Muhammad Hosni Mubarak was the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt for 30 years. He held office from 1981, until he was forced to resign by mass protests on February 11, 2011. Mubarak was trained as a pilot, and rose in the ranks of Egypt’s air force during the 1960s and ’70s. President Anwar Sadat named Mubarak to be his vice president in 1975, and in 1978 Mubarak became the vice chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP), the governing political party in Egypt. When Anwar Sadat was assassinated on October 14, 1981, Mubarak succeeded him to become Chairman of the NDP, as well.

Mubarak quickly became an old-style strongman, with full control of the government. Running uncontested, Mubarak won the Presidency in national referenda in 1987, 1993 and 1999; and, after a change in laws, he won running against a token opponent in 2005. He focused on economic growth and inched toward political reform, but any economic gains in the 1990s were offset by criticisms that Egypt was a near-dictatorship; indeed, Mubarak never lifted the state of emergency imposed after Sadat’s assassination.

In February 2005, Mubarak announced plans for a September 2005 election, that would be Egypt’s first-ever multi-candidate contest for the presidency. On September 7, 2005, he handily won his fifth consecutive term in those elections, but the victory was clouded by low voter turnout, reports of fraud and the imprisonment of Mubarak’s political rival, Ayman Nour. The next years were dominated by two issues: calls for political reform and Mubarak’s love/hate relationship with the United States, a steady provider of military aid.

Mubarak was rebuked for his lack of commitment to democracy by American leaders, including President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but he remained an important U.S. ally in the region, especially during the U.S. war in Iraq. Egyptians took to the streets in January 2011, to protest his rule; Mubarak at first shuffled his cabinet, then said he would step down in September. He finally was forced to resign on February 11, 2011.

Crown Prince Abdullah has been the acting leader of Saudi Arabia since his half-brother, King Fahd, suffered a stroke, in 1995. Saudi Arabia is one of the only nations that holds no elections whatsoever. The royal family has promised municipal elections soon, but it has not announced whether women will be allowed to vote. In fact, it is forbidden for unrelated Saudis of the opposite sex to appear in public together, even inside a taxi. Women are not allowed to testify on their own behalf in divorce proceedings. Also, in all court cases, the testimony of a man is equal to that of two women.

According to the U.S. State Department, Saudi Arabia continues to engage in arbitrary arrest and torture. During a human rights conference in 1995, Saudi authorities arrested nonviolent protesters who were calling for freedom of expression. Some were later flogged, the usual punishment for alleged political and religious offenses.

In a very unusual show of power, the religious leaders forbade children from playing with Barbie dolls, which they dubbed “Jewish dolls” that are “symbols of decadence of the perverted West.”

Talat Pasha was the key architect of the Armenian genocide, one of the largest genocides in modern history. More than 1 million people were massacred over a span of two years. A member of the Young Turks, Talat rose up and became one of three Pashas who ruled the Ottoman government from 1913, until the end of the disastrous First World War. Many Muslim Turks saw the rise in nationalism of the Christian Armenians as a threat to the existence of the Ottoman state. In previous years, programs had been installed against Armenians where possibly hundreds of thousands died. Thirty thousand died in the Adana massacre of 1909. Once they entered World War One, the Ottoman’s endeavor ended in total failure.

Russian and Armenian forces set up an Armenian mini-state in 1915, and thus Talat Pasha sought to punish them. Security forces rounded up 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders in Istanbul in 1915, and eventually executed them. After passing a deportation law, Pasha ordered deportations and executions to be carried out against all of the Armenian people. During the deportations conditions were deplorable and men were routinely separated from the rest and executed. Many prisoners were tortured or the victims of gruesome medical experiments, more died of hunger and thirst. In some instances, victims would be crucified in imitation of Jesus, as the perpetrators would say “Now let your Christ come help you!” Others would have red-hot irons and pincers applied to their flesh. Out of a population of 2. 5 million, between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians perished during this period. After the Ottoman collapse, Talat Pasha fled to Berlin and was subsequently murdered there, in 1921. His assassin was an Armenian genocide survivor.

Under his leadership, Syria underwent a degree of relaxation, with hundreds of political prisoners released and a few tentative steps towards easing media restrictions. But the pace of change has slowed — if not reversed — and President Assad has made it clear that his priority is economic rather than political reform. It has been under fire for its continued presence in Lebanon and for its alleged support for Palestinian militants and insurgents in Iraq.

Tensions escalated after the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in Beirut. Many critics blamed Syria for his death. The uneasy relationship between the United States and Syria has led many to believe that Syria could be the current US presidential administration’s next target. In the 2011 Middle East unrest, 358,548 protesters were killed.

A dictator known as much for sponsoring international terrorism as he is for his impeccable fashion sense, Libya’s self-proclaimed “Guide of the Revolution” took power in a September 1969 military coup that deposed King Idriss. One of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s first acts as dictator was to rework the calendar and rename all of the months. He also published The Green Book.

President Reagan personally appraised Muammar Qaddafi: “I find he’s not only a barbarian, but he’s flaky. [...] I just think that the man is a zealot.” The primary issue was Qaddafi’s longstanding support of international terrorism. He played host to both Abu Nidal and to the infamous assassin Carlos the Jackal. In all likelihood, Qaddafi ordered the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. During the recent Middle East unrest, between 2,500 and 8,000 protesters were killed.

Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden was also indicted over the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. He was wanted by numerous countries for his ties to terrorist activities, and many attempts were made to capture him. On April 29, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the CIA to conduct a raid, dubbed “Operation Neptune Spear”. In the late evening of May 1, 2011, (EDT), the president announced that bin Laden had been killed in the operation. The entire raid, including intelligence sweeps of the compound, was completed in less than 40 minutes. His body was taken and biometric facial recognition tests were performed. Subsequent genetic testing supported the preliminary identification. On May 6, 2011, al-Qaeda confirmed that bin Laden was dead. They also vowed that they would continue attacking the U.S. and its allies.

Saddam, which means “he who confronts,” was born in a village called Al-Auja, outside of Tikrit in northern Iraq. At around the time of his birth, his father disappeared from his life. Some accounts say that his father was killed; other sources say that he abandoned his family. Saddam’s mother soon remarried a man who was illiterate, immoral and brutal. Saddam hated living with his stepfather, and as soon as his uncle Khairullah Tulfah (his mother’s brother) was released from prison, in 1947, Saddam insisted that he go and live with him. Saddam didn’t start primary school until he moved in with his uncle at age 10. At age 18, Saddam graduated from primary school and applied to military school. Joining the military had been Saddam’s dream, and when he wasn’t able to pass the entrance exam, he was devastated. Though Saddam was never in the military, later in his life, he frequently wore military-style outfits.

Saddam moved to Baghdad for high school. He found school boring and enjoyed politics more. Saddam’s uncle, an ardent Arab nationalist, introduced him to the world of politics. Iraq, which had been a British colony from the end of World War I until 1932, was bubbling with internal power struggles. One of the groups vying for power was the Baath Party, and Saddam’s uncle was a member. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the Baath Party. He started out as a low-ranking member of the Party, and was responsible for leading his schoolmates during riots. However, in 1959, he was chosen to be a member of an assassination squad. On October 7, 1959, Saddam and others attempted, but failed, to assassinate the prime minister. Wanted by the Iraqi government, Saddam was forced to flee.

He lived in exile in Syria for three months, and then moved to Egypt, where he lived for three years. In 1963, the Baath Party successfully overthrew the government and took power, which allowed Saddam to return to Iraq from exile. While home, he married his cousin, Sajida Tulfah. However, the Baath Party was overthrown after only nine months in power and Saddam was arrested in 1964, after another coup attempt. He spent 18 months in prison, where he was tortured, before he escaped, in July 1966. During the next two years, Saddam became an important leader within the Baath Party.

In July 1968, when the Baath Party again gained power, Saddam became vice-president. Over the next decade, Saddam grew increasingly powerful. On July 16, 1979, the president of Iraq resigned and Saddam officially took his place. Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with a brutal hand. He used fear and terror to remain in power. From 1980 to 1988, Saddam led Iraq in a war against Iran, which ended in a stalemate. Also during the 1980s, Saddam used chemical weapons against Kurds within Iraq, including gassing the Kurdish town of Halabja. This action killed 5,000 people, in March 1988. In 1990, Saddam ordered Iraqi troops to invade the country of Kuwait. In response, the United States defended Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, and on March 19, 2003, the United States attacked Iraq. It was during the fighting that Saddam fled Baghdad. On December 13, 2003, U. S. forces found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in al-Dwar, near Tikrit. After a trial, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for his crimes, and on December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging.

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (born 1895 or 1897; died July 4, 1974) was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine. As early as 1920, he was active in opposing the British in order to secure the independence of Palestine as an Arab state, and led violent riots opposing the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. From 1921 to 1948, al-Husayni was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, using the position to continue his promotion of Palestinian nationalism. As a passionate antisemite, al-Husayni encouraged his followers to “kill the Jews wherever you find them”. During World War II, he collaborated with the Nazis and, in 1941, met the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in Germany. He asked Hitler to back Arab independence, and requested that Nazi Germany oppose the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home as part of the Pan-Arab struggle. According to an American report, al-Husayni energetically recruited Muslims for the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Party’s elite military command. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and subsequent Palestinian exodus, his claims to leadership became discredited and he was eventually sidelined by the Palestine Liberation Organization, losing most of his remaining political influence. He died in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1974.

Idi Amin Dada Oumee (born in 1924, in Uganda) was the military officer and president (1971-79) of Uganda. Amin also took tribalism, a long-standing problem in Uganda, to its extreme by, allegedly, ordering the persecution of Acholi, Lango and other tribes. Reports indicate the torture and murder of 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans during Amin’s presidency. In 1972, Amin began to expel Asians from Uganda.

He said God had directed him to do this (actually, he had been angered by the refusal of one of the country’s most prominent Asian families, the Madhvanis, to hand over their prettiest daughter as his fifth wife). Over the years, Ugandans would disappear in the thousands, their mutilated bodies washing up on the shores of Lake Victoria. Amin would boast of being a reluctant cannibal— he said human flesh was too salty. He once ordered the decapitation of political prisoners to be broadcast on TV, specifying that the victims “must wear white to make it easy to see the blood.” One of Amin’s guards, Abraham Sule, said “[Amin] put his bayonet in the pot containing human blood and licked the stuff as it ran down the bayonet. Amin told us ‘When you lick the blood of your victim, you will not see nightmares.’ He then did it.”

Ayatollah Khomeini was the religious leader of Iran, from 1979 to 1989. In that time, he implemented Sharia Law (Islamic religious law) with the Islamic dress code for both men and women enforced by Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and other Islamic groups. Opposition to the religious rule of the clergy, or Islam in general, was often met with harsh punishments. In a talk at the Fayzieah School in Qom, on August 30, 1979, Khomeini said:

“Those who are trying to bring corruption and destruction to our country in the name of democracy will be oppressed. They are worse than Bani-Ghorizeh Jews, and they must be hanged. We will oppress them by God’s order and God’s call to prayer.”

Following the People’s Mujahedin of Iran operation Forough-e Javidan against the Islamic Republic, Khomeini issued an order to judicial officials to judge every Iranian political prisoner and kill those who would not repent anti-regime activities. Many say that thousands were swiftly put to death inside the prisons. The suppressed memoirs of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri reportedly detail the execution of 30,000 political activists. After 11 days in the hospital for an operation to stop internal bleeding, Khomeini died of cancer on Saturday June 4, 1989, at the age of 86.

This Seattle, Washington, music and arts festival is another festival chock full of niche acts, some slightly more known than others, while carrying on its shoulders show-making headliners: last year saw Bob Dylan, Weezer, Rise Against, Courtney Love’s Hole (yuck), and the Decemberists, as the proverbial cream of the crop (yes, Bob Dylan… and Hole) to give an idea for how mixed, maybe even ambivalently so, the line-up can be. There isn’t really the kind of consistency that the others secure, but for a good sampling of whatever-the-hell, Bumbershoot is a decent outlet for seeing your favorite third-rate acts (though not enough that you should sacrifice all of your festival dollars here). Taking place September 3-5, it really does amount to the dregs of the festival season.

South by Southwest, taking place in Austin Texas, has a Costco mentality: it’s more in the way of quantity than it is quality. And while a few big names stick out, it seems every subordinate tier features a life-threatening mob of bands, almost a small town population’s worth, clamoring for attention. As such, injuries are commonplace. Over 1,300 largely unknown acts were scheduled this year between March 11th and the 20th (and you thought three days was a lot), but the headliners ranged from Duran Duran, Bright Eyes, and Queens of the Stone Age to Wu-Tang Clan and Cee Lo Green. Jack White, who always finds a way to top his own minimalistic tendencies, even stopped by and gave a surprise parking lot performance outside of his portable record store. Also, what’s neat about this particular festival is that it appeals to music as well as film, where a festival of its own exists; Arcade Fire’s Spike Jones directed short was a notable exhibition in that it had a little of both.

No Joke, this festival takes place at the Gorge Amphitheater…in George, Washington. Taking place Memorial Day weekend, this Bigfoot-themed festival is appropriately named: it’s leading acts carry quite the footprint, this year including the likes of Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie (both out of the woods with new albums), Modest Mouse, Wilco, the Decemberists, Bright Eyes, Cold War Kids, Wolf Parade and Deerhunter, amongst a great many others (others that also heavily populate the festival circuit). What’s most relieving is that none of the headliners are rappers or self-interested pop singers, which is what really ups this venue’s indy cred and respectability as a safehouse for all the weary road warriors.

This festival is most frequently associated with Bob Dylan’s decision to go electric (which didn’t go very well at the time). Now it carries on a tradition of prominently displaying the best concurrent examples of popular and indy folk music. Already past its 50th anniversary, essential and fresh voices alike have graced the stage, including Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Johnny Cash, The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, the Avette Brothers and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. This has got to be the mellowest of all the festivals, making up in subtlety what it lacks in overblown performances and high flying histrionics. It takes place July 30 and 31 this year.

This was the genesis for all the rest, at least as far as the festival mentality goes: three days of nothing but ingestion: musical, chemical and spiritual. World peace existed soundly and briefly in a vacuum on a farm, where upon which a full society of hippies embraced in the community of song, dance and “mental expansion.” While decadence ran amok, life and death took place on a muddy field, where everything was natural and nothing else seemed necessary. This was also the place where Hendrix blew minds with an acid soaked rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, Carlos Santana cringed as he played warped solos on a hallucination-manifested snake, and the sunny weather was matched by the shiniest of the decade’s folk, R&B, blues and acid rock acts, including Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, the Band, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Ever since, festivals have been packing bills to the brim and bringing together unseemly genres and people.

It’s an amazing thing when music can be used for reasons other than self-indulgence, like when a group of musicians decide to join forces to raise money for important causes, whether it be poverty in Ethiopia (Live Aid), supporting the agricultural industry from which we derive physical sustenance (Farm Aid), or to help rid the world of global starvation (Live 8). Leave it to the world’s biggest, multi-generational acts and most globally-conscious minds to make it happen, as with U2, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Phil Collins, Tom Petty, Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews. Performing across global venues, to form the most holistic collection plate, musicians proved they have the capacity to not be selfish. Such righteous ideals still find grounding today in myriad forms and charity/benefit concerts, as with Arcade Fire and Radiohead for Haiti, and the various artists who release profit-free singles for natural disasters and other seemingly ubiquitous global afflictions. Proof positive that a single artist with a following can be a million times more thoughtful and influential than a crafty team of record producers (their only true concern is that such time and dedication isn’t being spent on creating or promoting the next thing that will put a million dollars in their pockets).

This is probably the biggest festival on the list, both in terms of bill and popularity. The line-up always seems to resemble the intro credits for a Star Wars movie, or that huge contract Willy Wonka has those ill-fated kids sign with the microscopically-fine print, big names up top in bold print, lesser-knowns tightly squeezed-in below. The reason for this Chicago-based festival’s popularity has mostly to do with its utter eclecticism, and tendency to mesh the most despicably-adored mainstream with high-flying indy titans: for example, last year made room for Lady Gaga and Green Day, as well as Rage Against the Machine, the Strokes, Kings of Leon and Phoenix. While the headliners are seemingly obligated to display the mainstreamers to draw as big a crowd as possible, encouraging an atypical festival audience, there is no slight on indy representation. In fact, everything below the top two lines on the bill are almost exclusively indy, featuring the most appealing samplings possible, regular hits, with the recurring likes of the National, Black Keys, Spoon, the Walkmen, Mumford and Sons, etc. No one can be offended at a line-up like that, especially when you can pick which stage, make your own concert itinerary. This year, it takes place August 5-7.

Another biggie in heavy competition with Lollapalooza, though not really. Festivals really lend themselves into each other, as they simply present the ability for fans to attend the nearest-by one (though the east coast really suffers in this respect). There are some differences, but a lot of the important names are on each. Manchester, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, however, boasts some names this year which Lollapalooza is lacking, like Arcade Fire, the Strokes, Mumford and Sons, Buffalo Springfield (with Steven Stills and Neil Young), Lil’ Wayne, and whatever non-Led Zeppelin band Robert Plant is making music with. Meanwhile Lollapalooza seems to be hogging, amongst others, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, the White Lies and Cee Lo (though given his bomb of a performance at Coachella, it might be for the best). Bonnaroo is the most hippy-friendly, what with all the drug-friendly activities and asides, and is also a comedy-haven in its own rite; so even the musically-apathetic (or at least less-than-die-hard-consumers) can find equal merriment. This year does seem to offer compelling reasons why it makes sense to attend both (being very separate shows), but for all those 90’s-era white rapper-addicts, Eminem will assuredly appear at both. So prepare for vomit on your sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, as you will likely suffer heat stroke all the while at literally the hottest of the summer festival venues. This festival takes place June 9-12.

This festival is an indy safe-haven, and another pit stop for the greatest examples of such. Last year the usual 2nd tiers were in attendance, the ones we love to see every year, regardless if they’re toting a new album or not (the ones who seem to get a little more popular, a little higher on the list, every year they come out). Meanwhile, the Eagles were at the top of the headline, right before Phish, M.I.A., Muse, the Flaming Lips and the Strokes, who were putting their toes in the touring waters again after a half-decade hiatus. Other great reasons to make the pilgrimage to the big state, or else watch the televised coverage on PBS: Temper Trap, the XX, Beach House, Spoon, Vampire Weekend, the National, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Band of Horses, Monsters of Folk, Silversun Pickups, Two Door Cinema Club and a bucket of others. Yes, with a consummate bill like that, last year was a good time to lose your festival virginity, and ACL was the place.

Held in Indio, California, this festival is really a spectacle. With impressive multimedia-equipped sets, grand ornamental structures and stage performances, and 3 stages on which a diverse sampling of musicians of varying popularity levels perform simultaneously, Coachella keeps concert-goers’ sensory receptors consistently satisfied, with hardly a static moment in between doses of perpetual amusement. This year was especially rich with stimuli, what with Arcade Fire’s epic strobe beach-ball light show, Empire of the Sun’s sci-fi-interpretative-dance rave, and avant-garde filmmaker David Lynch adding his twisted touches to Interpol’s live YouTube-streamed performance, the likes of which he gave Duran Duran not long prior. Speaking of Duran Duran, they were there, too. As was Kanye West, whose presence contradicted the indy mentality infinitefold. It’s only (slightly) forgiven for the fact that he had to follow the Strokes who, breaking a 5-year hiatus, cranked out a hyper-tight set, rife with material from their latest album. This festival, kicking of the season in late April, would be one of the more accessible festivals, featuring a contentious three day line-up and plenty of music to dance/tweak out to. Bonus points given to 5 Gum for sponsoring a live webcast which covered the concert from start to finish, with the ability to manually switch between the different stages, for those unable to physically make the trek.

While Mass Effect may just be the latest blockbuster production to hit consoles, there is a specific reason it is included in this list. With many gamers carrying over their previous save from the first Mass Effect, they let their previous choices impact the sequel in ways not seen before. From the start, this is an achievement in writing (specifically in games), rather than continuing a story over starting a new one. You are left to live with the aftermath of the decisions that are made in the first game, in the second. Characters that died don’t return for this round. The narrative aspect of Mass Effect 2 was also highly praised, as it covered every nook and niche that players could find themselves in. Contact with familiar faces from the first game play out like fortuitous reunions between old acquaintances, and with depth like that it walked away with several Game of the Year awards, along with various writing awards and best RPG awards. With Mass Effect 2, writing is becoming ever more prominent in modern gaming.

A platform and puzzle video game developed by independent software developer, Jonathan Blow, Braid was released to the Xbox Live arcade in 2008, greeted with unanimously positive reviews and became the second best-selling Xbox Live Arcade title in 2008, selling 55,000 titles. While critics labeled its one primary shortfall as its short length, this title proved that games could come with stories at flash fiction length. Braid involves several time-based worlds, each of which involve their own mechanic to solve the puzzles. In a game about time, Tim is a man searching for a princess who has been snatched by a supposedly evil monster. The only relationship we know he has with the princess is that he wishes to reconcile something. As you continue through each world, you learn more about the central plot, mostly through text and the ending is left purposely ambiguous. Some have likened the game to Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with the way it interweaves its plot and narrative. Others have said the princess is analogous to the atom bomb. If you ever play Braid, carry this simple creed: “you must look back to go forwards.”

Set in an alternate history during 1960, the game takes place in the underwater city of Rapture, the inner workings of which were inspired by Ayn Rand and Objectivist philosophy and rhetoric. This time around, the game is more focused on setting than anything else. The once ordered civilization in Rapture now has become a dystopian society that you, the player, Jack, has crash landed near, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. As he makes his way to the seabed and into Rapture, you begin to uncover the inklings that led to the downfall of Rapture. The underwater realm is filled with a cast of characters that fit the assumptions one would associate with an underwater city, and a half-dreamt nightmare. Big Daddies resembling old-fashioned diving suits, and splicers seeking ADAM from the Little Sisters, commonly accompany the corridors of Rapture, and as the plot begins to thicken you see how this society corrupts under its rules and morals, you realize what’s been shrugged off is that questions are actually implicit commands.

With the advent of the Writer’s Guild of America accepting and commending outstanding writing in 2007/2008, it came as a surprise to those not in the know that Bioshock or Portal were not among those nominated, and even some that were nominated, such as Dead Head Fred, didn’t seem to offer much credibility that the WGA was accepting of video games as a medium for writing. With the small and dedicated team at Valve that worked on Portal, however, it may have come as no surprise, for you needed to be a member of the WGA to be nominated. Portal was lauded for its story, ensuing meme, gameplay, characterization, and its short format, as it was crowded onto a disc within the Orange Box. Its story is centered around Chell and GLaDOS, a simple protagonist vs. technology in strictest terms of literary conflict theory. But this conflict is not immediately apparent, only seeming blatant after never receiving your cake. The quote that spread like wildfire after Portal’s release: “the cake is a lie,” began to become a meme, meaning you were reaching an empty, unattainable goal. The characterization in Portal is that of sheer brilliance, featuring only two characters: a test subject and a somewhat sentient, passive aggressive AI. GLaDOS is our antagonist here, promising you cake, insulting you, and criticizing your every move while Chell increasingly struggles to make it through the next test chamber. As the credits roll and GLaDOS can be overheard in musical overtones, a thought occurs– you’re still alive.

In a game where you can easily get lost between the subplots and side-stories, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an architectural writing masterpiece. While you may get sidetracked for several days on a sidequest, the main storyline is still at play, laying the groundwork and framework for all your voyages into the environment. Non-playable characters may lie to you, or react to you differently, depending on your race and gender, a subtle, but powerful undertone. Starting off as a lowly prisoner who gets a chance shot at escaping his cell, you begin to tackle the task of closing the gates to Oblivion– no easy feat. Although all of this can be ignored and you, the player, can spend your time exploring the countryside, doing the above-mentioned sidequests, and building your character up, the story is quite driven by the increasing number of Oblivion gates and their dominant presence on the hillsides. Each subplot eventually leads back and keeps you coming back to the main storyline.Though, even when the story is over, the game isn’t finished. There were some jarring dialogue flaws as well as unbalanced leveling by enemies, however, Oblivion won several awards, including Game of the Year and Best RPG from multiple publications.

At the forefront of the defense of games as an art form (prompted in part by Roger Ebert) is Shadow of the Colossus.The game was made by Team Ico, the developers behind none other than Ico. Shadow of the Colossus is a spiritual successor to the aforementioned game, and will be followed by yet another similar spiritual successor in 2012, by the name of The Last Guardian. To make things more interesting, the game only has 16 enemies in total. You start off your journey as Wander, with your horse Agro, appealing to the god Dormin to revive Mono, who you later learn was sacrificed due to a cursed destiny. In this land, desolate and forbidden, you know little background between the characters and their relationships to each other. You are tasked to destroy the sixteen colossi by Dormin. After you fell the first colossus though, it is clear that there is something more sinister at play, as you are pierced by black energy and awaken at the shrine. The game does an excellent job of creating a bond between you and your horse through the use of minimalistic touches, the horse will steer itself away from cliffs and jump when needed, and will even go off and graze on its own when you clamber off. As the game and story advances you learn that Wander is being followed, and you begin to witness one of the best uses of antihero ever. After every colossus killed, Wander becomes more dirty, ragged and clumsy. This results in your questioning of Wander’s motives, and just which side you should be rooting for.

A cult classic, Fahrenheit, or better known in North America as Indigo Prophecy, was a precursor to the much more well-known Heavy Rain, and its cinematic gameplay. But where the game really stands out is its deep, captivating, and oftentimes disturbing story. The tale, which opens prolifically and profoundly with a murder, and is ranked as number ten on Game Informer’s Top Ten Video Game Openings, centers around Lucas Kane and the supernatural forces that he must fight to comprehend why New York City is being targeted by a series of mysterious murders that follow the same pattern: ordinary people becoming possessed and killing absolute strangers in public. Receiving the Best Story and Best Adventure Game award from Gamespot, Fahrenheit is not a game to be passed over in the used section of your local game shop.

Receiving a letter from his wife asking him to come to their special place, James Sunderland becomes drawn to Silent Hill. It is a quiet town they had frequented in the past, before the sickness took her from this life; she’s been dead for three years now. Upon entering Silent Hill, James encounters gruesome monsters and exaggerated versions of humanity, including a girl oblivious to what is happening around her, a man who has killed someone, and a woman who’s a spitting image of his wife, although she is dolled up and does not possess his wife’s subdued behavior. Finding more and more clues that lead to the revelation of the murder of your wife, Silent Hill 2 addresses your problems with analogies and metaphors. Silent Hill isn’t a town, it is your emotional being, and every door and corridor could contain a clue to James’ past, and the further you delve in, the more you must fight the mental blocks that portray him in innocent and culpable lights.

With a surplus of over 40 Game of the Year awards, and also including the accolade of Best Story, Deus Ex comes loaded with great expectations. In this cyberpunk themed tale of a world controlled by conspiracy and on the brink of collapse, a bionic government agent, J.C. Denton, is issued a series of risky covert assignments by his employer, UNATCO. A lot of background information is presented in the game that is purely optional; books, newspapers, e-mails, passwords, and other lines of text that are pertinent to the story and often contain allusions to science-fiction references, such as Tron and Blue Harvest. UNATCO coworkers react to your actions towards your enemies, appraising you or giving you the cold shoulder, and enemies can be hounded for information. Pioneering the FPS RPG formula, Deus Ex frequently finds its way near the top of the greatest games of all time lists.

For those of you following the list order, it is in reverse chronological order, and with that, we come to one of the greats of modern game storytelling: Half-Life. Considered and cited as being revolutionary in terms of the immersive gaming experience, interactive environment and storytelling, Half-Life was released to overwhelmingly positive reviews and, like Deus Ex, frequents greatest games of all time lists. The game has received over 50 Game of the Year awards as a tour de force first-person shooter as well as holding a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as best selling FPS of all-time. Half-life contained artfully scripted in-game sequences and a story that the player became captivated by. Offering a proposition or a battle Gordon Freeman has no chance of winning, an anticlimax after what you’ve survived, it is time to choose…

L.A. Noire is an upcoming detective video game that looks very promising in terms of writing. Set in post-war Los Angeles and directed in a film noir style, the game is said to focus on a series of murders that the player is openly allowed to solve. However, not every source is reliable, or can be trusted; lying, in video games, is evolving.

Honorable Mentions: Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Kingdom Hearts, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Bully, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

This Sony made MMO (massively multiplayer online) was the first of its kind, and really defined how MMO’s are played today. The games user interface is the standard blueprint for every new MMO that comes out: sometimes so similar you can even call it a copy. Regardless, if you loved or hated Everquest, nobody can deny that it was the launching pad for every new MMO that hits the scene.

The RTS (real time strategy) video game genre has been defined by this game. With its very high paced gameplay and a massive online fanbase, its hard to dispute the impact of Starcraft on the gaming industry. In my opinion, with the rise of console gaming, Starcraft is one of those games that really kept PC gaming alive. The game is even televised nationally in Korea. Yes, its that big. With the release of Starcraft II I would imagine the RTS genre will only grow.

Anyone who had a Playstation in the mid-90′s knows about this one. You can even call it the flagship game of the first generation Playstation. Anyone who plays RPG’s (role playing game) has a special appreciation for this game. Between the cutting edge graphics (for its time, of course) and compelling plot / side plot, this game can easily be known as the most famous RPG to date. There is still a huge demand for the game to be remade. The words RPG and Final Fantasy go hand in hand, because of this 7th installment of the franchise. Not to mention, Sepheroth is the most bad-ass villain ever!

Mothers around the world hated this game. Its a sandbox game that allowed you to do, literally, anything. The game really got heated after the release of “San Andreas”, particularly because of the “hot coffee mod” or sex scene shown. The games company had to re release the game without that scene. Regardless, Grand Theft Auto and sandboxes go hand in hand.

Microsoft can really thank this series for the huge success of XBox live. Sure, I mean we have Call of Duty now, but nobody can deny what halo did for the console FPS (first-person shooter). Because of Halo, the use of online console gaming was born with XBox live. I can’t remember a kid who didn’t play xbox live with halo.

Casual, yet so addictive! This game is the first thing to come to mind when you think of a portable game. How many of you kids out there have a mom that does not play games, but will play tetris? Need I say more?

Anyone who has Facebook either plays this game, or knows 5 people who do. If you are like me, your Facebook notifications are constantly full of annoying requests from those people that are addicted to the game.

This one is a no brainer. The mix between RPG, hack and slash, and action/adventure made this game a big hit from its first day of release. Nintendo struck gold with this one, and it is still a major series of the Nintendo platforms today. Not to mention, Link make an appearance in so many other games. That is how loved he really is.

It”s hard to not put this game as number 1. With over 10 million players currently, and growing, it’s easy to see how this game impacted gaming. People who don’t play games at all play WOW. The mix between satisfying content and the social network involved in this game truly puts it in its own category. There have even been reports of suicides concerning this game.

Any disputes here? This game from Nintendo started gaming. I know there was the atari and other systems prior to, but Mario made all games what they are today. With a new Mario releasing every year, its undeniable what this Italian plumber did for gamers all around the world.

Celts had a large reputation as head hunters, and were famous for putting victim’s heads on their chariots, and in front of their homes. Many Celts fought completely naked (much to the surprise of their enemies) and are famous for their iron long sword: “They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold[.]“

The Maori were the first settlers of New Zealand – arriving many centuries before Europeans. Their culture dates back to the early modern era. They had been known to practice cannibalism during warfare. In October, 1809, a European convict ship was attacked by a large group of Maori warriors, in revenge for the mistreatment of a chief’s son. The Maori killed most of the 66 people on board, and carried dead and alive victims off the boat and back to shore to be eaten. A few lucky survivors, who were able to find a hiding spot inside the mast of the boat, were horrified as they watched the Maori devour their shipmates through the night and in to the next morning.

The Mongols were considered barbarians and savages. They dominated Europe and Asia and were most famous for riding on horseback, lead by one of the greatest military commanders in history, Genghis Khan. They were highly disciplined and masters with using the bow and arrow on horseback. They used a composite bow that could rip through armor, and were also pretty good with lances and scimitars. They were masters of psychological warfare and intimidation, and built the second largest empire ever, smaller only than the British Empire (But nothing’s scary about tea and crumpets). It all started when Temujin (who was later known as Genghis Khan), vowed in his youth to bring the world to his feet. He almost did. Then he set his sights on China, and the rest is history. From Vietnam to Hungary, the Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous empire in the history of mankind.

The Apaches were like the ninjas of America. They would sneak up behind you and slit your throat, without you even knowing. They used primitive weapons made mostly of wood and bone. They were also the greatest knife fighters the world has ever seen, and were pretty good with the tomahawk and throwing ax. They terrorized the southwest United States, and even the military had trouble beating them. They were great hit and run fighters, and their descendants teach modern day special forces how to fight in hand to hand combat. They usually scalped their victims.

They terrorized Europe with their raids and pillaging (though not all of them, as we have previously read on Listverse). They were ferocious in battle and used weapons that suited their stature. They were big and mean and used their axes, swords and spears expertly in the conquering of cities. Even their religion was about war, and they believed that when you died in battle you fought, once again, in a never ending battle. They were all you would want in a soldier and proved it on the battlefield by destroying all in their paths.

Those caught stealing food in the famine-struck nation, or attempting to cross the borders, are subject to public execution. Kim is continuing his lavish lifestyle and military obsession, in spite of the crumbling economy. In North Korea, he and his father are deified, considered saviors of the whole universe. 250,000 dissidents are confined to “re-education camps”. He has waged a war on South Korea that involved assassinating South Korean leaders and blowing up South Korean planes. He presents a great threat to the world in terms of nuclear warfare, having persuaded the Soviet Union to award him a nuclear reactor, in 1984.

While Rome is possibly the greatest empire, you just can’t ignore some scariness. Criminals, slaves and others were forced to fight each other to the death in gladiatorial games. Some of the most evil men were Roman – Caligula, Nero and others. Christians were first, and horribly, targeted for persecution as a group, by the emperor Nero, in 64 AD. Some were torn apart by dogs, others burnt alive as human torches. At first they were ruled by divine kings, then they became a republic (perhaps their greatest period) before finally becoming an empire. How a group of farmers, who started off fending off wolves to protect their livestock, eventually became the greatest empire in all history is the stuff of legends. Coupled with an excellent military and administrative system, the Roman Empire, or rather ancient Rome, is also one of the longest-lasting. Counting from its founding to the fall of the Byzantine Empire, ancient Rome lasted for a whopping 2,214 years!

The Aztecs began their elaborate theocracy in the 1300s, and brought human sacrifice to a golden era. About 20,000 people were killed yearly to appease gods — especially the sun god, who needed daily “nourishment” of blood. Hearts of sacrifice victims were cut out, and some bodies were eaten ceremoniously. Other victims were drowned, beheaded, burned or dropped from heights. In a rite to the rain god, shrieking children were killed at several sites so that their tears might induce rain. In a rite to the maize goddess, a virgin danced for 24 hours, then was killed and skinned; her skin was worn by a priest in further dancing. One account says that at King Ahuitzotl’s coronation, 80,000 prisoners were butchered to please the gods. It is said that sometimes the victim would be cannibalized.

Although it was a very brief civilization, Nazi Germany was a superpower, and affected the world greatly. At least 4 million people were killed in the Holocaust (with some speculating it was closer to 11 million), and Nazi Germany started the worst war in human history – World War Two. The Nazi Swastika is probably the most hated symbol in the world. Nazi Germany owned about 268,829 square miles of land. Hitler was one of the most influential people ever – and his empire was, by far, one of the most terrifying.

Communism is responsible for millions of deaths – more, even, than Nazi Germany in just the Soviet Union alone. Communists such as Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Nicolae Ceausescu and others have killed millions of people. But The Soviet Union stands out as the worst. Stalin, alone, killed 10-60 million people. The Soviet Union was probably one of the U.S.A’s greatest foes. Living under Stalin put even the most average person into a state of constant fear – this, alone, makes the Soviet Union worse than Nazi Germany, in which the majority of Germans felt a certain level of safety as long as they supported the Nazi concept.

The Cydonian region on Mars attracted a great deal of attention because one of the hills in that region looked remarkably man made. The region was first imaged in detail by the Viking 1 orbiter, which was launched in 1975. Several images were taken by the Viking, including one taken in 1976 showing that one of the Cydonian mesas had the appearance of face. Scientists dismissed the face as a trick of light and shadow, but then a second image also showed the face at a different sun-angle. This caught the attention of organizations interested in extraterrestrial intelligence, and some talk show hosts who believed the Face was a long-lost Martian civilization. Most scientists still held the belief that the face was just a consequence of viewing conditions. In 2003, when the European space agency launched Mars Express, it was able to combine data from a high resolution stereo camera and create a 3D representation of the “Face on Mars”. The most recent image (bottom) I think would silence even the most faithful believers. The image shows a remnant massif, thought to have formed from landslides and an early form of debris apron formation, but no face in sight.

The Ica Stones are stones which were discovered in a cave in Peru. The cave was never identified. The Stones have engravings on them such as Aztec men fighting dinosaurs, extinct fish, open heart surgery and other things that show an advanced civilization. A farmer was arrested for selling these stones to tourists, when he admitted to making them himself. To get that ancient look, he says he left the stones in his chicken coop, and let the chickens do the rest. Others have also made and sold Ica Stones. There is no evidence of a civilization in that area, no ruins, bones or anything.

The Mary Celeste was a ship discovered floating in the sea minus its crew. Stories range from finding meals, still hot and ready to eat, to the ship being found abandoned but with no personal items taken, with strange circular burns on the deck – indicating alien abduction. The truth is much more boring. The ship that discovered the May Celeste saw signs that the crew had left in a hurry. The also noted the ship was making strange noises. The captain probably thought his ship was sinking, so he left with the crew.

The Bermuda Triangle is a triangular area in the Atlantic ocean where a large amount of ships and planes have crashed, or disappeared, without a trace. However, many of the ships and planes that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle were not actually in the Bermuda Triangle. Also, the amount of disappearances and crashes are not unusual for an area that size. The story of the Bermuda Triangle has developed due to media hysteria and authors wanting to be published.

The only mysterious thing here is the Mayans themselves, and how did they come up with the calendar. The calendar looks like this , 12.18.16.2.6, though this isn’t todays date. The end number counts up one day, when it reaches a certain number it will reset to zero and the number next to it will count up one. It ends on the year 2012, so people predict the world will end too. The world isn’t going to end. Think of the Mayan calendar as a odometer, when the numbers reach zero, they will start counting up from one again. No mystery.

The monster of Loch Ness, allegedly a plesiosaur which is all that is left of the dinosaur period. There have been sonar’s which have seen ‘something’, photographs etc. to support the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. What there hasn’t been, is a lot of common sense. The Loch Ness monster story has been around for more then 1500 years. That is one very old monster. Of course, it could have bred, but that would mean a family of monsters. How come with that many monsters there is no definite proof? A clear photograph that can’t be argued with? A carcass? But there is nothing except a lot of tourism.

Bigfoot is a prehistoric ape like animal. It is tall, hairy and has big feet. As with the Loch Ness Monster, there are only (hard to see) photographs and questionable footprints to prove its existence. Just like the Loch Ness Monster, there is no actual proof of the existence of Bigfoot. No scat, no bones, no artifacts. Nothing, except a lot of sightings. Ultimately, he is probably a figment of a few wild imaginations.

The Shroud of Turin is supposedly the cloth that was used to wrap Jesus after his death. The face of Jesus was miraculously imposed onto the cloth. Some blood, type AB was found on the cloth. Firstly, the AB type blood was found on the tape that was used to lift fibrils on the shroud and not on the shroud itself. Secondly, it could be anyone’s blood, from anyone who ever handled the shroud. Lastly, dried old blood is black and the stains on the shroud are red. One theory is that a male model was painted and wrapped in the shroud to create the figure of Christ. Vermillion paint was splashed on the models wrists, feet and body to create the blood. Analyzing the shroud has shown 2 common paint pigments used in the 14th century.

Astrology is the practice of examining the stars to tell us about our future. People born at a certain time of month have certain star signs, for example, Leo, born in July/August. Where some daily star signs might be accurate, this is coincidence. There isn’t any way a lot of old, probably dead stars can tell us about the future. Daily Star Signs are kept vague enough that they could apply to anything. For example, “You will meet someone new today”, we meet some one new every day, at the shop, the bus driver, in any day you will meet some one new.

Incorruptible Corpses are corpses that have been ‘preserved without embalming or any other artificial means’. The most famous is St. Bernadette Soubirous (above), who died in 1879. Her face and hands are made out of wax. The wax was added because her face was emaciated when she was first dug up. Other incorruptible corpses give off a sweet odor, similar to embalming fluid. Others still are due to how they were buried, in alkaline soil, with a lack of oxygen and bacteria and worms.

Other significant dishes: Pampushki (potato dummplings), galushki (dumplings)
Most unusual dish: holodets (minced jellied pig’s feet)

Borscht is a soup, of Ukrainian origin, that is popular in many Eastern and Central European countries. In most of these countries, it is made with beetroot as the main ingredient, giving it a deep reddish-purple color. The soup began its existence from trimmings of cellared vegetables, consumed throughout the winter months. Most families had a container, usually a kettle or stove pot, kept outside to store those trimmings. Around the first spring thaw, that pot was placed on the fire and cooked into a soup-like meal. One of the primary vegetables of the Slavic diet consumed during the winter months was beets. Hence, the recipe morphed into what is traditionally known of as a beet soup. [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: Mandi (rice and mutton), shawarma (kebab)
Most unusual dish: roast sheep’s eyes

Kabsa is an extremely tasty rice and meat dish from Saudi Arabia. There are many kinds of kabsa, and each kind has a uniqueness about it. The spices used in kabsa are largely responsible for its taste; these are generally black pepper, cloves, cardamom, saffron, cinnamon, black lime, bay leaves and nutmeg. The main ingredient that accompanies the spices is the meat, such as chicken, goat, lamb, camel or sometimes beef, fish and shrimp. In chicken machbūs, a whole chicken is used. The spices, rice and meat may be augmented with almonds, pine nuts, onions and raisins. A popular way of preparing the meat is called mandi. This is an ancient technique, whereby meat is barbecued in a deep hole in the ground, that is covered while the meat cooks. [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: boerewors, biltong (jerked meat)
Most unusual dish: Mopane worm (caterpillar)

Bobotie is a South African dish consisting of spiced minced meat baked with an egg-based topping. Early recipes incorporated ginger, marjoram and lemon rind; the introduction of curry powder has simplified the recipe somewhat, but the basic concept remains the same. Some recipes also call for chopped onions to be added to the mixture. Traditionally, bobotie incorporates dried fruit like raisins or sultanas, but the sweetness that they lend is not to everybody’s taste. It is often garnished with walnuts, chutney and bananas. Although not particularly spicy, the dish incorporates a variety of flavors that can add complexity. For example, the dried fruit (usually apricots and raisins/sultanas) contrasts the curry flavoring very nicely. The texture of the dish is also complex, with the baked egg mixture topping complementing the milk-soaked bread which adds moisture to the dish. [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: Roti canai (flatbread)
Most unusual dish: Pekasam Ikan (yeast coated fermented fish)

With roots in Malay culture, “nasi lemak” is a Malay word that literally means ‘fatty rice’. The name is derived from the cooking process whereby rice is soaked in coconut cream and then the mixture steamed. Sometimes knotted screwpine (pandan) leaves are thrown into the rice during steaming to give it more fragrance. Spices such as ginger and, occasionally, herbs like lemon grass may be added for additional fragrance. Traditionally, this comes as a platter of food wrapped in banana leaf, with cucumber slices, small dried anchovies, roasted peanuts, hard boiled egg and hot spicy sauce (sambal) at its core. As a more substantial meal, nasi lemak can also come with a variety of other accompaniments such as chicken, cuttlefish, cockle, stir fried water convolvulus, pickled vegetables, beef rendang (beef stewed in coconut milk and spices) or paru (beef lungs). [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: Papa a la Huancaina (yellow potato salad)
Most unusual dish: cuy (roast guinea pig)

Ceviche is relatively well known around the world. It is raw fish marinated in a citrus-based mixture, with lemons and limes being the most commonly used. In addition to adding flavor, the citric acid causes the proteins in the seafood to become denatured (effectively partly cooked). Traditional style ceviche was marinated for about 3 hours. Modern-style ceviche, created by Peruvian chef Dario Matsufuji in the 1970s, usually has a very short marinating period. With the appropriate fish, it can marinate in the time it takes to mix the ingredients, serve and carry the ceviche to the table. The classic Peruvian ceviche is composed of chunks of raw fish, marinated in freshly-squeezed key lime or bitter orange (naranja agria) juice, with sliced onions, chili, salt and pepper. Corvina or Cebo (sea bass) was the fish traditionally used. It is such an important dish in Peru that they have a national day for it. [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: kleftiko (lamb stew), fasolada (bean soup)
Most unusual dish: Patsa (feet and tripe soup)

Everyone loves lasagna – but if you haven’t tried moussaka you really are missing out on something quite extraordinary. Moussaka is the Greek equivalent of lasagna but it differs in a number of ways. Generally, it is made with veal or lamb (as opposed to beef), and instead of lasagna sheets it uses sliced eggplant (aubergine) or potato (in the Turkish version). The meat is flavored with cinnamon and pimento (allspice) and mixed with white wine. Like lasagna it is coated with a rich white sauce and it really is the most delicious Greek food. [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: Pad Thai (Thai noodles)
Most unusual dish: Laab Luead (raw pork dressed with pig’s blood)

Tom yum soup is a hot, spicy and sour soup which usually includes prawns or chicken and mushrooms, cilantro (coriander), lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves and thai basil. It is a very fragrant soup (as is typical of much Thai food) and is very healthy – being very low in fat and carbohydrates. There are other varieties of tom yum, such as tom yum nam khon which includes coconut milk, but for the true delicious taste of Thailand you must try tom yum. Fortunately for most of us westerners it is possible to buy pre-made tom yum paste, which saves the many hours pounding all of the herbs together first. Of all the entries on this list (as well as the one above), tom yum soup is the one that most readers will have tried – but if you haven’t – do. Oh – and if you live in Wellington, New Zealand, the best Tom Yum soup in the city can be eaten here (as you can see by the rave reviews). [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: Golonka
Most unusual dish: Czernina (black duck’s blood soup)

Bigos (Hunter’s Stew), is a traditional meat stew typical of Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian cuisines. There is no single recipe for a savory stew of cabbage and meat, as recipes vary considerably from region to region, as well as from family to family. Typical ingredients include white cabbage, sauerkraut (kapusta kiszona in Polish), various cuts of meat and sausages, often whole or puréed tomatoes, honey and mushrooms. The meats may include pork (often smoked), ham, bacon, beef, veal, sausage, and, as bigos is considered a real hunters’ stew, venison or other game; leftover cuts find their way into the pot as well.

Bigos is usually eaten with rye bread and potatoes. As with many stews, bigos can be kept in a cool place or refrigerated then reheated later—its taste actually intensifies when reheated. A common practice is to keep a pot of bigos going for a week or more, replenishing ingredients as necessary. [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: Lechon, Sinigang
Most unusual dish: Balut (duck embryo eggs)

Before colonization by the Spanish, the Philippines had their own unique method of cooking with vinegar, which preserved food and made it incredibly delicious. Pork adobo is almost certainly the national dish of the Philippines for that reason. Adobo was employed initially as a method of food preservation, but in time — with the advent of refrigeration methods — adobo became used primarily as a method of flavoring foods before cooking. Adobo typically involves cooking meat for a long period of time in a mixture of vinegar, garlic, salt and laurel leaves (bay leaves). The dish is either cooked until dry or cooked until a little of the cooking liquid remains as a sauce. The meat become very tender and the bite of the vinegar is removed whilst the flavor remains. It is a delicious dish that everyone should try. Pictured above is pork adobo I made with pork belly – it is served with rice and french beans. [Recipe]

Other significant dishes: Bulgogi – 불고기 (marinated beef – often called Korean Barbeque)
Most unusual dish: Bosintang – 보신탕 (dog stew)

I had to put Korean food (한식 – Hansik) first because it is my current passion – as you can see here. Also, it is quite unique in that much of the food is not prepared just for taste, but for health also – as has been the case for thousands of years. Much of Korean food is based on fermented products (naturally preserved) such as gochujang (hot pepper paste) and doenjang (soy bean paste – like Japanese miso). This gives it the easily recognizable red color. In addition to these pastes Korean food often includes hot pepper flakes – an essential ingredient in kimchi (which is pronounced gim-chee, NOT kim-chee, despite the spelling). Kimchi is fermented cabbage. There are many types of kimchi – cabbage kimchi (the most common), radish kimchi, water radish kimchi, etc.

Different recipes exist for each type, but one which I think is best for cabbage kimchi involves making a thick slurry with rice flour and water, and adding to it all of the seasoning: hot pepper flakes, scallions, Asian chives, raw oysters (or fermented squid), garlic, ginger, onions, pear and fish sauce. This is then spread on the individual leaves of the cabbage (which is kept whole). The cabbages are then kept in a container (traditionally outside in earthenware pots, but these days usually in glass or plastic in the fridge) where they ferment over time. Kimchi has a fresh taste and a crunchy texture and you can eat it immediately or when it is very well fermented (when it takes on a more sour flavor). For many Koreans, Kimchi is eaten with breakfast, lunch and dinner, and is such a staple part of the Korean diet that most Korean homes have a separate kimchi refrigerator. When Kimchi gets too sour to enjoy, you can use it as the basis for kimchi pancakes or kimchi stew. [Recipe]

Portions of this text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. Some text is derived from or courtesy of Wikipedia.

Shameful Event: Bipartisan Politics

Not an event, but an aspect, out of which many bad events have derived. The U. S. has two primary political parties, the Democratic and the Republican. The current threat of the government itself to “shut down” in Washington D. C. has been caused by the two parties refusing to get along with each other. They cannot stand each other’s political ideas, and refuse to yield one inch of ground either way. As a result, nothing is getting accomplished by the American government.

Not that the bipartisanship should be abolished. There should be two sides to every issue, but there should also be something we like to call “compromise” between them. But the Senate and Congress routinely vote straight down party lines without listening to, or caring about, the other side’s argument on an issue.

The major issue at the time of this list’s composition is budget expenditures, which, if not resolved, will “shut down” the government, after which the Senate, Congress and President’s Cabinet will continue to be paid, but the families of active soldiers overseas will not receive any more paychecks.

Republicans believe too much money is being spent. Democrats want even more money spent in order to stimulate the economy. The Republicans consider this digging down in order to climb out of a hole, and around and around we go.

It has gotten so bad, that photographs have surfaced, from inside the House and Senate, showing Democrats playing Solitaire, Freecell and Minesweeper on their laptops while Republicans give speeches. The reason? They angrily refuse to listen and be swayed from their positions. Though there is currently no proof, the Republicans are likely just as guilty of such goofing off.

Shameful Event: The Scopes “Monkey” Trial

A notorious miscarriage of justice and a serious waste of legislation. Legislation is very highly thought of in America, to the point that laws are put on the books for some very strange, unjust and idiotic things. There are quite a few websites dedicated to stupid American laws, and just for fun, this lister, a fan of “How To Train Your Dragon,” here gives his favorite. Direct from Utah: “it is illegal to hunt, kill, take, trap, possess or have sex with dragons.” It’s on the books, or so the website says. This lister doesn’t doubt it.

The Scopes Trial, however, was a very serious affair and remains so, since at the heart of it was the Tennessee state law against teaching evolution. Creationism was the order of the day, and John Scopes deliberately broke the law in order to put the actual law on trial. The entire nation came down on top of him, for and against, and his primary defense attorney was Clarence Darrow, an avowed atheist. He was up against former 3-time presidential candidate William J. Bryan, an avowed Christian fundamentalist. It shaped up just like a boxing match.

The judge was John Raulston, a very conservative Christian who quoted the Bible often throughout the farce. He supported Bryan’s prosecution more often than Darrow’s defense, and all scientific examinations were disallowed from the proceedings. No fossils, no rocks, no scientist’s testimony. Dinosaurs were alive 4,000 years ago because Bryan said so. God created the Earth on October 22, 4004 BC, at 7:30 in the evening. That’s a paraphrased quote. Darrow immediately called Bryan to the stand as an “expert” on the Bible. Bryan knew what was coming, but was unafraid. Darrow questioned him on the concept of Eve coming from Adam’s rib. If so, “where the hell did Cain’s wife come from? Did they have another creation over in the next county?”

Then he questioned the date of Earth’s creation. “How long was the first day? You can’t measure a day without sunlight, and God didn’t make the sun till the fourth day.” Raulston actually allowed this charade to go on for 2 hours. The whole trial was paid for by tax money. In the end Scopes lost, as everyone expected would happen in Tennessee. Darrow appealed to the state’s Supreme Court, which overturned the verdict on a technicality, rather than address the real issue (which simply cannot be resolved, because neither side wants it resolved): Judge Raulston had ordered Scopes to pay a $100 fine, but he should have left this decision with the jury. So the fine was expunged.

Shameful Event: Medals of Honor at Wounded Knee

On December 29, 1890, near the banks of Wounded Knee Creek, in Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota, a detachment of 500 men of the 7th U. S. Cavalry, led by Col. James Forsyth, surrounded an encampment of 350 Indians. They were under orders to disarm the Indians, and when they attempted to do so, a deaf Indian named Black Coyote did not understand what they were saying and did not want to relinquish his rifle, because it was expensive, and the Cavalry had no right to take it.

In the ensuing scuffle between him and 2 or 3 soldiers, a shot was fired, either by accident, or as a warning for him to calm down. Instead, the entire 7th cavalry opened fire on cue, assuming that the Indians had initiated hostilities. Most of the 120 Indian men were armed, but had intended to surrender. Now they had to defend themselves and their families and fired back.

The soldiers slaughtered at least 150 men, women, and children, most of the latter two unarmed and running for their lives or cowering. The Cavalry was so savage in its assault that crossfire killed some 30 soldiers. 4 Hotchkiss (Gatling) guns were also used on the crowd. The cavalry, on horses, chased down wounded Indians in the snowy plains and shot them down from behind.

As horrible as the act itself remains, it seems even worse to add insult to injury, and the Army awarded twenty men the Medal of Honor. That is the highest American military award for combat bravery. The criteria for receiving have become much more stringent since WWII, but that is not meant to discredit the actions of the soldiers who earned it in the Civil War or later.

It is, however, quite atrocious to award it to soldiers who were not in very serious danger of death. Half the Indian men who had rifles were shot down before they could get a shot off. Estimates, though we will never know for sure, place the cavalrymen killed by Indians at 5. It is believed the other 26 were killed by friendly fire. And the definition of valor, a word inscribed on the medal, does not include running down and killing wounded, fleeing non-combatants.

Shameful Event: The Civil War

It ranks so low because there were a number of mitigating factors in its origin, one of which you will see later in this list. John Q. Adams called this the last battle of the American Revolution, and he died 12 years before the Civil War began. He saw it coming. Everyone knew it was coming.

The tensions of racial superiority/inferiority were only going to rise until the problem was solved. The United States was “dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal,” except, of course, for blacks, Indians and women. White men were perfectly fine. Thomas Jefferson understood that slavery was wrong, but did not free his own until his death.

The South, populated by a lot of wealthy white landowners, refused to give up its “honorable institution” without a fight, and inexorably, the fight happened. Great credit should be given to Henry Clay, Sr., for his Compromise of 1850, which delayed the Civil War by a decade. There were other issues at hand besides slavery, of course, including states’ rights as opposed to federal rights, but the only right the South cared to keep was the right to own, buy, sell and trade slaves.

As a result of everyone’s refusal to compromise, over 600,000 Americans were killed, about 2% of the nation’s population at the time. If the same were to happen today, 6,000,000 Americans would be killed. Only about 416,000 died in WWII.

Shameful Event: Organized Crime

Organization of crime became possible largely because of the progression of firearms technology. From Postbellum until the 1960s or so, criminals possessed the very same weapons as the police. Today, fully automatic firearms are illegal in the United States for civilians to own, operate or possess.

In the Roaring 20s, however, anyone could buy one in a store, and the gangsters did so. The Thompson Submachine Gun was the most sought after, by far, followed closely by the Browning Automatic Rifle (a fully automatic 30-06). The police had them and the criminals had them, and the police’s communication system was woefully inadequate.

No one knew where the criminals were until they robbed a bank and made their getaway. Then the chase was on, and running gunbattles quite frequently erupted in the streets, killing innocent bystanders. Once the police gained technology’s upperhand, the criminals took to surreptition more than force in their enterprises. The FBI was founded just to hunt them down.

It was not until John Gotti was brought down that the back of the New York crime families was broken. But organized crime still goes strong in America, especially in the southwest, where Mexican drug gangs are invading big cities like San Diego and Los Angeles. And they have much the same weaponry again: fully automatic rifles and rocket launchers, heavy demolition, and an intense hatred for American law enforcement.

Shameful Event: Preston Brooks’s Assault on Charles Sumner

On May 22, 1856, Congressman Brooks, Dem. from SC, walked into the floor of the Senate to confront Sumner, Rep. From MA, over a speech Sumner had made three days prior, in which he humiliated Andrew Butler, Dem. From SC and Brooks’s cousin.

Brooks thought twice about his actions and asked fellow SC Dem. Laurence Keitt how he should go about dueling Sumner. Duels were illegal by then, but this rarely stopped anyone from traveling to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls where dueling was no problem. Keitt, a burly man of well over 6 feet, considered that because of his coarse speech, Sumner was beneath Brooks and therefore did not deserve the honor of a duel.

Brooks then made up his mind that he would simply beat Sumner with his walking cane. Everyone had canes back then, many with swords or muskets hidden in them. Brooks’s was just a cane, slightly over 1 inch thick, made of gutta-percha hardwood from SE Asia, with a 10 or 14 karat gold pommel.

The Senate Chamber was fairly deserted at the time, the day’s business having adjourned. Sumner was a big man of 6 feet 4 inches, to Brooks’s 5 feet 6 inches, but Sumner was seated at his desk working on a speech. These desks were, and still are, bolted to the floor, and the chairs did not have wheels at the time. Brooks informed Sumner that his earlier speech was libelous against his cousin, and proceeded to beat him savagely over the head with his cane.

Sumner tried to fight him off and get up, but his desk hindered him long enough for Brooks to incapacitate him. He beat him so horribly that Sumner ripped his desk out of the floor trying to get away. He staggered up the aisle, bleeding profusely from his head, and fell, blinded by his blood. Brooks following, beating him the whole way and then stood over him swinging until the other senators heard something crack. Brooks had broken his cane just below the pommel.

Sumner was unconscious and lying in a pool of blood. No one could come to his aid because Laurence Keitt had accompanied Brooks and brandished a revolver at them. Brooks walked out and resigned his post, after the House failed to vote him out. Almost every single person in the entire southern half of the United States cheered Brooks and mocked, scorned, ridiculed, and spurned Sumner for the rest of his career. Brooks was sent over 1,000 new canes by citizens all over the South.

The North criticized him, especially Anson Burlingame, Rep. From MA, who spoke so vehemently that Brooks challenged him to a duel. He didn’t think Burlingame would accept, but he did and chose Kentucky long rifles as the weapons. He was one of the finest hunters in the North, and Brooks quickly backed down. Brooks died of severe bronchitis the next year. This event has often been cited as one of the primary polarizations of the Antebellum period, over slavery and racial tensions, a spark to ignite the Civil War.

Shameful Event: Racism and Its Crimes

In the same vein of two other entries on this list, but significantly different. Especially Postbellum to about 1970. The famous Civil Rights movement is thought of as particular to the 1960s and Martin Luther King, Jr., but politicians, black and white, had been arguing for equal rights under the law since at least the founding of the country.

“All men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, etc.,” does not include a proviso against black people or Asian people, or any other “race.” But the reality around the country could not be ignored unless out of hatred or impudence, and this is precisely what the majority did until the Civil War compelled a change of government. And though the government changed, and blacks were given the rights to vote and hold office, racial thought would take much longer to right itself.

From Postbellum until the 1970s, blacks were treated monstrously by a lot of white mobs in the South. The Ku Klux Klan was formed “in order to protect white rights,” as its members claimed, but was really just an outlet for their rage, as they banded together and beat, tortured and lynched black people for what was perceived as the slightest infraction of the law. Never mind that this was, itself, breaking the law. And those in power did not seem to care about stopping these crimes. Including any specific example might be too lurid, but consider one of the most notorious instances, that of Willy Brown:

He was accused of raping a white woman, who identified him as the rapist. He was held in protective custody in the Omaha Courthouse from September 28 to 29, 1919, until the entire city had degenerated into a full-scale riot. A mob of over 4,000 white men, women and children besieged Brown, the mayor and his police in the courthouse, looted gun stores for over 1,000 firearms and began shooting the courthouse windows out.

They set the building on fire and demanded Brown be given up. The mayor went out and allowed them to hang him if they would leave. They promptly did so, then went back at the courthouse. The sheriff and his deputies drove through them, breaking people’s legs and arms, cut the mayor down, and drove him to a hospital. He survived.

The courthouse garrison finally relinquished Brown, who was hanged within 5 minutes from a power line. The mob shot at him for another 5 minutes, then cut him down, tied him to a car’s wheel and dragged him through the city, then doused him in lantern oil and set him on fire. They photographed him. Then dragged him through the streets again. The rape victim later retracted her statement and told some friends she just wanted to see a black man die.

Shameful Event: The Salem Witch Trials

In winter of 1691-92, in Salem Village, Massachusetts, outside Salem proper, four girls, Ann Putnam Jr. (12), Abigail Williams (11), Elizabeth Parris (9), and Mary Walcott (17), apparently began to suffer seizures, screaming fits, bursts of gibberish, general fear and violence against others.

It is now theorized by most that Parris and Williams, the two who started the craze, were simply looking to get attention for themselves. But once they were suspected of “indwelling by the Devil,” a crime which might have gotten them executed, they immediately blamed various people throughout Salem Village, and even neighboring towns of possessing them with their spirits, witchcraft and communion with Satan.

The entire area was paranoid about Satan in the first place, and was thus a powderkeg waiting to go off. Putnam and Walcott are believed to have started doing the same thing just for the fun of joining in, but Putnam’s parents saw her “possession” as a convenient means to get rid of some local enemies they’d made. Walcott is thought to have been involved for the sheer pleasure of causing others’ deaths.

It would take too long to give all the particulars here, but in the end, 19 people were hanged in public for witchcraft, and one man, Giles Corey, at about 80 years old, was crushed to death beneath heavy stones for refusing to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. The local magistrates even indicted and imprisoned a 4 your year old girl named Dorothy Good and aggressively interrogated her as to whether she was a witch.

She, of course, had no idea what in the world they were talking about and only wept for her mother, who disowned her to save herself. They finally told her to confess to witchcraft and she would be given back to her mother, which, of course, she did. She was released on 50 pounds bail and went insane from the ordeal.

The hysteria did not stop until the Governor George Phipps, who knew people were being killed, was informed that his wife had been accused of witchcraft. He immediately ordered the entire farce to cease.

Only five years later, every party involved in accusing or prosecuting innocent people repented, claimed to be ashamed, and begged everyone’s forgiveness. Except for John Hathorne, one of the judges. He condemned, or joined in condemning, most of those executed, rejoiced at their executions, and felt absolutely no remorse for the rest of his life, not even when several women suffered miscarriages in prison due to starvation and the atrocious squalor.

He called these dead infants, “righteous punishment from the Almighty. The children were not human, but born of the Devil, and now burn in the everlasting flames.” Abigail Williams disappeared, some say to New York, where she may have become a prostitute.

Shameful Event: Slavery

Tied in with more than one of this list’s entries, slavery is the heart of quite a few problems of America’s past. It’s over, but the resentment felt by blacks toward whites still exists. This country was founded by a bunch of white men with European ancestry, who touted the principle of universal equality. But at the same time, they imported slaves from Africa in order to tend their own property, rather than doing so themselves.

Quickly, slaves became a status symbol, just like any other property. The more you owned, the wealthier you were. Families of black people were broken up at slave auctions and never saw each other again. They were treated precisely the same as cattle. Whites defended this from Antebellum until the 1970s by quoting Genesis 9:27: “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” Canaan was the son of Ham, and this is the famous curse of Ham passage. His name is “Ham” in Hebrew, pronounced “hom,” and means “hot” or “burned,” which seems to be a reference to a darker color of skin.

The uneducated whites of the general public from Antebellum to the 1970s always assumed that Ham referred to a black person because black people like to eat pork. That’s not a lie or an exaggeration. The verse was therefore extrapolated to mean that black people should be servants of…who else but the opposite of black? White people.

This was how slavery was defended as a divinely approved institution for centuries. Of course slavery was instituted in America by white people out of a desire for power over other humans, and a lethargy concerning farming. The true shame of it is inherent throughout: its origins are idiotic and cruel; its longevity is beyond belief and outside logic.

Shameful Event: The Usurpation of Land from American Indians

It was one of Hitler’s inspirations for the Holocaust. How to get it done properly. You don’t start with force immediately. First you pretend to strike deals with the race you want out of your way. Then you double-cross them when the time is right, but don’t make the double-cross obvious. Keep them confused as to why you would renege, and guessing as to whether you really have. Until it’s too late for them to stop you.

In order to “appease your own people,” as it were, and not have a rebellion, you inform them over and over, years after years, that the race whose land and property you’re taking is primitive and violent, and that you’re not really causing them any harm. The Holocaust isn’t the only time this has happened.

And although the United States certainly didn’t engage in wholesale slaughter of the Indians, of the degree of the Holocaust, the U. S. government did, for centuries, uphold the principle of expanding the nation’s borders until reaching an ocean, whether or not this expansion came at anyone else’s expense.

The most infamous instance of this is President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, Seminole and Chickasaw tribes were forced off their lands in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida, and required to move to what is now Oklahoma. Neither the President nor any other white person seemed able to understand why they did not want to leave. Some did of their own accord, but most were finally forced to pick up and move, and were forced to do so on foot. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee Nation was not subject to Georgia’s state law, only national law.

But nevertheless, the Indian Removal Act passed in Congress by a single vote. Abraham Lincoln opposed it, as did David Crockett, who argued that America had no more right to take the Indians’ land than the British had to take America’s land.

With the Act in place, the states in questions were allotted 7,000 armed militia to force the Indians out. 13,000 Cherokee were herded in concentration camps in the freezing cold, where 2,000 to 8,000 of them died from cholera, famine and exposure. This went on from 1831 to 1847.

All told, 19,500 Creek, 4,300 Chickasaw, 12,500 Choctaw, 2,833 Seminole and 20,000 Cherokee were forced to walk to Oklahoma, a distance of no less than 200 miles for the Chickasaw and Choctaw, and up to 1,000 for the Seminole. Thousands died en route. The practice was euphemized by white politicians at the time as “manifest destiny.” Hitler called it “lebensraum,” “living room.” No President has ever apologized for the Indian Removal Act. It is now called the Trail of Tears, and it is one of many times America forced Indians off their land.

I, personally, believe that, in the future, the existence of intelligent Extra Terrestrial life in the universe will be seen to be self evident, and people will look back and laugh at the ignorance of the past, much in the same way we do today when we remember people used to think the earth was flat, or that it didn’t orbit the Sun. Slowly but surely scientists are beginning to agree that it is mathematically impossible for intelligent life not to exist with our planet in the endless expanse of the universe, and the trillions of planets it contains. We truly live in exciting times, as day by day, more and more is discovered about the Cosmos to show this to be empirically true. I’ll leave you with the words of the pioneer of America’s Apollo Space program, the great Wernher Von Braun. “You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.”

During the night of the 12th of February, 2010, lifelong paranormal skeptic Roy Shaw was walking his dog in Devon, England. Wandering through the quiet streets of his neighborhood, he began to approach his local Lawn Bowling club, when he was startled by an odd object hovering high up in the sky. Hazy and distant at first, it began to descend slowly and move nearer in his direction. Circular in shape, it suspended itself above the bowling club and Shaw entered the grounds to get a better look at the object. He watched in amazement as it zigzagged around, before landing on the far side of the green.

He was astounded to make out a 100ft long space craft, with blue and red lights streaming along it’s underside. At this point a 4ft high white apparition exited from the ship and floated towards him across the lawn. ‘It was about 4ft high and seemed to be translucent and moved very slowly towards us. I was transfixed because it made a droning noise, which sounded like “my, my” repeated over and over’ he later told newspapers. His dog, Sydney – an animal he stated is normally very placid – began growling and bearing its teeth at the spirit. At this point, Mr Shaw ran for his life, with such haste he twisted his ankle in the process. Another dog walker in the area claims to have seen the ship dart off into the sky at a 45 degree angle. Funnily enough, Mr Shaw still claims to be a paranormal skeptic, even after this bizarre encounter. Above is a sketch of the UFO he saw.

A woman telephoned RAF Wattisham, in Suffolk, England, on November 21st, 1989, in a distressed manner to report an encounter she had the night before with a strange man in her area. At around 10.30pm, the woman was walking her dog near a sports field when she was approached by a man with a ‘Scandinavian type accent’ dressed in light brown overalls that resembled a flying suit. A recently released report from the National Archives about the case reads. “He asked her if she was aware of stories about large circular flattened areas appearing in fields of wheat, and then went on to explain that he was from another planet similar to Earth, and that the circles had been caused by others like him who had traveled to Earth.” The man went on that they’re visits were friendly but was ordered not to make contact in case they were seen as a threat. He said he disobeyed his orders as he felt it was important for contact between our people and his to occur.

They talked for 10 minutes until he suddenly ran back in the direction he came. The woman, realizing the gravity of her situation and the strangeness of what had just occurred, ran home in a panic stricken state. Whilst doing so, she heard a thunderous buzzing noise, growing in haste and volume behind her. She turned to see a large spherical object, glowing a brilliant orange and white, rise from the trees and eventually disappear up into the atmosphere. The MOD notes attached to the file described the case as ‘one of our more unusual UFO reports.’ The operator who took the woman’s call described it as ‘a genuine call’.

In 1974, Carl Higdon was hunting in Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming. Taking aim and firing at an Elk something strange happened; his bullet seemed to move in slow motion. As he went to retrieve the bullet a sudden strange feeling came over him. Turning around, he saw a humanoid over six feet tall which he described as having a black jumpsuit, a wide belt decorated with a six-pointed star and emblem of yellow. It had straight hair standing out from his head, no eyebrows, bow-legs and long arms ending with rod-like appendages instead of hands. The being asked him if he was hungry and gave him four pills, telling him if he ate one he wouldn’t be hungry for 4 days. The humanoid then pointed to him, and in an instant he found himself encased in a transparent device and wearing a helmet.

Two more humanoids appeared, carrying the 5 elk Higdon had previously hunted; which were now stiff and in an unnaturally frozen state. He was told he was going to their home planet, some 163,000 light-years away, and subsequently arrived there in a flash. On the planet he said there were many buildings that resembled the Seattle Space needle, and the planet’s sun was of an intense heat. His next memory was of being back in Medicine Bow Park, with 2 and a half hours having elapsed. He staggered in a deranged state unable to find his truck, eventually finding it 3 miles away. He radioed the Sheriff, who found him at midnight exhausted and frantic, shouting ‘They took my elk’. After being taken to the local hospital and examined, they found all his vitamin levels were miraculously high, and tuberculosis marks he had on his lungs had vanished. Higdons wife and 2 other people in the area saw green and red lights in the sky on the night of his abduction.

George Gatay was a well respected local man in the town of Nouatre, in western France. A veteran of WW2, he fought with the French Resistance in Luxembourg against the Nazi’s. On the 30th of September, 1954, he was in charge of an 8 man crew working on a construction site. Whilst working he felt a ‘peculiar drowsiness ‘come over him. He felt compelled to walk, although he did not know where or why, as if some unknown force was guiding him. When he stopped he was in sight of an unknown being some 30ft away on a hill. He described it as having an opaque glass helmet, grey coveralls and short boots. He also noticed a rod like weapon in its hand and a square shaped electronic device on its chest. The creature stood in front of a dome shaped object which hovered 3ft above the ground. The craft also had a cupola shape on top, with blade like devices protruding from its highest point. In total awe of what he was looking at, Gattay stood in a paralyzed silence.

As he gazed in amazement, something even stranger happened. He stated ‘Suddenly, the strange man vanished, and I couldn’t explain how he did it, since he did not disappear from my field of vision by walking away, but vanished like an image one erases. Then I heard a strong whistling sound which drowned the noise of our excavators. Soon the object rose by successive jerks, in a vertical direction, and then it too was erased in a sort of blue haze, as if by a miracle.’ Gattay then ran back to the site to report what he saw, and noted that at his first attempt to do so he was overcome with an unshakable feeling of stillness. After greeting his workers with a panicky ‘Have you seen something!?’ Two of his workers concurred with his account, claiming to have seen a flying saucer and ‘a man dressed like a diver in front of it.’ His seven co workers complained of feeling inexplicably drowsy during the event, and George Gattay himself suffered headaches, loss of appetite and insomnia for the full following week.

In a Top 10 list of strange UFO stories, this one really is strange. The local Councillor for Winchester in Hampshire, Mr Adrian Hicks was in the town centre on a busy Saturday afternoon during the early months of 2004. After having lunch in his local bar and purchasing a few books from a book store, he noticed something odd about a woman walking through the rural town’s main street. Her clothes were somewhat unusual, and everything about her didn’t add up. The way she moved and her general demeanor gave off a strange impression which singled her out from the crowd. He followed her with his eyes for a few moments and came to the incredible realization that he wasn’t looking at a human at all – but an extra terrestrial. ‘It was staggering; I am not usually lost for words but was that day. ‘ He watched her for around 9 minutes, walking ahead of her twice and noticed a tutu like piece of clothing around her waist and a thick head of bright blonde hair. ‘She was a humanoid walking with a penguin like gait. She had very large oval eyes and was twirling her hands in a circular motion. She seemed friendly and totally at ease with us.

She wasn’t scared; she was smiling, and seemed to be enjoying herself among us.’ Hicks was startled when she stopped 7 ft away from him when he uttered ‘What the fuck is that?’ under his breath. ‘She walked very slowly up the High Street. I remember she was very interested in the clock over Lloyds Bank. She was taking it all in’. He has stated that several people noticed her without paying any extra attention and spotted some people taking pictures of her, though no pictures have ever surfaced. Hicks believes that the encounter is to do with a much larger Alien presence in Winchester, due to the secret US and British operations in a nearby base. An orthopedic technician with over 35 years experience, Hicks kept his encounter secret for 5 years in order to secure his place in local government, revealing his story only after securing election as a Liberal Democrat Councillor. He spent £400 of his own money for an artist to perfect her image, which can be seen above. He now lobbies for the government to come clean about its dealings with UFO’S.

During July 2009, an off duty police Sergeant was driving along the A4 motorway during the early hours of the morning. At around 5.a.m, whilst passing Silbury hill, an area long renowned for its druid precedent, UFO sightings and mystical attributes, he noticed 3 exceptionally tall men standing in a field examining a recently made crop circle. He noticed they had shining blonde hair and were dressed in white coveralls with their hoods down, which reminded him of forensic detectives. Intrigued by such a bizarre spectacle, the sergeant parked his car and approached the men. From a distance of 400 yards he shouted at them, but his attempts fell on deaf ears and he was ignored. Upon entering the field, however, the 3 men became aware of his presence and simultaneously turned toward him before making off at a miraculous speed heading southward away from the hill. He followed them for a few seconds, but realized he was no match for their pace and watched in awe as they strode off in superhuman strides. After glancing away for a second, the sergeant looked back in the men’s direction to see they had completely vanished.

“They ran faster than any man I have ever seen. I’m no slouch but they were moving so fast. I looked away for a second and when I looked back they were gone” he told Andrew Russell, the UFO investigator he has chosen to communicate through in favor of remaining anonymous. Walking back to his car, he felt something akin to a static electricity echoing throughout the field. The crops began to ripple and sway in time with a crackle that was pulsing all around him, and he developed a massive headache. “I then got scared. The noise was still around but I got an uneasy feeling and headed for the car. For the rest of the day I had a pounding headache I couldn’t shift.” He contacted his colleagues at Wiltshire Police and they released this statement. “The police officer was apparently off duty when this happened so we have no comment to make because it is a personal not a police matter.” On the night following the sighting, residents of the area reported seeing an unmarked Helicopter hovering for 3 hours over the field were the encounter took place, a sequence that has followed UFO and crop circle reports in the area with increasing frequency. The sergeant continues to remain anonymous.

On the 14th of September, 1985, there had been reports of UFO’s in the skies over Zimbabwe. Two days later at the private Ariel Elementary in Ruwa, 20km from the capital, Harare, 62 school children between the ages of 5 and 12 spotted a glowing ball in the sky during the schools morning break. They watched as it hovered around, appearing and disappearing for a short while before it gradually descended to the ground and landed 100ft away from the school in a bushy area off limits to the children. A ‘small man’, standing around 3ft tall with long black hair, large eyes and a slim neck exited the craft and began to walk towards the children. The schools teachers and staff were indoors attending a meeting at this point, which left the children unsupervised. As he moved in their direction he suddenly disappeared in mid step, reappearing on top of the craft, where he silently stared at the children for a few moments, before re-entering the ship and soaring off at an incredible speed. Many pupils were terrified due to African folklore stories which talk of demons and vampires that kidnap children and devour them. The only adult present in the playground was a parent running a tuck shop near the school entrance, who the children descended upon in stampede like fashion to relate their extraordinary tale.

The schools headmaster, Colin Mackie, contacted the now late Cynthia Hind, who in her time was Africa’s foremost UFO investigator. She interviewed the pupils and asked them to recreate drawings of what they saw. Around 35 sketches and drawings were produced, which were all strikingly similar in their depiction of the ‘man’ and his ship. Upon interviewing the children, Hind became convinced of the stories authenticity. One child told her “I swear by every hair on my head and the whole Bible that I am telling the truth.” The consensus was reached among the parents, school staff and Hind that the pupils were in fact telling the truth; as such a lie would be far too complex for children of a young age to conceive and uphold. On a more bizarre note, the older children told Hind they thought they were being communicated to by the ‘man’ and his stare, which warned them that the planet’s natural beauty and resources were being ravaged and polluted beyond repair. “Those thoughts came from the man, the man’s eyes” a shaken 12 year old told Hind. A drawing one of the pupils produced can be seen above.

On the 5th of November, 1979, Robert Taylor, a forester employed by the Livingston Development Corporation, left his house at 10.30am to check on some saplings he had planted at Dechmont Law, a secluded ,forested hill just off the M8 motorway. Accompanied by his dog, he parked his pickup truck at the beginning of a forest trail and preceded the rest of the way on foot. Turning a corner and coming onto a forest clearing, Taylor was greeted by an unbelievable spectacle. Suspended in mid air was a silent and motionless spherical object, which he recalled measuring around 20ft across by 12ft high. Made of a material he likened to black sand paper, a row of small circular windows ran around the centre of the object. A ring also protruded along the same course, sitting just below the portholes. Parts of the object were transparent and seemed to morph, which gave Taylor the impression the object was trying to make itself invisible, or had the capability to do so. As he went to walk toward the object, two smaller spheres covered in metal rods (which reminded him of old navy mines) ejected from the primary object and began to roll towards him. Attaching themselves to each of his trouser legs, they emitted an acrid, stifling smell which made him gag for air and lose consciousness.

He awoke to find himself face down in the grass, with the UFO long gone and his dog running around barking wildly. Attempting to summon the dog he realized he had lost his voice, and, trying to rise to his feet, he came to the horrible realization he couldn’t stand or walk either. Crawling and staggering back in the direction of his truck, he regained the functions in his legs and voice, but accidentally ditched his truck in wet mud after trying to drive in such a dazed and shaken state. He stumbled and lurched home, and upon arrival his wife thought he had been assaulted as he stood swaying in their doorway: his face grazed, his trousers badly torn and his clothes caked in mud. She called the police and an investigation revealed some interesting facts. The section of land in which he encountered the UFO was covered in peculiar indentations, none of which matched any forestry equipment or vehicles that were being used on the Law. The tears on his trousers were forensically examined and were discovered to have been pierced by an unknown implement, with the nature of the tears determining that whatever tore his trousers had attempted to lift him in an upwards direction. Taylor never gained financially or in any other form through telling his story, which never changed from when it first came to light in the 70′s up until his death at 89, in 2007.The Livingstone case remains unsolved to this day, and is the only UFO case in the UK which has resulted in a criminal investigation. Above is an artist’s impression of what Taylor encountered.

Marconi Systems was a defense and aeronautics engineering firm, contracted by the British government to design and manufacture visionary, top of the line weapons systems and military craft. Now extinct due to its merger with British Aerospace and eventual acquisition by BAE Systems, the firm was never far from controversy and back handed scandal. During the 1980′s, reports of an unusual amount of ‘suicides’ among Marconi’s employees who worked on top secret projects gathered widespread media attention in the UK. Twenty Five engineering experts, scientists and digital communication specialists succumbed to ‘suicide’ and ‘accidents’ over a 6 year period, between 1982 and 1988. A large majority died just before their contracts with Marconi were up ,or when they were on the verge of transferring to another defense systems company. Among those the public were supposed to believe committed suicide were; Shani Warren, a 26 year old personal assistant in a biochemical subdivision of Marconi, who was found at the bottom of a lake with her legs bound, her mouth gagged, a noose around her neck and her hands tied behind her back; Richard Pugh a 37 year old digital communications expert, who was found with his feet tied, a plastic bag over his head and a rope coiled round his neck and body four times; Alistair Beckham, a 55 year old software engineer who supposedly committed suicide by going into his garden shed , connecting his body up to a series of live electrical wires and frying himself to death, and Vimal Dajhibai; a 24 year old software engineer who was in his last week of work for Marconi. His death was ruled a suicide by jumping off a suspension bridge in Bristol. Friends said he spoke of his happiness at securing a new job and saw no reason for him to end his life. The coroner ruled a needle sized puncture wound found on his buttock was caused by his fall.

Many researchers uncovered whispers that the deaths were related to revolutionary infrared radar technology being developed by the company, and the Stars Wars defense initiative, which Marconi played a significant part in, due to America’s literal colonization of British defense innovations, a situation that continues to this day. Looking at these deaths it’s clear that security was something that Marconi took very seriously, and that they were willing to go to unthinkable measures to keep its capabilities and inventions top secret. An important and strategic Marconi complex was situated in the small English town of Frimley, complete with a testing zone, a manufacturing plant and company headquarters. Given what we already know about them, if an intruder were to penetrate deep within the premises, it would rank at the top of the site security alert scale, and that’s exactly what happened in 1976, although this was no ordinary intruder. A security guard doing his patrol at night was passing through the bases’ Old House, a structure that housed the company director’s office and a treasure trove of top secret information on Britain’s Radioactive, Nuclear, Infrared, Sonar, Ballistic and Aviation capabilities.

While walking down one of these corridors, he noticed a blue light emitting from underneath one of the doors. The guard was aroused and drew his gun, as nothing but classified files in locked Cabinets was meant to be on the other side, and the only person who was authorized to be in the building was him. He burst into the room, and was met with a horrifying and epochal sight. In the corner, perched over an open filing cabinet, rifling through mountains of Top Secret documents, was none other than an Extra Terrestrial. Described as being humanoid, and wearing some form of headlight which emitted the blue glow, it quickly turned toward the guard and erased itself in a blue haze right before his eyes and disappeared. Shrieking in terror, the guard ran out of the building to a security outpost, where he informed his colleagues of his encounter and the Complex went into lock down. The following morning the guard was taken away by 2 military psychiatrists, never to be seen by anyone on the site again.

In recent years, the Varginha case has garnered just as much attention and controversy among hardcore UFO enthusiasts as Roswell has among the general public. Many attempts have been made to thoroughly investigate the case and make conclusive findings. The 2002 book ‘UFOS over Brazil’ by American UFO expert Dr Roger Leir, is the closest so far, and his interviews with military officials, hospital surgeons and a wide array of civilian witnesses will form the basis of this account. The NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) tracked an uncorrelated, unidentified object soaring above the western hemisphere on the 13th of January, 1996. It entered Brazilian airspace and the CINDACTA (acronym translates as the ‘Integrated Air Traffic Control and Air Defense Centre’) were contacted, who in turn alerted the Brazilian Army command at Tres Coracoes, giving the instruction that all wings of the Brazilian military were to be put on high alert.

Rumors of mass UFO sightings began sweeping throughout southern Brazil in the days that followed, and events made a significant development on the 20th of January, when witnesses in a rural town in the state of Minais Gerais reported seeing a ‘Submarine shaped craft’ cruising 20ft above the ground, which appeared to be damaged or malfunctioning. Moving at a rickety, slow pace and emitting some form of smoke, it was heading in the direction of Varginha. At daybreak on the 21st, strange creatures were seen wandering around the town in an incapacitated and horribly confused state. Villagers erupted into frenzy and notified the police and fire brigade, telling them the town had been overrun by monsters from Indigenous folk tales and even the Devil himself. The army was quickly contacted and according to several witnesses 2 of the creatures were captured without resistance, with one being subsequently shot dead and the other being transferred to the Hospital Humanitas to receive treatment for the injuries it sustained during the crash. The Orthopedic Surgeon Leir interviewed said he was instructed by armed officers to begin a surgical scrub and prepare to perform a fracture reduction on plainly ‘a leg’. Leir interviewed the other surgeons and assistants that attended the surgery, who all stated the operating theatre was sealed except for one entrance which was manned by armed officers, who were unaware of what was in the theatre. The flow of military officials and hospital personnel into the room was strictly monitored, with only a small essential team of staff being allowed inside. Corrective surgery was performed on a fracture of the femur of its upper thigh, with members of the Brazilian Army S-2 military intelligence division being present at the surgery.

The bipedal creature was described as being around 5ft, with massive red eyes, a thin neck and dark brown skin which looked wet but was dry to the touch. It also had 3 bony protuberances on 3 sections across its head, and from its anatomy alone its sex was indeterminable. All attempts made to communicate verbally with the creature were of no consequence and it’s wound healed completely within 24 hours. After surgery the surgeon turned to see the aliens eyes fixated upon him. He then began to feel ‘hammer- like blows’ to his head and chunks of information began to pound and cram his mind, which he described as being like ‘Thoughtgrams’. The surgeon has never revealed the full extent of what the Alien told him, but among other things it told him that it’s race felt sorry for humans, because we are largely detached from our spiritual selves and are unaware of the amazing things we can accomplish, that it’s race already have. It was then taken out of the room by the officers, along with all X-rays, documents and test results that pertained to it. The surgeon complained of headaches for the 2 weeks following the event and was reduced to a quivering wreck when telling this aspect of the story to Leir. Two days later, several witnesses saw US military cargo planes at Sao Paolo Airport, which were presumed to be collecting the crashed craft and its occupants.

The story was picked up in its most basic form by The Wall Street Journal, who ran it on their front page as a story as centrally dealing with a downed unknown object in Brazil. While some people will perceive the story as baseless and futile nonsense, there is much evidence on the contrary. Ubirajara Rodriguez, an attorney and Varginha UFO case expert obtained a copy of the death certificate of a Corporal Marco Cherez, an officer who died three weeks after he supposedly touched the creature with his bare hands. His death certificate states the cause of death as being from a ‘Toxic substance’ and an ‘Ebola Type Disease’ although the full report of his autopsy has never been revealed. In the weeks that followed the event, a surprise visit was paid to Brazil by Warren Christopher and Daniel S.Goldin who were, at the time, the US Secretary of State and Director of NASA, respectively. Leir was shown several authenticated documents concerning agreements between Brazil and America which allow ‘any material coming from space that is found in Brazil to be turned over to the government of the United States.’ To top it off there are literally hundreds of Witnesses across Varginha, from all walks of life. Police officers, school teachers, peasant farmers and government employees: they are all united under the belief that extra terrestrials crash landed in their city at the turn of 1996, and they all witnessed it with their own eyes. But if you think the case is strange, you should take a look at the explanation Major Eduardo Calza gives as the cause of all this UFO hysteria surrounding Varginha. ‘It was an expectant Dwarf couple and a mentally handicapped dwarf’ he told investigative journalist Bruce Burgess during an interview for his documentary ‘The Brazilian Roswell’. What do you believe?

You will notice a lot of Jan de Bont, Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay on this list. This is because they are awful. But you know what? I still go see their movies. I think Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, but will that stop me from seeing Transformers: Dark of the Moon? Of course not.

You may be asking yourself: “But where is Independence Day?” To that question, I have no answer. It’s one of those crappy movies that I have some sort of nostalgic love for. I cannot bring myself to publicly ridicule it.

Now, allow me to don my snobby black beret and stroke my skinny, pretentious goatee as I list, and insult, some of the worst movies ever made.

The cold chases Jake Gyllenhaal down a hallway. That’s right, the cold. Chases him. Down a hallway. Also, in order to create some sort of quasi-deep commentary on survival, the characters discuss the merits of burning books in a library to stay warm, while being SURROUNDED by wooden tables and chairs. This movie made me wish that Global Warming would hurry up and put us out of our misery already.

This guy sums the plot up much better than I could, so, take it away hilarious, random internet movie snob:

“So, Billy Bob Thornton is, like, the Boss of NASA or whatever (LOL), and he is like “we have got to fuck up this asteroid,” and some guy is like “we’ll just nuke it,” and Billy Bob Thornton is like “we can’t nuke it because of some made up reason,” and so they decide that the only way to destroy the asteroid and save the Earth is to talk to Bruce Willis, the Best Oil Driller in the World. Oh boy, here we go. Meanwhile, out on the oil rig, Bruce Willis is hitting golf balls at a Greenpeace boat because he is a MAN. It’s hilarious and stupid how you work to make the world a better place based on deeply held personal beliefs when you should be shooting at Ben Affleck with a shotgun because he is having sex with your daughter, Liv Tyler. The army is like “Mr. Bruce Willis, please come with us, asteroid time,” and Bruce Willis is like, “Ben Affleck is fired.” And I don’t even know what the big deal is anyway, because if we learned anything from Deep Impact it’s that when the asteroid hits Earth you just need to run up a tall hill.

So, NASA is going to send a team of astronauts into space to land on the asteroid (sure) and drill a hole in it (yes) and fill the hole with a nuclear device (absolutely). But Bruce Willis is like “you guys are so stupid, the only way to do this is to send me into space.” OH, HOLD ON, WHAT? Nevermind, because it gets so much better a few seconds later when Bruce Willis is like “and I want to take my own team with me.” Take your own team with you? Into space? To land on an asteroid? And drill a hole in the asteroid and put a nuclear bomb in that hole? Better bring Daniel Farraday with you. You don’t want things to get ridiculous.

So, Bruce Willis hires all his pals, and surprise: they are so wacky and out of control! Oh, and he hires Ben Affleck, even though he just fired Ben Affleck? Also, Ben Affleck already has his own oil company but it has been literally 24 hours since he was working for Bruce Willis? How did he get an oil company so fast? These are the types of questions we might have time to wonder if that asteroid wasn’t coming straight for us! Of course, it’s hard to imagine a group this ragtag going into space, but they are the only chance we have. Most astronauts train for years to go into space, but these oilmen will only have 12 days. Insert 45 minute training sequence. Now they are ready to go into space! First stop is the international space station where there is a kooky Russian cosmonaut who has space cabin fever and then there is another 45 minute sequence involving fuel lines and space fires and oh no Ben Affleck almost dies but then he doesn’t die at all phew but then a few minutes later he almost dies again but he still doesn’t die. But some people die. Because his ship (one of two!) gets hit by a meteor and crashes on the asteroid. (You know how things in space are always crashing.)”

-courtesy of Gabe from videogum.com

Waterworld won 4 Razzies for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor (Kevin Costner) and Worst Supporting Actor (Dennis Hopper). It cost something like $200 million to make back in the mid-90s which, adjusted for inflation, is about $45 billion today (I think my math is right). Kevin Costner was coming off the huge critical and commercial success of Dances With Wolves, so the studio was going to back him on any crazy-ass idea they came across, including Mad Max with Jet-Skis.

Battlefield Earth is consistently ranked as one of, if not THE worst movie ever made. Unfortunately for science fiction, it was based on a classic novel, so anticipation was fairly high when the bomb dropped. It went on to be nominated for 8 and win 7 Razzies, in 2000. It won for worst picture, director, screenplay, actor, actress, etc. It also won for Worst Screen Couple, which they gave to “John Travolta and anyone sharing the screen with him at any given moment.” And then, to put the icing on the cake, in 2010 it won the Razzies coveted “Worst Movie of the Decade” award.

Boy that trailer looked promising. It was, perhaps, the most incongruous movie-trailer-to-actual-film relationship in history. This one was nominated for 8 Razzies, including worst picture, worst actor and worst director for Michael Bay, who decided to make a national tragedy into another one of his super slo-mo action movies. I think Team America: World Police sang it best – the clip is above and the lyrics are here:

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark,
When he made Pearl Harbor.
I miss you more than that movie missed the point,
And that’s an awful lot .
And now, now you’ve gone away,
And all I’m trying to say,
Is Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.

I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school,
He was terrible in that film.
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part,
He’s way better than Ben Affleck.
And now all I can think about is your smile,
And that shitty movie too,
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you

(Interlude)

Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked
Just a little bit more than I miss you.

If you want the perfect example of the unnecessary Hollywood remake, look no further than Wild Wild West. This movie managed to take two otherwise great actors (Kevin Kline and Will Smith) and drain them of any joy or talent for 2 hours. You can almost see them NOT wanting to be in the movie while you are watching it. It won 5 of the 9 Razzies it was nominated for in 1999, including, hilariously, worst song. That picture nicely captures Will Smith likely thinking, ‘what the hell am I doing in this movie’?

What did we learn from Twister?

1) Hold on to a water pipe and a tornado can pass directly over you with no physical consequences.

2) If you are only feet from a tornado, but you have something really dramatic to say, wind will not affect you or your ability to hear.

3) It rarely rains near tornadoes.

4) Mentioning an f-5 will cause everyone in the room to go silent and spill their drinks.

5) Bill Paxton can predict where tornadoes are going to hit by picking up a hand-full of dirt and letting it fall through his fingers.

6) Jan de Bont is a terrible director

David Sheega from CultureLab.com does a nice job of describing this disaster of a movie:

“…A car speeding through a city in the grip of terrible earthquakes makes insanely unlikely maneuvers, one after the next, then drives straight through an office building as it crumples and emerges unscathed. This sets the tone for the film. We learn not to worry too much for the characters’ safety. We know that if they get on a plane, it will always manage to take flight just as the runway collapses. The unlikely occurrences continue so relentlessly that we are numb to later scientific offenses, among them a tsunami that overturns a ship in the open ocean despite the fact that real tsunamis are tiny before reaching shore, and tropical animals that miraculously avoid freezing to death as they are flown through snow-covered mountains while suspended from helicopters.”

This movie was just so ridiculous I was completely distracted for the entire thing. The part where the mountains mysteriously MOVE to EXACTLY where they need them before crash landing was one of the most forehead-slappingly stupid things I’ve ever seen in a movie. This actually works much better as a comedy.

Jan de Bont strikes again with this horrifying movie. They decided to take the same premise from the first movie, and apply it to the SLOWEST form of transportation imaginable. This was like a really long SNL skit, or like that scene in Austin Powers when the stream roller is slowly approaching the screaming guy. I loved the 10 minute crash scene into the cardboard village at the end. Speed 2: Cruise Control was nominated for 8 Razzies, but, astonishingly, only won a single one, for Worst Sequel. But to be fair, that particular year saw perhaps the worst stock of blockbusters in history; it was up against The Postman, Anaconda and the #1 WORST BLOCKBUSTER OF ALL TIME, I give you…

Nominated for an earth-shattering 11 Razzies, this movie sucks so much that it will actually give you a headache if you attempt to watch it all in one sitting. It has been voted the worst movie of all time by Empire Magazine, and deservedly so. It actually received 3 times as many votes as the #2 selection (Battlefield Earth). There is really nothing I can say to do it justice, so, instead, watch the 3 minute clip above, it’s hilarious.

This list is courtesy of Chris Rau.