A 1953 mugshot of former Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger

Mywife loves Johnny Depp and I'm a big fan of gangster movies, so it's a safe bet that we'll see Black Mass, the new movie about former Boston Irish Mob boss Whitey Bulger, which opens this weekend. From what I've gathered checking out reviews and watching the trailer, the filmbased on the book of the same name by local investigative journalistsglamorizes Bulger's criminal escapades inBoston's underworld, details his bone-chilling psychopathic tendencies, and probes his secret-squirrel dalliances with FBI handlers.

Theonly thing that will trouble me as I watch the movie is a voice whispering in my head: "He's a rat. He's a rat. He's a rat!" Due to years ofprison conditioning, I still have an adverse reaction to snitches. Not that Ihate them or want to kill them or anythingit's just hard for me to celebrate or idolizethese people. Of course, I consider myself a gangster aficionado and can'tlie: Bulger's criminal career intrigues me. But his infamy leaves a sour taste inmy mouth. I've been out now fora little over a year, enjoying all the world has to offer, but old habits diehard, and in prison if you were a snitch, you didn't get any play. You gotchecked in to protective custodyor worse.

Bulgerhas maintained that he's not a rat, but on the compounds that I was on in thefederal Bureau of Prisons, no one was buying that storyespecially his homeboysfrom Boston. To them a snitch was a snitch was a snitch. Duringmy incarceration I read a lot of books on Bulger and numerous other gangsterswith names like Gotti, Escobar, Gaspipe, Sammy the Bull, Supreme, Big Meech,and Fat Cat. As I sat inside the belly of the beast cavorting with gangsters andreading about them, I discovered the true crime books of TJ English, who becameone of my favorite writersBorn to Kill and The Westies were two of myfavorites. Amid the hoopla surrounding Whitey Bulger's legacy, theJohnny Depp movie and the intricacies of Bulger's relationship with the FBI, I reachedout to English, who has just published his own tome on Bulger, Where the Bodies WereBuried, to get his take.

VICE: When did you decide to write a book on Whitey Bulger?
TJ English: When I saw that the trial of Whitey was shaping up to be awhitewash of the full dimensions of the Whitey fiasco, how the criminal justice system was complicit in Bulger's criminal career, how they enabled him,protected him, helped to create him. Little of that was touched upon at thetrial. Any time it came up, the prosecutors objected on the grounds ofrelevance, and the judge ruled in their favor. The trial was a carefullyorchestrated deception. Not that it wasn't interesting. It was an extraordinarycasting call of Boston hoodlumsbookies, loansharks, hitmen, etc.from a previous generation telling tales about organized crime in the city. The bookuses the trial as a jumping-off point to explore aspects of the story that weredeliberately being kept out of the trial.

What did you learn about Whitey that youdidn't know before?
That Bulger was the inheritor of his domain and not the creator.There existed a network of corrupt relationships between gangsters and lawmenin Boston at least since the creation of the Top Echelon Informant program byJ. Edgar Hoover in the mid 1960s. I focus much attention on this in Where the Bodies Were Buried, because I think it is key to understanding the fulldimensions of the Bulger years. The relationship Bulger had with Special AgentJohn Connolly, his FBI handler, was not new. In fact, it was the type ofrelationship that the FBI and US Attorney's office in Massachusetts had used tomake major cases against the mafia for decades. In that sense, Bulger was notspecial. His partner Stephen Flemmi was a Top Echelon Informant before Whitey.

Explain the whole dynamic between Whitey and the FBI. Who wasworking who?
In 1967, the FBI and prosecutors in New England had a murderousinformant named Joe "the Animal" Barboza take the witness stand andfinger innocent men for a murder they didn't commit. These men wereconvicted and sentenced to life in prison. FBI agents not only encouragedBarboza to tell his lies, they helped orchestrate his testimony. And thistravesty of justice was authorized all the way up the chain of command toDirector J. Edgar Hoover. Many people knew ithad happened. It was a dirty secret that, were it ever revealed, would havedestroyed the credibility of the FBI and entire criminal justice system.Barboza was a precursor to Whitey Bulger. When Bulger was recruited by the FBI,part of the understanding was that he and his partner Steve Flemmi were nowcustodians of this dirty history. The FBI and these gangsters formed a pactthat involved making sure this history would stay buried. It helped give Bulgerand Flemmi their power. They were now in a partnership with the US government.

To this day, it's often said that Whitey does not consider himself a rat. What's your take on that?
He was a rat. He may not believe he was, but I've seen hisentire informant file. He was providing information not only on the Mafia buton criminals within his neighborhood of South Boston. He was using hisinformant relationship to plant in some cases false information designed totake down his rivals int he underworld.

Who did you interview and talk to while researching and writingthe book?
The book was a culmination of people I've been talking to foryears about the Bulger story. I spoke with Teresa Stanley, Bulger's common-lawwife for 30 years. I spoke with FBI agent John Connolly, by phone inprison, where he resides on murder charges stemming from his relationship withWhitey. Spoke with Kevin Weeks, Bulger's right-hand man. Spoke with a retiredgangster named Pat Nee, who was a rival and then a key associate of Bulger's.Spoke with retired FBI agents, various criminals defense lawyers, and manyothers,

Explain the Southie mentality and why rats are so despised.
It has to do with Ireland and the history of rebellion stemmingfrom the Troubles. The Informer was a masterful Irish novel by LiamO'Flaherty (published in 1928), later made into a movieby director John Ford, that captures it beautifully. An informer is viewed as abetrayer of community, family, all that matters in this world.

What do you think Whitey's legacy ought to be?
Whitey the person will be forgotten, but what will be rememberedis this legacy of corruption that spawned Whitey. The Bulger fiasco is arguablythe worst law enforcement scandal of the last half century. People will foreverlook at this scandal and say, "How the hell did this ever happen?"

Do you think the movie Black Mass will cement his place inpopular culture next to gangster legends like Pablo Escobar and John Gotti?
Perhaps. That is how things work in this country. The mythologyof Bulger is now having its pop culture moment. But when the razzle dazzledissipates, what remains are the books, the historical record. The Bulger storyis mind-blowing; it's multilayered and complex. You'll have to see the movieand then read at least one book, maybe more, to bend your mind around it. But,yes, I do believe its a gangster saga that will have a lasting legacy.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter and check out TJ English's book here.

All photos by Megan Koester

In Yucca Valley, California, a ten-foot tall cement statue of Christ sits atop a hill. Hands clasped in prayer, he gazes reverently at the heavens above. His kingdom of feed stores, saloons, public shooting ranges, and mobile home parks sprawls throughout the barren landscape below. His creator was man, not God; like man, he is not long for this world. Time has whittled his nose to a stump. White paint peels from his molded mane. He is the most well-kept statue in Desert Christ Park.

The rest of Desert Christ Park's statues did not necessitate a collection of the faithful pulling them, like the steamship in Fitzcarraldo, up a 90-foot hill. One cannot tell if that is the reason why they've fallen into more decay than their enormous cohort. In spite of it all, they remain standing, concrete eroded by wind and dust, revealing the rusted steel bones beneath, flanking a three-story tall replica of the Last Supper. Statues of children, their faces apocalyptically sanded off, look up at the equally faded visages of stoic, emotionless Biblical characters. Antone Martin, their designer, hoped they would withstand the atomic threat that colored mid-century American life. They now appear as though they have, even though the bomb never hit.

Martin feared bombs because his job was manufacturing them for the military. In 1951, he molded his first Christ statue out of five tons of cement; his intent was to place it at the rim of the Grand Canyon as a "symbol of peace for mankind." After the United States Government kindly rejected his offer, explaining to him in the process the concept of this country's separation of church and state, he named his statue "The Unwanted Christ"that is, until the Yucca Valley Church, who promised to hoist it atop the hill for all to see, wanted it. And more. He relocated to Yucca Valley and spent the last ten years of his life (he died in 1961) constructing the park's other figures.

When I last visited the park, dark, foreboding clouds hung above it, adding an even more sinister element to its decay. A car filled with teens, drinking beers and smoking pot, sat in the parking lot, listening to Top 40 radio. They were the park's only other patrons. While designed to tell the story of the Bible, Desert Christ Park now serves only to grimly predict the decline of mankind. And, if you're a high desert degenerate, facilitate it.

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

Read: Garage-Rock Pioneer Jimy Sohns Has Seen Enough for 10 Lifetimes

Looks like Lady Gaga's bizarre Tony Bennett era is finally over. Just this week, a trailer for American Horror Story: Hotel teased Gaga as the Countess, dancing to Rammstein and looking generally menacing. Now, she has released a music video for a new song called "Til It Happens to You."

Co-written by Diane Warren and directed by Twilight's Catherine Hardwicke, the song and paired video deal with the ugly but pervasive issue of sexual assault, particularly among college students.

"One in five college women will be sexually assaulted this year if nothing changes," the video points out, before providing the phone number for the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-HOPE). Partial sales of the song will go to organizations helping sexual assault survivors.

Read: What You Need to Know About Europe's Migrant Crisis

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants are streaming from Syria and other war-torn parts of the Middle East toward the relative safety of Europe right now. The refugee crisis has inspired a lot of support and goodwill from people around the world, but it's also sparked a shitstorm of racist, nativistic responses from anti-refugee citizens and leaders across Europe.

Hungary's far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, has already said that the flood of Muslim refugees is a threat to Europe's "Christian roots" and he is building a gigantic wall along the Serbian border to keep them out.

Now, the mayor of a Hungarian town called Asotthalom has taken Orban's example to the next logical levelhe's filmed an action-packed propaganda video to flaunt his town's might and warn potential immigrants to not even think about putting their malnourished, dirty fucking shrapnel-studded feet into it. The video looks like a scene from the new Transporter reboot, complete with a knock-off Steve Jablonsky score.

"If you are an illegal immigrant and you want to get to Germany," Asotthalom Mayor Laszlo Toroczkai says, after a few clips of speeding cop cars and swole, threatening dudes on horses, "Hungary is a bad choice. Asotthalom is the worst."

Toroczkai may be a pretty outspoken opponent of illegal border crossings, but the New York Times is quick to remind everyone that he once had his ass kicked by Serbian nationalists after getting caught sneaking into the country in 2008. If only there'd been a scary YouTube video to dissuade him back then.

Juventus play Wolfsburg in 'PES 2016'and no, not one of these screens, courtesy of Konami, actually features a Spanish team. Sorry.

For those past a certain age, it's not difficult to remember the days when Pro Evolution Soccer was king of the land. Top of the league, with illegitimate editions of Gabriel Batistuta, Michael Owen, and the real Ronaldo scoring goals that the commercial opposition could only dream of one day replicating for themselves.

The FIFA series, back in the old days, was always a bit of a joke by comparisonto those in the know, at least. Passing was awkward, goals were too easily scored from certain areas of the penalty box, player likenesses were more horrifying than endearing, and the less said about the pantomime way sliding tackles were handled the better. Not until 2010 did FIFA start showing signs of improvement, hinting at the possibility of a changing of the digital soccer guard.

And when the change happened, it happened quickly. FIFA, knowing it was losing the fight, drastically altered its technology and the philosophy underpinning its design. Out was the dedication to an arcade-like vision of soccer, in was something purported to be more realistic and indicative of what you're used to seeing when you tune into real soccer on the weekend. And as soon asFIFA began gaining ground, PES saw a drop off in its user base. Loyalties were forgotten.

France play the Netherlands in 'PES 2016'

FIFA's ruled the charts, in the UK, ever since, and is now one of the world's biggest-selling games every year. But why has PES dropped off so severely? The cheap and easy answer is that it doesn't have the same volume of officially licensed teams and leagues as FIFA, therefore players are put off by a perceived lack of authenticity. Yet that's not the root cause of the issue. FIFA always had more clout with licensing, yet PES managed to play the role of people's champion for years.

The real reason PES has seen less success over recent years comes down to style. When FIFA altered its approach to make up ground on PES, it did so by mimicking a style of play that is commonly found in the English Premier League: hard running, constant attacking, and forceful defending, all wrapped up in the kind of pomp and pageantry that the Premier League is so good at presenting.

PES has gone down a completely different path, favoring a slower tempo, greater focus on accurate passing, and an approach to defending that is all about not being sucked out of position by the antics of your opponents. PES 2016, undoubtedly more than any other soccer game ever made, values these more thoughtful and considered elements, and only breaks out into acts of outlandish showmanship on the rarest of occasions.

Put simply: If FIFA is like the English Premier League, PES is Spain's La Liga.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film on Glasgow's Old Firm derby between 'Rangers and Celtic'

And that, more than any other single reason, provides the answer as to why FIFA has gone from one sales milestone to the next while PES still dreamsin a manner Liverpool fans may be familiar withof those past days of glory.

Given that the Premier League is the most popular and most readily broadcast soccer league in the world, it should come as no shock when players decide they want their digital soccer to match what they see on their TVs. The Premier League is the most attacking and unpredictable elite-level league in the world, and so people want that in their games, too.

While La Liga is also shown widely around the world, its reach is comparatively minimal on those days when Barcelona and Real Madrid are not locked in combat with one another. Therefore, PES is losing the ideology and familiarity battle before their game is even released.

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It's often said that PES in its modern state is not a suitable game for those post-pub nights back at the house. The game's dedication to considered build-up play in attack, combined with a tactical suite that allows you to pick up to three formations that can be seamlessly switched between in the middle of a game, doesn't lend itself to players inebriated to the point that telling a PS4 pad from an ashtray is a challenge.

There's truth to the clich that PES is certainly not an easy game to become accustomed to; much in the same way that it's difficult for casual Premier League soccer fans to watch any given La Liga game due to the fundamental differences in how Spanish and English teams tackle mid-match problems. The mentality of teams and players in La Liga can be so removed from that of their English equivalents that it can at times seem as though you're watching a different sport. Yes, the final goal remains constant no matter what the league, but the journey to get there is unique to each competition.

No wonder, then, that PES's La Liga style hasn't filled those fans solely dedicated to the Premier League with much excitement. Quite literally, when they play PES it doesn't feel at all like what they know as soccer.

Bayern Munich play FC Porto in 'PES 2016'

This might change, though. PES 2016 has attained a quality threshold that demands attention from soccer fans, no matter which real leagues they watch. Additionally, the ever-increasing presence of Spanish soccer (and European soccer, in general) on UK television should work to expand people's soccer tastes and tempt them into wanting to play more like Valencia or Sevilla than Swansea City or Crystal Palace.

What's perhaps most startlingly here is that soccer games have reached a level of sophistication that means that they are no longer merely attempting to replicate the core mechanics of the sport. Instead, they're looking to develop a playing style that matches a specific brand of soccer, one played by certain teams and in certain areas of the world.

Spanish clubs' recent record in European competition makes it difficult to argue against the fact that the country houses the finest soccer teams on the planet. By contrast, Premier League teams might not offer much of a European challenge any longer, but they are consistently involved in the most exciting matches on any given weekend.

So it comes down to one question: Do you want to be able to play the best soccer, or would you prefer the guarantee of excitement?

Pro Evolution Soccer 2016, by Konami, is out now. FIFA 16, by EA, is released on September 22.

Follow John Robertson on Twitter.

Dylann Roof's mugshot

Before 21-year-old Dylann Roof shot nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, he was living in a trailer where chaos reigned and the only constants were the sounds of video-game gunfire and the steady flow of itinerantand often troubledguests.

Five people lived there permanently. One of them, Joseph "Joey" Meek, had known Roof since childhood, and when he asked for a place to sleep, he was offered a spot on the floor. The guest drank heavily, spoke about his belief in segregation, and boasted about needing to do "something crazy." The people hosting him once hid his gun before deciding he wasn't serious, as the Washington Post reported in an immersive.

But on June 17, the 21-year-old apparently acted on those words, driving two hours to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, sitting quietly during Bible study, and then unloading his Glock into the crowd. His lawyers have indicated he's willing to plead guilty if it will spare him the death penalty for murder and federal hate crime charges, but local prosecutors seem determined to have him executed.

On VICE News: 'I'm Doing it to Survive': Crossing the Croatian Border With Hundreds of Migrants

On Thursday, Meek, who is also 21, was arrested by FBI agents and charged with lying to federal officials, as well as with withholding information about a crime. He pleaded not guilty Friday, the Washington Post reports, but faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.

Meek was interviewed by an FBI agent the day after the shooting and said he did not know the specifics of Roof's plan. But according to the federal indictment, "Meek's statements and representations denying such specifics were false, fictitious, and fraudulent when made."

Back in June, Meek spoke to several reporters about the time he spent living with Roof. "He wanted to do something big, like the Trayvon Martin case," he told the New York Daily News, referring to the unarmed black teen who was shot by George Zimmerman in 2012. "He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race," Meek told the Associated Press.

The FBI declined to comment on the case.

"He don't think he did anything wrong," Meek's girlfriend Lindsey Fry, who spoke to him on the phone as he was being approached by federal agents at his job Thursday, told the Washington Post. "I don't really have anything to say about it."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Meek Indictment

Still from "Sleeping Giant" courtesy TIFF

Remember that episode of the Ryan Gosling-starring Breaker High in which the school's hockey team, the Sea Monkeys, takes on the Prince Edward Island Spuds and is losing 15-6 when a penalty is called against them in the last few seconds of the game? No? Of course notpractically no one outside of Canada watched that show in the first place, let alone liked it enough to remember a specific episode years later. Well, here's how it plays out: Cassidy, the sporty girl on the ship, is in net and the Sea Monkeys' coach calls a timeout to tell his team that, if Cassidy can make the save, this will be the closest game they've ever played. Excited by the news, the team starts chanting, "We don't completely suck! We don't completely suck!" Cassidy then makes the save and the Breaker High crew heads back to the ship, ecstatic about the loss.

Canadian films are like the Sea Monkeys. Stay with me here.

Our films try to compete against much bigger, better supported, and better funded films and, just like that ragtag high school hockey team, they inevitably lose badly. In 2013, US films captured 88.6 percent of the Canadian box office, while Canadian films accounted for just 2.3 percent (international films accounted for the remaining 9.1 percent). Canadians spent only $24 million on Canadian films in 2013, and $923 million on US films. Telefilm Canada, the government agency that helps fund the development, production, and marketing of Canadian films, says that we shouldn't look at these box office numbers to gauge the success of our films. After all, the highest-grossing film in Canada in 2013 was Iron Man 3, which had a $200 million production budget, while Telefilm Canada only has a budget of about $95 million per year to spend on all of the films it helps fund.

Since Canadian films can't begin to compete with The Avengers & Co., Telefilm believes we should concentrate on our success in the independent film market. By Telefilm's calculations, independent films made $227 million in Canada in 2013, 11 percent of which (that $24 million) was earned by Canadian films.

Even with Telefilm's more positive outlook on the numbers, it's clear that Canadians aren't watching many Canadian movies at the theatre. But rather than continue trying to coddle our films (or perhaps to prevent audiences from avoiding them altogether), the Toronto International Film Festival no longer has any specifically "Canadian" programs. Instead, its slotted all of our homegrown films alongside international films. Canadian director Patricia Rozema, whose Into the Forest premiered at TIFF, told the CBC, "The idea is that Canadian cinema is strong enough to swim in international waters, and I'm fine with that."

In total, TIFF selected 39 Canadian features for audiences to discover this year (up from 31 at last year's fest). In addition to Rozema's film, there's also Patrick Reed and Michelle Shephard's doc Guantanamo's Child: Omar Khadr; Beeba Boys, by acclaimed auteur Deepa Mehta; and film critic Brian Johnson's debut feature documentary, Al Purdy was Here, to name a few.

With less than a week left at TIFF to catch the best Canada has to offer, VICE put together a list of five Canadian films worth checking out.

Room

Dir: Lenny Abrahamson

London, Ont.-based novelist Emma Donoghue wrote the screenplay for this Ireland/Canada co-production, which is based on her best-selling novel of the same name. Room, which was shot in Toronto, is narrated by five-year-old Jack (Vancouver-native Jacob Tremblay, who is only eight IRL), a boy who has spent his whole life inside "Room." Jack's mom, Joy Newsome (Brie Larson), was kidnapped by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) when she was just 17 and she's spent seven years trapped in his soundproof shed. After Joy comes up with a desperate plan to escape Room, Jack finds himself out in the real world for the first time. The film follows Jack as he learns about the world around him, and Joy, as she tries to cope with everything she's survived. Many are saying that Tremblay deserves an Oscar for his role in the filmThe Hollywood Reporter said that Tremblay "gives one of the all-time great performances by a child actor"and if that happens, he could be one of the youngest actors to ever be nominated.

Sleeping Giant

Dir: Andrew Cividino

This is exactly the kind of movie you want to seek out and support at TIFF. Wait to see Black Mass and Sicario when they're released nationwide, and watch a tiny but great Canadian flick that might not play again in a theatre near you. The first feature film by writer-director Andrew Cividino screened at Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival and is getting great reviews here at home. The film follows three teenage boys as they while away a languid summer vacation in Thunder Bay, Ont. egging cars, wrestling and playing Settlers of Catan. In Sleeping Giant, Canada plays Canadanot some unnamed American small town. The Northern Ontario landscape is beautifully shot by Toronto-based cinematographer James Klopko, the music was written and performed by Chris Thornborrow and Bruce Peninsula, and the leads are young Canadian kids, two of whom are actual cousins from T-Bay. Does it get more Canadian than that?

Hurt

Dir: Alan Zweig

Veteran documentary filmmaker, and Torontonian, Alan Zweig is back with what many are calling his best film yet. And that's saying something. Zweig won a Genie (now re-branded as a Canadian Screen Award, or a "Screenie") in 2010 for A Hard Name, his doc about ex-cons trying to live normal lives, and his 2013 film, When Jews Were Funny, won Best Canadian Feature Film at TIFF that year. Hurt profiles Steve Fonyo, a name that might be vaguely familiar to some Canadians. When Fonyo was 12 he lost his leg to cancer. At age 18, he ran across the country raising millions for cancer research. He was a national hero. He received the Order of Canada. Today, his life is self-described "chaos" and his legacy is destroyed.

The Forbidden Room

Dir: Guy Maddin

The latest from celebrated Canadian auteur Guy Maddin has been described as similar to an LSD trip or a "fever dream." Not much can be said of the plot as it doesn't really have one. It begins with a man in a bathrobe instructing the audience on how to bathe, segues to a submarine stuck at the bottom of the ocean, then to a woodsman on a mission, and so on and so forth. This might not be for everyone, but a list of great Canadian films wouldn't be complete if there wasn't something totally weird and wonderful included.

The Witch

Dir: Robert Eggers

If twins, religion, and witches freak you out, this is the film for you. The Witch is a US/Canada co-pro set in 17th-century New England (but filmed in Kiosk, Ont.). Aside from its shooting location, its score by Toronto-based Mark Korven, and the fact that it was co-produced by Toronto's Scythia Films and Daniel Bekerman, not much else about this film screams "I AM CANADIAN"! But it's so good, we'll happily take it as one of our own. The film follows a family of super religious settlers who are kicked out of their village and forced to survive on the outskirts of a forest that may or may not be home to a child-stealing witch. Under that kind of pressure, who wouldn't go a little nuts?

Follow Regan Reid on Twitter.

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

Cry-Baby #1: Peter Wallace

Screencaps via Google Maps and Amazon

The incident: A man noticed there was a book available in his local library that was written by a convicted pedophile.

The appropriate response: Nothing. There are many, many, many books that were written by shitty people.

The actual response: He contacted his local paper and the head of the library to complain.

Peter Wallace is a district councillor for the Labour party in Dover, England. Last week, while in his local library, the Dover Discovery Centre, he noticed a book by Rolf Harris. Rolf, as you may know, is an artist, musician, and television personality who was convicted last year for multiple sex offenses against underage girls.

The book in question was Rolf on Art, a book Rolf wrote to accompany a BBC series he hosted about the history of art. It does not mention sex with underage girls.

Though Peter didn't say anything to library staff about the book at the time, he later decided to go to his local paper, the Kent Messenger, to voice his outrage. He also sent a letter to Paul Carter, the head of the council in charge of the library.

"Your children are the most important things in the world to you, and it really cuts me to the core to see his books on display," he told the paper. Adding, "I don't want people to think our county council condones pedophilia."

He did not specify what he wants to do with every other book in the library that was written by an objectionable person. Presumably because purging them would leave about 10 books.

A spokesperson for the head of the council told the Messenger that they were still deciding what to do about the books.

Cry-Baby #2: Chesnee High School

Screencaps via Google Maps and WSPA-TV

The incident: A girl wore a "Nobody Knows I'm a Lesbian" shirt to school.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: She was suspended from school.

Briana Popour is a student at Chesnee High School in Chesnee, South Carolina.

Earlier this month, Briana wore a shirt to school printed with "Nobody Knows I'm a Lesbian."

According to Briana, she was taken out of one of her classes and sent to an administrative office. There, she says an unnamed male staff member told her her shirt was "disruptive" and said she would either have to change it, or go home.

Briana says that she opted to go home, telling the man that there is nothing in the school's handbook that prohibits a "Nobody Knows I'm a Lesbian" shirt.

"When I said something to him about the handbook, he said, 'Well, not everything is in the handbook,'" Briana told South Carolina's WSPA-TV in an interview.

The station reports that Briana was suspended, but did not specify how long the suspension was for. They also reached out to the school, who defended their decision, calling the shirt "offensive and distracting".

The story of Briana's suspension received national attention. Unsurprisingly, this prompted the school to have a change of heart. On Wednesday, US News & World Report reported that Briana's suspension had been overturned. "The dress code disciplinary decision you inquired about was overturned when administration realized that although the shirt was offensive and distracting to some adults in the building, the students were paying it little attention," a spokesperson for the school told the site.

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

Previously: A chef who threatened to kill a coworker in an argument over pizza vs. a woman who called the cops because another woman called her a mean name.

Winner: The woman who got called a mean name!!!

What kind of childhood did you have growing up? Were you free to play to the beat of your own drum, or did you parents beat their tune into you? I'd like to think a lot of people believe that childhood is about being free, making mistakes, and discovering who they are and what they're into. However, there are probably just as many people in the world who believe that the beautiful period before puberty should be dictated by a whole other set of rulestheir own.

In his 2013 short documentary, The Queen (La Reina), filmmaker Manuel Abramovich created what I perceive to be a "through the looking glass" experience of a child in the unenviable position of being mom's little plaything. Abramovich follows Memi, an 11-year-old set to participate in yet another painful run at queen of the carnival in an unnamed village in Argentina. Replete with extravagant dresses, ostentatious headpieces studded with rhinestones, the event is every girl's dreamat least that's what the adults say, whether they're extolling the virtue of the carnival upon Memi, begging her to not cry, whine, or complain about the $2,000 headpiece that is "straining a few months later, I realized that, in some way, me and Memi were the same person. I strongly identified with her.

The access Memi and her family allowed you is incredible. How did you find Memi and were there any issues in getting, maintaining, and ultimately finishing a film with this level of intimacy?
The Queen was sort of an impulse, it wasn't planned at all. I was traveling with a four-person crew to shoot an institutional documentary on that town s carnival, a monumental celebration where people parade wearing huge, lavish costumes decorated with feathers and gems. In the end, winners are chosen and queens are crowned.

That's how we came across Memi. We showed up at her home to interview her. Her mother very kindly welcomed us and excitedly started talking about the carnival, the costumes, and Memi's achievements. Memi was sitting on a couch staring at the floor, sulking, and didn't even say hello to us, while her mother went on and on about how she was going to be crowned.

Right there I felt in Memi a weird detachment from the situation she was immersed in, and I told them I wanted to shoot a movie about her, a personal project. I wanted to be as clear as possible: It was undoubtedly going to be my personal vision, and not reality, because movies are always a construction, even documentaries. I think that made them feel comfortable and that's why it turned out so intimate.

Can you discuss your unique approach to telling her story on camera? Was the style of focusing exclusively on her discussed from the beginning?
Yes, from the very first moment I felt the need to represent that big clash through the style: the grownup world versus Memi's experience. The contradiction between the adults' discourse and what Memi was going through. So I had the idea to counterpose image from sound. While we heard the grownups talking about how fantastic and marvelous the carnival is, the camera lingers still on Memi's gaze, who hardly ever speaks.

Thus, her mother (mainly), but also her tennis instructor, her seamstress, her nanny, her aunt, her hairdresser, her grandmother, among others represent demanding voices of authority and appear as voice-overs while we see Memi's reaction in her blank stare.

I liked the idea of making a movie about carnival without ever showing it directly. Just hear it and let the spectator imagine it.

I'm assuming Memi and her mother have seen the short documentary by now. Were there any issues or objections that came up after they viewed the film? It feels very uncompromising, especially for a subject so often associated with fluff and vanity.
Once I finished the editing, almost one year after the shooting, I came back to Memi's town to visit her and to show it to her and her family. To my surprise, they were happy and proud. They recalled all the sacrifices they had made to continue their tradition and to help Memi become the queen of carnival. Memi was thrilled to be starring in my film and understood the short was just my version of things and not a reflection of what she had experienced.

They understood that they were characters of a movie, based on a personal construction, and even sometimes exaggerated in order to work for the story I was interested in telling, to generate that mood of progressive tension.

"I'm not so cruel as in your film!" Memi's mom told me. In that moment, I understood one can't really judge other people's traditions from the outside. And that although the film has a critical tone, it's not an expos nor does it try to spread an anti-carnival message. I believe ambiguities make different cultures complex in their traditions, and I find it difficult to judge as an outsider.

As a documentary filmmaker, at what point would a subject's objections override your final cut, if ever? Do you think there's room for compromise in your art? Is it then still art?
I find it very important to watch the final cut with the person I'm working with and talk about their impressions. I also like to be upfront about what they are about to watch, it's always only a version, my version of themselves.

My work walks the line between reality and fiction. I like to mold "real" subjects and situations in order to construct a possible story, the story I wish to tell. The kind of documentary filmmaking that makes me tick is the one related to the idea of portraiture.

I like the rush of adrenaline you get from working with the "real," where everything can unexpectedly change course. I'm interested in creating a bond with my subject and build from that a sense of mutual trust that will make the film more meaningful.

What are you working on now?
I'm finishing my first feature, Solar. It's about a 10-year-old boy who became a new age phenomenon in the 90s, a sort of child guru. Twenty years later, he decided to reprint his book, and I persuaded him to make a documentary about his story. After a year's shooting, he was unhappy with the pre-established roles of the movie and with my way of directing. He threatened to abandon the project unless we switched roles.

In the end, the movie ended up being about my relationship with him during the shoot. Like a role-playing game in which the camera turned around and the director became the protagonist and the protagonist became the director. It was a very long and sometimes hard process. It meant a great personal learning experience for me, and fortunately we're both very happy with the result.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as the senior curator for Vimeo's On Demand platform. He has also programmed at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Learn more Manuel Abramovich and his work here.

Gaby Scanlon, whose stomach had to be removed. Photo via Facebook

Read: White People Explain Why They Feel Oppressed

A British wine bar is paying the price for serving a teenager a liquid nitrogen shot that fucked up her stomach so badly she needed to have it removed.

Gaby Scanlon, now 20, thought staff at Oscar's Wine Bar and Bistro in Lancaster were hooking her up when they gave her the Nitro-Jagermeister shot for free on her 18th birthday in Oct. 2012. But seconds later, she was doubled over in pain, experiencing what felt like "an explosion" in her tummy.

"Immediately on consuming the drink she was taken violently ill, retching and vomiting and smoking from her nose and mouth," said prosecutor Barry Berlin, speaking at this week's sentencing hearing for Oscar's, which resulted in a fine of 100,000 or about $204,000 CAD. (The bar has pleaded guilty to failing in the duty of an employer to ensure the safety of persons not in its employment.)

A bar manager reportedly saw smoking liquid nitrogen cocktails being served at a London hotel and was "intrigued by the dramatic effect," so he introduced them at Oscar's.

But according to evidence presented in court, the bar was "loose" about informing patrons of the risks of drinking liquid nitrogen, telling them that it was OK to consume after ten secondsan arbitrary number.

Scanlon testified that her server said it was fine to down the $8 shot while it was still smoking. She took his advice.

"Straight away I knew something was not right."

The birthday girl was then taken to a local hospital where her stomach and small bowel were surgically removed in order to save her life. She said she experiences ongoing pain stemming from the incident.

Attorney Kevin McLoughlin represented the bar at the hearing. He said owners, who seemingly had never heard of Google, are "sorry."

"At no time did they see anything warning them of the risks of ingestion."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

The Witch. Images courtesy TIFF

It's a nifty coincidence that this year's Toronto International Film Festival features two of the best horror movies ever produced in Ontarioalbeit ones that were made 55 years apart. Way back in 1961, an enterprising young filmmaker named Julian Roffman cobbled together enough funds to shoot a thriller called The Mask in Toronto. In an attempt to distinguish it from the other cheapjack B-pictures flooding the market, its story of a psychiatrist who suffers hideous visions after trying on a tribal mask bequeathed by a recently deceased patient came kitted out with blue-and-red anaglyph 3-D sequences. (These have been lovingly restored for the film's free presentation by TIFF Cinematheque, and will be followed by a fall theatrical release at TIFF Bell Lightbox.)

These legitimately trippy interludes, which suggest the influence of European Surrealists and American experimentalists like Maya Deren, are meant to suggest the hero's primal urgesthe perverted desires smothered by polite society. And while a lot of The Mask is laughable in a Mystery Science Theatre sort of way, its implication that evil is an irresistible force that can sway even the most rationally-minded men is as old as H.G. Lovecraft and as modern as Videodrome.

Like its namesake, The Mask is a hallucinatory relic; for something more state of the art, there's American director Robert Eggers' The Witch, which arrives at TIFF riding the highs of its Sundance hype. Shot in Southern Ontario but set in as-yet un-ratified America, the film occupies two hallowed traditions at the same time. First, it's a worthy entry into the cinema of witchcraft, one that stretches from the silent era (Benjamin Christensen's 1922 campus-cult favourite Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages) to the heyday of Hammer horror (1966's The Witches) to the ever-contemporary found-footage subgenre (The Blair Witch Project).

The Mask

But it also continues a grand tradition of American filmmakers decamping to Canada to shoot inexpensively. in fact, such film-industrial black magick laid the roots for our nation's entire moviemaking culture. Without the so-called "tax shelter" movies of the 1970sa go-for-broke period when tax-deductible B-movies were being shot on a shoestring all around Ontario and Quebecthe Canadian filmmaking landscape might have remained barren.

"We did get a tax credit," Eggers told VICE via telephone on the eve of the film's Canadian premiere. "I'm very pleased with where we shot it and how it turned out. It was actually very difficult to find the location: in my American imagination, I was like, 'Oh, Canadait's all virgin wilderness.' But it was hard because of the situation with logging companies. We had to go somewhere very remote to find a forest with white pine and hemlock that we could buy as being New England."

The attempted conquering of the wilderness is central to the story of The Witch, which follows a family that's leftor been banishedfrom their Christian settler community. William (Ralph Ineson), Kate (Kate Dickie) and their four children set up a farm on the edge of the forest in the hopes of surviving the winter. Their eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) has assumed a semi-parental role, but when she briefly takes her eyes off her infant brother Samuel, he's taken by someone (or something) in the woods. In an instant, Anya is turned into the family's black sheep, which in turn sets up the subversive idea at the heart of the story: that William comes to suspect that his own daughter might be the source of the evil that seems to be plaguing their family one catastrophe at a time.

For all its ravishing imagery and skilfully staged scares, The Witch is very much a film of ideas, which are deeply embedded in a screenplay that features reams of period-appropriate dialogue. Some of the concepts here are familiarthe tension between civilization and wilderness, or the pressurized tension of families dealing with lossbut in other ways, The Witch is downright radical. Where most films about witches and witchcraft treat their subjects as either sources of fear (the traditional, scare-mongering approach) or avatars of gendered victimization (the post-feminist, critical approach), Eggers' debut opts for door number three: without skimping on the scares or the social commentary, he's made a movie with a healthy sense of awe and respect for all that's otherworldly.

"I don't want to tell people what to think of the film," says Eggers, who admits that he's leery of spoilers even eight months after Sundance. "I will say that the film has been accused by some people of saying something like, 'Christianity is right,' which is interesting. I'm curious to see what neo-Pagan or Wiccan people think about it. It's a weirdly feminist film, because it's set in the 17th Century, and female power was seen in a very different light back then. That power was not seen as positive back then."

Indeed, the character of Thomasina (superbly played by Taylor-Joy), is one of the year's most interesting cinematic heroinesa mostly passive observer whose voice strains to be heard over the dogmatic rhetoric of her parents, and yet who is eventually in a position to make the story's most fateful choice. To say more more would require spoiler alertsbut in a way, it's an interesting companion piece to The Mask. These two films, separated by decades, both use their genre trappings to address aspects of human nature, and suggest that there's something liberating about acknowledging and harnessing the darkness within.

Follow Adam Nayman on Twitter.

Welcome to Netiquette 101, in which we'll be using cyber-case studies to teach you basic but valuable cyber-lessons in being a better cyber-citizen. Today, we discuss the various ins, outs, and what-have-you's of online dating.

Case Study: On January 26, 2013, the greatest Twitter direct message of all time leaked onto the internet. Its sender? J.R. Smith of the New York Knicks. Its recipient? A youngas in, a senior in high schoolfemale fan. The exchange went a little something like this:

Fan: I'm going to your game tonight.
J.R. Smith: Dope
Fan: ^_^
J.R. Smith: Oh really
Fan: Oh really what
J.R. Smith: You trying to get the pipe?

Now, J.R. Smith was not the first person to use the internet to ask a total stranger if they wanted to fuck, and he was certainly not the last. But the confidence with which he posed the question, the degree to which he escalated what began as a benign interaction into an offering of sex, the sheer audacity it takes to refer to your dick as a pipe, the way J.R. joked about it on Instagram afterward... Is it any wonder the line became a catchphrase and then a T-shirt?

On Motherboard: Cyborg Combat Critters

According to a certain kind of crude male logic, if you go up to a thousand strangers and ask all of them to have sex with you, at least one will eventually say "Yes," even if you get several hundred "Nos" before that. In real life, this would be extremely time-consuming, not to mention skeey, and might very well get you maced or arrested. Online, this behavior is still skeezy, but it's much easier to ask for sex, especially if you're as famous as J.R. Smith.

What We Can Learn: J.R. Smith being J.R. Smith, the story was treated as a joke, but bluntly asking someone if you can present your genitals to them via Twitter DM is really fucking crazy and borderline predatoryeven if you're a famous and shameless NBA player. You're just not supposed to act that way, unless you're on a site where it's expected that you'll be sending sexually explicit messages back and forth with other consenting adults.

This isn't to say that meeting your significant other (or even finding a casual hookup/sext partner) online is weird. It's not weird at all! But it's important to remember that the rules of normal society still apply when interacting and flirting with people from the internet. Not every social network is full of horny women in your area now just waiting for you to message them, just as not every building in America is an S&M dungeon.

Case Study: If you've got the time, you should really spend the next ten minutes of your life watching the above vlog from a couple who got engaged because of World of Warcraft. If you strip away the dude saying insanely corny stuff like, "It was the first time I talked to her... achievement unlocked!" and the guy comparing himself to a "hidden Paladin" because his girlfriend couldn't tell her parents about him, it's actually sort of adorable. They overcame great obstaclesher family smashing her laptop, his brothers thinking she might have been catfishing him, the fact that he was playing too much World of Warcraftto be together, and yet here they are, engaged! These two people clearly love each otherlike many couples do, they've developed a story of their relationship with major events and milestones. Most of their milestones just happen to involve World of Warcraft.

What We Can Learn: One of the really cool things about the internet is that it allows you to self-select your peer groups. People on Twitter and Reddit and countless other sites form little communities that develop their own tradition and languages. Think of bodybuilding forums, the fitness-obsessed corners of Instagram, the comments section of Guardian crosswords, "Weird Twitter," Facebook groups devoted to specific brands of motorcyclesthese people are regularly talking to each other all the time, about both their common interests as well as what's happening in their actual lives. It's totally possible to be more intimate with an online buddy than your coworkers or the IRL "friends" you only see at house parties. And when you think about it that way, eventually physically hanging out with (and potentially having sex with) someone you met online is one of the more normal and human things you can do.

Recommended: The Digital Love Industry

Case Study: This summer, a writer named Grace Spelman aired out a dude named Ben Schoen on Twitter. Spelman claimed that Schoen, a former host of the Harry Potter podcast Mugglecast, had been harassing her online, and had the screenshots to prove it. Schoen claimed that he'd simply been trying to interface with Spelman because he wanted to do business with her and it was all a misunderstanding. However, that didn't account for his frequent messages across several different platforms or him calling her "the one" and joking that they should get married. And nothing can account for him using the phrase, "You removed me from Facebook in a ghostly manner" in an email to Spelman.

What We Can Learn: When it comes to online interaction, intent matters way less than interpretation. Schoen might not have made a conscious decision to harass Spelman, but when someone looks at the mass of messages he sent hersome flirty, some mean, some aggressive, some just downright desperateit's hard to take it as anything other than harassment.

It's not OK to force someone to interact with you, regardless of the circumstances. It's like approaching a table in a coffee shop and trying to force the stranger already sitting down to talk to you.

Eventually, everyone will realize that when it comes to romance online, the rules of engagement remain the same. There's a right and a wrong time for everything, and just because acting like a goon online doesn't immediately get slapped for their creepiness doesn't make it any less real. I never thought I'd type this sentence, but we should all take notes from the World of Warcraft couple: They used the internet to find someone they shared a connection with, didn't encroach upon each other's space, and now have reached an enviably high level of happiness.

Follow Drew on Twitter.

Golden Dawn demonstration. Photo by Menelaos Myrillas-Nick Paleologos/SOOC

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

Today marks the second anniversary of the murder of antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas by Golden Dawn member George Roupakias. The killing was the catalyst that led to the arrest of many of the extreme right organization's members. Along with Fyssas's murder case, several other charges were also mounted against the organization.

Subsequently various members of the parliamentary group were jailed and set to face trial in a process that should have begun in April. However, thanks to endless bureaucratic delays a witness has yet to be called.

Until recently, the official line of GD leader Nikos Michaloliakoswho stands accused of directing a criminal organizationwas that his party had nothing to do with the murder of Pavlos Fyssas. In 2013, Michaloliakos claimed that George Roupakias wasn't even a member of Golden Dawn and that he had no involvement in the murder.

On Thursday, September 17, just a few days before Greeks are called to the polls for a third time in one year and with Golden Dawn polling as the third most popular party, Nikos Michaloliakos accepted political responsibility for the murder of Pavlos Fyssas on live radio.

"With regards to political responsibility for the murder of Fyssas in Keratsini, we accept it," he said during the interview. "As for criminal liability, there isn't any. Is it right to condemn a whole party because one of its followers carried out a condemnable act?"

Why did Michaliolakis "confess"? What does Golden Dawn's acceptance of political responsibility mean? Why do this a few days before the election? And, most importantly, will the Greek people continue to vote for a party that has claimed political responsibility for a murder just because it sells itself as anti-austerity and antisystemic? According to analysts, they will.

I got in touch Dimitris Psaras, journalist and author of the book The Black Book of Golden Dawn: Documents on the History and Activity of a Nazi Group to ask what conclusions he drew from Nikos Michaloliakos's confessions.

"With the admittance of 'political responsibility,' Michaloliakos is reassuring his hardcore followers that he hasn't abandoned them and isn't going to throw them under the bus just to save himself. He wants to dispel this image of a captain leaving the ship, an image that he's been tarred with in recent months. With this particular statement he has acknowledged what he has so stubbornly denied for two years. He now fully vindicates the united leadership of the organization," said Psaras.

I asked if he thinks there are still voters who were unaware of the real face of GD: "There haven't been any unsuspecting Golden Dawn votes since the autumn of 2013, when the press dealt extensively with the criminal activity of the organization," he responded. "I don't expect an immediate shift in voters. But this declaration of 'political responsibility' will have long-term consequences, both in terms of the judicial investigation of Golden Dawn and the political support behind their Nazi project," Psaras concluded.

I then contacted Aristides Hatzis, deputy professor of philosophy of law and theory of institutions at the University of Athens, to ask if he expects Golden Dawn to lose votes because of Michaloliakos's recent comments.

"I don't see how it will affect Golden Dawn's voters, because I don't think they have any doubt about what the party is. This isn't 2012, when they first entered the Greek parliament. Everyone knows that they are a neo-Nazi party, we all very aware of their views and what they have done," he replied. "I don't think it will cost them much in political capitalit looks like they will be emerging even stronger in the upcoming elections. They're playing the card of being the only genuine anti-memorandum and antisystemic party, as well as taking advantage of the situation with refugees and immigrants. There are no unsuspecting Golden Dawn supporters now. Nobody has an excuse."

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

The question that remains, however, is how the "confession" will affect future court proceedings for the political party. Takis Zotos, Thanassis Kampagiannis, and Kostas Papadakis Kostas are lawyers who work with the "Jail Golden Dawn" movement. They maintain that "the neo-Nazis might be making a desperate attempt to convince the public they've changed, but their Fhrer, Nikos Michaloliakos, just openly accepted political responsibility for organizing Pavlos Fyssas's murder. With this, Michaloliakos has accepted the charge of leading a criminal organization."

When asked whether there should be any new charges brought about after Michaloliakos's statement, Takis Zotos explained: "They are already charged with being a criminal organization. The difference is that, now, Michaloliakos accepts the charge. This will not benefit them at the polling booths. Ordinary people should be able to see them for what they are."

The author with the new friends she thought she made in Pensacola Beach, Florida

Welcome to Florida Stories, a new column where staff writer Allie Conti will be telling us some of the tales she's accumulated in her decades of living in the Sunshine State. If you have a Florida Story you'd like to share, email her here.

I frequently tell people that I've lived in every single part of Floridathe south Georgia run-off bit near the top, the stucco Disneyfied wasteland in the middle, the extension of Cuba near the tip. But in reality, there's another geographically distinct portion I've only been to once, and will never go to againthe Panhandle.

Last year, I had to travel to Pensacola for a story. It was 12 hours from my place in Miami, so I took a tiny plane and ended up there without a car because I am extremely good at planning. After my interview, I took a $35 cab to see the Gulf of Mexico. I asked my driver in Pensacola to drop me off at a "cool" bar of his choosing, which is how I ended up stranded at a place called "Crabs."

When I walked inside around 1 PM, the bartender greeted me by saying I "came to the right place," so I figured I'd stick it out until my 9 PM flight and see what magic happened. That gave me eight hours to make friends and memories.

On MUNCHIES: This Beer Maid Will Work Oktoberfest Until She Dies

Now, I like to think that I can talk to anyone. Building a rapport is part of journalism, after all. Getting people from different walks of life to open up is essential. And as I sat at the bar in a place I'd likely never visit again, I decided I wanted to meet and commune with "real Pensacola people."

Just your typical bar bathroom sign in Pensacola Beach, Florida

I turned to my right and cold-opened a grizzled old man with the only comment that immediately popped into my head. "There are no black people who live here, huh?"

"You're very observant," he replied with a smile. I immediately started scanning for a more palatable and less scary conversation partner.

Just then, two human eight-balls with peach-fuzz beards and shaved heads approached the bar. It wasn't long until I sparked up a conversation. I'll call them Brian and Josephthey were cousins who owned a roofing company and sold Oxy on the side. Just plain folks, in other words. We ordered drink after drink, with me all the while patting myself on the back for being able to chill with anyone, even drug dealers living in what they called LA (short for "lower Alabama.")

They told me that they loved in Pensacola and never wanted to leave. "Are you kidding me?" Brian asked, gesturing emphatically at the beach. "This is paradise."

Naturally, I asked what they did for fun.

"We go to Crabs, and we go to Babes," Jason replied, referring to a strip club with $5 lap dances. They asked me if I wanted to be shown around. "We're just real Pensacola people," Brian said, almost apologetically. "But we believe in Southern hospitality."

My brain practically short-circuited right there. Not only did I have the decency and ability to interact with the common man in a foreign land, they were parroting my "real Pensacola people" thought from earlier, which itself was a twisted line from the journalism-related movie Almost Famous. And these guys still wanted to hang out with me even though I look like I'm 12 years old.

In fact, I was so out of it with happiness at that moment, I only had one more rational decision in me. Soon after, they both went to the bathroom and left their wallets on the bar, and I checked their IDs to make sure they weren't lying about their names or where they were from. Everything checked out. I am the best journalist, I thought, My ability to read people is unparalleled.

Watch: How to Get Away with Stealing

After getting back from the men's room, Brian and Jason asked me if I wanted to have a true Pensacola experience, and like Henry Rollins, I immediately agreed to get in van. First, we stopped at a 7-11, where they bought me a pack of Pall Malls and a Big Gulp, which they taught me to fill with some Crown Royal they kept in their glove compartment so that "nobody would know were were drinking."

As we were swerving down the bridge back to Pensacola proper, a bunch of my secret drink spilled on my shirt. This development was sobering. Just then, I asked them to turn down the rap music we were blasting in order to make me a promise. "I need you to swear that you'll get me to the airport by 8 PM tonight," I said. "I have to be at work tomorrow and cannot fuck this up."

Again, they declared their belief in Southern hospitality, which was good enough for me. We went to Babes, where I suffered through several $5 lap dances that were purchased for me. Finally, at 7:45 PM, I approached my dudes and reminded them about the ride to the airport they'd promised me. Much to my delight, rather than complain about needing to leave the strip club, Brian and Jason practically fought over who would get to do the honor of driving me in their van.

Previously: How I Learned You Probably Shouldn't Try to Turn Raccoons into Pets

When I got dropped off at the airport, I gave a sincere thank you to Brian, and headed to check-in. My elation deflated almost immediately when an airline employee told me I wouldn't be allowed on the plane because I smelled like alcohol. I protested that I had a drink spilled on me, and that I only had one shirt, because I was there for work and needed to be back that same night. The best she would do was offer to drive and buy me McDonalds after her shift; it was going to be a long night, and the next flight was at 5 AM the next day.

Alternately fuming and trying to not cry, I sat in an uncomfortable chair, never falling asleep because it was freezing cold and because it's kind of terrifying to be the only human at an airport.

I made it back to Miami the next morning and collapsed into bed, just moments before my boss called to ask how it went. "Great," I lied. Then I decided to take a few minutes to find the guy who drove me to the airport and tell him what hell I'd just been through. Luckily, I had checked his ID at the bar, and I was hoping to Google his first and last name to pull up his Facebook.

The only result that came up for my search was with the sex offender registry.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Read: Is the US Military About to Let Transgender Soldiers Serve?

Back in 2011, President Barack Obama helped to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, a policy thatunder a misguided attempt to prevent discrimination and harassmentforbade LGBT individuals from being "out" while enlisted in the military. The repeal was celebrated by many, and helped begin to solidify Obama's standing as the first president who truly was as an ally of the LGBT community.

On Friday, Obama made another leap towards LGBT equality by nominating a gay manEric Fanningto lead the Army, the Washington Post reports. If Fanning, who has worked as a defense and national security specialist for more than 25 years, is approved by the Senate for this position, he will be the first openly gay civilian secretary of one of the military services.

"Eric brings many years of proven experience and exceptional leadership to this new role," Obama said in a statement. "I look forward to working with Eric to keep our Army the best in the world."

Follow Michael Cuby on Twitter.

Image via Wiki Commons

Earlier today, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill that, if it were to become law, would put the kibosh on Planned Parenthood's funding for the next year if they do not agree to stop performing abortions. The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, where Democrats have said they will filibuster, and President Barack Obama has also promised to veto any measure that disrupts Planned Parenthood's funding.

A second abortion-related bill, which according to the Washington Post would impose criminal penalties on medical personnel who fail to aid an infant born after an attempted abortion," also passed the House on Friday along partisan lines.

The bills come on the heels of a series of videos released by an organization called the Center for Medical Progress, which allegedly depict Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of aborted fetal tissue for profit.

Though Planned Parenthood already does not use federal funding for abortions, Republican members of Congress are opposed to funding the organization at all until an investigation of its practices is conducted. Representative Diane Black, a Republican from Tennessee, was quoted by the Post as saying, "If there is reason to investigate, then there is reason to withhold taxpayer dollars during that period of time."

It should also be noted that the eventual success or failure of either abortion bill is unlikely to affect the possibility of a government shutdown, which will go into effect if Congress does not pass spending legislation by September 30.

The House recently passed a third bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy that is tied to the government's upcoming budget; however, the House and Senate Appropriations Committee have also readied a second, "clean" version of the budget that does not mention the abortion issue and would keep the government running, given that a budget weighed down by abortion legislation is unlikely to pass the Senate.

Five In-Depth Stories on Abortion

1. In Victoria, Harassing Women About Abortions No Longer Counts as Free Speech
2. The Complicated Debate Over Banning Abortion Protests in Canberra
3. Why Satanists Are Fighting America's Restrictive Abortion Laws
4. I Went to a Bizarre Conference on How Abortion Affects Men
5. These Texas Women Want to Fund Your Abortion

Follow Drew on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user papalars

On Thursday, September 10, a group of 40 street vendors marched to Los Angeles City Hall to protest a new ordinance that bans unlicensed vending in parks. But it's not just the city's green spaces where vendors aren't allowed to sell their goods. A controversial law bans all sidewalk vending in LAeven though more than 50,000 street vendors operate in the city, hawking everything from used DVDs to fish tacos.

With protests and a grassroots campaign to legalize vending, the situation in LA may finally reach a boiling point. But words like informal, illicit, and underground have long been used to describe transactions that exist in a thorny gray area: not fully legal, but not explicitly harmful either. In fact, Robert Neuwirth, researcher, journalist, and author of Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, says the underground market accounts for trillions of dollars that circulate back into the economy, employing nearly half the world's workers.

It might seem odd that an activity deemed "underground" would be so visiblefrom knock-off purse vendors on Manhattan's Canal Street to pop-up taco stands and fresh fruit slicers on Alvarado Street in Los Angeles. That's why Neuwirth is leading a crusade to discard the terms underground economy or informal economy from everyday usethough so far, he admits, the campaign has not been very successful.

VICE caught up with Neuwirth on Skype to discuss recent vendor protests in LA, the unexpected benefits of piracy, and why we need to refer to the informal economy's members as true entrepreneurs.

VICE: You've spoken a lot about the the term underground economy. Why do you feel that's not an accurate depiction of the group and transactions it seeks to describe?
Robert Neuwirth: Because it lumps the criminal underground with everyone else. The vast majority of people who are working in what I call "System D," what people tend to call the "informal economy," are not selling drugs, and they're not doing human trafficking, and they're not harvesting organs from people. They're selling Downy fabric softener. They're selling Colgate toothpaste. They're selling sandwiches without a license. They're selling something for cash that they aren't reporting to the government. It's a different kind of enterprise policies that recognize that there's this in-between zone that has always existed. We never tried to criminalize moonlighting, when the guy was working on vacuum cleaners. It makes no sense for governments to call it informal or illegal, because that's just criminalizing two-thirds of the world's working population, close to 2 billion people. What we need to do is have a kind of middle ground. Maybe governments can start a policy where, if an entrepreneur is starting a business, he's got six years to go formal. Give him a phase-in time to run his business and get it all started before he has to do all the rigmarole of licensing. Or it might be offering a larger number of licenses, or the license fee might be slightly higher but you wouldn't pay any taxessomething that would be a concrete benefit to a person selling things on the street.

Follow Alyssa on Twitter.

Indigenous people sailing in the Amazon. Colombia, 2015. All photos by Carlos Villaln

This article originally appeared on VICE Colombia.

Coca plants have been demonized for centuries, and the cultures that consider them sacred and medicinal have often been labelled drug traffickers. The elders of the Peruvian Amazonian Indian tribe Huitoto once told me how their God even punished them through the leaf: "From now on, as punishment, I will take the coca away from your people and pass it into the hands of the white man. The plant will bring pain, misery, and rivers of blood wherever it goes."

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For my latest book, I wanted to follow the coca plant across an entire continent. From the Andes tribes who see it as a gift from God, to the Colombian farmers who process it into cocaine base and use it as currency in stores and pharmacies. And, of course, all the way onto the bloodbath it spirals into once it's finally turned into cocaine and heads north through Central America and Mexico, before eventually landing in the hands of those who use it for recreational purposes.

This is a selection of my work.

This series is part of a book called Coca: The Lost War, out later this year on Penguin Random House.

I hated those electric shock games kids had growing up, the ones where everyone would huddle around a little sphere and place their hands on a button that shocks one person at random. The only upside to those games was the fact you came out unscathed most of the time. There was more than a 75 percent chance you would sit there in anticipation and fear, only to watch your friends jump up and down, howling in pain.

When I tried to get off my antidepressants, the odds weren't so favorable. There were months on end of blinding electric pulses, often referred to as "brain zaps," odd shocks that accompanied sudden movements or just hit at random. They happened any time I turned my head. Everything drags in those moments: The world in front of you remains still for a second and then you feel sparks, hot little pinpricks flitting around.

That persistent sticky pain of electricity shooting up your neck and brain is one of the more unsettling feelings I've experienced. Combined with heart palpitations, an erratic appetite, an unreliable sleep cycle, and oscillating mood, it often felt as if getting off of Cymbalta would lead to something much more damaging than what prompted its initial use.

I decided to start taking an antidepressant when I was 17, after my best friend died on the last day of high school. He ditched class to skate and was pulled under the car he was skitching. I went to ask my doctor if she had any advice on handling the situation and she recommended I try Cymbalta at 60 mg.

I felt OK for a while; it definitely helped to quiet my mind for the first year or so. Then came the adverse effects. I never wanted to eat, never really felt up to sex, and gave up on most exercise and sports due to the brain zaps. I slept erratically or not at all. I was constantly drained; I perpetually felt as if I had just left a long movie and was stumbling out of a dark theater into the afternoon. It was stimuli overload without the stimuli, an unearned fatigue.

The first time I tried quitting Cymbalta, I couldn't make it a week without medication.

Cymbalta (Duloxetine) is a selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), a class of drug often used to help with depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia. The haziness I experienced was one of many possible side effects of Cymbalta. Others noted by the FDA include nausea, agitation, hallucinations, fever, fast heart rate, overactive reflexes, confusion, tremors, racing thoughts, and vomiting.

A couple years after I started taking Cymbalta, I started drinking a lot of coffee and doing blow. Not the most sensible move, but it helped with the haziness tremendously.

The headaches that year were insane. On Cymbalta, you aren't supposed to drink. Even one or two beers would leave me with a throbbing hangover. I was pairing my antidepressants with a gram of blow and seven or eight drinks, waking up unable to open my eyes, my head splitting apart. An entire year passed by where I was getting wrecked on a nightly basis in a misguided attempt to escape the perpetual mental haze.

This wasn't sustainable. After a while I decided to clean my act up, cut down on drinking, and get off the meds. There was a problem, however: Cymbalta is only prescribed in three doses: 20 mg, 30 mg, and 60 mg. 20 mg is still a significant dosage, making it nearly impossible to taper off the drug. Going cold turkey struck me as the most sensible option.

I had some experience with how Cymbalta withdrawals felt, but I wasn't prepared for how bad things would get when I completely stopped taking the drug. There's even a name for what I was going through: Cymbalta Discontinuation Syndrome was described in a 2009 FDA report that said quitting the drug could result in "injury, distress, and life management impacts."

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The FDA report brings up numerous claims that Eli-Lilly, the company that manufacters Cymbalta, downplayed the effects of withdrawal. The syndrome is "more severe and much more widespread than acknowledged by Eli-Lilly," according to claims cited by the report, and "sales representatives and marketing materials do not adequately inform physicians about the likelihood and severity of discontinuation syndrome." Most troubling of all is the claim that "Eli-Lilly has not developed a clinically-proven protocol for safely discontinuing Cymbalta."

These claims have generated a flurry of lawsuits. Claudia Herrera recently took Eli-Lilly to court in California, alleging the company had misrepresented Cymbalta's withdrawal symptoms. Herrera's lawyer described months of agonizing brain zaps, anxiety, spasms, and suicidal ideations that were deemed "serious and life-threatening." The psychiatrist who testified for Eli-Lilly informed jurors that there was no evidence in medical literature of withdrawal symptoms lasting for months. He went on to make the point that Herrera's symptoms might have simply been a manifestation of her underlying depression and anxiety disorders.

Early clinical trials sponsored by Lilly, however, found that among users of the drug, nearly 54 percent "had not resolved (withdrawal symptoms) after up to two weeks. What happened to these patients after two weeks is unknown."Herrera's lawyers also cited a 2005 study by the Journal of Affective DisordersJournal of Affective Disorders on Cymbalta withdrawals. The study revealed that more than 44 percent of patients who abruptly discontinue Cymbalta experience serious withdrawal symptoms. The warning label on Cymbalta states that such symptoms occur only at a rate of 1 percent or more, a discrepancy that representatives from Eli-Lilly opted not to address when I approached them for comment.

Claudia Herrera lost her case against Eli-Lilly; the drug company was not found liable for her withdrawal symptoms, in a decision that may give Eli-Lilly leverage over the 5,000 pending lawsuits over Cymbalta. Herrera filed an appeal on the verdict earlier this month.

Legal issues are nothing new to the drug manufacturer. In 2009, Eli-Lilly was ordered to pay one of the largest criminal fines in US history: $1.415 billion over illegal marketing practices regarding the antipsychotic medication Zyprexa. Hundreds of internal emails were released, revealing Lilly's efforts to suppress dangerous side effects and promote unapproved usage.

The first time I tried quitting Cymbalta, I couldn't make it a week without medication. It took another couple of years, a move to New York, and a renewed commitment to try again before I was able to kick my dependency.

Cymbalta's sales hit nearly $5 billion in 2012, $4 billion of that in the US alone. Before their patent expired in 2014, they were able to block a generic from being made and charge a retail price in 2013 of $538 per month. I often ended up paying about $200 a month with insurance (which, considering I can barely afford living in New York as is, was completely unsustainable).

I decided to see a new doctor about getting off the medication. He told me how hard it is to get off Cymbalta, and said he was reluctant to recommend the drug to his patients. In order to taper down, he told me, I would have to open the pills and take out the little balls they contain, periodically removing more little balls until I was off the stuff completely.

Thus commenced one of the hardest winters I've been through. There were months of heart palpitations, muscle spasms, and debilitating brain zaps. Tapering off proved difficult and tedious, and the physical withdrawals weren't much better than my first attempt.

The brain zaps and heart palpitations lingered the longest, probably six months after getting off Cymbalta.

It became hard not to doubt myself when everything got under my skin. Mundane daily tasks completely unraveled me. All of my anxious traits took over. I couldn't decide what to eat, what to wear, what to do with my time when I wasn't working. I could never sleep and when I did, I would wake up erratically, sweating and panicked. I lost weight and considered moving back home.

But as bad as these withdrawals became, I couldn't bring myself to get back on the medicine. I could still remember how distant I felt taking Cymbalta, how removed I was from the world. There was one day that stood out, in late August, or maybe early September, before I moved to New York. The weather was no longer insufferably hot and it was early evening, just before sunset. I was in a particularly bad mood so I opted to bike down to the Platte River that runs through Denver. I sat on one of the blocks that juts out over the water. Everything was cast in early-evening glow and you could see lower downtown stretching out over the carefully-manicured park, people walking their dogs, kids playing in the water, all the common scenes of summer bliss.

I remember sitting there and watching this perfect scenery and waiting for something to click, waiting for my surroundings to affect me. They never did. I sat there watching this idyllic scene and I felt tired and trapped. My panic began to churn. It became clear that I had to get off Cymbalta because nothing could get through its haze. I made my way home and realized I no longer cared to live like this; by the time I came down from the panic I was sitting on the floor, scared shitless and completely drained. This haze was a constant during my time on Cymbalta; nothing could ever get through.

I've been off any sort of medication for a couple of years and I'm genuinely happy. I don't like thinking about the amount of time I spent on the medicine, how many years I spent under the influence of something that numbed my outlook on the world, softened the borders of my personality. Not only was the drug rather ineffective for me, it felt as if it was handed to me without warning, without indication of what it would take to quit. One in ten Americans are on antidepressants, and medication can be a viable, beneficial, and sometimes life-saving option for those suffering from clinical depression; it's important, though, that patients are armed with a full understanding of potential side-effects, both while they're on a drug and if they should choose to come off it.

I still have low points, and so does everyone else. Anxiety and depression are incredibly common. It doesn't mean you throw medication at the problem without thoroughly assessing alternatives. I paint, I write, I run. I have many projects that keep me occupied and many people I love to keep me happy. As excruciating as it was getting off Cymbalta, I never would have realized how little I needed the medicine otherwise.

All photos courtesy of Apexart

Earlier this year Ron Cauthern and Harold Wayne Nichols, two death row inmates at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution just outside of Nashville, started crafting with a huge pile of cardboard and other junk in their unit's common room. Over the days and weeks, their art project grew larger and more complex, sprawling across the common space and drawing the attention of fascinated guards and inmates alike. Eventually their work came together in the form of a 13-by-18-foot cardboard airplane with distorted veins painted onto its side and a skull on its nose meant to represent the two inmates' impending deaths by lethal injection. A propeller was hooked up to a music box motor, which, when twisted, would spin while playing "Somewhere Out There."

According to Cauthern and Nichols, this plane was only a model for a much larger project they dreamed up: an army of aircraft that would circle around state capitals flying antideath penalty slogans until capital punishment is abolished in America.

Cauthern and Nichols will never see that dream come true. But earlier this month they did see their model plane, by then signed by almost every death row prisoner in Tennessee, broken down to its constituent parts, shipped north, and reassembled in Apexart, a nonprofit gallery in Manhattan established in 1994 to display the art of independent curators and creators.

Cauthern and Nichols's work (labeled in the gallery as Airplane) is part of Life after Death and Elsewhere, an exhibition of art by Tennessee death-row inmates which runs at Apexart through October 24. Organized by Robin Paris and Tom Williams, both professors at Nashville's Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, the show features over 30 works by a dozen condemned men, most of them murderers, including Abu Ali Abdur'Rahman, G'dongalay Berry, Declicho "Ironhawk" Besh, Gary Cone, Kennath Artez Henderson, Billy Irick, Akil Jahi, Donald Middlebrooks, Derrick Quintero, and Dennis Suttles. The art runs the gamut from high-concept sculptures to self-portraits to poetry and a binder of personal writings and correspondences available at the gallery's front desk. But they're united by a challenging sense of morbidity and political critique that's unique even for prison arts projects.

Most prison arts programs and the gallery shows attached to them serve a rehabilitative role. They're skills education or therapy, often for people the organizers hope will reenter society as functional individuals. But most death row inmates in the Riverbend arts program have no hope of returning to societyespecially since Tennessee, which executed six people between 2000 and 2009, is now fighting a hold placed on four more executions originally slated for 2015. Paris and Williams didn't just ask these condemned men to express themselves via art. Building on the condemned men's collective fate, they asked the inmates to design their own memorials while still alive, a mission made all the more macabre by the fact that one inmate, Ironhawk, died of a heart attack while building his project: a tree with symbolic feathers for leaves which the curators completed as an actual memorial for Ironhawk.

The memorial for Ironhawk

The roots of Life after Death and Elsewhere go back to the fall of 2013, when Paris and Williams first visited Riverbend at the behest of Lisa Guenther, a professor of philosophy specializing in issues of mass incarceration and capital punishment at Vanderbilt University who ran a program for inmates at the facility. Neither of the artists had any previous experience in a prison setting, but they agreed to take over an arts project while another educator went on sabbatical that summer. As they started to introduce the inmates to conceptual art, they began to learn about the men and the system they inhabited and found themselves deeply engaged.

"They had been in there a while," Paris told VICE at the current show's debut. "They'd had time to think. They'd read. They'd practiced skills. They were some realized people."

Over the next two years, working in compliance with prison regulations and with the support of the unit's guards, they developed a half-dozen shows in Tennessee that allowed the inmates to share their life stories and beliefs on incarceration and the death penalty beyond the walls of their cells.

"A side effect were very into the idea," said Williams. "Others were resistant because it seemed to be acquiescent to their sentences, or to their fate," which many are still fighting.

"Some of them were kind of superstitious," Paris added. "They thought, 'If I do this, that's what's going to happen...' Then we said, 'Well, a memorial can be something other than about your death. It can be something you want to be known for, no matter what your position is.' A lot of them went with that."

The results of this broad definition of memorialization run the gamut from the monumental to the ephemeral. In the video installation Telling Our Story, Quintero and two outside activists read stories from the inmates and talk about their lives over shots of nature and the prison parking lot. Berry's painting shows the shadow of death stalking him. Jahi's model of a shoe about to touch grass represents his memory of the first time he had contact with a spongy surface in years when he was being transferred to another facility. Cone's Gary Cone: I Am A Reader of Books is a spiraling tower of novels he's read; he had to leave the tower unfinished after suffering an infection that spread to his spine and left him a paraplegic in an isolated facility where he is now denied access to most books and visitors, much less arts programs like this.

Akil Jahi, Proposal for a Monument

Other pieces take a more didactic approach. Cauthern painted over a photo of a statue outside the Tennessee Capitol Building, adding a goatee and prison uniform to make it look like him. Henderson made a picture of himself as a younger man and a design for a community center that he thinks could have kept him out of trouble as a kid. Suttles created a series of roses using scrap bread from the lunch room grafted onto dowels with acrylic paint; one of the flowers is a massive 20-footer that he hopes could be displayed in outdoor spaces to remind people of the potential beauty and value in who and what they discard. Nichols presented a design for an amphitheater built of the bricks of demolished prisons, where future Americans could practice restorative justice.

But perhaps the most involved projects, outside of the airplane, were by those who rejected their death sentence altogether. Quintero's diorama, In My Mind's Eye was full of strings and figures of the Buddha and miniature covers of books, depicting both his cell and the journey the inmate took to get there (Quintero has escaped from prisons before, but still insists on his innocence). Abdur'Rahman drew on his Cherokee background and prison spirituality to create a complex tableau of natural figures that represented his escape into nature to shield him against abuse as a child. Abdur'Rahman's display also includes a descriptive poem and placard along with audio narration by his spiritual advisor, punctuated by the inmate singing and making animal noises.

Paris and Williams insist they're not nave. They know some of these men are guilty of serious crimes (although some may have been wrongfully convicted). And the exhibit's brochure claims that it seeks to explore the gravity of the crimes of which the men wore convicted alongside the inequities of the American justice system, asserting that no amount of remorse or restitution can or should erase the harm these inmate artists have done.

Ron Cauthern, New Monument for Nashville

Middlebrook admitted to murdering a 14-year-old boy, whom he beat, stabbed, raped with a stick, slashed across the chest in an X pattern, and urinated upon before leaving him under a mattress in a dry creek bed. That's a story I had to go searching for; it wasn't presented openly in the show. When you look at the paintings by Middlebrook on display,however, they do a great job of humanizing him. They recount a childhood of abuseforced heroin addiction and prostitutionand his willful conviction of childhood crimes to escape into juvenile detention. Middlebrook's paintings talk about his wish to express remorse to the family of his victim, and how that impulse towards contrition is strangled by a capital punishment system that urges silence, lest an inmate jeopardize his or her appeals cases. Talking to Paris and Williams, it's clear they've cultivated a great deal of sympathy for this artist, who opened up to them as he never did to the courts about the background leading to his crime.

At times, the social critique focus of the exhibition detracts from other hard, dark issues the show could have grappled withlike how justice could truly be served in a case like Middelbrook's.

What Life After Death and Elsewhere highlights is, as Paris puts it, the strangeness and confusion of the American prison industry and capital punishment system. Apexart is using panel discussions on prison reform and inmate story sessions to highlight these themes, with the hope of sparking difficult but vital conversations.

Dennis Suttles, Flowers from Death Row II: The Tennessee Supreme Court

But while the exhibit may be effective at highlighting hidden inequities and granting those unjustly robbed of their humanity and visibility a chance to express themselves publicly, there's a squeamish feeling you get looking at the work that is never directly addressed. It feels weird that Nichols, a man convicted of raping a 21-year-old girl then bashing her head in with a board, killing her, has asked the curators to leave out a bowl of mints to express his hospitality.

While we shouldn't define criminals solely by their crimes, it's difficult to extricate Nichols' work from that element of his whole being. I wish I had been challenged to reconcile these two wildly disparate aspects of Nicholshis humanity and his inhuman crimemore directly. That tension feels like the unfinished apotheosis of this project: What does it mean to be a human being, capable of both horrendous murder and powerful art, deep cruelty and significant pathos? Life After Death and Elsewhere could have been even more powerful if it had placed all the facts, both redemptive and disturbing, on the same stage.

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