It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Woodford County High School

Screencap via Facebook

The incident: A girl went to school wearing a fairly conservative outfit that left part of her collarbone exposed.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: She was allegedly sent home from school because her collarbone might create a distraction to male students.

According to a post made on her Facebook page, Stacie Dunn was called to Woodford County High School in Versailles, Kentucky, to pick up her daughter, Stephanie, because her outfit violated the school's dress code.

"So this is my daughter at school today," she wrote under a photo of Stephanie (pictured above). "I had to come to the school because according to her school principal what she is wearing is out of dress code and inappropriate for school." She added that there were multiple other girls waiting to be picked up at the school because of dress code violations.

According to Dunn, the school told her the issue was her daughter's collarbone, which they felt "may distract their male classmates."

The school's dress code states that students' shirts must be "crewneck" and "not extend below the collarbone." Dunn claimed that her daughter attempted to cover up her collarbone with a scarf, but was still sent home.

"Parents are being called away from their important jobs and students are missing important class time because they are showing their collarbones!" she wrote.

Speaking to Today.com, Scott Hawkins, the school's superintendent, said that the school would consider changing the dress code. "Our school administration has been very open with students and parents alike, that if they feel like changes need to be made, they are open to suggestions," he said, adding: "The whole idea behind the dress code is to make sure you have a safe learning environment and that's what we're trying to create."

Cry-Baby #2: A bunch of parents in England

Screencap via the Daily Mail/Mothercare

The incident: An online retailer listed a very obviously wrong price for an item. A bunch of people ordered it, then were told they couldn't have it at the cheap price.

The appropriate response: Moving on with your life.

The actual response: A bunch of people moaned to the Daily Mail about it.

Last weekend, British mother and baby retailer Mothercare erroneously listed a car seat at the price of £0.49 ($0.77) on their website. It should actually have been priced at about £135 ($210).

When shoppers noticed this, they started posting on social media, pointing people in the direction of the obviously accidental listing. "Theres a mistake on the mothercare website on a car seat for 49p, not missing a bargain so got 1 but I haven't even got a kid haha," wrote one Twitter user.

It didn't take long for Mothercare to delete the listing from their site. By this point, many people had already placed orders. Presumably, nobody who placed an order was stupid enough to think that they were getting a new car seat for less than a dollar.

Unsurprisingly, people who had ordered the seat were sent an email by Mothercare the next day telling them that their orders had been cancelled. "I appreciate that this is disappointing news and while it's not the bargain you were hoping for, I hope that you might consider our offer of an alternative car seat with a 10% online discount," the email read in part.

This should have come as a surprise to no one. However, some people were very upset about it.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, a woman named Stephanie Bennet who had attempted to buy one of the seats said: "I placed an order for the car seat on Saturday and was over the moon – however this was short-lived when I received an email late Monday night to say my order has been cancelled and I will not be getting the car seat at the bargain price. I feel that the 10 percent off a car seat offer that they have offered in its place is a complete and utter joke and that Mothercare should be honouring this to its customers."

Another customer said: "I am fuming. How they could get it so wrong is a joke."

Others posted complaints on Mothercare's Facebook page. Including a woman named Elaine Leeming Lowe who asked, "ISN'T THE CUSTOMER ALWAYS RIGHT??"

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here please:

Previously: A woman who allegedly shot a gun at her lover because he wouldn't give her the password to his phone vs. a woman who allegedly tried to get a Muslim Uber driver fired for being a Muslim.

Winner: The Muslim hater!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

This article appears in the August Issue of VICE Magazine

BEST ALBUM OF THE MONTH

ROYAL HEADACHE: High (What's Your Rupture?)
What's Your Rupture? has been doing God's work in releasing hit after hit, but this is fucking ridiculous. Records this good don't deserve a VICE review, because there's no place for guttersniping their contents. But here it goes, anyways. This is a band as pure as it is simple: four Aussies with one-word monikers on guitar, bass, drums, and vox churning out monster hooks that suck the air right out of the room. The production has a vintage coke dusting that amps up the urgency and makes the whole thing feel like catching lightning in a bottle. Live fast, play faster, and hopefully die a legend. It's that platonic truth of rock 'n' roll that High taps into. The relationship between hormones and heavy riffs that Alex Chilton first articulated in "Thirteen" is the core of every song here, which makes the aptly titled anthem "Little Star" a real punch in the heart. I'm a firm believer that nostalgia is poison, but no amount of cynicism can keep you from looking at old high school pics on Facebook after that.
FRENCH EGGS FAN

WORST ALBUM OF THE MONTH

CEREMONY: The L-Shaped Man (Matador)
I stopped listening to Ceremony when they started making god-awful power-violence albums and when it became time to become a respectable member of society. But once a scumfuck, always a scumfuck, so I figured I'd take this assignment. It takes balls to start a record with a song like "Hibernation," 90 seconds of a cat walking on a piano while another cat mumbles some shit about how sad he is. Apparently this is a concept album about a breakup, a.k.a. "a platform to explore loneliness and emotional weariness." There are back-to-back tracks named "Your Life in France" and "Your Life in America." Calm down, James Baldwin. Worship of Curtis & Co. is nothing new, but have some dignity and try to cover it up a little bit. There's a strong argument for plagiarism here, only slightly mitigated by the idiot-savant production decisions made by actual savant John Reis. I don't know who's trolling whom, but I get the sense that no one's going to be happy at the end of this.
PINCHY THE TIRE CRABT

BEST COVER OF THE MONTH

ULTIMATE PAINTING: Green Lanes (Trouble in Mind)
I'll never forget supplying James from Ultimate Painting his first taste of Adderall. Turns out they don't carry the shit in the UK, which is funny to me, considering you can walk into a small grocery store and say, "Hi there, I'd like one pack of the dick-numbing condoms, a box of razorblades, and the biggest box of codeine I'm seeing right up there. Cheers!" Well, it's a different place. But to be with someone the first time they've taken Adderall—oh, boy! It's like taking the virginity of a terminally ill person whose Make-A-Wish is to be fucked like the girl in 50 Shades of Grey. It's a remarkable kind of sorcery that I'm really happy to have been behind the wand of. On a completely separate note, when Jack and James put their amphetamine-less minds together, it turns out they really knock the fucker out of the park. One last thing—conflict of interest aside, I did name my son after Jack from Ultimate Painting, so if you're reading this, Jack, I'm fucking pissed we haven't talked in a while.
SEAN YEATON

WORST COVER OF THE MONTH

COAL CHAMBER: Rivals (Napalm)
When Coal Chamber rolls up to the Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts, this fall, I'll be asleep on the sidewalk. I'll let their tour bus roll over me like an apathetic cartoon who can count on two hands how many times he's had to re-inflate himself this week. When "Shock the Monkey" came out I was in seventh grade and my friend was carving smiley faces into his kneecaps to be like Ozzy, which, I guess, is like a Germ burn for people who put Monster Energy stickers on their motorcycles. As CC says, this album is "Another Nail in the Coffin" of our collective 21st-entury malaise. One big thing that isn't helping CC is that people—like moms and corn-fed good old boys—love Slipknot. I would bet you the seventh string off of Munky's Ibanez Universe that Corey Taylor will be a coach on The Voice next season. When my mom took me to Ozzfest in 1997, she said Slipknot was gross and she liked Marilyn Manson. There's a one-minute instrumental track here called "Dumpster Dive."
THOR GUN

PRINCE HARVEY
PHATASS
Self-Released
This girl who really likes to set her iCal to remind her to lick my pussy says that I need to be nicer to myself and realize that it's OK to make mistakes and take my time with things—blah, blah, blah. Honestly, though, I start to believe her the more she writes the alphabet in cursive on my clit with her tongue. But no sooner do I wish the alphabet were "ABCDEFGGGGHIJKLMNOMNOMNOPQQQQRSSSSSTTTTTUQQQ" than a motherfucker like Prince Harvey comes around and ABACADABA's PHATASS—a self-produced a cappella album recorded at the Apple Store in SoHo. The title is an acronym for Prince Harvey at the Apple Store SoHo, because he stood there pushing sounds out of his mouth and eliciting weird looks for months while perfecting every hook. He's a cunting genius!
@LLKOOLGURL

MAS YSA
Seraph
Downtown
The worst thing that's happened to me all month is my paper fedora fell into the bidet at the villa; it's been a fine month otherwise, though I can feel a canker sore coming on the front of my tongue. That said, I haven't gotten any lime juice in my urethra, and get this—I bet you've always wondered—the English translation for the Italian word Sbarro (you know, the schwag pizzeria?) is more or less "violent ejaculate eruption from the cock like a volcano." You can imagine. Like the way a hentai bro would unload some knuckle children in a jerk booth. Isn't that awesome!? The first time I ever saw Mas Ysa live it made me Sbarro all over the place, and on record it's like I get to revisit the spank bank with every rotation.
SEAN YEATON

APHEX TWIN
MARCHROMT30aEdit 2b 96
Warp
Maybe he's become an aging artist concerned with his legacy, or maybe he's just gotten bored with being mysterious. Whatever's been going on lately, Aphex is no longer on the endangered-species list. From posting unreleased tracks to listing off his gear, the man has been his own one-stop WikiLeaks. Next up, he's giving out the exact location of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and I hear he's producing a doc on the CIA's assassination of JFK.
THE GHOST OF DJ ROOMBA

HOT CHIP
Why Make Sense?
Domino
Let it be known: British white dudes are the worst dancers on the planet. That's why they do that jumping-up-and-down thing at shows—it's the only rhythm they're capable of. The image of watching a bunch of fine young chaps going ape to this album would be comparable to watching giraffes on ice skates hopped up on espresso while five dudes onstage, all wearing fedoras, nod their bald heads in unison. A depressing sight indeed. But in all seriousness, this album would be a gem if you took out all the singing and rapping.
DR. LUCIEN SANCHEZ

SEVEN DAVIS JR
Universes
Ninja Tune
Seven Davis Jr was a popular singer and entertainer, often called "Mister Show Business," who had a caterpillar mustache and lost his left eye in a driving accident—he shouldn't have kept his eye on the road—AH FUCK, KILL ME. He converted to Judaism in 1960 and was known to hang out with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at Las Vegas casinos. Today, he makes tracks with titles like "Good Vibes" and "No Worries" over funky bleepy bloops despite dying from throat cancer in 1990. Only a great like him could keep on trucking with the whole music thing, even though, ya know, he's covered in maggots—he's dead; worms crawl in, worms crawl out, etc. Good for him—he's one of the best Jews we have.
SAMMY DAVIS JR. JR.

MAX PIFF
Eponymous EP
Self-Released
Motherfucking God bless the immediacy of the internet. Add a couple randos who seem cool at the bodega one night and bangerang! The next you know you're doing K in the green room of, I dunno, someone. Swipe right a few times, and Jiminy Cricket, you're performing analingus on the cutest girl you've ever seen. So yeah, when this fine specimen I know emailed me like, "My baby daddy made this record," I immediately responded, "Yes, I will review it." And here it is: This shit is good! It's lighthearted, marijuana-exalting, semi-melancholic trap made by a skinny white art-dude. Prego!
LINDSEY "A GOOD PERSON" LEONARD

CONTAINER
LP
Spectrum Spools
Things that this Container album make difficult to contain: rage; psychological composure; existential chaos; the eggplant parm I daintily made for lunch at work; the ability to play it cool around pretty girls; ideas for better names than LP because all of his records are titled that and I keep forgetting which songs are on this new one; my lanky-ass dance moves.
KIP TINDELL

UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA
Multi-Love
Jagjaguwar
They call jacking or jilling off with a hand that's fallen asleep "the stranger." I know one person who swears by it, though I'm skeptical because the last thing my brain is trying to tell me when I have a dead arm is to fuck it to completion. I will say that, conceptually, I absolutely love the idea. I bet someone like Henry David Thoreau was glad to greet the day with a bulky dead arm to fuck. It's these little pleasures in life that confirm that Forrest Gump was right about that box of chocolates all along. Thoreau, Gump—both of these guys had a real optimistic outlook on life; whether you're a paresthesiaphiliac or you pissed your pants chilling with JFK, life and pleasure are about the path you take to get there, and that's why I'm a big UMO guy! You want to eat a 3D Dorito and wash it down with a boiling-hot horchata and Campari? This is your new favorite band.
MIKE LITORIS

GIRL BAND
Holding Hands with Jamie
Rough Trade
I heard this band for the first time a couple of years ago being blasted so loudly from an office that I thought it was giving me skeleton fever. This is the kind of record you want to fuck to so badly because you know things would get absolutely out of control. Every shrill, vein-scraping measure of sound these guys are making should never be played for highly intelligent apes, for they will rise and start a legit punk scene.
SEAMUS SOFTPOCKET

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD
What the World Needs Now
Redeye
Every cultured (read: stages his home to appear like that one part of A Moveable Feast he read) middle-aged white male takes pleasure in the simpler things, namely rapping snide observational comedy out of the side of his mouth like Big Tex, the towering marketing/ventriloquist proto-robot icon of the annual State Fair of Texas (God rest his charred soul), the kind of stuff sheds light on how they thought things were way back when they were hot shit, until anyone acknowledges them, even if they're just the family dog. We picked up the habit centuries ago: If you've never seen it, imagine a vampire guiding his own dick into his mouth, fishing-lure-style, by looking at himself in a full-length mirror after his timeless vampire bride cracks a Cialis joke at dinner.
POP POP

SWEET JOHN BLOOM
Weird Prayer
Tiny Engines
Where do you even begin with these guys? Well, they're stalwarts of the Massachusetts DIY hardcore scene. Jay got arrested once for yelling "Up the punx" at some cops in this art center in Danvers, and it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life until Ben Henry started yelling "Attica" and a full-blown riot broke out. Their modesty could make a nun wet, but they shred like you read about. They also have amazing hair.
CHUCK BILLICK

LA LUZ
Weirdo Shrine
Hardly Art
New age punk mysticism is hot but cooling down right now. I think I actually saw someone reading the Everyday Goth on her iPhone—its case was a bastardized version of Unknown Pleasures with Homer Simpson's head in the middle. I mean, fuck it, I got an alien tattoo; Rihanna wears Illuminati jewelry to bed. Vibes are in the air, and they're being recorded somewhere near Long Beach. Step off a gangplank into Weirdo Shrine, a dreamy hi-fi trip through irradiated Seattle-Pacific Fukushima mist, littered with Japanese surf LPs as mementos of a disaster. An island girl drapes flowered leis around your neck—fresh, duty-free perfume is involved, and you're excited because that's the part your friends said you had to make sure you experienced. Most people are truly beautiful. Fuck. What will Quentin Tarantino steal from these girls?
ALBERT FUNJAMAS

BLACKOUT
Blackout
RidingEasy
This record really made my spring. Ripping stoner doom you can dance to. Imagine Justin Bieber on acid reenacting 120 Days of Sodom on the corpse of JonBenét Ramsey. Sparx is back somehow, and that weird-ass cleavage thing took the Seastreak to the Vineyard. Big Gulps, huh? All right! Well, see ya later!
MATT GIORDANO

THE SWORD
High Country
Razor & Tie
I don't know what the fuck I expected to hear when this record started, but it certainly wasn't what the fuck the opening track, "Unicorn Farm," delivered. Synth-addled madness? Clapping? Fuck, there are weird sounds galore, panned left, right, up, and down—all over the goddamn place. It was probably wrong of me to write this off as more stoner-rock stuff, but then again, the second track delivers in a way where I can imagine I'm a fly on the wall at Sword practice and one of the dudes unbuckles his guitar and is like, "Let's fuck up their mind grapes, kemosabe!" to a den of teeth-gnashing riff wizards. Hell, the rest of the record is riffed up as fuck, too. Near as I can tell, songs are about magic, wandering travelers, weather, and what have you. Mystical stuff, if you can dig it—throne games and shit like this. Question here: Didn't the Sword used to be more metal and filthy-sounding? At present they're going for full-on Blue Oyster Cult vibes. That's cool, but I prefer the bong-rattling, dirty-ass riffs with the huge let's-burn-down-a-goddamn-building-and-declare-a-war-on-the-pigs drums. This polite, mustache-twirling, weed-vaporizing clarity they're running with here is just not what I'm trying to suck the marrow out from. Look, it's not bad. I could 100 percent burn down a hog leg or two with the chill graphic designers in the apartment next door and really appreciate their reaction and how it could very well change my opinion. It's a shame I have to work early in the morning and they won't stop talking about that fucking bug documentary they watched last week.
BENOVAN STANCHIANO

JENNY HVAL
Apocalypse, Girl
Sacred Bones
TMI: I genuinely tried not masturbating to this, but then I got to the "shaving in all the right places" line in the second song and "fishing cum out of my belly button." I spent a moment deeply contemplating where and why I would masturbate at work, and the urge was so heavy I fell behind on email and my co-workers' voices muffled into a shrill gong tone. This record is the girlfriend who buried a digit in your asshole on your birthday before any sort of even playful conversation about that sort of thing ever came up, which makes you wonder where she got the inspiration to cram it in there in the first place.
EMERSON ROSENTHAL

DUCKTAILS
St. Catherine
Domino
This record is named after Saint Catherine; she was a martyr who died for her belief in potpourri, Funfetti cupcakes, and the holy truth that men should never wear flip-flops. However, thanks to this piece of work, she shall henceforth be remembered as the patron saint of melancholy, generalized music that tries too hard to be beautiful and goes on and on without actually going anywhere. Like most religious things, what we have here is something that sounds good but is not.
ADAM SZAJGIN

MAC DEMARCO
Another One
Captured Tracks
I've never felt so close to death in my life as I do at this exact moment. Everything about the dog looks artificial and perfect. Her pads and nose are these cold onyx drops that are too perfect to have your dick sniffed by. It's not only the dog. Everything looks so immaculate. I'm actually about to die right now. I'm going to die sitting next to my perfect dog, in my perfect living room, any minute now. I can't peer out of my shitty cabin in hell to see Mac's face when they tell him about how they found me slouched over my MacBook—the one that looks like if RoboCop were just a crappy old seashell, digging for clues or whatever, when suddenly a rookie on the squad named Tim Allen shouts for Sarge to come over and check something out. That asshole Rodriguez throws his massive hand on Sammy Doucette's square shoulder and, with a second to spare before Sarge crosses the clumsy plywood threshold between the foyer and the living room where my lifeless body is, shouts, "Hey, you about done building that hot rod in your fucking garage yet, Allen?" Sammy's the only guy on the force who sees something worth nurturing in Rodriguez, but even he couldn't feign a chuckle at a time like this. Instead he just kind of half-whispers, "Nice one, Mr. Wilson" in between beats of dusting for fingerprints in my living room, where I'm dead. At that exact moment, whoever the real-life versions of Mulder and Scully are let themselves in and relieve the officers of their duty, without apology or thanks. Rodriguez isn't having it and tells them both that he'll see them in hell for some reason, which is confusing enough to take everyone's mind off of all the shit that was already happening. In a last-ditch effort to hold on to some of his pride, he screams "fuck you" at both of them like he's throwing a temper tantrum or something. The Mulder guy goes, "Listen, man, you might want to think twice before you go mouthing off to your superiors." Rodriguez laughs and says, "You really believe that? And the Mulder guy goes, "I want to... BELIEVE... that; I want to... BELIEVE..." and everyone goes piss-drinking-loco in the cabeza! Cops start whistling the X-Files theme song and dancing a jig around my corpse; Doucette thinks I come back to life at one point, and he kicks me by accident and my leg kinda twitches—no biggie, Doucette!
SEAN YEATON

NO HONEYMOON
I Wanna See Everything
Self-Released
On summer mornings you can find me biking on Flushing Avenue, all the way down to the Fairway in Red Hook. I lock up, walk in all sweaty and panting, and go straight to the juice fridge. I open a Naked Protein Zone right there in the store and down most of it before paying. Then I hunt for free samples. The Italian-bread-and-olive-oil station has, like, 25 olive oils, some grassy, some sweet, some bright neon yellow. There's free hot food, too, like sausages or stir-fry, and most days they have cubes of Manchego or Colby cheese. It's a dirtbag move, but you can take two slices of bread from the olive-oil station and bring them over to the cheese station and make a six-cube, three-cheese sammy. No one will stop you. Nothing on this No Honeymoon album was the song of the summer, but the title track has been the song of my summer and the things I like to get up to.
THE SLUGMAN OF HERBERT STREET

NATALIE IMBRUGLIA
Male
Sony Masterworks
As a teenager, I hung out with a bunch of skater boys; I was their token gay friend who had the sort of hot girlfriends my friends would've traded an inch off the end of their dicks to have a balmy, yet scentless, afternoon soixante-neuf with. While they shotgunned beers, I always listened to really foggy music on YouTube. One night, I played Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" on YouTube. "Dude!" one of the skaters yelled. "I used to jack off while watching this music video!" As I listened to Natalie's new album I thought about this exact moment, because this new stuff is the musical equivalent of running into the person you used to think about while masturbating and finding out their ass is now saggy even though they've injected their bum with illegal butt buffers. It made me very sad.
MITCHELL SUNDERLAND

KIDZ BOP KIDS
Kidz Bop 29
Razor & Tie
When we contacted Kidz Bop's publicist, she was like, "Why does an alternative youth rag wanna listen to children's covers of Meghan Trainor's 'Dear Future Husband'?" We explained that we review all types of music, but in response, she just kept LOL'ing or whatever, beating around the bush, and forwarding us links to non-Halloween-costume Meghan Trainor videos. We downloaded the album on Amazon anyways, and guess what? KIDS COVERING MEGHAN TRAINOR SONGS FUCKING BOPS!!! If only the Kidz Bop Kids could hear your platitudinal modesty I bet they'd march their butts into the studio and take a shot at "6PM in New York."
Kidz Bop lady, listen up: You need to act your age, not the Kidz Bop Kids' age.
MITCHELL SUNDERLAND

Screencap via VICE News

More coverage on the immigration crisis in Europe:

I Spent a Fearful and Lonely Night on the 'Immigration Train'
Europe or Die: Our Documentary About the Migrant Crisis
We Asked an Expert How to Solve the Calais Migrant Crisis

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

These days, it feels like everybody is anxious to have their opinions on immigration heard. Politicians, taxi drivers, that aunt of yours who always seems to have one too many—everybody seems to fancy themselves as an expert on the issue.

The subject's popularity isn't that surprising given the massive increase in people—or "swarms" as UK Prime Minister Cameron warmly describes them—crossing the Mediterranean lately. Last month, the amount of migrants detected at European borders was triple that of July 2014. At 107,500, it was the first time the number exceeded the 100,000 mark in a single month.

The whole debate surrounding asylum, refugees, and immigration is highly complex and involves a lot of key players, baffling acronyms, and regulations that can render it almost impossible for regular people to navigate. Like, what are people on about when they talk about "Triton"? What's a "Eurosur"? Why is Dublin making regulations governing anything?

Having already given you a myth busting guide to UK migration, we thought we'd try and explain some of the more common jargon that current affairs types like to throw about while discussing regular people attempting to escape war.

So, here it is.

Eurosur

Eurosur, according to its website, is "an information exchange system designed to improve the management of Europe's external borders." So, basically it's there to protect the West from all those people who you've been told are trying to steal your job. The Mediterranean can now be monitored by drones, offshore sensors, and satellite search systems. Through massive exchanges of data and national coordination centers, the estimated €874 million [$990 million] project will be able to pinpoint the exact coordinates of boat migrants in distress. Shame that nobody has decided whose responsibility it is to help them, though.

Dublin II and Dublin III

The Dublin Regulation determines which EU member state is responsible for examining the applications of migrants seeking protection under the Geneva convention. According to the regulation, people are required to apply for asylum in whichever European country they first set foot in. The regulation, as it stands now, makes things a little difficult for southern, coastal countries like Greece, where most migrants enter Europe, who are already completely overwhelmed.

A ruling from the European Human Rights Court has declared that deportations to Greece violate human rights because of the ongoing situation there. Several Europe member states have since said that they won't be deporting people to Greece pending further notice.

The UNHCR and numerous NGOs, such as Pro Asyl and Amnesty International, heavily criticize the Dublin Regulation, claiming it only regulates responsibility without putting forward a unified policy on refugees as well as violating international refugee rights.

People gathering material to make shelters in Calais. Photo by Jake Lewis

Complicit States

For more than 15 years, the EU has been making deals with so-called "complicit states" like Ukraine, Tunisia, Belarus, and Libya. In doing so, Europe has implemented a sort of border that prevents refugees from ever even reaching EU borders.

For example, Libya's former dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, received several million euros and a ship of modern equipment from Italy. All Gaddafi had to do was close off Libya's border with Chad and take back their deportees. Another example of Europe exerting pressure is by curtailing foreign aid to countries that haven't managed to intercept refugees. Some of these countries' authorities aren't exactly well-mannered when it comes to dealing with refugees—in Morocco, pregnant women and children are beaten; in Ukraine, they get imprisoned. All conduct sponsored by Brussels.

Related: Watch our documentary 'Migrant Prisons of Libya'

Pushback

So-called pushback actions are illegal operations in which refugees that have already crossed into European territories are sent back by border agents. For example, towing refugee boats out of European waters. This is to circumvent refugees making it onto EU soil and applying for asylum.

In February 2014, 15 people died in an attempt to swim from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The Spanish Guardia police pumped tear gas into the sea, beat the swimmers with clubs, and shot at them with rubber bullets. There's also video footage showing border agents attacking immigrants helplessly hanging from border fences.

Triton vs. Mare Nostrum

When we say Triton, we're not referring to the Little Mermaid's dad. No. We're talking about a specific EU operation. In November of last year, Triton replaced the sea rescue initiative, Mare Nostrum—a project responsible for the rescue of more than 130,000 refugees from the Mediterranean. Rome initiated the mission after the Lampedusa tragedy that left more than 360 people dead. But according to Italy's interior minister, Angelino Alfano, "Italy had done its duty." So, Mare Nostrum was discontinued. Triton, its successor, has a few elementary differences:

• Both Triton's budget and technical resources are considerably more limited than those of Mare Nostrum's, which amounted to roughly €9 million [$10 million.] Triton has less than a third of that.
• Triton is an operation run by Frontex, Europe's border protection agency. According to the head of Germany's Green Party, Simone Peter, Frontex lacks understanding of sea rescue missions and "their focus is border protection."
• Triton's operational area is considerably smaller. Their ships only patrol a small distance from the Italian coastline.
• Mare Nostrum's operational aim was first and foremost sea rescue. In contrast, Triton is set up to protect and surveil Europe's borders. Saving lives is not a priority for Triton.

"This is the first place I was ever beaten by the cops," Dennis Flores, 40, points out, as we pass 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. "They were filming a Steven Seagal movie, and I was like 13 years old."

Flores impersonates a chokehold, pushing his thumb against his Adam's apple, and starts to fake gag. "I guess I got too close," he says, smiling.

It's a steamy Thursday evening, and Fifth Avenue is bustling with kids lining up to buy empanadas, older Latina women selling chicharrón and tostones, and people entering taquerias and carnicerias left and right. The smell of carnitas is in the air as dinner time approaches.

Flores, a Sunset Park native of Puerto Rican descent, strolls down the street like he owns it, shaking hands and saying hello to everyone—but it's a walk that's also replete with dark memories.

At 46th and Fifth, when we first meet, Flores immediately begins telling a story.

"In 2003, a grandmother was beaten here and stripped in front of her entire family by the police for allegedly talking back to them," he explains, showing me a photo on his phone from the night of a half-naked older woman being thrown into the back of a police van, screaming. "It was humiliating." (The family involved later received a $500,000 settlement from the city, according to Flores.)

Related: Nine Months After He Filmed Eric Garner's Killing, the Cops Are Trying to Put Ramsey Orta Behind Bars

Then, down the block, at 47th and Fifth: "Last year, a family of Mexican street vendors were arrested and kicked in the back here. There was a huge crowd of people," Flores said, waving his hand to show the size. "But one of the cops who said the other cop was attacked first was lying. He couldn't have seen it." He pulls out his iPhone, and starts to replay the video from that September evening. In it, the officer clearly hits first. Flores smiles again. "Because we got him."

Dennis Flores with a GoPro Hero 3 strapped on to his body as he patrols down Fifth Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. All photos by Jason Bergman

This is the work of Flores's organization, El Grito de Sunset Park—a local police watchdog group he started with a couple of friends in 2002, when the country's videos of law enforcement were mostly limited to Rodney King and the show COPS. This was long before "copwatch," or the act of filming the police, seeped into the national discussion about criminal justice and people of color, one ignited by the videos of Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and more.

At the time, the group met once a year to film the sometimes brutal police response to the Puerto Rican Day Parade in June, which has a tendency to spill out onto Brooklyn's Fifth Avenue once it ends over in Manhattan. But since then, El Grito has morphed into a year-round operation, with Flores functioning as the veteran-in-arms: After all, he's been filming the police since 1995.

The work has taken Flores to Chicago and the Oaxaca region of Mexico (where he says he was deported by local officials), his YouTube account doubling as an archive. He claims he's faced plenty of blowback, like destroyed cameras and attacks by cops, with successful settlements helping to pay for more equipment. He treats the activity like a martial arts sensei—one that requires serious discipline and focus, in light of recent crackdowns. "We don't want to be Ramsey Orta," he added, a reference to the man who shot the video of Eric Garner and was later arrested on gun charges, which, some argue, were cooked up by police.

Once or twice a week, a squad hits the streets of Sunset Park, backpacks filled with digital cameras and iPhones, ready to shoot any police activity they might encounter. If anything relevant is captured, the video is soon pitched to local media outlets for coverage ("The New York Post calls me every week for something," Flores claims). If there are no bites, the stuff gets uploaded to the group's Facebook page with the hope that it'll go viral, and the right people will see it.

And, in the Mexican street vendors' case, that happened: The video helped unravel police claims in court, the charges were eventually dropped, and the relevant cops were subsequently suspended. In other words: El Grito won.

A few days after we first met, photographer Jason Bergman and I rejoined Flores and two others members of El Grito for an early night copwatch. It was a Monday, so the streets were quieter than usual; the busiest, they told me, is the weekend, when patrol units station themselves along Fifth Avenue. A normal Saturday night, another El Grito member named Claudio Gaeta Tapia told me, has Flores's phone abuzz with people calling in to report videos they've captured. A recent, more notorious, example is that of Sandra Amezquita, a pregnant woman who thrown to the ground by police after questioning the arrest of her son.

"If I we don't do it, a friend of a friend got it," Tapia noted. "It's constant. We have eyes everywhere."

As we made our way up and down Fifth Avenue, an inventory of cameras in hand, Tapia, 47, told me he has been part of El Grito for two years now, after he and Flores first met in Chicago back in '07. He lives in the nearby neighborhood of Crown Heights, but travels down here to Copwatch when he can.

On the corner of 50th and Fifth, a group of teenagers greeted Flores and his company, un-phased by our procession. Copwatch in a community of color in New York City is nothing new, though around here it feels like a more populist—and aggressive—DIY alternative to the urban liberalism on offer from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has sought piecemeal reforms rather than systematic ones, much to the chagrin of his progressive allies.

"If there's no real solidarity—none of this white savior shit, none of this charity—how will things change?" Tapia asked me. "It's a collective voice, made up of community members' stories, that becomes bigger than the individual parts."

For the crew, El Grito is a Brooklyn version, or counterpart, to leftist movements in Latin America, fighting what many consider to be systems of oppression. One member, Jason Del Aguila, said his experiences in Guatemala and El Salvador helped train him for New York, where the imperialist oppressor, he said, is the NYPD, backed and enhanced by what he sees as a shell of political power, starting first with local officials and making its way all the way up to City Hall. The name itself derives from the El Grito de Lares, a major Puerto Rican uprising in 1868 against Spanish colonial rule.

"The word Grito means 'Cry,' like a war cry," he added, tapping his camera. "This is ours."

The group carries this anti-colonial tone reminiscent of the Zapatistas in Mexico, or the Contra in Nicaragua—that this is essentially a struggle for independence from the persecution of the boys in blue. But, of course, there's a modern twist: the iPhone, and the camera that comes with it. "This is our evidence, our story," Tapia explained. "And being able to tell our story... that's liberty."

This was the motivation behind a cultural center set up by El Grito at a local church three years ago, which taught Hispanic history classes and "Know Your Right" seminars to the youth. It even taught copwatch. But the center was quickly closed. "Imagine if all of those teenagers on the corner had cameras?" Tapia offered. (Since then, Flores has moved the classroom to the street, projecting videos onto local businesses who allow it.)

In addition to foot patrols, El Grito de Sunset Park drives around looking for cops on foot or vehicular patrol.

The sun had almost fully set, and we had only seen an undercover unit so far. Flores, who always suspects a cop is near, advised that we hop in his car and patrol the block so we were less conspicuous. To cover their tracks, the members switch up copwatch days so the authorities can't detect a pattern. After a night's watch, they even walk back home in teams, so no one is followed by a police cruiser. This, they said, is for their own protection.

But these days, Flores strongly believes the cops are hiding from El Grito. This year, there was no fines or arrests at a Puerto Rican Day event that he helped organize, Flores told me, and the avenue was outfitted with traditional boricua music playing from speakers and bongos, which has drawn the attention of the police in the past. So the crew has been forced to weigh their own influence. "That's what it should be like! That's what we should expect," Tapia exclaimed. "They know we're out here. They know we're not backing down."

An NYPD security camera along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn

Before we took off, Flores pointed out an unwieldy NYPD camera installed at the top of a pole. A few of them lined Fifth Avenue, where we had been walking. Over his 20 years of experience, Flores has become a master of the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request, although, most of the time, his pleas go unanswered. But the first night we met, Flores mentioned a lawsuit that he planned on filing against the city for negligence, in which key footage from those cameras was allegedly "lost" by police. Tonight he was happy—the notice had been filed. "I got it in just before the courts closed," he said.

The case was that of Enrique Del Rosario, a 17-year-old who was beaten by police at last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade as he filmed the march. As usual, El Grito challenged the cops' narrative with multiple videos, and the charges were dismissed. But instead of wasting ten months in court, the city could've checked their own footage—that's what the cameras are for, right?—and dismissed the charges much sooner, Flores argued in the notice, which he shared with me later.

As we sped towards Eighth Avenue, a staunchly Asian-American part of the neighborhood, where, members say, there is less of a police presence, I spoke with Del Aguila, a 33-year-old Queens native and longtime member of El Grito. He explained that last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade in Sunset Park was a turning point for the group. "The community realized we had a methodology down," he said. "It felt like a team. We even had moms out with us, after putting their children with their grandparents, ready to film the police."

With his DSLR and fish-eye lens in hand, Del Aguila said he's been swung at and hit with a baton for filming. Although this year's Puerto Rican Day Parade was less abrasive, the day-to-day routine hasn't changed. He still sees a neighborhood struggling under the heavy burden of "broken windows" policing, which targets low-level "quality of life" crimes—a dragnet more apparent in communities of color like Sunset Park. Not surprisingly, at a town hall organized by Flores and other community advocates last October on the issue of police brutality, local residents came out in swarms.

"The cops are still not listening, but telling us what to do," Del Aguila argued. "That's why, when something happens, we need to show that we didn't invent it."

"If you're New York City's finest," he added, "act like it."

El Grito de Sunset Park follows and records a patrol car driving without its lights on.

In many ways, the history of El Grito de Sunset Park runs parallel to police watchdogs across the country. But they don't need a "more reactionary" case like Eric Garner or Freddie Gray for legitimacy, Flores said. Those firestorms help the cause, sure, but what matters most to the group is happening here—this community and its police, at opposite ends on a busy avenue in Brooklyn.

"I don't expect to change a system that was built this way," Flores told me. "What we're doing is holding up a mirror to America and saying, 'Look, this is what we're going through.'"

Soon enough, a patrol car with no lights on came into sight, and Flores gunned the engine, hoping to keep up. He quickly placed an iPhone on the dashboard, its video rolling. Del Aguila and Tapia focused their cameras forward, as Flores weaved between lanes, repeating the patrol car's every movement. Eventually, the car stopped at the 72nd Precinct—which a film student had been arrested for filming in the past—and two officers got out, staring at us.

"They know we're watching now," Flores said, laughing as he turned off the iPhone video. "And they can't do anything about it."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Read: The Tragic New Type of Nightlife Threatening UK Clubbing

A nightclub in Amsterdam will apparently host the world's first ever "blood rave," at which partygoers will be soaked with torrents of blood from an overhead sprinkler system.

The English-language Dutch news site NL Times claim to have spoken to one of the event's organizers, who at this stage seems determined to remain anonymous. The party, based on the opening scene in the late 90s vampire film Blade, will take place on Halloween if the Facebook page is to be believed.

Is it to be believed? Who the fuck knows. There's a video at the event page that appears to show the sprinkler system being tested but it's far from conclusive and the name of the venue is yet to be announced. We're attempting to get in touch with the promoters to verify it ourselves.

"After a long search we have developed a special sprinkler system with pipes running across the ceiling and thus making us able to spray blood over the crowd. We've already tested it a number of times with a substance resembling blood," the NL Times was told. "It is pushing the borders, but we want to see how far we can go."

Who's gonna go to this thing? According to the NL Times, "In terms of attendees, [the organizers] expect somewhat 'freaky' people in terms of personality." Here are some pictures of some of the 1.8k people who currently say they're going to Blood Rave on Facebook:

Makes u think. Photo via I can never forget u becoz I love u.

"If they love you like they say, then they wouldn't treat you like they do. Sometimes words lie."

"When the past calls, let it go to voicemail. It's got nothing new to say."

"A murderer will kill you, a thief will steal from you, but you'll never know where you stand with a LIAR."

"Sweet as sugar, hard as ice. Hurt me once, I'll kill you twice."

You've probably seen them. Those bizarre Facebook almost-memes featuring quasi-inspirational, pseudo-philosophical, passive-aggressive messages laid over stock photos of sunsets and couples laughing in the rain. It's hard to recall when you started seeing them—were they posted by someone you went to school with who's since changed their surname? Your cousin's ex, who added you after a brief introduction at a funeral?—but if your experience is anything like my own, you now can't escape them.

These statuses, .jpegs, and other bits of shareable, discontented content are all symptoms of a new paranoid rhetoric, a grand delusional discourse that has ensnared swathes of the population. You'll find the proclamations posted up and down your Facebook feed, slapped onto your Twitter timeline like a Post-it note from a psychopath, stinking up your Instagram like a corpse at the back of the bus. They're ugly and stupid and hysterical and disturbingly banal, and I'm totally fascinated by them.

READ ON THUMP: Digging for Creators: When the Search for a Track ID Becomes a Life Changing Mission

I'm not sure where I first picked up on this craze myself. Maybe it was when I was grimly scrolling through the profiles of my old classmates at some dreadful hour; maybe it was when I found myself looking on the Facebook pages of people who'd recently been convicted of violent crimes; maybe it was on Sarah "the most normal person on Earth" Harding's Twitter. Or maybe they're just absolutely everywhere, unavoidable if you spend even ten minutes a day on social media.

This shareable negativity is a phenomenon that is yet to be named. It's not a content format used by the big new media publishers. It's not something obviously monetized. But it is something pervasive and instantly recognizable, with most of the images in this pandemic of self-seriousness sharing one thing: portentous quotes attributed to no one; words of wisdom that come from nowhere; mottos that nobody has ever stood by.

You know, things like this:

That owl is so wise. Photo via sungazing1

These messages seem to have a reach and a popularity that transcends that of almost any branded viral content. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars getting world-class athletes or rising electronica producers to sell your product, but a .jpeg bearing the message, "Everybody knows how to love, but few people know how to stay in love with one person forever" can pick up twice the traction with none of the email chains or drawn-out strategy meetings.

Despite their inherently irritating nature, I quickly became obsessed with these posts, spending hours trawling the archives and related pages of the accounts that spawn them, finding one angry platitude after another. There are pages called: "I'd rather be single than lied to, cheated on, and disrespected" (109,000 people Like this); " Minion Jokes" (180,000 Likes), "if you want me in ur life. figure out a way to put me there. im done trying" (624,000 Likes). Those aren't even particularly strong examples of the form. There are so many, with so many Likes, that it's almost impossible to figure out who the "brand leader" or originator is.

Having spent night after night fully immersing myself in their strange codes, I noticed these pages come in a few distinct forms. The most common are the sentimental, romantic, schmaltzy ones, such as "I can never forget u bcoz I love u." Three million people "Like" this. For scale, about 4 million people Like the Guardian.

On the surface they peddle an old-fashioned idea of romance, one that seems to appeal to people who got into long-term relationships at a young age and want to rub that in the face of the sad, lonely masses, with their soulless dating apps and itchy STDs. The content is standard Hallmark fodder: naff and hopelessly corny. It usually involves cuddling toddlers; sepia images of disembodied hands grazing each other; women in dresses sitting on rock pools; or park benches in the autumn.

You know the drill:

Image via I can never forget u becoz I love u

Where it starts to become compelling is that, alongside the entry-level sentimentality, lies an aggressive, nasty undertone, mainly focusing on mythical two-timers, cheats, and players. Between all the niceties, you'll pick up on a "It sucks when you realize you rejected other people for one person that wasted your time," or a, "Your girlfriend is gorgeous and loyal, why flirt with other girls? It's like throwing away a diamond and picking up a rock."

These pages have a dubious by-trade in shaming cheaters. They pride themselves on their zero tolerance of adultery; it's the one thing that seems to bond them, to the extent that all these imagined people playing away from home have become a kind of mass folk devil, an intangible bête noire for self-righteous, wronged romantics to rally against.

While adultery obviously isn't something to be championed, these groups talk about people who cheat like they're legitimate subhuman scum, in the same way people in the New World used to view spinsters, or women who'd had children out of wedlock. As witches, misers, scoundrels; somewhere between Monty Burns and the Catman of Greenock. Anyone who's ever drunkenly snogged someone else at a festival or received a saucy Facebook message is cast into this dark chorus-line of "nasty bastards and bitches," scorned by the thousands of people who share the posts.

The same goes for single people, who are regarded either as pathetic creeps or loveless monsters. The messages don't believe in any kind of relationship other than one that results from meeting the right person and never, ever giving them up, because all love is at first sight and lasts for eternity.

Photo via I Am Fed Up with Your Lies and Cheating

The second genre of posts are less to do with romantic relationships and more about managing your social circle. You'll find plenty of fine examples on "Spirit Science" (7.6 million Likes), if you're so inclined. The page is primarily dedicated to niche science stuff, but has an unexpected sideline in statements like: "Sometimes you have to give up on people, not because you don't care, but because they don't," and: "Some people are like clouds: once they disappear, it's a better day."

These kind of posts perpetuate quite a dangerous notion: that your friendship group isn't just comprised of people with whom you share common interests and mutual friends, but is actually a complex network of scumbags that you must navigate carefully or die, full of the very worst personality types the world has to offer: liars, fakers, schmoozers, snitches, bullshitters, haters, bitches, bastards, sluts, creeps, two-timers, and wing-clippers. They too are cast out into the darkness with the cheaters.

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Of course, you could see all this as a bit of fun—catharsis, a way of lashing out at the people who fuck us over in our everyday lives. However, the kind of language you see here doesn't just manifest itself in these silly little pictures, but in the way some of us now talk to each other online. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen distant acquaintances and old school friends post statuses like "some days you find out who ur real friends are," "nice to know who's there for you and who's not!" and the occasional more flagrant "dirty little bitch."

Want to feel even worse about your species? If you search the hashtag "whore" on Twitter, you'll find thousands of seemingly normal people talking about their personal lives in the most horrifically candid way imaginable. Same goes for "fake," "cheat," and all the other standard terms we tar each other with online.

Photo via I Am Fed Up with Your Lies and Cheating

There's not a whole lot of positivity you can take out of all this; it's inherently negative, embarrassing, annoying, and pretty fucking depressing that human expression—among a certain section of society, at least—has reduced itself to an endless stream of bitter platitudes.

More than that, it's a sad state to be in when this kind of worldview is now accepted; that it's not seen as sociopathic, or even slightly unusual. That it's OK to act as if everyone around you has a secret agenda; that your friends could turn against you at any moment; that our sexual desires are evil; that people who choose to be single are pathetic; and that we're all important enough to fall victim to grand conspiracies against us. Like we're all Big Brother contestants. As if we're now so certain of our importance in the world that—like celebrities—we all have our own set of haters, out to wrong us in whatever way they can.

WATCH: Talking Politics with Drunk Yuppies at the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race:

Unlike the posts themselves, I don't believe the people sharing them are innately nasty or pathetic or stupid; I think they're just victims of a new kind of unpleasant clickbait: negative virality. It's a way of generating traffic that trades on our fears, rather than making us laugh or showing us something we haven't seen before.

Human beings are fragile creatures, trying to make our way through a story we don't know the end to. We don't have witches, or conscription, or hell, or immediate nuclear threat any more. But, in 2015, we do have one fear that shadows all others: rejection. We fear dying alone more than anything, and these click-traps play on that. They catch people at a low ebb, when they're going through a break-up, or when a friend has wronged them, offering them solidarity in the form of aggressive words about disloyal people. Clicking "Like" on one of these pictures might not seem like a particularly violent act, but the images themselves are definitely guilty of perpetuating this detrimental mindset we seem to be digging ourselves into.

Humans are fallible, and it's likely that anyone posting, sharing or Liking these kind of posts have been guilty of whatever it is they're railing against at some point in time. Hopefully, once we realize that we're all as lost and frightened and useless and fucked as each other, we'll leave them all behind, confining them to the graveyard of the world wide web.

Follow Clive on Twitter.

William Sandeson (Left) Photo via Linkedin, Taylor Samson (Right) from Halifax Regional Police.

A Dalhousie University student is accused of murdering a fellow student who went missing over the weekend.

Halifax police have charged William Sandeson, 22, with first-degree murder in relation to the death of 22-year-old Taylor Samson.

Sandeson appeared in court Thursday; his case was put over until Sept. 2, according to Global News.

Samson was last seen leaving his home on the night of Aug. 15. He was reported missing the following day but investigators later ruled his disappearance a homicide. His body has not been found.

Police arrested Sandeson, a first-year medical student due to start school on Monday, outside a house on Leaman Drive in Dartmouth Tuesday evening. They later searched an address on Henry Street—reportedly Sandeson's—where they believe the murder took place.

"This was not a random act as Taylor Samson and William Sandeson knew one another," police said in a media release. They have not said how they believe Samson was killed.

Samson, a physics student, allegedly left his house to make a drug deal the night he was killed, according to court documents obtained by Global News.

In the Information to Obtain a Search Warrant for an address at 6093 South St., Samson's fraternity house and the last place he was seen alive, police reportedly stated they believed they would find marijuana inside relating to the investigation.

Samson allegedly left the home with a black duffle bag full of weed and his cell phone Saturday night.

"Samson seemed nervous about it since it was 4 pounds, a larger amount of marijuana than usual," reads the document, quoted in Global News.

"Samson did not know this new 'client' as he was introduced through a regular "client of Samson's...making him very nervous."

According to the Information to Obtain a Search Warrant, Halifax police said they believe Samson was the victim of a "drug rip."

"We are comfortable with the fact that the investigation, once it goes through the court process, will show how in fact our victim, Mr. Samson, was murdered, where he was murdered at and the manner that that took place," Acting Inspector Tom Townsend with HRP/RCMP Integrated Criminal Investigations Division told Global News.

In a statement posted to its website, Dalhousie said it was "devastated" by the news.

"Our thoughts are with Taylor's family and friends and the loss they have suffered. We have support and counselling available for students."

Halifax police did not return calls for comment.

Follow Manisha on Twitter.

'Yes' voters in Athens earlier this year. Photo by Panagiotis Maidis

More in-depth coverage on Greece:

A Brief History of Greece's Debt Crisis
Douglas Coupland: Greece and the Curse of Leisure
Austerity Is Devastating Mental Health in Greece

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

Last night, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced his resignation, signaling that a new election is on its way. "The popular mandate that I received on the 25th of January has exhausted its limits. Now the sovereign people of Greece must weigh in," he said.

This comes just seven months after the electoral success of Syriza, Tsipras's left-wing party, which formed Greece's first anti-austerity government—and about a month after holding a slightly pointless referendum on whether the country should accept a deal with the "Troika" of banking organizations that holds Greece's debt.

Related: Watch our video, 'Teenage Riot: Athens'

But how did we come to this? Initially, Syriza gained popularity by promising an end to the tough austerity measures imposed on Greece by its international creditors. Many voters were however disillusioned when they realized that—much like previous governments—Syriza too had signed up for a tough set of austerity measures.

Members of Syriza's "Left Platform"—the party's radical left wing—opposed Tsipras's decision to agree to the new deal and withdrew their support for the party. Following that, on August 14, the government lost its parliamentary majority. On the morning of August 21, members of the Left Platform announced that they would be forming a new group called Laiki Enotita (Popular Unity).

A caretaker government will be placed in charge of the country in the interim. It's widely assumed that it will be led by Supreme Court President Vasiliki Thanos—which would make her the country's first female PM.

But what do the Greek people have to say about being called to the polls for the third time in eight months? I asked some young people for their thoughts.

Photo via Franca

Franca, 27 Years Old. freelancer.

"I'm not sure how I feel about these elections. Tsipras once again focused on his party politics rather than the interests of the country. I hope he wins the new elections and finally comes out confident and knowing what he wants. I don't know which way I will vote or if I'll vote at all. I want a majority government, made up of a united party, because coalitions don't work. The new government must implement a program that's realistic. I think Tsipras behaved very realistically after the referendum, so I hope he continues to pursue these firm policies without losing his way."

Photo via Augustinos

Augustinos, 28 Years Old. engineer.

"As a basic principle, letting the people choose is a good thing. The question is whether the elections should have taken place before the third memorandum was ever voted in. The referendum showed that Greeks can't handle more austerity. I believe that the timing of these elections suits the government because the public hasn't had time to resist the implementation of the new measures. Even though we no longer worry about leaving the EU, everyday life is becoming increasingly difficult and all the new measures favor the few rather than the many. I'll definitely be voting."

Photo via Maria

Maria Duka, 34 YEARS OLD. archaeologist.

"I don't want more elections. I'm sick of voting every six months. I'm tired of politicians making fools out of us. It would be better if all that election money went to someone dying of hunger. I once ran for office and witnessed first-hand how the election game is played. I said I'd would never vote again. Nevertheless, I voted in the referendum. I'm 95 percent against it but I'll probably do it anyway, even if it's just to keep the [ultra right-wing] Golden Dawn from winning."

Photo via Aphrodite

Aphrodite, 27 Years Old. web developer

"I think this election is a good thing. I always knew that Syriza was limited and would do a U-turn. It's not like elections bring us to a standstill—we should let them happen. I think the anti-austerity left will make gains, despite their faults. On the other hand, I'm afraid that some people might think that an even more leftist government could manage better. I am also afraid that Golden Dawn will play the 'we are the only true change' card. Whichever way it goes, I don't believe any result will bring about a 'better' government or improve living conditions here in Greece."

Photo via Raela

Raela, 25 Years Old. private sector employee.

"I don't think this election in necessary. The Greek people have already made their decision and put their trust in the current government. Unfortunately that government hasn't lived up to the public's expectations. Now, they don't want to take responsibility so they've called for yet another election. It's only going to cause even more political instability."

Photo via Manolis

Manolis, 21 Years Old. student.

"Generally, I think frequent elections are a bad thing. I like stability in society. That said, I have no problem with the upcoming election, though. It might be the only way to gauge public opinion in these uncertain times. Perhaps this is even an opportunity to set up a majority government. I'm studying in another city and won't actually be able to vote but I consider it my obligation to respect the final result."

Photo via Mina

Mina, 27 Years Old. actor.

"I'm glad I live in a country with a democratic constitution but I have some issues with all these elections. Firstly, they're mandatory. Secondly, they don't seem to bring about any real change, and thirdly, they undermine the people's trust in politicians. These elections haven't had any positive outcome. I also think Golden Dawn's popularity will increase. In times like these, people can sometimes use their vote to attack society's most vulnerable. If that's the way things go, the situation could get out of control and we'll see just how bad the situation can actually get. "

Want some background? Here's a brief history of Greece's debt.

A before and after photo of Cait's left shoulder. She began self-harming as a child and finally got her most visible scars tattooed at age 24

Warning: This story contains images and discussion of self-injury.

"I didn't realize how much it meant to me until you started asking," said Cait, her voice quivering, as she told me about the moment last December when a tattoo artist covered up her most visible collection of self-harm scars. He had pulled her in front of the mirror, the stencil already drawn on her arm, and was asking for her final approval before making it permanent. She knew that would be the last time she would see her scars.

The crisscross of purple and white scar tissue across her left shoulder is now undetectable underneath a bouquet of orchids. The length of a shirt's sleeve is no longer the first thing she looks at when buying clothing. Strangers no longer call her "emo" when she leaves her arms uncovered.

"After years and years of hiding that part of your body and all of a sudden you're proud of it. I wanted to show people," she said. "It changed my life."

That moment was a long time coming.

Cait's first method of self-harm started as a child when she began pulling her hair out during times of stress and anger. When this stopped calming her like it used to, she escalated to scratching and then, at age 11, she began cutting.

"I think the real root of the problem was that I was never taught how to deal with emotions, given any coping mechanisms," Cait said.

Cait hasn't self-harmed in almost six years, but the scars on her shoulders, hips, and thighs have lingered. They are memorials to what she has overcome and a reminder of what she calls her most embarrassing moments.

For many who cut, the scars become a stubborn life chapter that just won't shut.

I'm no stranger to self-harm scars. As a former social worker with teenagers for almost half a decade, I've dressed the self-injury wounds of dozens of clients. A young person cutting—or, in some cases, hacking—at their own flesh during my shift became as mundane as administering their thrice daily cocktail of anti-psychotic, antidepressant, anti-whatever meds. But I never thought of the secondary battle that went beyond the immediate problem of curbing their self-harm into something less destructive.

It's hard to pinpoint how common self-harm is because it's often done in secret. Between one and four percent of American adults and 15 percent of teens are believed to have self-harmed in some way, according to one study of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. A UK study estimates that 7 percent of the country's adolescents may intentionally injure themselves.

Self-harm is not exclusive to teenagers, nor is it a modern day phenomena. The first known mention of self-harm in a medical journal was in 1896 in the Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. Women throughout Europe were found to torture themselves with sewing needles earning the label "needle girls." Today, the word "cutting" will likely conjure up an image of emo teenagers with their side swept bangs, skinny jeans, and black hoodies who seem to wear their wrist cuts like the latest trend in bracelets.

For many who cut, the scars become a stubborn life chapter that just won't shut. Unlike other forms of self-harm—say, alcoholism or anorexia—when you cut, burn, or self-injure in some other way, it's a past that can be visible for the world to see years after you stop.

Motherboard asks why we hurt ourselves, and concludes that "the answer may lie in the intense relief we feel when it's over."

Like all the former self-harmers I spoke with for this story, Conor, 22, kept his cutting and burning well hidden. Despite a "fantastic upbringing," Conor struggled with his mental wellbeing as a child. When he became the target of bullies at school, he began self-harming as a way to cope at the age of 13.

"Pretty much all my upper body, anything that could be reachable provided it could be hidden by a t-shirt, you're fine," said Conor, of his cutting and burning areas. "I can walk around in shorts, socks, and a t-shirt and you would never know."

The photos he sent me looked like a meteor storm on his arm: White and purple scars about an inch long started at his wrists and continued to his shoulder and beyond. When Conor ran out of untouched skin on his upper body, he moved on to his ankles.

By age 18 or 19 Conor was ready to remove, cover, or reduce his scars in any way he could—oils, creams, surgery, and tattoos were all on the table. Eventually, he chose three custom tattoos for his ankles; one of them, an eight-point star representing a compass and a new direction in life.

"In the summer, when you want to wear shorts without socks, it just draws the eye away... from any white hairless areas of the leg or any overly purple scarring," he said.

Watch: Meet the Albanian Tattoo Artist Working Out of an Abandoned Bunker

If you browse through the Reddit forum for self-harm, the issue of scars comes up again and again: Are bracelets the best way to cover up? Does scar makeup work? Did your scar tissue take the tattoo ink? On RealSelf.com, a mash of Yelp and Facebook for plastic surgery procedures, more than 2,500 conversations discuss self-harm scars.

"Did I want to have my body on display as a harmed thing or did I want to display it with something I had chosen?" - Marya Hornbacher

Dr. Cengiz Açıkel, a plastic surgeon from Istanbul, Turkey, is a name that comes up often on the site. He is considered one of the go-to doctors for reducing self-harm scars through a technique of dermabrasion—a procedure like extreme exfoliation—and skin grafting.

"These [scars] are hard to explain. They are socially unacceptable and summertime is a nightmare for these people," said Açıkel.

He encountered his first self-harm patient, a former solider, early on in his 18-year practice. After that more came, including pilots, parents, executives in high-flying careers, patients from both sexes and every socioeconomic background. He has treated at least 200 people. Most are Turkish, but some are international.

A self-harm related inquiry to Açıkel's practice is normally triggered by some life event—when you date, go for a job interview, get married, have kids, etc.

"These scars become a problem at every milestone in life," said Açıkel.

A self-harm cover-up from tattoo artist Lindy Pagan at Lucky's Tattoo in New Jersey

For Marya Hornbacher, 41, that milestone was her wedding. She has five significant scars on her arm that she wanted either covered or reclaimed into something beautiful—so to match her wedding dress, Hornbacher had a tattoo of calla lilies twist around and up her arm. It covers some of the scars, but not all of them because some are so substantial they would not take the ink.

"It is something that was a decision: Did I want to have my body on display as a harmed thing or did I want to display it with something I had chosen?" she said.

Hornbacher injured her body in different ways for about two decades. It started with eating disorders, which she details in her Pulitzer Prize-nominated memoir "Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia" and ended with alcoholism. In the mix, a six-month period of cutting. She was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and at the time, cutting "slowed down the mania" that comes with bipolarism—or, at least, "gave me the perception that the mania was slowing down."

"There are very serious moments in your life when you will go 'Gosh damnit. I wish I would not have done that,'" said Hornbacher. Now, she's reclaimed that part of her life with the calla lilly tattoo.

Noisey talks to Laura Jane Grace about tattooing the pain away.

Although tattoos offer a way to salvage self-harm scars, it's an ironic choice. First, like self-harm scars, there's a stigma attached to having tattoos. And then there's the argument that tattoos can be a form of self-harm themselves: The payoff for many self-harmers comes with the rush of endorphins your body is programmed to release when there is an injury.

"You are basically relying on your body's own chemical-producing capacity to generate a set of drugs that change your consciousness," said Janis Whitlock, a research scientist from Cornell who studies self-harm. She referred to it as a process addiction much like pornography, shopping, or gambling. Tattooing injures the body eliciting the same rush of endorphins.

But whether a tattoo is a form of self-harm or not comes down to motivation, according to Karen Conterio, from SAFE Alternatives, an outpatient support group in Missouri. "It is not how often the person is doing it, but why they are doing it," she said.

The decision on what to do with self-harm scars can be complicated by a love hate relationship. Scars can become markers cataloging where you've been. They can also inspire strangers to come and touch them as if they were a pregnant woman's belly or prompt a random guy to mimic slitting his wrists just to piss you off. Both have happened to Laura Lejeune.

"You can look at a certain scar and you know it is from a certain chapter in my life," she said. "Going through so much and overcoming so much, to not have the scars—it's almost like you didn't overcome it."

Laura Lejeune runs a YouTube channel on mental health. Some of her videos address living with self-harm scars including one titled "The worst reaction to my scars!"

Lejeune, 21, runs a YouTube channel on mental health from her home in Newcastle, England. She was diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder, anxiety, and depression when she was 15. As a momentary escape, she turned to self-harm.

At first, she covered her scars with long sleeves, even on hot days. Then it progressed to bandages. She tried makeup, but it went on cakey and drew even more attention to what she was trying to hide. At one stage, laser became a serious contender to remove the scars on Lejeune's arms and thighs. At the last moment she backed away from her appointment. She decided she couldn't be without her scars.

Then, before a trip to Florida with extended family, Lejeune realized she wasn't comfortable baring her scars. She had been considering tattooing a portrait of her grandmother to cover up the scarring on her upper left arm, and with the impending trip, she decided to go for it.

Laura Lejeune's tattoo of her grandmother covers up and distracts from the self-harm scars on her left arm

She found Nick Nelson at Ascension Tattoo in Orlando, who took on the job. In addition to the design Lejeune wanted, he added a ring of red roses to cover the raised and purple scars. It became the perfect balance for Lejeune: Her scars were still there, just underneath the tattoo.

Nelson had known a few friends to go through cutting stages, but didn't realize how common it was until he started as a full time tattoo artist seven years ago. He tattoos a handful of clients each year who are there to cover up their self-harm scars. The majority of those clients tend to be in their late 20s. Earlier on they wore their scars like victory badges, but as they got older they became sick of explaining their scars again and again, according to Nelson.

It's the same for Michelle Myles from Daredevil Tattoo on New York's Lower East Side, who said clients coming in for self-harm scar cover-ups generally are embarrassed about their past. "It is something they seemed to have grown out of and they don't want it visible... so they put something positive over it," she said.

Michelle Myles from Daredevil Tattoo in New York City

Tattooing onto scar tissue is difficult, and Lejeune had to shop around before she found Nelson to take it on. Scar tissue is unpredictable when it is injected with ink. It can behave like normal skin or the ink can begin to bleed out, creating problems if the tattoo design calls for hard lines.

"It's nerve-racking," said Nelson.

He likes clients to wait at least two years before coming in for a tattoo as the skin can still be healing. Getting a doctor to look over the scars first isn't a bad idea either, he said.

Clients who come in for self-harm cover-ups are normally quiet about their back story, and Nelson doesn't quiz them either, but he sometimes has to bite his tongue on whether or not they will go back to self-harming once they get the tattoo.

"Part of me wants to say 'Hey, we are putting some nice art on you. Don't screw this up,'" he said.

I asked Whitlock, the researcher from Cornell, why the treatment community doesn't put a bigger focus on the visibility of scars, their stigma, and their lingering impact on life after self-harm. She told me that for young people this would likely be an ineffective deterrent because of how the brain develops during teenage years. It's when the gap between the brain's prefrontal cortex that regards what information is important, and the amygdale, which is in charge of rational thought, is as wide as it will ever be.

"In general, those kind of cautionary notes about the future tend to fall on pretty deaf ears if someone is around that age and struggling with a lot of emotion," she said.

Conterio, from SAFE Alternatives, doesn't spend much time addressing the long-term impact of scars in the support group either. When the organization started in 1986, it attracted mostly women in their 20s or 30s. Now, the majority of clients are teens.

"It is so much easier to talk about what they do to themselves physically rather than the underlying issues," she said.

Related: The Internet of Pain: When Suffering Goes Viral

When the client is ready, Conterio prepares them on how to talk about their scars. It's a very circumstantial exercise with a response planned for a range of scenarios like if a child asks verses an adult, a close friend verses an acquaintance, or a family member verses a work colleague.

Michelle Bicking, a licensed clinical social worker who runs the Self Injury Awareness Network out of Hartford, Connecticut, wants to see a greater discussion about scars in treatment. Bicking, 38, is a self-harmer in remission, pulling back from cutting her face and between her toes with razors to scratching. She described a disconnect that she and her self-harm clients have to their physical person.

"It is not so much the damage, but focusing on self-love and being aware of the different aspects of a person," said Bicking. "You are a body and one cannot live without the body."

Cait, the vet nurse from Florida, still thinks about self-harming every day even though she's almost six years clean. Keeping her body physically free from scars motivates her to use the elliptical for a quick burst of endorphins instead of cutting. That incentive has increased since she got her orchid tattoo.

"The willpower of not having any marks on my body overpowers the urge to [self-harm]," said Cait. "I like tattoos, but I don't want to be covered in them."

If you are struggling with self-harm, call the Self Injury Foundation's 24-hour national crisis line at 1-800-334-HELP (4357).

Follow Serena Solomon on Twitter.

Perfect summer, basically. Photo via Flickr user Chris Clogg

It seems like just yesterday you were huddled up at the back of the bus, covertly brown-bagging whiskey as your cheeks thawed from the subzero conditions outside. To get yourself through it, you envisioned warmer days: a lithe, tanned version of yourself hitting the beach, camping, maybe blasting some Rick Ross on a yacht—as if you know anyone rich enough to own a yacht. And now summer's nearly over and all you have to show for it is a beer belly and an all-clear at your STI check-up (good job, btw). Don't pack up your neon tank tops just yet. Dump a mickey of vodka into a Big Gulp slushie and get ready to make the most of what's left of the season.

HAVE A SUMMER FLING (OBVIOUSLY)
The fantasy: You meet a super hot stranger at a party, stay up all night alternating between talking and fucking, and somehow manage to have brunch in the morning without either person thinking the other is "too into it." Repeat for the rest of the summer.

Achievable dream: You use Tinder to bang some tourist who is town having escaped his lame food truck job and will now return to his home country to brag to his friends about the foreign sex. Repeat for the rest of the summer.

Worst case: Your social circle stays exactly the same and, wasted on a lethal cocktail of boredom and desperation, you bone your least-unattractive coworker. Weeks of awkwardness ensue. Don't worry, we've all been there and it'll pass, Noisey.

This guy gets it. Photo via Flickr user Jonathan Kos-Read

SMOKE LIKE IT WON'T GIVE YOU CANCER**
Maybe you're a casual summer smoker or maybe you've been toying with the idea of doing it because it looks so fucking cool.* Either way, now is the time to take up one of mankind's oldest traditions. There is truly nothing more relaxing than smoking on a patio with a cold beverage, or at the beach, in the park, in the secret stairwell at work where all the old chainsmokers hang out. Also, smoking lets you get out of the party and get some one-on-one time with a stranger. (See summer fling.) Plus, if you quit by winter, your chances of getting cancer go down by like 80 percent.**

*Not an actual fact

**It will

SLEEP ON YOUR (OR LIKELY, SOMEONE ELSE'S) LAWN
Summer is the best, and safest time to pass out outdoors. Any other season and you'd risk either catching pneumonia or dying of hypothermia. My editor had a friend who always used to sleep outside in the summer, even though he totally had a nice house. When asked why he liked to sleep outside, the guy said: "I just like the way it feels." What better reason is there to do something?

Photo via Flickr user Philip Leara

STOP SAVING, START TRAVELING
"But it's expensive," and you "don't have time," right? At this point, you should have a decent chunk of change saved up from your shitty job at the counter-service taco place. If you stay in town, you'll likely end up blowing it on that skid mark of a dive you frequent with your friends—not tuition. So GTFO. Watch a live sex show and feel gross about it later, go discount skydiving with an unlicensed company, try to speak a new language and piss all the locals off in the process. Travelling will give you perspective like nothing else can. And if you have to go alone, that's even better. You'll come back with enough "When I was in Thailand," stories to bore your friends for at least a year.

Okay, maybe not this band. But a band. Photo via Flickr user Incase

ACTUALLY LISTEN TO MUSIC AT A FESTIVAL
For the bargain bin price of $300, you spent your first two summer festivals barely conscious, having tent sex with someone who hadn't showered in days, buying cocaine* off strangers and becoming pro at avoiding piles of MDMA-induced human feces littering the grounds. This time around, maybe try listening to some actual music. Show up super early and check out that little-loved indie band playing on the second (or better yet, third) stage and take notice of the strangers there with you. These are your people. Appreciate the audacity of a 68-year-old running around in leather pants during the inevitable headlining reunion set. Spend 10 minutes in the pit. Save some of that beer money and splurge on a lobster roll at a food truck. The festival experience is different when you're not borderline comatose.

*Probably not cocaine

Still from Girls

PEE OUTSIDE
You're at a beach barbecue, beer number three in hand, when the urge to take a leak strikes. Toilets are either absent or, if you're like me, the mere sight of an outhouse makes you want to vomit and rip your skin off. That's all good. There's something invigorating and novel about pissing in the great outdoors; if nothing else, staring at a tree beats tile. But there's some basic etiquette to follow, namely, don't pee on yourself and don't pee on anyone else (without consent) also, always pee downhill. Take heed of the moment, and feel the perfect sound that is your urine hitting a pile of dried leaves.

Photo via Flickr user CasparGirl

RE-JOIN THE SPORTS TEAM YOU JOINED AT THE START OF SUMMER
In an effort to meet new people, you signed up to play on a rec-league ultimate frisbee team during the summer—you know, a laid back sport where you can half-ass it on the field until it's time for post-game drinks. Then you showed up to a game, realized how insanely serious some people are about tossing a plastic disc back and forth, and never came back. Now show up at the end of summer when the play-offs are on the line and ruin your team's chances because they love to talk about the value of sportsmanship and let you play.

GAIN WEIGHT
Now that summer is coming to an end, you can stop obsessing about your body. Your hottest moments are long gone and if you're smart, immortalized on Facebook. So let it all hang out. Load up on the grilled meat and beers. Tell yourself you'll hit the gym so hard in the fall. (You won't.)

Photo via Instagram user _marcofast

POST ONE GOOD NATURE INSTAGRAM
Remember when the internet wasn't really a thing, and you ran around trapping and killing bugs and eating dirt for fun? If you're legitimately nostalgic for those days, take a camping trip with a couple of friends. Get rained on. Freak out over bears, even though they don't exist in the part of the world you're from. Remember how much tents suck because they get too cold at night and too hot during the day. Discover that you already know everything about your pals and literally have nothing left to say to each other. Do mushrooms to fill the void. Regret doing mushrooms. Do them again. Then take one sweet, "candid," campfire shot and post to Instagram with the hashtag #unplugged or #nature or some other corny bullshit. After you die, you'll only be remembered for the likes on your social media posts anyway.

That's one kooky bridesmaid. Photo via Flickr user Michael Miller

ACTUALLY ENJOY A WEDDING, DON'T THINK ABOUT THE MONEY YOU SPENT
Once you hit your late 20s (or late teens in rural areas), summers = nonstop weddings. Without fail, some poor soulmates always choose to get hitched at the tail end of the season, when everyone is bitter about how much time/money they've already wasted on couples they don't care about. Chill. Take advantage of the free booze, have sex with someone in the wedding party, embarrass yourself dancing to Backstreet Boys or whatever '90s shit the DJ starts playing once everyone is too drunk to pretend to be cool anymore. Maybe even be happy for them, if that's your thing.

WASTE ENTIRE DAYS BITCHING ABOUT HOW SOON SUMMER WILL BE OVER
And then it will be, and you'll be sorry.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Check out Esther Pearl Watson's website, Instagram, and get her books from Fantagraphics. Follow the adventures of the Blood Lady Commandos from the beginning.

'Stone Cold' Steve Austin graces the cover of the forthcoming 'WWE 2K16'

Before I start, three things:

1. This list is objectively right.
2. Just one game per console generation, plus the arcades.
3. Suck it!

You can skip over these introductory words if you like, straight to the list, but if you're a real wrestling fan, you'll want the two minutes of backstory that always comes before the big match, eh?

SummerSlam's impending, folks—and if you don't know what that is, leave! Brock Lesnar—a man who looks like an angry dumpling—is about to battle the legendary Undertaker, who used to be a zombie, but now just looks like one.

Yep, folks—we're talking pro wrestling, the subject that splits people into two categories: Wrestling Fans and People Who Are Boring And Should Be Wrestling Fans.

Wrasslin' is a very strange journey for its fans. I've loved the stuff since 1991, which means all my heroes are either dead (Ultimate Warrior), damaged (Ric Flair), or have been illegally filmed having sex with a friend's wife (while a horrible invasion of his privacy, Hulk Hogan's sex tape was, to be fair, much more physically vigorous than most of his matches).

It's a glorious world—only wrestling could have a match refereed by the former Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, where the three competitors are a New York Times bestselling author (Mick Foley), a Hollywood superstar (The Rock), and a bad-ass named after something his wife said about a cup of tea ('Stone Cold' Steve Austin... and that's actually true).

Now, video games.

Since pro wrestling is the strangest world in entertainment—real people fight in battles where the outcome is predetermined—its video games end up very odd indeed. They are unreal versions of real people fighting in simulations of predetermined battles, but the outcome can't be predetermined, otherwise the game would be shit.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's full-length documentary, The British Wrestler

The fight mechanics are mind-boggling—wrestling is realistic-looking fantasy combat performed by real people, whereas video games make up the medium that makes you believe Batman can do a flying kick in all that rubber. Skill in any Mortal Kombat looks like effective fighting followed by a decapitation. Skill in a wrestling game looks like a series of stunts, all of which seem unnecessarily elaborate and tricky. Scorpion has combos that can juggle his opponent around the screen, but real patience is knocking your opponent down, and then getting a table...

Then getting another table...
Then stacking those tables...
Then setting them on fire...
Then taking your opponent to the top rope...
And then dropping them through both those tables, the ones that are on fire.

(And let's not forget, since the wrestlers in these game are mostly real people, their personal histories feed into their digital avatars. So say what you will about the Street Fighter V beta, but at least Ryu was never filmed boning Ken Master's wife.)

Right! The backstory montage is over! Here's our main event.

Pro Wrestling – NES, 1986

The title that brought us "A Winner Is You," Pro Wrestling is a Japanese game that goes straight for fun and dropkicks copyright in the head. You'll fight a bevy of familiar figures with unfamiliar names, including Great Puma (Tiger Mask), King Slender (Ric Flair, who gets off lightly here, given he's "Dick Slender" in another game), and the Amazon (it's clearly the Creature from the Black Lagoon, because 1980s Japanese kids just loved 1960s American sci-fi.) The presentation is great, with a referee in the ring, a cameraman outside, and everybody's moves are strong-style Japanese stuff: American wrestlers wouldn't learn how to do spinning kicks until the Great Body Oil Shortage of 1998 meant skinny blokes in T-shirts could have careers, too.

WWF WrestleFest – Arcade, 1991

The sequel to 1990's WWF Superstars, WWF WrestleFest is the best of late-1980s Saturday morning cartoon wrestling, and you played it in the arcades—the only place on earth sweatier than a wrestling ring. Chunky, colorful sprites and huge character models make you feel like a Day-Glo superhero—and the roster of 12 wrestlers is nostalgia for the dads and pure fear for the children.

Everyone's moves are right—Hulk Hogan does a devastating leg-drop, the Legion of Doom can tear your head off with their Doomsday Device—and the presentation is better than the real world (cool as he was, Jake "the Snake" Roberts never, ever had visible abs). There's a tag-team tournament with a steel cage match in the middle—and the Royal Rumble Mode is a finger-breaking adrenaline rush.

(Also, half the folks you'll wrestle as are dead, in rehab, out of rehab, or have converted to born-again Christianity at one point or another, but don't let that worry you.)

Honorable Mention: Saturday Night Slam Masters

Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium – SNES/Super Famicom, 1996

The finest wrestling game of the 16-bit generation. (WWF Raw doesn't come close, even if you can make a sumo wrestler cannonball the ring and knock out five men.) With over 60 characters to pick, a create-a-wrestler mode (on the Super Nintendo! What witchcraft is this?) and just about every move in wrestling represented, SFPWXP is flat-out genius, plus its acronym looks like a normal wrestling company name, but concussed, which is pretty appropriate.

New on Fightland: What Will Heat Maps and Motion Trackers Do to the Spirit of MMA?

WWF No Mercy – Nintendo 64, 2000

If you're a wrestling gamer, you likely cry yourself to sleep wondering what happened to the THQ/AKI engine from all their games on the N64. Get nostalgic! "I tell ya, kids... graphics so ugly your big beefy boys sometimes looked like angry origami, but a fighting system so good that it didn't matter that everybody's heads were square."

No Mercy is the tricked-out apogee of the form—huge roster, create-a-wrestler, all the moves from every wrestling game THQ/AKI had ever made—and the first-ever ladder match on a home console. As my grandfather said: "That is brutal! John, I was in the Second World War... and nobody ever hit me with a ladder."

Honorable Mentions: WCW/nWo Revenge, Virtual Pro Wrestling 2, Def Jam Vendetta

WWF SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain – PS2, 2003

Finally, finally, the gameplay gets fast. The best in the SmackDown! series (on any console), Here Comes the Pain is arcade-quick, hyper-violent, and doesn't give a damn about realism. You can throw someone headfirst off the side of a building, then elbow-drop them from a passing helicopter. This is wrestling as hell, where everybody is permanently injured, but unable to die.

It's also the last WWF/WWE game where you can: one, have inter-gender hardcore matches (in case you wanted to see a lady in high heels smash a palooka's face with a garbage can); two, have an Iron Man Match that works properly; and three, if you pick up a steel chair, your character will keep holding it until you get hit (in later games, you get three smashes, then the chair breaks). I hate to recommend this to anyone, but if you want to have real fun: PICK UP A CHAIR AND KEEP SWINGING.

(Trivia: who's that playable chap with the missing tooth? This is one of the games featuring Chris Benoit, who committed a double homicide. The WWE pretends he never worked for them, a fate they sometimes dish out to former employees who've "misbehaved"—or, in Benoit's case, killed people, before himself. See also: Hulk Hogan, who was illegally filmed having sex, and is occasionally a bit racist when he's near a microphone; and Chyna, who began her post-WWF career in pornography with a wrestler named X-Pac. She was subsequently banned from the company, while X-Pac still works there. So have some fun: make the Hulkster and Chyna in the create-a-wrestler mode and put them against Chris Benoit in an Old Man Opinions And Lady Sex Are As Bad As Murder Match.)

Honorable Mentions: Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, Fire ProWrestling D, Legends of Wrestling

Over on VICE Sports: The True Story Behind the Craziest Pro Wrestling Stunt Ever

WWE All-Stars – Xbox 360/PlayStation 3, 2011

I brought this home to my discerning family of bearded nerds back in 2011, along with a copy of Marvel Vs Capcom 3. We agreed that All-Stars is a ludicrous, physics-breaking Technicolor fever-dream, but Marvel vs Capcom 3 was just silly. This is multiplayer genius... that was bad acid at a crap rave.

All-Stars is wrestling the way it felt when you were a child, with finishing moves so powerful THEY SLOW DOWN TIME and END IN A SHOCKWAVE NOT SEEN SINCE THE RUSSIANS DETONATED THE TSAR BOMBA DURING THE COLD WAR.

There's not a lot of match types, or any storylines to speak of, but this is pure joy—and all the wrestlers return to what they always were, the best action figures you could ever want. And for the first, and only, time, Sgt Slaughter plays like someone with that name should.

WWE 2K15 – Xbox One/PlayStation 4, 2014

Last year's model of the longest-running wrestling franchise in gaming (starts with SmackDown!, becomes SmackDown! vs Raw, becomes WWE "NUMBER," then, after the death of THQ, WWE 2KYEAR), this makes the list because it's the one wrestling game currently out on "next"-gen consoles. Until, of course, WWE 2K16 comes out in about tens seconds (well, October 27).

WWE 2K15 worked on the tried-and-true formula of "Remember last year's game? We changed three animations." Harnessing all that NEXT-GEN POWER, you can now do a running stomp to a downed opponent (you always could, but the collision detection is better) and all the wrestlers look disturbingly thin. It was solid, but unspectacular—and the chairs kept breaking.

On the plus side, it did have Hulk Hogan in it. He's not in this year's—but he was going to be...

...And that's what makes wrestling games so interesting—what real-life dramas are going to stop me being able to play as my childhood hero today? Who'll go on a racist rant on Twitter? Who's blamed their concussions on their workplace? You just don't get this trouble with any other kind of fighting game.

Follow John on Twitter.

John does comedy, and is currently performing at the Edinburgh Festival. Click here for details and tickets.

Photo via Flickr user Karen Neoh

The English jazz singer and raconteur George Melly was once asked what he liked most about growing old. Losing your libido, he said; it was like getting unchained from a lunatic.

I know what he meant. Now that I'm in my late 30s, things have calmed down, but as a pubescent teen my libido was bouncing off the walls of his padded cell, talking in tongues, mad as a March hare. Pretty much anything would arouse me—the particular way a bus engine vibrated at a stop light; the synthetic fibers in boxer shorts. The list was endless.

That's right: I'm one of those preposterous guys who has literally jizzed himself in public.

At some point, this cauldron of over-heated desire ran into an actual live female, with predictably disastrous results. I was 15, the girl's name was Lisa, and to this day she has no idea of the part she played in my earliest sexual misadventure. That's because the party, as they say, was in my pants. That's right: I'm one of those preposterous guys who has literally jizzed himself in public.

It happened while waiting to go into class. I'd had my eye on Lisa for a while, and one day, I tried flirting with her. She must've reluctantly decided I was the best option in our class of fairly gormless-looking teenage boys, because Lisa responded positively to my lame chat-up line. We started shoving each other around (how kids in my school tended to communicate sexual interest) and one way or another, I found myself behind her with my arms draped over her shoulders.

I could feel her breasts pressed against my forearms. Just a slight adjustment, I thought, and I could have them in my hands. The corridor was filling up with other kids. I could feel their eyes on us. What was I doing! But Lisa seemed to coax me to go further.

"You're too tall," she said in a soft, comely voice, bumping her butt against me.

I tried to play it cool. "Yeah well you're too sma..."

SPLUFF!

I've told that story several times in my life, not always climaxing with the word "spluff," but always as an amusing anecdote. It seems natural to make a joke out of it, but at the time, it was anything but funny. Especially since my experience in the school hallway ended up predicting my sex life for the next ten years.

Premature ejaculation, or PE as it's casually abbreviated in medical shorthand, is the most common male sexual dysfunction, far more prevalent than impotence. The International Society for Sexual Medicine defines PE as a condition "characterized by ejaculation which always or nearly always occurs prior to or within about one minute of vaginal penetration." Experts estimate about 30 percent of the male population suffer with it at some point in their lives. For some it's a passing phase; but for many others it's not.

"One of the myths is that PE is a young man's problem and that once he learns how to have sex and be more aware of his arousal the problem will go away," says sex therapist and author Dr. Ian Kerner, who has written at length about his own struggles with PE. "But in truth most men who suffer from PE suffer from it chronically for the course of a lifespan."

These men can end up feeling like "sexual cripples," says Dr. Kerner, yet the common cultural response is still to laugh at it. Think of the classic scene in American Pie when Jim jizzes himself twice in front of the sexy exchange student, or the Lonely Island skit that got everyone singing about jizzing in their pants.

Dr. Kerner says this tendency to ridicule makes it harder to have a serious dialogue about premature ejaculation. "Think of all the sex issues that get talked about in the media day in day and out—erectile dysfunction, low female desire, sex addiction, porn addiction—yet you rarely hear about PE."

Photo via the US Navy Flickr page

We make jokes about those other problems too, but we're also prepared to take them seriously. A Hollywood actor's sex addiction might make him an object of derision but the fact that he can publicly admit to it says a lot. No star admits to being a chronic premature ejaculator.

The taboo surrounding PE means that most who suffer with it do so in silence. It was that way for me. The only people who knew were the girls I shared my bed with—and sometimes not even them, since when you have a problem with PE, you become adept at hiding it.

Ed*, a 23-year-old finance worker from Texas, admits to being "kind of intense" about covering up his PE and has a whole protocol worked out for first sexual encounters to ensure his date doesn't find out.

"Before beginning, I make sure we're in a house or somewhere with a bathroom I can escape to," says Ed. "So we start making out and I start stimulating her with my hands. Then I move my mouth around and work into cunnilingus.

"If she tries to touch my dick before that, I literally move her hand away and keep making it about her. After her orgasm I'm ready to bust, so I say I'm going to go rinse and run to the bathroom, where I rinse and jerk off."

Ed blames PE for ruining at least two relationships. At his age, I had the same fail rate.

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A couple of years after Lisa, I met a girl called Vicky, who became my first girlfriend. I was totally in love with Vicky, though our abortive attempts at sex were usually over before they began. Just having our naked bits in the vicinity of one another was enough to set me off. I was so devastated when she dumped me that—in a gesture high in romantic cant but low in environmental friendliness—I took a crappy plastic bracelet she had given me and solemnly buried it at the bottom of the garden.

Like Ed, I became convinced Vicky had finished me because of my PE. I tried to tell myself I'd do better next time, but whenever next time came along, the old trouble returned. My relationship to sex became characterized by evasion, bailing out on dates when things got too passionate, changing the subject when friends shared stories about their sex lives and wanted to hear mine.

In my early 20s I met a girl who I dated for a year. With her, at least I was able to talk about the issue and we both agreed I should try and get help. I told my doctor, who referred me to an urologist. He was a somber northern Englishman, cold and unempathic. After listening to my mumbled explanations he told me about a few behavioral techniques I could try out with my girlfriend, the main one being "the squeeze," which sounds like a dance craze from the Jazz Age but actually involves getting your partner to squeeze the tip of your cock when you feel yourself approaching bursting point.

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The squeeze was developed in the 60s by the inventors of sex therapy, William Masters and Virginia Johnson. Before Masters and Johnson, treatment for PE was considered unnecessary, since up until fairly recently, the world was entirely run by men who didn't give a shit about women's sexual pleasure and so saw no need in prolonging sex for mutual satisfaction. Even the famous sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who shone a light on what a bunch of perverts we all are with his sex surveys back in the 50s, saw nothing abnormal in his discovery that 75 percent of men reported ejaculating within two minutes at least half of the time.

When psychoanalysts did begin to take PE seriously as a problem, their main contribution seems to have been to stigmatize men with the condition. Take this psychoanalytic quarterly from 1933 that states in a chapter titled Amphimixis of Erotisms in the Ejaculatory Act: "Patients who suffer from premature ejaculation manifest the same attitude of indifference towards their semen as they would towards their urine, that is to say, as a valueless excretion of the organism." (In stark contrast, I suppose, to the rest of the male population at the time who were presumably treating their semen as the elixir of life it surely is, perhaps keeping a vial of their most memorable excretions in the trophy cabinet.)

The squeeze technique didn't work for me. My girlfriend found it too weird and after a few attempts, we stopped. I tried delay sprays and wearing a condom to numb sensitivity, but that didn't help either and within a few months she had ended things, telling me our lives were going in "different directions," though I of course knew the truth.

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By this point I'd given up hope of ever having a normal sex life. The only consolation was that I was at least able to make girls come. Oral sex is the ace up the sleeve of premature ejaculators: Ed calls it his "best friend," and Dr. Kerner has authored a best-selling book about it, called She Comes First, in which he outlines "a methodology for consistently leading women to orgasm" through cunnilingus.

I too became something of an oral genius, but remained unsatisfied. Why couldn't I share that pleasure with someone through sex? The trouble was that the more I obsessed about my limitations, the more my symptoms grew—a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Dr. Madeleine M. Castellanos, a New York-based psychiatrist specializing in sex therapy, says that this is not uncommon in PE sufferers.

"One of my main goals with all men who suffer with PE is improving the quality of their thoughts rather than the focus of their thoughts," says Dr. Castellanos. "I have found that when men are having positive thoughts full of eroticism and free of anxiety, they have much greater success overcoming PE than those who are primarily interpreting every thought and sensation with negativity and self-criticism."

How much PE is a psychological problem versus a physiological one is a vexed issue in the sexual therapy community. Dr. Kerner, who is firmly in the second camp, cites the latest research suggesting it's a neurobiological issue linked to the balance of dopamine and serotonin. "It's probably inheritable and might also have to do with nerve sensitivity in the penis."

Dr. Kerner backs medical treatments including, as a last resort, the SSRI class of anti-depressants, which have proved useful in treating PE since one of their side effects is diminished desire. He's also taking part in a research study with the company that produces Promescent, a lidocaine-based spray that works as a numbing agent.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

At the other end of the spectrum, Dr. Leonore Tiefer, a clinical associate professor in the psychiatry department at the New York University School of Medicine, is against the whole idea of medicalizing PE. "Medicalizing means viewing something as a medical condition. It's a mistake because nothing is broken—rapid ejaculation, average ejaculation, slow ejaculation are points on a continuum of variation," she told me. "Some cultures, some partners, some circumstances prefer fast, slow, or average. There's no normal."

Dr. Tiefer thinks that the public's current understanding of PE is being clouded by the pharmaceutical industry abetted by doctors too quick to diagnose and prescribe. There are ways, she says, to teach men to orgasm more slowly but "the individuals involved have to be interested, cooperative, and willing to practice the techniques and exercises."

Ed, who says he tried Promescent and found it ineffective, doesn't know how much of his PE is in his head, but he says there's a limit to the amount of behavioral therapy he's prepared to do. "I'm not going to engage in hours of tantric practice to manage it so I do what I can with controlling my environment and breathing slowly," he says.

When I was 25, I went for a summer to Tuscanny where I worked as a tour guide. While there I met a dark-eyed Italian called Daniela who inadvertently "cured" my PE when she introduced me to the blissful pleasures of stoned lovemaking. I don't know if the marijuana's effect on me could be said to be primarily physical or mental but at the time, of course, I didn't care. I was finally able to fuck for long periods, get girls off through penetration and bust out all those sex positions I'd been fantasizing about half my life. It was amazing.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

After Italy, weed became a necessary ingredient to my sex life and, for a while, if I didn't have any around I'd get nervous. I don't smoke pot anymore, and though in the course of my current relationship we've used it in our lovemaking and the sex has been amazing, it also has been amazing without it. And sometimes I've made a mess of the bed sheets—but I'm coming to terms with that.

Dr. Kerner believes PE can't be cured, only managed. He might be right but I wonder how much the distinction really matters. I put a lot more stock by Dr. Tiefer's observation that there's no normal. And while I don't deny that there's something innately funny about jizzing in your pants, it's also true that what you're laughing at really is an over-sensitivity which, if brought under even a modicum of control, can produce the kind of super sensitive lover that many women are crying out for.

Ed recently had a one-night stand where, for the first time in his adult life, his PE felt like a non-issue. He had three ejaculations, each one further apart from the last, the final one coming after over an hour of sex. What helped make this experience so different?

"I think the girl was what made it unique because she was so mellow," he said. "I was 100 percent upfront about my problem and she didn't feel weird. She had multiple orgasms and hasn't stopped texting me all week."

*Some names have been changed

Follow Paul Willis on Twitter.

The Bradford Jesus Man walking through the city. Photo by Peter Hughes.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

From the patrons of Hartlepool's can house to the enduring cult fame of the Norwich puppet man, Britain's provincial towns are filled with weird, mythologized, and well-loved characters. One of the most famous resides in the much-maligned city of Bradford.

I'm talking about Geoffrey Brindley, the so-called "Bradford Jesus Man." He's the definition of a local legend, a mysterious, indefinable individual who's spent the majority of his life walking around the North adorned in a robe and sandals, his delicate, frail frame looking like a hastily constructed scarecrow made flesh.

The Bradford Jesus has offered a "hello," a handshake, or a wave to anyone who approaches him, spending his life preaching and offering advice, time, and conversation to generations of people. He's gratefully accepted countless cups of tea, home-cooked meals and places to stay from willing locals. His reputation means that cafés, newsagents, and coffee shops rarely ask him to pay for anything, instead they offer him what he needs, have a chat, and let him continue on his way.

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In weeks of research, interviews with residents, eyewitness accounts, and even conversations with local priests, I only managed to piece together a dozen second-hand quotes from Geoffrey. There are even reports of him sprinting away from local journalists who were seeking interviews, so I resigned myself to constructing the truth using whatever fragmented shards of information I could find about this illusive man.

Growing up in Bradford, I saw the Jesus man a handful of times. Always fleeting, I'd catch glimpses of him pacing hurriedly across the street, or through the back window of my dad's car. One memorable sighting occurred from the window of a coach on a school trip. I recall a phalanx of shouting and waving adolescents being greeted by a smile and wave from the Jesus Man, then an eruption of frantic gossiping as we discussed who he might be and where he might come from.

Many argued that Geoffrey was possessed by the spirit of Christ, living in a cave, and only emerging in the daytime, like some kind of backwards vampire. Some said his family had been killed, and since that day he'd been wandering around in grief, taking solace in religion. There were even earnest suggestions that Nike wanted to offer him a sponsorship to wear their trainers, the sort of ludicrous claim that seemed feasible to young teenage boys.

Photo by Peter Hughes

He was sometimes described in typically brutal playground nomenclature as a "freak" or a "weirdo." But I always sensed something different. He represents someone who refuses to be beaten down into an existence of banality. He's rejected the box that life chose for him, and in this way, I've always seen his nomadic lifestyle as a symbol of hope and possibility. Instead of being inside the cave, looking at shadows, he was outside, walking around in the sun. But what motivated him to leave his conventional life behind?

I unearthed the backstory of the Jesus Man through an old work colleague of his, who explained that Geoffrey moved from the Derbyshire town of Buxton to Bradford to work as a machinist at a tractor factory called International Harvester. One afternoon, at the age of 33, Geoffrey announced to his co-workers he'd received a message from God that the world was going to end, and he was one of the chosen few to be saved. Understandably alarmed by the news of the coming apocalypse, he retreated to a cave near the North Yorkshire town of Settle for 12 nights to meditate and receive further instructions. This drew the attention of the local press, prompting a Baildon resident to intervene and offer him a place to stay. This was the start of a journey that continues to this day.

I spoke to Matt Morley, the creator of BradfordJesusMan.co.uk, the main portal for sightings and stories about the man in question. He explained why he thinks Geoffrey has become such an icon of positivity: "People are generally really antisocial with our faces in our phones most of the time. The art of conversation is almost lost and a simple 'hello' and 'thanks' are few and far between. Mr. Brindley will say hello to strangers and he always has a grin on his face—happiness can be contagious, a smile and a wave from a friendly face will make you happy. He doesn't want anything in return, he just wants to say 'hi.'"

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This quiet, unassuming man has made overwhelming contributions to the diverse communities of Bradford. As local Ishrat Saleem told me: "I remember Geoffrey coming to our house in the late 60s to eat. My dad would invite him in when he saw him walking on Leeds Road. He said Geoffrey was a spiritualist and a wanderer. He had long hair then. That was 50 years ago. I've seen him often and admire him for his courage to live the way he does. A lovely man, always happy. I wish him good health and a safe journey wherever he goes."

Some of the stories I heard were pretty everyday, but some were oddly touching, each one told with a misty-eyed affection that makes it impossible not to picture them with the hazy visuals of old VHS footage. Jan Bostock explained a chance meeting with Geoffrey when she was just ten years old: "I was walking home crying about something, he stopped and asked if I was OK, and we chatted for a few minutes. He gave me half a sandwich and sent me on my way. Several years later I gave him a lift from Skipton to Shipley."

Perpetual walking for 50 years may not be an anti-aging technique we're likely to see on the front cover of Cosmopolitan any time soon, but this lifestyle has afforded Geoffrey an almost superhuman ability to suppress the aging process. Ian Morton remembers, "I once asked him why he walked around all the time and he said, 'I'm looking for the answer.' When I think about it, I have seen him walking around Bradford for around 50 years now and he still looks the same."

Geoffrey found himself on the wrong side of the law twice in his younger years. He got into hot water with the police for trying to prevent people entering a bingo hall—ostensibly to protect them from the sin of gambling. He was locked up, but later bailed out by Colin Garnett, a Religious Studies teacher from a local school who'd seen the report of his arrest in the newspaper. Geoffrey spent another brief spell behind bars for protesting against a Beatles gig at the Alhambra theater. Rock music, it seems, is another modern evil that Geoffrey opposes, and he's since been accused of confronting men wearing metal band T-shirts around the city center.

Photo via Facebook

In 2011, a petition nominating Bradford Jesus Man to carry the Olympic torch amassed over 23,000 signatures. Although unsuccessful, I spoke to the creator of the petition, Louise Szucs, who explained why Geoffrey turned down the nomination. "Although he was flattered, I think he turned it down mainly because he didn't want the exposure." Ironically, the appearance of this story in the local press drew an unbelievable outpouring of affection for Geoffrey, manifesting itself in websites, forums and Facebook groups with memberships into the thousands, packed full of sightings, stories and shaky glimpses of video footage.

I was saddened and shocked to hear that this month, at the age of 88, Geoffrey Brindley has become critically ill following a fall and suspected stroke at the home he's shared with a friend for the past 25 years. Currently residing in the intensive care unit of Bradford Infirmary, this tragic news has awoken the sleeping giant of Geoffrey's fame, with an ocean of tributes and kind words of support from the local community.

Cynicism and misanthropy are two flaws that many people in the modern world suffer from, yet how many days have been brightened, even briefly, by a kind word from the Bradford Jesus? Maybe his endless wanderings remind people of the possibility of escape from the occasional drudgery of an ordinary life? Regardless of the reason, I hope we'll see Geoffrey back on the streets of Bradford again soon, continuing his legacy of friendship, compassion, optimism, and, above all, waving at excited kids on school buses.

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