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Known also as "suicide headaches," because sufferers have been known to take their own lives, cluster headaches are considered by many to be the most painful condition known to science—described as more painful than broken bones, any degree of dermis burn, and even child birth. Yes—mothers have essentially said, "I would rather eject another small human being from out of my undercarriage rather than have one of those things again."

They're not migraines—rather, they're more like a series of short headaches that occur in patterns of one or more each day for weeks or months on end (thus the "cluster" designation). I've had them for 25 years, since I was 16. The pain is indescribable, but here I go describing it to you anyway: If you have ever stubbed your toe, then you know how bad that kills. A cluster is like that, except it happens just behind the eye, right in the temple. The pain camps out, throbs there for at least 30 minutes and as long as two hours. A taste of earthly hell.

Scientists don't know what causes them, and typical painkillers and narcotics usually don't help. Believe me: In efforts to deal with this pain, I've orally ingested, injected, snorted and/or smoked oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, demerol, dilaudid, cocaine, heroin, codeine, morphine, and more, all to no avail. You get super fucked up, sure, but the pain is still there, at full strength, almost made worse because the dope just adds an unpleasant weirdness to the scene.

I've tried dropping dumbbells on my foot in an attempt to displace the pain. I've banged my head against the wall, then the floor, then the wall again. I've slammed bags of ice against my temple, leaving my face reddened and bruised. I've fantasized for hours about sparkling knives and imagined the relief of filleting my temple open like a raw chicken breast, as if the pain would bleed out. Yes, it's that dramatic.

To put it simply: Treatments are elusive. "These are very hard and very painful headaches to treat," said Dr. Mark Green, director of headache and pain medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, "and the agents that we usually use work sometimes, but they sure don't work all the time."

Doctor-sanctioned treatments for clusters include Imitrex (an injectable medicine that narrows the brain's blood vessels) and rapid oxygen inhalation. They're good at stopping attacks, but not preventing them. I've tried them, too—but nothing has provided me with even a 100th of the relief that psychedelics have.

A couple of years ago, I discovered Cluster Busters, a ground that advocates the use of alternative (though, sadly, illegal) cluster treatments. It was founded by Bob Wold, who broke a cycle of clusters using psychedelics in 1998 and felt he had to spread the word. Since starting Busters, Wold said that 95 percent of cluster sufferers he's come across who have been treated with psychedelics never go back to prescription drugs again.

With thousands of members, Cluster Busters offers a strong online community that helps cluster sufferers seek relief from their condition through psychedelics. The cure they advocate comes down to replacing doctor-prescribed prescription drugs with hallucinogens like mushrooms, LSD, rivea corymbosa seeds, or 5-MeO-DALT.

There's scant medical proof that they work—most everything we know about how psychedelics treat clusters is anecdotal. One small interview-based study showed promising results, but because psychedelics are hard to refine to medical purity and offer little profit motive for pharmaceutical companies to investigate them, Green said, forming large-scale regular psychedelic studies is difficult. And without them, case reports don't offer enough conclusive evidence that it's psychedelics themselves that are relieving symptoms.

"I've been doing headaches for more than 40 years, and I've got to tell you, I have story after story of people who say, 'I took this, and it made it go away,' and then, of course, it never held up in the long-term," he said. "I'm not being negative, and certainly I have a number of patients who experiment with mushrooms, grow them, and take various compounds, and some of them report efficacy, but I don't know, and I don't know about their safety either." To restate the obvious: These treatments can be risky, and they haven't been proven by medical science to work.

But Green also emphasized that "people with clusters have a real, genuine suicide risk," and that he's "certainly understanding and sympathetic that someone who just can't get relief with existing products would be willing to do most anything to get rid of the attacks."

Watch "Inside a Psychedelic Healing Retreat":

Personally, shrooms and DALT are what work for me. Three years ago, the first time I dosed on mushrooms instead of reaching for Imitrex, I knew I had found my answer. Instead of feeling like my head was an eggshell that a cluster could crack into at any second, I felt like I had a forcefield around my skull. My life has been shut down annually by clusters, with anywhere from one to seven headaches daily for periods that come once a year and last from one to six months. Discovering a way out of this hell cycle was as awesome as what I imagine seeing an alien or finding God would be like.

Shroom dosage varies based on how one elects to manage their condition. One can micro dose by putting a small piece under their tongue day as a preventative method. A somewhat larger dose (a stem or two) can be used at the onset of an individual cluster to knock it back. Or, by taking a large dose every seven days, I can "bust" my season of headaches and be free from pain until the next time it comes around. Dosing with 5-MeO-DALT is a different story (but I've found it to be the most effective treatment of all); when I feel a season coming on, I simply take 15 milligrams every five days, and my head will stay clear without experiencing any seriously debilitating trips.

What's tricky is that because psychedelics interact with prescription meds, you have to make the choice to use one or the other, and because psychedelics become ineffective if taken too regularly, if you get a cluster between doses, you're forced to grin and bear it. But the payoff is worth it.

I call the time of year in which my headaches come the mean season, and when I'm in the mean season, I am always less than ten minutes away from my home, mostly in my bed, either having a headache or anxiously preparing for one. I can't drink, I can't get high, and I can't fuck my boyfriend, because all those things will trigger a cluster. (Oddly, when I feel a cluster coming, I've found I can sometimes divert it by masturbating, though it's hard to kindle a chub when you know you might soon be squirming from unimaginable pain.)

What's crazy is how long the psychedelic solution has been out there, waiting for me to find it. If you had asked me at one point what was the worst thing I could imagine, I would have said, "Having a cluster while tripping." Funny how the answers are sometimes in the last place we think to look. I've now been pain-free for three years. Unless you suffer yourself, you have no idea just how beautiful that actually is.

Follow Giancarlo DiTripano on Twitter.

On an all new episode of PAYDAY, our new VICELAND series following 20-somethings over the course of a single pay-period, we head to Memphis to meet an aspiring MMA fighter, a car salesman, a recovering addict, and a rap artist.

PAYDAY airs Fridays at 9 PM on VICELAND.

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A giant foam blob is enveloping the city of Santa Clara, California. At press time, there were reports that the foam was not in any way connected to President-elect Donald Trump, and was in fact the result of some kind of accident with flame-retardant chemicals.

The heaving white mass materialized on Friday afternoon in an industrial section of Santa Clara, 45 miles from San Francisco. According to the local FOX TV news affiliate, the coating of wobbling, snow-white matter had created a mass as deep as five feet in some spots, completely obscuring parked cars, and preventing bystanders from entering buildings.

At around 1:00 PM local time, a livestream of the expanding, seemingly out-of-control chemical excretion revealed that young men had been riding their bikes through the area relatively unimpeded by the blob. The suds-covered cyclists (who may or may not be members of the alt-right, but whose political stance doesn't particularly matter in a story about a blob) told reporters that police in the area had given them permission to ride through.

This article will be updated as the story—and its complete lack of significance to the selection of Donald Trump's controversial White House transition team—develops.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

All photos by Nish Nalbandian, courtesy of Daylight Books

Award-winning photographer Nish Nalbandian's debut monograph A Whole World Blind depicts the realities of Aleppo, Syria where war has become part of everyday life. Shot over the course of a year and a half between 2013 and 2014, Nalbandian's photos are a honest and uncensored testimony to the strength and vitality of the people living amidst cataclysmic turmoil, from fighters in the thick of the nation's ongoing civil war to everyday citizens trying to coexist with the nonstop violence.

Through a mixture of portraiture and documentary photography, as well as oral testimonies and memoir, the book immerses readers in the lives of rebel fighters, child soldiers, and others caught in the conflict. Nalbandian made seven trips inside Syria, with some lasting up to two weeks, until spring 2014 when the Syrian Revolutionary Front kicked ISIS out of the northwest city of Idlib. By this point, ISIS's presence had grown throughout the Middle East, and the threat to journalists was too great for the documentarian to continue. We spoke to Nish about A Whole World Blind over email, as he is currently in Mosul, Iraq, embedded with Iraqi Special Forces to document their fight against ISIS.

VICE: How long have you been a photojournalist? How did you start?
Nish Nalbandian: This is actually something I've come to later in life as a second (or third) career. Photography was a hobby for me until about five years ago. Previously, it was simply my creative outlet. But as interest in my work started to grow, I decided to give it a go as a profession. The first photos I sold documented a motorcycle trip I took from Denver to the tip of South America.

What drove you to turn your lens toward the conflict in Syria? Was there a specific spark?
I visited Syria in 2009 and made some friends there. When the revolution broke out in 2011, I lost touch with those people, so I was following things closely. There was a lot of coverage coming out at that time, and a lot of great news photographers doing really good work, but my intent was really to go and do something a bit different. I have a photograph of my grandfather in Syria in 1916 when he was fighting against the Ottomans in the French Armenian Legion. He had lost his family to them in the Armenian Genocide, and had ended up like so many other Armenians (those who survived) in Syria. I wanted to try to recreate some of the feel of that portrait. I feel like I was only partially successful at that.

Did you have any first-hand experience with ISIS, and did the group's ascent have any immediate, observable ramifications on the culture?
I did not have any personal experience or problem with ISIS while there, but I did see ISIS flags in a few places before they really took hold. When they started kidnapping and holding journalists, it made me evaluate the risk of going as too high. While I stopped going, I was still in contact with people living inside who were threatened, arrested, and robbed by ISIS as they spread through the Aleppo area. They were not not in control of Aleppo when I was there, they were a growing power. And when I was in Idlib, they had just been kicked out. People reported then that they were glad to see ISIS go.

In the introduction of your book, you talk about the terrifying experience of hearing explosions in the near distance for the first time. Was there a point in the process of documenting this conflict that you stopped flinching as well?
Well, sort of, yes. You really do get used to hearing these sounds, and your brain becomes capable of filtering out the ones that may immediately affect you. At first, I noticed every explosion and burst of gunfire in the distance, but after a while I only reacted to close and more immediate sounds. I guess it's a learning process. You really do take cues from the people around you who lived with this for years on end.

For more on the Syrian Civil War, re-visit VICE News' 2014 doc "The Long War":

The juxtaposition of the more quietly beautiful images, such as the glimpses of land that look minimally touched by war, and the violent photos throughout the book is really powerful. Was it an intentional choice to soften the harshness of the realities of war?
It was definitely my intention to put those quieter moments in alongside or interspersed with the more graphic work. Not necessary to soften the harshness, but to show the reality that life goes on even in war. As photojournalists, we focus on the news—on the out-of-the-ordinary events—and that's what we often take pictures of. But that doesn't show the full picture, and my real intention was to offer a wider vantage into what happens in a place like Aleppo.

I felt if I only included classic "war" imagery, I wouldn't be telling the story accurately as I saw it. And what I saw were people with a lot of resilience living their lives with this war happening around them. Like much of life, was is not constantly uptempo, it ebbs and flows and moves from place to place. We tend to focus on the 'hot' parts of what is happening because they are so dramatic and removed from everyday life. But that misses the fact that the less hot places are still there, and I wanted to show it all.

One of my favorite portraits in the book is of the Kurdish fighter, Rukan, pointing her weapon out of a small hole in a wall overlooking the front line. What is the story behind this photograph?
Rukan was the leader of a small unit in the Kurdish fighting forces (YPG). When I went to visit them at their front line position in their neighborhood, they kept up their watch of their section of the line. Everyone rotated through a watch, and Rukan went to check on the other fighters at one point. She was not firing in this picture, just putting a trained eye on what was going on. Like much of what goes on in fighting units around the world, it was just routine, day in and out activity for her. From what I observed, waiting and watching took up much more of all the fighter's time than actual fighting.

Historically, war photographers have spoken about the emotional toll that being so close to suffering takes on them. What did you have to do to keep moving forward with your life and career?
I was aware of the potential for PTSD, and so I made sure to talk about and process my feelings about the things I saw. Some of it was pretty hard to see, especially when involving kids. I preemptively saw my shrink after I saw the worst things, just to keep it from becoming a problem for me. Honestly, while these things are hard to witness, I think that these experiences have made me a better person. I feel more compassionate and understanding of people, and I have a lot less tolerance for complaining about minor things now. Seeing other people be so resilient in the face of such difficulty I think has inspired me to be more resilient. But, on the other hand, when you see it continue to happen, man, I guess I have to admit that it has made me a bit cynical seeing how people can treat each other so inhumanly, over and over again. That's the toughest part for me.

Do you have any personal favorite photographs from the book? What significance do they hold for you?
Ah, this is a tough question... I tend to like the quieter pictures, like this one of two old men sitting down in front of a shop, or another of a man holding roses. But I think the most important ones for me are these black and white ones of a displaced family in Aleppo. They were really in a sad state, and it was hard to go back to my comfortable life knowing they were in such misery and poverty. I like being able to see the look in people's eyes. The significance is in the connection I had with those people. I'll never forget them.

See more photos from the book below.

'A Whole World Blind' is out now through Daylight Books, order a copy here and visit Nish Nalbandian's website to see more of his photo work.

Follow Grace on Twitter.

All photos by the author

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

There he is, running triumphantly across the soccer field, with his perfectly moussed hair held in place with styling mousse just for men. There he is, smiling confidently in the mirror, after moisturizing his perfect jawline with a facial cream formulated especially for male skin. And there he is again, standing in the middle of a blazing wildfire while he marinates a giant hunk of steak. He's hugging his screaming fans on the red carpet after dousing himself in a brand new cologne. He's hammering away at a iron rod with his huge, manly hands somewhere in a steamy barn, with an ice-cold bottle of beer by his side.

He is the Ideal Man. Created by—or at least shamelessly propped up by—the advertising industry. For nearly every single product that is marketed towards men, he is there: the heterosexual Adonis who, dressed in nothing more than a tiny white towel, explains what type of shaving cream and soda men should get to attain ultimate maleness.

But is identity formation really as simple as pressing the button on a deodorant can? As a woman, I am on the opposite side of the marketing game. My shampoo is a yellow bottle of L'Oréal and there are mint green Venus razors in my shower. Admittedly, I do feel like a woman, but I'm not sure if that's because of these products.

So I came up with a plan: I would only use men's products for a couple of days. I would fill my bathroom with men's deodorant, men's shampoo and men's hand cream. I would only use men's razors. I would stave off hunger with barbecued bacon and wash it down with Jupiler ("men know why!") or Coca Cola Zero. It is International Men's Day, after all.

Would a complete immersion in the world of male marketing help me understand what it's like to be a man? Would I start to appreciate soccer? Would starting a fire be easier? Would my tendency to show emotion every once in a while be replaced by the unstoppable urge to catch a fish with my bare hands? It's time to find out.

PREPARATION

It's not that hard to find the male beauty products in the supermarket. They're all in one place, and can be recognized by the packages which are all boring similar in their clean design: dark colors—black, dark shades of blue or grey—with simple fonts, and every so often a picture of a smooth guy with a fiery look in his eyes. Most bottles are pretty heavy and hard to carry with one hand—a little like I can imagine what guys would want for their penises.

This is what I bought:

Lynx Instinct deodorant
Schwarzkopf shampoo for men
Dove Men + Care shower gel
Nivea hair gel
Day cream for men
Nivea shaving cream for men
A pack of 15 disposable razors
Yogi Men's Tea
Steak, bacon, sausages, eggs and barbecue sauce
A six-pack of Jupiler
Three cans of Coke Zero
Barbecue coals
A hand cream called 'The Ritual of Samurai'
A $30 samurai-scented candle
An eau de toilette called The Rich Man

MONDAY

Real men eat an extreme amount of meat, according to the advertising industry. That's why I started my day with three eggs, ots of bacon, and two sausages. With every salty, meaty bite I took, I thought: it's happening. Any moment now, an unbelievable primal power will rush through my veins. Instead, I felt a little nauseous.

Because manliness literally has to be rubbed in, I went to take a shower. I felt my biceps flex as I pushed the shower gel out of the big fat bottle. It's true, male shampoo makes you stronger.

As I was starting to smell like every man I've ever met, I shaped my hair into a mohawk on the top of my head. That might not be what a Real Man would do, but it was fun nevertheless. There was also a lot more foam than usual, and I suddenly understood why men so often pee in the shower. It must take some practice to pee the foam towards the drain, or to make a small drawing, because I had to soap up my bottom half twice.

Afterwards, I walked back to my room naked. You're supposed to do that all cocky and confident, without a care in the world, and with a penis dangling between your legs. I figured I could do it. I thought this would be the magic of men's products: that you can let out your your silly little-boy-antics inside the walls of the bathroom where no-one can see you, and then walk out a confident, grown-up person. I'll admit I felt a certain recklessness and freedom coursing through my veins as I walked, completely naked, through the living room. But I was still very much aware of the fact that I live on the first floor, and have half-broken blinds instead of curtains.

So I wrapped myself in a towel, lit my men's scented candle, and brushed my tangled hair while inhaling the scent of cedar wood. It was more tangled than usual, but I sucked up the pain. It felt like the right thing to do.

TUESDAY

I sprayed clouds of Lynx under my armpits and smeared Samurai cream on my hands, smelling not unlike my 13-year-old cousin. I headed to the park, ready to destroy some outdoor fitness machines with my cold, solid muscles. Men always look busy here, but it's hard to figure out exactly what they do since all the devices look like pieces of postmodern art. I downed two cans of Coke Zero to motivate myself, then took my place on one of the devices and waited until the magical liquid kicked in and I transformed into a roaring gladiator.

It didn't become any more 007 than this

Nothing happened, so I sprayed a little more Lynx, and walked back home.

I was wondering how much more of that stuff I'd have to use before someone would finally dry hump me.

Yes, I have a chair in my shower

In the afternoon, I shaved my whole body. I thought I'd need aftershave, or at least little bits of toilet paper to put on the cuts, or that my skin would go all raw and stubbly, but so far, so good. The shaving companies had been tricking me with their patriarchal marketing tricks into buying overpriced female razors for years. But I didn't get worked up. Today I was part of that patriarchy.

Instead of getting angry, I decided to answer some messages, just as the men that I had opened up to in the past taught me to:

Translation:

— Heeey Stephanie! I really had a great time with you yesterday hehe, had so much fun with that dog after you left. Let's do this again soon, shall we?! Xxx

— Ok.

— ?? Haha you weirdo.

WEDNESDAY

I slept all night with the scented candle burning. When I woke up, it felt like the scent had actually crept into my lungs. I was at the top of the patriarchy.

I ate bacon and sausages as I checked the results of the football match of the day before. Northern Ireland won the game against Azerbaijan with a whopping 4-1. I couldn't say it excited me much. I drank a cup of men's tea, sprayed a little eau the toilette on my neck, applied some more Samurai cream and then tried again. Nothing happened. Not even a tiny spark of interest. Never mind.

I decided that if I wanted the male products to have the maximum effect, I should give them a bit of a push. That's why I spent an hour in my man-cave, the little corner in the house where men go to practice manly hobbies, away from their wives. I looked at some pictures of really big motorbikes, shiny cars and the latest gadgets—like a hairdryer in the shape of a gun and a portable barbecue that looks like a speaker. It wasn't not interesting, but I didn't exactly get an erection from it. Every 15 minutes, I drank a beer from a brand that "men know why" they're supposed to drink, according to its slogan. I must say, I did enjoy the woodchopping YouTube tutorial I watched a bit more after I got slightly buzzed.

Don't I look like a pro?

I tried to cook some meat over a homemade barbecue in my garden. I failed. My clothes smelt of ashy yet undercooked sausages and I decided to try and camouflage the smell with some more Lynx, some face cream on my jaw and a bit of hair gel on my head. I went to the top of my building and glared down. I was still afraid of heights. Then I ordered pizza and drank more beer.

This is my game face and also the reason I should never do this again

To run from my emotions, I went to a nearby sports bar to eat ribs, have a beer and watch some rugby. I yelled when the other guys did, and drew some penises on a napkin.

When I was on my way home I pulled down my pants and pissed on my left shoe, which was the straw that broke the camel's back. I didn't feel brave, nor powerful or successful. Despite all the creams, sprays, booze and food I had stuffed myself with the past few days, and the fact that I had become a puppet of all gendered marketing strategies, I was miles away from the man on my shampoo bottle.

Did I come closer to the core of manliness using all these products? Not really. But I did come closer to the fragility of manhood. That's exactly what advertising—and male branding—thrives on: the longing for something unreachable. As long as that longing exists, those products will be sold in an attempt to create a non-existent and completely unrealistic version of masculinity.

The thing is that all these so-called products for men (except for the eau de toilette, which was absolutely terrible) could also be used by women. The main lesson I learned? That men could use my deodorant, women could shave their legs with men's shaving cream, and the world wouldn't stop spinning on its axis. We just wouldn't need most of these products to be so strictly gendered.

Jailed for covering political unrest in Egypt, Mohamed Fahmy's new memoir recalls his ordeal. Still via Daily VICE

Mohamed Fahmy is a journalist's journalist who has really been in the shit, having reported extensively on the Iraq War and winning a Peabody award for his work with CNN on the Arab Spring. Conflict zones, terrorists, riots, mass political protests. And that's before Egyptian jail. He's a guy who knows a tough story, but had the unfortunate luxury of becoming a tough story. Imprisoned in Egypt for nearly two years, Fahmy did what most journalists never dream of doing: going to jail for our craft. Not only that, he went to a jail outside of Cairo meant for some of the toughest jihadis in the Middle East. Although I could face prison for my own debacle here in Trudeau's Canada, it'd be a country club vacation by comparison.

Accused of terrorism and links to al-Qaeda, the reporting world waited with bated breath for his release. His new book, The Marriott Cell, tells Fahmy's personal tale navigating prison wards with top terrorists and young protesters, to his wife Marwah smuggling his manuscripts and transcribed interviews with his cellmates out for him, because, yes, Fahmy never stopped reporting even while serving time.

Now he's free in Canada and is already a major advocate of freedom of the press. I've gotten to know him over the last year and it amazes me how wildly energetic and warm Mohamed can be having seriously gone through hell. The RCMP served me with a production order and I'm already jaded with the world. Not Fahmy. Instead, Mohamed has come back home and started fighting for imprisoned Canadians abroad and lowly journalist like me, up against bad odds.

I met him out on a park bench in trendy Toronto West, sun shining idyllically, just two journalist talking shop about surveillance, freedom of the press, Trump and the effects of Fahmy's epic ordeal has had on him now that he's living in Canada once again.

VICE: Do you feel like you have any amounts of PTSD or trauma from being inside that long?
Mohamed Fahmy: As soon as I got out, I was still dreaming of the prison and the trial and the cage and I was not sleeping well. But it's been a year since I've been out and my way of dealing with it was writing the book, letting it all out, you know, putting some context behind it. Doing a lot of research. This is my first journalistic project and I've interviewed many people in this book. I've interviewed Zaina bin Laden, the wife of Omar bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's eldest son. And I asked her about the recent audio recordings that Hamza bin Laden—the youngest son of bin Laden—had been releasing, calling on Jihadists to fight in Syria and avenge his father's death. And she was saying, you know, she thinks he's doing a big mistake but she also thinks he's being manipulated by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al Qaeda. So, there was a lot of eye-opening interviews in that book.

Now, when you were inside, did you ever think that this—a similar climate of press freedom that you witnessed in Egypt could actually be found in Canada?
Well it's funny that you're interviewing me because your own story really pissed me off, you know? And, you know, I think it's important to stay on the right side of history and make sure that the RCMP or any security apparatus does not to come up to journalists for his notes because immediately the—our sources won't trust us anymore. We won't be able to bring the news to the viewer. And again, the there are the stories like the spying on journalists in Quebec by police and I noticed that during Mr. Harper's time, the government, Canada's listing went ten points in the index according to the freedom—the Press Freedom Index.

I wonder where that's going to go.
I don't know where it's going to go now. It might go lower, you know. I think we're still in the honeymoon phase with the Liberal government, but I'm still optimistic that good things could happen.

I remember you telling me was that you were in an Egyptian jail and they were going through your phone and looking at messages and that's essentially what the government's trying to do to me, which blew my mind.
So, yeah, exactly when I heard your story I was shocked as well because in the court, they played audio recordings of my interview with Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of the head of Al Qaeda, right there in the court. And I was really pissed off because that's just the material I used for my interview. And when you told me that, or when I heard it—but your story, it's the same, almost, same idea, basically. And you know, we can't do that here in Canada because the whole world looks at Canada as the icon of democracy and everybody wants to move to Canada because we have the sort of democratic freedom and press freedom. When we do that it, sends very dangerous messages to the whole world.

Especially now in the age of Trump.
In the age of Trump, yeah. His rhetoric is really scary and I was devastated when I saw that result. You know, and I think he's gonna have to really change his attitude if he's going to continue for the four years.

Read More: Media Coalition and Civil Liberties Groups Granted Say in VICE Case Against RCMP

Now, do you think that the guys inside there were speaking to the Jihadists terrorists? Would they have spoken to you if they knew you would give stuff up on them? You know what I mean? Would they have been as foreign?
Well, to be honest, a lot them knew I was writing a book and they wanted their message out. But also we had—we started a mock radio show inside the terrorism wing. Every night, my colleague and I, we would be interviewing them and, like we'd do on a TV channel or a radio channel. We'd prepare the questions all day and asked them these very sensitive questions and they would spill it all out. So I documented a lot for these talk show episodes that we had inside the prison in the book.

Still via Daily VICE

Now, when you were inside, did you ever think to yourself, why isn't the Canadian government doing more to get me out?
I was the last to join the chorus. When I got out on bail for a while before I went back in again, I realized everyone was very angry at the way the Canadian government handled this case. They were very mild in their in the rhetoric. They were not talking to the right people in Egypt. Junior ministers. What they call interventions here was sending faxed and speaking to junior ministers in Egypt who don't really have clout to move things and make things happen. I was really thankful to the ambassadors on the ground because they were going a great job, yet, I felt that Mr. Harper delegated his responsibilities to his ambassadors rather than speaking to the president directly.

How about John Baird? The former foreign affairs ministers. Do you think he did enough?
I think he did the, you know, what he did what any foreign minister should do. However, when he arrived to Egypt and he announced that Canada would not put me on trial or... when there was a chance for an exit when Egypt allowed foreigners to be deported after the new presidential decree, he came out and he said he wouldn't put him on trial. So in that case, you know, they deported Peter, my Australian colleague who was with me in the same case, and they kept me inside the prison. Although, Baird had announced that my release would be imminent and I would be released momentarily.

And how about Al Jazeera. Do you think that your employer helped you enough while you were inside?
I think my employer did everything wrong when I was inside and this is not an opinion, these are all factual points that I describe in the book, you know. Hiring the wrong lawyer that I refused from day one. Not having the right licenses when we operating and not being very transparent about it. The list goes on. As it stand now, Al Jazeera has the worst record in TV history in the amount of journalists that were killed detained, and probably the worst security assessment and I—in the book I interview many former and current employees who go on the record to, pretty much, describe how this network has failed its staff. And, you know, I do it after many constructive emails and communication with the network and I do it to make sure it doesn't happen to anymore of these guys still working there basically.

Now you got out. Your employer failed you, your government failed you. Now we're living in the age of Donald Trump. I mean, are you positive? Having been out for a year and been in the world and had to deal with the repercussions of your experiences?
Look, I am convinced that we would be naive to believe that there is true press freedom anywhere in the world as we, you know, witness this kind of, unprecedented attack on human rights defenders and journalists in a generation basically. But the problem is, we can't just give up. We just gotta continue fighting for that noble cause and you know, there are victory and there are losses, but at the end of the day, you know, every case is important to fight for. You know, almost two hundreds journalists behind bars globally as we speak. Now there's about 780 and journalists that have been killed in the past decade. So it's an ongoing battle and that's the only way to win it.

Personally for me, I was actually depressed thinking that I was under a top secret gag order. I couldn't' talk about my case for nine months cause of national security. So I can only imagine how you would've felt inside a cage.
You know, when I first met you and I got to Canada here, you had been given the Press Freedom Award, the same award I got when I was in the cage in Egypt. And the first thing you told me was "I can't believe this is happening in Canada" and that's exactly how I feel. I can't believe this is happening in Canada. And, you know, in that cage in Egypt, it was a, you know, obviously a very horrific experience. But on Press Freedom day, they let me out of the cage to speak to the judge, and I told him listen the world is watching, let us go. You know, it's--this is really horrific for the state of democracy in Egypt, after the Arab Spring when we were all hoping for a true democratic change, press freedoms and, you know, a new life. And, you know, he just old me happy World Press Freedom Day, get back to the cage. So... It is an ongoing battle.

So what did you think when you saw Donald Trump elected? Is there gonna be a change for journalists in North America and the world?
I felt really helpless and I was devastated, especially, due to his rhetoric against journalists. And also the way he just, you know, portrayed himself. It's really sad and I hope it's just the sort of rhetoric he's using to win some votes and appeal to the emotions of some for the voters that support him, or who are very angry at HIllary. But what's really, you know, even worse, is that many of the dictators in the Middle East have a aligned with his ideas. And they both have these similar ideas and it's really worrying and I, you know, I just can't believe he's going to run it for for four years and you know, it's just—I can't even get over yet. And I see the protest sin the United States on the street daily and it reminded a little of the story of objections, you know, many Egyptians have towards the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie. He was elected despite the fact that many liberals and seculars voted against him and we all thought that he's not gonna make it and then suddenly, the Muslim Brotherhood it grew, and that, you know, pretty much, puts the benefits of people first and they're not inclusive in anyway in the way they run the country. So I felt really devastated and helpless. Similar to how what I felt when the Muslim Brotherhood won the election. Not to draw parallels on the same ideas, but you know.

Helplessness. I get that. I mean, one that I worry about is that the FBI, an organization that's known to spy on journalists before, especially when they're power goes unchecked, very clearly, internally, has a big love for Trump. So an organization like that with as much power as it has, not checked by civil liberties groups and by the presidency, I wonder what that means for journalists if journalists like ourselves interact with terrorists, with hackers with criminals. What's that gonna mean if they don't get the information that they want?
It's really scary and what I'm seeing now sometimes seems to be like it's, the old 60s playbook, you know, Whether it's what's happening in Egypt or what's happening in the Sates, a little of what's happening in Quebec, and with you, it's mind boggling. And I just don't understand how we have reached this point. Yes, there is an unprecedented attack in this age of terrorism on all the countries in the world by IS and other groups, but we just can't let go our civil liberties and let them win by allowing the government, whether it's, you know, some of the clauses in Bill-51 or the way the FBI's dealing with the matters in the US, we just can't let that happen, you know, and that's the whole challenge that makes a difference between a good leader and a bad leader, One that can balance this suppression of terrorism while maintaining civil liberties.

One thing we do know is that Breitbart will definitely get a presidential exclusive. I was at the United General Assembly in New York and they were just all over the place tryna promote Trump and you know, they were—they're a very unique organization for sure.
Big time.

For more of Brian Blomerth's work, visit his website, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Besides Ron Jeremy, Evan Stone is arguably the most famous living male porn star still making smut, though he's aged way better than the Hedgehog. At 52, Stone's performed in nearly 2,000 scenes, has almost 12 AVN awards (and 12 inches) under his belt, and continues to screw on camera at an astounding clip. He says what's kept him going for this long is his ability to find humor wherever he can in the sex industry, which probably explains why he's starred in so much parody porn.

Given that track record, it's unsurprising that Stone has earned a couple of paychecks portraying celebrity-turned-president-elect Donald Trump. He starred in the feature-length Hustler flick The Donald, released last spring, and went on to perform in a series of XXX parodies hosted for free on the site The Pornington Post.

"They gave me a shit-ton of awards for overacting, so I thought that maybe I could play the guy," Stone told me.

And he wasn't joking—the porn is so over-the-top it's more like dirty vaudeville than something you'd want to masturbate to. There's a debate scene with a faux-Hillary that ends in both characters getting covered in semen. There are also episodes featuring Obama, Melania, and Ivanka impersonators, as well as one titled "Motorboating Malia." You get the idea.

"Unfortunately, I may be one of the only people who benefitted from ," he said in a when I called him after the election. Trump's sure to be in the news constantly for the next four years, and if something is in the news, someone will be making porn about it. In my interview with him, on top of discussing the future of his Trump mimicry, Stone talked about why slapstick adult humor is necessary at a time like this, and even took a guess at what type of porn he imagines our new president likes to watch.

VICE: We first spoke on election day before the results were in, and things turned out very different from what many people expected. What surprised you?
Evan Stone: Well, definitely Trump winning. And I didn't want to say it before, but I thought Prop 60 pamphlet it said it would cost the state of California millions and millions of dollars if the industry moves. I didn't think they'd put that in there because it didn't really seem bipartisan, but maybe people just read that and were like, "OK... we shouldn't vote for it to pass." People vote with their pocketbooks first.

Now you're actually portraying the president-elect in these porn parodies, not just a celebrity running for office. Does that change anything for you?
I called the director making all the videos we're doing on Pornington Post and asked, "What do we do now?" He replied, "You're guaranteed a job for the next four years!" I told him I want to do even more with the series. I want to film one that takes place in the White House, but Obama and Biden have decided to stay there and hang while my Trump character stumbles through everything. There'd be sex-related narratives of course, but then we'd include gags where Obama and Biden hide a Kenyan passport in the Oval Office to fuck with Trump.

If we had unlimited resources, we'd go to Mike Pence's hometown, and, by exercising our freedom of speech, we'd shoot porn there—maybe even film it in the house he grew up in if it's available to rent. We have to find a guy to play Pence now.

For more on sex, watch our new episode of Slutever about the world's first male sex doll:

What else in politics do you guys want to parody based on how the election turned out?
We change the scripts like two days before we shoot because the stuff we're skewering is changing constantly. The main thing we have to work with right now is that Trump's already said This is what exactly I'm going to do; these are the people I'm going to appoint, etc. Even he doesn't end up doing what he said during the campaign, it still gives us a whole bunch of ammunition to go forward with.

So we did one making fun of the border wall, but next we're thinking about parodying the Supreme Court justice appointment situation. We're trying to figure out who the justice nomination could be so we can cast a performer to play him or her in the future. All this stuff writes itself. There's no way Trump can do a lot of the stuff that he says he wants to do. It's not possible. All I'm certain about is that the next four years are going to be funny as shit. I don't even know how I'll be able to keep up.

Do you think there will be even more interest in these parodies from porn fans now that Trump is president-elect?
Oh yeah! Look at Saturday Night Live and how they're kicking ass with the Trump satire. People are looking for this kind of levity with all the seriousness that's going on. You have to be able to laugh, or else you will drive yourself crazy. People want to laugh and they want to jerk off, and that's why I'm here.

What time of porn do you think Trump watches?
That's the question! I used to have a dungeon, and the dommes would say their clients were CEOs, doctors, lawyers—nobody was just a mechanic. They were all in positions of authority and power. Maybe it's the same thing with him!

How do you think Trump would respond to watching one of your parodies of him?
That guy doesn't have any sense of humor when it comes to people laughing at him. Think about that charity roast where he tanked. He was just seething. It was a roast and he couldn't handle it! He wouldn't sue me. I think he's probably smarter than that when it comes to lawsuits. All that would do is bring a lot of attention to the product. As soon as he brings his guns out on us, it'd be like Backdoor Sluts #9, one of the biggest-selling porn movies ever, which definitely got more attention after South Park had an episode about it—he'd be doing us a favor.

Visit PorningtonPost to see the Trump parodies, and visit Evan Stone's website for more.

Follow Zach on Twitter.

Students watched from outside the overflowing debate hall. Photo by Jake Kivanc

Jordan Peterson, the Toronto professor who became infamous earlier this fall for his fiery remarks on political correctness and gender identity, found himself at the centre of a long-anticipated debate Saturday morning around Bill C-16—legislation which, in his eyes, criminalizes free speech.

The debate, which took place at the University of Toronto, featured Peterson in discussion with U of T law professor Brenda Cossman, and University of British Columbia professor of education Mary Bryson.

The two professors mainly clashed with Peterson over the ethics of his refusal to address people by a preferred pronoun, as opposed to what he visually identifies as the person's sex.

"I am not going to be a mouthpiece for language I detest," Peterson told the audience, in response to a comparison made by the professors between racial hate speech and failing to respect someone's gender identity.

"This is not an issue of what we can't say, it's about what we must say," he said.

In the past, Peterson told VICE that he had not actually encountered a situation in which a student or staff member had asked him to address by a different pronoun than the one he identified them by. When asked whether he would comply with someone who requested that he do so, Peterson declined to give a straight answer.

"It would depend on how they asked me," he told VICE in September. "If I could detect that there was a chip on their shoulder, or that they were who might have him as a teacher," she told VICE. "I could not imagine having someone show such blatant disrespect to someone who is paying their salary."

During the debate, Peterson argued that pronouns were "not a mark of respect," but deflected the idea that someone who referred to him by an improper pronoun or declined to use his title was a fair comparison.

VICE also asked Peterson in September how he would deal with somebody who used a female pronoun on him, or refused to refer to him by his title, but would not comment on "a theoretical scenario."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

I did 21 years behind the wall, and kept my sanity largely by hanging out with my homeboys on the yard. They had my back at a moment's notice, protecting me from an otherwise-vicious environment and making the sentence feel like less of an eternity. But everything changes when you get out.

When you come home, maintaining friendships with prison buddies gets complicated real quick, especially since associating with another felon can trigger a probation violation and send you back. You have to stop interacting with criminals, which sounds simple enough, but isn't so easy when these people were once your family.

For example, a former buddy from the inside reached out to me over social media once we both got out. He told me that he'd started hustling again and asked for advice about whether to run or turn himself in on a new charge he faced. I quickly ended the conversation—I was fresh out and this dude was asking me to do some criminal consulting? Not a chance.

No two experiences with incarceration are the same, though, so I asked a few other felons to share their stories about maintaining prison friendships on the outside. Here's what they said.

I can't associate with them hard these days because I know better. I got a wife and I got kids and I work 80 hours a week.

Derek*
Mid 50s
Sentenced for Distributing Crack Cocaine
Released from FCI Fort Dix, New Jersey in 2005

Prison is not the best place to make friends. To start, you're meeting them under negative circumstances. If you build a bond with a person in prison, you have to realize that you don't know anything about how they act on the street. You don't know if they have a drug problem, if they're grimy to their family; you don't know any of their history when it comes to interacting with other people , and these are people you don't want to deal with on a regular basis. These guys always want to fight, take something from someone, borrow something and never pay it back, or try to take advantage of your kindness. I stayed to myself most of the time anyway, because your homeboys can be your worst enemy. I just worked out and was like, "Hey, how you all doing?" when I saw them. I would stay busy just to avoid them. Because if you're with them when something goes down, you're there too. You're with them. You perform or get hit.

90 percent of my homeboys I wouldn't associate with on the outside because of their mindset when it comes to continued criminal activity. I made a choice to make a change and do right because I've already seen what doing wrong costs me. As soon as I got out, these guys hit me up and the first thing out of their mouths was like, "Hey man, I got this for you, I got that for you, are you ready?" And I was like, "Hell no. You can keep that. I don't want to hear anything about that." They would tell me stuff like, "I'm just doing this for now, I gotta come up." But I was like fuck no.

Technically, you're not supposed to talk to ex-cons, but I still have guys I talk to. I don't know what some of them are into because I don't associate with them hard, but if they call me or hit me up on Facebook, I tell them what's up. I can't associate with them hard because I know better. I got a wife and I got kids and I work 80 hours a week. I don't have time to get out there and hang with the homeboys. I'd rather be at my son's basketball game or at a job making $200 for a couple of hours. My mindset is work and family now—and that's it.

Watch VICE News Tonight's doc on the prison strikes rippling through America:

Arthur
Early 40s
Sentenced for Mail, Wire, and Securities Fraud
Released from FPC Taft, California, in 2009

In federal prison, I was a loner. My closest friends were drug offenders. Guys who served lengthy sentences or mandatory minimums. Guys who didn't bitch or complain. They served their time. I'm not saying white-collar offenders complain a lot, but the ones in my dorm did, and I tried to ignore that. They tended to look down on other prisoners who weren't as educated as them. Some people in prison want to watch TV all day, complain all day, play cards all day. My friends had to have some type of goals, some type of link to the life they wanted to live when they got home. This meant people interested in developing new skills, communicating with family, and not causing trouble or looking down on other inmates.

After I got out, one of my associates from prison called me. "I'm home," he said. "It's great, but I'm struggling. My PO's breathing down my neck. I know you're in LA. I'm in LA, we should meet up."

This was a guy I was cool with in prison, someone I might have walked the track with or stood in line at the chow hall with sharing stories. I met his wife and kids in visitation. He was a good guy, but not someone I should be associating with on the outside. He's not someone who I felt would never commit another crime. I wasn't convinced that he was committed to living lawfully.

It was hard for me, but I didn't mince words. He said he wanted to meet up with me so we could talk, and I said no. When he asked why not, I said, "I'm on federal probation. I'm very transparent with my PO. There's no upside to us getting together. We are not going to do business together. There's no way that I can possibly help you or you help me. There's no reason for us to disclose on our probation form that we met to connect."

The reward of spending some time together and catching up is not worth the risk of getting a violation and derailing everything I was building. You might have friendships in prison, but once you cross those doors they should fully cease unless there is a seriously compelling reason you should continue to engage with one another.

*Inmate names and some identifying details have been changed to protect them from reprisal. Language has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter, and buy his new comic 'Confessions of a College Kingpin,' out now on Stache Publishing.

Visit Matt Rota's website to view more of his art.

An artist's interpretation of the race to lead Alberta's Progressive Conservative party. Photo via Flickr user Ben Watts

Ok, where the hell do you start with this mess?

Do you start with Jason Kenney, everyone's favourite bouncing baby boy, parachuting into the race in an attempt to merge the warring factions of Alberta's right?

Maybe with the Progressive Conservative-bros who chased both female leadership out of the race with Trumpian-like vitriol?

Look I don't know, all I know for sure is that the race to lead the former dynasty in the land of oil and honey has turned the party in on itself. It's hard to imagine the party hitting a further low then being decimated and going from first to third but hell, here we are.

The party seems to be split between factions. On one side of the chasm are those who want to follow Kenney to implode the party and merge with the Wildrose (the official opposition) and the PC faithful who view Kenney as an interloper and want the status quo.

Now, these two groups don't seem to like each other very much.

In the war for Alberta's right wing soul, the most recent shocker is that Sandra Jansen, a high-profile PC MLA, decided to cross the floor and join forces with the NDP and premier Rachel Notley.

Jansen, a particularly progressive Progressive Conservative who was in the running for leadership, recently dropped out of the race, alongside the only other woman Donna Kennedy-Glans, because of a massive amount of harassment and an emergence of "Trump-style politics"—which she blamed Kenney for.

"My social media has been filled with filth, my domain name purchased to direct people to smear pieces on me and finally, this past weekend in Red Deer, the final straw. Insults were scrawled on my nomination forms," she wrote in a statement.

Read More: Female Politicians Chased Out of Alberta PC Leadership Race, 'Trump-style Politics' Blamed

Jansen also said that volunteers from "another campaign" (read as Jason Kenney) chased her down a hall at a meeting and jeered her and her volunteers for "supporting children's right to a safe school environment."

Kenney has condemned both the harassment and Trump-style politics.

Jason Kenney. Photo via Facebook

Shortly after two women were chased out of a race, Derek Fildebrandt, a Wildrose MLA and Alberta's smarmiest politician, decided it would be a good time to tweet out his thoughts about leadership.

Spoiler alert: they weren't good.

"Hyper-sensitive, politically-correct, victim-as-virtue culture is creating a leadership class of wimps. People are sick of it," he tweeted.

Which, sounds more like an alt-right troll than an elected official.

Moving on, it says a lot about the NDP's centrism that the high-profile PC MLA would join them as opposed to the Liberal or Alberta party. It will be interesting to see how the more conservative parts of the progressive-conservative gels with the team in orange.

Jansen, speaking to the CBC about her decision to jump ship and swim for safety, explained that the move was because she wanted to work for a reasonable and pragmatic party again. She added that "extremists were taking over" the party and threw a jab at Kenney.

"I don't believe that there has been anything moderate or pragmatic being offered or even discussed by the people intent on taking over the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta," she said.

Premier Notley welcomed Jansen to join her party and praised her as a "strong, articulate, mainstream, progressive woman."

As for K-diddles, well, he just keeps getting into mischief as lil' rosy cheeked scamps do. First Kenney called in Daddy Harper for his support and then he pulled a stunt at a Edmonton delegate selection meeting. The former immigration minister hosted a hospitality suite metres away from where the selection meeting was taking place, which the rules say you cannot do.

The party president enforced said rules and forced him to leave. Kenney, a longtime politician, pleaded ignorance and said that he broke the rules because, hell, they were a little tricky.

"The guidelines state that the candidate is not to be 'near' a room where a DSM is being held," he wrote in a blog post. "What does 'near' mean? 10 metres? 100 metres? 1 kilometre? Is the candidate barred from the larger building entirely—a building which the PC Party does not own nor rent as a whole?"

"Clearly the word 'near' is up for interpretation."

Frankly, these days, the only thing that doesn't seems to be up for interpretation in Albertan politics is that this mess of a leadership race is fucking depressing.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

The author and his partner. Photo courtesy of the author

This article originally appeared on VICE US

I met my partner in the spring of 2012, right around St. Patrick's Day. In his Grindr profile picture, he was wearing a suit, which made him stand out from the usual collection of hipsters on the east side of Milwaukee.

We soon arranged to meet at a nearby bar, neither of us expecting much more than a quick hookup. But after we went home together that night, something clicked. We continued seeing each other, and as days stretched into weeks, we suddenly had something going. That was four years ago. We've been together since then.

Our relationship has never been perfect—whose is?—but the love is real and girded by staying power. When he left his job and was unemployed for several months, it sucked, but I stayed. Laws in Wisconsin allowed me to extend my health insurance coverage to him as a domestic partner, and we managed to make it work. When a new job in the Chicago-area required him to relocate, it sucked, but I went. Now, after years of teamwork, we both have jobs we like and the kind of life we've always wanted together. But the mood of the country and the track record of unbridled hostility espoused by many incoming leaders has us both afraid that this is as good as it's ever going to get for us.

When the Obergefell ruling dropped last year, extending same-sex marriage rights to couples across the country, my partner and I celebrated with the rest of America—but at a distance. Marriage equality had come to Wisconsin eight months earlier, despite the best efforts of some very committed anti-gay advocates. While we were overwhelmed at how far LGBTQ equality had come since the days of the proposed constitutional ban, we were not racing to the courthouse to grab a still-warm marriage license. Those were for the scores of couples together for decades who were all-but-married in the eyes of everyone but an indifferent or outwardly hostile state. We felt confident that this victory preserved our right to marry when the time was right.

We're racing to the courthouse now. The morning after Donald Trump was named president-elect, my partner and I calmly discussed how his presidency might affect us personally. We concluded that the possibility of future same-sex marriage restrictions is very real, and that if we wanted to get married, the time is now or never.

It's been a queasy, surreal week for the LGBTQ community since the election. On one hand, Trump has made overtures to sexual minorities that surpass any given by his party's previous standard bearers. When the question of marriage equality was put to him shortly after his victory, he said the matter was "settled." Before that, he'd used gay people as a prop in his hardline stance against Islamic terrorism following the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, and counted prominent openly gay men among his surrogates and supporters.

Beyond that, it seems like Donald Trump doesn't give a shit about gay people—in a good way. There's a big difference between acceptance and mere tolerance, but I'd rather have a tolerant president than one who's fervently anti-gay. Trump has orbited in close proximity to queer folk for so long he doesn't care anymore, if he ever did. When Caitlyn Jenner visited the Trump Tower, he told her she could use whichever bathroom she damn pleased. (Since then, he's seemingly reversed that stance, proving that you can never take Donald Trump at face value.)

Yet the LGBTQ community does have reason to worry their relationships will again be under attack. Trump's gay marriage proclamation following the election is at odds with the stances he campaigned on, including being "for traditional marriage," that marriage equality should be left to the states, and that marriage equality opponents can trust him. The curated list of right-wingers he paraded around as a buttress to the conservative wing of the Supreme Court doesn't inspire confidence, considering it includes judges who supported sodomy laws and politicians who compared same-sex marriages to people marrying bacon.

The possibility of future same-sex marriage restrictions is very real, and if we wanted to get married, it's now or never.

And while Trump himself might not care much about ruining the lives of queer folks, his transition team includes people like Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council who believes sexuality is a choice. Blackwell also once ran for office and insisted his (straight) opponent was secretly gay, and thus unfit to serve.

Then there's Mike Pence, an anti-gay true believer if there ever was one. Even before he was put on the national ticket, Pence was already famous in gay circles as the architect of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which effectively legalized discrimination against LGBTQ people in Indiana. Pence's playbook is being revived on a national scale in the form of the First Amendment Defense Act, which Trump has pledged to sign as soon as it lands on his desk.

Outside of the executive branch, other LGBTQ opponents or opportunists are lining up in opposition to existing law. The reinvigorated National Organization for Marriage released a post-election attack plan to unravel all measures of LGBTQ equality achieved since 2004, including a restriction on the definition of marriage. That's to say nothing about the surge of invective directed at LGBTQ individuals following the election. Even supposed unifiers like Florida senator Marco Rubio have gone on record saying the future of gay marriage is subject solely to whims of incoming judicial appointees.

That's not a future we're willing to risk. My partner and I had spoken of marriage before, and considered ourselves to be in a serious, committed relationship—sort of like a low-key, long-term engagement. But we weren't in any rush. Many of our straight friends dated for close to a decade before tying the knot, and while marriage was always the end goal, we both assumed it would happen sometime down the road, when we could afford to pay for a lavish wedding and honeymoon.

We no longer have the luxury to wait. Obama leaves office in three months—that's barely enough time for a ceremony. We don't know how dark the future will be for LGBTQ individuals in the four years to come, but we do know it will be harder to dissolve existing marriages than to prevent new ones, and we'd rather not take our chances.

So my partner and I are headed to court, before the haters do. It's not the ceremony we wanted, but it is the legal status we need. At least we'll have that, for now.

Follow Zach Brooke on Twitter.

All images by Guney Soykan

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

You can tell a lot about a country based on who runs it. Almost five months after he stepped down from his role as Prime Minister, you might for a second forget that David Cameron isn't still running the UK. He's come to define the last few years of austerity Britain, of a Tory party that champions spending cuts and slashed benefits for the young, while making jokes about how the leader of the opposition does up his tie and sings the national anthem. Gordon Brown symbolizes a sort of sad-faced dejection; Blair an optimism that later soured beyond belief and turned his name into a leftie slur, and Thatcher the crushing blow to industry that shook Britain to its core—or "power dressing" if you're a women's magazine.

But how much of that could you really learn from just looking at a photo of the prime minister? For Amsterdam-based artist Guney Soykan, one simple concept helps to chart the changing face of leadership in a handful of countries, displayed in his Face of a Nation project. And it all started with Guney's birthplace, in Turkey.

"The election results on November 1, 2015 were a big surprise for the opposition," he says. "Besides all of the controversy surrounding the government's actions, Erdogan and his AK Party had won the election again—by a major landslide. I was trying to understand the reasons behind the results. One of the things I realized was that voting behavior is very emotional: The elected leaders are a reflection of their society. And to me, that reflection is not only about the ideas, but also about the personality of the leader. I believe that people tend to vote for leaders with whom they can identify."

So he decided to bring together a visual record of the people chosen to run their countries—however democratically—over the past 50 years, creating a sort of time-lapse composite photo of one face made up of slivers of all the former leaders. The results vary, from the tiny splinters of men in Turkey's tumultuous political atmosphere to the creepy continuity of North Korea.

"It was almost too easy to put together the faces of the North Korean leaders. There are only three, and they're all part of the same family lineage," he says. "But when searching for images to use, I noticed something else that tells us about the political communication in North Korea—the most popular portraits of these leaders are almost identical. They all portray the men from the same angle, wearing the same glasses, and with a very similar haircut. North Korean propaganda leaves no room for doubt that the ideology of their first leader Kim Il-sung continues throughout his successors."

Other countries had their own tropes. "The official presidential photos released by the White House are always the same—facing to the right and smiling at camera," he says. "Meanwhile, Russian leaders have always been portrayed in a very serious and powerful pose." In South Africa, you watch as the majority black country moves from being run by the white-minority, racist apartheid government, to the post-independence ANC party.

What about countries he hasn't featured? The places that don't tend to come up in the usual global conversations around the G-8 or G-20 countries? "I think everyone is more or less aware of what is going on near their country. So even if your neighbors aren't among these global political 'superstars,' you will still know about their political leaders. And the actions of these political players will play a role in your perception of that country."

Ultimately, the project is a reflection on history. You can follow the homogeneity of most country's leaders—mostly male, generally of one specific ethnic group—and ask yourself what that tells you about the rest of that nation's citizens. Guney just pulled these images off the internet, so understands this is less a photographic piece than one about perception. For him, Turkey tells the most compelling tale, and sheds light on recent electoral upsets we've witnessed in both the US and UK this year.

"Turkish history is full of coups, of which the recently failed military coup is but an example. In the timetable you can see that Nihat Erim became the Prime Minister in 1971 after a coup that created so much instability in the political scene that it led to another coup only nine years later," he says. "Looking at all these instabilities it becomes easier to understand why the average voter is opting for a seemingly 'stable' choice nowadays." Seen that way by anyone who was surprised by Brexit or Trump, the promises for "taking back control" in Britain and making American "great again" make a lot more sense.

See the rest of the 'Face of a Nation' series below.

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Jeff Sessions speaks at a Trump rally in October. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

This week, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was officially nominated to be Donald Trump's attorney general, the country's top law enforcement post. This is clearly a reward for the conservative legislator's unwavering loyalty: Sessions was the first senator to formally support Trump. In February, he announced at a rally that "we are in a movement that must not fade away."

"We need to make America great again," Sessions said before thousands of cheering supporters in Madison, Alabama. "This is a campaign, this is a movement. The American people are not happy with their government."

"It is an honor to nominate US Senator Jeff Sessions to serve as Attorney General of the United States," Trump said in a press statement Friday. "He is a world-class legal mind and considered a truly great Attorney General and US Attorney in the state of Alabama. Jeff is greatly admired by legal scholars and virtually everyone who knows him."

But not many people outside his home state know much about Sessions. He's served in the Senate for 20 years, but never before has he reached this level of national prominence. So what can America expect from him after his expected confirmation by the Senate as AG?

Civil rights advocates paint a bleak picture of a former US attorney and legislator known for anti-immigrant sentiment and resistance to the Civil Rights movement; he was once blocked from getting a federal judgeship over a controversy that involved his past statements about how the the ACLU and NAACP "un-American" and "communist-inspired." His friends and supporters, however, insist that he's fair to all.

Sessions's Alabama roots run deep. He was born in Selma in 1946, and grew up in Hybart, a "little bitty community" on the edge of the Black Belt—the part of the state that was at the heart of the antebellum cotton industry—according to Hardy Jackson, a history professor at Jackson State University who writes about Alabama history.

"His record is the record of a classic Southern conservative, and I've never known him to be otherwise," Jackson told me. "On the edge of the Black Belt was where people with plantations had homes. He was part of the plantation gentry."

Sessions attended the Methodist school Huntingdon College for his undergraduate degree and then went on to law school at the University of Alabama. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed him US Attorney in Mobile. His most famous case from that period was his prosecution of three black civil rights workers for voter fraud who became known as the Marion Three (they were quickly acquitted of the charges against them). Meanwhile, he did seemingly little to protect the rights of black residents.

"I never felt the US Attorney's office under Sessions was available to help African Americans in pursuit of their civil rights or employment issues," one longtime civil rights attorney who was practicing in Mobile at the time told me. (He requested he remain anonymous.) "All of the traditional civil rights and voting rights were being fought at that time."

In 1986, Reagan nominated Sessions to be a federal district court judge, but the Senate eventually rejected the appointment after the confirmation hearings became mired in controversy—he was accused of making racially insensitive remarks, telling a white civil rights lawyer he was a "disgrace to his race," and joking about how he thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out some of them were pot smokers. He denied many allegations but admitted he thought the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was "a piece of intrusive legislation."

Gerry Hebert, a civil rights attorney who worked in Mobile at the time, testified that Sessions made such comments, and came out immediately to express his opposition to Sessions's AG appointment.

"He has repeatedly demonstrated racial insensitivity to black citizens of Alabama and this country through both his words and actions. He has never apologized for his racially charged comments during his last tenure at the Department of Justice," Hebert said in an emailed statement. "I believe that Sessions represents a threat to voting rights for all minorities. It is frightening to think that Sessions will run the U.S Department of Justice and have the opportunity to roll back voting rights through voter suppression in communities that have long struggled for equality."

But all that criticism didn't hurt Sessions's popularity in Alabama—he was elected state Attorney General in 1994 and went to the Senate in 1997. He's the most beloved statewide public official by far, his conservatism matching that of his deep-red state, even if some residents still harbor hostility for him.

"Many people in Alabama were quite upset that so much was made of the remarks he made," recalled Jackson, referring to Sessions' comments about the NAACP.

The issue that brought Sessions into Trump's orbit was immigration—he opposes all forms of immigration reform, wants to decrease the number of visas granted to foreign workers, and aligns with Trump on mass deportations.

"For several years now he's been the leading anti-immigration voice in the US Senate since he served in opposition to what we call practical reforms, so it's certainly something we're concerned about," Beth Werlin, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, told me. The attorney general has the authority to interpret which groups qualify for asylum and how strictly to prosecute undocumented immigrants, among other immigration issues.

Senator Sessions's office did not immediately return calls asking for comment. But one of the senator's best friends told me that accusations of his civil rights infringement are blown out of proportion.

"I have known and been a friend of Jeff for over 40 years and he has always been the same... a sincere person with class," Scott Hunter, a Mobile resident who played football at the University of Alabama, told me via text message. "He will do a great job for all Americans as their Attorney General... and I emphasize 'all' Americans."

But the organizations that will likely oppose Trump's administration for the next four years do not share that optimism.

Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, warned that Sessions went beyond opposing immigration into aligning with "racist anti-immigrant groups." Cohen noted that Sessions had spoken to the Advisory Board of the Federation of American Immigration Reform, which the SPLC defines as a hate group for its anti-Latino rhetoric, and that the anti-Muslim group the Center for Security Policy recently given Sessions an award.

"These are groups that don't just simply oppose immigration. These are groups that vilify Latinos and Muslims," Cohen told me.

The ACLU also issued a warning about Sessions's appointment, which the Senate must now approve.

"His positions on LGBT rights, capital punishment, abortion rights, and presidential authority in times of war have been contested by the ACLU and other civil rights organizations," the group said in a statement. "In his confirmation hearings, senators, the media, and the American public should closely examine his stances on these key issues to ensure we can have confidence in his ability to uphold the Constitution and our laws on behalf of all Americans."

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Casual sex isn't as great as everyone makes out to be. I mean, it's great for me, a man, because I am so painfully oblivious of my own shortcomings that I'd rather spend 20 minutes sweating in silence with a stranger than have the impertinence to ask her what she might actually find enjoyable. But this invariably leads to the ultimate subliminal embarrassment in sex: the faked orgasm.

An oft-cited American study of 20,000 university students found that 78 percent of men, compared to only 42 percent of women, reported having an orgasm in their last casual encounter. That means there is whole load of faking going on, with men strutting confidently out of dorm rooms while young women roll their eyes. Since the numbers in the US are so high, we spoke to both men and women about the last time they faked it.

"I thought it was the lesser of two evils"

I once faked it with a friend to cut it short. We were having random drunken sex for some reason and he said he loved me midway through, so I had to pretend not to hear so I didn't have to address it. Then I pretended I was "done" and fell asleep. Even though we are still friends we've never mentioned it again, mostly I think because I met the boyfriend I'm still with right now two weeks later.

My friend and I were both pretty drunk and I thought it was the lesser of two evils between having to explain to him halfway through that it was just random drunken sex and definitely not a love thing, or pretending not to hear and faking it so we could get it over with. I feel bad about doing it to this day, although I don't think he noticed. If he did, he didn't seem too bothered about it.

— Monica, 22

"I didn't realise how much antidepressants would affect my sex life"

I was on a weekend away with my girlfriend for a One Direction concert and we had been looking forward to it for months. We took some toys and she really wanted to spice things up and help us get close to one another, as I had been suffering depression and pushing her away. I never knew antidepressants would affect my sex life.

We went to 1D and had some drinks, got back to our room and I managed to get hard for a minute whilst putting the condom on and being inside her. It went semi and I fucked her for about five minutes, trying to get it over with. When I noticed she was near climax, I started with the sound effects and heavy breathing. We both got loud and I don't think she even had her eyes open but I said, "Uhh I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum," and groaned a massive groan, then snatched the condom off before she could see it was empty and put it in the bin.

I don't know if it was my antidepressants, the alcohol or just the anxiety but it's made me insecure of myself in bed and nervous to ever hook up with someone in the future. Me and my girlfriend just recently split too, but not over this. Our sex life depreciated very quickly and we lost intimacy.

— Ryan, 19

"I was mentally planning what I was gonna put in my curry later"

I was having sex with someone who I'd started seeing when I was about 20, and he was clearly way more into it than me, saying things like: "Oh my god your amazing" while we were pretty much just fucking in the missionary position. Now I know sex is for giggles, but back then I thought it was more serious and that I had to go with it, so I'm there making all the noises. We moved it onto a bit of doggy, which was great because I could look out the window.

Skip to about ten minutes later it's getting pretty boring, so I flip it back over and decide I'm hungry and want dinner so we gotta end it soon. Cue my audition for a porn movie, pretty much heaps of: "Oh my god, oh my god" and panting, the usual shit, like I'm a good actress. He thought we came together and had put in the performance of his life but the whole time I was mentally planning what I was gonna put in my curry later, like if I needed to go out and get fresh coriander or if we already had it, because what's a curry without fresh coriander?

— Courtney, 26

"I was going to have a heart attack after taking coke for hours"

It was 5PM the day after a packet binge began and my secret plan of continuing to buy packet to impress some girl had worked perfectly – she was in my bed touching my shrivelled-up disappointment. We then proceeded to do doggy style. I got out of breath after about ten seconds and thought I was going to have a heart attack, so I just pretended to orgasm, and then she fell asleep.

I was thinking of saying to this girl: "Look, I'm not gonna buss and also I think my heart and dick are going to explode and I don't know you well enough for you to take me to hospital," but was worried she would get all weird and try to make me orgasm and it would be embarrassing for everyone. Like, I don't insist on eating a girl out really badly for 45 minutes. If I don't make her come by un-sexily thrusting in her for a couple of minutes, I just accept it and move on.

— Tomas, 28

"I was too drunk and my beer goggles came off halfway through"

Faked orgasms used to be a thing that I did a lot back in the day, but these days I prefer not to: I can't be bothered, and also I'm trying to be a decent human being. There was this one night stand a few months ago, though. One of those ones where the guy was pretty keen to make you orgasm but I was too drunk and my beer goggles came off halfway through, so I just thought, 'Fuck it, I wanna go to sleep,' channelled my inner 19-year old and gave him the theatrics because that was obviously what he was waiting for. He bought it, nutted and I haven't seen him since.

— Yasmine, 24

"After more than an hour I just couldn't be bothered any more"

I last faked an orgasm after being at it relentlessly for well over an hour, and I just couldn't be bothered any more. It wasn't even like I wasn't enjoying it, either, but basically I made the noise, shook my leg and then went to sleep. Awful, I know, but man's gotta sleep, and I didn't want to hurt her feelings, thinking I hadn't finished and everything. A lot of onus is put on the "climax", when that's just one part of it, I think. I don't know if she noticed. Maybe, but if so, she never let on.

— Diego, 25

@williamwasteman

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A Public Health England car smoking ban advert

Some laws are enforced with zealous abandon. A parking tickets is issued every four seconds in the UK, while hundreds of thousands of public order offences are recorded each year.

On the flipside, there are a surprising number of actual laws you can break with impunity. Fancy a cigarette but you've got a kid in the car? Figures obtained by the Press Association show that only one person has ever been fined for smoking in a car next to a child, even though a ban on just that has been in place since October of last year.

When that law was first proposed, a number of politicians raised concerns about whether it could really be applied in practice. Among them was Anne Main, Tory MP for St Albans. Having now been proved correct, she says: "This is a truly unenforceable policy. There was always a lack of clarity on how it would be enforced, and what tangible effect it would have on parents who smoke in front of children."

This isn't the first time a law has proved difficult to enforce. In Northern Ireland, paying for sex was banned in June of 2015 but, one year on, not a single person had been charged. While the ban on fox hunting has yielded successful prosecutions, activists claim it is still routinely ignored. In March of last year it emerged there had been no successful prosecutions for performing female genital mutilation in the UK, despite a ban being in place for 30 years. There are many more laws like this, routinely broken but never policed. Some might say these lawbreakers are hard to monitor, but is any law truly unenforceable?

"No behaviour is entirely impossible to police," says Jenny Wiltshire, head of general crime at law firm Hickman & Rose. According to Wiltshire, problems arise when politicians introduce laws which don't match public opinion. When that happens, widespread breaches of the law – combined with difficulties enforcing the new rules – "can render the whole enterprise fruitless".

Often, the extent to which laws are actively enforced comes down to time and money. Ken Marsh, chairman at the Met Police Federation, says: "How does a police officer use their time correctly? They get hauled from pillar to post in terms of what they are asked to do. If they're driving along and see someone smoking or not wearing their seatbelt, to take the action required you're looking at an hour-plus. That's a huge drain on police resources."

Mike Schwarz, partner at law firm Bindmans, agrees: "The police have limited budgets and they have to prioritise which crimes they want to pursue. Police and police crime commissioners have a role in enforcing the law and monitoring its enforcement. The whole idea is they can react to local pressures and priorities. It might just be down to financial considerations, and that also ties into political judgments about what are serious crimes and what aren't."

While one might imagine all laws are created equal, in reality, Schwarz describes a range of factors that can come into play when decisions are being made about which of them should be enforced. "My impression is that it depends on a whole combination of things, like financial priorities, personal connections, political sympathies," he says.

Schwarz sees the fox hunting ban as an example of how some laws are enforced more rigorously than others. "Before that legislation came into effect, hunt sabs felt they were being prosecuted overzealously by the police, perhaps because the police were sympathetic to the hunt," he says. "Then the legislation came into effect banning fox hunting. There have been criticisms of that legislation not being correctly formulated, and also criticisms that it was not enforced fully against hunters, while hunt sabs were still being prosecuted."

Regardless of whether they will be enforced or not, it's not hard to imagine that politicians might be tempted to pass laws which create a perception that they are working to stamp out problem behaviour. Nicholas Dent, associate at law firm Kingsley Napley, says: "I think there's an attraction to introducing criminal offences, because it offers a good political soundbite. It's an easy off-the-shelf response to a problem."

Dent points to recently introduced rules which were brought in as a response to the global financial crisis, and which make it an offence to take a decision which causes a financial institution to fail. "It's quite possible there will be no prosecutions under that legislation," he says. "But you can understand why the executive thought it would be a good idea to create this offence – because they thought it was what the public wanted."

READ: The Law Needs to Catch Up, But Look: Weed Is Effectively Legal in the UK

You don't have to look hard for examples of laws that are so rarely enforced and widely flouted that they have largely been forgotten. Dent suggests legislation which forbids the sale of alcohol to a person who is already drunk – a law that, if properly enforced, would threaten to tear apart the fabric of British society and almost certainly trigger the collapse of the economy.

All this said, sometimes the mere existence of a law is enough to change behaviour. Jenny Wiltshire gives the smoking ban as an example of a law which was a low priority for the police and local authorities, but was successful because it was widely supported by the public. "If they are obeyed, laws which are not actually enforced are certainly a cost effective way of changing people's behaviour," she says.

The point is that even after a law goes through the scrutiny of parliament and the careful bureaucracy of the civil service, it still doesn't mean it's actually the law of the land. The law isn't abstract; it's human, and the laws that stick are ones that the public, and the police, actually care about.

@mark_wilding

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Still from Moroni Matteo's Axe Murder prank

Prank culture is bigger than ever. It used to be that only men called Dom Joly, Tom Green and Ashton Kutcher were given the platform to pull tricks on unsuspecting bystanders, but now anyone with a wifi password can make a name for themselves by doing something shitty to someone else and posting the results online.

Like the guy on YouTube who told his partner he'd blown up their kid, or pretended to throw it off a balcony. Or this Australian prank-bro who routinely terrorises his girlfriend. Or Sam Pepper, who inexplicably has built and retained a huge following. And it extends beyond the internet – the so-called "killer clown craze", which began as a prank and morphed into people in clown masks trying to terrify other people by running after them with knives, is YouTube prank culture gone mainstream.

Scientists know where fear comes from – it's triggered by the feeling of losing control or being rendered powerless in some way. We've all experienced it, and sometimes we even volunteer for it: we watch horror films, dress up for Halloween, go to theme parks and submit ourselves to terrifying rides. We find pleasure in making people jump. There's an element of eroticism in recalling a particularly grisly story. But why is it now a cultural obsession?

"There is a value in being able to shock," says Tony Blockley, a criminologist at the University of Derby. The desire to frighten someone, he says, is a product of a society obsessed with sensationalism. Shock has become currency, a way to impress.

"By attaining that 'shock value', you feed your personal ego. There is a status, a credibility, a kudos attached to it," he says. "We don't shock or scare for the sake of shocking or scaring. We do it to achieve something."

Look through these videos on YouTube and you'll see that all the perpetrators are men and most of the victims are women. Tony argues this pattern is so evident because pranks are a way for men to maintain their dominant position in culture, in a society that rewards aggressive and dominant male behaviour – or, in his words, "hegemonic masculinity".

"In frightening someone," Tony says, "you are asserting your power and control over them. The intense psychological drive to be dominant is predicated by an environment which aggrandises these values. Why do they do it? Because they can. They can scare somebody. They can control someone. These men would never see the people they frighten as 'victims'. They don't consider that person. They don't try to. They see that person as an object for their achievement – not as a person."

In one study, 78 undergraduates were asked whether they'd rather kill insects, assist in the killing of insects, cleaning toilets or submerging their hands in ice cold water. Over 53 percent of the volunteers elected to grind the insects to death.

"Everyday sadism" is the label attributed to casual acts of sadism. These might range from a seemingly benign competitiveness in a violent video game through to more stealthy behaviours, such as stealing or manipulation. The consistent thread is a pleasure derived from the suffering of others. I wonder if there's an element of everyday sadism in online pranks. "There is a degree of narcissism. A lack of compassion, too," says Tony.

In 2012, psychologist Erin Buckles undertook research into whether or not "ordinary, everyday people" are capable of acts of sadism. Seventy-eight undergraduates volunteered for the study, thinking they were being investigated for their tolerance to challenging and unpleasant jobs, choosing between killing insects, assisting in the killing of insects, cleaning toilets or submerging their hands in ice cold water. Over 53 percent of the volunteers chose killing or assisting to kill insects over the other two jobs.

The "insect killing" was set up so that no bugs were actually harmed, though the volunteers did not realise this, electing to grind the insects to death via a machine that mimicked the crunch of the insects' exoskeletons. The more sadistic volunteers derived pleasure from killing the insects, and the more insects they killed, the more pleasure they derived. "It reinforces the sadistic behaviour via pleasurable experiences," Erin concluded in her study.

This perhaps explains the escalation of the clown craze, from passive clowns frightening people up to clowns actively perpetrating acts of violence.

Moroni Matteo's Axe Murder prank

Moroni Matteo runs the YouTube prank channel DM Pranks Productions Early pranks include the mostly gentle "huge sneeze prank" and "confusing people", but some of the more recent videos you'll find on his channel feature a man in military attire chasing strangers with a flamethrower, a blood-stained "zombie" replicating axing someone's head off and, of course, a very literal killer clown.

Ask Matteo about what compels him to scare people and he is peculiarly earnest, describing one of his pranks as "realising a childhood dream".

How does he feel executing a prank? "I feel very good," he says. "There is a lot of hard work that goes behind my videos, sometimes months of work and thousands of dollars. I started the channel in 2013 after watching other people playing pranks and thinking I could do better. I wanted to have the highest quality videos on the prank scene."

"A lot of this," says Dr Jeremy Phillips, senior lecturer in forensic psychology at the University of Chester, "is driven by the simple need to be liked."

Like Tony Blockley, he recognises the influence of power and control. "People's behaviour is unpredictable. We mostly cannot control how they will respond to us. And if someone is not getting the response – be it respect or validation – their self-esteem requires, they will seek it out via extreme modes of behaviour," he says.

Dr Phillips believes social media feeds into this – anonymous feedback on pranks only reinforces the need to do them. "People see others gaining kudos for these acts and want to elicit the same reaction," he argues. "You do not stand on the roadside dressed as a clown for no reason. You are expecting a reaction. You are expecting to be filmed."

Of course, while it's easy to sit back and judge, blaming the success of the sadistic prank videos on the individuals making them, we're all complicit. It's classic schadenfreude material. And in a culture in which everything is content, by clicking on videos and laughing at the misfortune of others, we've all made scaring people on the internet something worth doing.

@Lara_A_Williams

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Jazzie B, aka Trevor Beresford Romeo, is 53, has an OBE and is the founder of Soul II Soul, the Grammy-award winning the group behind life-long bangers like "Back to Life" and "Keep on Movin''. They've just released their latest record Origins ,a live album that traces the group's roots from the 1980s until the present day.

VICE: How many people have been in love with you?
Jazzie B: Thousands. With a name like Romeo what do you expect?

When in your life have you been truly overcome with fear?
I've been stuck up a few times. The last one was when I got stuck up in Jamaica by the police. Just one of those roadblock incidents and they went too far. They stop you and draw guns, and I guess one gentleman was overzealous and thought I was putting on my accent. When they realised I was an English geezer they put their guns away.

What is the nicest thing you own?
I think my records, just a handful of special records. A personal record signed by James Brown, who I was on tour with, and a Jones Girl single signed by all the girls.

Complete this sentence: The problem with young people today is...
They're misunderstood. There's so much shit thrown at young people when older people's behaviour is sometimes worse. You see a bunch of young people on the street and you're immediately in fear, but they're just hanging out. I live in Camden, where there's a really diverse and interesting cross-section of people. And there's arseholes in everyone, yeah? But most of the young'uns are just misunderstood. In one of the youth centres I look after, one of the kids has a car and he keeps getting stopped all the time even though he has a driving licence. Things like that would destroy your confidence in older people.

What would be your last meal?
Probably stewfish, preferably snapper, bammy, and ground food, so things like yams, green bananas and sweet potatoes. It's my favourite. I ate it as a child growing up, and I was raised on that sort of food. I probably eat it about once a week anyway.

Would you have sex with a robot?
Nah. Too many nice human birds about for that.

If you were a wrestler, what song would you come into the ring to?
"Zion", by Soul II Soul. I'd come into the ring to my own song. Why not? Ain't that a perk of the job?

What's the grossest injury or illness you've ever had?
Probably the chicken pox at 20. It didn't get to shingles, so I was lucky. But I had to stay away from all my mates and I was having a birthday party at the time. They were all there except for me, and I was quarantined in a different room.

Do you think drugs can make you happy?
Nah, they're temporary fixes. They're a fix for the moment, but they don't make you happy. Been there done that. Child of the 80s, me.

What film or TV show makes you cry?
A film called Babylon, it's an English film about sound systems. It's quite an emotional film for me, it's a personal thing. There's a scene in there that makes me overwhelmed with emotion, it just reminds me of so many things about how I grew up.

Without Googling, explain how global warming basically works.
I think with global warming, it's all about evolution. I think probably over 100 or 1,000 years ago things were completely different. Now, because there's so many more people in the world, there's more adding to it. So whether that's too many cows, or emitting stuff into the ozone, I personally believe that it's all part of evolution. It's all inevitable, just like life and its cycles are.

What have you done in your career that you are most proud of?
Our motto: A happy face, a thumping base, for a loving race. It's being an asset to the collective – that could be Soul II Soul, that could be mankind.

What memory from school stands out to you stronger than any other?
My careers teacher saying I should become a milkman. What a dickhead. There were a lot of dickhead teachers. Probably fewer than there are today though.

Where did you go on your first friends holiday and what did you do?
It was probably Ibiza in the early 80s. It was incredible – we're talking about the Balearic days, it wasn't house music and all that. It was a bit more rustic. Less contrived. It was in the embryonic stages of mass hedonism. So there was still a firm and strong hippy culture. I mean, there were clubs, but they weren't at the magnitude of what it has become. So it was an interesting phase.

If you had to give up sex or kissing, which would it be?
Kissing! I'd give up kissing for some more sex.

Soul II Soul's new album 'Origins' is out now.

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