All photos courtesy of Mary Thorn

In Florida's public schools, children are taught what to do if they need to outrun an alligator. Laugh all you want, but it's an important skill to have should you ever find yourself in the state's famous swamps. Every so often you hear about people being eaten by gators—presumably these poor souls didn't pay attention in class. (In case you're wondering, you're supposed to run in zig-zags, because the reptiles' tiny legs apparently get all jammed trying to constantly change direction.)

But though a healthy fear of gators is instilled in every Floridian, Mary Thorn grew up to love them. In fact, she loves them so much that about a decade ago, she decided to adopt five of them. Four died, but one, named Rambo, remained. Today he's grown to a robust 125 pounds—too big, the Florida Wildlife Commission (FWC) says, for Thorn's property. She insists, however, that taking him away from her would do more harm than good, and her dispute with the FWC made national news this week, possibly because of her habit of dressing Rambo up like a person.

To learn more, I called Thorn up to hear all about how she trained Rambo and how he acts around her dogs.

VICE: Why do you love gators, and why did you decide you wanted five of them?
Mary Thorn: My brother owns a fish pond, and whenever gators get in his pond, I would get 'em out. I was just a tomboy; I loved the animals.You want me to describe why I decided to adopt the gators? What happened was somebody had taken them out of the lake and tried to kidnap them and keep them illegally. They were confiscated by officials down here and they were brought to the place where I worked. They were in a ten-gallon tank for the first four years of their life, in a dark closet. So nobody knew what to do really do with them, so I just took them under my wing and I raised them. My boss brought them to me––he got them from the FWC, and they didn't know what to do with them.

How do you train them to not kill you?
Well, when I got the gators, they couldn't even move their arms and legs and stuff. So they had to go through two or three years of physical therapy. Due to that, I was really close with them, so I just started training them. If they did something good, I'd give them a reward, and if they did something I didn't like, I would scold them. And they learned to do what they needed to do. They were given seven goals a year, and they accomplished most of their seven goals. still considering it. That's the latest word today.

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It's always sunny with Justin Trudeau, even when it's pipelines vs. Aboriginal rights. Photo via The Canadian Press

In recent months, we've seen a surge in public displays of affection for TransCanada's proposed Energy East pipeline. According to such fanboys/fangirls (a long list including Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, the entire Conservative caucus and Rick fucking Mercer), the 1.1 million barrel/day project would create jobs, generate sweet, sweet export dollars and lessen Canada's dependency on foreign energy sources. It's a "nation-building" project, we're told, one compared by TransCanada's CEO to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 19th century (a pretty tone-deaf comparison given the CPR was built with slave labour and helped trigger the North-West Rebellion).

None of those arguments matter in the slightest. That is, if Canadians want to pretend to care about recognizing the legitimate sovereignty of Indigenous peoples.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged to implement all 94 recommendations contained within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, both of which emphasize the implementation of "free, prior and informed consent" and rejection of the "terra nullius" principle (the bullshit theological argument used to justify settler-colonialism which allowed the federal government to claim "ownership" over Canada's lands). JT has specifically described Indigenous rights as "not an inconvenience but rather a sacred obligation."

But many First Nations and treaty organizations across the country ardently oppose pipelines. Court cases are piling up and Indigenous groups are winning lots of them. In December, Kanesatake – where the legendary Oka Crisis of 1990 happened – pulled out of the review process for Energy East along with another nearby Mohawk community. Many other First Nations and treaty organizations have called for delays or a full halting of the process.

So the fact that politicians and corporate execs continue overtly and implicitly advocating for the completion of Energy East and other pipelines like Kinder Morgan and the Northern Gateway in the midst of such overwhelming dissent serves as a slap in the face to Indigenous peoples, especially when the same people use language like "nation-to-nation" and "reconciliation" on the regular.

Clayton Thomas-Muller, the Stop It at the Source campaigner for 350.org and member of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, emphasizes it's not the fault of the 634 First Nations that the "settler-colonial state of Canada" chose to agree to "nation-to-nation" relationships with them (the latter referring to the concept of two nations coming to the table with equal rights and recognition of each other's sovereignty).

"That's something that Trudeau and the federal government of Canada, and of course the provincial governments who hold jurisdiction over natural resources, need to figure out," he told VICE. "And they need to provide Indigenous peoples with adequate resources to meaningfully engage their populations to make sure they're informed without any meddling of corporate or government entities to be able to effectively say 'yes' or 'no' to a project. I think there's a lot of coercion, a lot of economic blackmail and exploitation of the socioeconomic crisis by both the state of Canada and by the corporations they're working in collusion with."

She's a beauty! Photo via Flickr user Brian Cantoni

It's technically the job of the Crown to consult with Indigenous peoples, but part of that duty has been delegated to the National Energy Board (NEB), a federal tribunal responsible for the regulation of interprovincial and international oil and gas pipelines. It's a controversial approach that the Supreme Court of Canada will continue to mud-wrestle with in future years. Individual First Nations may receive benefits such as revenue sharing, guaranteed jobs and the reclamation of damaged lands. A system exists. But it's horrendously flawed in the eyes of many.

There are good reasons. For one, the NEB has never rejected a project based on First Nations opposition. In recent years, the NEB has also been criticized for draconian rules on oral testimonies, a refusal to allow testimonies from traditional experts, cuts to participant funding (which helps First Nations pay for the pricey process, including hiring of experts and preparing of evidence and reports), abbreviated consultation windows and a failure to ensure companies are complying with conditions. Many lawsuits have been filed against the federal government and NEB by First Nations, mostly recently the joint application by Clyde River and Chippewa of the Thames approved by the Supreme Court. These are not exactly the indicators of a process that respects the rights and desires of sovereign nations.

"It's not the fault of the NEB," notes Eugene Kung, staff counsel for the West Coast Environmental Law's Aboriginal and Natural Resources Law team. "They're not set up to have those nation-to-nation conversations. They're made of engineers and accountants who are very good at a very specific job but I don't think that particular scope includes nation-to-nation reconciliation or some of the concerns that are much broader than an economic or technical analysis, especially when given unrealistic timelines."

To be sure, Trudeau has indicated the NEB process will be bolstered, with three interim board members to be appointed to meet specifically with Indigenous groups. He's also stated the federal government will consult directly with the over 150 First Nations communities impacted by Energy East after the NEB process has been completed via a single ministerial representative.

But such moves are exercises in contradictions. Trudeau recently stated that energy exports will "fund this transition to a low-carbon economy," implying support for pipelines given his commitment to address climate change. According to the Alberta regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the prime minister's sending "mixed signals" about the ability for First Nations to veto pipeline projects. A vice-president for a petroleum industry service provider stated after sitting in on a roundtable with Trudeau in early February that "from what he told us today, he's in favour of pipelines because it benefits all of Canada." Mixed signals indeed.

"There's definitely a lot of posturing by these governments to paint that they're moving in a different direction," says Eriel Deranger, communications manager and member of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (one of the communities hardest hit by tarsands development). "It's problematic because I'm not sure how they would actually achieve it unless they were willing to actually restructure the governance that has been in place for the last century-and-a-half."

Breaking. Pipelines not the most popular. Photo via Flickr user Mark Klotz

It all comes back to treaties. Many have been made with Indigenous groups over the centuries, with the most famous cluster being the 11 Numbered Treaties signed between 1871 and 1921. Debates have raged ever since then about the "true spirit and original intent" of such agreements. Indigenous elders and scholars have often argued that treaties represented a commitment to mutual respect, the sharing of land and resources and not to meddle in each other's internal affairs.

But the Canadian state has essentially interpreted them as agreements of the surrender and extinguishment of land title, which is how Indigenous people ended up on reserves (well, that and John A. Macdonald's sociopathic forced starvation of such peoples in order to "clear the plains" for settlement). It's even more complicated in British Columbia, where most of the province is not subject to treaty.

But this shit gets tricky even within Indigenous circles given contested understandings of nationhood: Hayden King, director of Centre for Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University and member of Beausoleil First Nation, notes that "nation" can refer at any one time to a small community, clan, First Nation, treaty territory or an entire confederacy. Dealing with simultaneously fluid and powerful nations would be inconvenient for Canada (if sovereign, such entities would possess a formalized veto over a pipeline for whatever reason they please: they don't like the colour, it bisects a field that's really quite good for playing ultimate frisbee in, or maybe a spill from it would devastate traditional hunting, fishing and trapping terrain.)

Yet Canada has finally decided, at least in rhetoric, to "reconcile" with Indigenous peoples. King notes that so far, that's just looked like many "politically convenient" meetings between Trudeau and AFN Chief Perry Bellegarde, who Thomas-Muller nicknames "Pipeline Perry." Something's gotta give. Yet the recent First Ministers' Meeting, which rounded up all the premiers to chitchat about climate change and a green economy, excluded any Indigenous leaders from the actual meeting. Sunny ways but only if you're a politician representing settlers, it seems.

"Really, when we're talking about climate change or land and resources, it's provinces that have that jurisdiction and First Nations need to have conversations with the provinces," King says. "There's no better opportunity than at a First Ministers' meeting to have those conversations."

But that relationship's starting to change whether the provinces and country want it or not. Kung – who works with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, which has filed a lawsuit against the NEB and federal government over alleged lack of consultation in the NEB's controversial Kinder Morgan review – says while it's not a legal requirement to obtain consent from First Nations, it's turning into a very practical need: "Across the board, the lack of that consent represents very real legal and financial risk."

In other words, veto power is already effectively in place given recent successes in the courts, although it would help all parties involved if there was more certainly about the rules of engagement. But such efforts cost First Nations in legal fees, money which could otherwise be used to house their communities, provide clean water and fund health services. Plus, there's the salt in the wound of having to sue the nation you signed a treaty with in order to be respected (but that's a whole different story).

Meanwhile, grassroots activism continues building. Judy DaSilva, a member of the Grassy Narrows First Nation (near Kenora, Ont.) and veteran activist, was served an injunction by CN in April 2015 for holding an Anishinaabe water ceremony next to the railway lines passing through her home nation owned by CN. She's also helped organize a blockade against forestry activity in Grassy Narrows since 2002 and has been an outspoken advocate about mercury contamination. Now, DaSilva's gearing up for another fight, this time against Energy East: on March 19, she's hosting another water ceremony adjacent to a pipeline that runs close to her grandfather's gravesite and residential school site where many children are buried.

It's a battle that Thomas-Muller has great confidence that Indigenous people will win: "We're still in a bit of the honeymoon period but it's becoming very, very clear that Prime Minister Trudeau and the establishment, along with the centrist Indigenous chiefs' organizations, are continuing to try to push business as usual," he concludes.

"I think the difference between before and now is that there's a powerful, bonafide climate justice movement in this country led by First Nations people that is standing in the way of their pipeline dreams."

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The Disney catalog is a body of work that serves as a greatest hits collection for cartoon cinema. It's also, unsurprisingly, a canon that appeals greatly to the furry community. If it's an animal, Disney has probably anthropomorphized it. A fish with anxiety disorder? Yeah. A fox in favor of wealth redistribution? Got it. A duck with tits? Check. This month, Disney released its latest offering, Zootopia, a film about a con-artist fox named Nick Wilde, voiced by Jason Bateman.

The fox is one of furrydom's favorite characters, and with Zootopia Disney has continued its longstanding if not-entirely-public relationship with the furry community. Like most Disney animations, it's marketed toward a general audience. But as a caper set within an anthropomorphic metropolis, replete with rabbits and cape buffalo as big-city cops and Shakira as a rump-shaking, singing gazelle, Zootopia naturally fits the furry community's interests.

"We're all about showing what it would be like if we were all different species," said Chip Fox, a veteran furry who works as a defense and space systems architect at MIT. "The movie is a great example of how some things actually work in the furry community."

Disney is at least somewhat aware of furries. Co-director Byron Howard tweeted early Zootopia sketches as he conversed with furries; animator Daniel Gonzales encouraged fans to send pictures of themselves in fursuits; and layout supervisor Joaquin Baldwin pondered the Zootopian presence of "smoothies" (for those of you outside furry culture, that's the concept of anthropomorphic characters obsessing over humans).

Moreover, BuzzFeed recently uncovered an email from Disney marketing hire Allied Integrated Media that asked Furlife, a furry Meetup group, to post pictures of themselves using the hashtags "#Zootopia" and "#ZooU." But Disney's relationship with furries goes beyond social-media marketing schemes, spanning decades before Zootopia's development.

Although anthropomorphic creatures have appeared in literature since at least the time of Hesiod, several centuries before Aesop's Fables, furry culture started gestating during the 70s. "During the proto-furry period, there was an art movement recognized by art historians as the lowbrow/pop surrealism movement," said Octavia Wolfe, a furry and art historian who says she used to design logos for Disney. The influence of lowbrow underground cartoonists can be found in furry art's inherently countercultural focus as well as its occasionally bawdy humor.

According to Wolfe and furry historian Fred Patten, the definitive starting point for furry culture came in 1976, with the founding of Vootie. An underground publication that grew out of the sci-fi community, Vootie marked the first time a magazine carried original, furry-related comics created by a fan base as opposed to being a commercial production. "It was devoted to the concept of original funny-animal creations rather than the fans creating their own imitation Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Felix the Cat, and already commercially established comics," Patten wrote in an email. Among these original creations was "Omaha" the Cat Dancer, which became one of the first comics to incorporate explicit sex between talking animals into its storylines.

The "proto" label fell off in the early 80s. In an article titled "Retrospective: An Illustrated Chronology of Furry Fandom, 1966–96" Patten writes that former US Air Force graphics specialist Steve Gallacci provided a major breakthrough for the niche when he entered the 1980 World Science Fiction Convention's art show with a painting of Erma Felna—a dark-haired feline serving in the extraterrestrial military. By 1983, she'd become the central character of Albedo Anthropomorphics, an anthology that is often credited with starting the furry comic-book genre. That same year Marc Schirmeister began the amateur comics zine Rowrbrazzle, which featured illustrations of talking animals—the first publication to feature them exclusively—and its success was one of the first markers that a furry community existed, according to Patten.

"The reason that a lot of furries will say that they're misrepresented in media is because a lot of media has a tendency to focus on the sexual aspects," Octavia Wolfe said. "With a lot of furries, that's not really the case."

The furry community grew, eventually making its way into animation. Schirmeister worked on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and one episode of Batman: The Animated Series. His Rowrbrazzle colleague John Cawley, A.K.A. Topfox, went on to have a hand in producing An American Tail, the Garfield and Friends series, and a few episodes of Dexter's Laboratory. As for specifically Disney-related works, Rowrbrazzle alumnus Chris Sanders is known for co-directing Lilo and Stitch, while fellow alumnus Shawn Keller did animation work on The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Chip Fox believes there may be more furry animators working at Disney (when asked about furries at the company, a representative for Disney declined to comment). But it's hard to get an exact estimate since animators tend to distance themselves from the furry community. Some may have outgrown it, but others simply want to protect their careers. There's a rumored studio bias against furries because of the belief that it's a sex-focused culture. While NSFW furry art certainly exists, it makes up only a fraction of the community's artwork.

"The reason that a lot of furries will say that they're misrepresented in media is because a lot of media has a tendency to focus on the sexual aspects," Wolfe agreed. "With a lot of furries, that's not really the case."

The prejudices and stereotypes haven't stopped the furry community from growing its global membership and footprint in mainstream culture. Overall, Zootopia's significance—and its parallel with furry ethos—is bringing legions of fans together.

"This is the first time I have ever seen furries en masse go to see a movie," said Wolfe, who's been a furry for 14 years. "It's a huge impact, and furries are acknowledging it by attending it."

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Andi and Beni 1982

This article originally appeared on VICE Alps

In 1982, Zurich-based photographer Barbara Davatz photographed 12 couples. Six years (1988), 15 years (1997), and 32 years later (2014), she did the same, with the same people—only each time some of her subjects had formed new relationships. The resulting series, As Time Goes By, is a long-term study of interpersonal relationships, age, and style.

As Time Goes By is currently on display at the Fotostiftung Winterthur in Zurich, so I got in touch with Davatz to chat about her life's work.

VICE: How did you come up with the idea for this project?
Barbara Davatz: Back then, Zurich was bubbling. Young people were fighting for their space, which resulted in the Zurich riots. I didn't join the movement actively, as I was very busy with my work, but I felt very sympathetic to that cause and toward the people who were pushing for it. I also appreciated their creativity in sprayed façades, posters, print material, newspapers, and slogans.

This work isn't a direct result of what was happening in Switzerland at the time, but it is indirectly connected. Originally, I wanted to focus on the statement people make with their appearance—you can use the word "styling," though I don't really like it. The way we present ourselves, our clothes, haircuts, and accessories say something, about us and about how we see the world. When people pair up, you see that statement become twice as strong. That's what fascinated me.

How did you find your subjects?
It all started with Kurt and Nicola. They're friends of mine. I found they looked fascinating together. Both had blond crew cuts and almost always wore black from head to toe. Their clothes were homemade or second-hand—just great. They were my inspiration to make portraits of people who communicate a world view—a lifestyle, through their appearance as a pair. So I started looking for more couples who did the same with their looks.

How did you choose them?
The main criterion was that they should all have an unusual and interesting look—so much in terms of their build and face, but also their clothes. They shouldn't follow mainstream fashion, since they should have a "message" that was being strengthened through duplication. Take for example Beni and Andi, two of the "Bewegler" . Their torn clothes were a conscious statement against the "Establishment." That was the message they conveyed when they walked down the street.

Beni, Charlotte, Lou-Salomé, and Natalie 2014

And how did you come to photograph Beni and Andi?
We were all standing in a long queue at a grocer's in Seefeld. One of them was wearing a fabric coat; the other a leather coat with the lining hanging out and a torn jumper. I remember that Beni's green jumper was fixed with red wool. I had a little time to observe them and thought, These two would be great. So I gathered my confidence and said: "Hey you two! I'm a photographer working on a series of portraits—would you consider being photographed for it?"

They were quite skeptical at first—after all, I'm twenty years older than them. But they invited me to their flat two days later, and we had a sort of interview. There was coffee, and I showed them my portfolio. The chemistry was just right, and shortly after, we took this wonderful double-portrait. One of my favorite pictures to this day.

Was it always your plan to photograph people over such a long period of time? Not necessarily. I was a professional photographer and was really busy—my art was more of a sideline thing. One day, Nikolaus Wyss and Walter Keller came by my studio looking for photographs to publish in their magazine, Der Alltag.

Walter looked at the portraits and said, "If you ever want to expand this series, I would definitely publish it in the magazine." I had thought about continuing before, but my work left little free time. The interest those two showed and the idea that the pictures wouldn't just be landing in my archive were incredibly motivating. I got to work immediately and fifteen new photographs came into being.

Didn't the voyeuristic component of the project increase over time?
Yes, there's undoubtedly an element of voyeurism to the project. It's a conceptual portrait series; people are just who they are and look at the camera. And of course, the aging process is so evident that it's hard for the series to not feel intimate.

How has your relationship with your subjects changed over time?
Over time, I got to know a lot about their lives of my subjects. Whenever we set a date to meet up, we first had long phone conversations to catch up. And every time I would think, "Wow, how funny life is. All these things have happened since the last time I spoke to this person."

My subjects have become a kind of family to me, but they probably mean more to me than I do to them. Over the years, every time I heard news of them, each time I would spot something in the newspaper—say one of them made a film or an exhibition or won a design prize—I would collect the articles, invitations, tickets, or reviews. I keep an archive of what these people have done and experienced, like a proud mother. In many ways, this series is not about the times these people ended up in front of my lens but about the times in between.

Barbara Davatz—As Time Goes By, 1972 to 2014 is on show at the Fotostiftung Winterthur in Zurich from the Feb­ru­ary 27 to the May 16, 2016.

Scroll down for more pictures.

Nicola and Kurt 1982

Kurt and Nicola 1988

Barbara and Nicola 1997

Anna and Kurt 1997

Barbara and Pius 2014

Nicola and Angela 2014

Anna and Beat 2014

Elias and Kurt 2014

The Vega+. Photo via Indiegogo

You might have seen the announcement of the Vega+ a few weeks ago. If not, it's a handheld ZX Spectrum, basically, allowing you to relive the glory days of 1980s gaming with about a thousand pre-loaded, gaudily colored, and once-slow-loading games you half-remember from when you were probably a barely developed fetus. At the time of writing, the Vega+ has more than tripled its Indiegogo target of £100,000 —people really want this thing in their lives.

But the Vega+ is just another gadget, a toy, a time-filling distraction in the long line of stuff that comes out aimed solely at nostalgia glands. And it's the piece that's broken this particular camel's... opinion spine? What I mean is, the Vega+ annoys me. It's not just the announcement of a new, portable time machine back to when games came on cassettes, meaning a younger sibling could tape over Chuckie Egg with that week's top ten singles, that's got me wound up—it's that people, real-life living and breathing human beings, are so ready to fund such a thing.

I'm just going to say it: games today are better than games used to be. But here we have the recycled re-release of a massively out-dated computer, albeit redesigned as a handheld to allow for on-the-shitter sessions, that people are chucking money at instead of newer, way more interesting video game projects. And face it: how many people who buy the Vega+ are really going to use it regularly? The vast majority of Spectrum games are best off remaining in the past, and I'm going to guess that 95 percent of purchasers quickly realize this and place their new portable on a shelf, never to be touched again in anger.

Do you remember those 101-in-1 cartridges that you could pick up on overseas holidays, from the dodgy electronics shops just off the market square in that Spanish town you don't recall the name of? Of course you do. And do you remember how many of those games you ever bothered to play more than once? Again, absolutely, because it was two. And that's exactly the same sort of ratio between gold bullion and grotesque bullshit you'll find with the Vega+'s thousand games.

Because to come back to my earlier point: most old games are shit, frankly. Load up anything from a so-called "classic" computer or console (by which we mean long since supplanted) and, more often than not it will seem shite when compared to one that came out last year. It will be something cobbled together by an idiot in their bedroom for the Spectrum. It will be another fucking platformer for the SNES. It will be something that tries and fails to use 3D in anything approaching a decent way for the PSone. It will be anything on Dreamcast that isn't the meager handful of games that were actually any good for it.

Unchecked nostalgia is a disease, one that afflicts us in all walks of life, but one that I see being taken financial advantage of the most in the world of gaming. It's not just the Vega+ that's guilty of taking cash to reserve you your memories in a rather tepid new way; there's also the RetroN 5, the endless re-releases of Mega Drive games for all of your consoles and handhelds, this piece of trash.

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Related: Watch 'Street Fighter V: KO Dreams', co-created with Capcom

In 2012, SNK (Playmore) got on the nostalgia train with the Neo Geo X. The aim: to rinse a substantial chunk of cash from gullible gamers who really couldn't do without Fatal Fury. The reality: the handheld console was cheap and nasty, and many who parted with their money for it soon remembered just how little fun a whole bunch of Neo Geo games actually were. Super Sidekicks aside, obviously.

It's the actual games, too, with everything being re-skinned and re-done to work on new consoles and computers, making me share in the Old Man Yells At Cloud opining of Dan Griliopoulos' opening paragraph to this Stardew Valley review. To paraphrase: can no game just be left to die?

Your history has been monetized, your reaction of unthinking positivity has pound signs littered all over it, and the short history of gaming is one that is going to be endlessly recycled because of it. Fuck it, the thing prints money—so why not do it like that?

I'm not totally down on nostalgia, of course. You can see that here, where I wrote about great SNES games that you should play, right now. And yes, I appreciate that some of you might now be branding me a hypocrite, but here's what I'm trying to say: just because it's an old game, perhaps on a "classic" system, by a "legendary" developer, doesn't make it a good one.

The Neo Geo X (photo via Amazon)

The problem comes from people reacting positively to a new veneer being lathered atop some old junk just because they remember something from the time when their critical faculties were somewhat lacking. Sorry to break it to you, reader, but Altered Beast was shit. Go back and play it now, realize the truth.

Your memory plays tricks on you, so when some new snake oil salesman comes along saying, "Hey, buy this miracle retro product and all your dreams will come true," the lizard part of your brain that craves the warm embrace of the past lights up. So you buy it, you buy into it, and you fuel the continuation of this endless cycle of blinkered nostalgia.

I don't blame you. I've fallen victim to it, too. Though admittedly I don't think anyone fell prey to the rebranded Commodore phone, as that was just bloody silly. A cheap Android phone branded with a dead name and some free emulator slapped on it?

The Commodore PET includes a Commodore 64 emulator called, amusingly enough, VICE, and another to handle Amiga games. Photo via commodoresmart.com

But we can get through this—we can be pickier about what we allow ourselves to tint up all rosy-like. We can really sit down inside our heads and think, "was the original Zelda really the best in the series, or am I just telling myself that because I totally lost touch with the series by the time the quite obviously superior Wind Waker came out?"

We can download our emulators and our collections of ROMs and, when we excitedly tell our friends, correct them when they say "that's amazing!" and demand to have a night where you all sit there playing all the classics. Because they're thinking of shit games, and they're thinking their childhood memories equate to actual quality. They don't. We can be more discerning with our retro choices, like by playing nothing other than WWF No Mercy.

Blind nostalgia is a disease. A curse on us all for being so prone to uncritically accepting what childhood memories tell us as fact. A luxury we could do without. "Old" doesn't mean "good"—it can, but it's not an automatic thing. And when it comes to something like the Vega+ or the Neo Geo X, it is actively harmful.

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For many petty criminals, going straight is no easy task. Imagine you've been sent to jail for selling pills or stealing a car; you're legally obliged to tell prospective employers that fact, which sets you back a spot in an already competitive job market. Knocked back, the allure of falling back in with your old criminal peers and doing another job for a bit of easy cash gets stronger and stronger.

But what about more serious offenders? It's one thing reintegrating back into society after a sentence for a pub brawl or a burglary, but how do people go about reforming after helping to run a major drug ring or taking part in protection rackets? How do such heavy-duty criminals manage to leave their former lives behind, given the fact the odds are so stacked against them?

To find out, I got in touch with five former criminals: ex-Mancunian gang member Darryl Laycock; John Lawson, who was a member of The Nomads biker gang; Bradley Welsh, who was once described as "a teenage godfather who ran the streets of the Scottish capital"; Peter "Wildman" Mahoney, who was an enforcer for drug lord Shaun "English Shaun" Attwood; and Stephen Graham, who was involved in a variety of serious crimes until serving time for manslaughter in Jamaica.

JOHN LAWSON

Anything immoral I did, I would try to justify by saying, "I'm not such a bad guy overall." This meant that I managed to still class myself as a decent bloke, in spite of living a life of crime. I thought I was an alright person because I didn't beat my wife up, wasn't a drug addict, and was providing for my family. That justification allowed me to have a mentality where I would read my kids a bedtime story, kiss them goodnight, and then put on a balaclava, pick up my shotgun, and hold someone hostage who owed my client money.

I first realized that I wasn't actually all that great a guy when The Sun described me as an "enforcer for Glasgow's gangsters." I hadn't seen myself like that until that point, and thought, 'Is that really who I am?' I didn't have an immediate change of heart or anything like that; it was just a case of acknowledging that I was a wicked man. I was serving five years for extortion at the time, which gave me a lot of time to think about things. In those contemplative moments when you're in your prison cell at night, you really begin to analyze yourself.

The major turning point came when I went to a Bible group in Glenochil high security prison. My intention was to steal the biscuits the pastor brought in, but I burst out in tears while reading the lyrics of a hymn called "Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord" and spent the following night thinking about all the kidnappings, extortions, and beatings that I'd carried out. The next day, my friend gave me a Bible and I read something from the Book of Ezekiel that said if a wicked man turns away from the wickedness that he's committed and does what is just and right, he can still be saved. After reading this, I looked in the mirror and saw myself for the animal I'd become. I surrendered my life to Christ in that prison.

It wasn't easy to turn over a new leaf. In jail, people tried to take advantage when they realized I'd become a Christian. When I was eventually released, some of the people I'd previously worked with asked if I wanted in on crimes they were committing, which I said no to. Fortunately, nobody attempted to intimidate me back into my old line of work. I think that was partly down to my reputation.

When I left The Nomads, which happened way before my imprisonment, the main guy said, "Look, you can't just quit like that without any repercussions." I told him that I'd blow his house up if he and his mates tried anything. I had previously been asked by someone to sell some plastic explosives that he'd stolen from the army to a guy in the IRA, so they knew it was a serious threat. The knowledge of things like that probably made people wary of trying to coerce me into doing things, although now my life has totally changed, and I get my buzz from preaching the word of God in some of the toughest prisons on the planet, rather than inflicting pain and suffering.

DARRYL LAYCOCK

When I was in jail, a member of my family made me promise to turn my life around. I decided there and then that I was going to change for the better when I was released, and have never looked back. To be honest, I haven't really even been tempted, because a promise is a promise.

When I got out of prison, I was banned from Manchester because I was labeled as a high risk of harm to people living there. My mom had a heart attack shortly afterwards, and I was only allowed to visit her with a police escort. I was also banned from mixing with around 30 known associates, who the police believed were involved with gangs or criminal activity. Some people might have seen all this as an obstacle to getting on with their life, but I viewed it as a consequence of my own actions. If I hadn't committed crimes and been involved with gangs in the first place then I wouldn't have had such strict conditions placed on me.

I couldn't get work at first because I had to live in a bail hostel and return at regular intervals to sign in. That was intended to prevent me from going back to Manchester. Because I didn't have a job, I started volunteering at an organization called CELL instead, which stands for "Choices, Education, Lifelong Learning." I volunteered for nine months and was then given an opportunity to work part time as a volunteer coordinator, which I did. I've been in employment ever since, and still do work for CELLS from time to time five years later.

Fortunately, I'm no longer at risk from my old enemies, and there's no danger of them dragging me back into violence. I actually work with some of the people I used to have trouble with, educating young people about the consequences of violence. The gang problem has subsided in Manchester nowadays. Lots of the people who used to be involved have now grown up and moved on with their lives. Many of my former associates are now legitimate businessmen.

I get more of a buzz from doing the positive things I do today than I ever did from negative stuff. I also value my life, which I didn't before. A lot of people are stuck in a cycle of crime all their lives, so I'm pleased to have managed to break free. I've done over 12 years in prison overall, and been locked up in 19 different jails, some of which I've been in four or five times. I'm glad to say I've left all that behind and would never want to be stuck in that revolving door again. Back in the day, I thought there was no hope for me, but now I've realized I was wrong. Giving up crime is as easy as you make it, and for me, it was as simple as making a promise and sticking to it.

BRADLEY WELSH

Bradley with his daughter

I first made the decision to pack crime in while lying in a straitjacket in a prison cell after having the shit beaten out of me by the wardens at just 19 years old. I was on remand at the time for firearms, extortion, and menacing an estate agent, and facing between ten and 15 years in jail. The authorities had placed me in solitary and put me in the straitjacket because I'd kicked off when they wouldn't allow me to see a visitor who'd traveled for two hours to get to the jail. I lay there thinking to myself, 'This isn't the life for me!' I also realized that I was putting my family through shit for no good reason. What had I gained from my crimes? Money? At the end of the day, you can't buy freedom.

I ended up getting found not guilty for the firearms and extortion charges, but was given four years in prison for menacing an estate agent. It dawned on me that even though I earned a small fortune when I was committing crime, if you added up all the hours I was going to spend in prison, it still wasn't worth it. The grief I had inflicted on my poor mom was the worst thing of all. I vowed that I was never going to do anything that would cause her that much strife again.

I'd been a prominent figure in Hibernian FC's Capital City Service football firm before going to jail. That meant that a lot of people in the prison system who followed other teams hated me because of my reputation. It resulted in me getting moved from jail to jail to avoid trouble. I ended up in Dumfries prison, where there was a warden called Ian Black, who was the captain of a Scottish boxing team I'd been in three years earlier. He got me into training, and I later moved to an open prison, where I was allowed out to box in competitions.

Boxing gave me a focus, and I later went on to win the British title. The energy that I had once put into crime was now being used for something productive. Not everybody was convinced of this when I was released back onto the streets, though. A lot of people didn't seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that people can change, and assumed that I was still the same. Luckily, I went to live in the States to pursue my boxing, which enabled me to get away from all that. I eventually moved back to Edinburgh, where I'm now chairman of the Amateur Boxing Association Scotland, which runs 20 different gyms around the country. I can be found at Holyrood Boxing Gym or Castle Boxing Gym, using sport to provide young people with an alternative to getting into trouble. My advice to anyone who is considering getting involved in crime is that it's a mug's game. I was lucky to have stopped living that life at a young age, and am very glad I did.

PETER 'WILDMAN' MAHONEY

Wildman (right) with Shaun Attwood after their release from prison

In 2002 I was arrested for my involvement in a drug ring in the US and ended up doing seven-and-a-half years. To be honest, prison didn't phase me when I first got locked up, and definitely didn't make me want to go straight. For the first five years I got into fights all the time, and thought, 'I'm not bothered if they want to give me extra time. They can go for it.' Then I got a visit from a lady from the British Embassy, who was very nice and polite and treated me like a human being. She made me realize how much I missed the pleasantries of the outside world. That was the turning point when I decided I didn't want to end up behind bars again.

I was very fortunate to have family and friends who supported me when I got out of prison, which is one of the reasons I stayed on the straight and narrow. I was aware that if I went back to crime, it wouldn't just be hurting society; it would be hurting my loved ones as well. One of the main obstacles I faced was that I couldn't get a job. Luckily, my dad took me under his wing. He's a kitchen fitter and cabinet maker, and showed me the ropes. I now work a few days a week with him, and am enjoying being a normal person. I only work part time, earning £150 a week, but it's enough to give me self-worth.

I got no help from the government at all to find a job, and can understand why some people who've been involved in crime in the past might find it difficult. They tried to send me on courses that seemed designed to make a mockery of me. The last one they sent me on was a personal hygiene course that taught me how to brush my teeth and cut my nails. That kind of thing isn't helping anyone, and just made me feel angry.

I've been tempted to handle situations with violence a few times since my release, when female friends have told me their boyfriends have beat them up. I considered going 'round and doing the boyfriends in, but then thought, 'Hang on a minute, if I do that, I might end up getting locked up, and then my family will be left to sort me out.'

Drugs have never really tempted me that much since I got out. I used to take so many of them that I should be dead ten times over. I even carried on smoking crystal meth after I had a stroke and lost control of half my face, using the part of my mouth that still worked to suck the glass pipe. Prison probably saved my life in that respect. Nowadays I smoke a bit of weed and have a few beers, but that's it. I'm content with living a quiet family life.

STEPHEN GRAHAM

I decided to leave crime behind because I realized the selfishness of my attitude while I was incarcerated in Jamaica for manslaughter. It wasn't only me being punished, but also my family, who had done nothing wrong. Until that point, I hadn't really taken the time to look inside myself, but serving that sentence gave me a lot of time for reflection. Before that, I had known the things I did were bad, but hadn't come to a realization deep down within me, and there's definitely a difference between the two.

In order to reform, I had to learn to truly love myself and concentrate on my passions. That helped me fill the void that had been partly responsible for me doing crime. I'd always loved writing when I was younger, so I started using it as a vehicle to express myself while I was in prison, penning books and poems.

When I was released, I was offered quite a bit of money to get involved in some serious crimes, but said no because I'd made a concrete decision to turn my life around. I'd put together a plan of action to better myself while I was behind bars, and was intent on sticking to it. I had no qualifications because I'd been kicked out of four different schools when I was younger, so I enrolled in community college and did an access course the following year. I passed with the highest mark in the class, which enabled me to go to university. The fact that I was able to do this despite lacking any qualifications at age 31, and having spent almost nine years in a Jamaican prison, shows that it's never too late to get an education. I got a degree in sports medicine and am now a personal trainer. I've since gone on to work with top national and international athletes.

Related: Watch our new documentary 'Walking Heavy—Britain's Most Notorious Former Criminal'

I also typed up and self-published the books I'd written in prison; created a book and documentary examining the issues of knife and gun crime; and started mentoring young people. I started delivering talks about crime and antisocial behavior to schools, pupil referral units and universities, and hosting various fun projects and programs in the community. Doing all these things has allowed me to use the drive that motivated me to commit crime for positive purposes. What a lot of people don't realize is that to be on the streets selling drugs actually takes the same kind of drive that can be channeled into legitimate pursuits. I harnessed that determination, and put it to good use.

Some people might have viewed me as being in a gang when I was younger, but I also came to the realization that there are no gangs in Britain; just people who are involved in street culture. I don't like to label groups of young people as gangs; many of these youths are just people who are yet to find their true passion in life. Fortunately, I'm no longer in that boat, and have been able to get myself into a position where I'm able to help others. It's far more rewarding doing what I do today than breaking the law ever was, and the fact that I've been involved in every crime that you can think of means that I understand the youth's mentality and can help to change it.

Thanks to Shaun Attwood for putting me in touch with Wildman, who appears in two books Shaun has written: Party Time and Hard Time. Darryl is currently involved with the charity One Minute in May, and John has a book coming out entitled If A Wicked Man.

Follow Nick on Twitter.

Photos by Jörg Brüggemann

In August 2015, just as the refugee crisis was really starting to command global news, photographer Jörg Brüggemann traveled to the Greek island of Kos to document the first of the interactions between Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani refugees with British, Swedish, and German vacationers there.

His juxtapositions make light of a heavy and significant subject matter. Eastern desperation and Western luxury are presented next to each other head on, with no middlemen in the form of politicians or the media for people to hide behind. As Greece is hit with a third bailout, repetitive Grexit scares, and a refugee crisis to deal with, the margarita-sipping Europeans from the north look on, tucking in gyros and stepping over the washed-up life jackets of war survivors.

We caught up with Brüggemann to talk about the Western adage that "ignorance is bliss" and how traditional forms of photojournalism are desensitizing us and ruining everything.

VICE: Hi Jörg. You went to Kos to see the first interactions between refugees and tourists. How much communication did you see between the two groups?
Jörg Brüggemann: It was a very special situation. There isn't much tourism in the places where refugees land on Lesbos, where many of the refugees were arriving to, so Kos was fascinating. These two groups of people never collide so directly with each other. They shared a small space, so there was definitely communication—not always verbal, but obviously people were looking at one another and trying to understand what the others were doing there.

Did many tourists try and help the refugees?
Some tourists were approaching refugees, offering water and giving toys to children, but most of the help was from the people who live on Kos—people who ran the hotels and restaurants—and Greek anarchist and leftist groups. There were also tourists who signed up voluntarily to help there. There's this one photo of a Dutch tourist holding up refugees standing in line; he's holding them back pretty forcefully. He signed up to help give out food and shampoo and whatever was needed.

Although there are heavy juxtapositions in the shots, I tried to show that the refugees and the tourists were sharing the same space and aren't actually all that different. You can see the refugees using the island in the same ways as the tourists; they have the same needs and behaviors—you see them lying in the sun and passing time together waiting for their registration. You see young refugees using their life vests because they can't swim, in the same way that you see young tourists using rubber rings. I even took photos of refugees taking selfies, just as the tourists were taking selfies on the beach. It's the same thing; they just grew up in a fucked-up place where there's war right now, but we're very much the same, and it was really important to me to show that.

The photographs seem to demonstrate a Western ignorance—a lack of empathy comes across. Was this your intention?
That's definitely, totally it—and also who is to blame for this lack of empathy? If you just consume things through the mass media, you're obviously not directly exposed to them, so it's very different when you're presented with something like the refugee crisis head-on. It gets more emotional; you can relate to the people all of a sudden.

The tourists in Kos reacted to the refugees in different ways. A lot of tourists had booked their two-week holidays way in advance. They'd worked the whole year to save for it, and they'd been looking forward to it, so when they got there and saw all the refugees... I mean, a lot of these people had seen what was happening in Kos on the news beforehand, so a lot of them probably thought, I'm having this two-week holiday, and I don't want to be confronted with this. Which I believe is perfectly fair. But if you didn't want to see the refugees, you could book a hotel that was a half an hour's drive away on the other side of the island, so you wouldn't be exposed to it.

On the other hand, there were people who saw it on the news and were interested, so they came to Kos to have a look and to see what was going on. And then there were obviously these people that said, "I'm here, and I want to do something," and volunteered. It was interesting; in a way, it's a kind of a metaphor for how the world is responding to all this chaos.

Was there much competition with photojournalists capturing the refugee crisis for the news?
Yeah, it was actually really surprising to me. I got up very early one morning to wait on the beach for the boats to come in, and there were eight other photographers there. I stood alongside them and photographed the boat approaching, but there was so much more happening there than they all seemed to realize. So when the next boat came, I took a step back about twenty meters to photograph the whole scene. I wanted to show how the media is the third player in this whole thing. The photographers were actually a little angry at me for including them in the shot because they're very traditional in the sense that photojournalism shouldn't interfere in the scene. But it does, and I think they're kind of lying to themselves when they say they're not. When there is a group of photographers shooting the arrival of these refugees, it obviously has an impact on these people coming over on the boat. Some refugees actually jumped off the boat and ran away because they thought that those people waiting on the beach were the police.

The type of crisis photography that has traditionally showed the screwing over of people—while I definitely think it's important and has to be done—is, I think, having less and less of an influence or impact on people. We've been exposed so much that it's just another photo of a suffering family or of a dying child, and you just click through it because it doesn't relate to your life.



How is your work different to this?
It's more relatable—you could be that tourist on the beach. It's lighter than the crisis photojournalism but it still grabs you at the neck and draws you in, and that was something that I found very interesting.

Check out more of Brüggemann's work at his website.

Photos by Elizabeth Renstrom

This article appeared in the March issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

In the age of on-demand-all-streaming-instant everything, we all have our comedy cures, the clips we have bookmarked for when the mid-afternoon melancholy rolls in and we need an injection of joy straight into our bloodstream. Here's my prescription for a blue funk: a GIF of Hannibal Buress dancing down the rampway at Grand Central Station in a suit and tie, doing a jerky cabbage patch motion with his arms and a wobbly shuffle with his feet. Even though the clip lasts only a few seconds, Buress's daffy strut (which comes from a scene in Broad City, when the gang rushes to get to a destination wedding) has brought me near endless delight. This has much to do with the element of surprise: Buress's character, a typically restrained dentist named Lincoln—Broad City's one and only straight man, in all senses of the phrase—rarely breaks the goofball barrier. If Abbi and Ilana are always turned up to ten, Buress keeps Lincoln simmering at a constant three; seeing him cut loose is so rare it's like a shock when it happens. Some of the most generous comedy comes out of deep restraint, and Buress knows this—he keeps so much to himself that when he finally does give something more, it feels cathartic.

I felt this same slow-burning generosity when I met Buress for lunch at Ramen Yebisu in Williamsburg, where he lives, on a recent gray afternoon. On the kind of day that zaps you of your life force just by walking around in it, both Buress and I arrived at the ramen place chilly and low-energy. But then, the break: We sat down, and my recorder immediately stopped working. That sickly pall of "oh shit, this is a nightmare" broke across my face. Buress, sensing the panic, did the kind thing. He laughed. And when Buress laughs, as he does often during his own stand-up sets, he does it with his whole face and a full-throated cackle. We were going to be OK.

However, as I learned throughout our lunch, the clouds I felt hanging over Buress extend a bit beyond just a touch of seasonal-affective disorder. On the one hand, he has reached a point in his life, and in his career, where things are going better than ever: On February 5, the day after his 33rd birthday, Netflix released Comedy Camisado, Buress's new hour-long stand-up special. For a comedian, a Netflix release is the new Big Dream: thousands of comedy fans streaming in glorious unison, all within reach of their bongs and bags of Doritos. As far as stand-up goes, Buress, who started out in his native Chicago, has reached the upper echelon—the only thing he has left to do is play Madison Square Garden (a goal he intends to achieve, by the way).

Almost overnight Buress became the face of comic vigilante justice, a role he never asked to play.

Then, there's his television work. He is one of the best parts of Broad City—a show full of best parts—and he chews up every scene of the absurdist Eric Andre Show as the laconic sidekick who will put up with anything. Last year, he debuted Why? with Hannibal Buress, his own show on Comedy Central, a major victory after four previous television development deals had not panned out. He is also making the transition to film; in December, he killed in Daddy's Home, and he appeared in the indie action flick Band of Robbers, which saw wide release in January. And he has more IMDb credits coming: He has a role in the Baywatch film, starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, but he told me he doesn't take his shirt off. He travels everywhere with a DJ and a roving posse of friends and musicians, packs big rooms across the country, and sometimes uses "an Uber for jets" to get from place to place should he miss a flight (which he does, a lot: "I miss like, two out of every five flights I am scheduled for," he told me). When we met, he had just come back from Tokyo, where he played a last-minute show that sold out in less than a day.

And yet, there's always the other hand. As Buress fiddled with his chopsticks and tried to spear slippery dumplings ("Man, I'm really struggling with these. Might have to call in a fork."), I asked him how excited he feels on the eve of so many big developments—and was surprised when he admitted to feeling less happy than he had been in a while. "I think I was my happiest right before my other special came out," he said, a bit wistfully. " I just remember being in good spirits. I did this podcast called Champs with Neal Brennan and Moshe Kasher, and I just remember being in such a good mood when I did that. I think it was fewer responsibilities, a lighter time."

What he didn't mention in this spiel, and what I am even loathe to mention here, because Buress seems so keen on moving past it, is that March 2014, when Live in Chicago came out, was also seven months B.C.: Before Cosby. If you haven't heard about the connection between Hannibal Buress and Bill Cosby (and have been living in a cave... in which case, are you OK?), here it is in brief: In late October 2014, grainy footage of a joke Buress had been telling on the road about Cosby's history of sexual assault hit YouTube. The bit began with Buress chastising Cosby for telling young black men how to behave when he has no real moral ground to do so: "Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby... You leave here and google 'Bill Cosby rape.' It's not funny. That shit has more results than 'Hannibal Buress.'" The internet circulated the footage in a frenzy until cable news picked it up, at which point the story tipped into actual real-world results. Women began coming forward. Cosby lost an NBC show, and Cosby Show reruns disappeared from cable. Almost overnight Buress became the face of comic vigilante justice, a role he never asked to play. He certainly has more Google results now.

When I asked him about googling himself, he pulled out his phone and clicked one of the results, an article claiming he has a secret Zionist agenda. "I did a gig for the Young Jewish Leadership in Chicago last month," he said, referring to a performance for the Jewish United Fund's Young Leadership Division. "And here is one of those goofy-ass conspiracy sites that thinks I'm some secret agent."

All the conspiracy theories that sprang up in the wake of the Cosby affair still amuse and shock Buress. "People think I got my TV show because of that," he said. "But that would be impossible. The TV deal was locked in July 2014 and that came out in October. But after that, I almost didn't want to do my show anymore."

Buress pressed ahead despite his reservations with Why?, a half-hour showcase that was part man-on-the-street interviews, part variety show—but admitted that his heart wasn't fully in the eight episodes he made. He decided against returning for a second season. "It was uneven, unfocused," he said of the show. "I was having angst. It was just having this weird media attention that I didn't like."

This is the catch-22 of having a bit go viral in the era of modern stand-up. The way the business is set up, it only has room for a handful of stars at any given time. There are the working comedians you've heard of—Aziz Ansari, Amy Schumer, Louis CK, Chris Rock—and then there is everybody else. It's a profession full of hoofers and grinders, playing showcases and guesting on podcasts and trying to fill a room and get on a marquee until they break big. Buress, because of his extremely rare stand-up talent, was already on the brink before any of the headlines happened. But it's understandable how the attention can affect a person on the road to success.

As he slurped down his miso ramen, Buress reflected on the fact that he almost quit doing comedy altogether in the wake of Cosbygate. He worried that the notice he was getting was more about the web traffic than his actual act. "People interject it unnecessarily," he told me. "I remember seeing a review of Daddy's Home that called me 'Cosby outer Hannibal Buress,' and I was like, really? But it is what it is." So Buress is moving on. As with his gleeful little jig in Grand Central, he keeps finding new ways to harness the electric power of abrupt surprise; he'll be soft-spoken, low-key, and measured during a set, ambling slowly across the stage, and then all of a sudden, he'll explode, delighting his audience. In that wedding episode of Broad City, Buress's character stops inside the train station, looks up at the celestial ceiling paintings, and says, "Holy shit, this place really is majestic." He is a vessel for unexpected revelations; you often don't know what he is going to say next, but you know that it will be incisive, startling, and true.

Of course, Buress still nods to the strange turn his life took in late 2014, and likely will for a while. He knows it has become funny. His Netflix set includes a bit in which he talks about how distrustful he is of strangers. He punctuates this riff with, "Did Cosby send you?"

His other new material, which contains his trademark mixture of incisive social observations and absurdist revelations, focuses more on his fears about aging and moving past his hard-partying 20s (though he told me he still goes out until 3 or 4 AM every night when he is out on the road). His main criticism of his own act now is that he appears too sweaty doing it—"I don't know why I look particularly sweaty in this special," he said. "Watch me get older and sweatier."

This is an apple. Not a sex toy. Photo via Flickr user andeecollard

A BC elementary school teacher has been found guilty of professional misconduct after breaking into his workplace at night to watch porn and have phone sex, according to a document posted by the education ministry.

Jason Coghlan is of one of Britain's most notorious reformed criminals who was jailed for armed robbery before finding an even more lucrative pastime: studying law and founding a legal firm in Marbella, Spain.

In our documentary Walking Heavy,VICE gained intimate access to Jason's life over two years, witnessing the rise of his law firm, JaCogLaw, which caters to the British gangsters and prisoners of Spain's Costa Del Sol. While it appears that things are looking up for Coghlan, the chaos of his old life is never far away, as a gang feud in his native Manchester threatens to unravel his new peaceful existence.

Dr. Chakwas from Mass Effect—an inspiration to all who serve with her

The other week, VICE ran a compact guide to video gaming's biggest dickheads. Now, we get slammed in some corners of the internet for being "down" on video games, and it's easy to see why if you only ever read the stuff that's being critical—even when, as in the case of the dickheads piece, we've got our tongue stuffed so far into our cheek that its practicality tickling an ear lobe.

Truth is, the vast majority of VICE Gaming articles are celebratory, full of hope for the entertainment industry's fastest-moving medium, something that we should all be involved with, whether that's through high-spec PC rigs or by spending ten minutes with a match-three puzzler on our smartphones while riding the bus to work. We wouldn't be doing all this—there are now over 800 articles in the VICE Gaming section—if we simply wanted to talk shit. That wouldn't get us anywhere.

So, welcome to another positive piece—a flipside, if you will, to the dickheads list. Just as we ran a "things we love about video games" article alongside another explaining what we hate about them last year, here we're highlighting five characters that are the absolute opposite of complete and utter dickheads. (I say "we," it's just me doing it. IMO, and all that.) These are the real heroes of video games—the good guys and gals, the helpful NPCs who'll do anything to help you get ahead. Bless them, for while they are merely AI drones for the most part, each has found a special place in the hearts of gamers worldwide.

Tenzin helps Nathan recover. Screencap via YouTube

TENZIN (from 'Uncharted 2: Among Thieves')

The Uncharted series' leading man, Nathan Drake, made the dickheads list, primarily because while he's rarely short of a wise crack, and some people love that half-tuck, he doesn't half run about the world royally fucking over ancient ruins and dismantling the remains of forgotten societies. In Uncharted 2, though, he looks like he's bought it: gravely injured and lost in the snowy Himalayas, Drake lies down to die. Except! He doesn't! Obviously! And the reason why is Tenzin. Sweet, kind-hearted, sturdy, gentle-mannered, nobody-will-ever-understand-you-like-I-do Tenzin.

This Tibetan explorer, who doesn't speak a word of English and whose vocal contributions to the game aren't even translated in subtitles—it simply reads, "speaking Tibetan" whenever he opens his mouth—pulls Nathan up and drags his dying ass to a his home village. What follows is one of the game's most memorable sequences, where a recovering Drake mixes with the residents as he follows Tenzin through a wonderfully alive settlement, kids laughing at him and older villagers politely acknowledging his presence, all set against stunning mountain scenery. No guns, no violence—just an American in an alien environment, but one that the player wishes they could spend a little more time in.

Tenzin stays by Drake's side as his adventure continues, eventually taking out mercenaries who lay waste to his home, in pursuit of the series' leading treasure hunter. The two share a bond that transcends language, and Tenzin's strange faithfulness to this out-of-his-depth foreigner is amongst the most affecting elements of Naughty Dog's continuing action franchise.

THE POSTMAN (from the Zelda series)

It's not uncommon to get a little lost in the Zelda games, from time to time—especially if you've put the game in question down for a little while. In some Zeldas, though, the Hero of Time has a little assistance in the form of this postman. In the newly HD'ed Twilight Princess, for example, this none-more-dedicated mailman pops up regularly to deliver letters to Link, spelling out where to head next. He can be found all around Hyrule, always posting, always dashing, always on time. This guy, he's a carrier extraordinaire. And he can even see through the outward appearance of who he's delivering to, recognizing Link when he's in his wolf form.

The Zelda postman—his real name, we may never know it—appears in a raft of franchise entries, dating back to 2000's Majora's Mask. But his most memorable contributions definitely occur during Twilight Princess, as he finds his way to incredible, should-be-impossible locations, like the Cave of Ordeals, simply in order to hand over a letter. Honorable and dependable, truly as diligent and efficient as they come, the postman is one of Hyrule's greatest assets, and an inspiration to us all.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE talk film with director Ben Wheatley

VIVI ORTINIER (from 'Final Fantasy IX')

Diminutive magic-man Vivi, a black mage, is introduced as a timid playable character, someone who doesn't actively want to tag along with Zidane et al. But after a little gentle persuasion, he joins the FFIX gang and ultimately proves himself a more-than-capable magician in battle, casting enemy-engulfing flames and his exclusive black magic abilities.

Raised by an adoptive grandfather, Quan, but essentially orphaned before we meet him, Vivi's story in FFIX is one of amazing, and saddening, self-discovery. He realizes that he is, in fact, one of many—a clone, who isn't expected to live beyond a year or so. He gets over his natural depression at this situation, and continues to travel with Zidane's party, a more than useful ally to have around, especially when paired with Steiner for collaborative attacks.

After the game's end boss has been vanquished, players see a sequence depicting the hero characters assembling to watch a play, but one key member of the cast is absent. It appears that time caught up with Vivi. "My memories will be part of the sky," reads the narrator, Vivi himself.

EVERY ONE OF THE ELITE BEAT AGENTS (from 'Elite Beat Agents')

Okay, this is a bit of a cheat—but since you're sort of the Agent, as you play, I guess the hero in Elite Beat Agents is you. This rhythm-action game for the Nintendo DS is just the single greatest use of the system's stylus, a tap-and-drag-along adventure in which the titular squad of life-bettering (and, eventually, world-saving) operatives defeat distress and devastation by... singing and dancing, basically.

I don't know of any other video game where successfully hitting cues in time to a cover of Earth, Wind & Fire's "September" leads to a mother chasing away rain clouds in order to take her son on a picnic. Or where nailing the beats in a pretty-close-to-the-real-deal take on Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat" saves a family-run motor company courtesy of some sweet ninja moves. And the "YMCA" stage—help a gnarly sea captain find the sunken treasure of his dreams—is just one of the most sublimely, subversively brilliant creations in video gaming history.

Some gaming characters save the world with guns. The Elite Beat Agents achieved it with The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash". I know who the real winners are, here.

DR. KARIN CHAKWAS (from the Mass Effect series)

Did you let her die at the end of Mass Effect 2? For shame, because Karin Chakwas is the most selfless member of the Normandy's crew, and an almighty asset in the battle against the Reaper menace. Her natural altruism enables the fighters amongst the ranks to go about their business with the best possible support—she could have stayed at the Citadel, or even gone to Earth, to establish her own practice; but instead, she travels the stars as Commander Shepard's most essential confidant. She reveals in the second game that she's not in this for the Cerberus paramilitary group that brought Shepard back from the dead only to send him into more danger; she's doing this to fight the evils in the universe, regardless of the cost to her own life.

Dr. Chakwas enjoys a drink, and Shepard can knock back a brandy in her company, if he or she so wishes. She is very much a professional of few distractions—a little courtesy here and there will usually suffice. When she does reveal her vulnerabilities, she apologizes for them, unnecessarily but endearingly. In ME3, she can re-join the crew, if you decide to allow it, and you should—you get to drink to your adventures again, in a moment of calm between Chakwas continually patching up the walking wounded.

In the same way that "Bones" McCoy was—and remains—such a pivotal part of the Star Trek universe, so Dr. Chakwas' contributions to Mass Effect strike right to the heart of the series' overarching story (so far). She's usually all steel on the outside, unbreakable, committed to her responsibilities; and yet even though we, the players, hardly see her compared to the likes of the attack-squad-available Miranda and Liara, she's one of the most believably three-dimensional characters on show, resistant to cliché, and relatably stiff of upper lip. Don't let her die, you savages.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

All photos by the author

Hello Comic Bookers,

How are you? I am fine. I am also Nick Gazin, VICE's art editor and comics curator/expert. This is my weekly column in which I review and discuss comics, zines, art books, and anything that is notably great or awful.

In high school, my dad and I would listen to this record a lot. Harvey Comics—who produced the comics about the supernatural children Casper, Wendy, Hot Stuff, and the giant idiot duck, Baby Huey—also made a few records that would get packaged with multi-packs of their comics. This is the only one I've heard, but this is a pretty solid song if you ask me. If you have a copy, I'm looking for one. Please contact me through VICE.

Here are reviews of five things.

1. Don't Worry
By Anna Haifisch (Perfectly Acceptable Press)

To me, personally, Anna Haifisch is one of the greatest artists of this time we live in, right now. I love everything she makes. Her comic series, the Artist (which ran on this website), is one of my favorite creative works ever made. I've read each strip dozens of times, and each panel makes me feel good. I've cried at how much of myself I recognize in her work. I think of specific panels and dialogue and become instantly happy.

With her economic line, limited color palettes, and simple, lanky limbed characters, she has encapsulated every feeling and theme of what it means to be an artist.

This book collects a few different series of single-composition images. There's a smoking frog surrounded by buckets of house paint casually brushing an abstract sculpture. In a section called "Kalifornien," a character paints an angry cat while looking at a sunset. In a section called "Oh Oh," a frog comforts a crying or sleeping frog in the New York subway while waiting for a train under a large ad for Tropicana. Quiet moments full of meaning are rendered with seemingly effortless efficiency. If the point of art is to make you feel like you're not alone in your feelings, then Anna Haifisch is my idea of a great artist.

Buy Don't Worry.

2. Ghoulanoids
By Derek M. Ballard (Drippy Bone Press)

Derek did some comics for VICE a long time ago and also is one of the many people I've hired who works for Adventure Time.

A dead body is on a gurney while a woman vacuums in a modern house with elements drawn from different perspectives. She's interrupted by a policeman who wants her to check out the dead body, out of which we see multiple creatures emerge. One of the creatures says a strange poem, and the comic ends.

It's not a satisfying story, but it's not really about the literal story. It's a series of beautiful moments, drawings, and abstract words.

Derek also made an accompanying bag of "Ghoulanoid" toys.

Buy Ghoulanoids.

3. Howard Nostrand's Nightmares
Edited by Craig Yoe (IDW / Yoe Books)

A lot of people love Jack Davis's drawings, but nobody made a career out of his aping his style like Howard Nostrand. Nostrand's style makes you kind of wonder what was on his mind. He even did the cover art for a bootleg MAD board game with a fake Alfred E. Neuman on the box. There are also comics in here that look very similar to comics from MAD's early color period, especially "Prince Violent!" and Melvin Mole. What's especially funny is that towards the very end of the book is a comic called "What's Happening at... 8:30 PM" that feels equal parts Jack Davis-ripoff and Will Eisner-ripoff.

Considering how unoriginal Nostrand was, these comics are still a lot of fun to look at. It makes me a little sad that someone this skilled didn't try to establish a more unique style. But life is sad and not all artists make the bravest choices. This book is thoroughly worthwhile no matter what.

Buy Howard Nostrand's Nightmares.

4. Wuvable Oaf
By Ed Luce (Fantagraphics)

Wuvable Oaf is about a big, hairy, bald gay guy with a beard who loves kitties, is withdrawn and shy, and has a crush on a surly little man who sings in a metal band called Ejaculoid. If you love Gengoroh Tagame, then you probably already have this book too. If you don't, you should. Although this is a comic about big, giant, hairy gay guys, it's more like Archie than porn and should be enjoyed by all. Let this oaf into your heart and this book onto your coffee table to let people know that you know what's up.

Also, read comics about the titular oaf every Friday on VICE.

Buy Wuvable Oaf.

5. Fight: A Chapter Book
By Sam Spina

This is a little Xeric grant winner from a few years back about a weird-looking creature named FIGHT who just loves to beat people up. He loves it as a kid, and he loves it as a professional boxer. While in the ring, he is introduced to SUPER FIGHT, a lady version of him. They run to each other and French passionately before she proceeds to kick the shit out of him. She goes home and gives birth to a child named FIGHT 64, who immediately beats her up. The original FIGHT monster is living in squalor and trying to survive. The lady FIGHT asks for supplies to heal herself. Meanwhile, FIGHT 64 is beating every living creature he can to death. Without going into detail about how the story plays out, the final image is FIGHT punching out a ref while holding a championship belt aloft.

This comic surprised me several times. I never knew where it was going or what was coming next and that's rare. Sam Spina's drawing style is fun and simple.

Buy Fight.

See you next week! Follow me on Instagram!

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skimore

Read: We Asked an Expert What Would Happen if Donald Trump Actually Became President

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Forecasting Service—a branch of the company that publishes The Economist—has named Donald Trump's potential victory in the upcoming US presidential election one of the top ten risks facing the world today.

The forecast specified that there was a "moderate probability" of a Trump win and a potential "high impact." It went on to note that Trump's "hostile attitude to free trade and alienation of Mexico and China in particular, could escalate rapidly into a trade war," and that "his militaristic tendencies towards the Middle East (and ban on all Muslim travel to the US) would be a potent recruitment tool for jihadi groups, increasing their threat both within the region and beyond."

Trump earned the same score, a 12, as the "rising threat of jihadi terrorism," and ranked as a higher threat than the UK deciding to leave the European Union. The top threat facing the world, the report said, was the economic collapse of China, which scored a 20.

"Although we do not expect Mr Trump to defeat his most likely Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton," the report concluded, "there are risks to this forecast, especially in the event of a terrorist attack on US soil or a sudden economic downturn."

Both UBC (pictured, above) and UVic have been criticized for their handling of sexual assault cases. Photo via Flickr user abdallahh.

When a student at the University of Victoria finally got her hands on redacted documents recounting the school's investigation into her sexual assault complaint, she says she was furious. "It was contradictory and victim blaming," she told VICE. "It took a couple days to calm down."

Those documents came with a letter warning her not to discuss the details with anyone except family, police, lawyers, or a professional therapist. The letter also said failure to maintain confidentiality could result in the university pursuing disciplinary actions.

The student, who requested anonymity, said the school's response to her case failed to protect her and left her silenced. The incident, which happened last November, was determined not an assault because the student didn't say "no" despite her assertion she refused physically.

"What we're seeing is institution mismanaging cases and failing the students who have experienced the harm," said Kenya Rogers, director of external relations for UVic's student society. "There's no policies in place and no process for survivors."

As many campuses across Canada take heat for not having formal sexual assault policies, the premier of BC is taking action to make sure the province's schools get their shit together and protect survivors of sexual assault.

"A rapist's best friend is silence," Premier Christy Clark told the legislature Wednesday. "A rapist's best friend is the failure of authorities to recognize a complaint when it comes forward and fail to act on it... We need to do more to protect women on campus from sexual assault because these life-changing, traumatic events don't need to happen."

Last week, Andrew Weaver, the leader of the BC Green Party ,introduced a bill that would require campuses to write and maintain policies to prevent sexual violence. Though the BC Liberal government originally dismissed the idea, Clark said yesterday she looks forward to working with him to "either pass this bill or amend it and pass a similar version."

The move comes as campus assaults are making headlines from coast to coast. At UVic, one student is accused of sexually assaulting four women, and UBC grad students say the school was slow to act on reports of a serial attacker. The latest investigation out of Brock University found a history professor gave a student alcohol and attempted to force sex on her. The student was warned by the school to keep silent, even though the prof continued teaching up until two weeks ago.

Though the bill may not be passed in its current form, Rogers stressed the need to force campuses to bring students and communities to the table when writing these policies. Earlier this month, Ontario passed a similar bill that requires student involvement and a review every three years.

After their dragging heels on this for months, BC universities now say they're eager to support the government's move. A UVic spokesperson said the school had already been participating in the BC education minister's push to create formal guidelines on sexual assault. Now that BC is taking a legislative approach, they're happy to work with the government on that too.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter

Texting or enjoying a night at the opera? Photo via Flickr user Joi Ito

If opera isn't already dead, the form is definitely dwindling in popularity. These days we can hardly find the energy to raise our eyes from the tiny screens three inches from our faces in order to watch watch larger screens, to say nothing of dragging our asses down to ye olde theater for something as anachronistic as the opera.

But don't throw away those lorgnettes just yet—a former Buddhist priest–turned-performance artist based in Chicago is looking to redefine the operatic experience with his new performance, Father's To I've To Father's, an opera that is performed entirely through text messages..

The project is the brainchild of Jake Harper, who goes by the moniker Banrei. Harper was formally trained in composition, and after a stint in New York City doing experimental sound-based performances with Soundwalk Collective, he packed his bags and flew to Tokyo, where he spent three years living and working in a Buddhist monastery. It was there that Harper found the inspiration for what would eventually become Father's.

Related: How to Make Opera Less Boring

At its most basic level, Father's is the story of a person trying to "remember his father's dance." It will be "performed" over the course of two weeks in May by way of two daily SMS messages delivered to audience members. The opera's music will be provided by the vibration of the audience members' own phones, and the messages themselves will be a pastiche of straight narrative, images, video, and a poem composed of syllables culled from the audience members' names using a computer program modeled after a form of ancient Chinese rhymed verse.

Confused? I know I was, so I skyped Harper and his fiancée/producer, Claire Molek, so they could break down what the performance is all about.

VICE: So why a text opera?
Jake Harper: A text-based opera is something I've been working on and trying to express for a while now. I was drawn to the intimacy of being able to reach out and touch the audience, to be in this close proximity of someone's intimate personal space. Each iteration and each piece of text is touching the person physically through the vibrating of his or her phone.

Claire Molek: It's an opera delivered by text, so already we're subverting this idea of the very pretentious, sophisticated operatic space and putting it in a text message. By funding something that is so sophisticated on Indiegogo, I think that also calls into question the idea of art as a commodity and being conscious of your patronage. We're entering into this conversation about the transparency of the work because all the audience members are participating in it. The work itself has its own space, but it's being populated by the names of all these participants and the people participating are also paying for it and making the work possible. The whole cycle to me is really beautiful.

When I first heard about your project, it really reminded me of Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty, where the boundaries between actor and audience are broken down to engage the viewers in a more visceral way. Who or what inspired this opera's techniques?
Molek: John Cage comes to mind for me, in terms of influence, but I don't really have any reference for this. Jake was a Buddhist priest for three years in Japan though, and that was important.

Harper: That's where a lot of the elements come from. In the Zen Buddhist ceremony, the percussionist uses a woodblock called a mokugyo, and each time they hit it, they chant one syllable of sutra. Each hit on the mokugyo, or each chant of the syllable is very abstract and can also be representative of the entire work because it's a stream of sonically identical events. But opera comes from this lineage that is characteristically complex in terms of the rhythms, melodies, or harmonies of the piece. I was interested in what would happen if you flatten these elements through a series of identical bursts of vibration or ringtones, like with the mokugyo and sutra chants.

What made you want to take these very old cultural relics—the mokugyo and sutras—and combine them with modern technology?
Harper: The mokugyo and the chanting of the sutra were the things I studied while living in a monastery. They were part of my everyday life. When I'd leave a ceremony and get a text message, it struck me how similar the experience of these chants and receiving a text message was. In connecting them, it made me feel that every communication I received was part of this sacred whole, this four dimensional extended ritual brought about by communicating with people in different places. That was the link between the two things.

What's the story being told in Father's To I've To Father's?
Harper: I don't want to say too much about what the story's about. I want people to discover for themselves what the story of someone trying to discover his father's dance means. The text itself is very much wrapped in the language of great American bards, which I also extend to people like Charles Olson, who is one of the Black Mountain poets, and the Chinese poet Hanshan, whose name directly translates into English as "Cold Mountain." So in the performance, we talk about the main character going on a pilgrimage to Cold Mountain. There's also a connection with this mythic poet's sidekick Shide, who is usually depicted as carrying a broom, and this imagery also comes up a lot in the performance. So the story involves interplay between these two characters in this conceptual space that takes place over two weeks.

OK, but you can't have an opera without music. How does that come into play in your performance?
Harper: Music factors in in two ways. The first way is with the ringtone burst and what's possible when you strip away certain elements of sound and create things of short duration. The composition of someone's ringtone—whether he or she has it set to vibrate or a little musical thing—becomes the mokugyo hit every time a message is transmitted. Each text you receive becomes representative of the whole piece.

The second element of that, since we are attaching multimedia to the text message, that's like using sound to deliver other sounds. So now you have this multidimensional experience of sound. In a traditional opera, you're sitting there for four hours, and it's moving forward whether you had a chance to explore a certain passage or not, and when it's over, it's over. But what's unique about the short duration bursts is it gives you the opportunity to explore the experience outside of linear time.

The audience is pretty intimately involved with the performance, right? Each audience member's name is literally helping construct the piece.
Harper: Yeah, so we created a code using Python based on the mechanics of classical Chinese rhymed verse. It's taking the syllables of the audience's names and rhyming them together following the rules of classical Chinese rhymed verse. There are a few reasons I chose this. In the first place, Hanshan, the main character, wrote in classical Chinese verse. But it's also important to me to allow people to exist together in the same way, so there is this kind of mutual acknowledgement of the presence of other people. They will be receiving these messages, and while they can't necessarily feel someone else's phone vibrating, the poem they'll be looking at is this abstract poem made using the phonemes of their names. If one person was removed from the work, then that would necessarily change the text that people are receiving. So you're reading this poem and forced to acknowledge the presence of other people in the work.

So imagine being in an opera and someone's phone rings during the piece. This creates a barrier because you realize somebody is being connected to someone that's not with the mutual participants of the space you're in, with somebody in a virtual space. This does the opposite of that.

What do you hope your audience will ultimately take away from the performance?
Harper: For me, the most important message is about compassion. I feel that we take for granted that human beings are sacred. We're all bodhisattvas, or buddhas, or Christs. There's something sacred about being a human being, about being a sentient being. Any form of human interaction—whether it's someone getting punched in the face at a Trump rally or making love—just being mutual participants in a common experience involves an act of compassion and love that is undeniable. It's a way of embracing all human contact as a rare and sacred form of expression.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Buy "tickets" to Father's To I've To Father's here.

Follow Daniel Oberhaus on Twitter.

We're embarrassed for everybody in this photo. Screenshot via Twitter.

Just when you thought Justin Trudeau couldn't be more of a Disney hero caricature, two American dudes literally got on their knees and begged the Canadian Prince of Meme to step into the US presidential race.

As seen in this sad, sad video, the guys asked Trudeau, "Could you run for president here?" while the PM was getting smoked meat at a New York City cafe.

Because that's not in any way legally possible, nice guy Trudeau had to decline.

"It's very simple, I'm not American born," he said, clearly wary of entering into a contest with a known Birther like Donald Trump.

But the dudes, who probably weren't at all thinking about how many social media views this story would get, just wouldn't let it go.

"All our guys are so bad, they're terrible," said one, while the other chimed in, "They're boring, weird, you have to settle for them." Pretty apt descriptions for the current Republican and Democratic candidates, respectively.

Shit got awkward when the two grown men got on their knees and continued pleading with Trudeau to throw his hat into the ring.

"I don't know if you noticed, I actually have a job and it's a pretty good one," Canada's panda-loving camp counsellor-in-chief said with a grin, which is the Trudeau equivalent of putting his foot down your throat.

Canadians really, really don't need another reason to feel smug and superior to our neighbours down south, but now we've got one. Thanks, 'Merica!

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

A successful marriage proposal Photo by Victor Grigas via Wikipedia

There can't be many things more mortifying than having your marriage proposal rejected. Look up "failed marriage proposal" on YouTube and there are endless videos of people being shot down, each of them as hard to watch as the last. For some reason, a huge amount of them seem to happen either at shopping malls, next to large monuments, or at sporting contests. This, of course, compounds the already deep, cavernous sense of despair: Nobody wants to be consoled by a football mascot in a fucking tiger costume.

What these YouTube videos don't offer is a chance to ask the people involved what the experience actually feels like. I wanted to find out, so I tracked down three people who've either had a proposal turned down or turned down a proposal and asked them to tell me all about it.

(Names have been changed)

ARTS 'N' CRAFTS DISASTER

Illustrations by George Yarnton

My girlfriend and I have now been together for just over a year and I've always been very clear that I have no interest in getting married, or having children. I'm 29 and she's 25 and she seemed to go along with that. In October of last year, though, she started get a little bit "nesty"—she told me that she loved me and began to start talking about moving in together, which I found all a bit too much to handle.

The conversation died down for a while until February 29. It was a Sunday afternoon and my girlfriend invited me to this bracelet workshop she was doing. When I arrived at the workshop, which was a room filled with middle-aged women and colored thread, my girlfriend was working away, making these bracelets. I sat down opposite her and she passed me a box of stuff so I could make my own bracelet. The box contained a handful of small letters to fix on to the thread. Looking into the box, I realized that the letters spelt out "Will you marry me?"

My eyes widened immediately. I really didn't want her to embarrass herself in front of a group of women in loose, floor-length dresses, so I started putting the letters on the bracelet in deliberately in the wrong order. I was making words like "owl" and "lily" instead, but she stopped me and started hysterically crying. She knew I was intentionally not taking it seriously in order to avoid having the conversation about it.

I felt really uncomfortable. Not just because I'd just been proposed to, but because it happened via the medium of a handmade bracelet.

Then we went for a walk, and after she'd stopped crying she tried to pin it on the fact that it was the 29th, supposedly the "one date a year where women can propose to men." She told me that if you say no, the man has to purchase the woman a pair of silk gloves. I thought it was totally bullshit, but there's a Wikipedia page with it all on there. Then she told me it was all a joke. But if it was a joke I don't see why she had to cry so much. I've always been pretty clear that I never want to get married; I primed her to that fact.

After it happened I just went home because I had work in the morning. We began awkwardly texting the week after it happened. I didn't see her for three days afterwards, and during that time I thought to myself, As long as she doesn't bring it up, everything will be fine. This is still pretty fresh, so we're still working things out. She's a really nice girl but it's a bit weird that this has happened.

To be honest, I've had a very sheltered life up until now, so having an embarrassing teen movie proposal that I had to turn down in front of a room full of primary school teachers was all pretty terrible. It's probably the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Alex, 29

READ ON BROADLY: Planning Viral Wedding Proposals Is an Actual Job

A TEAM GB UPSET

When I first started going out with Tom, I was completely starry-eyed. He was ten years older than me, completely gorgeous and had been an Olympic athlete for Team GB . On paper he was my perfect man, but the reality was entirely different. Although he was in a team that won gold at the Olympics, he injured himself just before the last race, so wasn't in the lineup to get a medal. That moment stuck with him throughout his life and gave him this massive complex about being in control and having to prove himself. After two years, the difficulties in our relationship became too much, so I decided to call it quits.

Some time later my dad told me he'd received a message from Tom on Facebook, saying, "I need to talk to you about your daughter." The next day I woke up to a call from Tom saying he was in Canterbury. I was so hungover that I couldn't quite process what he was saying, but I made out that he wanted me to meet him at the cathedral. I couldn't quite believe he was there, but I slumped out of bed and got in the car to go and meet him.

When I got to Canterbury Cathedral, Tom was waiting for me outside this incredibly beautiful building with a bottle of champagne and a bunch of flowers. Before I had a chance to say anything he got down on one knee and proposed. He gave me a necklace—not a ring, a necklace. Suddenly a mob of tourists rushed towards us and began taking photos of him down on one knee and me looking like I was about to throw up everything I had consumed the night before. I was mortified. I asked him to get up off the floor and explained to him, in front of a group of Japanese sightseers, that we were not even together, let alone about to get married. Tom had convinced himself that proposing to me would fix all our problems.

We left the cathedral and I walked him to the station, but the trains weren't running so he had to get on a coach replacement service home.

Emma, 25

DEAD CAT DILEMMA

I first met Claire at a club in London called KOKO. The night I met her she was wearing a luminous bra and I was wearing a T-shirt with an alien on it. As bad as it sounds, she asked to borrow one of my glow sticks and that's how we met.

At the time I proposed, Claire and I had been together for six years. We'd just moved in together when she began saying that she felt trapped in her job and wanted to leave. In the most middle-class of ways, she found an advert in the travel section of the Guardian that said you could pay £1,000 to go sailing for a year. It was mad. They teach you how to sail and provide all your lodgings for a grand. She was obsessed with going; I think she thought sailing would solve all of her problems. I was weaker at the time and pretended to be fine with her going to live on a sailboat for a year. Obviously I was shredded up inside, but I couldn't go with her because I'd just got a new job.

During her time away we'd only Skyped now and again because she was literally out at sea in the middle of nowhere. Every time we spoke she seemed less and less interested in coming back. As a result of her disinterest, I became fixated on the idea that marrying her would be the way to get her back. It became an obsession of mine and I booked a flight to go and meet her in Tahiti.

In the weeks leading up to my trip to see Claire, her childhood cat that I was looking after at home started dying on me. I thought, Holy fuck, the cat can't die while she's away—there's no way she'll marry me! So for months I had to medicate the cat, and I was paying a lot of money because there was no insurance. The vet eventually said it was going to cost two grand to save the cat, and there was no way I could spend that—all my money had gone on the flights. So I had the cat put down—which also costs money, by the way. I chose to bury it in a mass grave because it was free. It was really bad.

The day after the cat died, I boarded my plane to Tahiti, but the flight was severely delayed. I started to get this sort of stress rash, and before I knew it I had literally broken out in hives. Then I missed my connecting flight in Paris so had to stay in a shitty Ibis hotel.

Finally I arrived and spotted Claire in the arrivals hall. She looked stunning: bronzed skin and shells in her hair. I, on the other hand, was pale, covered in hives, and had lost about five pounds because of stress. That night, I convinced myself that I had to propose to Claire. As we met at a neon rave, I bought over 2,000 glow sticks—glow sticks that got me stopped at customs—to make a huge heart on the sand.

I brought Claire outside to see my glow stick love letter, but she knew what was happening and stopped me before I could say anything. She began this whole monologue about how things weren't right between us and that she wasn't sure about our future. I swallowed the sadness. At that moment I was completely crushed.

I was sitting in Tahiti bawling my eyes out. Then I thought, Fuck this, I'm going to have a good time. But it turned out that because of a plane strike we were stranded for another two weeks on the island. It was awkward as fuck. We ran out of money so we had to stay on the fucking boat that she'd been sailing around on in this tiny little cabin. A week in she confessed to me that she'd been sleeping with someone else on the boat the entire time.

Ben, 29

Follow Amelia on Twitter.

Donald Trump, who grammar in political speeches is just below 6th grade level, say experts. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

US News

American IS Supporter Convicted
Arizona man Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem has been convicted of conspiring to support Islamic State in an attack at a "Draw Muhammad" contest in Texas last year. Kareem, 44, was found guilty of transporting firearms with the intention to commit murder, as well as conspiring to provide support to the terrorist group.—CNN

Trump's Grammar Just Below 6th Grade Level
An academic study analyzing political speeches for "readability" found Donald Trump's grammar was "just below sixth grade level." The Carnegie Mellon study found most candidates using language typical of students in grades 6-8, "though Donald Trump tends to lag behind the others."—The Washington Post

Air Force General Fired for Sleazy Emails
A senior Air Force general has been fired after an investigation found sexually suggestive emails sent to a female Lieutenant Colonel to be "unprofessional." Lieutenant General John Hesterman, in charge of air campaigns in Iraq and Syria, was found to have "compromised his standing as an officer and gentleman."—ABC News

City Gives $125,000 to Women Arrested While Naked
Chandler City Council in Arizona will pay $125,000 to a woman who said a police officer illegally entered her home and handcuffed her in front of her daughter while she was naked. Esmeralda Rossi's claim was supported by the cop's body-camera video evidence.—USA Today

International News

North Korea Fires Missile Capable of Reaching Japan
North Korea has again defied UN sanctions by firing at least one ballistic missile, which flew 500 miles before hitting the sea of its east coast, according to South Korea. If confirmed it would mark North Korea's first test of a medium-range missile, capable of reaching Japan, since 2014.—Reuters

EU Pitches Deal to Turkey
EU leaders will pitch their migrant plan to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu today after finally agreeing a joint position. The proposed deal would see all migrants traveling to Greece from Turkey sent back, in return for financial aid and visa-free access to Schengen countries.—Al Jazeera

Saudis to Scale Back Yemen Campaign
A Saudi military spokesman said that its coalition will scale back operations against Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen, one year after fighting began. Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri said that "the major fighting in Yemen is nearing an end," but air strikes may continue.—The Guardian

Cambodia Leader Denies Buying Facebook Likes
Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has denied buying fake likes for his Facebook page, after the opposition leader accused him of boosting his popularity artificially. Sen's page has 3.2 million likes, but the biggest single group of likes came from India.—BBC News

Rapper Offset (middle) and the rest of Migos. Photo via Wikipedia.

Everything Else

Migos Member Offset Arrested
Offset, real name is Kiari Cephus, has been arrested in his hometown Atlanta. The Migos rapper was pulled over after police officers discovered he was driving on a suspended license, and reportedly spent one night in jail.—Rolling Stone

Hidden Rooms Found at Tutankhamun's Tomb
Radar scans on the walls of Tutankhamun's burial tomb have revealed the presence of hidden chambers containing unidentified metal objects. One theory is that it is the tomb of Queen Nefertiti.—National Geographic

Astronauts Lift Off to Attempt Space Record
NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are set for launch today on a mission to the International Space Station. Williams will try to set a US record by spending 534 days in space.—Florida Today

Teacher Fired for Watching Porn in School
Darren Hankey, an elementary school teacher in British Columbia, was found guilty of professional misconduct after breaking back into his school at night to watch porn and have phone sex.—VICE

Done with reading today? Watch our new film 'Walking Heavy: How Britain's Most Notorious Reformed Criminal Is Helping Offenders Navigate the Law'

A 2011 US Marshals mugshot of Whitey Bulger after his arrest. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Life Inside is an ongoing collaboration between The Marshall Project and VICE that offers first-person perspectives from those who live and work in the criminal justice system.

From mid-2014 through early 2015, I was in prison at the United States Penitentiary Coleman II in Florida. That's where I encountered James "Whitey" Bulger.

What people enamored with Whitey's tale don't seem to grasp is that along with running Boston's Irish mob, eluding capture for years, and killing multiple people, he was an FBI informant who allegedly* snitched on his competitors. That's grounds for getting whacked.

Of course, I knew Coleman II was a so-called special-needs prison—a "safe" facility where informants, former cops, ex-gang members, check-ins (prisoners who intentionally put themselves in solitary confinement to be safe), homosexuals, and sex offenders can all, supposedly, walk the Yard freely. At regular federal lockups, these types of men are in danger of being beaten, stabbed, or strangled to death.**

When I first saw Whitey, I didn't realize he was Whitey. He looked like a pale, white-haired geezer in a wheelchair. Probably a chomo , I thought. I couldn't see him robbing a bank, killing people, or any other respectable crime.

Sid, an ex-Aryan Brotherhood member with a bald, tattooed head, mustache, and toothless mouth, was pushing Whitey's wheelchair around, hovering over and hoarding him. I figured Sid was extorting a chomo for money—no big deal.

But later that day, an ex-Nazi Low Rider stopped me to say, "Hey, I heard Whitey Bulger's over there. That's crazy!"

When Sid wheeled him to dinner that first night, many inmates commented on the new arrival. "Look, that's Whitey Bulger!" they exclaimed. But nobody went up to him to ask for his autograph or strike up a conversation. The guy was frail, and his posture shouted Stay away.

Despite Whitey's clear desire to be left alone, when he wheeled past my table out of the chow hall that night, I told him, "Nice running, Whitey!" He broke out into a broad, wolfish smile.

Thirty-some days later, I was put in the same unit as Whitey with only one cell between his and my own.

Whitey didn't seek out conversation—I only saw him smile twice. Most of the time, he sat in his wheelchair by the TV with an intense look on his face. Sometimes, he slipped into an old-man nap while he was out at recreation (which is something he never could have done at a normal prison: your gang required you to be fully dressed and ready to fight at all times.)

One day, when Whitey napped on the rec yard, a dope fiend and hustler known for selling used shoes snuck up on him and pretended to try and remove his shoes. "Hey, stop that!" I yelled. "He ain't dead yet." We all laughed, and Whitey went back to sleep.

Back on our unit, Whitey eventually got around to telling some stories about his life, often producing documents and photos he said backed them up. He claimed that way back, when he was at Alcatraz, they "experimented on him" with LSD.

Lawrence told me that Whitey often had night-terrors and would wake up screaming. Whitey never told any of us what was haunting him and would have scowled at the suggestion that he talk to the prison shrink.

Now that I think about it, Whitey's general attitude and demeanor reminded me of a kid I knew, Mikey Rhodes, the son of a poor, dysfunctional family. Mikey had been abused as a child, and all he did the rest of his life was scowl. Six years after I met him, he was murdered and dumped in the Mississippi River.

That's all Whitey was to me: a man with a past and a scowl.

Nathaniel Lindell is a 40-year-old former inmate of the federal Bureau of Prisons. He committed a murder in 1996.

*During his trial, Bulger and his lawyers denied that he was an FBI informant.

**Coleman II did not respond to multiple requests for confirmation about the nature of the facility.

Niall (Bernardo Méndez) , Liam (Dylan de Jossineau), Louis (Brandon González) and Zayn (Israel Carreño). We didn't get to meet Harry (Rudy Jaramillo) because he was ill. All photos by Katia Tort

This article was originally published on VICE Mexico

"I'm looking for boys who look like Niall, Liam, Harry, and Louis," read the ad that was posted with a photo of One Direction on Facebook, three years ago. That was the beginning of Imitators Top—a Mexican agency representing impersonators of some of the biggest pop stars of our time: Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Five Seconds of Summer, and, of course, 1D.

Israel Carreño, 23, and his girlfriend Karla Magaña founded the company in 2012. They first came up with the idea of putting together a 1D tribute band after watching one of the group's music videos. "We realized no one else was offering that kind of service in Mexico. I had some savings that I wanted to invest in something, so we decided to put together a 1D wardrobe," recalled Israel, when I met the group at the center of Mexico City a couple of weeks ago.

In addition to running the company, Israel impersonates Zayn Malik, who left the band in 2015. "Following orders was never my thing, so I decided to become my own boss. But in order to be a boss, you have to be the best at your job. I had to learn to be a good impersonator, so I could show others how to do it," he went on.

After going through hundreds of Facebook profiles of friends and acquaintances, Israel and Karla found four guys they felt could become the Mexican 1D. The next step was filming a video in Mexico City's Bellas Artes, in an attempt to raise their profile.

A mom will hire us without telling her daughter and we'll just show up at the party as a surprise. People laugh because they know us from the memes and then they have a good time. They call us Juan Direcshon.

But according to Israel, they did it all wrong: "The video sucks. We bought a bunch of hipster clothes—like bow ties, suspenders, shirts, jackets—without even knowing how they actually dressed. Later, we realized they would probably never be seen in that kind of thing. People seemed to hate it too."

It wasn't until almost six months after the video was released, that Imitators Top received their first booking requests: "I had taken a risk and invested my money but months went by and I didn't see any income. There came a point where I thought I should quit."

Israel's first break came when a dance academy booked the group to perform at Expo 15—an annual trade show showcasing the work of companies that cater to Quinceañera parties for teenage girls. "We booked 40 shows after that," Israel remembered.

Getting booked for shows, however, didn't mean the group was ready for them: "We prepared this choreography for a party we played in the suburbs and we looked ridiculous. No one at the party was paying attention to us and nobody clapped when we finished. It was the worst show ever," Israel said. "I was ashamed of asking for my check."

It was around that time that a good part of the original group left the band. "One of them was an alcoholic, another one was always trying to hook up with fangirls, and a third one just got tired of the fact we never really booked any shows."

The natural next step for the group was to improve their performance skills. Israel began looking for new members, who were committed and had better stage presence. He forgot all about choreographies and focused on improving their outfits and each boy's resemblance to the original members. "We would study the videos relentlessly. We watched the movie, like, 12 times. And each of us just focused on copying our characters—from their moves on stage to the way they engage with each other."

The quality of the shows improved and with that came more bookings. Another breaking point came when a girl celebrating her quinceañera asked for a photo with the boys in front of the Independence Column at the center of Mexico City. The photo went viral and soon became a meme. Despite all the mockery they received on social media, people began to recognize them—"or at least began to know we existed," laughed Israel.

But a few weeks ago, a local entertainment magazine hired the band to perform at their booth at Expo 15 (where they put their first show ever) and things went out of control. In just a few days, their Facebook page grew organically from 8,000 to 11,000 likes, while memes concerning the band took over the social network.

According to the boys, the jokes were "really mean and discouraging" but that didn't stall their success: Their rates now range from 5,000 to 14,000 mxn per show—which, for the local impersonator industry, is pretty good. "The line of business also changed. For instance, a mom will hire us without telling her daughter and we'll just show up at the party as a surprise. People laugh because they know us from the memes and then they have a good time. They call us "Juan Direcshon," said Israel.

The most rewarding part of the job to them, however, is to see the birthday girls happy. "We freak out when a birthday girl starts crying because we don't know if those are tears of joy or sadness or if they are crying with laughter," added Bernardo Méndez, who impersonates Niall Horan.

Dylan de Joussineau (Liam Payne)

The group currently consists of 18-year-old Dylan de Joussineau (Liam Payne); 17-year-old Brandon Gonzalez (Louis Tomlinson); 17-year-old Bernardo Méndez (Niall Horan); 23-year-old Israel Carreño (Zayn Malik), and 20-year-old Rudy Jaramillo (Harry Styles), who we didn't meet because he was sick. "We all have our lives and our own personalities. But when we put on our costumes, everything changes. We become 1D because that's our job. But we don't dress or act like the on a daily basis," Dylan explained.

Dylan was born in France. He used to work at a car impound there, saved money, and bought a ticket to Mexico. "I spent most of the day hanging out with my girlfriend, studying to be a video editor, or skating," he said. Apparently, his girlfriend is not jealous of the fans because she also works as an impersonator—she acts as Ariana Grande for Imitators Top—and she knows that it's just a part of the job. "The downside to this job is that there will always be trolls who criticize our work, no matter what. But I love my job. It's always fun to forget who you are and become someone else for a while."

Bernardo Méndez (Niall Horan)

Bernardo, who acts as Niall Horan, "used to hate One Direction." He mostly likes listening to rap, bachata, and rock music. "But after listening to 1D for so long, their stuff kind of grew on me."

Bernardo is in high school and loves doing push ups: "I used to be pretty muscly but had to tone down for this gig." He also works as a make-up salesman, while the part he enjoys most about the 1D job is having fans: "I never thought we would have such a big fan base just for being impersonators. When I feel sad, I read the fans' messages and they cheer me up. I feel motivated because now I'm a role model to some people." I asked him if he's ever made out with a fan: "Well, if I have to be honest.. Yes, I have," he replied.

Brandon González (Louis Tomlinson)

Brandon is the youngest member of the band. Before joining the band, he used to work as a waiter but he finds this job way more amusing. What he enjoys about it is the fact that, more than being a band, they are all now close friends: "We all get along well. It's really cool and we have a lot of fun, but of course sometimes the hate and the trolling become a little hard to stomach."

Israel Carreño (Zayn Malik)

Imitators Top plan to expand further in the quinceañeras industry. Israel said they'll keep offering a full range of pop star impersonators, but that they will also set up two dance academies to train their talents as chambelanes for 15th birthday parties. "We are looking for more artists to sign with us. Imitators Top is never going to die because we're the only ones who offer this kind of service in Mexico—especially when it comes to One Direction impersonators. If you google 'One Direction impersonators Mexico,' you'll find 20 ads and all of them are ours. There is simply no competition."

According to all of them, Imitators Top is reinventing the impersonators industry. "We all agree on it," Israel concluded. "The industry has become rather stagnant. I'm not saying Elvis, Michael Jackson, or Juan Gabriel impersonators are bad at what they do—it's just that there should be more modern options to choose from. The world has enough Elvises. The market is worn-out. Mexico needs new stuff. People have to innovate and that's exactly what we're doing."

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