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People like food. It fills you up, gives you a reason to leave your bed in the morning and tastes good… some of the time. For those other times, when the stuff you’re jamming into your greasy maw isn’t up to par but you’re determined to eat it anyway, there are condiments. Maybe you splash a half ton of ranch dressing on some crummy French fries or slather a diabetic coma-inducing level of ketchup your overdone burger. The point is, condiments can rescue an otherwise disastrous meal or jazz up an old favorite with just a little sugar or oil or spice. Then there’s these condiments. For those not content with a little butter, there is a wide variety of disgusting things you can put on your food that can make even the most ironclad stomach churn. And we’re not just talking about those freaks that put ketchup on their macaroni and cheese. 1. Miracle Whip (United States) The miracle is that they get away with selling it in the grocery store. Mayonnaise, like many condiments, is a “love it or hate it” affair. While ketchup and mustard have enjoyed fairly even popularity across the demographics of western culture, mayo has consistently been viewed as the red-headed stepchild of the mainstream condiment family. Considered a foodstuff for the extremely white or Canadian, the relatively simple concoction consists mostly of eggs, oil, some vinegar and spices. What’s missing from that recipe? Well if you said lots of high glucose corn syrup, you might prefer the “tangy zip” of miracle whip. The whiter-than-white stuff was invented in 1933 as a result of the Great Depression, which caused huge price increases in foods like eggs and oil. The good people a Kraft realized that all they had to do was invent a new “emulsifying machine” to blend mayo with cheap dressing and sugar to make an unholy goop that provided people with less calories at a marginally lower price. Sure it makes Miracle Whip, but it can also turn out 250 mood rings every hour! Well, that was the idea. Just because the ingredients cost less didn’t stop the price from creeping up over time. Also, according to the label, it’s technically a salad dressing. Try serving that one on romaine at your next dinner party. 2. Jeotgal (Korea) And this is only the part that goes on top of something else. Have you ever been tucking into a nice seafood dinner and thought: this is good, but is there a way I could get this fishy taste on everything? In semi-liquid from? Two months from now? As it turns out, the people of Korea have had their best people working on the problem for thousands of years. Whereas countries like America have many varieties of mustard or barbeque sauce, Korea has an entire range of fermented seafood sauces which vary based on what they let die in them and whether they bothered to cook it first. While often used as a pickling agent in the popular dish kimchi, Jeotgal is also found adorning other dishes as well as being used for dipping delicacies like pig’s feet or blood sausage. Some varieties of Jeotgal may also differ only by when the product was harvested. Apparently shrimp caught in May and shrimp caught in June taste completely different, even after you let them sit around in the sun until August. Other types of jeotgal use raw crab, oysters and fish eggs as bases. Curiously, there is no Fido Jeotgal, even though dog meat is a consistently popular dish in Korea. Although, now that I think about it... that looks pretty good. 3. Vegemite (Australia) ...please don’t be made of termites. With the exception of shrimp laden “barbies”, skin cancer or crocodiles and the men that hunt them, there’s nothing more stereotypically Australian than Vegemite. The salty, savoury paste is commonly consumed while spread over toast or on bread as part of a sandwich. “The Veg”, as nobody calls it, provides an incredibly rich source of B vitamins and fodder for comedy writers. It’s made by a process that involves spices, yeasty slush from beer making that would otherw[...]

“A dog is a man’s best friend.”, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.” Proverbs are hidden treasures – chests of old timey wisdom, possibly the best kind of wisdom there is. They somehow manage to shrink wrap dozens of years of personal experience and universal truths into one sentence with a certain nice ring to it. But what happens when those truths deal with misogyny, adultery and unintentional humor? Why, they get listed on WeirdWorm for your amusement, of course. Let us then amuse you with the nine funniest foreign sayings we could find. 1. A Dog Is Wiser Than a Woman; It Doesn’t Bark At Its Master From: Russia There are so many things one can learn from this jewel of wisdom. Like that the guy who coined it probably spent that very night on the couch after comparing his wife to Lassie. Or that Russia apparently had some pretty clever dogs, back in whatever days this saying was constructed. This actually answers the question of why would they sent a canine to space when so many human peasants were abundant. All in all, this reads like the testimony of a man who’s been put in the dog house far too often and decided one day to passive-aggressively take a shot at his wife, before caving in and buying her a bunch of roses, of course. 2. A Good Husband Is Healthy And Absent From: Japan If you are a connoisseur of fine foreign pr0nography, you are well acquainted with the vast library of Japanese X-rated titles where the lonely housewife, feeling abandoned by her husband out on yet another business trip, discovers her own self respect in a 20-male-1-female orgy. This proverb kind of explains why this smut genre is so popular – it’s a part of the Japanese national consciousness. On the other hand, perhaps there is a kind of chicken-or-the-egg thing in play here. Maybe it’s a saying born after the boom of the lonely Japanese housewife style of adult entertainment? We don’t know, but it’s nice to see that in a culture which apparently treasures infidelity so much, they at least still care for their cuckolded husbands’ health. 3. A House Without a Dog Or A Cat Is the House of A Scoundrel From: Portugal Personal experience shows that a house without a dog or a cat is foremost a house that smells nice and doesn’t spend half its budget on pet food and pet medical expenses. But above all else, a pet-less house is a house whose owner never had to touch poop that wasn’t his own unless he really wants to. But then again, we have never been to Portugal, so maybe it’s a simple cultural difference and their country simply has more respect for people who take time out of their lives to take care of small furry animals? Imagine that – an entire country where our crazy cat ladies would be considered virtuous, noble people. Food for thought, people. 4. Angels Carry Drunkards On Their Arms From: Poland If there is anything drunkards and angels have in common, it’s that they are never truly on planet Earth, always flying somewhere high in the sky above the problems of the humans. Until the alcohol runs out and they wake up pants-less in some dirty alley. The drunkards that is, not the angels. Poland is not helping its western reputation of being basically Little Russia by trying to impose religious undertones on their country’s alcoholism. Yeah, it’s cool to think that in your drunken stupor you’re under heavenly protection, but attitudes like that is what causes drunken driving accidents, people. Stop it. 5. A Single Russian Hair Outweighs Half A Pole From: Russia Like the dog proverb before, this one also teaches us everything we need to know about Russian culture: their hair obviously generate their own gravity making them way heavier than regular hair. Which… we assume, is something to be proud of in Eastern Europe? Are Polish people known for having light hair? Is that an actual stereotype? Because what else could[...]

In case you’re new to the Internet, a quick review: you can play old video games on your computer using emulators. These emulators need “ROMs”, which you can download for virus bonuses throughout the Internet. However, some in the ROM community, being bored teenagers with nothing to do or man-children who really need a hobby, will reprogram these games. Some do it to fix some imagined broken moment, to “improve” the story, or just generally remind you why you started talking to people who didn’t play video games by repainting all the sprites for no particular reason. Playing ROM hacks is a painful, unpleasant tour of the Internet that will remind you just how much you hate people. So! Let’s get to it! NOTE: We are will not be providing links to the actual ROMs. This is due in part to the tremendous risk of getting a computer virus (no, we’re not kidding, these are teenagers, they think giving you Vundo is the funniest thing EVAR). Additionally ROMs are technically illegal, even though most of these games are not available and in fact most of the publishers are out of business. If you absolutely must, a quick Googling should turn them up if you really want to play them. And God help you if you do. 1. Ninja Gayden It takes the imagination of a child to get this from an 8-bit sprite. Ninja Gaiden is, of course, the classic franchise featuring Ryu, the ninja clad all in black, killing his way through New York City. You get one guess what “Ninja Gayden” adds to the mix. And if you guess a pink suit and all the weapons turned into…how do we put this delicately… unabashedly excited and engorged male reproductive organs… you’d be correct! Why, exactly, this was necessary to add to the original game (a hack-and-slash platforming classic) we don’t know. However, we’re guessing it has something to do with the ROM editor’s immaturity and not-so-latent homosexual desires. 2. Wilford Island One thing we’ve never gotten, in all our years on the Internet, is why the obsession with Wilford Brimley has lasted as long as it has. Not that we don’t LIKE Wilford Brimley: he was a talented actor and he also starred in the highly accidentally hilarious Ewok TV movies, which you really have to see to believe. But “DIABEETUS” as a catchphrase has endured a lot longer than one would expect. Nevertheless, it is this obsession that spawned this remake of Hudson’s “Adventure Island”, starring Wilford Brimley and with the sprites actually decently edited. Somebody spent real time turning this into a game where Wilford Brimley runs around in a grass skirt jumping on oats. … We take it back. Rule 34 tells us all we need to know about Brimley’s popularity. 3. Beerlaga My god... the genius of it! Beer is, of course, a magical, beautiful concoction that makes everything better, especially when you’re finding dozens of ROMs that all think beating up gays, rabid idiotic racism, and sexual assault are prime comedy fodder. We’ve had a couple of six packs already in the course of this article. But we’re still not sure what the idea is behind “Beerlaga”. No, we get the pun. “Laga” sounds like “lager”, that one’s kind of obvious. But how much time and effort was spent in MS Paint to create what amounts to gunning down beer cans with a 40? You know what you could have done, Beerlaga creator? Read to children. Volunteered at a homeless shelter. Or just get really wasted. Really, anything would be better than this.

When you’re a kid, it is often fun to get lost in a world of make believe. You can pretend that you’re a knight rescuing a damsel in distress, or a mutant with some totally rockin’ superpowers, or Indiana Jones trying to find a lost and priceless artifact. Of course, then you grow up and playing make believe is no longer what the kids refer to as “cool” anymore. We should say, many of us grow up and leave the world of make believe behind. Other people, well, they can be a little more hesitant, and that’s why we’ve got people messing around with things like… 1. The Klingon Language Come on, did you think we’d really start with anything else? Of all the things on this list, learning and speaking Klingon is probably the most established practice there is. People have been learning and speaking this made up language for so long that it’s relatively commonplace in comparison to the rest of the entries below. Speaking Klingon is mentioned in pop culture all the time, from movies like Garden State all the way to shows like Frasier. There’s even a Klingon Language Institute, which exists to teach people to read, write, and speak the language of those alien freaks who kept trying to kill William Shatner back in the 1960’s. We have to admit that the KLI seems to have a pretty solid grasp on their public perception and embrace it, putting humor on their website with lines like “whether you’ve just stumbled in here by accident, or lost a bet.” And d*** it, we just can’t hate too much on nerds who can crack little jokes like that. We’ll even let them keep their lunch money. If they all looked like this, there would be far fewer jokes. 2. The Jedi “Religion” Star Wars taught us a lot. It taught us that Darth Vader was a total bada**, Luke Skywalker was a whiny b****, George Lucas is a one trick pony and that being a Jedi Knight would be about the coolest thing ever. Just imagine being able to force choke people into submission or convince them that really, these are so totally not the droids they’re looking for. And now imagine people in the world who actually list “Jedi” as their religion. And now stop snickering while we tell you all about them. Believe it or not, there are really people out there who have “converted” to Jediism, and you can too by visiting templeofthejediorder.org. It’s a real website which claims that practicing Jediism is not the same as seen on the screen in the Star Wars films, though the longwinded mission statement suggests that’s only because they don’t in fact have the Force. They do however refer to themselves as Jedi Knights, which kind of contradicts the whole thing, and say that they base their lifestyle not on the “myths” of Star Wars, but on real life examples of Jediism. Kind of like the time we were trapped in an ice cave and willed our lightsabre to us in order to escape a Wampa. We should totally tell them about that, they’d think it was awesome and make us their leader. You call that discipline? If that was a real lightsabre you’d have lost a foot. 3. The “Sport” of Quidditch It probably should not come as any shock that there are people who take the world of Harry Potter way too seriously. And hey, we admit that it’s a pretty cool world and we dig the books and movies as much as the next nerd. So it probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that people looked at elements of the books and films, thought to themselves, “hey, that’s awesome” and tried to turn them into reality. Most notable of these pathetic attempts is the ‘sport’ of Quidditch, which has become something of a phenomenon on college campuses across the United States. Quidditch, as you know doubt know, involves people flying around on brooms and also involves what appear to be ridiculous double entendres, such as one of the positions being called “beater” and the object that a seeker tries to catch being named a “golden snitch.” The Quidditch that people actually play follows all of the same overly confusing rules as Harry Pot[...]

Ever had a self-appointed linguistic expert regale you with word origin stories that seemed a bit off? The following etymologies have spread well beyond Yahoo!Answers and into the education and legal system, as well as into everyday life. But take our word for it: every one of them is utterly, ridiculously wrong. 1. The Missionary Position The Story Supposedly, the phrase ‘missionary position’ originated back in the days when Western missionaries to Melanesia tried to impose strict sexual rules on the native populations they were preaching to. According to the newly-arrived missionaries, man-on-top was the only sexual position favored by their God, and everything else was a sin against nature. Natives, used to enjoying a joyful choice of multiple positions in their unspoiled, Avatar-like paradise, coined the nickname as a way of mocking the fuddy-duddy Westerners. The Truth The term was popularized by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in his 1948 collection, The Kinsey Report, inside which Kinsey cites an earlier researcher before retelling the Melanesia story. However, further investigation since then has not dug up any proof of the term being used before 1948, even in the research Kinsey cited. Since Kinsey’s brand of research was not popular with the Church at the time, one might assume that Kinsey was more inclined than most people to believe made-up stories about the people he didn’t get along with very well. He was, for example, also fond of telling audiences that the Roman Catholic Church was in possession of the world’s largest collection of pr0nography. This was probably untrue, although we must keep in mind that this was during the 40’s and 50’s, well before the invention of the Internet. This is what happens when the nuns confiscate your stash. Why Has the Story Stuck? Before Kinsey’s time, the most widespread name in use for the act was the ‘male superior’ position. Presumably, many men discovered that suggesting a form of sex that implied their lady’s innate lowliness was not helpful for intimacy, and chose the more neutral-sounding ‘missionary’ instead. Since the name doesn’t really make sense without the colorful back story, everyone just assumed that it was true. Presumably, the Melanesian tourist industry has been booming ever since. 2. Wakes The Story Poisonous foods, horrific diseases and excessive drinking were common in the bad, old days. When these things didn’t kill people at age 25, they would sometimes knock them out for a few days in a state of near-death. Without modern medical technology, it was impossible to tell if these people were actually dead or not. So, to avoid any embarrassing claw-your-way-out-of-your-own-grave-and-eat-your-relatives-in-revenge mishaps, the victim’s family would gather around his corpse for hours or days and keep vigil in case he or she woke up: hence our tradition of a ‘wake’. This is a body of a man who’s family would like to get their shuteye According to some versions of this story, today’s tradition of drinking and celebrating at wakes originated from trying to make such a loud noise that the body would ‘wake up’ (surely just yelling next to his ear would have been easier). The Truth The name derives from the Old English word wacu, which means ‘watching or guarding’ as opposed to ‘waking up’. The modern English verb ‘watch’ has its origins in the same word. Back in the day, wakes involved surrounding the body and holding a prayer vigil. This period of mourning allowed relatives and friends to visit and pay their last respects (and, if Irish, drink) before the body was removed to be buried. Why Has the Story Stuck? Given the modern meaning of ‘wake’, holding a ceremony with that name right after somebody passes out and dies is always going to be linguistically confusing. Like many linguistic myths, this one is probably popular because it’s so much more interesting than the reality. If there’s one thing people are scared of more than death, it’s being buried alive[...]

Food is one of the most basic pleasures in life. Everybody eats, and while caffeine and playing with yourself on Chatroulette can handle your other necessities, you’re pretty much stuck with food. For now. And for any mundane activity there are those who seek adventure. In terms of food, most can be satiated with a little Tabasco. Others need to push the envelope further by indulging in the taboo and the strange. For those people, only the thrill of consuming a still living animal will suffice. Today, we’ll be examining some of the dishes these freaks call dinner. Or lunch. Or whatever. 1. Casu marzu (Italy) Hey, that looks pretty... wait. Why is it moving? Let’s ease into this one. Lots of people eat cheese made from sheep’s milk. On the isle of Sardinia in Italy, they prefer Pecorino. They also like it served a very specific way. Rather than just fermenting the cheese, they just go ahead and give it a push into the “rotting” territory by inviting maggots to the party. Cheese flies are allowed to lay their eggs, which hatch and start chewing their way through. They start to break down the fats and this makes the cheese very soft. So soft, the Pecorino begins to “cry” (as the locals put it) as the digested fatty liquid leaks out. When it’s time to consume the devil-cheese, it’s decision time. Some go for the full experience and eat it, maggots and all, in thin strips on some crispy bread that in no way disguises the taste of live larvae. For the faint of heart, one can also seal the cheese in a bag which causes the maggots to lose oxygen and start launching themselves out of the cheese at distances up to 15 centimeters. That’s over 18 times their body length, about the same as you leaping a 10 story building. When the bag stops making the sweet pitter-patter of maggots in their death throws, the cheese is certified baby fly free. The maggots also provide a cool, pre-industrial expiration date. If the maggots die naturally, the cheese has gone toxic, hence the idea behind eating it while it’s still infested. For the people who nosh with the insects intact, they can look forward to the chance of the larvae surviving the stomach and setting up shop in the intestines. As it turns out, living in rotting cheese means they’re pretty used to acidic environments, and being a disgusting maggot means they’re more than happy to try to burrow into your duodenum. 2. Oysters (Widespread) I wonder if anyone’s ever made a "shellfish look like lady parts" joke. Well, they have now. There’s no classier food than shellfish, except maybe steak soaked in champagne. Lobster, mussels, king crab… delicious delights from the seven seas. And when it comes to seafood, freshness is the phrase that pays. The faster you can get these animals from their underwater home to your plate, the tastier they are. People still pay good money to look their dinner in the eye while they choose a lobster from a tank. Oysters push the idea of freshness to the logical conclusion. They must be cooked or eaten while they are still alive, otherwise you can look forward to an evening bowing to the porcelain god. While they can be boiled, baked or prepared any number of ways, the most delightful method is on the half shell. This means half the shell is cut open or “shucked” while they’re still alive to expose the sweet, sweet innards. Various sauces or juices can be added to the gelatinous mass, but the idea is to get that mollusc into your stomach before it’s legally dead. Obviously the best way to do that is just pick them up and slurp the bloody things down like a two bit whore. Surprisingly, oysters are pretty good for you. They have a number of minerals that you normally only get from the most annoyingly enriched breakfast cereals, as well as vitamin B12, which helps keep you sane and full of blood. Eating them raw (sometimes called “shooters”) retains the most nutrients. Hippies even have a hard time saying no, as oysters are almost always sustain[...]

Celebrities are famous for giving their children utterly ridiculous names. But what about the normal Joes who are saddled with monikers that aren’t anything like ‘Joe’? At least the children of famous people can cry about their names while sitting on top of their huge piles of cash and maybe beating their slaves. If you’re just an ordinary guy with parents who were suffering temporary insanity when they named you, you’re in for a much tougher time. Here are some types of cruel and unusual names that non-celebrities are naming their hapless children: 6. I’m a Fan So you like something. You really, really like it. You could consider yourself a fanatic. Is it enough to have posters on your wall, or to spend all your money on merchandise? No. For some people, the only way to truly prove that you’re a true fan of something is to name a kid after it. In its most harmless form, you see parents naming children after celebrities or fictional characters that have relatively normal names. So, for example, the name ‘Harry’ rose in popularity when the Harry Potter books became popular. But what if you’re a fan of a person with a more unusual name? Or what if you want your kid to be a constant, unmistakable reminder of how much you love your celebrity crush? For example, the name ‘Ben’ is too normal. Why not name him or her Affleck? Then you can be reminded every day of that great movie, Pearl Harbor. Cinematic abortion didn’t fit on the birth certificate. But we’re still in the tame ones. One mother, apparently a horror movie fan, named her kid Vorhees. Yes, after Jason Vorhees, this guy: The woman who performed this cruel deed was apparently a fan of more than one franchise, though, because poor little Vorhees has siblings called Morpheus, Frodo and Rogue. And branching out from popular culture, another sibling is called Peppermint. Hey, you can be a fan of peppermint, can’t you? 5. Uniquely Trendy Names There’s a problem with trying to be unique: everyone’s doing it. In the past couple of decades, many parents have been rebelling against ‘traditional’ names with long histories. So they chose names like ‘Kayleigh’ and ‘Brayden’ that had been obscure up until then, and sometimes almost non-existent. What better way to prove your child’s uniqueness, right? There was one problem: trendy baby names spread like a virus. Little Madison might have been the only one in her class named that in 1985, but in 2008 Madison was the fourth most popular girls’ name in America. Your unique and precious snowflake is now awash in a sea of Madisons. It would have been more original just to name her Sarah. The Typhoid Mary of the Madison Virus Which brings us to another potential problem for these kids is that anyone upon hearing their name is going to immediately recognize two things: one, the year in which they were born, and two, that their mother was most likely a sheep-like follower of fashion. A man named ‘Daniel’ could have been born in 2008 or AD 108. When you hear the name ‘Jayden’, though, you know the kid was probably born after 2001, when the name suddenly shot to stardom. 4. Deliberate Misspelling What if you just can’t stomach the idea of your darling little angel not having a unique name, but you’re also too unoriginal to come up with something different? Simply misspell the name! Here are some real baby names: Jennipher, Jessyka, Destyneigh (because nothing is better for a growing young woman than having the sound a horse makes in her name!), Taelor, Mychal, and Loegan. But there’s many more – any name in the English language can be misspelled for that genuine ‘my mother was seventeen years old and on drugs when she gave me it’ feeling. Stay classy, British media. This type of cruel and unusual naming introduces a new type of torture to your innocent child. Sure, the kid named ‘Vorhees’ will be getting turned down on job applications and accosted by his girlfriends’ fathers his whole life, but at least the average person will know [...]

Chances are you don’t love your job. If you’re like most people, you have to get up in the morning and sit in front of a computer for hours compiling excel sheets or answering phone calls. However, an average 9 to 5 job is heaven compared to some of the peculiar, dangerous or simply stinky jobs that people had to do in the past. Here are some of the weirdest jobs anyone ever had on their resume. 1. Whipping Boys During the 1600’s in England, educating the future king created an interesting problem. Since the monarch’s blood line was considered divine, teachers and caretakers couldn’t punish the young prince even if he acted like a brat. The solution was obvious: get another young boy to take the punishment instead of the future king, hence the job of Whipping Boy. These scapegoats were usually chosen from the children of the nobility and educated along with the prince, living in the same quarters and playing together in their spare time. This meant that most of the time the prince was attached to the whipping boy and avoided doing badly so his friend wouldn’t be punished. While there is no record attesting how well this worked in practice, we do know that some kings later rewarded their whipping boys with land and nobility roles. If nothing else, the promise that one day you might become a duke would probably keep you going through all those undeserved punishments. Apparently if you were really bad you got fed to a bear 2. Dog Whipper Another career option during the 1600’s was the position of dog whipper. This was a church official whose job was to, no big surprise here, whip dogs. The reason for this wasn’t that medieval people hated puppies, in fact the problem was that people loved dogs too much and hordes of stray dogs waiting for food gathered around churches. It was the dog whipper who made sure that these dogs didn’t start barking in the middle of a sermon, and he would chase them away if they tried to attack a well dressed lady. Part of the job benefits were a free whip, a pair of wooden thongs (useful when trying to remove stubborn dogs) and a small plot of land sometimes known as the dog acre. Some of the downsides were the packs of dogs that could become very angry when someone tried to chase them away. Luckily for everyone involved: as dog shelters became common there was no need for this job anymore. Well, you don’t see any accountants carved into buildings, do you? 3. Gymnasiarch An extremely popular occupation in ancient Greece was that of professional athlete. After all, Greece was the place where the Olympic Games started so it’s no wonder that many young men focused on physical training. However, all these sweaty men needed someone to clean themselves up and we’re not talking about someone to give you a sponge bath. Back in ancient times the way to clean up was by pouring oil on your body and scraping yourself clean. At the end of it all, you ended up with a gross mess of dirt, dead skin and oily mush. Sounds awesome doesn’t it? Well if you were a Gymnasiarch it was your job to deal with that. Interesting enough, because athletes were in such high regard even this position was seen as very important and reserved for nobility. However, you did get the great bonus of carrying around a large stick and hitting young athletes over the head when they didn’t perform well enough. Cleaning yourself was different back in the day. 4. Urinatores Despite what you’d think after reading this job title, urinatores were not really dealing with urine at all (for the urine related jobs look at the end of the list). The word “urinator” is Latin for diver, which means that urinatores were divers who had two different, but equally important tasks. On one hand they were the first amphibious unit used by the Roman army whenever it was necessary to send underwater soldiers to sabotage ships. On the other hand, when there wasn’t a maritime war going on, urinatores dealt with underwater scavenging. This was a profi[...]

The story of gamers is the modern equivalent of the Ugly Duckling tale. Long ago they were an outcast bunch, looked down upon by most of society, until something changed and gaming became more available to the general public. Now everyone, from your postman to your grandparents, plays video games. The geek culture has truly taken over, and with it video games reached out into the world and influenced every area of normal life. Things like… 6. Theme Parks The Nintendo Amusement Park is a “planned but still not completed” New York project meant to bring all your favorite NES titles to life and let you experience them first hand. The park’s three promises about their possible attractions are: nothing with be digital, nothing will be projected and nothing will be virtual. The attractions are supposed to be real life obstacle courses where, for example, you get to run around as Mario and jump on Goombas using a professional stunt harness. The project failed to find sufficient funding to progress beyond the prototype Super Mario course, but if you have money to waste, the Mario Experience is opened to the public after initial reservations. 5. Off-Broadway Plays Back in the late 80s / early 90s Adventure video games were all the rage. Everyone was internet relay chatting about combining items, solving riddles and having miles of fun until the genre mysteriously died out. Many classic adventure titles have been all but forgotten, almost all of which had the word “Quest” in them for some reason. But, in a way, they lived on in the memories of their fans. Today, these fans recreate their childhood nostalgia in Off-Broadway Play form. “Adventure Quest” is the name of a Brooklyn play directed by Adam Swiderski who, together with a large portion of the cast, is himself a fan of the Adventure genre. The play wants to mimic all the familiar experiences of those classic games, by for example having a character that can only do things by giving clear verbal commands. This is an obvious reference to the old text based RPGs where each action required a specific command, like “Go North”, “Stab Monster”, etc. Unfortunately “Win Game” never did the trick. “Adventure Quest” also features a few cameos from classic Adventure games’ items and characters, and there is a lot of breaking of the fourth wall. Swiderski wanted to bring video games to the theater for a long time and even penned a screenplay for the immensely popular “Grim Fandango”, considered one of the finest Adventure games ever made. Maybe someday he will get to direct it, giving people more reasons to go to the theater besides than that time Harry Potter got naked on stage with that horse. 4. Museums As a whole, video gaming doesn’t really have a history per se. It’s been, what, 38 years since Pong was released? That’s not that old, but nonetheless a video game museum has been opened. The National Center for the History of Electronic Games in Rochester, New York, is part of the Strong National Museum of Play, which itself focuses on toys and games. The video game museum allegedly offers 15,000 objects that span every aspect of gaming; from hardware, to games, advertising and even vintage instruction manuals. Inside the museum you get to see all the consoles you never knew existed, because even in the 80s there was more to video games than just Atari and Commodore. Other sections are supposedly dedicated to other areas of gaming, including developers, gamers and even controversies. Why yes, video games did have their less-stellar moments, like “Custer’s Revenge” where you could actually take the role of famed general Custer and graphically violate a Native American woman. No, that is not a joke. This game exists and you can probably see it exhibited in the museum.

According to that country song – we think it’s called something like “Every Country Song You’ve Ever Heard Accidently (Because You Don’t Really Listen to Country – Honest!)” – everything is better in the country. The beer is colder, the truck tires are bigger, heck even the livestock is more attractive. So you city pansies have movies, theater, and muggings to look forward to in order to relieve the tedium of your every day life? Check out why the “country is better” moniker is every bit as applicable when it comes to entertainment options – and by “better,” we also mean “more likely to end in carnage and death.” 1. Punkin’ Chunkin’ Is anyone else terrified by the sheer number of school buses in this picture? What it is: For those lost, uninitiated souls, “punkin’ chunkin‘” is roughly translated as “hurling innocent gourds across state lines at velocities approaching the speed of sound to show those other bumpkins what’s what.” Why it’s awesome: Seriously, we’re talking about hurling the hell out of these things. You hear about it and think, “aw, that’s cute, they’re using a homemade contraption to launch pumpkins at each other. Sounds like something out of a light-hearted TV movie made to celebrate Thanksgiving!” If so, you are in for a low income wakeup call, unless you watch the kind of TV movies in which things end in blood and death (something on Lifetime, perhaps?) Punkin’ chunkers throw pumpkins using slingshots, catapults, trebuchets, pneumatics, and any combination of the above. You have to clear a swathe on all sides of the chunker just to lessen the chance of serious injury or death to the audience. And, for the most part, the constructors and operators of these terrifying machines aren’t physicists and engineers. These are people who are almost as interested in seeing which chunker breaks the most (and in the process turning awesome amounts of potential energy into uncontrolled kinetic energy) as in seeing whether they can throw the pumpkins any real distance. And yes, these reasons all fit into the “why it’s awesome category.” Why it could end in disaster: Of course, what’s awesome is often dangerous, and so pretty much everything from the last paragraph goes here. You might be surprised to find out that people can come up with some amazingly damaging equipment with just compressed gases and a few pieces of wood, without even involving fire. See? Awesome and dangerous (and completely unrelated). Also, as with the rest of these activities, adding alcohol just increases the danger potential exponentially. And don’t think for a moment that alcohol won’t be added. Participants in many rural types of entertainment (not all, we don’t want to hit every generalized stereotype here) consider alcohol to be just an important a food group as red meat and mayonnaise. 2. Demolition Derby I'd like some more cars on my car, if you get a chance, thanks! What it is: Demolition derby is basically like bumper cars, but with real cars instead of those electric pieces of crud that invariably end up getting stuck ramming repeatedly into a wall as you get owned by five year olds who somehow know how to operate the stupid things… and yes, if you are sensing bitterness here, you would be correct. Why it’s awesome: Chances are, if you have any interest in motorsports whatsoever, you know why most people watch them – in the hopes that they’ll get to see a spectacular crash. Now, most people might never admit to this, but why else would you stare at cars moving quickly around a course for hours and hours? If you take out all that boring driving in circles and replace it with the juicy good bits, it will probably become the best thing ever. It’s like replacing the tas[...]

In many parts of the world, beauty contests are a really common affair, so much so that it’s become difficult to distinguish one pretty lady in a sash and shiny gown from another. However, that’s not the case with the following contests, which are unique for their premise, execution or even their definition of beauty. Maybe these contests are a refreshing twist on an old formula. Or maybe they’re simply weird. 1. Miss Artificial Beauty Some people find beauty pageants to be shallow and demeaning to women. They believe that these contests only warp society’s view of what a woman is or should be, and do more harm than good. Chances are those people probably wouldn’t care for Miss Artificial Beauty. The idea was born in 2004 when a contestant in a Chinese beauty pageant was disqualified because she had undergone several cosmetic surgeries. Rather than take this as a lesson in the true meaning of what it means to be beautiful, she attempted to sue the pageant organizers, only to have her case thrown out in court. After hearing about this plight, a kind hearted soul realized the country’s growing fixation with plastic surgery was ripe for exploitation (Chinese men and women spend over two-billion dollars annually) and organized the first pageant where plastic surgery was a requirement. Mao would be proud if he weren’t a presumably beautiful corpse. Totally what he had in mind. Contestants were required to provide documentation of the procedures they had undergone. Contestants competed in several categories including best body, biggest change and best personality. The category of Best Media Image was awarded to a sixty-two year old woman and a transsexual. The winner of Miss Plastic Surgery, a woman named Feng Qian, netted six-thousand dollars worth of prizes… probably less than a third of what she spent to qualify. 2. Miss Sister 2008 According to those video tapes behind the beaded curtain at your local video store, nuns are practically sexual deviants waiting for the first chance to shed their clothes to show you the love of Christ (wink, wink). Of course, anyone who’s spent five minutes in the real world can tell you that notion isn’t true. In fact, popular culture tends to present nuns as, well, uneasy on the eyes. Cover your heart! Father Antonio Rungi of Italy hoped to change the perception of nuns with a pageant of his own design. Originally planned to run on his blog, the Miss Sister 2008 competition would pit nuns against one another to determine who had the most inner beauty, gauging attributes such as social awareness, charity, spirituality and other similarly humdrum categories. Once posted on the blog, these profiles would be voted on by the nun-enthused public which totally exists somewhere, we guess. From the get-go, Father Rungi wanted to ensure the focus of the pageant wasn’t physical. Despite this, some people still took offense at the idea. Rungi fielded calls of criticism from local priests, bishops and even the Association of Catholic Teachers to which Rungi belonged. Ultimately the pageant was cancelled and the world must still wander in the darkness of not knowing which nun is indeed the most beautiful. 3. Miss Jumbo Queen Most beauty pageants focus on fitness as a means to gauge beauty. Thailand decided to take it in another direction with the Miss Jumbo Queen competition, which is exactly what it sounds like: a quest to find the most beautiful large women in the country. If you’re thinking this is at all progressive, just wait. The pageant was introduced to the world in 1997 as an addition to the Samphran Elephant Ground and Zoo’s Jumbo Banquet. Before the inclusion of the pageant the banquet’s main feature was a feast for the zoo’s elephants comprised of tons of fruit and veggies. Naturally, the only possible follow up to this was a beauty pageant for people who avoid those things. Hey there, good lookin’. Miss Jumbo Queen is crowned based on her ability to exhibit the characteristics of an eleph[...]

Whether you’re an atheist or a believer, you’ll probably agree that many religions (like everyone elses) have a creepy side. There’s the unintentionally scary church artwork, terrifying elderly Sunday school teachers, and the wide range of truly weird funeral customs. But no matter how bizarre or frightening your local place of worship, here are some religious sites around the globe that will make it look like Disneyland by comparison. 5. The Skull Cathedral, Ortranto, Italy What do you do when you have a bunch of beheaded martyr’s corpses that just would have been sitting around anyway? You build them into a church. Wow! Look at those plants! In 1480, Ottoman troops attacked and conquered the fine seaside city of Ortranto. The conquerors took eight hundred of the inhabitants out to a hill and told them to convert to Islam. They refused, and were beheaded. The hill became known as the Hill of Martyrs, and the remains of the pious citizens who wouldn’t give up their Catholic faith were, uh, built into a display behind the altar of a church. We guess that’s just how they did things back then. Nothing says God’s love like a baby. And… skulls. We’re all fine with honoring the people that died for their religion this way. But really, what kind of usable church would this be? You’d be sitting there, listening to the priest give his homily and announce this week’s parish schedule, and all you would be doing is glancing over at the piles upon piles of skeletons, hoping they don’t come back to life and go all Jason and the Argonauts on you. 4. Demon Remains, Kanazawa, Japan On a whole, Catholic countries like Italy are good at dominating the ‘creepy religion’ market, but if there’s one region that definitely gives them a run for their money, it’s Japan. As any fan of J-horror knows, the Japanese are really good at making things eerie. Take, for example, the ‘monster mummies’ found in various Buddhist temples in Japan: Who you gonna call? These ‘mummified demons’ are almost certainly all fakes, usually being made from the mummified remains of several other creatures. Still, it doesn’t stop them being creepy as all hell. The baby in Eraserhead never got his growth spurt. You might ask what exactly the corpses of demons are doing inside religious temples in Japan. Isn’t that a bit like a church displaying Satan’s pitchfork or his jacket or something? Well, demons (oni) in Japanese religion aren’t always that evil, just mischievous. The oni above, a kappa, could certainly cause trouble, often killing horses and kidnapping children. But he could also be befriended and even tricked into serving you for all eternity. Maybe that’s what happened to the poor mummified dude above. These demon corpses can be found all over Japan, and even in some foreign museums. But this guy, a ‘three-faced demon’ who we think is the creepiest… I’m counting one and a half faces. Two tops. …can be found at Zengyouji Temple, in Kanazawa. Next time you’re in the area, ask for directions to the mummified-three-faced-demon temple. Hopefully there’s only one of them in town, but this being Japan and all, you can’t be sure. 3. Self-Mummified Monks, Yamagata, Japan These mummies are also found in Tibet, but the real creepiness is once again found in Japan, which as a nation just seems to be good at this kind of thing. The grand dragon of your nightmares. What makes Japan’s mummies extra creepy is that they weren’t just mummified; they actually mummified themselves. First they started themselves on a near-starvation diet, presumably so they’d get used to looking like a mummy. Then they slowly poisoned themselves by drinking a special type of tea. Finally they were put inside of a box or room, where they rang a bell every day to prove they were still alive. If they didn’t ring the bell, their tomb was sealed. I’d kill myself for a cup of coffee! Ah! I kid! Mummy humor. Not everyone who did this actually became a mummy, but the ones who did were venerated and di[...]

“Behind every great fortune there is a great crime” – attributed to Honoré de Balzac America has long been a storied place of opportunity, where the poor and downtrodden could flip off the monarchs or dictators of their homeland and get a new start on their lives. Multitudes have come and prospered, and a small number created great fortunes. Some made so much that they ran out of space in the garage for another car and decided, what the heck, why not give some money away. As easily as a dog marking the trees in the neighborhood, philanthropists could attach their names to universities, foundations and charities. But like the rest of society, not every one of these philanthropists were honest and hardworking. Several made their money by cheating people, abusing workers, destroying those in their path and working with criminals and dictators. So next time you watch Sesame Street or PBS with your kids, remember that it’s brought to you, in part, by the crimes against society and humanity (though it does keep the pledge drive to a minimum). 1. William Randolph Hearst Business: Newspaper Publishing Foundation/Value: The Hearst Foundations – $313.5 Million William Randolph Hearst grew up in a moderately affluent family that made its money from gold and oil. After being expelled from Harvard for sending his professor chamber pots in the mail, Hearst’s father gave him what any spoiled brat deserved: his own business. Hearst was given control of the San Francisco Examiner and proceeded to spend $1 million a year to trick it out. He turned from normal news to stories about crime, tragic deaths and sensational stories, usually in the form of tacky, pedestrian numbered lists. His peddling of dumb news paid off and in 1895, looking for a new challenge, decided to challenge Joseph Pulitzer, the owner of the New York World. He bought the New York Morning Herald and staffed it by buying out Pulitzer’s entire Sunday edition staff. From there a press war for circulation started that would bring about some of the most sensational and low forms of journalism, provoke a war in Cuba and give Rupert Murdoch a model to build Fox News after. Apparently the Amish were a lot more ruthless back then. Why He’s Unethical: The race for circulation went beyond simply reporting the most graphic news of the day. In order to best his competitors Hearst started to create the news. When tensions ran high between Cuba and Spain in 1898 over Cuba’s fight for independence, the United States sent the USS Maine to protect American interests. On February 15, 1898 the Maine sank after an explosion, killing 266 men on board. While the cause was unknown, it was blamed on a mine set by the Spanish. Before a full inquiry could even be made, Hearst was readying his presses to report for a war. Hearst sent reporter Richard Harding Davis and Artist Frederick Remington to document atrocities. When they found no war going on, he telegrammed: “You supply the pictures, I’ll supply the war”. The war would result in 2,466 American casualties and the introduction of the Platt Amendment , giving the United State free reign to interfere in Cuba’s national affairs. Anger at US tampering led to resentment that came to a head with Fidel Castro’s communist revolution. The war also gave the United States control of the Philippines, resulting in the uprising of the locals Filipinos, starting the Philippine War costing 4,196 American lives. Hearst was the model to the titular character in Citizen Kane, often voted the best film of all time. Hearst was angered by the negative portrayal and the famous line “Rosebud”, the name he gave to his mistress’ clitoris. He used his newspapers to attack the film and an associate at MGM offered to buy the film from $1 million and destroy it. Hearst managed to destroy Welles career, but Citizen Kane would go on as the film that defined public perception of Hearst. 2. Andrew Carnegie Business: Steel Foundation: Carnegie Corporation [...]

Stereotypes hurt. Some are negative: insinuating certain groups can’t drive well, are inherently lazy, all look the same or pronounce “about” incorrectly. Some can be positive: claiming everyone from a certain group is good with money, are superior athletes, are good at math or are extremely polite. All of them are hurtful, and if you went through that list trying to match each example to an ethnic group, you’re a bad person. Our lies don’t just extend to our own species though. We slander our way through most of the plant and animal kingdom. We even adopt some of their names to insult others (weasel, rat, William Dafoe). However, few animals have had more unjust rumors spread about them than the majestic elephant. With the international day of tolerance less than seven months away, it’s time to set the record straight about our long nosed friends. 1. Elephants Are Afraid of Mice Be cool man, be cool! Just take my wallet and go! Starting off with a classic. The idea that the mighty elephant, the largest present day land-dwelling animal could be frightened by a tiny mouse speaks to us. If something that big could be afraid of something that small, are you really such a girlie-girl for wetting yourself when you see a spider? The only thing better would be if we could get footage of a blue whale getting scared by an anchovy, and we have our best men working on that around the clock. This is one that’s been around for a while, most of us hearing about it from the movie Dumbo or from old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Some attribute it to accounts from circus workers who supposedly witnessed their plus-sized performers being terrified first hand. Some unscientific studies from sources like MythBusters have also contributed to the idea that they’re all giant scaredy-phants. However, if you talk to a scientist, zookeeper, or one of the people from the next section of this article, you get a very different picture. Elephants are known to be bold, intelligent and occasionally merciless killers. They live in the same places as lions and tigers and know how to handle them. So is there nothing that scares them? As it turns out, yes there is, and no, it’s not mice. You are in for a world of hurt, boy. Elephants don’t like what they can’t see, which turns out to be a lot of things. Though they have good hearing and an exceptional sense of smell, their eyesight is pretty shoddy. An observable threat can be addressed, but unidentified movement, sounds and smells, especially ones close by, is a real turn off for them. One of the boilerplate pieces of advice you’ll get from animal experts is to never make sudden movements. So scurrying in a nearby brush might startle an elephant, whether it’s a mouse, a predator, or some stupid tourist with a zoom lens. And if you really did scare an elephant, you’re probably not going to end up laughing as it runs away, trunk between its legs. Elephants mean business, as some people already know. 2. Elephants Are Angry Drunks Elephant Beer: A Taste You’ll Trample For! You’d think with people talking smack about their phobias, elephants would have earned the right to a drink here or there. Unfortunately, when the booze kicks in there’s a lot of stampeding, devastation and death. Family reunions aside, stories of murderous, drunken elephants have been reported for years, including two attacks in the Indian province of Assam. While breaking into human farms for food, as they sometimes do, the behemoths stumbled onto casks of homemade rice beer and proceeded to get gong-showed. The first attack killed 4 and injured 6, while the second killed six and injured several others. So are elephants gentle giants who can’t hold their sauce? Are they simply lacking some kind of Elepholics Anonymous? Actually, no. These attacks, which occurred years apart, account for only a fraction of the total elephant related deaths. In fact, as many as 500 people die each year from encounters with elephants. Artist’s rendition of India[...]

There are thousands of UFO, Big Foot or other cryptozoological sightings recorded around the world every year, and most of them can easily be proven as fakes or the ramblings of some mad-man. Yet, among these absurdities there are some rare events which simply have no explanation, and leave even skeptics puzzled. Here are six of the most peculiar mysteries that no one can find a good explanation for. 1. Valentich disappearance I want to believe… that this isn’t just a pie tin on a string. Frederick Valentich was an experienced pilot, with over 150 hours of air time. He was flying a Cessna 182L light aircraft on a perfectly clear day with no wind, perfect visibility and no technical problems, when suddenly he disappeared without a trace. The case sounds like an urban legend about the Bermuda Triangle; however this is a well documented disappearance that left authorities puzzled. A search and rescue mission was sent out only minutes after the plane disappeared from radar, however there was no trace of the plane. All Cessena aircrafts are meant to stay afloat for up to an hour after crashing in water, but in this case the plane was simply nowhere to be found. Valentich did have a life vest inside the cockpit, so why he didn’t attempt the highly complex technique known as “getting out of the plane” is unknown. Further, why the radio beacon that he had on board didn’t activate is another mystery. Perhaps the strangest detail of the disappearance is that only minutes before he crashed, Valentich reported that he was staring down an UFO. His last, vaguely unsettling message was: “It’s not an aircraft.” This strange detail has lead to two conclusions. Some figure Valentich suffered some sort of non-hilarious stroke and started seeing things, in which case we still don’t know why his plane couldn’t be found. Other’s lean towards the possibility that Valentich was indeed kidnapped by little green men. 2. Bimini Road Not an extreme closeup of an old waffle. This road, sometimes also called the Bimini Wall, is an underwater structure that stretches for half a mile near Bimini Island in the Bahamas. The whole structure is formed of rectangular limestone blocks which look very much like an ancient road or a wall. The official explanation for the strange structure is that it was caused over the years by concentrations of shells and sand. In other words, the whole thing could potentially be created over millions of years by a natural occurring phenomenon of hard shells gathering in straight angles. However, this doesn’t explain why the formation is completely unique to one specific spot in the entire whole world. It also doesn’t explain why it seems like it has multiple layers. Atlantis was known for it’s mediocre craftsmanship. Furthermore, several anthropologists and oceanographers believe that the road might have been created by an ancient civilization, some going as far as suggesting this might be the fabled Atlantis. Probably a stretch, but we still have to wonder how these underwater roads were created. 3. Mary Celeste Thankfully, there is no Gordon Lightfoot song about this. The Mary Celeste was launched in 1860 out of Nova Scotia and was approximately 103 feet from bow to stern (sailor talk!). What is interesting about the ship is that it seems to have been cursed right out of the shipyard. It had several accidents during construction and on board, and was sold dozens of times within the first ten years. Eventually, the ship, which was originally named “Amazon” ended up under an American captain who renamed it as “Mary Celeste.” The ship departed New York on November 7th, 1872 with a crew of seven as well as the captain’s family. None of the people on board were ever seen again. A shipwreck was hardly a strange turn of events. But when we say “nobody was seen again”, that doesn’t include the ship. It’s considered one of the most mysterious maritime disappearances of all time because all the crew and the family mem[...]