Last week, America collectively obsessed over the story of Brady Olson, a 15-year-old Iowa farm boy better known by his political alter ego, independent presidential candidate Deez Nuts. Shortly after Olson/Deez-Nuts filed to run on July 26—highlighting the unverified simplicity of the Federal Election Commission's candidacy declaration Form 2—he convinced Public Policy Polling, a serious but also game-as-fuck firm, to include him in their 2016 voter surveys.

It was a joke, highlighting the absurd array of actual presidential candidates running this year. But then he started climbing the polls. Last week, a PPP poll showed "Deez Nuts" with 9 percent support among North Carolina voters, building on his 8 percent in Iowa and 7 percent in Minnesota. By Friday, Deez Nuts had gone viral, a heroic symbol of voter frustration with the steamy cesspool of American politics.

Before you start casting Deez Nuts as some kind of teenage version of Howard Beale in the first act of The Network, it's worth remembering that he falls into a long line of absurdist candidates who "run for president" as an act of political performance art, or simply for their own amusement. In fact, Olson has cited as his inspiration Limberbutt McCubbins, a five-year-old cat from Kentucky that garnered media attention (and a Jezebel endorsement) this spring after two bored and blasé high school students registered him in the Democratic presidential primary.

To date, 768 people have declared their presidential candidacies in 2016. The list includes Bailey D Dog, Buddy the Cat, Buddy the Elf, Crawfish Crawfish, Jack Sparrow, Princess Oawlawolwaol, and Sydneys Voluptuous Buttocks—not to mention perennial stunt candidates like Vermin Supreme and His Royal Majesty Caesar Saint Augustine de Bounaparte of the United States of Turtle Island, who festively throw their hats in the ring every year. There's also Pogo Mochello Allen-Reese, a Republican hopeful who wants to end obesity with club dancing; D.R. Skeens, a member of the uncontactable Hedonistic Existentialist Party; and Robert "R3DN3CK" Allen MacLeod, Jr., who goes by the troubling moniker"New White Candidate."

About 60 percent of the 2016 hopefuls aren't registered with any well-known party. Some have made up their own groups, like the almost-legitimate-sounding Peace and Freedom Party, the American Party, or the United Party. Most don't have websites or campaign literature. And most of them won't get the attention of a single voter.

Together, this army of windmill-tilters underscores the general chaos of the American political system. But every 50 names or so, there's a candidate like Deez Nuts who stands out by mixing their absurdity with a surprising amount of substance—a candidate weird enough to draw attention but also earnest enough to hold it, drawing you deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole of heartfelt, if bizarre, convictions. Below is a roundup of the best such candidates:

Zoltan Istvan, Transhumanist Party
A pop techno-philosopher and volcano boarder, Zoltan Istvan is the founder and 2016 presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party, a techno-futurist movement whose No. 1 aim is to "overcome human death and aging within 15-20 years." In other words, Zoltan Istvan is a Marvel villain. Just look at him:

After building a following with his novel The Transhumanist Wager—a sort-of Silicon Valley version of Atlas Shrugged—Istvan decided that the best way to turn America into a techno-utopia was to get into politics. His campaign is basically an extension of his novel, focused on attaining immortality through biological advancement and mind uploading.

But what makes the Transhumanist Party platform so surreal is that all that lofty futurism is combined with more mundane political concerns: First, ensure that all citizens have the morphological freedom to cyber-alter their own bodies as they choose; then institute a flat tax. Create national initiatives to tackle the threats of artificial intelligence, asteroids, and plagues; then create a federal mandate for free preschools nationwide

Jim Hedges, Prohibitionist Party

Yes, Prohibitionists still exist in the 21^st century—although just barely, by the looks of their latest party newsletter. Hedges, a former Pennsylvania tax assessor, is the only member to have been elected to public office since 1959. He was named the Prohibitionist 2016 presidential nominee on a conference call this summer, after the party's quadrennial convention was cancelled because, according to the newsletter, "several Party regulars who would normally attend are on the sick list."

As you may have guessed, Hedges' No. 1 priority is reinstituting a nationwide ban on alcohol. Because while America's brief experiment with temperance is now widely seen as a failure, Hedges and his party aren't buying it. Actually, they believe it was a tremendous success, quashing some of the country's deep-seated social ailments by depriving Americans of the demon booze that was driving them to sin. Beyond the alcohol issue, the party's platform is basically just a more fundamentalist version of GOP talking points, calling for a balanced budget and an end to things like foreign aid, public-sector labor unions, and the Federal Reserve.

For a party that has been sputtering out since Congress passed the 21 ^st Amendment, the Prohibitionists have been remarkably resilient—a historical relic that speaks to both the futility and hope of challenging the two-party system in America. And Hedges, who rules the party with an iron fist, exudes a calm sobriety that borders on hyponotic. Actually, he identifies himself with Jimmy Carter—which seems like an odd choice at first, until you remember that Carter was a famous teetotaler.

W. Knox Richardson, Helluva Party

The Helluva Party flag.

The brainchild of Las Vegas standup comedian and "PR idea man" W. Knox Richardson, the Helluva Party, a Nevada-based LLC, claims to be America's first for-profit political party. A simplistic commentary on the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision and the corporatization of American politics, the Helluva Party seems more like a PR joke than an actual third-party protest.

But sometimes, ever so quietly, the Helluva Party—which is basically just Richardson and his "running mate," a Santa Cruz musician named Richard Karst—breaks its pro forma "whatever" stance on policy with what sound like genuine and earnest issue proposals. A detailed case for an asset-backed currency system, for example, or a complex plan for capping university tuition using mandates for the use of federal education funding. It's a sign that there maybe there's something more to Richardson than bumper stickers about Guam and insensitive tweets about Caitlin Jenner. Then again, maybe there's not. And maybe that's the point.

Roland Durphy Menard III, Independent
While there is nothing outwardly surprising about Roland Durphy Menard III—an independent presidential candidate apparently based in Portland, Oregon—his campaign is fascinating in its sweeping approach to the hodgepodge of crazy that fills the fringes of American politics. His website, a Blogspot site called "Concrete Steps" that looks a bit like the homepage for a bible study group, consists of one very long text block describing Maynard's "Moderation Affiliation"—"an affiliation of Democrats, Independents and Republicans who utilize the adjunct precept of all parties"—and laying out his plans for the country.

Basically, it's a lot of words—inconsistent and imperceptibly ordered policy proposals sprinkled with "My Country 'Tis of Thee" lyrics and progressively blatant references to Menard's divine mission to restore religious integrity and spirituality to the nation. But while Menard is a kook, he's so genuine and detailed, yet so sprawling and half-logical, that he makes you want to break out the string and go all John Nash on his platform.

David 'Da Vid' Raphael, The Light Party

Da Vid, the 2016 presidential candidate for The Light Party. Photo via The Light Party

David Raphael—who prefers to go by the hilarious nickname Da Vid—is a New Age musician and director the Global Peace Foundation, a nonprofit that is trying to convert Alcatraz into a "Jewel of Light." So naturally Da Vid is holding down the 2016 presidential race for The Light Party, a utopian spiritual-environmental group with a very broad seven-point plan laid out in crystal form.

Posted on a website looks like it was designed by small-town pagans in the early 2000s, the Light Party platform reads like the community bulletin board of a natural foods store: decriminalization of drugs, nuclear disarmament, GMO bans, campaign finance reform. But while The Light Party may be overshadowed by the Bernie Sanders boom this cycle, its members also take the whole bleeding-heart, San Francisco liberal thing to another level.

Under a Light Party administration, for example, the money collected from those green taxes would be used to pay for the creation of something called The Gaia/Solaris Consortium, an "Inter-National Corporation" aimed at creating a "Sustainable Global Solar Hydrogen/Hemp Based Economy." Da Vid, if elected president, would launch his own television station, "the Artainment Global Family Television Network," with continuous transcendental programming to "heal and enlighten" America.

Donald C. Sauter, Independent
While officially listed as an independent, Donald Sauter is actually running for president as a Unarchist, a term he came up with himself. As you might expect from the leader of an imaginary movement, Sauter has lots of ideas about democracy and whatnot. For instance, he would like to eliminate the entire US judiciary—including the lawyers—and allow "truly representative juries" to hear cases presented by individuals, assigning guilt and punishments by simple majority voting. He also doesn't like mass surveillance, which makes sense.

But Sauter isn't just another raging libertarian. His website also includes strategies and complex rules for Scrabble, guitar tabs, plus commentary on his favorite board games, his mother (whom he loves), and UFO sightings. Spend enough time there, and you come to see Sauter as a genuine, kind-hearted middle-aged man, full of goodwill that he believes the world will reciprocate. And you feel sad that he is trying to throw himself into the dark abyss of the political system.

Scott Allen Meek Stephens, Independent

Image courtesy of Scott Meek 2016.

Billing himself as "your vocal weapon of choice" for the 2016 elections, Scott Allen Meek Stephens has a car salesman's poise and web design, but not much of a platform to speak of—just a promise to "amend" virtually every major American social injustice, and lots of pride in his Native American-Irish heritage. (Although his website also has some dubious references to secret HIV/AIDS and cancer cures, but I refuse to go down that rabbit hole.)

But Stephens does have one serious belief: in the power of hemp. It's hard to follow his reasoning, but somehow Stephens believes that hemp will be the silver bullet that will get the American, nay the global, economy back on track. It's a wonderfully odd single-issue campaign that gives you an idea of what kind of crazy those other 700-plus candidates might be selling.

Tami Stainfield, No Party
One of those perennial independent candidates, Stainfield has gotten an unusual amount of media attention for her dark-horse bids for president (and US Senate in 2014), including mock mashups of her YouTube videos. And with her vague references to possible conspiracies, selective quotation of the founding fathers, and penchant for speaking in tongues, Stainfield is basically a human highlight reel of right-wing politics. But her eclectic and half-composed streams of thought also perfectly encapsulate America's stranger political impulses. She also apparently shares our national impulse to run from—and scream expletives at—cops.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

The Fay School. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The parents of a 12-year-old student in Southborough, Massachusetts, are suing his private school, The Fay School, over the institution's Wi-Fi. The suit claims the student suffers from electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome, which causes symptoms like headaches, rashes, fatigue, nausea, and other discomfort from proximity to electromagnetic fields. The parents claim the Wi-Fi worsens their son's symptoms.

According to the Telegram & Gazette, a local newspaper, the student was diagnosed with electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome after the school installed a more powerful Wi-Fi connection in 2013. While there's little medical research on electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome, its existence was tepidly acknowledged by the World Health Organization in 2005. An entire community of people suffering from electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome has formed in Green Bank, West Virginia, a town without any type of Wi-Fi, cell phone signal, or modern technology, due to a high-tech radio telescope that operates there as part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

In a statement released yesterday, the Fay School said it hired a company in January to analyze its radio communication signals and emissions. That company found that their levels of access point emissions, broadcast radio and television signals, and other RFE emissions on campus were substantially less than the Federal Communication Commission's safety limits.

Still, the family's lawsuit aims to force the school to either weaken the Wi-Fi signal or switch to using Ethernet cables. The family is also seeking $250,000 in damages.

Photo by the author

Some of the main, cellphone-related evidence in the trial of convicted murderer Adnan Syed was called into question in a new motion filed in court on Monday. The motion is part of a larger defense strategy to bring the court system of Baltimore in alignment with the views of fans of Serial, arguably the most successful podcast of all time.

Despite not directly arguing for his innocence, the true crime podcast questioned the basis for Syed's conviction in the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee—a case by the prosecution largely built around cellphone records. By detailing a narrative of his deeds alongside a record of his calls, the prosecution convinced a jury to convict Syed.

Lee's body was found in a local park called Leakin Park, and at a critical moment in the story of the crime, an incoming call seemed to place Syed at the burial site. The fan map below shows locations of the prosecution's narrative in blue, and approximate locations of cellphone towers that interacted with Syed's phone in yellow.

The prosecution's version of events was backed by testimony from Jay Wilds, a friend of Syed's who confessed to being his accomplice. The podcast, however, demonstrated that there were enormous inconsistencies in Wilds' version of events, and ultimately suggested that even if Syed arguably had a motive and an opportunity to commit the crime, the prosecution's specific narrative had been totally implausible.

Now, Syed's attorney, C. Justin Brown, is arguing over a technicality, though not a trivial one: The phone records handed over by AT&T were meant to be taken with a grain of salt, according to the telecom company. There was originally a cover page on the record, stating that "Outgoing calls only are reliable for location status. Any incoming calls will NOT be considered reliable information for location," but it was allegedly disregarded by the prosecution, and completely unknown to defense council Cristina Gutierrez.

After Serial, a second, much grittier podcast called Undisclosed has filled the Serial-shaped hole in some fans' hearts. Although an overt defense of Syed produced by one of Syed's attorneys, Rabia Chaudry, that podcast has revealed persuasive evidence, including the revelation of the AT&T cover sheet.

In May, when Syed was granted a stay of appeal, Maryland attorney Douglas Colbert, who worked with Syed during his bail hearing told VICE that the Maryland court system was likely choosing its moves very carefully. "The court wants to proceed with the utmost care in making this decision, and does not want to rush something which has created a great deal of interest in whether or not Mr. Syed received a fair trial," he said.

The May ruling had nothing to do with these phone records. It stalled the appeals process, and shifted everything to a special kind of trial court focused on two pieces of possible shoddy lawyering, for which Syed might deserve a new trial: there was the question of whether Gutierrez failed when she didn't pursue a plea bargain; then there was whether or not a critical witness named Asia McClain—who will be allowed to testify at the new trial—could offer Syed a clean alibi, as she seemed to do in her appearances on Serial.

This new filing appears to simply be one more possible reason for a post-conviction hearing. It's a process that looks like it's going to stretch out for quite a while, whether Syed's conviction is overturned or not.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Andrea and her dog

The small town of Asbestos, Quebec was once home to the largest asbestos mine in the world. At the time, the widely-used natural resource was considered to be the town's "white gold." But in the 1990s, after it was found that prolonged exposure to asbestos and its dust/filaments was linked to lung cancer, the mining and use of asbestos was phased out of most western industrial nations.

However, it was only a little less than four years ago that mining finally ceased in the town of Asbestos.

German photojournalist Matthias Walendy travelled to Quebec in 2014 to document a place that, to paraphrase his notes, has lost its identity:

"In 2014, I went to Asbestos to stay there for four weeks. I was interested in its industrial and commercial history and in the lives of the people living in a town now bearing the name associated with an unhealthy and harmful image. I found a place that tries hard to look into the future in a positive and optimistic way, yet at the same time looks back sadly into the past, longing for the good old days. Some people strongly believe that the present situation will change some way, thinking that the world will somehow understand how important asbestos is. Others have simply lost any hope.

"Before I went to Asbestos I had expected the people there to be rather full of scepticism, shame, and even anger. But they were glad that someone had come who was interested in their past and to whom they could tell their point of view."

Photo by Flickr user A .

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

You hear the word gangs and what do you think? Knives, council estates, drugs, and weapon dogs hanging by their teeth from park swings. It's likely that the images flooding your mind right now are fairly gender-specific. When it comes to gangs and gang activity, girls aren't usually the first thing people think of.

And yet there's been a marked increase in girls being recruited into UK gangs over the past decade, an increase that in 2013 prompted the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) to devise a strategic framework "to confront this serious problem which until recently has received very little attention."

The exact numbers that make up this "serious problem" are still vague. Even the report itself admits it's "not intended to be a prescriptive and definitive guide," and that "approaches to girls and gangs are still in the early stages."

The ambiguity behind the stats is largely due to the lack of female-centric research available. Looking through the myriad reports on gang crime, edging unsurely around the subject of girls and young women, it's easy to wonder whether female gang members are not just some strange mythical creature, conjured up for the sake of tabloid sensationalism to sell a few more papers.

But this is changing: One of the most comprehensive reports to date has been undertaken by the University of Bedfordshire. The report, contained in two parts, underlines exactly how neglected the statistical research into girls in gangs is. Lead researcher Dr. Helen Beckett explains this omission by noting how the collection of data tends to focus almost exclusively on "gang nominals" (meaning those suspected of gang involvement and placed on a borough-specific gang matrix, or "mapping system"), all of whom tend to be male.

These gang-affiliated girls—the ones who haven't been charged with a criminal offense and where no child protection event has been reported—are known by the authorities as "the invisible ones"; the statutory sectors can't get involved and they essentially remain trapped in a cycle of abuse.

Suffering from a whole range of factors (detailed in the Centre for Mental Health's 2013 report: A Need to Belong), including self-esteem and mental health issues, behavioral problems, and physically/sexually abusive backgrounds, they will be groomed or "gassed up" into joining gangs for the sense of belonging and refuge they provide. Recruited for various reasons—for sex, as drugs and weapon carriers, as "honeytraps"—their roles will be largely dependent on their relation to a male member of the gang. The lowest in the gang hierarchy, and the ones most at risk, are known as "links" (or "groupies" or "pass-around"). These will generally be the girls with the lowest self-esteem, the most desperate to belong, the ones without any formal status, no familial ties or long-term relationship within the gang to protect them.

The St Giles Trust is a group attempting to provide a platform for these vulnerable girls by giving them access to people they can relate to—women and men who've grown up and witnessed the same things as they have, who've been involved in gangs themselves. First established as a soup kitchen in 1962, where it provided meals straight out of the crypt of the local church, one third of the staff are ex-offenders themselves. They also happen to run the SOS Project—London's largest gang intervention scheme.

I met up with SOS Senior Caseworkers Antonia Ejoh-Steer and Toni Harriott. Toni's also the founder of the Expect Respect Project, a drop-in center that supports vulnerable teenage girls and young women most at risk of sexual exploitation and gang-related violence. We sat down to talk about the girls who find themselves caught up in London's gang culture.

VICE: How do you manage to reach out to these young girls?
Toni Harriott: We go into schools, youth services, YOTs—that's Youth Offending Teams—and run workshops. I've been doing girls in gangs work a long time with St Giles, but the focus on female-only workshops has only been in the last year-and-a-half. Boy's issues tend to outshine what's going on for the girls—if there's four stabbings in an area, all boys, and one girl's been raped, where do you think all the resources are gonna go? Into the boys.

Related: Watch 'Young Reoffenders,' a film about gang of young men from Oxford locked into a cycle of reoffending and going to jail

That's why I started the ER [Expect Respect] project. We show them how to communicate effectively with each other in confrontation, expressing their emotions; a lot of them don't know how and it comes out very angry, very negative.

The main focus is female empowerment. A part of that is showing what sexual exploitation looks like, because a lot of the girls we come across are being exploited and they don't even realize.

And what about the kind of roles these girls play in the gangs?
Antonia Ejoh-Steer: Girls are quite powerful in gangs, 'cause they've got big responsibilities. I mean, they might be the ones carrying the weapons—they're less likely to get stop and searched. They could be holding the drugs. So they might not be on the road, but they play a big part... We've met girls that are equal to the men.

Toni: Within the gang there's different types of girls, right? You get the guys that wanna go for what they describe as a "good girl." She's probably working, hasn't got a criminal record; she'll get the rentals, hold the drugs, move certain things for them. They'll put their stuff in her house 'cause it's a safe house. If you've got every man coming in your house, that's not a safe house. If you've got someone hiding drugs you don't want it in a house where like ten people be in and out every day. So they pick what girls they want for what type of role they play in the gang, but they're both being exploited.

It's important to understand that we are dealing with young girls—children, not adults. They've suffered from post-traumatic stress because of what they've seen and what they're going through—some of the girls we've worked with have witnessed their friends get stabbed on a weekly basis. They're knowing 'bout stabbings going on. They're living in a perpetual state of fear and they've got all that teenage angst as well: put that lot together and you've got a ticking time bomb. Then it becomes about how you defuse that young person, and the tools you use.

On Broadly: Meet the Woman Leading the First Female-Run Mosque in Britain

What kind of age would you try and do this defusing?
Toni: My son's three and I speak to him about understanding empathy... Early intervention is the most important thing. If you've planted that seed from a very young age, they're forewarned, it helps them make more informed decisions. But if we don't start telling them from a young age, then they're walking through this world blind.

What about policies for protecting the girls who've been kicked out of home?
Antonia: All-female hostels, they don't exist any more, and that's needed...

Toni: It's a mistake to put a vulnerable female in a hostel where there are guys with similar backgrounds to the ones who've exploited her in the past. At the end of the day, that young person is vulnerable and you're putting them in a worse situation. If they haven't got the right type of support, what's going to happen to them?

Many of the processes in place fail to accommodate open discussion, especially with the girls—mothers and their daughters. With ER we try and focus on these relationships, strengthening that bond. Because as a girl, if you haven't got that bond with your mum then you'll look elsewhere, you'll make bad decisions, and you'll isolate yourself.

A lot of the time girls say when they're in these exploitative situations, "My mum don't really understand me, my family don't care, no one really listens," and the guy's telling them, "I'll listen to you, I care about you, I'm there for you."

Related: Watch our discussion with feminist writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes on Broadly

Like grooming?
Toni: That's exactly what it is. And as a parent you have to make an effort to get to know your children, to have those sorts of dialogue with your children.

You have to make more of an effort to separate them from social networking as well. Because they're in their own world and young people don't always understand that once you've shared images or done things on camera, it's almost impossible to stop that content being shared.

It's a relatively new form of exploitation...
Toni: Right, and it's a platform parents just aren't clued-up on. It's a different type of world out there—girls can be exploited by not just one guy but many, and it can be really difficult to realize what's happening till it's too late.

What we tell our young girls is at the end of the day, be strong enough to say no. As a group of girls, you have to be united and you have to be strong. But then equally we tell the young boys: "Who wants to be number nine out of ten guys that's sleeping with one girl? What type of life... what type of mentality is that?"

And it's not just the boys exploiting the girls, right?
Toni: We've worked with cases where girls have set up other girls and taken them to places where they're exploited, raped. Girls will actually know that there's boys in a house; a main boy will be like, "You got any girls for me?" and they'll go out and say to a girl, "Yeah man, there's a nice party going on, it's gonna be loud and there's gonna be loadsa drink." They get there: It's them and 20 men in one room and the girl that's brought 'em there is saying "bye" and left the girl in that room.

So how do you manage to tackle all these problems?
Toni: I think with the girls they just need to be empowered. They need to feel like they don't need the love of a man to make them feel something about themselves... The problem is the media gives a perception that to be accepted, to be successful, you need to use your sexuality, you need to dress and act a certain way, be a certain weight. That's not reality. Most young girls we work with don't even know who to look to as a role model, because it's not explained to them what it's like to aspire to be like someone, or to even have aspirations.

The situation we're witnessing here is desperate: We got the boys killing each other and we got the girls being abused and debased by these young men. As a parent, as a human being, I'm gonna try my hardest to not let that happen to my young people; try to change their mindset and give them a little bit of aspiration in their life. So that when they're in their twenties, thirties, they ain't got four kids round them, four different baby father, man in jail, boyfriend dead, all them things... That's not the life. It's not necessary. We come from a society where that shouldn't happen, but we're doing it to our young children, and our young children are doing it to each other. And as a society, we have to be more responsible for them.

Follow Alun Evans on Twitter.

All 'WWE 2K16' screenshots courtesy of 2K—this being the in-game Brock Lesnar

If you've not watched SummerSlam 2015 yet and don't want to know (some of) the results, click away now as this is your one and only spoiler warning.

Two extremely large men aren't punching each other within a ring that's already seen nine previous bouts of physically intimidating dudes and, ahem, "divas" perform for a sold-out crowd, and said audience is lighting up in electric reverence for them. One man is 50-year-old Mark Calaway, a 6'10" mountain of taut muscle and somewhat sagging skin from Texas who's better known to viewers here and (the millions) at home, watching on pay-per-view TV, as The Undertaker. The other is the only man alive whose existence lends a sense of realism to the exaggerated frames of Marcus Fenix and his Gears of War squad mates: Brock Lesnar (that's his real name) looks like a video game character, a walking, talking, grunting, roaring avatar comprised of great boulders of flesh, tiny little sparkling eyes, and terrifically crap tattoos. His neck is wider than my torso. I suspect he may actually eat the impoverished children of Brooklyn's less-affluent neighborhoods. He used to fight in the UFC. I am officially afraid of him.

These guys do not like each other—or, at least, that's the story that's playing out, staged, choreographed to inch-precise perfection. Professional wrestling is incredibly weird, and being in the very center of the whirlwind, near enough ringside at WWE's SummerSlam 2015 event at New York's Barclays Center, is absolutely fucking amazing. There's no live event atmosphere comparable to this. It's not like a sporting contest, nor a gig or a theatrical show. Yet there are elements of those productions at play, that feed into the charged air, that stir expectations and gossip and hopes—even though everyone here knows perfectly well that results in WWE contests are decided, worked through, and painstakingly stage-managed long before the first bell rings.

Fans chant for their favorite wrestlers, but unlike the crowd at a football match, they're not at the throats of rival supporters, as it's their love of this entertainment above anything else, above personal preferences for sweaty people in tight pants, that draws them, like foam-hand-waving-and-beer-swilling moths to an LCD-screens-everywhere flame, in their many thousands. There's a friendly edginess to being amongst these men and women as they exchange chants about whether or not John Cena is any good (he is, but he loses nonetheless) and occasionally erupt as one in reaction to some decidedly spectacular passages of play with an arena-filling chorus of "this is awesome."

Yes, it is.

Seth Rollins, as he appears in 'WWE 2K16'

Yet I'm not here purely for SummerSlam. I feel privileged indeed to have been up close to it, to feel the heat from The Undertaker's introductory flames and smell the sweat soaking Seth Rollins's tight white trousers as he thrusts both the World Heavyweight and United States championship belts aloft having dispatched the crowd-splitting Cena, leaving the latter prone on the canvas (it's okay, he's fine – which he certainly wasn't when Rollins legitimately, accidentally, broke his nose during a match in July). But I'm really amongst these heroes and villains, these superhuman entertainers whose dynamic, breath-taking moves truly shatter the but-it's-all-fake barrier (trust me: seen "for real," some of this action, however practiced it is, is mind-blowing), for the game of the game: the imminent WWE 2K16.

The Yuke's-developed and 2K-published wrestling sim series' newest iteration needs to enact some damage repair work after the previous entry, WWE 2K15, limped out of the ring after some savage reviews. Writing for Eurogamer, Ian Dransfield called the game "a kick in the teeth," concluding: "The series hasn't been good for a long time now, but this year is the first it's been actively bad." At Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Adam Smith was barely any kinder: "It's more like playing with a bunch of action figures than enjoying a simulated digital world."

But aren't these guys, The Undertaker and Lesnar and Rollins and Cena, through to rising female wrestlers like Paige and Sasha Banks and NXT break-out stars like Kevin Owens and Finn Bálor, just that: action figures being manipulated, toyed with, by the powers that be at WWE? You can buy them all in plastic form at any Toys R Us and be Vince McMahon for an afternoon in your own home, deciding who wins and who sweats out two-dozen square meals for no reason other than to be defeated. Wrestling video games are that hands-on role play turned glossier, given the high-production-value presentation you see on TV, likenesses not quite so He-Man-ish as the wildly popular toys. When you play WWE 2K16, you're pulling strings, setting up falls, developing your own rivalries and seeing story lines through to explosive conclusions. At least, you will be if you're any good at it.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film, 'The British Wrestler'

I'm not very good at WWE 2K16. I actually score a couple of victories over another journalist at a preview/launch event held a few nights ahead of SummerSlam, but my wins feel hollow, meaningless: neither of us really know what we're doing, and if he'd gone for a pin before I did, he'd have won as even after several more matches I've still not worked out how to successfully kick out of that three-and-you're-out situation. It involves a quick-time-event-like mini-game of overlapping colors, red and blue, and the need to whack a particular button at just the right time. Possibly. Honestly, the flow of any WWE 2K16 match moves so fast that the on-screen instructions disappear in a blur, leaving idiots like me mindlessly tapping instructions for my chosen superstar to follow. I feel bad for Bálor, seeing him pinned so easily when I'm up against the PS4-controlled Cesaro. Sorry Finn. I'll get better, maybe.

What's important to understand here is that the WWE 2K series is not your average fighting game where two or more characters smash each other around until health bars drop to zero and combatants collapse. This isn't the same breed of wrestling game I knackered a succession of Competition Pro joysticks enjoying on the Amiga in the early 1990s. WWE 2K16 is complex, detailed, thorough—and somewhat intimidating if you're unfamiliar with how these bouts are "supposed" to play out, with ebb and flow that will see every competitor have their moment (or more) to dominate. Eventually someone will weaken enough to be pinned, but that might not be the end of it. A kick-out, a shift in the match, and suddenly the down-and-out is on top. It's a strange game (type) where you can take a kicking for minutes at a time and end up winning, or out-perform your opponent from the start only to be undone by a well-timed and wholly energy-sapping signature move.

Finn Bálor, as he appears in 'WWE 2K16'

The very first match I participate in sees the two wrestlers grapple in a collar and elbow hold, and up pops an information window instructing me what to do. It's essentially rock, paper, scissors, using three of the PS4 pad's face buttons, and I lose, and I'm immediately on the back foot. Reading your opponent is vital here, too—a quick press of R2 to interrupt a move turns the tide and puts your character on the offensive. Unfortunately, this is a very hit-and-miss mechanic to begin with, as prompts ultimately come too late to instigate a reversal; it's up to the player to learn each opponent's tells and jab that shoulder button before the console realizes what's coming.

WWE 2K16 isn't a game that will click easily with beginners, then—and multiplayer fun will be compromised unless everyone knows (roughly) what they're supposed to be doing. Sometimes spectacular maneuvers are possible using the bare minimum of inputs, such as the moments when a signature move is charged and executable by simply pressing the triangle button, or Y on an Xbox pad. I see this when playing as Titus O'Neil, grabbing my opponent and slamming him to the deck in some kind of a powerbomb. But often it can dizzy with its range of possibilities, its buffet of bombastically aggressive offensive actions. I felt, several times, that I really had no idea how I pulled off any particular move, save for the basic kicks and punches which, appropriately, are as weightless as they are in real life, there for show more than effect.

Dolph Ziggler, as he appears in 'WWE 2K16'

"It seems so real now that it blows my mind," a man who chooses to call himself Dolph Ziggler tells me at the preview event, referring to how WWE 2K16 looks and plays. He's one of several WWE stars charged with hyping up both the game and themselves, ahead of SummerSlam. At the Barclays Centre, Ziggler—real name Nick Nemeth—draws his bout with the Bulgarian Rusev in a double count-out, and he's as animated outside of competition as he is in (and around) the ring, gesticulating wildly as he recalls his own past playing wrestling games. "Before you could create your own wrestler I'd usually pick 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin or Billy Gunn, but once you got to the point where you could create a wrestler—which was basically only combining different parts of existing wrestlers—I'd basically try to make me, any chance I got." And being in the game now, properly, is to Nemeth "the coolest thing in the world."

It must be weird to see yourself—albeit a very stylized, hyper-real version of yourself—in a game, on toy store shelves, in the hands of children. Nemeth, Ziggler, thinks it's cool, and who am I to doubt him? But the Ohio-born entertainer is as All American as they come—the night before I speak to him he's been in a local dive bar "singing Mötley Crüe at the top of my lungs," and his smile could stall the heartbeat of the most heterosexual man. He could be the result of a character creation tool: winning looks, astounding athleticism, cheeky charm. So I go looking for a more, let's say, grounded take on WWE 2K16 and all things "wrassling," and wind up in conversation with Stuart Bennett, once of Preston, England, and now a Florida-residing WWE professional competing as King Barrett.

"This is the sixth game I've been in now," he tells me. "The first time was really weird, but it's got progressively less so—but you'll never quite get used to it. But I think they've got it perfect this year, and this is the best they've ever done, with the graphics. They've even picked up all my wrinkles, unfortunately."

Barrett, as he appears in 'WWE 2K16'

To be fair, Barrett does have his share of facial crevices, albeit mostly around the forehead region. I can relate—we're both 35 and the passage of time does things to any man's looks. Unfortunately, that's probably where the similarities between us end—he's over two meters tall and stood beside him I feel, at a whisker over six feet, like Tyrion Lannister shooting the shit with The Mountain. He has remarkable nipples, too. Seriously, should you ever see him in the flesh, shirted or not, just look at them. Where yours point, his don't. It's incredibly distracting.

Anyway.

"I think we're always looking creatively at things like video games, and Hollywood, and MMA, for different ideas that we can bring into WWE," Barrett says as I ask him whether wrestlers ever look to video games, particularly the traditional fighters with their special moves, for inspiration. "If there's something that we think we can use, and it looks good and is impactful, then we'll definitely use it, and there have been examples of that in the past. Anything we can bring something different into WWE that shocks the fans, or surprises them, that's always a good thing." He mentions fellow British wrestler Neville—real name Benjamin Satterly, a native of Newcastle upon Tyne—whose SummerSlam performance is simply unreal, his spring-heeled energy and gravity-defying leaps looking like Street Fighter-style cartoon athleticism made flesh-and-blood reality.

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The face of 'WWE 2K16,' "Stone Cold" Steve Austin

But WWE 2K16 isn't Street Fighter. It's not Mortal Kombat, or Killer Instinct. It's a wrestling simulation, a strange hybrid of a game where carefully planned tactics are paramount and quick reactions essential; and yet, its outcomes are not as predetermined as the entertainment, the fiction, it's based on. It is both as real as wrestling video gaming gets, and a lie, a malleable manifestation of a brand that is only ever headed in one direction, be that as good as known to fans or presented as a series of surprise results. But is it better than 2K15? I think so. It has to be, for all involved.

Pre-release, much of this game's coverage has been focused on its impressive roster of playable superstars—it'll be the most comprehensive at launch yet, with more female wrestlers than ever before to choose from (for example, the SummerSlam-victorious Paige, another Brit in WWE, will be playable from purchase, whereas she was DLC only on 2K15), beside contemporary competitors and all-time legends like The Ultimate Warrior and Andre the Giant. Pre-order it and you can play as The Terminator, too. Because video games. In total some 120 wrestlers will be selectable, including cover star "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who takes to the mic at the preview event to big up the game and, fairly sincerely I feel, recall his surprise at being asked to appear as its face.

It has the names, then. But strip them from the game and what's left? Does the gameplay stand up without the celebrities surrounding it? Again, I think so. It's deep and detailed, not the easiest game to get along with instantly; but I get the impression, after a good clutch of matches, that WWE 2K16 is going to royally reward those who stick with it, who stay committed to exploring its countless fans-servicing features, including an expanded career mode, the return of ladders (!) and the option to create your own arenas as well as wrestlers.

Cesaro, as he appears in 'WWE 2K16'

I can't guarantee I'll be one of those people, but that's as much to do with my relationship with wrestling as the game itself. I admire the efforts these professionals put into keeping an ever-growing audience engaged, but as a man in his mid-30s I think the boat that'd have taken me to a lasting appreciation of their weekly exertions has long since sailed. That doesn't make SummerSlam any the less spectacular—I mean, bloody hell. Hands went to mouth several times, I laughed merrily, and my fingertips tingled with the infectious buzz of the occasion. Some of what I saw genuinely made me wince, and it isn't even real. At least, that's what I tell myself—but looking at so many around me, willingly losing their shit entirely, for them, this is as real as it gets.

The Undertaker wins. Except, he doesn't. The referee missed his tap-out and let the match continue, after which Lesnar passed out to the Texan's signature Hell's Gate hold. Except he didn't, obviously. He pretended to. Or did he? That blood on his face, that's real, right? That menace in his eyes, surely that can't be faked. Oh hell, don't look into the camera like that, at me, through me. Those tats, man, they're not crap, not at all. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

WWE 2K16 is released on October 27 in the US. Travel and accommodation for this preview trip was arranged and covered by 2K, likewise attendance of SummerSlam and a few other costs. Thanks in particular, and good luck, to Adam.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

"Think of all the human remains on that cold, faraway rock, kiddo." Photo courtesy Astrobotic Technology press release

Read: The Woman Who Downed an Entire Bottle of Cognac Because She Couldn't Take It on a Plane Is a Hero for Our Time

Dealing with the burial arrangements of your loved ones can be a difficult process, but a company has now made it possible to simply ship off cremated remains to the moon. Elysium Space, based in San Francisco, announced this month that it will soon be offering lunar burials for a starting price of $9,950. Instead of sending your dearly departed six feet under, now you can send them over 200,000 miles above.

Elysium Space's first lunar burial will be for the late mother of a US Army infantry soldier, Steven Jenks, from Tennessee, who would write in her letters to her son while he was in Iraq, "always look at the moon and know I am with you."

"It's a privilege to provide an experience that will allow families to commemorate and honor loved ones by directly connecting them with the moon in the night sky," said John Thornton, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology (a company that has teamed up with Elysium to offer the burials), in a press release.

Elysium Space has begun accepting reservations for their Lunar Memorial service. The first 50 participants will pay the starting price; beyond that, the price will increase to $11,950—still not far off from the $7,000-$10,000 average price of a funeral in the United States.

Once a spot is reserved, the company ships out a kit containing a custom-engraved ash capsule and a small scoop for transferring a "symbolic portion of the remains." Unfortunately, the Elysium is only accepting cremated remains under a gram per customer at this time.

Once shipped back to the company, the capsule is placed in a spacecraft module. Remains will then be sent into space via an Astrobotics lander from a to-be-determined launch point: either Cape Canaveral, Florida; Vandenberg Air Force Base in California; or Wallops, Virginia.

Over 450 people have had their remains sent to space since 1992, the first being Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek. This will not be the first lunar burial either—the remains of geologist Eugene Shoemaker were sent to the moon in 1998.

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An artist rendition by Webber Wave Pools

Earlier this month, in the 500-person Welsh town of Dolgarrog, Surf Snowdonia opened. The outdoor complex's prime attraction is a freshwater lagoon that creates two surfable waves at the push of a button. Developed by a company called Wavegarden, it's without question the best surfing wave pool in operation today. It's also the first to be open to the public. Already surfers are wondering if this is the beginning of the greatest fundamental shift in the sport's 100-plus year history.

Surfing has forever been dependent on uncontrollable factors: weather, tides, swell, wind, shifting sand banks, and the formation of reefs and headlands thousands of years ago. Perfect conditions and ideal waves are the products of chance and will be forever temporary. No two waves have ever broken the same way. So for generations, recreational surfers have spent their lives and incomes in pursuit of optimal conditions all over the world. This pursuit is core to the culture, and is as celebrated as it is frustrating.

Surfers at Wavegarden

This unpredictability carries over into competitive surfing, and as a result, the sport has never established a truly level playing field. Nor has it been able to market itself like other sports that can sell grandstand tickets and set live broadcast times. Unless a competitor is attacked by a shark in the middle of an event, it's pretty hard for surfing to gain a mainstream audience despite its immense popularity.

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All of this has led to what's been a long and often comical relationship between surfing and man-made waves.

The dream of wave pools has been pursued without notable success for decades. We've seen wave tanks everywhere from Dubai to the Canary Islands, Japan, and North America. One wave pool in Arizona was even the basis for the cult Hollywood film North Shore, where protagonist Rick Kane uses his winnings at an inland contest to pursue surfing in Hawaii. Another in Pennsylvania was home to the 1985 World Inland Surfing Championships, won by two-time World Champion Tom Carroll. The ridiculousness of the event and terrible wave quality was demonstrated by the lack of a 1986 World Inland Surfing Championships.

Australian professional free surfer Dion Agius flew to Dubai's Wadi Adventure Wave Pool in 2012 to film the award-winning surf clip Electric Blue Heaven. An experience he described to VICE as "surreal, but flawed."

"The whole concept of it is really, really exciting but the power in the wave subsides really fast," said Agius. "Because the power is not generated over an extended period it loses its force really quick."

Dion Agius traveled to Dubai to film 'Electric Blue Heaven'

It's that lack of power that has plagued wave pool creation. The other popular model for man-made waves has been the Flowrider—a design that shoots three inches of water up a sloping arc to create a freestanding wave. Created 25 years ago, these are in malls, water parks, cruise ships, and at even Munich airport, but the sensation of riding the Flowrider is considered about as close a simulation to surfing as skateboarding in a wetsuit through a tarp on your driveway.

Basically—up until right now—wave pools have really, really sucked.

Which brings us back to Wavegarden and its first public pool, Surf Snowdonia. Developed over the last ten years, Wavegarden's technology is seemingly simple. In a long, oblong lagoon, a snow-plow like mechanism runs underwater through the middle of the facility, creating two perfect, albeit small, waves that peel for over 150 meters. When operating, the waves break in the same place, the same way, every two minutes. It's a radical change to surfing in nature.

This jump in technology comes at a profound time for competitive surfing. In June, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Organising Committee shortlisted surfing as one of eight sports it may include at the event. Surfing's prospects for inclusion were boosted by the statement that the committee are looking for events that have a focus on youth appeal.

With two pools built (the first being their R&D lagoon in the Basque country of Spain), and another currently in development in Austin, surfing's equivalent of the space race is being led by Wavegarden, but they're not alone. There are clusters of wave companies with prototypes in development around the world. One is the Kelly Slater Wave Company, owned and conceived by the 11-time world champion surfer.

Australian surfboard shaper and futurist Greg Webber patented the Webber Wave Pool design ten years ago. The circular model promises to be even better for core surfers than what is currently being achieved with Wavegarden. Australian media reported that the first Webber Wave Pool would be built on the Sunshine Coast in September 2015. Unfortunately, Webber told VICE they're still talking with developers and an advised date is up in the air. He did, however, offer predictions about where this movement is going to take the sport and culture of surfing.

Webber Wave Pool Design

"In ten years I think there will be well over a hundred of them," said Webber. "One wave pool will get the go-ahead with the Olympic Committee and surfing will enter the Olympics... There will be a huge growth (in the sport of surfing) so long as the pool is the right one or the right type... What I think will happen is we'll stop competing in nature. Because you can't have a decent event in nature because it's random."

In an email to VICE, Wavegarden downplayed how significant the effect of wave pools on surfing will be.

"I think it does change it (surfing)... but much less that we think," wrote Wavegarden media rep Felipe Verger. "Low-cost airlines, the eruption of surf schools and surf camps all over the world, and [the] internet have probably a much bigger impact on surf culture than the fact that people who live in places where there are no waves, or the weather is very bad during certain times of the year, can take up/continue surfing."

A child surfing at Wavegarden

However, Verger also told VICE the "next wave lagoon in Austin will blow the minds of a lot of people" and that they have pools in development in "Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) Morocco and Dubai. And later Australia, Germany, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Brazil, California."

Australian company Wavepark Group holds the license to develop Wavegarden pools in Australia and it has been reported that they plan for as many as ten of them to open to the public in the next few years. With the early commercial success of Surf Snowdonia as a model, which has been fully booked since it opened to a mostly non-surfing population, it seems certain that wave pools are coming and that they will only get better.

Related: Check out VICE's surf show Hi Shreadability

"It's really scary to think what that will do to surfing in the mainstream," said Agius, "I dare say that it's going to be pretty lame whatever comes out of the whole pool scene. There will probably be huge Red Bull logos over every pool and lights and drones and shit and it will probably be in the Olympics and it's probably going to suck."

Days after VICE's conversation with Agius, Red Bull announced that they would be putting on an international ticketed surfing competition at the Surf Snowdonia complex this September. The competition, called Red Bull Unleashed, will include a grandstand capacity of 2,500 people.

But surfing as a sport is only one facet of how wave pools will affect surfers in the future, as Greg Webber reflected.

"Large numbers of people having really good waves and a lot of the time is probably the most healthy thing we can do at the moment," he said. "if there are enough of them built and the wave rates are high enough, then how happy would people be if you can know that at least once a week you can get barreled off your effing head?"

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Cognac, being enjoyed—as is traditional—in a small measurement, out of a glass. Photo via Patrick Nygren.

A woman at an airport in Beijing chugged an entire $180 bottle of cognac because she was told she couldn't bring it through the security check and—scene deleted—was later found rolling around, screaming on the floor of the concourse. Airport staff eventually decided against letting her fly. The unspoken subtext here is that she was drunk.

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The woman—thought to be in her mid-40s and known only by her surname, "Zhao"—arrived at Beijing Capitol International Airport ahead of a noon flight transfer to Wenzhou, when she was stopped at security and told she couldn't bring the $180 bottle of Rémy Martin XO Excellence in with her carry-on luggage, according to the Nanfang. So she did the only thing you can do in that situation: she Stuck It to the Fucking Man by going off into a corner and drinking the entire bottle by herself.

Some select quotes, from the Nanfang's account of the ensuing chaos:

"Zhao started acting wildly and yelling incoherently."
"Due to her massive inebriation, when Zhao fell to the floor, that's where she stayed."
"That created a new security problem though, and it had to do with the bottle of cognac that was now inside her."
"Zhao was taken to a convalescence room and was checked out by a doctor."

Eventually, either the pilot or the police (reports vary) decided that, obviously, Zhao was in no state to fly, and she was detained in the convalescence room until 7:00 PM when she abruptly sobered up. Yeah, beats the hell out of your spring break "we had six pints each at the airport before getting on a flight to Jamaica" story, doesn't it? Zhao saw the Man, with his Petty Rules and his Security Concerns and his Liquid Carry-On Restrictions, and went: fuck you. Zhao stared into the white eyes of the Man and said: stick it up your ass. Zhao, a 40-year-old drunk woman from Beijing, is arguably the greatest punk who ever lived.

A lot of people ask me, "Joel, tell us about that time a really hard Polish security guard made you throw a bottle of vodka away." Well, reader: one time a really hard Polish security guard, dressed in military spats and manning an airport check-in desk, made me throw a bottle of vodka away. And, like the wimpy little bitch boy that I am, I did it. I stared into his flinty, soulless blue eyes, and I plunked the tiny bottle of vodka I was trying to bring home into the designated vodka trash. Am I ashamed of myself? I am, I was, I have been ever since. And that's because I don't even have one fraction of the chutzpah that Ms. Zhao had.

You always hear about rappers with their cognac. They enjoy their expensive brandy from the French region of—hold on, let me google it—from the French region of Cognac. But you never hear about 50 Cent downing one entire bottle of it—in an airport, in less than half an hour—then rolling around screaming and rapping. Has Jay-Z ever decked an entire bottle of Rémy Martin then gotten so drunk a doctor had to escort him to a small, pale room? No. Fetty Wap and his Remy Boyz, for all their talk: have they ever gotten so drunk in an airport concourse that police reports have described them as "massively inebriated"? No, no, a thousand times no. But Ms. Zhao has.

Heroes are rare these days, and infrequent are the times we can be truly inspired by our fellow man. But Ms. Zhao, whoever you are, however bad your hangover still is, please know this: you are and always will be my hero. Your actions are the actions of a human being, free and unbreakable, toiling against the large fracture-less face of corporate hostility, of rules upon rules, against the humorless agents of the government machine. Why can't we take 700ml of cognac onto an airplane? Who says we can't scream drunkenly at the police? Here's to feeling good all the time. Here's to drinking so much cognac you're forbidden from leaving the country. Here's to you, Ms. Zhao.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

Image via Twitter

Two television journalists from Roanoke, Virginia, CBS affiliate WDBJ were shot and killed during a live broadcast around 6:45 AM on Wednesday morning. A woman being interviewed was also wounded in the shooting, which took place at a shopping mall called Bridgewater Plaza in the community of Moneta.

The journalists were 24-year-old reporter Alison Parker and 27-year-old photographer Adam Ward. At least eight shots were fired. Later in the morning, the shooter was reported to have killed himself, but though he turned his gun on himself he apparently survived .

As a local NBC affiliate reports, the suspect is believed by Virginia officials to be a disgruntled ex-employee named Vester Lee Flanigan who went by the name Bryce Williams while employed with WDBJ. Flanigan apparently posted graphic videos of the attack and the moments preceding it on his Twitter account, which has since been suspended.

ABC News said in a tweet that they had received a fax from someone purporting to be the shooter.

At the time of the shooting, Parker was interviewing Vicki Gardner, the director of Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce. Gardner, who was shot in the back, has reportedly already been through successful surgery.

WDBJ7 General Manager and Vice President Jeff Marks went on air at 8:45 AM, and confirmed Parker and Ward's deaths, saying, "We always say 'senseless' crime. How can this individual have robbed Alison and Adam's families of their lives and loves?"

A source told the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza that the suspect—who worked at the network for about a year—is also believed to be "the victim's ex-boyfriend":

Parker and Ward were both in committed relationships with other employees at the network. Parker and another anchor at the station, Chris Hurst, were planning to get married, he tweeted after the attack. Ward was engaged to producer Melissa Ott.

This post will be updated as more information becomes available.

A screenshot from 'The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age'

Paul Brenner (drums) and Joseph Morinelli (guitar) of Rochester indie-rock act Joywave tell us about their affection for this easily forgotten entry in the RPG hall of not-quite-famers, released back in 2004 for Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube.

Paul: Published by Electronic Arts in 2004, this game received mostly positive reviews, although some of the more experienced RPG gamers of the world brushed it aside, claiming it to be too similar to a certain Final Fantasy game. Being two high-school-aged kids who had never really been into Final Fantasy, or any role-playing games at all for that matter, this complex and highly detailed Lord of the Rings-based adventure was a total game-changer. LOTR was something we could get behind; something we were quite familiar with.

The visuals in The Third Age look amazing throughout. Some of the mechanics in the free-roam, non-combat portions of the game, however, were less than fluid. I'm sure Joseph agrees, half the fun of the game was wondering if it was going to freeze, or if the character would become stuck in certain sections of the map. Games with humorous glitches are always the best. It's quite funny watching the mighty Berethor, Dúnedain of the North, fixed on a stump running in place aimlessly, all set to the magical soundtrack of Middle-earth. It was always the little things that made us laugh the hardest late at night in my mom's basement.

Joseph: We would have so much XP in the first few sections that the game would freeze every time we tried to save. It was frightening, because the last four or five hours of our day were on the line if the game didn't unfreeze. We would sit and watch the "saving game..." notification in silence, sweating. When the words "game saved" finally came onto the screen, a HUGE sigh of relief would lighten the mood and we'd be back at it. Sometimes we'd get so cocky in our traveling—well, our backtracking for XP—that we wouldn't save it, and die in a horribly embarrassing way. After the short-lived battle and the hours wasted because of not saving, we'd both sit in silence, watching Sauron's eye with the words "GAME OVER" on the screen, not wanting to blame each other for the miscalculated step.

Why not watch a music video by Joywave? This is "Somebody New," and it came out earlier in 2015.

Paul: To spare you from all the ridiculous RPG jargon such as skill trees and craft attacks, I'll simply say that a turn-based combat game such as this one requires a lot of patience and even more tact. The battles, much like our late-night hangouts, were also an effective form of therapy for both of us. We'd work our asses off all day and night at our crap jobs, then we'd sit down in my mom's basement—which was also my room—and diplomatically conquer Middle-earth one Uruk-hai at a time. I don't know what I would've done if I didn't have those late-night and early-morning sessions.

Article continues after the video below

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Joseph: The dialogue and terminology in this game were a way for me to cope with the mundane nuances of my job at a grocery store. Even though I always dreamed of being a musician for a living, I still had to support myself by working a retail job. It sucked because dealing with that stuff at work wasn't easy without someone to talk to about it. It seemed like every time something bad would happen, I would need someone from my fellowship to back me up. My interactions at work sometimes consisted of rude people, who knew that if they complained enough, they would get what they wanted. People would yell and complain to a sapless youth like myself, and I just had to sit there and take it.

After playing The Third Age however, I began to cope with my job in a completely different way. When a customer would approach me, screaming about how the grocery store didn't have the name-brand soda that he buys every single day, I would think to myself:

"OK. This is a pissed off Uruk-hai Sword Veteran, with Mordor weaponry, who's attempting a Crippling Attack on my soul. At this point I'm pretty tired from playing LOTR: Third Age until 6 AM this morning, so before I endure this verbal battle, I should probably ingest some kingsfoil. I don't have Paul to bounce off of, so I'm going at this solo. He seems really, REALLY pissed off that we don't have this product, so maybe I'll give myself Power of the Valar, allowing me to revive after he verbally destroys my existence. Once I'm revived, I'll give myself a Stone Shield to deflect the Chinese Food projectiles flying from his teeth, let him down easy with a Flames of Ruin, and tell him that the warehouse is out of his precious soda. The only problem is that he'll then go and complain to my manager. I think I have an Ent Draught Phial and some Longbottom Leaf to endure that verbal exchange, so I'll be okay."

In reality, this exchange/battle with a real-life customer would probably only last about 20 seconds. Playing this embarrassing string of events in my head definitely helped, because I didn't have someone next to me to strategize with.

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Another screenshot from 'The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age'

Paul: I also used to be constantly thinking about this game during my days at work. Battle scenarios would run through my head much like I assume a professional chess player would mentally strategize in his spare time. Despite the dozens of times we've already brutally completed this game in its entirety, and despite the hundreds of hours we used to spend laughing, shouting, and jeering at 2 AM in my mom's basement, I know neither one of us would have the slightest hesitation to drop everything and play it again and again. LOTR: Third Age will forever hold a special spot in our heads and hearts.

Joywave is a band—we mentioned that already, right?—and you can hear them and learn more about what they do by visiting their official website.

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Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

"The arsehole of the world." All pictures author's own.

"Welcome to the arsehole of the world," says Robert* as we row down the Guadiana River in a little dinghy toward his farm. He's in his late 40s, wearing a faded black wife-beater and dark sunglasses, with graying Elvis sideburns and half a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

I look around and see eucalyptus trees lining the bank of the river, rolling hills surrounding white-wall and orange-roof villages. Portugal on one side, Spain on the other. Blue skies, nearly 100 degrees. It's a pretty nice looking arsehole, really, but it's smack in the middle of nowhere. Just two little villages on either side of the river and a lot of disused land around them.

Robert has had an exciting life so far. He's been through the squat and free party scene in London in the late 1980s, done the rock-n-roll thing with a German punk band, hung with Fela Kuti in the Kalkuta Republic, ran hash from Lebanon into Israeli Kibbitzim, and now he's here in Sanlucar de Guadiana in Andalusia, Spain—population: 500—a haven for British expats.

A patron of the local bar

Spain in general is popular among UK residents looking for an escape. There are an estimated one million British citizens living in the country, mostly centered around Valencia, Malaga, Marbella, Torremolinos—places where you can get Heinz Beans for breakfast and no one bats an eyelid at socks-in-sandals. They buy their villas, sit on the beach, go shopping, and play golf. But the little expat community in Sanlucar is a different scene altogether.

Drift down the river and you'll see them on the banks: topless in straw hats, hunched over veg-plots, herding sheep, or sanding timber, all tending to their fincas—small farms built on disused land. They grow fruit and vegetables, keep livestock, and build their own houses.

An amateur-built house

It might sound simple enough—move onto a piece of land, build a house, farm crops, keep a few animals—but to a useless Digital Age kid like me, raised in an economy where those fundamental human skills are superfluous and long forgotten, these people are courageous.

The finca I stayed on was almost self-sufficient. The residents grow most of their own food, and keep chickens and a few sheep for meat. They generate all their electricity from solar panels and wind generators. A simple irrigation system pumps water up from the river, and everything that drains from the shower or the sink goes to the plants and the fruit trees.

I've been to a few eco-villages in the UK, and none of them have it half as good as these guys. Try to live off the land in the English climate, and you inevitably spend most of the year collecting wood for warmth in the winter, then most of winter cursing the fact that you're sleeping in a shed made of recycled Jewson palettes instead of an electrically-heated and professionally-insulated house. Or you're fighting bailiffs.

Over in Spain they have cheap land, planning permission, and can grow their own weed. They're laughing.

"Back at home, you can't cut down a tree, you can't even paint your house without the authorities and their paperwork," says Peggy. "We're secluded here, we can do what we like."

Peggy arrived in her early 30s. She got on the wrong train by mistake one morning and found herself in Paddington, took it as a sign, and decided there and then to make a run for it. Without looking back, she got on a train to Bristol to pick up a guy she'd once had a fling with, and together they sailed the world until they found this place, where they dug in.

Now they have two kids, two dogs, six sheep, plenty of chickens, and have built a beautiful little cottage by the river. Just like that. No prior farming or house-building experience. They just did it. You have to admire the courage. Building a safe and functional house feels to me as achievable as heart surgery to a dilettante.

Tony and Jan

Tony and Jan are a few fincas downriver. We kayaked around one day and spent an afternoon on their balcony drinking Spanish lager, admiring their bungalow, and bitching about England. They're in their late 60s, and had sailed the world for 42 years before stopping here three years ago to build their house. They lived in a tent while they built a shed, and then lived in that shed until they finished their house.

"If humans can do it, you or I can do it," says Tony, white haired with gappy teeth and a wheezy chuckle. "I never mixed concrete in my life before we started this."

A local farmer taught him how to make dry stone walls, and he hired a professional to tile the floor, but everything else he did himself, floating tons of brick and sand down the river and hauling it up to the building site on a moped. A lot of work for a skinny, white-haired old man with back problems. He had to stop sailing because of his age, but who says you can't build your own house at 70?

Is this story transporting you to a happy alternative reality where you're not stuck in an office? Perhaps you'd like to watch a documentary about a guy called Spitman to bring you crashing back down to Earth:

There was no chance of them going back to England, of course. "It costs £9 [$14] for a pack of cigarettes, £5 [$8] for a pint, the weather sucks, and nobody talks to each other." Yup.

And if they're not at the fincas Tony and Jan are at the bar in the village along with the rest of the ex-pats, getting wasted on cheap sherry and telling stories. The community is a weird mix of washed-ashore sailors, hippies, and has-beens. There are even a number of ex-army, no-nonsense pragmatists around, for whom sustainability and self-sufficiency are more to do with survivalism. What they all have in common, however, is their glorious return-to-the-land ideal. They all escaped—from the cities, the complicated technology, the unending politics, and overall ball-ache of contemporary living, to come here and live the simple life. Build a house, grow food, get drunk, splash around in the river, and ignore the rest. Beautiful.

Some names have been changed.

Illustration by James Burgess

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

When the person before you goes into the GP, a few minutes later you see them come out, green slip of prescription paper clutched in their sweaty hands. Then, about two minutes later, the doctor will buzz you in. But what happens in those few minutes between patients?

I guess we all imagine that the doctor takes a robotic sip of still water, genially taps some notes into their old computer box, and then prepares for the next patient by shifting a tissue box around. But maybe, when the door slips closed on them, they just sit and stare out the window for 120 seconds, trying to think of reasons not to throw themselves out of it.

And then you turn up with your thrush or tonsillitis and they're forced to stave off the misery they're feeling for just a few moments more.

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A recent survey conducted by Pulse—a news publication for doctors—claimed that half of GPs are at risk of "burnout." The symptoms of burnout mirror those of depression and anxiety but are framed in terms of "emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a loss of any sense of accomplishment," says Nigel Praities, a journalist from Pulse.

As with any mental health issue, there is an associated likelihood of alcohol and substance abuse, and also of the problem getting so bad that it results in suicide. And in a horrible instance of irony, it turns out that doctors are much better at killing themselves than the rest of us. They know how to get the job done, meaning their "suicide completion rate" exceeds the average for the population.

Doctors are supposed to help make you feel better—make your problems disappear so you can get back to your life. But a recent Medical Protection Society survey showed that 60 percent of GPs believed their mental health was having an impact on their ability to concentrate, and 36 percent felt it was making it harder to empathize with their patients. The Chair of the BMA consultants, Dr. Paul Flynn has said that studies have shown that sleep deprivation can have similar effects to drinking, and that yet, paradoxically, "You would never allow a consultant under the influence of alcohol to treat patients, but continue to turn a blind eye to doctors who are sleep deprived."

All of this stress, anxiety, and depression is a massive problem for the UK. It can result in misdiagnoses of patients, doctors having to take time off to turn into functioning people again, doctors leaving the NHS to go private and even doctors leaving the country to go practice in metaphorically sunnier climes. As Nigel told me: "It is a crisis. I can't stress it enough."

Could Tory-led changes to the NHS be to blame for this crisis? Hospital Consultant and Specialists Association (HCSA) will put forward a motion at September's annual Trades Union Congress that "stress amongst talented lifesaving doctors is continuing to impact on our NHS [...] Consultant workload has been continuously increasing and the pressure to care for an ever increasing patient caseload is causing some consultants' mental health to be impacted." If you need evidence, then just look at the recent outcry from overworked and underpaid NHS staff in response to David Cameron's proposal for a "seven-day NHS."

The problem isn't just with GPs either. One psychiatrist, Cosmo Hallstrom, who has recently moved from the NHS to private healthcare, thinks that "the NHS has done well at systematically undermining the morale of doctors... It is a sick organization." New NHS structures mean that "the doctor loses clinical control and is subservient to non-medical managers who may well have a different agenda. The service is fragmented, and so the doctor no longer sees the patient though their journey and recovery as they used to."

And the NHS shit-storm is apparently coming from all sides. The unnecessarily frequent standards checks that are plaguing (even the most consistently well-performing) surgeries create an oppressive blame culture within practices. Dr. Prabhu Umesh, who is the Medical Director of an Acute Trust in Wigan and a committee member for BIDA, told me about the mindset of doctors at his practice who are constantly worried about being reported to the General Medical Council for malpractice. He said that "doctors are frightened and scared." He continues: "All these doctors need is help, support. and guidance. Not humiliation."

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Despite the fact that most GMC investigations are ultimately dismissed, such a tortuous process can't fail to leave dents. For those with a mortgage and mouths to feed, the ill effects can be more acute—as an MPS members' survey seemed to confirm.

Dr. Gerada runs a service to care for mentally ill doctors in London and has gone so far as to call the NHS "an industrial hazard." One tweet he posted read, "Preparing for a day as a GP feels like preparing to go to battle. Sad, that the profession I love has become so undermined."

So what's the solution? Umesh told me that, at his practice, "We are very lucky because every consultant knows they can contact me for help. I stood up in front of my team and I said the first week, 'No blaming, naming, shaming, or disciplining.' But there is accountability for all of us—we have to be honest and we have to learn." But without lots of Umeshes around to foster healthy team spirit with his "happy doctors, happy patients" mantra, it is urgent that structures are put in place to deal with the results of the problem on a systematic, national scale.

Doctors' official communities are overwhelmingly in favor of national occupational health services that provide counseling and help for doctors who need it—like the Practitioner's Health Programme run by Dr. Gerada. Yet despite their success, the government is increasingly cutting funding to such services.

Gerada's PHP had to close its doors a while back because it was overwhelmed by demand. One service in Cornwall lost its government backing for treating doctors that weren't being formally investigated already, which seems the very definition of a sticking plaster approach to the problem. While national occupational mental health coverage keeps being promised, the current reality is a postcode lottery.

Doctors have likened their enduring, unreciprocated devotion to the NHS to an abusive relationship. They keep getting promises of change, and they keep on turning up even when these promises turn into abuse. Until someone at the top allocates part of the NHS budget to an occupational mental health service for doctors, you'll likely have to sit back and watch your GP push rocks up hills, before waltzing into their office hoping they're happy and sane enough to help you.