All photos by Rebecca Camphens

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

You'd probably think that no one handles quite as many sex toys as pornstars, but 40-year-old Chantall from the Netherlands has had more than 600 dildos, butt plugs and vibrators pass through her hands.

On her blog Climaximaal.nl, which she started about four years ago, she reviews every kind of toy imaginable – including several Tarzan vibrators, a smiling buttplug and a double penetrator. Her blog gets around 2,000 visitors a day, while she also gets a lot of e-mails from people asking her for sex advice on a weekly basis. Besides sex toy reviews, her blog also offers more in-depth stuff – like a Comprehensive Guide to Lube or tips for cleaning a sex toy.

To get to this level of expertise, Chantall has been puffing and panting for almost 15 years – she's been in the sex toy industry for much longer than her website's been live. I wanted to know more about this fountain of sex toy knowledge, so I went to her home to get a good look at her sex toy paradise. When I rang her doorbell around 11:30 AM, a cheerful redhead wearing a bright turquoise polka dot dress opened the door. After a cup of tea, she led me to a small office upstairs. It was full of brightly-coloured dreamcatchers, which she also makes herself and sells online.

I spoke with Chantall about her blog, toxic toys and the ultimate orgasm.

VICE: Why did you start a blog about sex toys?
Chantall: I have a degree in Media Studies, and after I graduated I started working as a freelance writer for various magazines. I've always been very interested in sexuality, so when the editor in chief of the Dutch pornographic magazine FOXY asked me to write for them, I immediately said yes. I was responsible for the product page and wrote about 10 new sex toys every month. That was about 15 years ago. From there my interest in sex toys just kept growing, so about four years ago my husband said, "Why don't you start something of your own?". That's when I started my own blog.

How many sex toys have you tried in those 15 years?
I think I must be getting close to 1,000. But some of them are so bad, you don't even want to try them out. I will still turn them on but I just don't put them in. So the toys that I have actually tested – I think that's about 600.

I'm not going to torture myself by staying in bed with a terrible product for an hour in the hope that something will happen. If I don't get an orgasm within 10 minutes, that's it.

Do the manufacturers send you all these toys?
Yes, I have never actually bought one myself. I've got connections with all the major brands, like Lelo, Fun Factory and Rocks-Off. They send me their newest products before they even hit the stores so I can try them out and write about it. I also work with a few sex shops. They often let me choose the toys I'd like to test myself.

Do you do this every day?
I don't test a new toy every day, because reviewing sex toys is just like having "regular" sex; Sometimes you're in the mood and sometimes you're not. But I do try to update my website and answer messages from readers every day.

How long does it take you to test a toy?
It depends. If the toy is really excellent, I'll test it more than once. But if it's terrible – which happens more often than the other way around – I will be done with it very quickly. I'm not going to torture myself by staying in bed with a terrible product for an hour in the hope that something will happen eventually. If I don't get an orgasm within 10 minutes, that's it.

How do you go about testing a toy, exactly?
I usually test the toys on my own but some of them are made to be used with a partner, so sometimes I'll call in my husband. I do what I call a "dry test" first. I look at the package, I look up what the manufacturer says about the product online, I feel the material, read the instructions, I check the buttons and I take a look at and feel how the toy vibrates. It has happened before that I broke a toy right away just by turning it a bit. And if a toy stinks, I don't even try it out.

If it stinks?
Yes. The shape and the motor of a toy may be amazing but if it's made out of unsafe materials, I refuse to test it. Unsafe materials generally have a very typical plastic smell. Safe materials are glass, metal and 100 percent silicone, for instance. Those materials are non-porous, which means they are easy to clean and that bacteria, fungi or other kinds of dirty stuff don't get the chance to stick to your toy.

For instance, an unsafe material that is sometimes used for sex toys is jelly, which is PVC that's been softened with plasticisers. These plasticisers are not good for your health. There have been studies on rats, and they got infertile after a small exposure to plasticisers. So toys made out of jelly are not allowed to ever enter my body.

But toys made out of silicone are okay, right?
Sure, though an other problem which comes in to play is that a company is allowed to put on the package that the toy is made out of hundred percent silicone, even if that's not the case. There aren't many laws and rules concerning sex toys, unfortunately.

Is there a way to tell if a toy is unsafe, besides the material?
There are a few tells. Never buy a toy with a horny-looking woman on the package, never buy toys that smell, never buy toys that come with a "For novelty use only" tag on the package and above all, read about the product first or consult a sex shop assistant before you buy it. We are all so busy worrying about what we eat these days, but no one really thinks about how healthy their vibrator is.

What's your favourite sex toy?
It's the Europe Magic Wand, purely because of the brilliant vibrations it gives you – though it just might the most ugly vibrator that exists. It looks a bit like a microphone with a huge ball on it and if you are a woman who has never tried a sex toy, I'd advice you to not start with this one. It vibrates very deeply, because it works on 220 volts. So, you have to plug it in a socket.

What's the worst?
I think more than a half of the sex toys I've tested belong in that category. So every toy that's made out of unsafe materials is bad. And then you also have those that vibrate badly. I always compare vibrations to the growl of a bear and the squeak of a mouse. Growling bear vibrations are the good ones, while squeaky mouse vibrations are the bad ones. They are not only annoying to your ears, but also to your clitoris.

Then you also have the category I call "Funfair in your cunt"; toys in every colour of the rainbow, with clockwise and counterclockwise rotating pearls and glitter. It all looks very pretty but I can not recommend those products for several reasons. And then there are the "sex toys that look like children's toys" – those are the ones I really hate.

What's the most extreme toy you've tested?
The Sybian is a kind of fuck machine – it was so terrible! When I put it on, my whole house – incuding the houses next door – started to vibrate. It's a device that weighs about 10 kilos and the company advised to put it on my bed, so that the mattress would absorb the vibrations and my neighbours didn't have to enjoy my little adventure. For me, that was too much hassle. I'm in for good and nice sex. I don't need it to be so complicated that I have to rebuild my entire living room.

A terrible Hello Kitty vibrator, which according to Chantall is "a real collector's item."

What makes your vagina the ultimate testing vagina?
Well, it probably isn't. Every woman is different and I can not guarantee that whatever I find pleasurable, all other women do too. But I can tell you what toys you shoulnd't use. I have so many toys at home – I don't think there is anyone else in the Netherlands who has tested that many.

Is there actually the right toy for every woman?
Yes, I think so. But if you don't feel the need to have one, that's another story. If you have a good sex life with your partner or with your fingers, you shouldn't feel the pressure to buy one. But there are plenty of women who find it more difficult to have an orgasm.

Thanks for having me, Chantall.

A sugar factory near York that's since been demolished (Photo: Ken Crosby, via)

Earlier this week, Britain's largest steelmaker, TATA steel, announced that it would end production in the UK. The news is another giant blow to the UK manufacturing industry, which has been declining rapidly since the 1970s. Gone are the days of coal mines, chimneys and cotton mills; countries like China, India and Taiwan took the manufacturing crown years ago through low costs and cheap labour.

But it's not all doom and gloom: manufacturing still accounts for about 10 percent of the output of the UK economy. There are over 100,00 people employed in the British aerospace industry, for example, and we still make 5 million tons of plastic a year, while our textile industry is the third largest fashion employer in the EU, just behind Italy and Germany.

The figures might show that the UK still has some form of manufacturing industry, but does anyone actually know that? We went took to the streets to ask some strangers if they have any idea that we still make things in this country.

VICE: Do you know what we manufacture in the UK?
Ben, 23, insurance broker:Not as much as we used to. We do a lot more high tech stuff now.

High tech unfortunately doesn't come under manufacturing – do you know any other industrial industries we have in the UK?
Building cars. But we don't tend to do that any more.

Do you think there should be more investment in the UK's manufacturing industries?
The problem is wages are too high here; it's cheaper to make things in other countries. I think, unfortunately, there will always be more made abroad because it's too expensive to produce in this country.

When you were growing up did you ever think about having a career in the manufacturing industry?
Not really. I grew up in the south of England, where there is traditionally less manufacturing than in the north. Down here there was never that community of children going off to do what their fathers did.

Do you know what's manufactured in the UK?
Benaiah, 31, designer: Yes, because I get stuff made here myself. I've got my own clothing brand and I have a lot of pieces made in the Midlands and in Huddersfield, where I'm from.

Why did you want to make stuff in the UK? It must be pretty expensive.
Huddersfield is known for its suiting fabric, so massive brands like Dior get their suiting fabrics made in Huddersfield. Knowing that gave me good reason to keep production here. Also, keeping money within this economy is important to me.

Have you found it a struggle to keep manufacturing here?
Yes, because it's so expensive – it's ridiculous. Also, the level of quality as a whole is better in places like China. A lot of clothing manufactures over here don't have some of the technical abilities for specific things I want designed.

Do you think people are aware that the textile industry contributes greatly to our economy?
No, not at all. I think people think it's something that we used to do, as opposed to what we still do. And how do you get people to still use things here when it's so expensive!

Do you know what we manufacture in the UK?
Mhairi, 19, shop assistant: No. I thought everything people bought here was either from China or America.

Can you remember the last thing you bought that was made in the UK?
No, but come to think of it, I know a lot of jumpers are made in the UK.

Yeah, the textile industry is booming. Anything other than jumpers?
A lot of food is made here, isn't it?

Yes it is, along with cars and plastic. Did you ever have ambition to work in the manufacturing industry?
I've always wanted to make clothes, but that's about it.

What products do we make in the UK?
Margo, 30, producer: Clothes, shoes, furniture... oh, and food!

Do you think it's important that we have a manufacturing industry here in the UK?
Yeah, for sure. It's the same for every other country – the problem is that everything becomes centralised and one company begins to run the whole industry. I think it's important to use whatever techniques and skills a country has to create a sense of pride.

Did you ever have dreams of getting a job within the manufacturing industry?
Not really. Some of my family are food producers, so that's always been the path a lot of them have taken, but I've always been into art.

Do you think more should be done in this country to promote manufacturing?
I think more education would go a long with manufacturing. A lot of people are put off by high prices of British goods, but people need to be informed as to why the prices are so high and why it's important that they are made.

Can you remember the last UK-made product you bought?
Probably my shoes – they're Clarks.

The last Clarks UK factory ceased production in 2005. Production was relocated off-shore, using third party factories, predominantly located in Asia.

Do you know what we manufacture in the UK?
Sonia, 24, graphic designer: I have no idea.

We make a lot of aeroplane parts and pharmaceutical products – perhaps you've bought clothing from a British textile industry?
Yeah, I always shop at Topshop.

Actually, the vast majority of Topshop clothes are made abroad.
Are you serious? I didn't know that.

Do you think people should be more informed about British manufacturing?
Yeah, definitely – I mean, you've just taught me a lot about Topshop.

Has learning that a high street brand like Topshop make a lot of their clothes abroad made you think differently about shopping there?
No, everything is the same to me. I wouldn't be more likely to buy something because it was made here, and I think that things made in Britain have their price boosted up.

Do you know what products we manufacture in the UK?
Iestyn, 50, performer: Books? Do we still export cotton?

Well, a German-backed company has plans to build a new cotton-spinning line in Manchester, but that's about it. Did you ever want to get into the manufacturing industry before you have the career you do now?
Well, my uncle, who worked for BOAC as a mechanic, fascinated me. He made one specific part; the same part all of his working life – isn't that crazy? But I knew I was always going to have a career on the stage.

Do you think more should be done to promote manufacturing in this country?
I have to say no, because I think art is the signature of the civilisation and we should value art first. I think manufacturing is valued quite enough, although look at me – ignorant.

Do you think it's important to buy British produce?
Actually, yes – look after your own first. I think you should support what's around you.

What was the last thing you bought that you know what made in the UK?
A pint of Fuller's.

Thanks, Iestyn.

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Tamil protesters in Parliament Square in May 2009, flying the flag of the LTTE, Tamil Tigers (Photo by Southbanksteve)

In 2009, as the Sri Lankan civil war reached its bloody conclusion, David Miliband touched down in Colombo to appeal for peace. "Now is the time for the fighting to stop," Miliband warned. "Protection of civilians is absolutely paramount in our minds."

However, Miliband's public plea stood in direct contrast to what his department was doing in private, secret Foreign Office documents seen by VICE can reveal. British aid to Sri Lanka helped set up a vigilante network that supplied police with intelligence at the height of a bloody government crack down. The documents show that the UK was aware of the risk of human rights abuses but continued nonetheless. This raises questions of British complicity in war crimes.

In 2008, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence "merged" a community policing project, that was being delivered by UK advisers, with civil defence activities which "involved forming unarmed youth vigilance groups to report on any suspicious items/people".

At that time, Sri Lankan police were silencing government critics through assassinations, disappearances and torture, as the military carried out a massive offensive against Tamil rebels in the north, shelling schools and hospitals inside civilian safe zones.

As many as 146,000 Tamils disappeared in the final stages of the conflict, which become known as a "war without witnesses", as media access was denied and outspoken Sri Lankan journalists were eliminated.

Although Britain has backed a UN investigation into credible allegations of war crimes committed during the civil war, the Foreign Office has spent years battling against Freedom of Information requests for details of British police assistance given to their Sri Lankan counterparts at the height of the dirty war against rebels and political opponents in 2008 and 2009.

First, the government told a court that no such documents existed. Then it released heavily censored copies, before accidentally sending out the original versions, revealing the details it had tried to cover up. VICE can now reveal these files for the first time.

"A veneer of community based policing being used to cover less palatable behaviour."

They contain a string of reports from the shadowy Security Sector Development Advisory Team, a joint FCO, MOD and DFID unit, setting out plans to help Sri Lanka set up a form of "community based policing".

At the time, Sri Lanka's police were overseen by the President's brother, defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. According to the documents, he decided around July 2008 that "civil defence and longer term community based policing activities would need to be 'merged'. The civil defence activities involved forming unarmed youth vigilance groups to report on any suspicious items/people and work closely with the Sri Lankan Police."

The Foreign Office realised that British aid was being manipulated, noting that the Sri Lankan defence department "clearly consider that there is an overlap between the activities comprising civil defence and those which they view as community based policing". However, the police aid project continued despite UK concerns about "a veneer of community based policing being used to cover less palatable behaviour".

Sri Lanka's defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa (fourth from left) with police chiefs. The sign reads "The meeting of Civil Defence Committees" (Photo via Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence)

"The Civil Defence Committees (CDC) were a mass intelligence network, which effectively converted the Sinhala civilian population into state spies."

Thousands of Civil Defence Committees or CDCs, comprised of local people, provided intelligence to the police. Sri Lankan media later reported the Defence Secretary as saying that "the modern 'community police' concept was introduced to Sri Lanka as CDCs were used effectively particularly during the final phase of the war to enhance vigilance among communities." Although he claimed the vigilantes foiled bomb plots in the capital, several journalists including an Associated Press photographer complained of harassment from Civil Defence Committees members as early as February 2008.

"Community police" initiatives may sound fairly benign, but not in this context: at the time, Sri Lanka was a war-torn country where the majority Sinhalese population was carrying out a genocidal assault on the minority Tamil people. "In every respect, the Civil Defence Committees (CDC) were a mass intelligence network, which effectively converted the Sinhala civilian population into state spies. The true objective of the plan was to re-organise the civilians as vigilance groups that can function parallel to the official state intelligence bodies", said Bashana Abeywardane, an exiled Sri Lankan journalist who now coordinates the press freedom group Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.

By mid-2008, the Foreign Office noted that there were "increasing restrictions on freedom of expression, including abductions and disappearances", referring to the escalating attacks on journalists in Sri Lanka. The files said that these activities "are claimed to be linked to the Secretary of Defence", the man who controlled the police force that Britain was aiding. The Foreign Office originally tried to censor this comment, probably because it shows they knowingly continued to work with people they suspected of being rights abusers.

The UK carried on its community policing project in Sri Lanka even after the outspoken editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, Lasantha Wickrematunge, was assassinated by unidentified gunmen in January 2009. His murder muzzled other critics of the government's war and highlighted the dire state of press freedom in Sri Lanka, as the fighting in the north climaxed.

Abeywardene said that people arrested as a result of intelligence gathered by CDC members were routinely tortured, raising serious questions about British complicity. "The Sri Lankan government expected CDC members to spy on their neighbours and report back to police, which included the powers to carry out random ID checks in their neighbourhoods. If someone considered as suspicious was reported or handed over to the police by the CDC, he or she will be taken into Terrorism Investigation Division custody where they would be detained and tortured."

How VICE reported the conflict at the time:

The UK Foreign Office was well aware that it risked working with human rights abusers; however, it did not rule out using one of the island's most violent paramilitary groups as a source of recruits for community policing. A censored part of one document shows British officials felt that "the suggestion of employing ex-TMVP combatants as policemen in the East remains contentious and would require sophisticated vetting mechanisms to avoid those against whom there are allegations of human rights abuses being sent to promote community based policing." The TMVP was a government-backed militia, led by a renegade Tamil colonel, that was accused of killings and abductions.

The documents don't give any indication as to why Britain would want to support this genocidal regime. However, a speech by then UK defence secretary Liam Fox in 2011 could give us a clue. "Sri Lanka has a role to play in maintaining the international stability and security that, as an open, trading nation, Britain's national interest requires", Liam Fox told an audience in Colombo. "Sri Lanka is located in a pivotal position in the Indian Ocean with major international shipping routes between the Far East and the Gulf within 25 miles of your coast".

Our investigation has also found that Britain continued to work with Sri Lanka's police chief, Jayantha Wickramaratna, advising his officers about intelligence-gathering techniques, even though the Foreign Office did not trust him. One document reveals that UK advisers "congratulated the new [Inspector General of Police] on his appointment", but they tried to censor the fact that they had a "lack of confidence in his trustworthiness". Wickramaratna, who was appointed head of police in 2008, was well known to British authorities. He had previously visited Scotland for the first stage of the community policing project in 2007.

Staff from the Scottish Police College travelled to Sri Lanka to continue the work with Wickramaratna and his colleagues. David Garbutt, a former director of the Scottish Police College, told VICE that the training he delivered to Sri Lankan officers was "based on the National Intelligence Model (NIM), which provides community data to support the principles of community policing."

The National Intelligence Model is used by British police forces for gathering vast amounts of information on criminal suspects, crimes and communities at local, regional and national levels. Dr Robin Fletcher, an ex-Metropolitan police Detective Superintendent, says that the model "always has the potential to be misused" in the wrong hands. "It gathers masses and masses of intelligence...for example where did he go shopping? Who did he meet?" This information was being used by a police force that was tracking down critical journalists and anyone who sheltered them.

A screenshot of a video demonstrating i2 software

To reiterate, just because it was called "community policing" doesn't mean the British government was training Sri Lankan cops in stuff like fines for littering or shutting down noisy parties. One British adviser noted ominously that the term Community Based Policing was "being used for all manner of activities". The Foreign Office itself was concerned that Sri Lankan police might be receiving too much intelligence training from UK staff. One report, written by a Foreign Office adviser, claims that Garbutt promised to train the Sri Lankan police in using powerful i2 intelligence software. This technology allows authorities to build sophisticated databases of suspects and their associates. A senior Sri Lankan police officer, who had previously served in a notorious counter-terrorism unit, "was particularly interested in training to use the i2 software, which I understand had been promised to them by David Garbutt", according to the document.

The Foreign Office adviser commented that, "Whilst intelligence-led policing is a key component of a preventive approach, thought should be given as to whether this might be used for political aims and consequently whether HMG [Her Majesty's Government] would wish to be associated with such assistance." However Garbutt told VICE that although he discussed the i2 product with the Sri Lankans, he did not offer to deliver them i2 training.

Another document shows that some staff teaching community policing did have significant experience in intelligence. An email written by Britain's defence attaché in Colombo reveals that the British instructors included "some excellent ex-Special Branch" officers, whose visit to Sri Lanka "tied into work done by the Scottish Police College and other consultants on the theme of Community Policing". Home Office guidelines say that "the primary function of Special Branch is covert intelligence work in relation to national security". The defence attaché wanted a highly experienced officer to visit Sri Lanka, saying that "we tried for Ronnie Flanagan but couldn't get him". Flanagan was a former Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and head of its Special Branch in Northern Ireland during the British state's war against the IRA.

An "Intelligence and Security Adviser" was also among the British staff who visited Sri Lanka in 2009, raising further questions about the extent of intelligence advice given to Sri Lanka during its crackdown. The adviser, Peter Wilson, ran a private security consultancy and claims that his "early career was with the British Diplomatic Service, specialising in national security matters." Wilson met with Sanjaya Colonne, head of the Office of Strategic Affairs in Sri Lanka's Ministry of Defence, who reported to the defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. According to the files, Wilson "pursued the possibility of meetings" for Colonne with MI5 in London at the end of the war.

Sanjaya Colonne attending a drinks party at the British High Commission in Colombo, 2011 (Photo via ukinsrilanka)

Wilson was among British staff who secretly met Sanjaya Colonne in Sri Lanka in February 2009, when Tamil rebels were almost defeated and the UN was warning that hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped and under fire. While the FCO had admitted the possibility of working with human rights abusers, the minutes of this meeting barely comment on the atrocities that have shocked the international community, simply noting that the Sri Lankan government "continue to make military progress against the LTTE ."

As civilians fleeing the conflict zone were herded into barbed wire internment camps, minutes from the meeting with Colonne note that the Sri Lankan authorities were "very much alive to the problem of administering the territories they had gained."

During this meeting, the British advisers "discussed the possibility of sharing UK experience on policing and governance in post-conflict areas." Later that month, a pair of senior Northern Irish police commanders were sent to Sri Lanka as "critical friends", ostensibly to help with the community policing project. However, both officers had extensive counter-terrorism expertise and VICE has now learnt that they actually undertook some work in relation to public order provision (i.e. riot control) in Sri Lanka.

These revelations stand in stark contrast to the public position of the British government at the time of the war. The then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband visited Sri Lanka in April 2009 and called for an immediate ceasefire to protect civilians at risk from shelling. The secret files show an alarming level of clandestine UK support for the Sri Lankan authorities. British security advisers continued to visit Sri Lanka during the final fortnight of fighting in May 2009 when civilian casualties climaxed at around a thousand deaths a day. Even at that point, the files show that extra UK security cooperation was arranged, despite the FCO noting that there was "sustained harassment of the media."

Underlining just how cosy the relationship was, weeks after the war ended, UK civil servants paid for flights and accommodation for Colonne and his wife to come to London. They were even taken out for dinner in London at taxpayer's expense.

However, the Foreign Office still insists that British aid improved human rights in Sri Lanka. Responding to our investigation, an FCO spokesperson said:

"We are committed to improving human rights in Sri Lanka and continue to fund a range of projects including on issues such as women's rights and police training and reform.

"UK experts provided advice and training to the Sri Lankan Police to improve human rights through a project in 2008 and have continued with this work since then.

"The Prime Minister has recently announced a further £6.6million of funding to support further work in Sri Lanka, promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights."

@pmillerinfo

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This originally appeared on VICE US

If you want to live in a stately hillside house in Los Angeles, but you've been holding out for one where a horrible tragedy happened over a half-century ago, now's your chance: the Los Feliz Murder Mansion, one of LA's premier goth makeout spots, and perhaps the crown jewel of Southern California murder lore, can be yours for only $2,750,000.

The Murder Mansion, for the uninitiated, is the site of a murder-suicide from 1959. Since the house has remained unoccupied ever since the night of the crime, legend has it that the worldly possessions of the murderer and his family remained untouched for decades—and were visible through the windows.

"This isn't the first murder house I've sold," said Nancy Sandborn of Berkshire Hathaway's real estate operation in Los Angeles. Sandborn's job is to find a new owner, and that's precisely what she plans to do. On Tuesday she held an event known as a "broker's caravan"—an open house for real estate agents only—in order to drum up interest in the property. She told me over 200 people showed up armed with stories. That was how she learned she was selling a legend, and that she was going to have her hands full.

Photos courtesy of Nancy Sandborn unless otherwise noted

Sandborn compared the interest in the Los Feliz Murder Mansion to the fervor over the 1998 demolition of Rockingham, the home where Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered. "People still drive by just to look at it, and that house doesn't even stand anymore!" she laughed.

Locals describe it as a "murder mansion," but at just over 5,000 square feet, 2475 Glendower Place is actually just a big, Spanish Revival murder house. It boasts an incredible location, just a stone's throw from Griffith Park, and comes with a breathtaking view of Los Angeles from its front doorstep. And it's also been the location of very few heartbreaking and grisly murder-suicides, at a total of just one.

In 1959, the house's owner, a doctor named Harold N. Perelson, had some kind of mental and emotional breakdown and attacked his family with a hammer. He struck and killed his wife Lillian, and then turned on his 18-year-old daughter, but fortunately her injuries weren't fatal. She and Perelson's two other kids escaped. Dr. Perelson then drank poison and died.

From that night until the present day, the house has stood empty and mostly neglected, and it's become increasingly dilapidated in the process.

That's how the Los Feliz Murder Mansion became a curiosity for adventurous locals, and a source of irritation for neighbors. A 2009 story in the LA Times about the house pointed out that explorers brave enough to sneak up to the windows could peep at 1950s furniture and a TV, along with what appeared to be unopened christmas gifts. By implication, the Perelson family's stuff was still in there, frozen just as it was the day of the crime, like a morbid time capsule.

Here's a photo taken through the living room window from when I visited one night in 2014:

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

And here's a daytime photo of that same room now that Sandborn has cleared it out:

The house may still be creepy, but if anyone was clinging to the hope that the scene would be preserved, that ship has sailed.

Sandborn, however, thinks your romantic notions about the place are hogwash, "just like alligators in the sewers of New York," she said. She pointed out to me that a couple named Emily and Julian Enriquez bought the house just after Dr. Perelson died. The explanation, she claims, for the midcentury bric-a-brac strewn around inside the the house is that "The Enriquez family bought in the mid-century," so there's no reason to think that was murder memorabilia.

And anyone with any attachment to the Los Feliz Murder Mansion legend had better hope she's right, because those items are gone now. "They were removed," is all Sandborn would tell me. It's been cleaned up to prepare it for the market, but that's not to say it's necessarily habitable. Sandborn made no assurances about the structural integrity of the house, nor the condition of its fixtures and appliances, except to say that the new buyer should "investigate."

One interesting development that only emerged when Sandborn cleared the place out and took pictures: the old timey bar upstairs in the ballroom (It has a ballroom) is still intact. So far there's been no word about what time Lloyd the ghost bartender clocks in every night though.

Sandborn's real estate listing certainly doesn't mention the murder. "First time on the market in over 50 years!" it says, but it doesn't mention why. According to California law, violent deaths in a home only need to be disclosed to new buyers if they happened in the past three years. In other words, legally speaking, Sandborn doesn't need to tell anyone she's selling a crime scene.

But when I talked to her, she wasn't coy about the murder at all. "Some people care. Some people don't care, and if you care, then it's not a house that you're gonna buy," she said. And from her perspective as a real estate agent, a house like this in such a great spot and at such a modest asking price relative to the surrounding homes is a big deal. "There are very few pieces of property like this just sitting around waiting to be purchased," she said, adding, "Sorry to be so cavalier."

When I last reported on the Murder Mansion in 2014, a former neighbor named Jude Margolis, told me 2475 Glendower is "just an old empty house that was at one time beautiful, that is now a teardown."

Sandborn disagrees, and would prefer to not see it knocked down. "It's a beautiful house," she said. "Hopefully someone will buy it and restore it."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

I'm Ruby Tandoh and I'm a food writer who loves fast food. In this column, I'll review Britain's best-loved junk food chains, revelling in the joys of a 99p Chicken Mayo and giving my professional take on pressing issues like whether McDonald's or Burger King does the best shake and exactly how hot the Nando's spice scale goes.

What is it: Wimpy

Where is it: Largely in Essex – widely acknowledged as the home of good taste

Best innuendo on the menu: Bender in a Bun

Who hates it: Will Self

Why should you go there: Will Self hates it. Plus decadent desserts for less than £3.

Not all restaurants need to be cool. Some carry a prestige with their name that precludes the need for hype. They quietly get on with the job of being great, like steak at Hawksmoor or breakfast at the Wolseley. They know the market they feed and the niche that they dominate, and in this sprawling, saturated food world, that's no small feat. I want to see how it's done. I want to know what it takes to turn a restaurant into a gastronomical institution. I want to go the Wimpy at the top of Southend High Street.

Ruby outside Wimpy. All photos via the author.

I'm barely through the door before a waiter hurries over to ask if I've had a good morning, and so ingrained are my antisocial impulses that I nearly turn on my heels and walk straight out again. I was expecting, even hoping, that this would be just another faceless fast food experience, where I'd leave full of belly and devastated of spirit, just the way I like it. But Wimpy's not that kind of restaurant, and it doesn't cater to that modern anonymity fetish. From my comfy corner table, I steal a glance at the last of the lunch hour crowd: a couple with a newborn eat burgers along the rear wall; an old man sips a tea; a woman chats contentedly to herself over a toastie. Wimpy has roots deep here in my native Essex – it's home to over 20 percent of its franchises nationwide – and despite its parent company pulling the strings from all the way in South Africa, this feels like a thoroughly local joint. Something strange stirs in my soul: I feel happy.

High on the good vibes and the cheery service, I order a feast. First up is Wimpy's signature dish, as integral to our national identity as Tracy Emin's bed, as iconic as a Banksy on a urinal cake: the Bender in a Bun with Cheese. I'm instantly smitten. There comes a time in our lives where we face up to the truth of who we are and what we stand for – when good taste goes out the window and we're finally brave enough to stand on a bar stool and shout, "I am rude, and gross, and imperfect but I am here and I will not apologise for it." This is what the Bender in a Bun tastes like. It's a frankfurter coiled into a soft bun with plenty of onion, ketchup and cheese, and it's good. Imagine being christened with that name and still having the strength of character (although not flavour, to be completely honest) to be an icon of our times. Be inspired!

Next is the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Having grown up with the meat-adjacent savouriness of McDonald's burgers, to chow down on this Wimpy burger and be greeted by the flavour of actual cow sends me reeling – it's a little grey but flavourful, well-seasoned and nicely cooked. The bun is real bread too, even with a little flour still clinging to its dusty bottom, and a speckling of wholegrain through the crumb. It's broader and flatter than I'd like, though, particularly given the size of the burger within. I have better luck with the Lemon and Pepper Quorn burger, whose white bread bun is somehow sturdier and breadier. The Quorn patty itself is crispy, fried, salty, and meaty (although I can't be sure where the 'lemon and pepper' went), and the salad is fresh and crunchy. It's a joy to be able to order something vegetarian other than a beanburger (although there's one of those on the menu, too) at a fast food joint, and judging by company's website, being the first chain to introduce Quorn products is something they're rightly proud of, too.

Belly bulging but appetite untroubled, I move on to dessert. The Eton Mess is huge: heavy glass sundae bowl heaped with cloud-like curls, twists and swirls of ice cream, rippled with a shock of bright red berry sauce and fruit. It's so deliciously, decadently baroque, it makes my teeth ache. It is, of course, over-sweet, and maybe there could be a little more sharpness from the berries to balance that saccharine tilt, but I'm happy with it for £2.85. The Syrup Sponge Pudding is a similarly joyous affair: the same soft serve, bright white, vanilla-spiked ice cream, but this time nestled around a hot sponge cake, sodden in sweet syrup. Also on the specials menu was a Sticky Toffee Pudding – a little less sweet and more rounded in its toffee edge. These desserts are about theatre, not subtlety. I love them.

There are of course some things that let me down. I partnered my main course with a full-bodied glass of the house chocolate milkshake, but was disappointed to find that, as smooth and creamy as it was, it delivered but the faintest whisper of cocoa – nothing like the rich, chocolatey clout I'd anticipated. The onion rings left me wanting, too, lacking any discernible onion and encased in a surfeit of soggy, under-seasoned batter. But these things happen. The truth is that in spite of some nice plates and an insistence on the good old-fashioned virtue of cutlery, this is still fast food. Wimpy suffers for its good intentions: in a polyester carton, fumbling with a ketchup sachet and balancing a drink in the crook of our arm, we'll forgive any culinary sin. When the same food is presented to us with Wimpy's level of care, though, good food – hot-off-the-grill food, huge sundaes and thick shakes and sizzling salt-encrusted fries – ends up somehow less-than, if we're not careful to manage our expectations.

By the time I'm done with my Wimpy meal I'm sweating, exhausted – but happy. This is an experience I wasn't sure still existed: somewhere to park your bum while you eat your burger, somewhere you can come in with a gaggle of friends and all cluster around a single Brown Derby (that's a warm doughnut topped with ice cream and chocolate sauce) and sit for hours discussing your crushes. It straddles an American-style cheeriness with a thoroughly British commitment to the greasy spoon culture: there are real bottles of ketchup here, emblazoned with the Union Jack no less; the fries here are still called chips. In what other fast food chain can you wash down a halo of fried frankfurter in a bun with a good cuppa? I love it.

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It's hard to remember a time before the hiss and pop of NOS dispensers soundtracked every British social gathering. Before groups of rough men in North Face jackets offering three balloons for a fiver made up 25 percent of all attendees at any given dance music festival. One thing's for sure: it was a simpler time, back when drugs were drugs; "gas" was what Americans called petrol; and NOS was what made Vin Diesel's car go faster.

Now, laughing gas is the second most popular drug in Britain (behind weed) – probably due to the fact it's available outside most nightclubs and inside basically any house party with a conscientious host. Daily Mail scare stories about Coronation Street stars "indulging in "FASHIONABLE new drug HIPPY CRACK" presumably don't hurt either, with readers realising it's relatively harmless stuff and deciding to try it out for themselves.

The cottage industry that's sprung up around NOS is unique in the way it falls between legitimate business and old fashioned, meet-me-in-that-side-street-in-half-an-hour drug dealing. The mark-ups are huge – depending on the bulk of your order, you can flip individual canisters for nearly 1,000 percent profit – so it's no wonder scores of budding entrepreneurs are getting involved; type the name of any major city into Facebook, followed by the word "gas", "NOS", "whip" or "cream", and you'll find a host of small businesses delivering laughing gas around the clock.

These businesses use social media to advertise their product, making tongue in cheek allusions to being innocent catering supply companies selling chargers for whipped cream dispensers, circumventing the legal grey area NOS falls into: it's not illegal to possess or inhale it, but it is illegal to sell it to anyone under 18 if you think they're going to inhale it.

Type in "Sheffield" and one of those kicker words, and you'll likely end up on a page advertised as the city's largest and cheapest supplier of cream chargers. The business is run by my friend Mark, who I've known since school, back when he used to hawk out-of-date Mars bars on the field at lunchtime. Now, he delivers colourless gas to the students, caners and assorted flotsam of Sheffield, who know him universally as "The Gasman".

Up on the roof of Mark's apartment building, he's telling me that he's "not just in this for the love of NOS". A business management graduate, he comes off like a fairly typical young entrepreneur; an Apprentice contestant you wouldn't actually mind going for a pint with.

"I tend to do a sponsored Facebook post most afternoons," he says, his eyes darting between the two iPhones and the iPad laid out in front of him. "I used to spend hours trying to write funny posts, but I realised that just posting a picture of some canisters with the phone number does the job just as well. People want gas; they just need to be reminded."

His system obviously works: Mark's gas-phone barely stops buzzing throughout my entire time with him, and at one point he leans over to show me the 786 unread messages, 514 missed calls and 224 voicemails he's accumulated in the past week or so.

Half an hour into the delivery run, the incessant rattle and clinking of hundreds of NOS canisters is beginning to grate on me. Mark's obviously used to it, hurtling around Sheffield at a speed that doesn't seem legal as he chats about the status of his business.

"Officially, I'm selling whipped cream chargers," he says. "They're not for human consumption – that's what it says on my website. Can I guarantee that nobody who buys from me 'misuses' them? Unfortunately not, but I don't sell it for that purpose."

Under the current provisions of the government's proposed Psychoactive Substances Act – which aims to ban all "legal highs" – Mark's business, at best, would remain in a legal very-grey area, placed under heavy scrutiny, or, at worst, land him up to seven years in prison. That said, the bill was supposed to be passed into law on the 6th of April, but has now been delayed while the government works out what it's doing, after a number of setbacks, so the legislation could still change.

Either way, Mark's decided to get out while the going's good, as he doesn't see much of a future for the venture post-ban.

"It's a good time to get out, really," he says. "I've done alright for myself, but business is in decline anyway; more people are wise to the fact that you can order NOS online for half the price. The ban will put people like me off, but I don't see how they can stop fucking Amazon."

It's 9:47PM and I'm sitting among the many boxes of NOS in the back of Mark's car to allow his customers space in the front seat. We've just dropped 14 boxes of canisters off to two girls outside Sheffield's main student halls. They came out in dressing gowns, and upon seeing me and my camera thrust the money through the open car window before scurrying back inside, ignoring my – in hindsight, probably quite creepy – request for a "quick photo".

Our next customer, the host of a nearby house party, stops and chats with us for a while. He addresses Mark as "Gasman" three times over the course of our brief conversation. It doesn't sound like he's being ironic.

Though most of the deliveries tonight are to students, Mark isn't without his more mature customers. As we navigate the many one-way streets and dodgy junctions of Sheffield city centre, Mark catches up on his voicemails. A middle-aged woman's voice comes over the loudspeaker. She identifies herself as "Jelly Bean", explaining that she's lost her iPhone, so when Mark's on his way he should give her a call on the landline.

"She and her husband usually order three boxes maybe every other Saturday night," Mark explains. "Apparently they drop the kids round at her sister's, come home, open a bottle of wine and balloon the night away."

As the night progresses, I notice the various ways people go about their business with Mark. Compared to other transactions, where the customer-vendor relationship is much more established, buying laughing gas is relatively new territory for most people. Some treat Mark like a friendly drug dealer: non-threatening, but someone to be respected. They invite him into their parties and overuse the word "mate". Others simply hand over the cash and take the gas without exchanging any more than basic pleasantries – the kind of inane shit you mutter to a pizza guy or a bus driver.

Our last stop of the night takes us way, way out into Sheffield's suburbs, to a punter who's offered to pay double the normal price to cover delivery. We're met at the end of the drive by Dan, who is shirtless and has pupils the size of a watch face. He invites me into his back garden to share in his purchase and pose for a picture.

There's an awkward moment as he stands there topless, shivering in the cold March night and fumbling with the dispenser, neither of us talking. I look through the conservatory and into Dan's living room; nobody's there. We finish our balloons and, without an explanation as to why he's at home, possibly alone and shirtless at 3AM on a Saturday morning, Dan goes back inside.

NOS, when used safely, is pretty harmless stuff. There were 17 deaths associated with laughing gas between 2006 and 2012, but in almost every case the deaths were caused by asphyxiation due to the method people had used to inhale the gas (plastic bags), not because of the gas itself.

Professor David Nutt, neuropsychopharmacologist and the former UK drugs czar, argues NOS is "exceptionally safe" given the number of people who use it. "I mean, you can kill yourself, obviously," he told the BBC. "If you breathe nothing but nitrous for 10 minutes, you will die, but I don't think there's any evidence that nitrous kills people if you use it recreationally."

How exactly the government is going to legislate against a substance that's arguably less harmful than a pint of lager is yet to be decided. Why exactly they want to ban it is something we'll probably never know.

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Has this CGI artist literally never seen toast? Christ. (Photo via Marmite)

Everyone loves April Fools' Day, don't they? All the laughs. All the japes. All the fun and goodtimes. All the jokes, all the joy. A jolly little day, for laughter, for glee. And then, abruptly at noon, the jokes stop. Sadness and misery. A fun void. An empty space where once a whoopee cushion lay. For just twelve little hours, pranks have a place. And then: nothing.

The above intro was entirely false. April Fools is actually extremely bad. The last time I raised a smile on April Fools' Day was in 1993, because that was a Thursday, and the Beano came out that day, and oh gosh did the antics of that boy and his dog just amuse me so much. Since then it's just been brands doing fun little 'oh, we've launched a new kind of soup, it's made from people... PSYCH!' style stuff and appalling sub-spaghetti tree news stories. I don't want to be all 'the fine upstanding tradition of April Fools' Day has been ruined by the vile machinations of powerful brands', but: have you ever thought that maybe the fine upstanding tradition of April Fools' Day has been ruined by the vile machinations of powerful brands?

Anyway, here's all the shit that's going to happen on April 1st this year. Tick them off like a bingo card as and when.

THERE WILL BE A JOKE WHERE IT IS SUGGESTED A FAMOUS AMERICAN PERSON HAS STARTED DOING SOMETHING BRITISH PEOPLE CAN RELATE TO BECAUSE WE ARE EGOTISTS, BRITISH PEOPLE, WE ARE OBSESSED WITH BEING BRITISH AND NON-BRITISH PEOPLE BEING SLIGHTLY MORE BRITISH

It is the year of our lord 2016 so as best I can tell there are only two famous American people currently in existence, Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian, and so on April 1st there is nailed on to be some news story or something about one of those doing something British that can appeal to us, the British people, with our British ways. 'Kim Kardashian is Going to Open a Tea House in Shrewsbury!', or something. 'Donald Trump Wanks Himself to Death W/ an Orange in His Mouth, as All British Politicians Do'. 'J-Woww From Off Of Jersey Shore Is Retraining... As A Racist London Cabby!'. 'Aaron Carter 'Likes Pottering About In The Shed''. 'Miley Cyrus: 'I Want To Live in A Big Yorkshire Pudding''. That sort of shit.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE MOST MEME-ABLE BRITISH POLITICIAN SUPPOSEDLY DOING SOMETHING WACKY OR UNLIKELY

Ed Miliband launches his own range of decorative limestone tablets, in garden centres now! Jeremy Corbyn launches his own temping agencies for geography teachers! Ed Balls! George Osborne launches a welfare boost for the disabled! David Cameron comes out: 'I have held this secret for a long time: I am actually just a condom full of pork mince' ! Theresa May's Raunchy Page 3 Shoot!

GOOGLE DOES SOMETHING SHIT

It's weird that Google – one of the most respected companies on the planet, a search engine giant, the guardian of all our emails, all our datas, owners of YouTube, owners of everything – it's so weird that they do such consistently shit April Fools' pranks. Most of the time it's just announcing an unlikely product ('Google For Pets', something like that) and flipping one of their websites temporarily horizontal. For a million pounds, Google, I will think of better April Fools pranks for you. Until then I look forward to the announcement of 'Google Toilet, the voice-operated Google toilet' or whatever on Friday.

THERE WILL BE A COMPLEX PR SET UP DESIGNED TO LAMPOON HIPSTERS, THOSE MOUSTACHIOED FISH-IN-BARRELS, WITH THEIR BICYCLES

Good news, hipsters! We've developed a new cold press coffee that you can feed directly to your decorative cactus! Get a tattoo about it, shitheads! Fuck you for liking things! Our branded April Fool will put an end to all that, let me tell you! Change gear on your bike about it, twats!

SOMETHING DEPLORABLE INVOLVING PUGS

Buying a pug is actually a very good investment because you can make your money back every year around April Fools Day by charging brands to stage a photoshoot of your dog like, wearing wellies, or BDSM gear, or eating a special formulated-for-dogs frozen yoghurt treat, or some other nonsense shit like that. Makes up for all the walking and the bad smell they generate, doesn't it? Pugs: the dog that works for you.

THAT LAD FROM ACCOUNTS CORNERS YOU IN THE WORK KITCHEN – YOU REALLY NEED TO START TIMING YOUR MORNING COFFEE BETTER, BECAUSE HE KEEPS GETTING YOU HERE, DRAINING YOU OF ENERGY LIKE A POWERFUL POKÉMON IN A BOSS BATTLE – AND TRIES TO PULL SOME SORT OF NEXT LEVEL META-BANT, FAILING HORRIBLY

"Ooh, heard the news?" he's saying, in the way of the big tub of Nescafé, again. "You're fired. You've been fired. You're not needed any more." He's got the milk now, the fuckshow, just holding it. Oh the fu— at least fill the kettle when you're done with it so other people can use it. "So yeah, heh," he's saying. "Pack your bag! You're leaving!" You've wasted both of our time, Luke.

SOMETHING ABOUT DRONES

There will be a story about drones, there is always a stories about drones, last year it was selfies and this year it is drones, 'Drones Are The Latest Exhibit In London Zoo!', or something, 'Drones Are Being Used to Drop Ice Creams on the Poor!', drones drones drones, we are all of us slowly turning into drones, the earth will be blasted by sand and the heart of life will beat it's final blast and still there will somehow be a story about drones emerging, will we ever be rid of drones...

SOMETHING AWFUL HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE AND PEOPLE DON'T QUITE KNOW IF IT'S AN APRIL FOOL OR NOT

Not... not quite sure whether this BBC story about some puppies being hit by a train is... a joke?

THERE WILL BE A FUNNY OR DIE SKETCH WHERE A COMIC ACTOR IS DOING A SERIOUS ROLE, AND THAT IS BOTH THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE JOKE

Ben Stiller's Oscar Schindler is being described by critics as 'actively making Liam Neeson's Schindler, in hindsight, worse'.

ASOS LAUNCH A JOKE PRODUCT BUT SOME LAD ON YOUR FACEBOOK GENUINELY WOULD WEAR IT

" no seriously though would anyone else genuinely wear this jumper made of selfie sticks? Its fire."

THERE WILL BE A PRESS RELEASE ABOUT A DUMB NEW DATING APP THAT METRO ONLINE WILL PICK UP IN A WAY THAT SUGGESTS THEY DON'T QUITE KNOW IT'S A JOKE

A new dating app has launched – that matches people up based on whether their cat fancies their dog.

Growlr, free in the App Store, sees unlucky-in-love singletons matched based on whether their cat – which is the girl, all cats are girls – fancies the other person's dog, or boy.

Cats who fancy the other person's dog are then 'matched' – and human love can blossom.

"Stupid quote that includes a pun about purring!" said the app's inventor, Tarquin De Foxtrot-Shitface who, it so happens, is also the CEO of another, more commercially available app. "Cats have always fancied dogs, so we thought: why not? It's the purr-fect way to meet a match!"

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include the fact that the app 'Growlr' is not real and does not exist but the story was getting traffic for us anyway so we're not taking it down.

UKIP SUPPORTERS ON THAT RACIST FACEBOOK GROUP I'M IN GET REALLY CONFUSED BY A HEAVILY ARTIFACTED REFUGEE MEME AND ALL GO IN ON EACH OTHER

Alright, listen, and I know this sounds like a very flimsy excuse that a parliamentary peer later has to rely on in court, but: a few months ago I joined a racist Facebook group because I thought, one day, it might make for a good story. But it turns out I am not Donal McIntyre and 3,000 white dudes all called 'Dave' are not TV-friendly super hooligans, so it's mainly just a load of dudes who haven't had a natural erection in this millennium complaining about potholes in their local roads and somehow tangentially blaming 'the musrats'. Can I bear to look away? Can I bear to leave the racist Facebook group I swear I joined as a joke? Reader: I cannot.

Any way: nailed on, tomorrow, someone will publish some JPEG that has been saved and re-saved one thousand, two hundred thousand times, saying something like 'THIS MUSLIM IS CLAIMING FOUR MILLION POUNDS PER WEEK FROM THE STATE... AND WORKS CASH IN HAND CLEANING HIS OWN BMW!!!!' and all the racists will go mental and not really realise that this is a joke and their life is a joke, and the meme will be saved and resaved again, and distributed anon onto other racist Facebook groups.

VICE OR AT LEAST SOME SNEERING JOYLESS STAFF WRITER AT VICE WILL SHIT ON THE IDEA OF APRIL FOOLS' DAY AND FUN IN GENERAL, AS IF THEY ARE EVEN THAT MUCH FUN, AS IF THEY EVER WORKED HARD ON A FAMILY-FRIENDLY BRANDED LAMPOON EVEN HALF AS HARD IS THESE BULLET-SWEATING PR TYPES DO, AS IF THEY'VE EVER TRIED TO RAISE A SMILE, INSTEAD OF JUST SHITTING ON EVERYTHING, JUST SHITTING ON FUN

Tick.

ABSOLUTELY NOBODY WILL SINCERELY GET FOOLED

Fun is a dead concept and April Fools' Day is the bones of its corpse and nobody has ever actually been tricked by anything since that Orson Wells radio play about War of the Worlds.

OH FUCKING SOMETHING ABOUT EMOJI OR SOMETHING

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ALWAYS ULTRA LAUNCHES A NEW SOY SAUCE EMOJI. FOR YOUR DRONE.

@joelgolby

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Photo via Flickr user Blind Nomad

Read: Can You Tell Which of These Ten-Year-Olds Took Cannabis Oil Today?

If you needed another reason to quit blazing other than cops, sketchy-ass hippies, and crippling paranoia, here's one for you: Regular weed use makes you poorer and less happy, according to a study released this week.

The report from researchers at UC Davis and Duke University report claims that the more you toke, the more likely you are to be broke—pot smokers who indulge four times or more a week eventually "ended up in a lower social class than their parents, with lower-paying, less skilled, and less prestigious jobs than those who were not regular cannabis smokers."

"Our study found that regular cannabis users experienced downward social mobility and more financial problems—such as troubles with debt and cash flow—than those who did not," Magdalena Cerda, an associate professor of emergency medicine and leader of the study, said in a statement that accompanied the report.

Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the researcher's data comes from a project that has been tracking 1,000 pot smokers in Dunedin, New Zealand, for decades, which must be tedious work. Naturally, some people object to the findings, since it's hard to control for all the different variables that might affect people over the course of their lives. Another criticism is that weed is still illegal in New Zealand, and maybe some of the problems these people have had can be chalked up to the stigma and stress of breaking the law constantly, even if you never get caught.

But the broadest possible reading of the study is probably unassailable: If you do a drug a bunch for years and years, it probably will fuck you up.

Death is creepy. Image via Imgur

I called my dad on his birthday recently.

I opened with, "Hey dad. Happy birthday!" to which he replied, "Who is this?"

He was being facetious (I'm his only daughter), needling me because I don't get in touch often enough. Momentarily, I felt guilty. He lives in Vancouver, and I'm in Toronto, and I know I should pick up the phone more, but even on his 71st birthday, I procrastinated until late into the evening. Within minutes, I remembered why.

My dad always wants to talk about dying.

He talks about it the same way other parents discuss politics, or their dogs, or the latest episode of Ellen. My dad likes chatting about all those things too, but he can hop from Donald Trump to where he wants to be buried without batting an eye. It's not something he does out of fear, either. It's more that, realistically, it's the biggest event he has left to look forward to, so he thinks about it a lot.

On this day, his birthday, he told me he wants to have his body cremated and his ashes scattered in a river in India, a place he scouted on his recent and first-ever trip there. At first, as I always do, I tried to brush the conversation aside with a few "mmhmms" and "yeah sures." But he wouldn't drop it. He started spelling out the names of the river and the temple that sits on it, and asked if I would be willing to take his remains there upon his demise.

"You'll love it," he promised, as, on my end, I grudgingly took notes about his plan in a Google doc titled "Dad's ashes."

Then, just as I was hoping we could switch topics, he informed me he'd paid off two grave plots in Vancouver. Since he now has his heart set on India as a final resting place, he offered me one of them.

"You can have it when you die," he said, totally matter-of-fact. (In the meantime, I'll rent it to some poor UBC students for like $1,200 a month, so they can pitch a tent on it rather than trying to find reasonably priced housing near the school.)

It was the first time he dragged my own mortality into one of these conversations, and it startled me. I don't remember how I responded, but in my head, I was thinking WTF? in a furious and agitated loop.

Truth is, I don't need to be dwelling on death anymore than I already do. Even though I'm in my 20s, I think about it all the time. Not so much the act of dying—though sometimes when I take a break from work to get coffee or lunch, I visualize getting hit by a car, and on occasion, when I light up a cigarette, I wonder when I'm going to get cancer, something I'm convinced is an inevitability. But more so, it's the idea of being dead—of ceasing to exist—that haunts me.

I guess everyone goes through a death phase, and I'm not sure when my fixation started. I remember asking my mom about dying when I was really little, and her telling me it wasn't something I'd have to worry about for a long time. My maternal grandma, whom I adored, died of cancer when I was 14. I was old enough to be sad, though I couldn't grasp the gravity or permanence of death.

My grandpa's death, in 2011, hit harder. A couple family members and I were with him when he took his final breaths in a hospice in Vancouver.

Though very sad, it was peaceful, and I thought the experience would make me more comfortable with death. Instead, and despite being exposed to many tragic deaths as a reporter, I've grown increasingly anxious.

When I contemplate the fact that we're all going to die, I start to question my life choices. Why am I not backpacking Europe right now, or trying heroin for fun, or having indiscriminate sex all the time? Or maybe I should be reproducing in order to leave some kind of legacy. Death makes all of our morals and values—great career, marriage, house, kids, accumulation of stuff—seem trite and pointless.

Long ago, I abandoned almost all of the Catholic beliefs on which I was raised, but the concept of an afterlife is one I've remained agnostic about. Perhaps, if I had grown up atheist, never expecting anything but nothingness to come after death, the concept might be easier to accept. Instead, I've stayed up late googling "near death experiences" and read books like Proof of Heaven, which follows a skeptical neurosurgeon's "journey into the afterlife," in an attempt to comfort myself into thinking such a thing might be real. But logic seems to get the best of me, and I go right back to fearing being erased from this planet without a trace, aside from some of my more highbrow work, which will certainly be passed around by cave-dwelling robots thousands of years after we nuke the planet.

My parents, however, no longer share any of these worries.

While my mom never talks about me dying, she often brings up her will, keeping me informed of every little tweak she makes. I hate it, mostly because I cannot handle the thought of her being gone. I mean, aren't wills supposed to be read after a person has died? Can't I just deal with it then?

Sometimes, my mom says she wonders if anything happens after death or what she'll miss out on, but she's certainly not scared. She claims she hasn't been since she was young.

And I guess that's where the irony lies. I'm at an age where I'm supposed to be "living my best life." Yet, if I let it, the fear of dying can preoccupy my brain for extended periods.

After my grandpa died, I told a therapist that I regretted not visiting him more in hospital, and the regret had left me riddled with guilt. She asked how I could make it up to him post mortem, a question I didn't understand. She then alluded to other decisions I was struggling with at the time—primarily whether or not to break up my boyfriend and move to Toronto, and hinted that I should bite the bullet and commit to both of them since I'd been leaning that way for so long. I didn't fully grasp the connection between those things and my grandpa's death, but I think she was essentially saying I shouldn't hold back on taking risks because that could lead to more regret later. And perhaps more than anything, I'm scared of finding myself at the end of my life dwelling on things I didn't do.

These days, I try not to sink too deep into the rabbit hole, limiting myself to a few minutes of brooding about death at a time. But my parents' tendency to rehash the topic forces me to confront both their mortality and my own. Maybe it's a good thing. There's not much I find comforting about death, but seeing as how it's inevitable, indifference like that of my parents might be the best I can hope for. Who knows, one day that grave plot might look a lot more appealing than an overpriced condo in Toronto. But even if that's not the case, I'll be dead, so at the very least I will no longer have to give a shit about any of this.

Follow Manisha on Twitter.

This is what a $700 juicer looks like. Photo via Juicero

I want to understand the $700 juicer. I mean, I understand the $700 juicer as far as the mechanics of it go: You buy the thing, it sits on your counter, you get pre-made packets of fruit and vegetables in the mail, you stick those in your $700 juicer, out comes eight ounces of juice.

What I want to understand is why everyone loves the $700 juicer. The company behind it, Juicero, just got $70 million in venture capital cash from the usual Silicon Valley suspects; in total, it's raised $120 million in funds from investors including GV (a.k.a. Google Ventures), according to the New York Times. Gwyneth Paltrow and Dr. Oz reportedly love the $700 juicer. A Vogue writer said that watching the Juicero machine in action was a moment "when I've felt, with palpable certainty, that time has slipped into the future." She went on to say that the juicer was right up there with "the advent of the Hoverboard, the invention of the Venmo payment, the first time my fingerprint unlocked an iPhone." That article's headline, by the way, promised that the $700 Juicero would "change life." I just want to understand that statement, as it relates to a $700 juicer.

Is it the way the $700 juicer looks? It looks, basically, like a big iPod that pees juice into a glass, which makes sense as Apple design dude Jony Ive reportedly had a hand in it. Is it the way the juice tastes? Everyone says that it tastes better than normal juice, and I'm sure it does, because in addition to the $700 juicer you have to pay $4 to $10 for individual packets of fruits and vegetables, and when you pay a shitload for something, it usually is pretty nice.

Is it the way the $700 juicer is being sold? Juicero isn't just going around saying, "Hey, here is a $700 juicer, everyone!" Instead, it's doing that thing Silicon Valley people do, throwing out terms like "disruption" and "farm-to-glass philosophy"; on its website, it describes the $700 juicer as a "personal cold-press juicer that's engineered to press nutrient-dense, raw produce into a glass in minutes." In other words: a juicer. It also touts the complicated system behind the $700 juicer: The company buys produce, hires workers to wash and chop it, and sends it out in those pre-made packets, which also come with QR codes so the Juicero, which is WiFi enabled, can check to make sure the produce is fresh. If the produce inside the packet is not fresh, the $700 juicer will not turn it into juice. It's a complicated way to make juicing as convenient and mess-free as possible, but that's apparently the point. Investors are not excited by a $700 juicer. They are excited by combining a bunch of techno trends in a way that results in a new philosophy in juice-making, even if the end result appears, to the naked eye, to be nothing more than a $700 juicer.

Maybe people are excited by the story of Juicero founder Doug Evans? He is the kind of company founder who starts out a Medium post about his company (titled "Journey to Juicero") by saying, "I believe there are no chances in life — only choices." He then goes into the story of his life, which involves graffitiing subway cars in New York in the 80s, working for famed designer Paul Rand for seven years without getting paid, and starting a juice shop that was later sold to investors who fired him. That is exactly the kind of guy who you want selling a $700 juicer, I guess.

I know that people can't be excited about this YouTube ad from Juicero. For a disruptive company, this is oddly like a traditional informercial, complete with people confounded by something as simple as bringing a tote bag to a farmer's market. Making juice with an ordinary juicer, in Juicero's reckoning, is a series of unpleasant, almost impossible tasks:

Maybe the secret of the $700 juicer is that the people looking at it don't see a $700 juicer, they see the future, a time when the ordinary functions of living are stripped of complications and mess. Juice, in the future, doesn't involve interacting with actual fruits or vegetables or even going to the juice store and clumsily asking a worker what you want with your mouth like some kind of primate. Instead, a packet is delivered to your door—ideally by drone—and you pop it into one of your many machines, and out comes your desired juice. There's an app that tells you when you're out of packets, and even suggests juices that you might want to try.

There are other humans in this vision of the future who have to do the unpleasant behind-the-scenes work to produce those packets—the agriculture and the processing and the packaging and so on—but you, $700 juice machine owner, don't have to think about them, and they recede into the background. That is what is so exciting, presumably: The idea that things are getting easier and more streamlined and just all-around better for humanity, or at least the bits of humanity who can afford to live in the future.

Follow Harry on Twitter.

The author (left) with a Peshmerga colonel, Masao, and Soran. All images by author

On March 6, 2016, I hopped an unsurprisingly cheap flight to Erbil, the capital of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. The plan was to spend a week with a Japanese photojournalist named Masao, who has covered conflicts as a freelancer for the past 40-odd years. I'm a freelance journalist in Australia, which is obviously safer and infinitely more comfortable than anything Masao was covering in Iraq. I'd briefly visited the region years earlier, but I'd come back with Masao as a mentor on how to work in a war zone.

I didn't expect to be "in the shit" as it were, but northern Iraq remains a troubled place. Since 2014, the Kurdish Regional Government has been fighting ISIS; not only halting its advance across northern Iraq but going on the offensive to recapture lost ground.

A good fixer is the difference between life and death

Working in a foreign country, a fixer is the journalist's most important resource. Not only do fixers know the area and the language, but they can also set up meetings, organize accommodation and transport, and—as their name would suggest—fix things when you get "in the shit."

Masao's fixer was an Iranian Kurd named Soran. He looked like a cross between Lenin and Hagrid, and was happy to argue with officials on our behalf for hours at a time to ensure we could do and go where we wanted. When I wanted to spend a few days in Sinjar on my own, he even found me an interpreter.

Soran (right) at the office of Domiz refugee camp in Duhok

Barjis (left) and a Yazidi fighter talk in front of a destroyed ISIS tank in Sinjar.

It was in Sinjar that I met Barjis, who demonstrated for us what a bad fixer is like. He oversold his language skills, constantly paraphrased answers during interviews, and was moody as hell—souring at the simplest direction. But at $100 a day, he was dirt cheap. He was also the only guy available, and without him, I would have been completely fucked. And he was a Yazidi, which—as both Masao and Soran told me—meant he wouldn't sell us to ISIS at the first opportunity.

A Peshmerga soldier asks us where we are going. This one image sums up a lot of the trip.

You'll need a fake press card

There are few job titles in the whole world that inspire less confidence than "freelance journalist." Not only do you come with the baggage of the privacy-invading, quote-distorting, your-pain-is-my-paycheck stereotypes, but you're unimportant to boot. Masao and Soran knew this. Soran carried a few press cards, some of which had been valid at one point, and others that he just made himself. In Erbil, we made a fake one for me: A cheap passport photo and laminate job. It worked wonders. Doors were opened, permissions granted, and checkpoints passed.

In Sinjar, I found myself alone at a checkpoint, being interrogated by a Peshmerga officer on how I got into the area without official permission. Even if I'd said I was a freelance reporter, and shown him my passport, there was a good chance he wouldn't have believed me, and I would've ended up sharing a cell with Mohamed Jamal Khweis. But a few moments after flashing my (very fake) press card, I was a free man.

A Peshmerga soldier on the front line

Have cigarettes, the right ones

"A lot of soldiers smoke," Masao told me once, offhand. And without fail, every time we sat with anyone for more than two minutes, soldiers were lighting up. Barjis explained that he thought people who didn't smoke were untrustworthy. Even though he'd quit smoking, Masao would sometimes bum a cigarette from an officer during an interview to strike up a rapport.

Back in 2013, I'd traveled to Syria and found a couple packs of Marlboro Reds earned me a handy bit of goodwill, so this time I grabbed a carton at duty free. But no one wanted my American garbage sticks. Everyone smoked Arden Lights, which I've never seen outside Iraq. Whenever I'd offer a Malboro to people, they'd crinkle up their face and wave their hands at me before offering me one of their Ardens. On the few occasions I insisted they take one of mine, I got a look that I roughly translated to, "Don't make me regret being nice to you, Australian."

A Yazidi man and child at a temple. The Yazidis have been an ISIS targets since 2014.

Get used to a blasé attitude to death

Obviously, being at war for the better part of 15 years will affect a country's relationship with death. But I was not prepared for how much everybody's casual attitude to the human toll would affect me.

At a Peshmerga special forces base in Sinjar, an American volunteer named David happily showed me pictures on his phone of dead ISIS fighters "stacked up like firewood." I mustn't have looked all that impressed because because David quickly offered to take Masao, Soran, and I to see some mass graves just out of town.

A mass grave of Yazidis, killed by ISIS

David, the American Peshmerga volunteer, points out a bullet hole in a hip.

There were three of them—mounds of dirt covered in grass, weeds, clothing, bullet casings, and bones. Three or four hundred people would've been buried there. "This is a bullet hole in the skull," David said, almost like a tour guide. "Here's one in a hip. This is a girl's braid. This hip bone probably belongs to a child of three or four." While the Peshmerga picked through the bodies and their belongings, the three of us snapped photos. I knew I should've felt more disturbed than I did. But it was as though someone was showing us their vegetable garden.

Shoot first, ask questions later

I'd never had a problem taking people's photos until I visited a refugee camp in Duhok. It became quickly apparent people were trying to avoid my camera, and I began to feel awkward. Who was I to jam a camera in their faces and ask them to tell the people back in Australia how shitty their lives were? Soran saw me struggling, and as an experienced documentarian, he offered a few words. "Sometimes it's better to just start filming and then ask permission," he said. "If you start filming, people are more likely to talk."

A refugee at the Duhok camp

A few days later, all three of us were in a Yazidi temple waving our cameras around as the people there prayed for the release of their women from ISIS. It still didn't feel right, documenting their intimate grief. But following Masao's lead, being just a fly on the wall, I didn't feel I was intruding as much as I did before.

Throughout our time together, Masao kept saying he didn't think he had anything useful to teach me. But I learned a fucking a ton in that week. A lot of it wouldn't make the cut in an article like this, but it's essential stuff for getting the story and not dying. It's dirty, expensive, and sometimes dangerous work being a freelancer in a war zone, and hardly anyone will care what you did or saw over there anyway. But I went a full week without thinking "why the fuck did I become a freelance journalist?" In northern Iraq, I found a steady supply of the passion that led me down this road. I can't wait to do it again.

Follow Chris on Twitter.

It probably wasn't even the first time Mark Fuston got hired to blow up a porn store.

In 2003, the one-eyed giant disconnected the propane hose on a construction site in Vancouver, Washington, and redirected it into a nascent shop called Desire Video. Then he placed an incendiary device in the corner of the building. Finally, he went back to the car of a co-conspirator and hit the trigger on a remote-controlled bomb.

To their mutual frustration, it didn't take.

As you might expect from a man who once got arrested for allegedly breaking a woman's wrist over 15 bucks and charged with fatally shooting a guy over a $180 drug debt, Fuston was determined to have his payday. With the cash on the line, he did what he had to do, laying down a fuel trail to the building and lighting it on fire.

"This was definitely not a case of unrestrained moral outrage or some misguided attempt to protect the community from pornography or the social ills that can be connected to that industry," a federal prosecutor later argued in court. "Rather, Mark Fuston's singular goal was to get paid."

A former Dead Head and bike-gang member who also went by "Mau Mau," Fulton was eventually sentenced to two and a half years for the March 27, 2003, fire. But a new federal lawsuit spells out the insane details of what is surely the most bizarre erotic business rivalry of all time.

Police apparently suspected pretty quickly that Desire Video had fallen victim to arson, so they deployed undercovers. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) investigators knew the store was within a mile of another porn shop, Adult Video Only, and according to the suit, they rented an apartment in the complex where an employee named Ken Courtney lived. In the course of the investigation, they found out that Courtney—who committed suicide before the case went to trial—built the defective bomb.

For his part, Fuston had been wrapped up in porn mayhem before: In 1977, the career criminal was charged with trying to burn down an adult bookstore, but got off even though cops found him holding a gas can and matches at the scene. And in 1991, a man who looked an awful lot like Fuston was spotted near a Portland porn store just before it burst into flames, courtesy of a pipe bomb.

The burned Vancouver shop was eventually rebuilt and opened under the name Taboo Video, and the new suit alleges that the owners of Adult Video Only were so desperate to shake suspicion that they put a "For Sale" sign in their window. When Levi Bussanich, the owner of Taboo and the man behind the suit, took the bait and came over for a tour, the suit claims he was shown several video arcades––places where customers could insert cash and watch porn inside the store.

He was allegedly told that the machines weren't tracked by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which suggested the store was worth more than was on paper. According to the suit, this no mere marketing strategy—it was a trust-building exercise designed to cover up the fact that the owners of Adult Video Only had committed the arson.

Recordings obtained by investigators suggest the rivalry didn't end with the one arson: Fuston and Courtney discussed throwing a grenade into what had been Desire Video once it got rebuilt, with scant regard for the customers who would presumably have been inside. They also spoke about assassinating someone for $10,000, although the hit never took place.

The civil complaint alleges that the money used to pay for the arson came from weed sales and money from the illicit arcade machines.

The people who allegedly paid Fuston to light the fire were never charged with any crimes, apparently because of a statute of limitations issue. But Bussanich is suing them for civil damages, claiming violations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which is typically used to go after mob bosses.

Meanwhile, Adult Video Only is still up and running in Vancouver. Its website states that it plans to add a smoking room soon, and suggests that it will be BYOB (in weed-legal Washington, this apparently means "bring your own bud.")

"When you are ready to spice up your sex life come in and visit us," the site reads. "Our friendly staff will be glad to assist you in finding that perfect toy or gift."

Follow Allie on Twitter.

Mietta said I should give you a name this morning—"an identity," so to speak. She's my sex therapist, who's helping me learn to listen to you. Then there's Brooke, a physiotherapist, who affably giggles when I apologize on your behalf during our fortnightly examinations. We started off with one third of a pointer finger and quivering knees. You're somewhat agreeable now, although only on certain days.

We'll celebrate when this is over—dilators and all.

Is naming a vagina like naming a child? I can't recall ever stumbling across an article recounting "1,001 of the Year's Favorite Vagina Names" during my internet trawls. Just as I can't recall a time when you didn't aggressively, perhaps instinctively, ensure the gates were sealed to your unknown chamber. And yet, amidst your intent resistance, here I still am—maintaining a steady gaze, smiling at my frustrated lovers, "It's OK, just keep trying."

According to vaginismus.com (a domain name I'm sure would've been in high demand), vaginismus is a condition caused by the "involuntary tightening of the pelvic floor, especially the pubococcygeus (PC) muscle group." Essentially that means one may experience burning, stinging, and tightness during sex. For some, it makes penetration impossible. Often during sex your breathing will halt and other body muscle groups (such as the legs or the lower back) spasm involuntarily. Tampons and gynecological examinations are a no-go.

What makes vaginismus so unique is that it exists both in the mind and the body. The reaction isn't conscious. Much like blinking, the PC muscles have taught themselves to contract and "flinch" in ways to protect themselves against the anticipated threat. Left untreated, the condition worsens—the contractions have the opportunity to mature. And so they become "stronger" and last longer, with greater intensity. You're like my tiny, troublesome body-builder down there. An iron woman of sorts.

I never told my first love about you. I didn't tell anyone. As a woman amongst women, sex was never discussed in a way that suggested to me that it was physically pleasurable. Emotionally, perhaps. It was flattery, more than anything.

In retrospect, perhaps my first time was the best. I could justify the pain: I was merely losing my virginity, and it was my feminine duty to endure such affliction. He fumbled about my body in a drunken but polite fashion. But I remember jolting when he brazenly inserted the first finger. It was immediate. It was like an electrocution. Everything seized. It felt as if you were fastening yourself around the intrusion—like a painful, dry suction.

We kept at it for eighteen months—you, me, and him. And it's not as if I didn't enjoy the relationship. I loved the feeling of being loved. But I was always aware of your voice—shooting through me, occasionally bejeweling my body in goosebumps. I had to learn to ignore you. Every time my lower back seized, or my legs kicked out, I pretended it was intense pleasure. Because how do you tell somebody you care about and long for at 17 that his love feels like razor blades?

I'm sorry. I thought all cis-gendered, heterosexual women faked it. I thought we'd all subscribed to some hilarious inside joke where, in a parallel universe, we'd laugh over coffee about how, as much as sex hurts, we all wanted it. Pain was just a price we had to pay.

Illustration by the author

I told my second boyfriend 18 months into our relationship. His reaction was exactly why I'd kept my secret for as long as I did: He was frustrated, confused, and robbed of empathy. I talked too much about it, he said. It was a disgusting topic, he chastised. "Oh!" he yelled sarcastically one night between my halted tears. "You have vaginismus?! Really? I had no idea."

I felt constant shame and rejection. It was as though my body was riddled with disease—a body he wanted nothing to do with unless it was fixed, and even then. My broken vagina became more than just that—I began feeling like a broken woman. My body not petite enough. My style not revealing enough. My voice: too loud and obnoxious. My hair: too thick, short, and unruly. My fingernails weren't manicured and kept. If not an attractive woman—if not an attractive, heterosexual, penetrable cis-woman—then what?

When he went overseas, I made it my mission to be "fixed" in time to visit him. That's when I shyly introduced you to Mietta and Brooke. We were diligent, the four of us. I had so much incentive. I falsely envisaged how our relationship would change once I could have penetrative sex. We'd laugh more. We'd see more films. Naturally, that wasn't the case at all. We were reunited after two uncomfortable plane rides, and six months of my telling him penetrative sex wasn't an option until I felt truly comfortable. He insisted we try, and I said yes. Of course I said yes.

It was 4:00 PM, but true to the Scandinavian climate, it was as dark as night. I didn't know what day it was. He looked different, and it had been so long. The attempt was brief. I asked for patience, but perhaps too much patience. He sourly noted that the process was "too medical," sighed, and stopped. Too medical for who?

My wearied, tempered eyes locked with his. It was as if you, my enraged, now suffering self, sent a furious wave through me. It wasn't an electrocution, no, but rather a motivating force. This was the last straw. Never again was I to let him dictate my worth based on a condition he exacerbated. I was done. I didn't see his empty, frustrated pupils, but instead envisioned my painful interactions with dilators, my screams as Brooke attempted to remove a small tampon after one overly ambitious appointment, pretending my spasms were pleasurable responses night after night for so many years. How difficult it was to function for days after sex: the redness, the rawness, the hurt. Too medical for who?

RELATED: Meet the Model Who Sued a Tampon Company After Losing Her Leg to Toxic Shock Syndrome

Back in Melbourne, six months into my treatment, there are some weeks when you and I were ticking boxes I didn't even know existed. Then there are other weeks where you rejected me entirely. I understand that; I rejected you for so long as well.

I truly never meant to be unkind to you. It's just that sex is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Sex is nothing like sex is. It is perplexing and discomforting. And rather than listening to you, I listened to the flustered giggling of a comrade of schoolgirls who—between porn, real life, and poorly illustrated comics in sex ed books—discussed all things sex. Endlessly. At some point, I started believing sex was meant to hurt, even if just for the first time.

There have been three since. One: a kind person, who laughed as I apologized for my body. My pelvis sighed a hot gulp of air: relief. There was nothing to fear. He won't hurt you. The second: Captivating in every sense. I had met him that night. I was enthralled and forgot for a moment that I sported this ailment. So this is what sex is meant to feel like, I thought, as the morning sun began peeking through his windows.

The third was an eager admirer, who compassionately listened to the clinical description of my vaginismus, but when push came to shove, thought only to address his own pleasure. Sure, it hurt—it stung in all of those familiar, unprepared crevasses. But not like it used to. Never like it used to.

I named you Tori. Tori means winner, conqueror. Mietta thinks it's a fantastic name. I remember my mother telling me she was going to name me Tori, so it seemed fitting. It isn't too delicate. It doesn't remind me of petals and vanilla incense. You're not fragile. You're one tough lover, that's for sure. You are more than a throbbing, aching space to puncture, Tori.

See more of Madison's illustrations on Instagram.

All photos by the author

The sun is setting on Rob Ford's former stronghold of Rexdale as a line of people billows out of the Toronto Congress Centre. Ford Nation, in all its boisterous glory, is here in full effect: the signage, the T-shirts, and the coveted Rob Ford bobbleheads. The crowd, at his visitation, funeral, and, now, subsequent after-party, were enamored with gospel singing, post-Easter cheers of "Ford to rise again," and a hefty amount of backslapping. Provided this event was in a park filled with barbecues and empty beer cans, you could mistake the congregation that formed as almost any other iteration of Ford Fest.

Except something crucial is missing: Rob Ford. The former mayor, once lambasted across international publications for offensive tirades and smoking crack, is dead. Cancer took his life last week at the way-too-early age of 46. Since then, Toronto has been divided in mourning either the greatest or worst mayor it's ever had. There's been silence, selfies, statues (possibly), and a grand visitation in city hall. The post-mortem red carpet was rolled out and garnished with sprinkles of the gravy train.

3I came to the event—a post-funeral goodbye for the former mayor—for one reason: I needed to find out why Ford Nation loved and continued to love this man. I needed to understand why honest, hardworking people from different ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds would rally behind a man who worked against their interests and constantly perpetuated dishonesty and disrespect for those he claimed to serve. Most importantly, I wanted to know if another shitshow like Ford could happen again—with someone like his brother Doug—and what that might mean for Toronto.

When I arrived at 6 PM, the line outside the building numbered just around 200. By the time me and a small squadron of other journalists got through the doors at 7:30, that number had tripled. I was given a smiley stamp on my wrist, and a ticket for one free alcoholic beverage. I looked up from the blue coupon and stared at a slideshow of Ford, a known alcoholic, being projected on center stage. Somehow, the thought of sipping booze in his honor felt a little distasteful. Before I tossed my voucher in the trash, I saw a man in a wheelchair and a man with a cane toast wine.

"To Rob," one of them said. "To the best mayor!"

I spent the next 20 minutes canvassing the room for those decked out in head-to-toe Ford gear. When I finally approached some of them, they asked what organization I was with. Most were relieved VICE wasn't a newspaper—in the mind of Ford Nation, the mainstream media are crooks who drove Ford deeper into addiction and eventually to death. With a little bit of trust gained, I asked them what it was that really made them love Rob Ford so much.

Paul, 50, Electrician

VICE: What was the best thing Rob did for Toronto?
Paul: He stopped the waste of our money. Y'know, he cared for the average guy like you or me, and he went in there and put a boot on the throat of the greed.

What in particular did he save you money on?
I once had a whole bunch of extra stuff on my lawn. It was leftover from a fellow we had in our basement. Not garbage but junk. The city said they wouldn't take it without extra bags, zips, a whole lot of money. I called the mayor, and he took care of it for me. Didn't cost me a dime!

Do you have any stories of Ford yourself?
That man was good, real good. I was so blessed to meet him one day, just near here actually, and he paid for my drink. I was having a real bad day, and he just sat there and listened. He asked what I thought of the city, and I told him. He called me up one day too, just out of the blue, asked how I was and if my garbage was being taken care of.

Mazlin, 52, Unemployed

VICE: How did you come to love Rob Ford?
Mazlin: I used to work for in the 90s, and they were always so, so good to me. He really did care for Toronto and its people. He was just like Christ.

How so?
He came through these streets and met people, he helped people, he was here to heal. He was like Christ the Lord. The way they betrayed him and stabbed him and left him to die, and then turn around and be at the front of his funeral, pretend like nothing happened. It's sick.

Who was the Judas in all this?
I don't want to talk about that, but Doug, I want to talk to him. The same people who turned their back on Rob were the first to roll out the carpet when he died. I want to know why Doug, if it was up to him, y'know, let them sit at the front of his funeral.

Danny 28, Construction Worker

VICE: Did you ever meet Rob Ford?
Danny: Three times! First was on the Danforth. He was out there with his family I think. I don't remember. I said, "Hey mayor, can I get a selfie?" He was totally cool with it and remembered me when we ran into each other again.

This was before the crack scandal?
Yeah, but that didn't bother me.

Why not?
He was a man like all of us, and he was doing good things so the media, like you and others, tried to make it into something more than it was because they all wanted it back to business as usual. Keep taking from the taxpayers.

I'm a student with a very moderate amount of income. I'm not even an average taxpayer.
With your fancy camera and all that, I'm sure you get kickbacks.

Teresa, 67, Retired

VICE: Did Rob ever call you?
Teresa: That's how he got my vote. Asked me if I was happy with my house, my driveway, my neighborhood. Talked me for a good ten minutes. I wasn't even expecting it.

Do you think a statue should be built in his honor?
Abso-fricken-lutely! We don't have great men like him in this city often enough, and I don't even know of any other statues like that. Who else are going to put, uh, what's his name? Who makes the music? Drake!

Are Rob Ford and Drake on the same level?
Oh love, no. Rob was a much better and more respectable man.

Donna, 49, Mother

VICE: What's the best thing Rob Ford did for Toronto?
Donna: He made this city great again! The gravy train—who's going to stop it now?

Maybe Doug?
Not Doug. I think he's tired. So tired of all the skimmying and scamming that goes on at city hall. Maybe Michael .

What about John Tory?
You're out of your mind if you think that sideman is going to do what Rob did by even an inch. Rob cannot be touched.

Did you ever meet Rob?
No, and it makes me so sad. I saw him from a distance, but I never got to shake his hand. I wish I had.

Leslie, 40, Pool Technician

VICE: Who was Rob Ford to you?
Leslie: The best—just the best person. He will not be forgotten. We won't let forget.

Did you feel like he was given a rough go near the end of his term as mayor?
The whole city turned on him, and this man, he loved us. So yes, I think that we, and I say myself included, did not treat him fair.

A woman I spoke to earlier compared him to Jesus.
He, well, look at what happened! Compare it to the Bible. The tales are the same. He looked and sounded and acted like Christ in many ways. Y'know, you can't take that away from him.

I think that's kind of debatable. What's the best thing he did for you?
He fixed all the potholes along my commute to work. Now they're starting to pop back up again, now that he's gone. I don't think that's a coincidence.

What will you do now that he's gone?
Fight for Doug, fight for the Fords. They are down right now, but they will come back and help us respect the taxpayers again.

Follow Jake on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user J Brew

Last month, Brian (who asked we not use his last name) woke up in the middle of the night to the feeling of his dick hardening in his boxers. He could vaguely feel its outline as it tightened, becoming more erect, as his wife lay sleeping next to him. Could this be a dream? he thought. But, almost instantly, the optimism of that latter possibility came crashing down.

"I sort of pushed my hips forward against my boxers and looked for the bulge," he said, "and obviously it was still gone."

A year ago, Brian, a 38-year-old who lives in the Midwest, had a penectomy—the surgical removal of a penis. He'd gone to his doctor, complaining of what he thought might be a genital wart, but after meetings with few specialists, he learned it was late-stage squamous cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer. Doctors recommended the penectomy.

"That was a bad day," he told me over the phone.

Oddly, since the surgery, he's been struck by an occasional sensation that the penis is still there, like a phantom limb.

For years, patients with phantom limbs were told the phenomenon was "all in their head," but now, research suggests up to 80 percent of people who have had an arm or leg amputated report a feeling of a body part that isn't there. For men who have had their penises amputated, the same holds true.

The phenomenon was first reported by Scottish physicians in the late 1700s, who mentioned phantom penises off-handedly in larger work about phantom limbs, according to a journal article. In 1815, Scottish surgeon Andrew Marshal described a man who'd lost his entire penis: "In the case of W. Scott, whose penis was carried off by a gun-shot, the stump of it, which was even with the skin of the pubis, resumed the peculiar sensibility of the glans penis," he wrote in his notes, which were published in 1815, two years after his death. Another Scottish surgeon, John Hunter, described several instances of the ghost dick in his 1786 book, Observations on Certain Parts of the Animal Oeconomy, including one man who received so much pleasure from his phantom penis that he was able to ejaculate through his "stump."

Unlike phantom limbs, which are known to cause pain, phantom penises seem more often associated with pleasure.

But Wayne Earle, a 48-year-old Australian, finds nothing pleasurable about his phantom penis. Earle, the founder of CheckYourTackle, a website dedicated to raising awareness about male cancers and providing support for cancer victims, had a complete penectomy in 2014 to stop the spread of squamous cell carcinoma.

"I still wake up occasionally with it, and it does get aroused when Tracy and I kiss, cuddle, or get close," he told me via Facebook messenger. "This is a big part of my depression, as you still get the sexual urges just like any other man. You still produce testosterone, and the body does self-adjust, but you still get urges and a phantom erection. There is no way that it is pleasurable."

Watch: ResERECTION: The Penis Implant

In 1950, in the the journal Transactions of the American Neurological Association, Boston surgeon A. Price Heusner described an elderly man whose penis was "accidentally traumatized and amputated" and had an occasional "painless but always erect penile ghost whose appearances were neither provoked nor provokable by sexual phantasies." The man had to check regularly to make sure it wasn't still there.

A year later, Alfred Crone-Münzebrock published his study of 12 men, cancer survivors who opted for amputation and had remaining stumps. Seven of them reported phantom penises, with two of those men associating the phenomenon with pain.

Related: We Talked to a Guy Who Found Peace Through Self-Amputation

In 1999, Dr. C. Miller Fisher, a Boston neurologist who died in 2012, published a case study of a 44-year-old businessman whose penile skin cancer, manifested as a painful sore on the penis, necessitated a full penectomy. After the surgery, he reported phantom boners, often resulting from erotic stimulation like "seeing a pretty young woman." The phantom penis was essentially a replica of the one he'd actually had, and he reported feeling phantom pain emanating from the cancerous sore.

It only really happens if I start to think about it. Otherwise, it's more just the general shape and idea of a penis. — Matt

Earle experienced the phantom penis everyday in the six months following his surgery. "It is one of the things that is not really discussed with you and the doctors at the time of diagnosis," he told me. He described the ghost of his penis as mentally, emotionally, and physically painful, saying it was one of the worst experiences of his cancer journey.

"As time went on, it gradually reduced" he wrote, "and I just don't feel it anymore, or in my mind, I have somewhat blocked it out, as most of the muscle that help control erections are still in place."

Theories about the causes of phantom limbs are ever-changing. Most researchers seem to believe that it's the result of maladaptive changes to the brain after surgery. Others think it's related to the nervous system and the spine.

Even less is known about the cause and tendencies of the phantom penis. The lack of penile cancer support groups, compared to other types of cancer, mean less internet discussion of the phenomenon.

On Motherboard: The Difficult Decision to Save or to Sever

A 2008 study by V.S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at UC San Diego who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, revealed completely new angles to the phantom penis phenomenon: In his research, Ramachandran found that trans women who had their penises removed reported experiencing phantom penises at a far lower rate (about 30 percent) than men who've lost penises to penectomies (about 60 percent).

Additionally, he interviewed 29 trans men and found that 18 of them experienced phantom penises, despite never having had an actual penis.

Ramachandran acknowledges that it's possible that these phantom experiences are confabulation, or distorted memories, but he lists seven reasons why he believes they're not. (Among them: Patients could describe their phantoms penises in great detail, could not will them to go away, and many of the phantom penises were different from the patient's "ideal penis" in size, shape, or length.)

Matt, an 18-year-old trans college student in North Carolina who didn't want us to use his last name, said he first felt a phantom penis before he went through puberty.

"At that age, I didn't really understand what it was—just that I could feel something that obviously wasn't there," he wrote to me in an email. "About the time I learned about sex and all of that fun stuff and started going through puberty (13ish) I started to mess around with the whole phantom penis thing. This probably sounds really weird, but I figured out that if I pretended to masturbate like a cis guy, I could feel it. Along with that, thinking about sex gave me what I guess you'd call the 'phantom erection.'"

He's never been able to reach orgasm through this style of masturbation, but he's come close. His "phantom penis" is there about half the time. The shape, he said, is not very defined, but it does stay consistent for the most part.

"I'd say there's like roughly five inches of space where I can tell it's there," he wrote. "I haven't been able to really identify whether or not I can differentiate between the different parts of it. Oddly enough, the phantom testicle thing is rarely apparent. It only really happens if I start to think about it and try to feel it. Otherwise, it's more just the general shape and idea of a penis."

For Matt, who started taking testosterone a few weeks ago (which has boosted the prevalence of the phantom), the phenomenon is bittersweet.

"The presence of it both affirms my self image as a guy and frustrates me, actually," he said. "It's affirming in the sense that I know that I'm a guy, and my body knows as well. On the other hand, it's kind of frustrating to feel the penis and then look in the mirror and have there be nothing—much less something that can be used for sex or using the bathroom, like a cis male."

Follow Dave on Twitter.

Maybe think twice before you hand over those keys next time. Photo via Flickr user Morrie's Luxury Auto

If you're affluent enough (lol) to be using valet services, you might've wondered at some point how those young 20-something drivers in cheap, ill-fitting suits are treating your Maserati? Or, if you're like me, you might've wondered what the equivalent of spitting in burgers would be for those parking cars of the rich and wannabe famous.

A gun owner in Virginia at the opening of a gun shop. (Rex Features via AP Images)

This week, an anonymous internet person calling himself the "Hyper Rationalist" launched a Change.org petition calling for guns to be allowed at the GOP convention this July. It went viral, gathering more than 50,000 signatures and launching a bevy of incredulous news articles. Some people assumed it was a joke, or supported it jokingly, but others took it seriously enough that Donald Trump said he would consider it, and the Secret Service had to clarify that no guns would be allowed at the event.

It was, it turns out, a piece of satire from a self-described liberal, but you can't blame people if they weren't sure whether they should laugh—in 2016, it's increasingly difficult to sort out satire from fact. Even if it weren't in earnest, the petition did spark an upsurge in the national debate about guns, with columns in the New York Times and the New York Daily News both referencing it.

Here is the Hyper Rationalist—who did not want to share his identity, though he said another outlet has discovered it—describing how all that happened:

It came out of a joke. I was watching a Republican debate—it was a particularly contentious one, and the talk of a contested convention was getting more heated, and I thought, Wow, I wonder how they'd feel about having open carry there? That seed germinated into something a little more concrete, which was the petition. It was intended to be another cute, satirical thing that I would share with people, a couple other people would share it, and it would dwindle and die a slow social media death.

I considered the petition an offshoot of what I normally do, which is write tweets or Facebook posts for my little social circle that I entertain sometimes and annoy other times. This was one step beyond that, I guess; it became something closer to performance art—in hindsight, that's what it looks like now.

The goal was to write something earnestly in the words of somebody on the pro-gun side of the debate. Not the furthest right person on that side, not the most easily caricatured—I imagined someone who could easily get a guest spot on Fox News. I tried to use that sort of language, for the most part, with little tweaks, like the capitalization of "HUSSEIN" in "Barack Hussein Obama," as clues for people who might be in on the joke. I wrote what I think Republicans should have written without me, in order to not be in contradiction of their own stated principles about guns.

Gun ownership is a uniquely irrational aspect of our life in America that we've lost the ability to talk about in a way that makes sense. What really confounds me is when a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz rails endlessly about the San Bernardino attack, where 14 people were killed—a tragedy, no doubt, but in the end, I don't care who shoots me. It could be a Muslim, it could be a white supremacist, it could be a depressed guy, it could be a kid who got a gun from his mom's purse. I don't want to see anyone getting shot, regardless of the reasons behind it. Republicans like Trump and Cruz only seem to care about mass shootings when people they don't like commit them.

Anyway, when I shared the petition around it was like wildfire. I think the first big push was from Brave New Films, who grabbed it somehow, and I forget how it spread from there but the shares just started piling up. By the time the petition got to 5,000 signatures, I sort of panicked a little bit.

I was also a little disappointed with how the media just propagated the petition as if it were real, as if it would have the force of law behind it if it reached X number of signatures. On the one hand, I was thrilled that they saw the point, and they were asking questions, but on the other hand, I saw a lot of outlets that were just glomming on and reposting other site's information like, "This is happening, and this seems kind of hot at the moment." I think a lot of them got distracted by the whodunit aspect of the thing and failed to address the underlying question it sought to ask.

My sense was that the vast majority of support was from people who knew that it was satire. But I don't know. That's very unscientific; I'm not going to comb through 50,000 comments and try to figure that out. I don't necessarily think it took off because Republicans supported it—but I think it's absurd that most Republicans were silent on it.

Now that the right knows a liberal was behind the petition I've been called a "Clinton activist." I don't know why. I'm pretty neutral about the primary—I like Bernie Sanders. I've donated to him, but I've also donated a little bit to Hillary Clinton. Republicans want to say, "Look who started it!" but who cares who started it? Do you agree with it or not?

Either guns make you safe or they don't. If they make you safer—and Republicans say they do, they always rail against "gun-free zones" and want to make it possible for gun owners to carry them everywhere—they would make the convention safer. So why not have guns there? Is that an admission on their part that a lot of armed people getting together would be unsafe?

For 95 percent of people, guns at a convention seems like a bad idea, this year in particular with the atmosphere of violence that's in the air. Could we maybe look at that across other contexts and see if there are lessons to be drawn?

I wish we could have a conversation about guns where the two perceived options weren't "Take all the guns," or "Everyone can have all the guns they want." Generally, I like the idea of lower-capacity magazines, I like the idea of "smart guns"—but I don't have a specific piece of legislation in mind that I want to see passed. I just want to be able to talk about guns in a rational way. That was what I was trying to do.

Follow the Hyper Rationalist on his blog and Twitter.

So you decided to open your relationship. Congratulations! Monogamy certainly seems tough, and since puberty, I have thought it profoundly wasteful to set up a game of chicken between commitment and the id. But I warn you: You may begin to find network television toothless, as so many plots lazily circle around infidelity, the threat of infidelity, or humor based in tension surrounding infidelity.

Also, you fantastic free-thinker, a poly lifestyle isn't all Caligula all the time. The bacchanalian vibe you imagine may not come to pass, and you run some serious risks. I'm not talking about existential dangers to your coupledom, but a more mundane concern: namely that people in fresh open relationships can be annoying as shit.

I know what I'm talking about, because in my personal life I'm a target for a lot of open couples: I'm relatively promiscuous and think dating as a triad is cute and kinda hot. While I'm not saying there's a right way to approach non-monogamy, there are definitely a few wrong ways. As someone who answered searchable poly questions on OkCupid honestly, those wrong ways frequently get aimed right at my face.

So before you screenshot Sex at Dawn for your joint OkCupid profile, allow me to provide you some tips for having an open relationship in the real world.

Getting laid still takes work

This goes out, I'm sorry to say, more to men than women. As I mentioned before, I answered a few questions on OkCupid truthfully: Yes, I would date someone in an open relationship. I would! That's true. But now half the salvos I get on that dating site go something like this: "Hey April-I'm in an open marriage, and I love my wife. You've got a great ass! I'd like for us to become fuck buddies. Write back quickly."

Ask yourself: Did you have to have game when you were single? Your wedding ring isn't Spanish fly, and the fact that some woman likes you enough to share a bathroom doesn't make you Justin Trudeau's younger brother. Be polite, at a bare minimum.

Not everyone wants to hear about your sex life

The universe of people interested in the mechanics of your open relationship is almost certainly the exact same one that heard details of your pre-poly sex life. Your close pals, married wing-woman, that college roommate you ask about butt stuff—it's wonderful to have a large pool of candid friends. But if someone isn't in that circle, he or she doesn't need to hear about "my wife's lover." You don't need to bring up The Ethical Slut at Thanksgiving to your 75-year-old aunt. Your co-worker in the next cubicle isn't being close-minded if they don't want to hear about your foursome—he didn't want to visualize you naked last year, and he still doesn't. You don't need to keep your new relationship status a secret; allude to it a few times, perhaps, and people who are interested will ask about it.

In most circumstances, a cold open request to fuck you and your partner is rude

It's the same as asking complete strangers to pee on you, i.e. asking them to complete a fantasy of yours without first ascertaining whether they're into it. That might fly at a sex party, but even if you're on a dating site, a proposition requires preamble. Leading with an unsolicited sexual appeal is trolling. It doesn't matter if you used the words "please" and "thank you." This is still true if you're a woman. Ladies, if I don't know you, don't assume that I'm interested in "slow sensuality," or that I want to see your husband's dick because "we're sisters." (We aren't, and if we were that would be even weirder.) If you have a two-person profile, say hi and mention something we have in common, same as if you were single. I'll get the idea, and if I'm interested, I'll write back.

Baggage is still unattractive, even if it's a couple's set

Asking single people to date you singly, but describing yourself mostly in relation to your partner and how committed you are and how you're in process with this whole non-monogamy thing isn't going to turn people on or make them think they'd have a good time with you. The only thing less likely to get my panties in a twist than asking me for sex in your first five words is making it clear that you are a big ball of defensive, confused feelings, and you need free therapy that comes with head.

I understand that going from a lifetime of clear rules that can be spelled out with country songs to a new world of ambiguity is a big deal. My life is full of my big deals, too. Wait 'til the second date to wax large with the big deals, and try to understand that they aren't my problem.

Low-stakes auxiliary sex Is probably easier with other non-monogamous people

When I tweak my dating profile to indicate "partnered but available," the deluge of "third" emails slows to a trickle. The implications of this are nasty—it means that men (and couples) are looking for some kind of fantasy fulfillment robot with no life of her own, a convenient threesome partner and nothing more. That's a lousy deal, especially for a single person looking for an emotional connection, not a role in a harem. This seems like a no-brainer, but I guess it needs to be said: If most of your emotional needs are covered by your primary partner, and all you really want is sexual variety and friendship, you might want to look for someone who is in a committed relationship of his or her own.

Non-monogamy isn't the only way, and you don't get to tell everyone else they're doing it wrong

There are myriad reasons why people might prefer monogamy, including religion, ease of navigating the world, or because it just feels right. Respect that, even if you choose differently. You know how you complain all the time about monogamous bores telling you you're going to hell/divorce court? They don't need your advice, either.

Follow April Adams on Twitter.

Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

Bethany Cosentino is a songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist best known as one half of Best Coast. The band has four albums, Crazy for You, The Only Place, Fade Away (an EP) and California Nights, which came out last spring. When I first heard the music of Best Coast—chimeric as Fleetwood Mac, slightly nostalgic in a Beach Boys way, bad-ass and lo-fi too—I was living in New York City, thousands of miles from Venice Beach where I live now. Cosentino seemed to possess an endless summer of youth: a sunset that never fully goes behind the mountain. Even the longing conveyed in her lyrics seemed romantic, not itchy like mine. I imagined that if one could only live by the ocean and hang around with surfer boys, one might harness some kind of chill and ride it.

Now I live three blocks from the beach, and I know that this isn't the case. We are who we are, and no amount of palm trees really changes that. I've also discovered, through the magic of Twitter, that Cosentino isn't as chill as I thought she was. Underneath the infinity pool and the pink and purple sky is a complicated brain chemistry, dichotomous feelings, and a hamster wheel of a mind: just like so many of us. I asked Bethany if she would be willing to talk about what goes on in there, and she said yes.

VICE: Before I twitter-knew you and was just a fan of your music, I always imagined that you were the ultimate California chill girl—like that you were at some eternal bonfire or clambake following a day of surfing. Is all of this a projection, or is there some of that in you?
Bethany Cosentino: I like to think that I'm pretty "chill" in some regard—like, for example, when I'm not working, I spend the majority of my time at home on the couch watching TV, or working out by myself and THEN hanging on the couch watching TV. So like, my "hobbies" are pretty chill. I'm not like a raging party girl. I was at one point, but I'm over that now. It's like, too exhausting for me. I think part of why the aesthetic of Best Coast has always been so "California-centric," and everything is covered in palm trees and the sun and the beach and shit, is because I lack so much of that "vibe" in my personality. I very rarely go to the beach. I appreciate it a lot, but I don't ever really go out of my way to hang out there. The ocean actually really freaks me out. Like, it's way too much to think about. Because I am the way that I am, which can tend to be pretty neurotic and anxious and reclusive, it made sense to me to make the aesthetic of the band very much the opposite of that. My lyrics are super cloudy and have a very what the fuck does it all mean??? vibe, but I try to write really upbeat, happy, sunny melodies. In a way, it's like tricking my brain to be like, Everything is OK because you're in the sun and it's warm outside in December! But lyrically I'm still like "fuuuuuuuuuuck."

When the weather is beautiful, it can feel like there is "pressure" to be happy. Can you talk about your relationship with anxiety/depression? When did you first notice the onset, or did you always feel some discomfort with living in a body on earth?
I was diagnosed with anxiety/depression when I was in high school. I started having a really hard time focusing in school. I never wanted to leave my room and go outside, I never slept, I was so incredibly moody—everything just felt like a chore. I started acting out in the form of self-destructive behavior, and my mom was finally just like, "OK, I'm taking you to a doctor." So I started seeing a psychiatrist who diagnosed me as bipolar II with anxiety, ADHD, and depression. At the time, all I really knew of bipolar disorder and mental illness was Sylvia Plath and Girl, Interrupted. Honestly, that shit made me feel better. It made me feel less alone in the world.

For a long time, I ignored the fact that I suffered from any of these things—but it always got the best of me. I took medication for a while as a teenager, but I quickly decided I didn't need it as soon as it started making me gain weight. Finally, when I was in my early twenties, shortly after the success of Best Coast, I confronted it again and started seeing another psychiatrist and a therapist. I've learned simple yet effective ways to deal with my anxiety, and sometimes it feels like nothing ever works—but I just refuse to give up on myself. If I'm feeling mopey or overwhelmed, I just force myself to go on a hike, or workout on my ballet barre, or take a bath in lavender oil, or rub crystals all over my face.

I used to be really afraid to talk about it, but I think over the last several years—especially with people like you discussing mental illness in such a real way—I've become a lot more open and honest about it. If you listen to my lyrics, or read any interview with me, I think it's pretty clear that I battle with issues. I just think that I've figured out how to control those issues as best I can, and not let them control me.

I'm back in the crystal game. After years of hiatus, I've become addicted to buying crystals again. This time, though, I'm like, OK, I'm not looking for this thing to save me. It's just fucking pretty. What are your biggest anxiety triggers?
I wish I could explain this in an eloquent, graceful way, but I'll just say this: I can basically freak the fuck out over anything. If there isn't a problem or something to fear or stress out over, I will find a way to make it happen. Sometimes if I'm in a crowded grocery store, and there are too many people around, I just get super claustrophobic and have a hard time breathing, and I have to just leave and go sit in my car. Other times, something like opening my email in the morning to like, twenty unread emails, can make me panic.

When I was younger, I used to quit every job I ever had—like straight up just not show up and ask my mom to call them and tell them I was never coming back! Seriously, I did that. And now, I am a twenty-nine-year-old woman who spends a month on a tour bus with little to no privacy, performs six days a week in front of tons of people, does interviews for sometimes hours at a time—I mean, you get it. When I get the most frustrated with my feelings and the world around me, I try to remind myself that I've come this far, and I am able to do everything I do even when sometimes I don't feel like I can get myself out of bed. This is my job, it's my livelihood, and I know that I can't get my mom to call in sick to life for me. I just have to roll my eyes and take deep breaths and make it work, and I do that pretty much every single day.

I identify with you one hundred percent re: When there isn't a problem or something to fear, you will find or create something. General anxiety is more uncomfortable to me than when it's tethered to a tangible issue, so I will find something upon which to project the feeling that already exists. It's why I feel comfortable in a crisis—because it's like the world is rising to meet the level of anxiety I feel every day. It feels earned or normal for that kind of situation, whereas when everything is OK, it doesn't fit. Sometimes I am tweeting about never leaving the house again from my side of town (west), and you affirm that statement's resonance from your side of town (east), and I wonder what forms your anxiety takes: social, general, phobic, panic?
Pretty much all of the above. I have terrible social anxiety, but I'm a musician who lives in the spotlight—it makes basically no sense. As much as I love my fans and I appreciate them so much, I can get weird when interacting with them. When people approach me out in public, I get freaked out. I do my best to thank them and be polite and take a selfie or whatever, but on the inside, I'm usually like, Oh my God, can they see the pimple that's coming in on my chin? Did I forget to lock the door to the bus? Is this bruise on my leg because I'm dying? It's like a whole fucking ridiculous world of bullshit that swirls around in my head. Other times, I have full blown panic attacks, and the world around me starts to feel like it's going in slow motion, and voices start sounding like the teacher in The Peanuts, and my heart starts racing, and I have to like sit down or walk away from whatever situation I'm in, and that can be hard if that happens to me while I'm working—there have definitely been times where I'm on stage, and I can feel a panic attack coming on, and I just have to push through it. This job has presented me with a gigantic challenge. It's like, OK, you are absolutely neurotic and awkward and moody, let's put you in situations on a daily basis that trigger all of those things. In a way, I think this job has saved my life. It's allowed me to realize that my issues are just that—issues—and no, they're not easy to deal with, but it's totally possible to be able to live my life and navigate through this at times terrifying world without having to go hide in a cave for the rest of my life.

It's really inspiring to hear that when you push through it, you can see that these things don't define you. Does anxiety ever affect your experience of performing?
There was a period of time when I just got wasted onstage and awkwardly talked to the crowd as if I was talking to a friend, but I only did that because I felt so nervous and uncomfortable, so I would just like do shots onstage and be like, "So do you guys like cats? I like cats!" It was a mechanism for me to deal with the anxiety of being in front of that many people and feeling self-conscious about a million different things. I don't do that anymore, though. I very rarely perform drunk anymore—I just can't do it.

Alcohol worked for me to medicate my anxiety until it stopped working. If I could have stayed drunk twenty-four hours a day, I would have never had to get sober. Weed, which was at one point my best friend, also turned on me. It became a catalyst for panic attacks. And when it did I really mourned the loss of that love. How does weed affect your anxiety?
It differs from day to day, honestly. Sometimes it really helps me, and it makes me just feel like super chill, no fucks. But, other times, it makes me feel like I'm talking too much, and everyone thinks I'm annoying. I usually have to get high before I go out and do anything social, but every once in a while, it backfires because I'll like get high, go out, and then be like, Whoa I'm too high for this I need ice cream and water ASAP.

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Illustration by Sam Taylor

If you ask me, one of the best things about being a woman in 2016 is having the freedom to get your tits out on social media. Kim Kardashian knows this and so, it now seems, does her friend Emily Ratjkowski – whom you may remember as the brunette hottie from the "Blurred Lines" video. They posted a sisterly tit pic this week in defiance of slut-shaming. Guess what happened next? Well, duh. They got slut-shamed. By disgusting misogynistic dickheads like Piers Morgan. Morgan posted a series of Tweets telling Kim K and Emily that they were "Classy ladies. Real classy" and should "try wearing a little dignity" while calling the pair "tacky". He then posted a pic of himself and Kim K in "Happier, more tasteful days". Class? Dignity? Taste? Time to clutch those pearls, boys and girls! What a shame – for when a man is tired of Kim Kardashian's breasts, he is tired of life.

Emily didn't respond to the moral censure of this great arbiter of taste, but instead tweeted: "However sexual our bodies may be, we need to hve the freedom as women to choose whn & how we express our sexuality." Morgan continued: "Oh Emily, enough of this nonsensical pseudo-feminist gibberish. If not for me, then for Emmeline." Oh. Yes. Feminism. That thing where posh twats shame women over the choices they make about their bodies!

In what parallel universe does a 51-year-old man lecture a woman old enough to be his daughter – almost his granddaughter – on how to be a feminist? Presumably he'd prefer Emily to dress like Emmeline Pankhurst, with long skirts and high necks and maybe some white gloves for good measure? I admire Pankhurst greatly but we're in the 21st century now and women can dress or undress however the hell they want.

"RIP feminism", Morgan finished. The push for women's rights would indeed be in a very poor state if Piers Morgan were its last defender. This is the same Piers Morgan who has spent years expressing his "revulsion" towards Madonna, describing her body as a "gruesome display of muscle-bound pecs-twitching that actually made me physically gag". That particular comment was over Madonna's appearance at the 2012 Golden Globes, when she was there to collect an award. He praised Sofia Vergara's appearance at the same even because "she dresses for men, not women". The same Piers Morgan who wrote last year that Madonna's fall at the Brits was "God's way of telling you you're too old to cavort like a hooker." Make no mistake: Piers Morgan is no feminist. He's an entitled little prick who feels he has a right to comment on women's bodies with disgusting misogyny. He's the claret-lipped uncle at posh family weddings who yells at his sister-in-law in front of the whole family to tell her she's put on weight. He's a hideous pulsating mound of smegma.

I welcome men's voices in feminism, if they actually have something new, interesting and important to say. But here's the thing: in this instance, quite simply, Morgan is wrong.

According to Piers Smegma, feminism is "supposed to be the advocacy of women's rights & equality with men. Not, I dare to suggest, topless selfies." Yes, feminism is supposed to be about the advancement of women's rights, but Morgan should look at the warped logic in his own tweets. Men post topless selfies all the time. Look, here's Justin Bieber with his boobs out. Take a long hard look at it. I have. And here's Tom Hardy. And Drake. Go on. Knock yourself out. If topless men are your thing, there are plenty to choose from on social media. I don't remember Morgan ever telling Bieber or any other male celebrity to cover up. That's more double standard than equality. Take Instagram and Facebook's bans on female nipples - if men and women are to be equal, then men and women's nipples are going to have to be equal too. Morgan can complain about taste and dignity all he likes, but that's the way feminism's going down in 2016.

I've never met Emily but I did have the pleasure of meeting Elle Evans a couple of years ago. She was the blonde hottie from the "Blurred Lines" video. We spoke at the Oxford Union together in defence of promiscuity, a debate we won. I found her to be a highly intelligent, calm and composed young woman. She wasn't some vapid bimbo and there is no reason to believe that either Kim K or Emily Ratajkowski are either. Just because a woman chooses to present herself sexually in the public eye does not mean she's an idiot in need of advice from a scumbag like Piers Morgan. As young feminist and journalist Abi Wilkinson wrote: "I could tweet nudes & it wouldn't change anything about me, my opinions or my intelligence. Piers Morgan's tweets show he's an idiot though."