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How to Find Your Friends at a Festival

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This festival-goer found out just how dangerous it is to veer wild. Photo by Jake Lewis

This article originally appeared on VICE Benelux

Generally speaking, your friends play a pretty crucial role in your enjoyment of a festival. Which is why it's a shame when you end up losing them as soon as you pass security. Before you've even had the chance to force the words "left of the speakers by the main stage" through your clenched jaws, all your friends have been absorbed into an amorphous mass of hammered festival-goers.

You'll be happy to know that finding your team doesn't require reinventing the wheel. There are people who track down others for a living—some because it's their job and others because they aren't actually people but instead a hungry shark looking for food. These guys have already come up with some pretty efficient search strategies. We rounded them up to make that cold and lonely trek across the festival site as short and painless as possible.

The Robot

Illustrations by Father Futureback

It's 2015; leave the searching to a robot. The MAVRIC is an autonomous search robot that is used in studies of foraging and food search patterns in animals. MAVRIC's search pattern is probably the closest thing to the bewildered and wavering swagger of the average festival-goer—in fact, it has been christened the "drunken sailor's walk" by researchers.

Here's how to copy MAVRIC: Start at the entrance of the festival, pick the direction you're going to waddle in and then just go wherever your mood takes you. Give in to gravity every so often so you veer from left to right a bit and can keep a close eye on all the sides of the festival site. Keep this up until you've found your friends, but make sure you see them before they see you. If they see you waddling about like a penguin on ketamine, they'll probably try and drop you off at the first aid tent and you'll lose them again.

The Shark

Don't let a few picturesque snaps of coral reefs fool you: Oceans are vast and deserted wet plains, kind of like a festival campsite after a torrential downpour. Sharks have had the last 420 million years to come up with the best way to find food. Normally, a shark moves more or less randomly through the ocean, but when it can't find any prey, it switches from its regular swimming pattern to a Lévy flight: a combination of longer linear movements and short, random bursts.

First, study your direct surroundings and see if you can find your friends in the area that you're already in. If you can't, walk in a more or less straight line in another direction for a bit, and start looking carefully in the small patch of the festival site you're in again. Repeat this pattern and you will find your friends. Probably.

The Criminalist

Criminalists that specialize in forensic science (like those guys on CSI) have a whole slew of different search patterns to find and collect evidence. One of those patterns is the spiral search method, where you walk in a circle from the outer edges of the crime scene to the center—this is often used in arson cases, for example.

The process can also be reversed for, say, a bomb explosion or a dead body. Go to the place where your knowledge of your friends' whereabouts died a tragic death, and walk outward in an expanding spiral from that point. Eventually you will find your friends—probably just in time to catch you as you dizzily fall to the ground.

The Rescue Helicopter

For most of us, endlessly looking for specific people is enough reason to sink into a terrible funk, but some people actually like it so much that they decide to do it professionally: These guys are called "rescue workers." They're the people you want to see if you happen to go overboard on a ship, or find yourself trapped in the snow after an avalanche, the only thing peeping above the surface your big toe.

One of the search patterns that search and rescue teams use is in the shape of a propeller, or three triangles. For starters, identify an easily recognizable starting point—like the porta-potties or a puddle of vomit with a distinctive color pallet. Walk in a straight line, turn 120 degrees to the left, and repeat, so you work your way back to your starting point in a triangle. Keep walking straight on and make a new triangle. Repeat. If search and rescue teams can dig up snowed under cross-country skiers with this technique, you should be able to find your drunken friends.


Related: Watch our documentary 'ICEMAN'


The Brick

What would a brick do in this situation? It wouldn't go looking for you, it'd probably just lie there and wait to be found. Lie down in the grass somewhere and wait until your friends find you. The chance of that happening isn't very big, by the way. Let's say there are 60,000 people walking around and you've lost four friends. Because you're lying on the ground and the entire festival population is moving past you, there's an equal chance for every person to be one of your friends.

Assuming your friends did manage to stay together, you can think of them as one person. That means that for every person who steps over you, the chance is (1 / (60000 - 4)) or 0.00166677778 percent that you will find them again. If you take into consideration that a large part of the festival population will step over you more than once and you'll be almost-stepped-on by the same pair of muddy rain boots multiple times, after some complicated math you end up with the simple answer to stop being so fucking lazy and just go and find your friends, you moron.

A Final Option

Photo by Jake Lewis

Don't lose your friends. Ever thought about that?



My Trip to Gen Con, Where Board Games Never Go Out of Style

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All photos courtesy of the author

In the week before Gamescom opens up its doors to the occasionally washed teenage masses, there's another massive gaming thing taking place on the other side of the world. More than 60,000 lovely people travel to the state of Indiana every year to celebrate Gen Con—the longest-running major gaming convention in the world. I pop over every year with the Shut Up & Sit Down team, because we're cool and board games are cool and leave me alone you aren't even my real dad.

Gen Con kicked off quietly in the late 1960s when Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax couldn't make it to a wargaming convention in Chicago and so invited a bunch of people around to his place near Lake Geneva instead. Half a century later it's an eclectic mess of all sorts of games and all sorts of players, with board games, card games, RPGs, and miniatures.

A group of friends grab a free table to play through last year's excellent Dead of Winter—a cooperative zombie survival game staged in a mess of post-apocalyptic snow. The end of the world has sent them all a bit funny, and there's a good chance that one of them is actually a traitor. It's hard to tell when everyone playing has their own strange, unique agenda.

Last time I played Dead of Winter my secret mission was to collect enough gasoline to burn our safe house to the ground when we had enough supplies to move on to the next one. I wasn't a bad guy, I was just a bit fixated—but you can already see where the paranoia slots in. Video games are excellent, but analogue gaming is so exciting right now that anyone ignoring it is a bit of a mug.

Gen Con feels like the best example of this—a sprawl of inventiveness and options that feels like a welcome break from the usual landscape of blunt marketing. Comic conventions often just feel like big shops, and video game conferences are a sea of billboard adverts and queues. People line up for silly-hours just to get a brief look at an unreleased game. I appreciate that many find these rituals exciting, but compare them to something like Gen Con, and culturally it all just feels a little bit shit.

Article continues after the video below


Related: Watch VICE's film, The Mystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'


There's a ridiculous amount of stuff you can do. There's an area entirely dedicated to "boffing"—the art of making giant foam weapons, then using them to joyfully beat up your friends. Last year's highlight for me was True Dungeon—a lovingly home-brewed puzzle-filled adventure which is basically a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and The Crystal Maze. I was a bard, which meant I spent most of the time singing Bowie songs in the hope that I'd be providing some sort of buff for the rest of my party. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I was.

(There's footage of me making a prick of myself about ten minutes in, here.)

An entire hall is dedicated to just providing people with tables, so they can sit down with strangers and play something cool. Some people bring their home-brewed sci-fi hobby projects to the show; others spend their time having a blast with the My Little Pony collectible card game.

Aside from a mild spritz of snooty snark from an older gentleman who clearly felt that World War II miniature gaming was the only worthwhile activity at Gen Con, there's an astounding lack of judgement to be found in these halls. Some people have traveled to the con to play and buy brand new games, others arrive for the competitive play, and some people just come along to hang out. In contrast to the hype-machine buzz that fills the air of most modern gaming expos, Gen Con is full of people actually playing games.

Kickstarter has proved endlessly viable for board games with a primary selling point of "look you get hundreds of tiny plastic figures," but within the traditional industry pre-order culture isn't really a thing—there's very little prominent promotion for anything you can't actually buy right now. It might be an oversimplification, but I wonder how much this simple difference accounts for the dramatic change in tone: people mostly seem excited about the stuff they've just bought, rather than fixating on The Next Big Thing™, and the endless cycle of imaginary promises, which can swiftly begin to tarnish enthusiasm in video gaming.

You can't digitally distribute boxes full of cardboard, which means games that won't be available for months are at this very moment "on the water"—finished and printed and mass-produced, and now being slowly shipped across the world from China. The big surprises here aren't just announcements—it's what you'll turn up to find on sale. Publishers arrange small speedy deliveries of finished stuff, which means it's entirely possible to get your hands on a game that won't be on shelves until after Christmas.

Heavily buffed vertical slice demos, like you get in video games, obviously aren't a thing here either, but you can still sit and get a quick preview of a prototype of something that's out next year. Mostly though, people just play the games they love, or the games they've just bought, or the games that strangers they met in their hotel bar invited them over to try. The impact area of the convention seems to span the entire city—everywhere you go you find pockets of people raucously laughing at party games or furrowing their brows above a sea of reference sheets and dice.

And everyone you meet is so bloody lovely. At one point I was sure I was losing my mind, until I started interrogating the locals. As a city built entirely around racing events and annual conventions, Indianapolis is basically a giant hotel network, joined together by a chain of skyways that let you walk across most of the city without ever leaving the safety of air-con. It's a strangely empty realm of familiar restaurants and underground parking, a city specced for maximum capacity and seemingly little else. Gigantic government buildings and a towering civil war memorial sit like splodges of old punctuation stuck within a mass of fresh, uncaring glass. It's a place that seems content to annually import its culture from elsewhere, and the local Hoosiers take great price in being excellent hosts.

New on Munchies: Southern Food Is Delicious, But Will Eventually Kill You

This'll be where the people come to boff, then.

Everywhere we go, we're thanked for attending. The locals adore Gen Con, and always give the exact same reasons why. Everyone comes to have a good time, everyone is friendly, and nobody causes any trouble. I'm told that years ago the convention used to fall on the same week as a major motor biking event—the bars were still full of people wearing leather, but some of them weren't steampunk enthusiasts, and many more of them came looking for a fight.

It's an awfully useless and tepid word, but Gen Con is just unbelievably nice. You'll find passion seeping out of any convention, but the rare quality here is sincerity. Everyone turns up and has an awesome time doing the things they specifically like doing, whether that's jaunting around a shit Crystal Maze or sitting in their hotel playing Dungeons & Dragons. You ask people about what they've been doing, and they're excited to tell you. They're excited to find out what you've been doing, too.

It's an infectious atmosphere that effortlessly crushes almost any cynicism. On my last night I poke my head into the costume ball, taking place within a grand hotel ballroom, where cosplayers seize the week's last opportunity to try and hook up with someone in a Spider-Man suit. Two Jedi use their lightsabers to host an impromptu limbo competition, while hundreds of people in amazing costumes smile and enthusiastically dance to shit music. Despite my evil heart of stone, I physically couldn't help but join in.

I've been to Gen Con twice now, and that's what I still can't fathom. Everyone turns up to have a nice time, everyone has a nice time doing nice things, and then everyone goes home with a big smile and writes articles that make them sound like a fucking intolerable Valium-stuffed Care Bear. It doesn't matter what you're playing: here, joy wins. It just always wins.

Follow Matt Lees on Twitter.

In Unearthed College Essay, Ann Coulter Rails Against Conservative Men

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In Unearthed College Essay, Ann Coulter Rails Against Conservative Men

How 11 Badass Women Stayed Fabulous At a Montreal Metal Festival

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The women at Heavy in Montreal rocked really hard. All photos courtesy the Author.

When we talk about summer festival fashion, we generally talk about a lithe Brandy Melville model whose barely-pubescent hips sway to the beat of The National, an inch of tasteful under-butt peaking out through her high-waisted jeans, her flower crown squeezing out every last brain cell. Maybe she is even flat-chested enough to afford to go bra-less—after all, she likely won't be doing any head banging or moshing.

At this weekend's Heavy Montreal metal festival, I survived the Alexisonfire mosh pit thanks to three bras layered over one another like a jockstrap for my chest, and my hair fastened in a Jew bun to prevent grabby men from pulling out chunks of it. (Though that didn't stop them from grabbing other things. Nothing adds to an outfit quite like a sultry bold red lip mouthing the words "touch me again and die a slow painful death.")

That day was an all-black-errthang type of day, not because it necessarily matched the colour of my soul, but because this way, my armpit sweat stains wouldn't advertise to the world I am a hot mess. My canvas black Vans didn't do much in the way of bruise prevention, but my newly painted toenails made it out unscathed—which, when you're trying to maintain some semblance of femininity in the vicinity of a wall of death, is of utmost importance. I'll fuck you up if you step on my pedicure. Female metal heads can be femme too, you know.

I spoke to 11 other festival-goers who've made the proverbial mosh pit their catwalk.

1. Emily Strigl

Maplewood, New Jersey

It's hard enough for the average human to look perfect on an average day, but to look perfect at a freaking metal festival? There had to be witchcraft involved. Not only was she rocking six-inch heels while walking around on the stone-and beer can-laden grounds, but her charm was ~*iNfEcTiOuS*~.

"I'm definitely a metalhead, and I admire the hippy look, but it's just not my thing," she said. "When I get dressed, I try to be cool (not like, cool cool), because it's always so hot at these festivals. I'm a huge fan of gussets, black on black, and the more I look like Gene Simmons, the better. I'm getting a little old for the mosh pit, so these here are my festival boots. If I'm going to a regular concert, I wear stilettos, but my husband told me I have to be comfortable today. I grew up in the '70s listening to '80s metal, so I don't feel old here."

2. Catharine Sheppard

St. John's, Newfoundland

Ever look at someone and feel this instant wave of calm and relief? That's what I felt about this bite-sized beauty transfixed by Glassjaw on stage.

"I love to be comfortable. Here, I went for the fake thigh highs (they're actually tights) so I don't have to think about them falling down," she said. "I made this dress especially for the festival since I found one online for $140 but used only $30 worth of material. I love that the back is open and shows off my tattoo. My hair has been green for two months but I re-dyed it for this. And the Mary Janes? Sure, they're comfortable, but they are just so cute."

3. Amélie Ménard

Montreal, Quebec

Had an army of men not been beating the living shit out of each other a mere foot-and-a-half in front of us, her outfit would have suggested we were at Coachella. What separated her from the standard festival basic bitch aesthetic, however, was the insane detail, like chandelier earrings hanging from gauges and elaborate tattoos, which she says are inspired by the European teknival scene.

"Everything needs to be as light as possible. I got this crocheted dress from Camden Market in London, and while I need to keep it simple, I love lots of jewelry. I love layering and mixing textures like lace and leather, which can be an issue because it's so hot out," she said. "My look is definitely Tank-Girl-meets-Carrie-Bradshaw, metal-meets-high-fashion, where you'll see lots of one-of-a-kind designer pieces and skulls."

4. Imane Imane

Montreal, Quebec

She was out of an haute couture ad creatively directed by a guy with an addiction to breakdowns (the metal kind, not downward spirals). I almost wanted to ask what someone so put together was doing at a shitshow like this. But alas, her bad-bitch aura explained it all.

"I dress however the fuck I want, like this guy (points at a man in a full-body Spiderman costume). I have to make sure my bra cup is tight enough. I love leather—it's just so hot," she said. "The blazer is the sweet part of the outfit, because I find the sweat is part of the look. I mix black and white because if you get lost in the crowd, your friends can find you better, and it looks far better than wearing a bright orange cone."

5. Stéphanie Huot

Trois-Rivières, Quebec

There's something incredibly nostalgic about the emo look circa 2004. The ability to reinvent that in a mature, effortless way is applause- (or head-bang-) worthy.

"I don't want to dress like everyone else with the fluff and frills at Osheaga," she said. "I've been coming here for five years, and since I don't mosh anymore, I'm wearing a loose bralet (a thin bra without underwire). These UNIF boots are my all-day-everyday boots. I usually wear them with a long skirt, but at Heavy, I don't mind being almost naked."

6. Christa Carr

Ottawa, Ontario

I was enchanted by her blue lip liner, which totally worked within the context of her quirky look. Bonus: it was a big fuck you to Kylie Jenner's tired nude lip. Not to mention, her eyebrows were dyed, too. Talk about attention to detail.

"I get to wear what I want to wear and express myself here, even with the blue lip liner. I wear this vest because it's fashion-meets-function and I put all my stuff in there without having to carry it around," she said. "I was worried I'd be too cold today so I figured these socks would cover half my leg. As for the glasses, I'm like the emoji with hearts for eyes. I got my hair and eyebrows redone for this, and these boots are so I don't get stepped on in the pit."

7. Jordan Isobel

Montreal, Quebec

I first saw her lingering by the hot tub, and sure enough, her minimal outfit reflected an effort to act as a source of eye candy for band members she hopes to chat up. Side note: if you have beef with a scantily clad woman, you're just jealous her body is better than yours.

"Everything's more fun in the '80s. I'm really into old-school speed metal, which is more hoochie with the big hair and pink nails, but it makes me feel empowered," she said. "Honestly, if a tit falls out, that's okay. If I reach for something, there will be tasteful underboob. These cowboy boots give me a little heel without looking stupid, and the high shorts show off my waist and tuck in my tummy when I sit. I'm big on femininity and most comfortable in this type of flashy outfit."

8. Kristen Nugent

Dallas, Texas

In a sea of 50 shades of black, a white dress is a breath of fresh air. This chick must be a badass for risking not only a stain, but a Marilyn moment.

"The white dress does make me stand out, not that I need to, having bright red hair and standing at six feet tall," she said. "I do like that I'm going for a more feminine look. The red lips are consistent day to day, but for work as a lawyer I need to cover up my tattoos. Yesterday, I rocked a similar look with a spiked leather jacket and dress. This outfit works for me now since I've had my share of moshing days as a former pit kid."

9. Andreja Schrump

Kimberley, British Columbia

I saw her dashing through the crowd like a character in a video game. Sure enough, her berry-printed skirt evoked psychedelic images of Strawberry Fields Forever.

"My wardrobe is based around rockabilly-pinup stuff, and completely the opposite of how people usually dress. They're shocked when they see me. The breeze is definitely helpful, though," she said while curtsying. "The bright pattern and colour is important to me. I literally walked into Hot Topic and picked up these neon tights on sale and I chose the fake purple eyelashes because they're just the coolest."

10. Liz Imperiale

Montreal, Quebec

It's tough to maintain an air of timeless beauty when the sun is turning us all into a Puddle of Mudd (haha, remember them?). Alas, her pure-as-snow skin was a matte canvas—the perfect backdrop for fun pops of red and a crimson kisser-of-death.

"I don't even know how put foundation on. All I wear is eyeliner and lipstick—if that," she said, adding that she hadn't applied any sunscreen that day (which has the tendency to contribute to a greasy complexion). "My bosses at work are pretty cool, and they let me show off my tattoos, so the way I dress for Heavy isn't much different than my day-to-day. I'm most comfortable wearing jeans, boots, and a T to shows, but I still channel the classic pinup Bettie Page look with my hair and glasses."

11. Vickey Smookie

Okinawa, Japan

As I held my recorder up to her dainty features with Pig Destroyer blaring in the background, a shirtless sweaty man exclaimed, "You two are the hottest things I have ever seen in my life." Certainly, though, he was referring to the fact that a human manifestation of his warrior princess fantasies had materialized before his eyes. The velvet and sequin-studded bow in her hair precluded her from being full-blown intimidating, so I had to know her deal.

"Have you heard of the Harajuku Girls? Because they are my inspiration," she said, balancing on heels taller than her. "I perform with a group called The Royals so I wear these types of outfits all the time. I love leather, fishnets, everything sexy. No matter where I am, I'm dressing up."

Follow Marissa Miller on Twitter

Living with My Mother's Mental Illness

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Living with My Mother's Mental Illness

Pornhub Has Seriously Pissed Off Italy’s Parmigiano-Reggiano Industry

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Pornhub Has Seriously Pissed Off Italy’s Parmigiano-Reggiano Industry

How Do You Readjust to Society After Decades in Prison?

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Martin McNair in front of the Mi Casa Su Casa house in Baltimore. Photo by Tracey Brown

Baltimore has seen a lot of bad press lately because of the Freddie Gray tragedy, the subsequent riots, recurring gang violence, and questionable law enforcement practices. But there's hope for the future in the form of local criminal justice initiatives like Mi Casa Su Casa (MCSC), a supportive housing program for those who've been stuck behind bars for years or even decades. Since its founding in 2013, the group has helped about two dozen men successfully transition back into the community and inch toward becoming productive members of their community. That's no small feat in any arena, but given the tumult that has gripped Baltimore lately, it represents a significant achievement—after all, with police helicopters flying overhead, narcotic cops on patrol, abandoned and boarded-up buildings, and drug dealers on the corner, living in Baltimore's hardest neighborhoods isn't exactly easy.

"What I'm seeing is that dudes have a lot of scar tissue from being in the battle field of incarceration for so long," Martin McNair, Mi Casa Su Casa's senior coordinator, tells VICE. "This is our opportunity to offer the wraparound services officially that we've been offering, unofficially, in our community. We have the clinic in place with a results-driven [approach] to assist the men that come into our program."

Along with Director Carlton Carrington, Martin thinks he's actually making change on the volatile streets of Baltimore.

"We partnered with [criminal justice advocate] Walter Lomax, the Public Defender's Office, and the University Of Maryland Law School Forensic Social Work Clinic to provide housing for the geriatric reentering citizens in 2014," Martin says. "These are men that were lifers who were released [after] the Unger Decision [a ruling that declared many verdicts were invalid because incorrect instructions were given by judges to juries]. These people had jury trials in the late 60s up until 1981, and were found guilty by a jury and sentenced by the same jury. While these partners were doing great things getting these guys their freedom, the only opposition was housing the ones that needed [it] once they got released, especially if they didn't have any family support.

"A lot of these men have outlived their families, being gone for three to five decades, and literally have no family at all or the family they have they don't know," Martin adds.

A man named Boogaloo is one of the ex-lifers currently in the program. He did 51 years and never expected to see the light of day. After such a significant amount of time behind bars, Boogaloo had an incredible transition to make, one the Mi Casa Su Casa staff was ready to help with.

"It's been a slow process," Boogaloo tells VICE. "It was hard to get my birth records and stuff from the archives. I didn't have the right information and I had to go back and recycle everything so that I could get identification."

Boogaloo also had to re-familiarize himself with the city because so much had changed during the half-century he'd been out of commission. It didn't hurt that he kept the right perspective while locked up. "They locked up my body but not my mind. I kept my mind free," he tells VICE. "I wasn't in a mental cage."

Which is not to say the fundamental changes in American life since the Jim Crow era haven't been overwhelming at times.

"I had to get out here and regroup and re-familiarize myself with society," Boogaloo says. "I'm still not really comfortable with the phones. When I got locked up, all they had was house phones. When I came out with all this cell phone stuff, it was like I was suspended in time."

That's just one of the challenges men like Boogaloo face. I encountered similar problems when I got out of federal prison a year ago myself. At the time of my incarceration in 1993, there wasn't much in the way of the Internet, and social media and smartphones were a ways off. In the first weeks I spent outside, I was always asking my wife to help me navigate the intricacies of the digital frontier. Now I'm a pro on my iPhone 6 Plus; it was just a matter of learning how to use the technology, and perhaps more importantly, I had the desire to master it.

Photo by the author

"The problems most ex-offenders and reentering citizens face, especially the ones coming out of long-term bids, are that they are realistically scared and terrified of what this new world has to offer," Martin tells VICE. "It's like a lot of them are Rip Van Winkle. When they went in several decades ago, there were no smartphones, dollar stores, bank cards, Bluetooths in the car... They see the young guys coming in the prisons and have a distorted sense of what 's out here when they return. For a lot of them, the only window to the outside world is what they see in the media."

And pop culture can only convey so much.

"What really baffled me was the credit cards," Boogaloo says. "They didn't even have credit cards when I got locked up. When I went up to an ATM machine, I didn't really know how to work the machine or none of that stuff. When I went to the store, I went up to the cashier and said, 'Can you help me out? I just got out of prison and I don't know whats going on with this credit card machine.'"

The material things we take for granted—and suspect we couldn't live without—can be a tremendous obstacle to those coming out of the belly of the beast. And while Martin teamed up with the Abell Foundation and OSI (Open Society Institute) to provide housing, grand plans on paper haven't always translated to reality.

"We found that MCSC staff was the ones teaching social skills, financial literacy, life skills, and any other skill that these men needed," Martin says. "These guys related to us better than the social workers, due to my partner and I being around them daily. What we soon realized, during the pilot portion process of interacting with these guys, was that the moneys and the time wasn't enough. There was no cookie-cutter process with this demographic. Each man getting released was different—some could hit the ground running, navigating his way through the city on public transportation, and then one was terrified to go out on his own to the corner store."

Take Al, another resident at the house who got released after doing a 36-year sentence. He gave it a go when he first got to the house, but on one of his first days back out in society had en encounter that made him want to go back to a cage.

"I don't go out. I think I would be better off back in prison," Al told VICE. "I lived good in prison. I'm struggling here. I stay in this courtyard here. I don't like to go out unless someone is with me. When I first got here, I went out jogging and a police officer called me over and asked for my ID and I didn't have any ID. I told him I just got out of prison and was at the reentry house and he asked me, 'How long were you in?' I told him a long time and he questioned me. 'Ten years? 'Longer.' 'Twenty years?' 'Longer.' 'Thirty years?' 'Longer.' 'How long?' 'Thirty-six years,' I told him and he said, 'Well, you're a real piece of shit, go back to your house and don't ever come out in this neighborhood.' You wouldn't think that anything like that would happen, but it did."

Mi Casa Su Casa does its best to prepare these guys for the street, but they can't account for everything. The group runs a very structured program because these guys who've done multiple decades inside are used to formal scheduling. The house has rules on the wall like "Respect your fellow residents," and signs that read, "No weapons allowed," "No drugs allowed," and "No visitors in the rooms or above the first floor,"

Martin tries to keep the atmosphere's regimentation simple, but firm.

Photo by the author

"We help them by initially acknowledging what's needed for them to be successful. We focus on the resident 's mindset first, how and what they are feeling about coming into the free world again," he tells VICE. " Then MCSC's clinician will put a realistic plan of action for them to execute along with ours staff and case managers' assistance."

Martin and Mi Casa Su Casa are providing a much need service, especially with the prison reform movement having recently been embraced by President Obama. We're at the end of the tough-on-crime cycle now, and there's hope that a kinder and smarter approach to imprisonment will replace replace the draconian model.

Reentry advocates like Martin are just trying to keep up with the demand.

"A lot of people don't want to deal with the population of people we deal with for reasons being something that they did decades ago," he says. "Misinformation is one of the greatest injustices that affect us all—it has no barriers."

The program has expanded to three houses, and Martin intends to make moves into drug treatment programming, job training, behavior modification, and more.

"We want to see everybody we encounter win, whether they want to or not," Martin says.

To learn more about this program, check out their website here.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Tinder Threw a Twitter Fit After 'Vanity Fair' Blamed Them for a 'Dating Apocalypse'

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Read: My Adventures Using Tinder as a Trans Woman

Last week, Nancy Jo Sales—of Bling Ring infamy—penned a feature for Vanity Fair about the way Tinder is ravaging the millennial dating scene and crippling 20-somethings' ability to find real romance. Sales called the rise of Tinder a "Dating Apocalypse," which didn't make Tinder particularly happy, so the company did what any normal, professional company would do in 2015: They immediately took to the internet to berate Sales and her Vanity Fair story in a firestorm of tweets.

Tinder's Twitter reaction aside, the company has some supporters who also think Sales's feature made pretty broad claims. On Wednesday morning, New York Magazine published a response to the original piece and Tinder's Twitter tirade, suggesting that Sales fell victim to Confirmation bias—while the stories that Sales used as evidence are true, she doesn't seem to mention the number of people for whom Tinder has been very beneficial. Sure, there are plenty of Tinder dating horror stories, but there are also a few people out there actually finding love as they thumb through virtual stacks of potential partners.

When you have decided to call dating apps like Tinder "a wayward meteor on the now dinosaur-like rituals of courtship," it kind of makes sense to rely on more than stories you got from chatting up a few Tinder power users. That's about the gist of what Tinder was trying to say in defense, but maybe blasting a string of tweets out to Nancy Jo Sales isn't the best way to make their case. Even Tinder has felt a little bashful about their tweet fest.

A spokesman for Tinder issued a statement to the Huffington Post on Wednesday that they may have taken the angry tweets too far. "We were saddened to see that the article didn't touch upon the positive experiences that the majority of our users encounter daily," they said. "Our intention was to highlight the many statistics and amazing stories that are sometimes left unpublished, and, in doing so, we overreacted."

We've all made mistakes, Tinder—mistakes that have, from time to time, been facilitated by your app. We'll cut you some slack on this one.


Australian Doctors Have New Guidelines for Handling Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery Requests

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Image via Flickr user Bob Jagendorf

A growing number of Australian women are coming to their doctors with concerns that their protruding labia minora are abnormal or their labia majora are too large, and sheepishly asking questions about genital cosmetic surgery. The trend has led the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) to develop world-first guidelines to help doctors better understand women's motivations for seeking surgery and counsel them through concerns about their appearance.

Guidelines author Dr. Magdalena Simonis said some women sought genital cosmetic surgery because they had a "lack of knowledge" of their own genital anatomy and mistakenly believed they were "abnormal" when in fact they were medically average.

She warned that labiaplasty—a surgical procedure for altering the inner labia—was a serious and potentially risky operation and many women were unaware of its ramifications.

"Genital cosmetic surgery is not the same as having your nose modified or a breast augmentation," Dr. Simonis told VICE. "If you are going to embark on some modification procedure which involves removing and cutting away highly sensitive genital tissue that plays a part in the whole erotic experience, then you're really making a decision that could cause irreversible harm."

I actually think that we need to stop talking about 'normal.'

Given that "normal" occupies a broader definition than what many apparently believe, the idea that women are having serious, expensive surgery (operations can cost between $3,000 and $9,000) because of misplaced anxiety is at best cause for alarm.

"I actually think that we need to stop talking about 'normal,'" said Dr. Simonis. "It's like saying, 'What is a normal nose?' ['Normal'] is a range, a spectrum. Even if a woman has very long, very large labia minora, if she is comfortable with that, then that is normal."

Experts have attributed women's dissatisfaction with their appearance to the proliferation of online pornography and the popularity among young women of Brazilian waxing. With the curtains pulled back, many are shocked—and in some cases, unhappy—with what lies beneath.

"The cloak of pubic hair has been removed... Removing pubic hair is now pretty much the norm for this generation," said Dr. Simonis. "Twenty-five years ago when I started a general practice everybody had pubic hair and nobody apologized for it. Whereas now I find a lot of young women apologize for having pubic hair or for not having removed it prior to a consultation."

Medicare data reveals the number of claims for genital cosmetic surgery doubled in the decade between 2003 and 2013. Although Medicare does not provide rebates for non-therapeutic cosmetic surgery, a 2014 health department review found there was no standard procedure for determining why women had labiaplasty, raising concerns that many were claiming for cosmetic and not medical reasons.

Dr. Hugh Bartholomeusz, president of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, said Medicare had since tightened its requirements for patients seeking labiaplasty and vulvoplasty and now only covers congenital abnormalities and functional issues.


Related: Watch VICE News's documentary on reversing female circumcision.


"Medicare basically have said 'We are not prepared to pay for this procedure on the public purse if there isn't a reason for the procedure being performed other than purely cosmetic reasons,'" Dr. Bartholomeusz told the ABC.

"The doctors concerned need to send photographs to Medicare, they have a panel that review these photographs and then make a decision as to whether they will allow the item number to be used," he said.

Of course, this will not prevent women from seeking surgery via the private system, which is not required to publish data on patients and procedures.

"Medicare has only really measured the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Simonis. "The plastic and cosmetic surgeons...who are advertising these procedures openly admit that this is a very new, booming, lucrative industry for them."

In addition to the influence of Internet pornography, Maggie Kirkman, a Senior Research Fellow at The Jean Hailes Research Unit at Monash University, believes we should also be exploring the impacts of Australia's censorship laws on women's—and men's—attitudes toward their genitals.

In partnership with a long list of women's health organizations, Dr. Kirkman is currently undertaking research in order to understand what drives women to seek labiaplasty, partly via an anonymous survey open to the general public.

"Most people probably aren't aware that in M-rated magazines you're not allowed to show women's genitals," Dr. Kirkman told VICE. "They have to be hidden or airbrushed out... with no requirement that the image is identified as having been digitally altered."

Indeed, the Australian Classification Board mandates that images of vulvae "must be healed to a single crease"—this, despite the fact that many women's inner labia do not neatly tuck into their vulva.

"Clearly whoever set up those rules didn't want women's genitals to be visible," Dr. Kirkman added. "Men are allowed to have penises and balls, women are just meant to have a kind of 'Barbie' finish, or a pre-pubertal, childish look."

Both Dr. Kirkman and Dr. Simonis pointed to Women's Health Victoria's The Labia Library as an important resource for educating people about the female anatomy. Launched in 2013 in response to the increase in women seeking genital cosmetic surgery, the website aims to portray the diversity of women's genitals by featuring real, unaltered photographs of different vulvas.

"We're all different downstairs and healthy vulvas come in lots of different shapes and sizes. Labia size, symmetry, and color vary a lot between women," the website reads. "Even if you can't see what your vulva looks like in these images, chances are it's perfectly normal and healthy."

Related: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Vulva

Still, some women say the appearance of their vulva negatively affects their self-confidence and intimate relationships. Until she had labiaplasty in 2013, Louise, a 19-year-old Sydney woman, told ABC TV she'd hated how she looked since she was 14. She felt her labia were abnormal, and saved up for "quite a while" to have the expensive surgery.

Post operation, Louise admitted that while the result wasn't perfect, it was a significant improvement. "It's not exactly how I wanted it, but it's a lot better than it was," she said. "[Labiaplasty] definitely gave me a lot more confidence in myself."

Laura, a 23-year-old writer and performer from Melbourne, said she was frustrated that many women felt self-conscious about their vulvas, but was not surprised given our cultural reluctance to discuss women's bodily functions and sexual health.

"If young people only ever see and hear about vulvas that have no protrusions or 'ugly' bits, then of course they will worry that theirs is abnormal, and of course they will want to take steps to fix it," she told VICE.

"Although I do not judge those who choose to have genital cosmetic surgery, it saddens me that this is even a thing," Laura added. "The decision to undergo this type of elective surgery is not something that has happened in a vacuum—it is the result of years and years of negative messaging surrounding women's bodies and women's sexualities."

According to Dr. Kirkman, dismantling the stigma that surrounds women's sexuality would help reduce the shame many feel about their genitals.

"There does seem to be something in the idea that women's sexuality and bodies are somehow frightening," Dr. Kirkman said. "For whatever reason there is a large portion of society who fear women being in control, not just of their own bodies but of other things as well.

"And so we just have to resist this sense that there is only one way of being a woman, one kind of woman's body."

Follow Hayley on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Former President Jimmy Carter Has Cancer

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Photo via Flickr

In a statement released Wednesday, former US President Jimmy Carter announced that he has cancer and will be seeking treatment at Emory Healthcare in his home state of Georgia.

Carter underwent surgery at Emory to remove a mass in his liver last week. During the operation, surgeons discovered that cancer had spread to "other parts of [his] body," according to Wednesday's statement.

Today's short press release from the Carter Center promised an in-depth briefing when more is known about the cancer, most likely next week. The 90-year-old Democrat is the second-oldest living ex-president, after George H. W. Bush, who is 91.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Study Reveals Kids Are Being Assigned Too Much Homework

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user Randen Pederson

Though school can be a completely different experience depending on the type of student you are, one thing rings true for almost anyone navigating the perils of institutionalized learning: homework sucks. In addition to extending the school day past the time actually spent in the classroom, it cuts into the time available to students who may want to do other things with their supposed "free" time.

Related: You Won't Find Typical Homework Projects at School of Poetic Communication

Both the National PTA and the National Education Association agree that homework should follow the ten-minute rule: each child should be given around ten minutes of homework per grade level. To put this into perspective, a first grader should be assigned ten minutes of homework per day, a sixth grader an hour, and a senior in high school two hours.

However, a recent study, published by The American Journal of Family Therapy revealed that students are being assigned way more homework than the rule suggests. The study was conducted through questionnaires given to more than 1,100 parents of K-12 students.

One of the more shocking findings showed that kindergarteners, who experts say should not be assigned any homework, were sometimes being assigned the same amount recommended for third graders. Equally disturbing was the revelation that most first graders were being assigned triple the recommended amount.

Although the idea of a first grader spending thirty minutes on their homework may not seem all that horrible at first, it is particularly scary when additional information is taken into account. According to Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, one of the contributing editors of the study (who is also a clinical director of the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology), homework that exceeds the recommended amount can be "detrimental to [students'] attitude about school, their grades, their self-confidence, their social skills, and their quality of life."

So there you have it, kids. Scientific proof that your teachers are wrong and you shouldn't listen to them.

Follow Michael Cuby on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Chelsea Manning Could End Up in Solitary Confinement For Possessing the Caitlyn Jenner Issue of 'Vanity Fair'

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Image via Flickr user Matthew Lippincott

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Chelsea Manning, the 27-year-old former Army soldier imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks for delivering a huge cache of classified information to Wikileaks, now faces possible charges that could get her stuck in solitary confinement indefinitely, sources close to Manning told The Guardian. Possessing the Caitlyn Jenner issue of Vanity Fair is one of the rule violations.

Vanity Fair wasn't the only controversial piece of literature. Manning apparently possessed other "prohibited property," including a short story collection about trans men called A Safe Girl to Love, Pakistani female education activist Malala Yousafza's memoir I Am Malala, at least one copy of Out Magazine, the issue of Cosmopolitan that she was interviewed for, and, for good measure, a printout of the Senate torture report, which was unclassified in 2014.

Some of the more routine prison rule violations being alleged include disrespect, disorderly conduct, and tossing food on the floor. One supposed incident of disrespect simply stemmed from saying "I want my lawyer," according to her lawyer.

There are also reportedly oddities like "medicine misuse," which, Manning's lawyer says, refers to her use of some toothpaste that expired earlier this year.

Manning has already clashed with the military prison system. Nearly a year ago, she filed a federal lawsuit saying that denying her hormone therapy for her diagnosed gender dysphoria is a violation of her constitutional rights. For a brief time, being allowed to wear women's underwear was the military's only concession to her transgender rights, but earlier this year, she was granted hormone therapy, and in March, military personnel were formally forbidden from referring to her with male pronouns.

The site Freechelsea.com has issued a petition demanding that the military drop the prison charges against Manning. It also request that her disciplinary hearing on August 18 be opened to the public.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

In Photos: The Aftermath of the Massive Explosion in the Chinese City of Tianjin

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In Photos: The Aftermath of the Massive Explosion in the Chinese City of Tianjin

Photos: The Polar Extremes of Communities Behind California's 'Redwood Curtain'

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This article appears in the August Issue of VICE Magazine

Curran Hatleberg currently lives somewhere in North Florida between his car and friends' couches. This nomadic condition is familiar to the 33-year-old: He spent six months roaming the Southwest in an Airstream trailer, until that ended and he moved on to Florida. His photographic process has always involved this drifting—driving with no destination until he encounters a scene that resonates with him. "There's something that just feels like I need to get out of the car and walk," Hatleberg told me. "Maybe it's as simple as there's a bunch of people out and about. I just start walking up to people with my camera displayed and introducing myself, and then I spend time with them." This contributes to the uncontrived immediacy of Hatleberg's pictures: "After a certain point people become numb to you and dissolve back into the flow of action they were engaged in when you first approached them."

Hatleberg's forthcoming first book of photographs, Lost Coast, puts this patient observation on display. Last year, Hatleberg decided to take a short break from his wandering to teach photography at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California, and photograph the residents and landscape of the small towns of Humboldt County. "I've never been attached to one specific place for that long," he said. "It really changed the way that I was working." Fitting, then, that the pictures in Lost Coast neglect the impermanent population of Eureka—the thousands of dreadlocked neo-hippies and free-wheeling liberal arts school graduates who drift through town on their way to trim marijuana on any number of the weed farms Humboldt Country is famous for. Instead his pictures focus on the town's permanent residents. Many of these individuals are fiercely independent, choosing ­isolation behind the so-called "Redwood Curtain" despite bleak economic conditions in the region.

A psychoactive tinge does creep into the photographs nonetheless, largely thanks to the scale problem created by the outsize nature of the old-growth forests and the frequently misty, atmospheric light of the Northern California coastline. "The landscape there is very psychedelic," Hatleberg explained. "There is a majestic, prehistoric quality—this grandeur of nature that I was completely captivated by as a stage. It's this larger-than-life presence that's always towering over you—redwoods spilling off cliffs down into the Pacific Ocean. It's the most beautiful thing you can imagine. Yet it is a place of polarizing extremes. Underneath the grandeur of nature the familiar struggles of small-town life are found—drug abuse, economic hardship. People exist in a kind of dream state, propped up by the mythology of the Pacific Northwest. Everything is seen through fog and nothing is fully revealed. Even now, the place is a mystery to me."

—MATTHEW LEIFHEIT

Curran Hatleberg is the recipient of a 2015 grant from Magnum Foundation's Emergency Fund and the 2014 Individual Photographer's Fellowship from the Aaron Siskind Foundation. The following photographs are a selection from the more than 60 pictures in his first book, Lost Coast, which will be published by TBW Books in September.

The Worst Drug in the World: A New York Politician Just Unveiled an Actual Plan to Combat the Synthetic Pot Epidemic

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Photo by Allie Conti

On Wednesday, State Senator Jeff Klein gathered a small group of reporters and community leaders in the Bronx to let them know he's got a solution to a problem no one else is quite sure how to solve. Standing outside of the Jacobi Medical Center in front of a lectern and next to a poster-board that looked like it belonged at an eighth-grade science fair, the on-again, off-again Democrat laid out a three-pronged strategy to combat the synthetic cannabinoid (a.k.a. K2) epidemic plaguing NYC.

Read: How Synthetic Weed Is Ravaging Brooklyn's Homeless Population

"The Bronx is becoming the K2 capital of New York City," Klein said in a statement. "At least ten patients a week are rushed through the emergency room at Jacobi Hospital displaying frightening, erratic behavior associated with K2 use. I'm introducing legislation to keep ahead of the chemists' curve and criminalize all analogous chemicals put into these colorful K2 packets."

It's probably a stretch to argue that the Bronx, which Klein represents in the state legislature, is the epicenter of the epidemic. A July report by the New York Times Magazine showed that the upstate New York city of Syracuse recently experienced 19 overdoses in one day. Similarly, my recent story for VICE showed that in Central Brooklyn, where the drug can be obtained for as little as $1, homeless people abuse it to the point that some EMTs are shuttling the same abusers back and forth between city hospitals and shelters all day long.


Watch our documentary about synthetic marijuana in the UK:


But the press conference suggests that the powers that be are making the issue a priority. Klein's proposal emerged just a week after NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton started referring to the chemicals as "weaponized weed" and not long after City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito called for busts at Harlem bodegas. While actual marijuana is not present in these products, Bratton's language—which has also included dire warnings about how the superhuman strength of K2 users means normal cops' normal takedown tactics might not be effective—suggests the NYPD is trying to tackle this public health crisis.

Right now, selling synthetic cannabinoids—a violation rather than a felony—will get you a slap in the wrist, like a $500 fine, according to Klein. Under legislation he plans to propose in Albany's next legislative session, selling fake "marijuana" would be criminalized under the penal code—just like selling actual pot—and dealers would face fines of $2,000 for a first violation, $5,000 for a second violation, and a termination of their license after a third strike.

Klein also wants to make sure every NYPD officer has field testing kits, although it's unclear how those would work given that the biggest problem with synthetic cannabinoids is that the formula for them is constantly changing.

After Klein went over his plan, fellow politicians, a couple of doctors, and members of the community took the mic. A few of the speeches undeniably took on a pearl-clutching think-of-the-children tone. "This drug is a gateway drug," explained Assemblyman Mark Gjonaj. "It's misleading and it affects our most vulnerable—our children." He pointed to pictures of a packet of "Smacked!" a brand of synthetic marijuana that features a bugged-out cartoon frog on the front, suggesting that it's sold to kids like candy.

This isn't the first time a freakout over this designer drug has reached Reefer Madness levels of absurdity. Back when Bratton went on his "weaponized weed" tear, he showed a video of a naked man, supposedly on K2, bursting through a fence, Kool-Aid Man style. But as Gothamist later reported, the clip was actually from a very old episode of COPS, and depicted someone in the throes of a legit PCP freakout.

Klein mostly avoided that kind of alarmism on Wednesday. Besides talking about the effect the drug was having on the community, and how it could be obtained by kids, he emphasized that his office had identified 24 bodegas in the Bronx that were currently selling it. He did have a video offering of his own, however.

"As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words," Klein said as he wrapped up the conference. "Go to the video."

Video via Senator Klein's office

In the clip, which was filmed on August 7, an undercover member of Klein's staff is able to obtain five bags of synthetic marijuana from a bodega and even cut a deal in the process. "You're my man," the spy tells the clerk as he walks away with 25 grams worth of the worst drug in the world for just $25. "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.


All the Types of People You'll Meet at a Hostel

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Photo by Ender Suenni

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

This summer, droves of young privileged Westerners will strap on their backpacks and head out into the big brave world. Some will be celebrating graduation, some trying to forget about disastrous finals exams, while others will simply seek to fill the existential void with trance parties and crotch-destroying venereal diseases.

After having spent a year scraping that cash together, it's finally time to swan off into the sunset with the shirt on your back, a copy of On the Road, and a slightly presumptuous number of condoms. No matter which continent you've chosen to Lonely Planet your way through, you're destined to repeatedly bump into hundreds of young voyagers with the exact same itinerary as you. Sure, it's nice to see a familiar face, but you have to be very selective when it comes to which of these free-spirits you decide to attach yourself to. Oftentimes, that friendly Portuguese crust-punk who gave you lice will turn out to be nothing more than a leech who's only goal is to spend the last of your cash on a vintage fire-poi kit. Don't assume you're safe because you've brought along your friend from home, either—as your parents' marriage can attest to, anyone can test your patience if you spend enough time with them.

These warnings aside, you're going to need some partners in crime while you traipse about the globe, even if only to help you avoid dejectedly masturbating alone in your hostel bunk every night. If you're going to be hanging around with a bunch of strangers all summer, it's vital that you learn to separate the wheat from the dickheads. To assist you in judging a book by its cover, we've compiled a list of some of the backpackers you're likely to meet on your travels.

Australian Backpackers

Proto-Australian Corey Worthington. Screencap via Youtube.

If you've ever visited Sydney, you'll know that it's almost impossible to differentiate the locals from Americans or Europeans. They're smart, stylish, and thoroughly modern. Yet, for some baffling reason, as soon as Aussies board a plane, out come the neon sunglasses, shark tooth necklaces, and nipple piercings.

Perhaps they're attempting to slowly make these things part of their cultural heritage, so that, in a few centuries, neon sunglasses will be for Australians what clogs are for the Dutch, or the beret is for the French. I suppose you have to start somewhere if you want to create a national identity that goes beyond kangaroos or hats with corks hanging out of them, but still, is this really the way to go? Australia: just because these stereotypes exist doesn't mean that you have to live up to them.

Do-Gooders

Don't get me wrong, it's admirable that you've decided to single-handedly end social injustice by spending two weeks shoveling feces at a Nepalese monkey sanctuary. I'll be the first to admit that the world would be a considerably better place if there were more left-wing, bleeding heart humanities students.

Sadly, despite the good intentions, scrubbing oil residue off of turtles will only end up being a piss in an ocean of global hunger, financial injustice, police brutality, institutional racism, slave labor, and global warming. Which is completely fine, but maybe cool it a bit with the bragging?

Backpacking Douchebros

Photo by the author

The backpacking douchebro often comes across as a nice guy at first. He's cheerful, friendly, and most importantly, has plenty of jazz-cigarettes that he doesn't mind sharing with you—something that miraculously manages to render his sun-protection fedora tolerable.

Unfortunately, his decision to end every other sentence with 'dhuuuude' will soon get on your nerves. As will his inability to talk about anything other than how shitty the local "herb" is or how good he is at the didgeridoo.

Grumpy French Backpackers

Let's face it, hostel life can be ghastly: that grueling sensation of someone else's toenail clippings tickling your feet in the shower, the smell of your towel after stuffing it into your bag while wet. Having blown your entire budget on the "full diving package," your breakfast will also be reduced to a tedious slice of the world's driest bread and just enough Nescafé crumbs to brew a cup of sour brown water.

Sure, these things are nothing short of atrocities, but they don't give you a license to be eternally grumpy. Unless you are French. In that case, apparently, it's completely acceptable to spend every waking moment moping about as if you fell into a septic tank on your wedding day.

The Happy-Go-Lucky Optimist

Polar to the French backpacker, the Optimist has a permanent grin slapped across his face. This person is so eager to see everything the city has to offer that his stride is essentially an enthusiastic skip. He treats every bakery visit as if it's the discovery of a long-lost temple and greets every local as if they're his best friend.


WATCH: Thailand's Meth Epidemic and Vomit Rehab


The Optimist won't hesitate to ask whether or not you've climbed the nearest mountain, visited the underground museum, gone on the butterfly excursion, or had yourself fitted for a tailor-made penis gourd. If you try to explain that you've only been in town for three days, he will tell you he's been there for two. If you're hungry, the Optimist will recommend a local dish that he claims to be his favorite. The food may very well be delicious, but the Optimist's toe-curling joy has already left a bitter taste in your mouth.

The Lonely Old Traveler

Photo by the author

After multiple failed marriages and a couple of botched entrepreneurial endeavors, the Lonely Old Traveler (LOT) realized his life needed something more meaningful than a weekly solo dinner at TGIFriday's. The LOT spends six months a year working up enough cash to fund these explorations and spends equally as much time yapping about them, too.

The Lonely Old Traveler is capable of regaling you with weeklong tales of eskimos he's met and that one moose he single-handedly shot, skinned and ate. He's the kind of person who will plonk his red wine nose down next to you as soon as you've mustered the courage to talk to that hot Canadian from your dorm. Seconds before you've reached your wit's end, he'll disappear off on his travels. Which is really a shame, because, for some inexplicable reason, you'll miss him.

Brits

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

You've finally found your paradise. As you look up at the pristine blue sky through the softly swaying leaves of a palm tree, you hear a rhythm. Or is it a beat? No, wait, a chant? Suddenly you recognize it. "Let's go fuckin' mental! Let's go fuckin' mental!" The lads have arrived, seemingly pre-sunburnt, all sweating flesh and intimidatingly small pastel shorts.

You try to avoid eye contact and pretend you don't speak English, determined to integrate with the local culture and people. It's no use, though. They've got recent iPlayer downloads and inexplicably they've bagged a 24-pack of Carlsberg. The weird cocktails in coconut shells were nice at first, but you suspect they gave you the shits and you'd kill for anything in a can. One of them has even got Sky Sports on his phone, laughing in the face of international roaming charges.

Give in. Go over to them. Let their barely coherent banter wash over you. You might as well join them for fish bowls later. It's not like there's much to do in paradise anyway.

Babies in Jars, Death Masks, and Ponytails: My Induction to the Odditorium

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Joe Coleman, left, introducing the author to his Odditorium in Brooklyn. Photos by Petra Szabo

Joe Coleman walks among us, hairy and intense, a collector of entire lives and worlds. I recognize the urge, having myself collected toy cars, old pulps, shiny minerals, and rave fliers. Some of these hoards survived my ten years and three months as a ward of New York State's prisons, safe in my parents' garage. Now cured, I've been selling them off on eBay since my release.

Seven inches of my hair, braided and secured at both of the ponytail's ends, was recently inducted into the one-of-a-kind collection Coleman has spent much of his life assembling. The astonishing exhibition, known as the Odditorium, displays things that speak to an unconventional set of interests, morals, and needs—Coleman considers it a shrine to the margins of Americana. Whether he's a curator or high priest, Coleman's mission is to give the voiceless their say. The exploitation of birth defects, body-altering illnesses, and morbid curiosity is hallowed and storied, but Coleman overturns this macabre voyeurism by letting the "losers of history" speak for themselves. The result is insightful at times, jarring at others, and never even close to dull.

My own ponytail was a more poignant way of illustrating the years I lost than a pile of calendars or slashes on a wall, having been recorded in my body's cells.

It was in prison that I learned to transcend my addiction to things because I wasn't allowed to have many. Before being plucked from my regular existence at the age of 25, I collected a library of 3,000 books that served as an external registry of my intellectual development (and allowances blown). But New York State convicts are allowed just 25 books and 14 magazines at a time. Suffice it to say my tenure as a gentleman-librarian was put on hold once I was sentenced, though I did work as an assistant in four jailhouse collections, each approximating my own lost database—without the leather and gilt.

Upon my release, unboxing the books was an exercise in nostalgia veering toward mockery. The advent of Kindles and Google had sapped all value and purpose from my collection of classics. Only symbols matter today, like the URL leading to the Memoirs of Casanova that I once tracked down in an unexpurgated 1928 edition. Perhaps that is why a physical thing, like the old ponytail Coleman inducted into his Odditorium, must also have symbolic value to remain important in our digital world; the hair I sent home in 2010 was not just seven inches long, but seven years old—or seven Christmases sad.

Coleman inducting the author's hair into his Odditorium

The name of the Odditorium is a nod to the portmanteau moniker used by the installation's many 19th-century predecessors. The exhibits are approached with reverence rather than an eye to profit—even if Coleman's waxwork opium addicts, death masks of guillotined murderers, and adopted son Junior (a deformed baby in a jar) all graduated to being elements of an artwork after lying in the shadows of carnivals. Junior was neglected and out of fashion, sipping formaldehyde in a rotting Coney Island attraction, when Coleman felt compelled to rescue him. Today, the jar in which the misshapen baby was preserved long ago has a well-lit shelf of its own. There's a small chance Junior is actually a "bouncer," as the wax or gutta percha recreations (created to avoid the law against moving bodies between states) were called.

At a time when gawking at the varieties of our fellow men was deemed wholesome fun, the new arena of cinema's appetite for the lurid was but an extension of society's frank taste for the morbid. The pinheads, Siamese twins, and other performers who acted in 1932's Freaks were served up as objects to a curious (and paying) audience. Today, the concept is disgusting: Fondling the costume of Johnny Eck, Amazing Half-Boy, I decided it was tragedy I was feeling—the anguish of the human zoo animal. His outfit is a relic central to the Odditorium.

I was not the first to make the mistake of applying contemporary values to another world. The sequined shirt was Johnny's favorite and most expensive possession. He adored performing—condemned to walking on his hands at waist level, it was only on a stage that he could expect genuine eye contact. (He had feet and legs, they were just useless and shrunken, and he'd hide them beneath clothes—and yes, he did have genitals.)

Across the hall, an elaborate reliquary shelters a ghastly mummified arm bone. This was a piece of a saint and had been officially deemed holy. In medieval times, the skeletons of people chosen by others as exceedingly good were believed to cure the ill and never rot. But that nasty tibia didn't hold a candle to the half-boy's half-shirt.

If nothing else, these exhibits beg a few questions: How do we choose what to worship? What is holy and good? What's bad? Isn't this ugly? And what was my ponytail doing in here?

On the far side of the Odditorium hangs an original letter from Albert Fish, a notorious murderer and cannibal electrocuted to death in 1934. Coleman appreciates the terrifying contrast between Fish's benevolent and elderly appearance with the atrocities this bogeyman committed. Coleman showed me a glaring cognitive dissonance in the text, corresponding with as wide a gap between our actions and words: Fish isn't troubled freely admitting to having snatched, tortured, cooked, and eaten dozens of children. But the "Brooklyn Vampire" emphatically denied raping the young girl he dined on, claiming "she died pure."

Fish, like Coleman, was a Catholic living under the rules of a Catholic subculture. Unlike Coleman, he believed himself to be a good Catholic as he understood the church—and therefore was arguably symbolic of all that was wrong with it and what Coleman believes is selective morality on the part of the faithful. Coleman fights against a world in which Albert Fish is blamed and fried, while other Sinners are left to go about their business.

Coleman, whose wit can be appreciated as long as your stomach is strong, also displays the rather kooky Feejee Mermaid. (Even PT Barnum never asserted their authenticity.) Having only read about the chimeras, which were made by sewing the top half of a monkey to the nether portion of a fish, it was a delight to hold a real one in my hands. To sate the Western world's endless appetite for curiosities was a cottage industry in the Far East not unlike the fanciful taxidermy of states like Arkansas, where Jackalopes can be found. (Coleman has a two-headed version, in keeping with his twin obsession.) Twirling a villain's whisker, Coleman opined that his bi-cephalic beasts, pickled punks, and lifesize waxwork OJ Simpson all demonstrate the relativity of things.

In other words, impression matters, but the truth is for lawyers.

Coleman in his element

Coleman began to doubt his way beyond good and evil when he began to doubt his faith. As a god-fearing boy in Norwalk, Connecticut, he witnessed his beloved church shun his own mother for divorcing. When she wasn't allowed to receive Communion, Coleman rejected his own slice of the body of Christ. He never looked back, and the the Odditorium is heavy on bodies of Man, and infused with a sort of anti-Catholic fervor. Most are wax, though there's also plenty of hair, and not just mine. (Charles Manson sent some creepy strands along with a striking letter.) Nevertheless, after an arcane induction ceremony recorded for posterity, my own ponytail joined the display.

I was once dubbed the "Apologetic Bandit" for the spree of hapless and amateur robberies I committed during the worst week of my two-year heroin addiction. Now I share a shelf with the Stetson of "Wild Bill" Carlisle. He hasn't worn it since his passing in 1964, but was once well-known enough that tourists traveled to his motel in Wyoming for the pleasure of his proximity. Indeed, the "Robin Hood of the Rails" is often said to be one of the last outlaws to rob trains in the Wild West. Legend has it that he tipped porters and abstained from taking the valuables of women, children, and servicemen during his hold-ups, but Bill served 17 years for his crimes.

I served ten, apologies be damned. But while I may have been wanted for the four months between the crimes and my 2003 arrest, unlike Bill, it wasn't quite "dead or alive."

Like most outlaws, Coleman wore a disguise when he played an outlandish character named Doctor Momboozo on the counter-cultural stages of the 1980s. Booze-O was a neighborhood nickname of Coleman's father, and he brought them back together in his act while wearing a costume with an outer layer of raw pork and, beneath it, a vest that "exploded." Shooting off the fireworks, gun powder, and smoke bombs got Coleman arrested, but the cops weren't sure what to charge him with. (He still has a record for "possession of an infernal device.") Having been found guilty of buying human souls myself, law enforcement's belief in a hellish machine seems plausible. Today, Coleman's forays in the field of geekery would trigger animal rights alarms; after all, his artistic expression required rodent sacrifice. The life of a geek, as any carny can tell you, is light on nerdiness and hard on animals.

The punk artist's punk artist, Coleman bit the heads off rats in the name of transgressive art. Mingling with the extreme set led by G.G. Allin, Coleman traveled to Budapest and away from American law, autopsying his fellow creatures. He's released music with his band The Steel Tips and quit drugs without finding religion. Coleman has also written books and acted in film—he has a fan in Asia Argento, Dario's daughter, who took a first forbidden peek of Coleman in her father's library. (Now she casts him in her bloody films.) William Burroughs asked Coleman to draw his beloved hobos, and the UK's most violent convict, Charles Bronson, adopted the artist into his makeshift "family," even though Coleman is not a prisoner. Charles Manson, meanwhile, made a study of the images Coleman sent him at Corcoran Maximum Security Prison in California. (In response, Charlie dubbed Coleman "Caveman in a Spaceship," the apt description nestled in the frightening letter Manson sent to the Odditorium.)

Coleman's paintings, meanwhile, refuse a category. Neither Folk Art, Outsider Art, or even Outlaw Art are apt descriptors, as Coleman managed to secure rarefied patronage of the famous, rich, and marginal. Coleman's sales have reached a quarter of a million dollars, an exciting day at Sotheby's in his telling. Flipping through the Odditorium's guest book, I saw Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, and John Waters had sat in the same chair as me. To join an elite cohort of clients, which also includes Jim Jarmusch and Iggy Pop, requires patience and longevity—and there's a list, as Coleman spends years on each painting.

Obsessively filling a canvas to the bitter end using a one-haired brush and magnifying jeweler's glasses takes Coleman as much as four years. He uses calligraphic script to tell the images' tales right on his paintings, explaining each symbol with dry wit and charismatic misspellings. He also weaves in ephemera particular to the thinking behind an image; the elements have run the gamut from a murder victim's clothing to scabs from his body to stained sheets to AA batteries. The works are called "multimedia" in catalogues and "fucking awesome" most everywhere else. The range of mediums beyond paint used on his diptychs and pseudo-icons bring them to the edge of the realm of objects. Still, they are possible to reproduce in two dimensions—Coleman has put out several luscious albums, but next year they will be outdone with a tombstone-sized slab of published luxury cataloguing almost all of Coleman's art...in full size. The trick will be achieved with fold-out plates; for those of us who can afford neither the originals nor reproductions, a companion volume of his miniatures will be available in a size one can steal. Don't worry: Most of Coleman's subjects would have done the same; some might have gone on to murder the bookshop's clerks, and others to eat them. Coleman won't tell, as he deals in symbols, and books are but things we can usually live without.

Johnny Eck's outfit in the Odditorium. Photo courtesy Joe Coleman

Would pinching Johnny Eck's sleeve matter to me if I didn't know who wore it (and missed the waist)? Coleman agreed that it would not. Is the truth in the captions? Clearly art is much more than that, as is the Odditorium.

Still, Coleman is speaking for the junkies, sexual deviants, and serial killers of history. His mission is to give these mute members of humanity a chance to be heard. They've only been talked about for so long. Coleman has also said—without stuttering, I may add—that society gets the criminals it deserves. They are represented in the Odditorium: the sinners as well as the saints, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

They are all there for visitors to figure out just who we deserve. Maybe it's me.

Follow Daniel Genis on Twitter.

The US Government Is Spending Millions to Illegally Lock Up Immigrant Families

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It was a scramble for survival: tens of thousands of women and kids streaming across the southern border, bolting from Central American nations where rape and murder rates had reached heights typically only seen in countries facing civil war. They spent days on buses and trains, crossed rivers in flimsy rafts, and trekked through the desert, some mothers carrying newborns in their arms.

The families fled drug trade–fueled gang violence and sought political asylum in the US, fearing for their lives if they returned home. The flood of migrants—mainly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador— caused a crisis at the border in the summer of 2014, leading the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to announce a controversial new policy intended to deter would-be Central American migrant families from making the journey to the border.

"Our message to those who try to cross our border illegally is clear: you will be sent home," DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told the Senate Appropriations Committee last July. "We are building additional space to detain these groups and hold them until their expedited removal orders are effectuated."

On VICE News: The Google Search That Made the CIA Spy on the US Senate

Johnson's testimony signaled a shift in DHS policy, making it clear that the agency would begin detaining immigrant mothers and their children while they fought court cases for asylum ( unaccompanied minors were treated differently and sent to shelters.) Previously, families seeking asylum in the US could pay a small bond as a promise that they would appear at a later hearing, then live in the country with relative freedom until then.

Under the new DHS policy, the migrant families were put in detention centers while they waited for the court dates—prompting a need for a large-scale family detention system. Last summer, DHS contracted with two of the nation's largest private prison corporations—Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group—to open two large facilities in Texas. They were to house a combined total of nearly 3,000 people.

The facilities were a massive investment. According to a spokesperson for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency has paid CCA and GEO a total of about $362 million to open and operate the two detention centers facilities. The bulk of that money—about $332 million—has gone to CCA to build and operate the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas; another $30 million has gone to GEO, which runs the Karnes County Residential Center, a 532-bed family facility outside of San Antonio.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson at the opening of the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Photo via the Department of Homeland Security

But DHS has faced growing pressure to close the detention centers, where many families have been locked up for seven and eight months, and where several detainees have reported abuse by guards. Now DHS could be forced to shutter the centers altogether. Last week, a federal judge in California ruled that the facilities operate illegally, and ordered DHS to release families from the South Texas and Karnes facilities, citing violations of basic standards in caring for children.

In her ruling—which came in response to a lawsuit filed against DHS by lawyers from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law—the judge, Dolly M. Gee of the Central District of California, marveled at the vast sums DHS had spent paying these for-profit prison corporations.

"It is astonishing that Defendants have enacted a program requiring such expensive infrastructure without more evidence to show it would be compliant with an agreement that has been in effect for over 20 years," Gee wrote. "It is even more shocking that after two decades defendants have not implemented proper regulations to deal with this complicated area of immigration law."

Want more immigration coverage? Check out Open Water, the VICE News series covering the international migrant crisis

In the wake of the decision, 178 Democratic members of Congress signed a letter on July 31 demanding DHS end its family detention policy, arguing that it was "detrimental to mothers and children and is not reflective of our Nation's values."

"The detained population is largely comprised of refugees fleeing violence and persecution, many of whom have serious medical and mental health needs that have not been addressed in custody," the letter read. "It is long past time to end family detention."


Watch the VICE News documentary Immigrant America: Murder and Migration in Honduras


The congressional response comes after months of complaints about the treatment of detainees in DHS's family facilities. In April, a group of detained mothers at the Karnes facility went on two hunger strikes to protest conditions faced by detainees there, and one refugee attempted suicide this June. Late last month, a former social worker from the Karnes center testified before Congress that her supervisor forced her to erase detainees' medical complaints from their records.

Last September, lawyers with the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund filed a complaint with DHS on behalf of multiple Karnes detainees who claimed there had been "ongoing sexual abuse since August 2014," and alleged that at least three Karnes guards had taken detainees out of their cells in the night to rape them. (DHS investigators said they found "no evidence" to support the claims.)

Despite the ongoing issues with DHS's family detention policies, the Obama administration is now asking the court for a chance to reargue their case on the grounds that the agency is converting the family detention facilities into short-term processing centers for migrant children and their families.

In a court filing submitted last week, lawyers for the US Justice Department claimed the centers are necessary to process asylum requests and to keep mothers with their children. The lawyers argued that limiting family detention would encourage future Central American immigrants by "incentivizing adults to bring children with them on dangerous journeys as a means to avoid detention." (The court has not yet responded to the request.)

DHS insists that the department is already shifting away from the harsh family detention policies implemented last summer. According to DHS Press Secretary Marsha Catron, the agency recently stopped detaining families for months at a time. "Of those families apprehended at or near the border and placed into detention, 60 percent are released within 2-4 weeks," Catron said in an email.

"We are moving toward using family facilities as short-term processing centers, not detention centers, where careful and informed judgments can be made about risk of flight, health needs, and humanitarian protection claims," Catron added. "We anticipate that, in the future, most families with credible claims will be released in an average of 20 days and have proposed that timeline to the Court."

In June, Secretary Johnson admitted that long-term detention for asylum seekers was unnecessary, and said that families would once again be allowed to pay bonds for their release after passing the department's "credible fear" test—a preliminary interview aimed at determining whether a migrant has a strong argument for asylum.

"Once a family has established eligibility for asylum or other relief under our laws, long-term detention is an inefficient use of our resources and should be discontinued," he said in a statement. By mid July, the agency began releasing groups of mothers and children, some who had been locked up for nearly a year.

Immigration activists protest the detention of migrant families in the US. Photo by Joe Piette via Flickr

Since then, occupancy rates at the Texas family detention facilities have plummeted. According to numbers provided by ICE, as of last week, just 101 people remained in the Karnes detention center, filling less than one-fifth of the facility's capacity. At the South Texas center, which can house 2,400 detainees, the population has dwindled to 1,235. The facilities have continued normal intake, but far fewer families have been apprehended in the US this year than last year, due in part to the Mexican government's efforts to tighten its own border security to deter Central American crossers.

But even as the inmate populations dwindle, CCA and GEO have continued to rake in money from the family detention facilities. Since the companies' contracts to run the centers include fixed rates, based off the total of number of beds available, the private prison operators will continue to receive the same monthly payments from DHS regardless of inmate fluctuations, according to the ICE spokesperson.

Leaders of the companies, apparently unfazed by the court's ruling on ICE detention policies, seem to believe the windfall will continue. On a quarterly earnings call in May, CCA's Chief Financial Officer David Garfinkle reassured investors that the company's profits from Dilley would remain stable.

"Our South Texas facility, which is our largest contract with ICE, has a fixed monthly payment. So that serves as a good hedge on population volatility within our portfolio," Garfinkle said, according to a transcript. He projected that the facility would "contribute to further growth in 2015."

According to Immigrations and Custom Enforcement, CCA's current contract extends through November 2016. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the agency would not provide a specific end date for GEO's contract to run Karnes, but noted that GEO previously ran Karnes as an adult immigrant detention center, and might be revert it back to that function should ICE close its family detention centers.


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DHS does have the ability to simply cancel its contracts with the private prison companies. Carl Takei, a staff attorney for the ACLU's National Prison Project, noted that a "force majeure" clause in the contract with CCA permits DHS to cancel the agreement in extreme circumstances, including a "court decision." In other words, the court's ruling against the agency's family detention program could be the exit route that allows the feds to get out of these payments to the private prison companies.

Takei added that DHS might also look to convert both detention centers into adult facilities, but noted that the agency already has 34,000 beds designated for this population, and typically does not fill them all.

A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment about whether the agency would break its contracts with CCA or GEO due to declining inmate populations, or in the event that the court rejects the government's request to rehear the family detention case. Spokespeople for CCA and GEO also refused to comment on the contracts, instead offering statements on their respective companies' longstanding relationship with DHS.

Takei pointed out that fierce political and financial pressure from CCA and GEO could stop the government from simply breaking its agreements. Both companies have strong relationships with the federal government. Private prison companies run more than 60 percent of immigrant detention centers in the US—the largest of these companies, CCA and GEO have a combined annual revenue of $3 billion.

The companies have also spent millions lobbying the federal government on immigration issues. An April report by the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group Grassroots Leadership found that CCA and GEO spent about $11 million combined between 2008 and 2014 lobbying the federal government to pay for immigrant detention centers and to prevent immigration reform that would hurt their businesses. The report found that in 2009, the companies lobbied Congress to instate a bed quota, which requires the government to maintain at least 34,000 detention beds in immigrant detention centers. After the quota was put in place, CCA and GEO's profits had doubled by 2013, according to Bloomberg.

"The countervailing pressure on ICE is that they might cause hurt feelings from ICE and GEO," Takei said.

Regardless of whether the court decides to reconsider its decision on the Obama administration's family immigration policy, immigration advocates fear that ICE will find a use for the Texas detention centers.

"ICE signed the Karnes and Dilley contracts in a period of hysteria in response to the number of mothers and children arriving from Central America last summer, so I don't know whether they were thinking about the future," Takei said. "But the fact the government had made the poor decision to obligate itself to pay for these facilities doesn't mean we should stretch to find people to fill them."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

Who's Afraid Of Vagina Art?

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Who's Afraid Of Vagina Art?

An Inside Look at the Depressed, Substance-Abusing World of Law

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Just imagine being one of these boring dudes. Still from Suits

I was at a fundraising event downtown—accountants, doctors, entrepreneurs and engineers mingled about, cocktails in hand. A young, smug-faced finance guy with expensive shoes came up to me, shook my hand and asked what I did for a living.

"Lawyer."

A smirk began to curl on his lips and he said: "Hey, what do you throw to a drowning lawyer? His partners."

Little did he know that earlier that day, I had spent an hour of unbillable time researching effective suicide methods on lostallhope.com. Accounting for lethality, time and agony, "drowning", whether in an ocean/lake, bathtub or swimming pool, ranked 18th, 23rd, and 24th respectively. "Shotgun to the head" ranked first, though best use slugs, not buckshot; if buckshot is all you've got, use .24 to .36 calibre, not skeet-grade .05 pellet. Sadly, I'm not joking about any of this.

So I'd had a rough day. I'd also heard the joke before, but this was a networking function, so I had to be on.

Without missing a beat, I said, "Y'know what the problem with lawyer jokes is? Lawyers don't think they're funny, but no else thinks they're jokes." He laughed, enjoying the repartee.

I drank a lot that night, hating myself for being a lawyer and hating myself for hating myself for being a lawyer. Surely, among the lawyer set, all ambitious and cocksure, I'm alone in my melancholy, I figured. I must be licking invisible psychic wounds. Besides, no one would have sympathy for my privileged-wealthy-white-guy whimpers.

Indeed, we lawyers should be a happy lot. We're paid well, many of us earning six figures within the first few years of practice. We've got smarts; research suggests our average IQ is a not-too-shabby 120, for whatever that's worth. We're lucky in that our skill set can easily align with our social values too, whether that means serving big business or helping refugees. And while everyone has a lawyer joke up their sleeve, parents are generally proud to say their kid is a lawyer. We should be winners in the pursuit of happiness.

But we're not. Far from it. Reams of data prove it. "They are at much greater risk than the general population for depression" summarizes Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and leading researcher in the science of happiness.

A key study supporting Seligman's sad verdict is John Hopkins University research showing that lawyers have the highest rate of depression among all occupations, suffering from depression at a rate of 3.6 times higher than non-lawyers.

In my experience, depression in the lawyer world has a particularly underground style to it. Taking sick days is not part of the culture, so it's hard to recycle for a day or two binge-watching Netflix and spooning Ben & Jerry's. For litigators in particular (i.e. those who plead in court and deal directly with clients as opposed to the backend legal researchers and drafters), there's a lot of theatre and often a harsh audience, so you've got to hide your darkness away. For example, one of my mentors was a superstar pleader, a real firecracker, full of bluster and stereotypical lawyer bravado. But once a week he'd close his door and blinds for an hour and later on you can tell he'd been crying. As irony would have it, he once warned me about a senior lawyer I had a file with, a former big-firm shining star and Supreme Court pleader who had a breakdown and now sleeps in his office all week and goes to court unwashed and reeking of body odour. Another solo-practitioner friend of mine, a warm-hearted, bowtie-wearing intellectual who could blow your mind with fancy insights into the history, meaning and purpose of some esoteric statute, would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time.

As for myself, my co-workers would describe me as plucky and playful (I even use emojis and exclamation points in my text messages!), but I take zoloft, see a therapist once a week, write daily thought journals and still my mind gravitates to self-destruction on my way back from court.

We also booze and drug ourselves at a rate greater than twice the national average.

While I had a big-firm buddy pothead who blazed every day after court, cannabis addiction wasn't popular in the suited-and-booted lawyer world. Booze and coke seemed to be the go-tos. A remarkably high proportion of the senior attorneys I dealt with were known to be alcoholics as my mentor would warn me about them, but I developed a knack for detecting them at the courthouse; perpetually flushed and rashy faces, even before they started yelling at you, and a slow or funny gait. The cokeheads skewed younger and something subtle behind the eyes gave them away. A sneaky, snakey and suspiciously gregarious energy coursed through them. I definitely channeled the same vibe the times I did bumps in the office tower bathroom to break writer's block from drafting proceedings all day.

And, yes, we snuff it. Our suicide rate is six times greater than that of the general population.

What makes us so gloomy?

The misery begins in law school, where we're trained to be wet blankets. Seligman speaks of "Pessimistic Explanatory Style" (PES), where bad events are interpreted as "pervasive, permanent, and uncontrollable," in contrast to an optimistic style that sees them as "local, temporary and changeable". PES is not only a principal cause of depression, it's also a productivity and success killer; it makes you perform worse at your job, give up on things prematurely, suck at sports and generally fuck you up.

"Thus, pessimists are losers on many fronts" says Seligman, "but there is one glaring exception: Pessimists do better at law." Pessimists outperform optimists in law school.

Law school trains us to see shit coming from miles away. I studied for years how buying an iPhone, renting an apartment, getting married or posting a comment online could lead to catastrophic injury, imprisonment or bankruptcy.

After law school, we enter the industry with turd-tainted PES glasses and the shit carnival begins in earnest.

Welcome to the scourge of the "billable hour," Mammon's preferred unit of measurement. Most firms' billing targets are approximately 35 billable hours per week, accounting for vacations. My non-lawyer friends often say, "Oh, pshaw, 35 hours of work a week ain't bad." This is where the word "billable" is critical. We can't bill work related to administration, marketing, recruiting, training, mandatory continuing education courses, co-worker schmoozing, eating, urinating, defecating or Facebook stalking. Data shows we bill two hours for every three spent in the office.

The crabs-in-a-bucket law firm structure doesn't help, because the fellow next door who's out-billing gets end-of-year bonus and might steal your partner track. This fosters a twisted culture where colleagues brag about sleeping under their desk to bill late into the night.

No wonder our attrition rate is terrible: more than one third of associates at big law firms quit in their first three years. Young attorneys soon realize that the fancy perks of free smartphones, catered in-office meals and chauffeur services exist to make you a billing machine. You're working in a gilded sweatshop with floor-to-ceiling windows.

Then there's the dispiriting nature of the work itself where the quality of the job I perform can have little to do with the outcome. There are few certainties in litigation. No disrespect to centuries of jurisprudential precision and the hard-won assurance that the rule of law will be applied carefully and fairly but... litigation is often a crapshoot. At the end of the day, you're paying me a lot of money to present your personal problems to some stranger sitting on a bench.

I'm only as effective as my client, and my client is often my worst enemy. As a senior attorney once told me: "Your first assumption is that your client is crazy." People who need attorneys are often conflict-prone personalities. They have trouble obeying rules, cooperating with others and are good at making mistakes. They're also in crisis, so they can be unpleasant and unhappy. They're usually wealthy and with a sense of entitlement to boot. And they're flakey: one day you're their hero, the next day they refuse to pay you, and the day after you have to sue them to collect fees.

The last feature at the shit-carnival is other lawyers, aka "colleagues." I put that word in quotes because we also call them "adversaries," revealing a distressing paradox. Unique among professionals, ours is a zero-sum adversarial system. Scaring, devastating, surprising, misleading and stressing out your enemy-colleague is part of winning. We're trained to not trust anything they say and have everything confirmed in writing.

Now you've seen the carnival, gone on all the rides and feel the bile rising... but you buy another ticket because you've gotta keep up with the Joneses. John and Becky down the hall are billing 60-hour weeks, getting fancy condos and eyeing the corner office. You can't admit weakness in a shark tank. The view of depression as moral weakness is a prevalent thing, particularly in a subculture designed for Type A personalities. So swallow your vomit, rinse with scotch and bill on.

Bar associations are concerned about their morose, substance-addicted little foot soldiers. More than half of all disciplinary actions are against mentally ill or chemically dependent lawyers.

And big firms are also concerned because it eats into their bottom line. The average cost of an associate's departure is $315,000 and about 20 percent of payroll is devoted to addressing absenteeism, employee turnover, disability leaves, counseling, medical costs and accidents.

What's being done about all this?

Not much, it seems.

Big firm marketing guys and bar association reps peddle platitudes about work-life balance, alternative dispute resolution models and pro bono encouragement, but let's not kid ourselves: lawyering is a mercenary profession. Litigation rates are increasing, competition for jobs is fierce and firms don't want their worker bees spending more time with their families. We're not in Silicon Valley where a company can make a lot of money on new ideas or disruptive technologies and hence afford to encourage creativity over hours logged.

To me, the system is broken and it's not getting fixed.

Yet I still practice. I didn't put a slug in the chamber or slap on my cement shoes. I picked myself up with some therapy, medication and all that, but my relationship to the profession needed a rework.

But some silly macho complex was holding me back. All this talk about pro bono services, meaningful work, work-life balance meant making less money and resisting the allure of status, power and Harvey Specter-ness. It sounded pretty limp-dick to me.

But the lawyer existence I was chasing was also killing me.

I decided to walk away from my firm, open a solo practice, work fewer hours, work on things unrelated to law and build an alternative online business model selling unbundled legal services to reasonable people at reasonable costs. And my dick works just fine, thank you very much.

There are of course people who are happy practicing law in the meat-grinder model, those who enjoy the carnival. They exist. I've met them. But they're not me and they're unlike a lot of lawyers. They also work with colleagues who struggle with suicidal thoughts, numb with drug and drink and mask their melancholy with witty rejoinders at cocktail parties.

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