means "cool"). These were their languages: Tamil, the mother tongue, Hindi, the language in wide circulation in Mumbai, and English, the language of social mobility.

"Hip-hop in America has its own language," Bose said. "This is ours."

For the past two years, the Dandies have been in a self-imposed exile of sorts, rejecting gigs to focus on "making it big" with their new album Namma Kacheri, which means "our feast," and its message that "whoever you are, you can always find a reason to celebrate."

"We have 15 finished songs," Shankar said, "but we are waiting for the right people to back us."

In 2009, when the Dandies first came together, they performed with Timbaland Productions and Apache Indian, the British reggae DJ for a show called "Respect Recycle" in Dharavi, Bose's home. The Dandies made headlines, mostly containing the word "slum," but nothing lucrative came out of it. "I went and did my stuff, and came out, that's it," Bose said.

The same year, the Dandies contributed a track called "Ragamuffin Mix" to the Indian film Quick Gun Murugun, based on the adventures of a vegetarian cowboy. The movie ended up being exhibited as contemporary Indian cinema at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but the film's critical acclaim did not bring them business. Bollywood was preoccupied with what was selling—Hindi songs interspersed with commercial rap that could become anthems in nightclubs and weddings, "not straight rap about real issues of real people."

On THUMP: India's Electronic Music Scene is Off the Chain

The Dandies fund themselves with their day jobs: Shankar manages load control at the airport; Prasad keys in data on incoming and outgoing cargo; Bose DJs. "There are only few people who understand real hip-hop," Prasad said, climbing into a rainbow-colored ride that resembled a giant saucer. "We are teachers who are educating about any small and big issues. Change can happen this way also, people need to see that."

That's why they wrote "Respect Hip-Hop":

Money, power, fame, ain't you wants dis/Keep the music real, just keep it real high/Respect the chase like we praise the God, Amen

In India, Prasad said, hip-hop ought to come with some morality. "They think that if you do dope, you get crazy ideas for lyrics," he said. "We don't drink, smoke, or anything, but young kids get attracted to wrong things. If I do some crazy noise in front of a kid, he will not understand but he will like it. He'll say, 'That guy is dope.'"

An indigenous hip-hop culture is growing in Indian and the South Dandies Swaraj are an important part of that, but Prasad believes it will take at least another ten years for hip-hop to fully take off in South Asia. In the mean time, the Dandies will continue to lay the foundation for the next generation of India's MCs by staying true to the core essence of hip-hop and their culture.

Follow Mansi Choksi on Twitter.

Photo by Yuliya Tsoy

Having a reputation for being polite and apologetic isn't the worst thing when you're a Canadian. We may come across as meek pushovers, but at least we're universally likeable. But are we universally fuckable? How does our courteous and penitent nature translate over into the bedroom? We spoke to a bunch of maple chasers about the impression Canadians left when it came time to bone.

Jenny
Age: 33
Nationality: American
Occupation: Baker and barista
When I lived in Vancouver, I divorced my husband of seven years and entered a giddy hot-mess slut phase. I went around fucking every kind of person I could—there was a hyper-masculine black student athlete with actual diamond studs in his ears, a sweet, nerdy half-Chinese half-Aboriginal journalist, a super religious Jewish kid from the suburbs, a forty-something suit with a swank apartment, a graying hipster film editor, a ridiculously hot crusty punk from Newfoundland, a girl from a tiny town in Saskatchewan who dressed like the gayest gay dude.

Most Americans would imagine Canadians would make apologetic, polite, tentative lovers. I'm here to tell you, based on this totally scientific sample size, that Canadians are weird, assertive, and unprudish in the sack. Every Canadian I sexed had a thing—a kink or specific request. What was so refreshing was that each of my Canadian lovers would talk about his or her kink from the start, find out if I was game, and off we'd go having a specific sort of kinky, hot sex. There was no fucking for a while like this or like that and then maybe after a few nights they'd bust out the weird. Canadians want to fuck how they want to fuck, and they don't wait to find out if their potential lovers are into it.

Gabe
Nationality: Brazilian
Age: 32
Occupation: Filmmaker
I was on vacation with my family over Christmas, travelling around Ontario and Quebec. It was my first experience with Tinder. I was hanging out with my family and they all wanted to stay in early so I used Tinder to go out, not by myself.

The thing about using Tinder elsewhere, besides your hometown, is that even the girls who aren't attractive are still attractive because it's not the same gene pool. At home, people look familiar, like your cousin or an ex.

The first Canadian girl I met was Turkish. We didn't sleep together because I had no condoms but we fooled around in the backseat of my rental car. It was nasty. She spat on my cock. Being a Brazilian, you expect everyone else to be colder and uptight. And that was a good surprise.

The next night, I met a Jewish Canadian girl. We could have fun on Christmas day because she wasn't celebrating with her family. She celebrated with my cock. She was into adventure. Although it was short-term, we really connected to the point that I proposed to have anal without condoms. To my luck I'd just been tested before I'd left so I got my results from email. Although she was into adventure, she wanted to make sure I was disease free. That came in handy.

As a souvenir from banging Canadian girls, I brought home the HPV virus. From all that I gave them, that's what I got in return. It kept me company for a few months. Bringing home memories and STDs from Canada.

Danny
Nationality: Mexico
Age: 28
Occupation: Video Editor
I came to Canada to study English, but my first experience with a Canadian girl was about eight months later, when I was studying at art school. I met her through a mutual friend, and after two dates, we slept together. She was older than me by six years.

The main thing I noticed was a very obvious submissiveness. She was docile and not particularly aggressive or proactive. This is a huge difference from most girls that I have slept with in Mexico, [who] tend to be incredibly playful and bold.

I enjoyed the experience. It was fun and the differences didn't really bother me since people and situations always differ but, yes, it was remarkably unlike girls from Mexico.

Elizabeth
Nationality: English
Age: 36
Occupation: Dog-walker
British men use alcohol and humour. Canadian men use their emo.

Esther
Age: 32
Nationality: French Belgium
Occupation: Sales
Canadian guys were really polite. They're really different than Belgian, or Europeans guys. I think it has to do with Canadian girls. Sorry ladies, I think you're way too prude.

My friend left me her bed for a night while I was visiting in Vancouver. I met a Canadian guy and had to take advantage of him immediately. I met him at the bar—there wasn't even a date or anything. After we finished, he was embarrassed, he wanted to stay. And I was like, "No way, it's cool." He was really surprised. I think I intimidated them, by being playful with my sexuality. That's more common where I come from.

European guys will pay for your drink. My Canadian friends always complain. I told them to come to Europe, you'll drink all day for free.

Idan
Age: 29
Nationality: Israeli
Occupation: Real estate
Canadian lovers are way easier to get involved with physically but less so emotionally. They are a bit naive and immature. In Israel, most girls start to be sexually active at the age of 17 or 18. In Canada, girls go to camp at a young age and start to be sexually active by 13 or 14. But on a maturity level, the Israeli girls are way more mature than the Canadian ones. [Canadians] are less independent and confident. The military and the life in Israel toughens up the girls way more than the girls who live in Canada.

Maria
Nationality: Brazilian
Age: 33
Occupation: Urban planner
I have been living in Canada for 15 years. After my second relationship I came to the conclusion that maybe only a Brazilian man—or at least someone from a warmer cultural background—would make me feel fully fulfilled. I didn't know what it was, but there was always something missing. There's something about a Brazilian man's hand, the hands that grab you with confidence. There was also kissing, which was a problem as it never involved enough tongue. So about three-and-a-half years ago, I ended my previous relationship and had no expectations for the future.

Then, shortly after, I went on a trip with one of my longtime friends and former roommate. He had to go to a conference in Montreal and invited me to come and stay with him. Although we were sleeping in the same bed, I would never make a move. Turns out that Canadians don't seem to be the best at making a move either. So there we were, sleeping in the same bed in a five-star hotel room for three nights. Luckily something happened on the last night: he woke me up and gave me a massage. Then, from the second we touched each other I had a feeling that I found the other half of a magnet. We have been together for three years and our sex life is better than I could dream of.

Layla
Nationality: Spanish
Age: 27
Occupation: Film production
I think connection is connection regardless of the country. I do find, in general with Canadians, that there are more body issues. Interestingly, I found Canada very liberating for being a lesbian and also it's way less sexist than where I come from. But in terms of body issues and nudity, our approach is more natural, I think.

I also found myself a bit lost sometimes in terms of communication and trying to understand what was going on between myself and someone else. In Spain, we don't date. We sleep together and then maybe we date. Canada was more about: we date and then, maybe, we sleep together.

Karan
Age: 31
Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Engineer
My experiences with Canadians as lovers are two extremes. On one hand they're granola and boring. They want to lie on the bed as you put your dick in their mouth. On the other hand, they're kinky as fuck—super passionate. It's either been, holy shit this is boring, I could have watched porn, or holy shit, when can we fuck next?

There's also a lot of "sorry," which I find funny, because it's like, "No, I want you to take me to town."

They're also reserved. You have to warm up the oven. Then, after a certain point when they get comfortable, stuff starts to happen. As someone who's not Canadian, you keep getting asked where you're from and you keep getting called exotic. Like I'm a white Bengal tiger. A few weeks ago, a guy peed on me in the tub after fucking me. It was fantastic. Afterwards we showered, and I put maple syrup on his dick and sucked it off. We laughed because it was meant to be a Canadian joke. You think it's a good idea, but shit gets sticky.

Follow Elianna Lev on Twitter.

Still from 'Terminator: Genisys' (2015). Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Terminator: Genisys is about the future invading and colonizing the past. Like all the other Terminator films, it's a kind of reverse imperial nightmare, in which the bound and docile computer servants rise up and destroy their masters in an orgy of nuclear fire. The underclass we have subjugated has risen up and seized the machinery of death. And as Kyle Reese declares of his evil robot pursuer in the first Terminator film, that underclass "can't be bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!"

Michael Biehn's crazed, over-the-top delivery as Reese nicely captures sci-fi's longstanding paranoid terror: the fear not only of death but of just retribution. It's not an accident that the machine takeover in Terminator is referred to as "Judgment Day."

In its colonial concerns, the Terminator series picks up on sci-fi tropes stretching back at least to War of the Worlds , in which H. G. Wells explicitly compares what the Martians do to Europeans to what the British did to other peoples. "We must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races," Wells writes. "The Tasmanians... were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of 50 years."

Still from 'Terminator: Genisys' (2015). Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Note that while Wells sympathizes with the Tasmanians, he doesn't hesitate to call them "inferior." And "inferior" in this case, specifically, means backwards, farther down the evolutionary scale—trapped in the past. John Rieder in Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction points out that in Wells's time, anthropologists saw people like the Tasmanians as prehistoric holdovers. The past wasn't just a temporal phenomenon—it was spatial. You could visit the colonies and travel back to a primitive past: Ships to Australia, or Africa, or the Polynesian Islands were effectively time machines. In keeping with that theme, Wells's Martians were presented as having enormous, super-evolved brains—a vision of humanity's future development, come back through space-time to destroy their own past.

The parallel here with Terminator: Genisys should be fairly obvious. The film opens with an extended sequence in the robot-controlled future, where the former computer servants have seized control, and humans are hunted down and put in camps. (Mostly white) anticolonial freedom fighters led by John Connor rise up to throw off the yoke of oppression. The (formerly) subjugated are imagined as futuristic monsters, while the (onetime) subjugators are seen as scrappy atavistic holdovers: "Old but not obsolete," as good Terminator Pops (Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course) repeatedly says.

Pops, though, does his good Terminator thing in the past, not the future. The time-traveling technology, used in all the Terminator films, is here spread around liberally. Scads of humans and robots making multiple time jumps to 1984 (the date of the first Terminator film) and then to the near future, 2017. Rather than a line between invaded past and invading future as in War of the Worlds —or the other Terminator films—Genisys scrambles all the terms.

1960 Edward Gorey cover to 'War of the Worlds' by H. G. Wells

Wells used parallels to position Europeans as both invaders and invaded. The irony in War of the Worlds is that futuristic Europeans are turned into the backwards colonized peoples. Genisys dispenses with the irony in favor of a gleefully decadent messiness. Filmic trickery allows old good Arnold Terminator to confront his younger evil doppelgänger robot self. Who is the future and who is the past, here? And just to turn the futuristic lug-nut further, both good and bad terminators are designed to infiltrate human society. The servants actually, literally, inhabit the skin of the colonizers—or is it the colonizers inhabiting the skin of the colonized? How can you tell the difference?

Still from 'Terminator: Genisys' (2015). Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

To some extent, you can see Genisys as riffing on Wells's colonial metaphor. John Connor, the resistance leader and the hope for a human future, is synthetically replaced at the cellular level by terminator technology and becomes John Connor, robot clone, hope for computer master operating system Skynet. The freedom fighter is the Man—or the Man is the freedom fighter, depending on how you look at it. Either way, it seems like an illustration (parodic or otherwise) of our longstanding desire to view ourselves as scrappy underdogs even as we target distant lands with our superior weaponry and superior tech. Skynet in 2017 manifests as a holographic child, whining that humans are trying to kill it and using that as an excuse to institute a final solution. The über-powerful are always imagining themselves under assault—just like in the reverse-colonial daydreams of Wells, or Terminator.

Watch our documentary 'The New Wave of Ultra-Violent Uganda DIY Cinema':

It would be giving Genisys too much credit, though, to pretend it is really thinking all that deeply about colonialism, or about anything for that matter. The first two Terminator movies seem to believe, at least, in their own anxieties. Terminator presents a genuinely terrifying vision in which our mechanical catspaws become unstoppable, vengeful destroyers; T2 deftly conflates postindustrial anxieties about obsolescence with nuclear Cold War nightmare.

On Creators Project: Drawing Robot Sketches C-3PO and a T-800 Terminator

Genisys pretends to care about the same fears, but really it just leverages them as exercises in branding. Suspenseful pacing and apocalyptic vision are cheerily sacrificed for as many winking references to the earlier two films as possible. Genisys feels like a Disney theme-park take on the series—"Terminatorland: You'll Be Back"—right down to the boy-gets-girl-and-rides-off-into-the-landscape ending. "No fate" is a hollow slogan when you get the same damn conclusion as every other film in the multiplexes.

Still, there is something refreshing about Genisys's naked hackishness. Wells's colonial anxieties, warnings, and moralisms are shamelessly diced up for tropes. Here, imperial adventure is dulled into nostalgic corporate comfort food. But isn't it fun to imagine oppression and invasion and freedom-fighting ? Genisys insists. Things blow up, the weak defeat the strong—or is that the strong defeating the weak? Either way, colonialism is served up as empty-headed entertainment for all on the big screen—and for that matter on the nightly news, where our various foreign misadventures grind on for our viewing pleasure without logic or much American emotional investment. The callous stupidity of Genisys isn't exactly profound, but at least it's honest.

Terminator: Genisys is in theaters on July 1.

Follow Noah Berlatsky on Twitter.

From left to right: Federal Labour Minister Kellie Leitch, former PC candidate Jamie Ellerton, PC MPP Lisa MacLeod, and PC Leader Patrick Brown. Photo via Twitter

Patrick Brown drinks a Red Bull every morning.

That's probably the most surprising thing I learned about the leader of Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party after a half-hour chat early in June.

Watch video from our sit-down with Brown on Daily VICE.

Even though we talked about a range of controversial issues, Brown seemed ready to bend over backwards to send home the point: I don't have a hidden agenda.

Which is smart politics, really. The PC Party hasn't had a great track record these past few years.

Christine Elliott, establishment contender for the leadership who fell in a huge upset to Brown, called the party's brand "toxic" during the campaign, a clear potshot at Brown and his supposed social conservative credentials.

Fellow contender, MPP Monte McNaughton, has been a dogmatic opponent of the province's new sex-ed curriculum, which would do such outlandish things as teaching children that gay and trans people exist and are human beings. McNaughton dropped out of the race and endorsed Brown.

Then there was Rick Nicholls, co-chair of Brown's campaign, who came out as a disbeliever of evolution.

Brown also got the effective endorsement of Campaign Life Coalition, a prominent pro-choice, anti-gay lobby group. He was also said to have signed up a significant amount of socially conservative culture groups onto his campaign.

It all left the impression that Brown's surprise victory would be bad news for everyone but the province's straight white dudes.

However, Brown has worked hard to convey exactly the opposite impression.

Within weeks of becoming leader, his caucus in Queen's Park voted in favour of a ban on gay and trans conversion therapy, which has led to the suicides of queer youth across North America.

Then, in the face of criticism, he and several high-profile caucus members joined the Toronto Pride Parade, making him the first Ontario PC leader to do so.

When a social conservative radio host took aim at him and Lisa MacLeod, who was also a felled leadership candidate, the conservatives shot back with a surprising amount of vigour.

"Our party has turned a corner and there may be some people who don't like it," MacLeod told the Toronto Star, adding: "I am not going to kowtow to people who don't share my values,"

When Brown sat down with VICE, that's exactly the line he was trumpeting. While he was still reticent to sign on to the Liberals' sex ed curriculum, Brown didn't even dip a toe in the social conservative fountain when it came to LGBTQ issues or abortion.

An except of our conversation is below.

VICE: One thing that young people don't tend to line up behind are social conservative ideas. You've been painted as being a pretty ardent social conservative, whether it's abortion or gay rights or transgender rights. How are you going to deal with that?
Brown: I think sometimes how certain newspapers paint you is not necessarily accurate. The reality is I've always considered myself a pragmatic conservative. The reality is if anyone had done their research, I was the first Member of Parliament in the history of Barrie to attend Pride functions. And I did so because I don't care about your sexual orientation, your race, your religion—the only thing that counts in this country is the merit of your ideas. I feel that my ideas are very much in sync and in line with those of my generation.

But you have come out as pro-life, as anti-abortion. There's obviously some concern that if you become premier, that access to abortion services might be limited.
I disagree with your interpretation. You make a statement that frankly is incorrect. I have said that we'll not revisit the issue of abortion. I have said that I support gay marriage and whatever way someone can find love, I'm happy for them.

During the leadership race, you made a clear distinction between yourself and your opponent: you came out quite hard against the Liberal government's sex-ed curriculum. This is a curriculum that teaches about sexual orientation from a very young age or gender identity from a very young age. What problems do you have with that?
Well, I've said, first of all, there is merit to sex education. I think all the leadership candidates opposed the way the Liberals brought in the curriculum. It was just varying perspectives on what we saw wrong with it. I took the middle-of-the-road position, where some were saying more consultation was needed. Some, like my colleague Monte McNaughton, might have been more critical than I had been. My middle-of-the-road approach was this: The sex ed curriculum needs to be updated on matters of mental health, texting, consent. The curriculum needs to evolve, because technology has, and issues that are confronting us have evolved. But what I've said is, the Liberals promised consultation, it didn't happen; they promised a dialogue, it didn't happen.

I read somewhere that you're more conservative than Stephen Harper, that's how somehow described you. Philosophy-wise, where do you fit into all of this. You say pragmatic conservative, but what does that actually mean? How does your overarching philosophy look here?
First of all I, I think the only people describing me that way are probably people working for Premier Kathleen Wynne right now, because they're struggling to understand, frankly, the growth we've seen in the PC party. We've gone from 10,000 members to 80,000.

[...]

My approach has been very different. When there was agreement with Québec on reducing the interprovincial trade barriers, I applauded the Premier. When there was a Scarborough Liberal MPP put forward an initiative on Terry Fox Day, proclaiming Terry Fox Day, fantastic. That's a Canadian icon. When there was a Liberal MPP who talked about financial literacy for Brampton, I said you have our full support, because I believe financial literacy in schools is important. And more recently, I was a guest speaker at the police association. I went and gave a talk why I supported NDP MPP DiNovo's bill on PTSD, because I believe we need to take PTSD more seriously. You know, there's four examples right there where I have championed causes put forward by other parties. It's not about left or right. I think the only people that care about that paragon that you're describing are people that work at, you know, work down the street at U of T teaching political science. I think the average voter out there fundamentally only cares how you're going to create jobs, how you're going to make the quality of life better for families in Ontario, and that's my driving agenda.

This interview has been edited for style, clarity, and length.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

All Photos by Panagiotis Maidis.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

Just one day after a demonstration gathered thousands of 'No' voters in Athens' city center, Syntagma Square was once again filled with people. This time, however, it was the 'Yes' voters who were out in force.

Since a referendum was announced early last Saturday morning, the Greek public has been divided. The referendum—scheduled for Sunday, July 5—was called to decide whether the Greek people should accept the draft agreement proposed by the country's lenders. However, since Greece defaulted on its IMF loans last night, just a few hours after proposing a third bailout plan that would exclude the international organization, many are wondering whether Sunday's proposed referendum will happen at all.

What was easily palpable in Syntagma Square on Tuesday afternoon was the anger and resentment brought about by the closure of banks early this week and the fact that cash machines are now limiting withdrawals to about $70 a day.

Those who gathered on Tuesday afternoon showed their support for a 'Yes' vote that would keep the country in the Eurozone. Just a few meters away, in Propylaea, extra-parliamentary left activists and anarchist groups had gathered to protest the 'Yes' rally. The police prevented the counter-demonstrators from marching to Syntagma Square so the two groups never met.

I met first-time demonstrator Michalis in Syntagma square. He's 28, works in finance, and told me: "Things are very difficult. I am in a situation where I can take care of myself. I make just over £700 [$1,090] a month. I've managed, with a lot of hardship, to earn an amount that allows me to live—not exactly comfortably—but normally. I don't live by myself though, I live with my parents. I could probably live alone but I'd barely scrape by."

"The ideological reason behind me being here is that Greece is part of the European Union. One thing that I hear from a lot of 'No' supporters is that they don't see how things can get any worse. Sure, things have been miserable for five years and yes, the measures that have been suggested are really tough and will hurt people, but really, things can get so much worse if we vote 'No.'"

Jason is 23 years old and studying mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Athens. He thinks that "the situation is tragic. I will vote yes because the drachma means destruction, as well as isolation. Not wanting to take a risk shouldn't mean having to go back to the drachma. I'm in favor of signing the memorandum and negotiating. When you borrow from someone, you don't get to set the terms of the contract."

Dimitris is 18 years old and studying in Hungary.

Many young people who are studying abroad were present at the demonstration, too. Dimitris is 18 years old and studying in Hungary. "Personally, I can't take any more of the government's gambling when it comes to our future in Europe," he said. "There is no guarantee that a 'No' vote will keep us in the Euro or Europe. I think 'Yes' is best for the country."

Panagiotis is 22 and studying in England. He came back to Greece for a holiday and just so happens to be in town for the referendum. He said: "I want to stay in Europe. I don't support Tsipras, I don't support any party, I am here as a Greek European. I believe that this is where we belong and where we should stay. I will vote 'Yes.' I prefer the Euro and its difficulties to returning to the drachma and going 500 years back."

Related: Watch our documentary 'Teenage Riot: Athens'

Socrates is a 24-year-old student at the Athens Polytechnic University and in a couple of weeks he will be entering the army, which in Greece is mandatory for men. So far, he's been working two part-time jobs without any sort of insurance, making about £220 [$340] a month. "I haven't been affected by the new capital controls because I have no money in the bank," he said. "Whether it ends up being a 'Yes' or a 'No,' the situation is a mess. The question is whether to choose something that's difficult but we are used to, or something that is completely unknown to us."

"The government hasn't told us what a 'No' vote or a 'Yes' vote actually mean. I'm voting 'Yes' because I don't trust them. I'm in favor of signing the new memorandum. I have been in favor of the measures from the start, because I believe that us Greeks are unable to sort out our country, so someone else has to do it. "I'm worried about joining the army during such an unstable period but I don't really have a choice. Even if we don't have money as a country, the army will still get paid and I'll be able to eat," Socrates concluded.

Scroll down for more photos.

All photos by Harmon Leon

The first thing you notice at a Christian stand-up comedy gathering is that everyone is so damn nice. They are nice even when a dreadlocked Jew from Brooklyn steps on stage, clearing his throat, and starts telling jokes. I know this because that dreadlocked Jew from Brooklyn was me.

I was on stage at His Hands Church in Cobb County, Georgia, delivering a bunch of Jesus jokes I'd written in my hotel the night before:

"I used to play in a Christian punk bank. We were called the No Sex Before Marriage Pistols."

"I have an atheist friend. The only problem is, I don't believe he exists."

I had come here for the Christian Comedy Association's annual conference to learn everything there is to know about the sub-genre. Roughly 100 Christian comedians from around the country had gathered inside the church for the two-day conference, where there would be workshops, prayers, networking, and performances—all aimed at serving God through humor.

"All the jokes, all the workshops, all the meetings are nothing without the Lord by your side," said Kenn Kington, the CCA's president, who kicked off the comedy conference. "Let us follow you Jesus."

A Bible passage from Corinthians appeared on a large screen, and the comedians bowed their heads in a prayer: "Father, thank you for the way you gifted us... It's only through the gift of Jesus that we do this for you."

In this alternative comedy universe, Christian stand-up comedians are stars in their own holy stratosphere. Some have sold multi-platinum records, yet are virtually unknown to the mainstream comedy world. Their routines use all the same ingredients of stand-up, with one difference: Their comedy is a vehicle to serve God.

"I perform wherever I can," said a newbie comedian who had traveled from California to be at the CCA conference. "Youth groups, churches, open mics..."

"Do you do mainstream clubs?" I asked, as we congregated near the food table.

"Yes, but I have to plug my ears," he said. "Everyone is just trying to be dirty for the sake of being dirty. Even Chris Rock says you have to start out clean."

He had a point. Two nights before I arrived at CCA, I had gone to a comedy show in Atlanta where someone did a bit about his cat lapping up fresh cum after sex with his partner. There wasn't even a joke attached.

Christian comedy, by contrast, is squeaky-clean, Jesus-centered, and often tied to an inspirational message. There are, needless to say, no dick jokes. From what I'd seen, it's mostly made up of observational humor about things Christians do, like go to church or do chores for their wives. As Kington explained at the beginning of the conference, "Our entire purpose is so we can be around others who are doing this and see why God gave us this crazy gift. And that really is what this is."

Within the Christian comedy circuit, that crazy gift can mean good money. Headliners can reap $1,500 to $2,500 per church comedy show—which adds up, since there are more churches than comedy clubs. Comics can move up the ranks quickly, since there's a limited pool of comedians and each church has hours of programming to fill.

"Almost every year, there's somebody here that came just to learn about comedy and try to get bookings in churches because clubs are drying up," said Gordon Douglas, the CCA chaplain. "If you're doing this Christian comedy out of the love of God and because he called you to it, you will know his joy and peace."

I wasn't sure I knew what he meant, but I nodded.

Chonda Pierce at the Christian Comedy Association conference

"We do no different in the church world than what every evangelist has done since I was a kid," said Chonda Pierce, one of the biggest stars in Christian stand-up comedy. "They have a funny story at the very start—they're trying to capture the audience's attention so they can set them up and deliver their sermon. So that's what I do."

Pierce, who started her career as a Minnie Pearl impersonator, is now repped by the same manager as Billy Crystal and Woody Allen. Still, no one in Hollywood has heard of her because of this niche circuit. "I got an award this year as the most gold and platinum awarded female comic in history—in any genre." She recalls the award presenter leaning over and saying, "I've never heard of ya!"

It's not surprising. For the past 25 years, Pierce has been selling out shows in towns with names like Sedalia, Zionsville, and Silsbee. "In the Christian comedy world, as far as the church goes, being a woman is a plus," she said about the large ratio of females on the circuit. "To get a bunch of guys to come out and hear you is pulling teeth for a church. To get a bunch of women to come hear a woman comedian—they'll just come in mini-vans! My audience has the checkbook; your audience has to have permission to leave the house!"

Lawyers aren't stand-up comedians. VICE Sports shows us why.

In the late 90s, Pierce held the very first CCA conference on her 100-acre farm in rural Tennessee (nicknamed "The Funny Farm"). A woman from LA participated in the gathering and asked Pierce how to get more comedy work at churches. "I said, 'Well, the first thing I'd start doing is wear a bra.' I was very sincere in saying that."

We all know that nobody is going to buy a ticket if all it says is: 'A Bunch of People Are Going to Talk About Jesus Tonight for $25.' – Chonda Pierce

For Pierce, being a Christian comedian means "at some point in the night, you want your audience to make a decision. That's what Christianity is: We have made a decision to believe Jesus."

She explained that could take the form of coming to Jesus, preaching the Bible, or loving one another as the Lord has loved us. "Whatever that is, we're going to have a moment of purpose." To her, the distinction is using stand-up comedy as a spiritual vehicle rather than using Christianity as the purpose behind her comedy. "We all know that nobody is going to buy a ticket if all it says is: 'A Bunch of People Are Going to Talk About Jesus Tonight for $25."

Watch: Rob Delaney is "The Funniest Man On Twitter"

"People feel afraid of the title," Pierce said of being a Christian stand-up. "It grieves me when I realized later on that it was causing me limitations."

True, the mainstream comedy world doesn't know what to make of Christian comedians. A week earlier, I asked secular comedian Brendon Walsh his take. "It's the same thing that comes to mind when I hear the term 'Christian Rock,'" he said. "It's like something that this specific group wants, but they can't have the real thing because it doesn't agree with their beliefs. It's like being lactose intolerant. You still want ice cream because it's great, but you can't have it because it makes you shit your pants. So they make their own crappy version of it that won't make them shit themselves, but it's just not the same."

Comedian Doug Stanhope had a harsher take: "There is no question that religion is born in power and control," he said. Stanhope feels that this ideology spills over into Christian standup comedy. "Their followers are guilty of trying to find an easy answer, whether it's in a book, a sermon—or even a joke—rather than question the quandary of life on their own terms."

This view toward Christian comedy can make it difficult for Christian comedians to perform in secular clubs. It breaks Pierce's heart to see Christian comics compromise their material when they perform in mainstream comedy clubs. "Not only does it grieve me," she said, "but I think it also grieves the Father. I think he says, 'Please be the same person that you are.'" Fearless to the faith, Pierce doesn't compromise: "I tell the exact same jokes as I do at the Grand Ole Opry as I do at the First Baptist!"

For the most part, her comedy does crossover in the parts of the country where Larry the Cable Guy and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour would play. She's also toured with Wanda Sykes on a USO tour of Afghanistan—though she was strictly told not to talk about Jesus.

Related: Motherboard believes that Vine isn't dead, it's getting funnier.

Pierce was diagnosed with clinical depression after the death of her husband in 2014 and the recent suicide of a close pastor. She now uses her comedy at her ministry to speak to those who might be going through the same thing: "That's what the Lord had designed for me to do."

Because of this, she sees spirituality as intrinsic to her comedic success. "If you're here because you eat, sleep, and dream your craft, you are going nowhere. You might succeed for a while, but you will eventually crash and burn and have nothing," she said during one conference event. "Hold your path and deliver the best comedy that you can but don't forget your Father. I can't take you all on and change your career, but I can invite the Holy Spirit into your life and pray for you."

"A Christian comedian is someone who wants to honor God every time they go on stage," explained a man who goes by the name Nazareth. "You can be in a prison. You can be in a strip club. It doesn't matter. If you're performing, you want to honor God—then God will find a way to honor himself through that."

His favorite joke: "How do you get Holy Water? You boil the Hell out of it."

Born in Kuwait, Nazareth started his comedy career in the early 90s, performing in clubs alongside the likes of Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, and Kevin James. Then, three years into his stand-up career, he found his comedy calling: "I gave my life to Christ. I left the clubs and was going to go back to accounting. And God said, 'No, I want you to use this for me.' So I said, 'Can I honor you?' And he said, 'Yes!'"

In 1992, Nazareth fasted for 40 days, at which time, he says God told him to rent a stadium to put on a Christian comedy concert and start his production company: Comedy Crusades. Now, no matter where he performs—whether it's a mainstream comedy club or a corporate event—Nazareth uses the comedy stage as his pulpit to spread the word of Jesus.

"I've headlined the Tempe Improv on a regular night," he said. "I ended up giving an invitation to Christ at the event. Honoring Him allowed me to do it. When you honor God with your comedy, he will use you regardless!" He hopes to one day perform the Rose Bowl, alongside other Christian comedians.

Lord, I'm serious about this comedy. Would you please give me a gig? I need a gig on Sunday. – Nazareth

At the conference, Nazareth was leading a workshop on getting more bookings. Before he began, the comedians' bowed their heads again: "Father we do it for you and we do it for humor..."

For them, praying is not just a ritual—Nazareth says he's secured more bookings through prayer than anything else. He offered practical advice to the group: "Say, 'Lord, I'm serious about this comedy. I'm serious about this performing. Can you please open the doors for me? Would you please give me a gig? I need a gig on Sunday.'"

Through this method, Nazareth says he's gotten last minute gigs filling in for vacant pastors. "God opens the doors," he said. In the past, he's also played the "Jesus card"—telling everyone he's a Christian—as a strategy for scrounging up business. Once, he says, he told the man sitting next to him on an airplane that he was a Christian who performed comedy shows to spread the gospel. "I booked a $10K gig on the plane."

No matter what faith, making a living as a comedian ain't easy. It involves the constant need of approval and a lot of rejection. In the Christian comedy world, Nazareth recommends a few pointers, such as "stalk your clients." Cracking the Christian comedy market is all about schmoozing—except it's done with pastors rather than booking agents. Nazareth suggested the strategy of Googling all the churches in a given area, and then to "drive to their church on a Sunday, shake their hand after the service, and sell them on your comedy."

When all else fails, Nazareth says to use God's forces, and prayer, to get the job done. For example, if James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, is appearing at a nearby church and there's a storm in his home base of Colorado, you should call the church and say, "If he wont be able to make it, I'm there!"

But most importantly: "Don't ever associate your calendar with your self-worth," Nazareth advised. "Times when I didn't have a lot of work I felt like a loser. Your self-worth is with God."

Stand-up can be really hard. Watch Harry struggle through his first gig.

Unlike mainstream comedy gigs, where deprecation is part of the routine, there's a sense of resounding support within the Christian comedy circuit. "They don't really heckle in churches," said Brian Smith, part of the comedy musical duo Dave and Brian.

That's an advantage of performing on the Christian stand-up comedy circuit: Occasionally you get someone shouting out "Rebuke!"—an Old Testament reference to disproval—but for the most part, church crowds are good. Instead of drunk heckles, they usually show passive-aggressive disdain by plastering on a tense smile.

I asked Smith what made a successful Christian comedy routine.

"Talk about mother-in-laws," he said. "Talk about kids."

"What about shopping at Home Depot?" I suggested, remembering how many stand-up performances on the first night at the conference involved that hilarious scenario.

Smith added a big hackneyed Christian comedy standard: "Talk about the differences between white churches and black churches." That, he said, would bring down the house.

There's another Tom Brady who is a stand-up comedian. Read about him on VICE Sports.

Later at the conference, a comedian called Bone Hampton got on stage to provide tough love to the new comedians. You could tell Bone crushes it in any room he plays; he's even performed in a fair number of mainstream clubs, and has appeared on The View and My Name is Earl.

Bone takes a different attitude to the current biggest star in comedy: "This is the hardest thing I struggle with these LA comics: 'Louis CK is fearless; he'll say anything. I love Louis CK because there's nothing he wont say.' That doesn't make you better than us! Because there's some stuff you ain't supposed to say!"

Applause. There were a few shouts of "amen."

"There's some stuff the Lord would tap you on your shoulder and say, 'That's not on the stage I put you on! That's not coming out your mouth to my people!' That's the thing I say about being a Christian comic—don't get caught up with we wont say stuff. We don't do shock; we're not trying to shock people. We do funny!"

Metaphorically, Bone dropped the mic.

In the beginning, intent on learning all that I could about Christian comedy, I had signed up for the Christian comedy competition. Before I got onstage, I was nervous as hell. I couldn't do the joke about "having a threesome with a pair of Siamese twins attached at the vagina," or referring to the audience as "a bunch of divorced dads sleeping in a motel while their ex-wives are being finger-banged by a fitness instructor named Hovig." Cross those off the list. I had to make these people laugh with clean, crafted jokes.

Everyone got three minutes to perform their best material. There were jokes about weight loss. A guy pointed out that people abducted by UFOs are usually stupid. One woman pulled out a pair of electric nose clippers and proceeded to use the device. A bald guy put on his best Ching-Chong-Ding-Dong voice and performed an impression of a cat-eating chef at a Chinese restaurant. Another comic launched into a bit about how, when he was 16, he couldn't take his 19-year-old wife to prom—though he didn't expand upon getting married at 16, as if that was some sort of given.

I opted for silly, surreal religious jokes that I had written on a napkin: "I used to be a Mormon comedian. Here's a joke from my act, 'Take one of my wives, please... because I have several... because I'm a Mormon...'"

The votes were tallied, and—by the grace of God, I suppose—I had sealed my position in the big evening Christian stand-up comedy show.

The author performing his Christian stand-up routine. Video courtesy of J. Drake Productions

In the end, it was me, the Jew, who stormed the Christian stand-up comedy showcase. It was surprisingly fun—we were all just telling jokes, messing around on stage, and making people laugh. That's the world of comedy. Every good comedy set is like a religious experience, though mine just happened not to be attached to a big magical invisible man in the sky.

"I've never seen comedy done like that before," said a comedian from Des Moines after my act.

"Do you mostly perform at churches?" asked a comic from Philly.

Bone walked by. "Good job!"

It made me realize: This was really just a room full of other comedians, and comedians are all from the same island of misfit toys—God-fearing or otherwise. We end complaining about stuff, dissecting the crowd, and generally acting slightly jaded. And, judging by the amount of business cards handed to me, I think I could actually have a career on the Christian comedy circuit; all I would have to do is sign on the dotted line for Jesus.

Follow Harmon Leon on Twitter.

Photos by the author.

For better or worse, San Francisco has come to embody the term "gentrification." Between the city's tech-fueled boom, astronomical increase in the cost of living, and struggles with the influx of tech workers, the tale of SF's skyrocketing housing prices has become the biggest continuing news story in the region so far this decade.

We're at a point where headlines about evictions of elderly and disabled people due to property owners desiring to cash in have become so commonplace that outrage has been replaced with malaise and existential dread that our community will never be the same again. We're way past fatigue and closely approaching new-normal status. "It saddens me that the Mission that I grew up in is no longer what I remember," Mission resident Julio Cesar told me. "The feeling of the culture that made the Mission famous for what it was is no longer there. It's all starting to blend into the same type of culture."

Housing policy and economics may not seem like the most rousing issue, but in a city besieged by an eviction epidemic and skyrocketing rents, the absurdity of the circumstances has emotions running high. The city's residents are being displaced at alarming rates. According to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, the number of no-fault evictions in San Francisco went from 664 in 2012 to 1432 in 2013—a 216 percent jump. For comparison, Los Angeles, a city with a population 4.5 times the size of San Francisco, had 376 such evictions. Regardless of whether its residents are being evicted or simply priced out, the Mission's demographics have drastically changed in recent years, with over 8,000 of its primarily Latino residents leaving and being replaced by mostly whites.

The average one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco goes for about $3,500 per month, up by almost $1000 from two years ago. And the market for buyers is just as capable of producing jaw-dropping numbers. In order to purchase a median price home ($743,000) in the Bay Area you need to earn just above $140,000. And to afford the median price of $1,045,000 for a home in San Francisco, you would need to earn $200,000, putting you in the 94th percentile of American income.

The causes and effects of this crisis have been established. Now, the focus is starting to shift to how we're going to fix our problems. The Bay Area gentrification wars have begun to enter their solutions phase.

At the beginning of this month, a heated debate took place within San Francisco's city hall centering on a piece of legislation up for vote. The legislation proposed would've enacted a 45-day moratorium on all market-rate housing and all housing not 100 percent subsidized below market rate in the Mission, one of the most affected neighborhoods by gentrification and the city's affordability crisis. The Mission Moratorium was put forth with the intent of endowing the city government with the power to buy 13 plots of lands in the neighborhood to build affordable housing upon.

This piece of legislation was submitted by San Francisco Board of Supervisors member and stalwart of the city's progressive scene David Campos, whose district includes the Mission. Campos says the moratoriums is "about land preservation."

Related: California's undergoing its worst draught in 500 years.

The public comment before the moratorium vote was a seven-hour long, contentious affair fraught with numerous outbursts and raucous chants. Members of the community were allowed a couple minutes before the board to express themselves on the issue, almost all of whom supported the moratorium. Many citizens unleashed venomous anger at the hearing, including a Holocaust survivor who began his comment by saying America is the most fascist country in the world and told the board "you are like Gestapo fascists." Others expressed themselves in a more theatrical fashion, singing Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" and Lionel Ritchie's "All Night Long."

Despite the intense fervor in support of the moratorium, the legislation did not pass. Seven out of 11 supervisors voted in favor of it, but since the bill was considered emergency legislation, it required nine votes to win rather than the normal six. Supporters of the moratorium found solace in defeat. "Even though it did not pass, all of us see it as a victory for the community. We were able to get seven out of the 11 supervisors to side with the community," Campos told me over the phone a couple weeks after the vote.

Outside of city hall, one of the biggest anti-moratorium and pro development activists is Sonja Trauss, principal at San Francisco Bay Area Renters' Federation (SFBARF). "It was never going to pass; no moratorium is ever going to pass," she claimed. "It didn't pass in Emeryville, Walnut Creek, and Foster City. Moratoriums are very popular to propose because they allow a majority of electeds to vote for them, without any of them worrying that it will become law."

Trauss founded SFBARF, which has plans to eventually become a Political Action Committee, for the central purpose of promoting the rapid building of housing. "All the signs of shortage are all around us," she says, "but no one really seemed to be taking seriously that we need a massive influx of units." If a building can serve the basic purpose of housing someone, SFBARF is all for it.

Trauss has encountered a sizable amount of hate from the opposition and has faced accusations that SFBARF is actually a front secretly working on behalf of the developers. When I pressed Trauss on the details of her organization's operations and funding she willingly obliged. SFBARF spends its money on Trauss' income, transportation, food, a part-time assistant, and printing. She disclosed that donations to the organization include $5,000 from the San Francisco Moderates, a group that shares Trauss's philosophy on housing and runs counter to the city's progressives, $3,600 from an unnamed donor, and $10,000 from Jeremy Stoppelman, the co-founder and CEO of Yelp. Trauss is currently strapped for cash and looking to raise $82,000 which will go toward a variety of ends such as rallying for housing projects, pushing for certain housing legislation, and putting on events.

Photo via Flickr user FunGi_.

When I asked Campos why he would propose the moratorium if it was bound to fail, he pointed out that it provided political capital behind other affordable housing initiatives. "The movement we see in the allocation of more funding, in putting together a concrete strategy for how to identify properties, none of that would be happening without what happened at the community forum."

The proposed moratorium legislation was the first housing crisis solution that generated a level of attention on par with rent increase news. The legislation energized and amplified the long-running debate about whether or not building more housing will alleviate and possibly fix our situation. The pro-moratorium camp, mostly drawing from the city's progressive spectrum and led by Campos, believes we should only be building affordable housing. He says, "When there's a lack of affordable housing, the solution is to build more affordable housing."

One of the most cited academic voices in this debate is UC Berkeley Urban and Labor Economics professor and author of The New Geography of Jobs, Enrico Moretti. In a phone interview with me, he says the points put forth by the pro-moratorium camp are false. "There's a growing and homogenous body of academic research that points exactly to the opposite. If you allow market-rate housing in a city you experience lower increases in rent."

Campos's counterpart on the anti-moratorium side is Supervisor Scott Weiner, whose district covers areas like the Castro and mostly white and wealthy enclaves like Noe Valley and Glen Park. Known as a "moderate" by San Francisco standards—on a national spectrum he is more or less a typical liberal democrat—Weiner certainly hasn't been moderate on the issue of housing, nor with his opposition to the moratorium. "This moratorium will not stop a single eviction and will not bring down the cost of rent," he told me.

Photo via Flickr user rick.

In a Medium post following the announcement, Weiner came out swinging, writing "A moratorium is likely to have precisely the opposite effect by increasing the housing pressure cooker that's triggering displacement and reducing the resources available to build affordable housing." He also heavily criticized the pro-moratorium camp's reasoning: "Proponents spin the moratorium as a mere 'pause on luxury housing,' but it's much more than that. It will stop pretty much all housing production, including projects with a significant percentage of affordable units, group housing, single room occupancy buildings (SROs), and student housing."

Still, the possibility of a moratorium is not completely dead. It could come to fruition in November via ballot measure, a frequent strategy for political activists in San Francisco. According to local real estate blog SocketSite the proposed measure, which has not yet garnered the requisite number of signatures to receive approval status from the city's Department of Elections, would institute a year-and-a-half-long ban on building, destroying, or changing any building with five or more housing units. Buildings with 100 percent below market-rate housing would be exempt.

The measure still needs 15,000 signatures by July 6 in order to be approved for the November elections. The groups in charge of getting signatures have started to ramp up their operations and are making a huge push. Scott Weaver, the proponent of the moratorium ballot, told me he expects the proposed measure to achieve its goal.

Having a robust discourse and ongoing conversations addressing the housing crisis at large and the many aspects of it forms the foundation of solving the problem afflicting the region. But could the acerbic side of these discussions stifle and hinder potential progress?

When I spoke with Supervisor Weiner, he accused Supervisor Campos of cynically conflating his points about supply and demand with supply-side economics. Weiner's main point, he says, is that we need more housing supply to meet the huge demand, and claims Campos is misrepresenting his words as a way to make it seem like Weiner is pro-rich.

In the next four months one of the biggest stories of the San Francisco housing crisis will be the $300 million affordable housing bond ballot measure in November. Due to its crossover support and the absence of public opposition as of this writing, the bond, which is the largest in San Francisco history, has a good chance of passing despite needing to overcome a two-thirds threshold. Both Weiner and Campos endorse the measure. The bond was originally proposed to be $250 million, but the Mayor's office tacked on another $50 million to be specifically used in The Mission after political pressure and action, which Campos credits to the moratorium vote and input from the pro-moratorium community.

Mayor Ed Lee says, "The bond will provide the resources we need to speed up the construction of housing for low and middle income families." His office plans to commit a total of $2.7 billion towards making San Francisco more affordable and has set a goal of 30,000 new and refurbished housing units by 2020.

When I reached out to Tim Colen, Executive Director of the San Francisco Housing Coalition, his take was ardently pro-bond. "Pass the damn bond, it's the right thing to do. It's gets the money fastest to where it's needed. All of these things are not rocket science."

What does $300 million buy you? Not enough to have widespread effects.

According to Colen it costs about $500,000 to produce one unit of housing, affordable or market-rate. So best-case scenario we'd end up with 600 units. According to recent census data, the average number of residents in a San Francisco County household is 2.31. If that math holds true, these units would accommodate a mere 1,386 residents. When you factor in the cost of buying land on some of the most expensive real estate in the country and the number of years before residents will be able to move into those units, that age-old phrase "too little, too late" comes to mind.

On VICE News: Humans Are Causing the Sixth Mass Extinction in Earth's History, Says Study

Supervisor Campos, while a fan of the measure, thinks it doesn't go far enough and isn't the only solution. "We're happy about the bond being increased, even though it's an important step, it's not enough. I'm supporting a countermeasure that Supervisor John Avalos has been working on to introduce $500 million. We probably need about $600 million in the mission alone." says Campos. "We need a marshall plan for the Mission, we need a marshall plan for San Francisco around housing."

When I asked Corey Cook, Professor of American Politics at the University of San Francisco, about what the future holds for San Francisco, he told me, "Absent substantial public investment in affordable housing at the federal, state, and local level (much of which will not be forthcoming), changes in state law to protect tenants (which it appears the legislature will not enact), and regional cooperation to build affordable and moderate income housing particularly on the peninsula, I think the best we can hope for is some mitigation of the most extreme social dislocations in the city—using the limited policy tools to prevent evictions, utilize public resources to build affordable housing, support residents in public and subsidized housing with high quality integrated social services, and maintain strong inclusionary zoning policies and hope to wait out this cycle."

It's very possible that San Francisco will never be the same again. The city has been overrun by young tech workers, raised on the liberal ideals of their boomer parents and buoyed by the promise of cashing in on the tech boom. It's not like San Francisco transplants are inherently bad people; surely, many probably would tell you they sympathize with the people they're driving out. But hey, everybody needs a place to sleep. And supply and demand dictates that he with the most bitcoin wins.

Follow George McIntire on Twitter.