Zombies, vampires, werewolves or supernatural beings? What spooks you out? Once in a while, we all love to curl up and get completely immersed with a bone-chilling horror novel. Sometimes it’s the opposite. We become too scared to flip the pages to the next chapter because we’re too immersed with the story. But let’s face it, reading a good horror story is always exciting. If you get nightmares after reading it, you know it’s a winner.

Let me share with you a list of the top 25 hair-raising and terrifying horror novels that you will surely enjoy.

1. Dollhouse by Anya Allyn

The story focuses on the disappearance of a fifteen-year old girl named Aisha. In the last five years, children have been reported to be missing in the woods. After their scheduled school hiking trip, Aisha was nowhere to be found. Her boyfriend, Ethan, who lives with his grandfather was blamed for Aisha’s disappearance. The two fled town escaping the accusations that were pinned against them. Cassie, Ethan’s only friend who has been secretly in love with him wanted to prove his innocence. They both went out to the woods to find Aisha but instead of finding Aisha they found something else, a dark secret that only the forest could keep.

The Dollhouse is the first installment of Anya Allyn’s Dollhouse Trilogy. The second book Paper Dolls is as exciting as the first. Anya Allyn is set out to release the final installment this coming July 2013.

2. Paper Dolls by Anya Allyn

In the first book, Cassie went to the woods to help Ethan find Aisha. The two found a very dark secret. They found the Dollhouse. In this book, Cassie finds out the shocking reality of why the Dollhouse was created. The final chapter of the book will blow your mind. It revolves around Cassie’s capability to distinguish reality from fiction and dreams. It will make you crave for more.

3. Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

Nothing is scarier than falling in love with a dead girl or a ghost. Cas Lowood, a ghost hunter, fell in love with Anna Korlov, a ghost that he was hunting. Anna opened the door to hell to save Cas’ life. She vanished and was never seen again. However, Cas couldn’t stop thinking about Ana and he keeps on blaming himself for what happened. He has been having terrifying dreams of Ana when he is asleep and visions of her when he is awake. He is determined to find her and save her from eternal damnation.

4. The Immortal by Christopher Pike

This novel was written by one of New York Times best selling authors, Christopher Pike. The story revolves around a small figurine that Josie finds on a sacred island while vacationing with her parents and best friend in Greece. The story goes back in time to two women named Phthia and Syrope, who were fighting over a guy. Then it talks about the spat between Josie and her best friend Helen over some guy named Ralph then to more guy problems when they got to Greece. Things changed when Josie found the small statue in the sacred island that they visited.

5. Red by Kait Nolan

Lycanthropy is a curse that befalls all women in Elodie’s family. They become werewolves when they reach the age of sixteen and die whenever the give birth to a female child. Elodie has done her best to suppress the wolf inside her until the age of seventeen. She took a job as an intern for a scientist who studied the history and evolution of lycans. Sawyer, the young scientist that Elodie was working for felt that Elodie was different from normal girls. What Elodie, did not know was that Sawyer was also a werewolf in hiding, and she had the ability to keep him calm. For seventeen years, Elodie was able to keep her wolf tendencies in check but they began to become uncontrollable and she soon became the target of wolf hunters. It was up to Sawyer to protect her.

6. The Christmas Killer by Patricia Windsor

Rose Potter is a psychic even during her teenage years. When she dreamt the murder of one of the girls in their small town of Bethboro, everything changed. Nancy Emerson, the girl in Rose’s dream died two days after Rose dreamt of her death. Ever since that day, things were never the same for her.

7. The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike

Sita, a five thousand year old vampire, thought that she was able to kill her creator Yaksha successfully. For many years, Sita thought she was the last vampire roaming earth until someone tried to kill her. She couldn’t point out who wanted her dead and thought it could be the client of one of her victims. Determined to get to the bottom of who her mystery hunter is, Sita went back to high school and made friends with one of her victims’ son. The twist starts when Sita falls in love with the boy that he befriended.

8. Something Bad by Richard Satterlie

Gabe Peterson lost most of his childhood memories. He could only remember things that happened to him after he turned twelve years old. Other than that everything else is a blur. His memory skills were put to a test when an odd man of short stature arrived in his city. Unfortunate and unexplainable events started to happen, and all Gabe needed to do to save his family was to recall his past.

9. Velveteen by Daniel Marks

Sixteen-year-old Velveteen was abducted and killed by a psycho named Bonesaw. Her death has awakened her thirst for revenge towards her killer, but the only problem was that she went straight to purgatory. She’s determined to haunt her killer for eternity, but she first had to cross the realm that separates the dead from the living.

10. Unraveling Isobel by Eileen Cook

Isobel is not happy with the way things are going. They moved to a small island north west of the pacific in what seems to be a very spooky looking house together with her mom’s new husband. At their new house, Isobel starts to see ghosts especially the ghost of the dead daughter of her mom’s husband. Her mom and stepdad are starting to think that she might be mentally disturbed and sent her to see a psychiatrist. Isobel starts to doubt herself and believe that she might be crazy, not until things started to change in their new house.

11. Chain Letter by Christopher Pike

Alison received a chain letter that was signed from “Your Caretaker”. She and her friends thought it was some lame prank, but little did they know that someone was on to them. They each received a chain letter stating different requests and demands. They ignored the letters until terrible things started to happen.

12. The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

The Near Witch talks about the peaceful town of Near until an outsider comes along. Children were reported to be missing, and other strange things were happening a day after the outsider arrived. It was then a very strong and brave young girl named Lexi who decided to find out the truth. She has heard of stories about the Near Witch, and as she dug deeper she learned a lot more secrets.

13. Rabbits in the Garden by Jessica McHugh

Avery Norton discovered a secret tomb down in their basement. She was only thirteen-years old and was accused of murder. She was locked up in the Taunton State Lunatic Asylum. Avery was determined to prove her innocence and her sanity.

14. The Reapers are The Angels by Alden Bell

Temple is running for her life because of the zombies that have invaded America. Her killer is set on ending her life. It is up to Temple to save herself and the people around her.

15. Slice of Cherries by Dia Reeves

The story revolves around Kit and Fancy Cordelle, the daughters of the notorious killer, Bonesaw. They are partners in crime and do almost everything together. Their reputation has been tainted because of their father; nevertheless the two sisters don’t mind being tagged as outcasts. However, when they moved to Portero, things started to change. They were craving for something different. They were craving to kill.

16. House of Dark Shadows by Robert Liparulo

Xander King moved from Los Angeles to an isolated town together with his family. The fifteen-year old kid was disheartened because he would miss his group of friends that he makes films with. It was their favorite past time. But when Xander moved in to their new house his mind was changed. He was led to a passageway that paved a way to entrances to different places.

17. Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender

Two sisters, Alex and Kasey, both live in a very old house. Kasey the younger one is fixating on an old doll that she found in the house. Paranormal things started to happen such as water boiling on a stove that was never lit and the air conditioner making the house cold even if it is not plugged.

18. Bloodlines by Lindsay Anne Kendal

Keira belongs to a gifted family. They have the ability to sense things that are unknown. Her gifts started to manifest when she started to hear mysterious voices and have dreams that are unexplainable. Keira is on the search for the answer to all these mysterious voices and dreams that she has been having.

19. Cryer’s Cross by Lisa McMann

With a headcount of 212,  the town of Cryer’s Cross is devastated when one of their high school students disappear. Kendall, one of the teenagers in the town that was diagnosed of OCD became hysterical with what happened, more so when her boyfriend Nico also went missing.

20. Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

The story is about a zombie with a heart. Not your typical scary zombie story. R has no pulse, no individuality and no recollection of whatsoever of what his life was before he became a zombie. He does not like to kill people, but as a zombie, it is essential for him to kill to survive.

21. Sleepless by Thomas Fahy

The students of Saint Opportuna High went on a school excursion to New Orleans. When they came back, the students started having terrible and frightening dreams. They dreamt that they were murdering people. The downside was that the murders were real; they were not dreams.

22. Weregirls: Birth of the Pack by Petru Popescu

The Weregirls, a soccer club composed of girls, namely, Nikkie, Lily, Grazia and Arielle. Andra Hewlit, one of the new girls in school started to feel that Lily had psychic powers. Lily didn’t know that she and her friends had psychic powers until word spreads around that they all have the ability that allowed them to transform in to wolves. As the girls transform into wolves they were able to awaken an enemy, the Breed. It was up to the Weregirls to defeat this enemy.

23. Skeleton Man by Joseph Bruchac

The story is about a group of Mohawk Indians specifically a man who ate human flesh. The man ate his entire family even himself excluding their skeletons and with the exemption of his niece. Molly became an orphan at a very early age because her parents went missing. A mysterious man who claimed to be her uncle took her into custody. This uncle of hers would lock her up every night, and she is starting to wonder if her uncle could be the missing Skeleton Man.

24. The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

The story is set in New England in the year 1888. Henry works as an intern for a scientist also called a Monstrumologist, a scientist who specializes in the study of monsters.

25. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Something terrible happened to Jacob’s family which made him go to an isolated island in the Coast of Wales. In his trip, he found the remains of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As he wandered through the lobby, Jacob realized that the children were not just strange. They were threatening, and they might not even be dead yet.

There goes your list of the Top 25 Horror Novels for Young Adults. So what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

[Warning: Spoilers ahead. Take a look at the Iron Man infographics or a comparison of Iron Man vs. Batman if you haven’t seen the movie yet.]

10) Why did Aldrich Killian only breathe fire once?

Let’s start this list with an admittedly minor plot hole that nevertheless seems strange in retrospect. After Killian reveals that he has also injected himself with Extremis, he displays an ability to breathe fire. However, he only does it once. Why doesn’t he breathe fire again during the climactic battle with Tony Stark? Wouldn’t one good fire blast be enough to kill Tony even if he was in one of his suits? Speaking of the suits…

9) Where did Iron Patriot’s damage go?

After capturing Iron Patriot, Killian tries to force the suit open to extract James Rhodes. He eventually uses his Extremis powers to try and force him out. But in doing so he melts a good portion of Iron Patriot’s chest-plate. But when Iron Patriot goes to kidnap the President, the armor is completely unharmed. Killian mentioned that his men could fix the suit during the extraction scene, but the film implies that the suit was sent to kidnap the President immediately after they got Rhodes out. While we’re talking about Iron Patriot, let’s move on and ask the question…

8) How did Killian’s henchman use the War Machine armor?

During the film, we are shown that Tony’s suits have retinal scan technology, thereby only allowing select people to use them. One could argue that the War Machine armor was different since it belonged to Rhodes. But at one point, Tony reveals that Rhodes DOES have an account (leading to the WarMachineRox line). This implies that the War Machine armor DID have retinal scan technology. So how did Killian’s henchman bypass it so he could use it? Did he hack the armor? Tony’s suits are supposed to be state-of-the-art. So unless that henchman was a technological savant who could hack the suit en route to kidnapping the president, it seems unlikely if not impossible that he could use it.

7) Why did Killian warn his own men about the Mandarin?

Before we dive into the more egregious plot holes, I want to address another smaller one that still bothers me. At one point, we see Killian’s men getting ready to film one of the Mandarin’s video messages. We then hear them being instructed not to look him in the eyes if they want to live. At this point in the movie, it makes sense. After all, the audience isn’t aware yet that the Mandarin is just a puppet played by an actor. But later, the Mandarin “kills” a hostage during one of the videos. We later learn that this was staged, too. So, if the hostage killing was faked, obviously the people making the messages knew that it was all smoke and mirrors. So why put on the charade that he was real earlier in the film when there was nobody BUT the workers there to see him?

6) Why didn’t Tony arm the mansion after calling out the Mandarin?

One of the major themes of the film concerns Tony’s devotion to Pepper versus his devotion to his work and his suits. We learn that Pepper is, in fact, the most important thing to him. So why didn’t he warn Pepper or arm the mansion after giving the Mandarin his home address? If Pepper really was the most important thing to him, why didn’t he evacuate her or immediately put her in a suit to protect her? But this isn’t the only plot hole surrounding the scene where the Mandarin attacks the mansion. For example…

5) Why did the Mandarin attack Tony’s mansion when Maya was there?

We learn much later in the movie that Maya Hansen is working for Killian and that, in his eyes, she is ultimately disposable. But this doesn’t explain why the Mandarin orders helicopters to bomb Tony’s mansion while she was in it. Maybe the Mandarin and his men knew that she could survive the attack because of her exposure to Extremis, but Tony and Pepper didn’t. In fact, wouldn’t wounding Maya be a dead give-away to Tony about her and Killian’s connection to the bombings? And speaking about Pepper…

4) Why did the Mandarin wait to kidnap Pepper?

After the Mandarin’s men bomb Tony’s house, they fail to kidnap Pepper. Yes, Tony may have destroyed most of the helicopters, but why didn’t Maya kidnap Pepper? With Tony flying off to Tennessee while unconscious there was no reason for Maya to keep pretending that she wasn’t working for Killian. After all, later in the movie they go on and kidnap Pepper anyway. So why did they wait? It’s possible that they waited because they thought that Tony was dead, but that seems like a really flimsy reason considering the fact that Maya would have been able to see Tony flying away after the battle.

3) Why didn’t the authorities make the connection between the Tennessee bombing and the Mandarin attacks?

A massive chunk of the movie involves Tony going to rural Tennessee to investigate the mysterious death of a US servicemen that involved an explosion similar to the Mandarin bombings. It doesn’t take long for him to determine that his death, listed as a suicide, was actually caused by Extremis. So why doesn’t the US government or SHIELD look into it after the Mandarin begins his reign of terror? It’s not like the US government doesn’t know about it. After all, the movie explains that the government covered it up. If they covered it up, then they knew about the unusual circumstances surrounding his death. If they knew that, then why didn’t they immediately start investigating other wounded veterans who might have sought radical medical treatments? The film implies that the military cover-up may have been ANOTHER cover-up orchestrated by AIM. But the film only explicitly names ONE member of the government as working with AIM: the vice-president. Does the vice-president really have the power to keep such info a secret, especially from SHIELD, an organization specifically dedicated to such problems? I don’t think so.

2) Why did Tony wait until the end to summon all the suits?

For the big climax, Tony orders all of his suits to come to his aid to stop Killian and save the president. But this begs the question of why he didn’t do that before? Why didn’t he summon them when the mansion was attacked? Why didn’t he call them when he first arrived in Tennessee? Yes, his armor ran out of power, but he was able to call Pepper from a phone booth. Why couldn’t he tell her to go to his mansion and release them? One could argue that he couldn’t summon them until the end because up until then they were covered with debris and rubble. To that, I have two responses. One: how did Tony know that they weren’t covered in rubble anymore when he was literally a continent away? Two: are you telling me that around 40 Iron Man suits could blast their way out of the side of a mountain? Really? REALLY?

1) Where were the Avengers and SHIELD?

Here’s the biggest plot hole in the entire movie: WHERE WERE THE AVENGERS? Yes, part of the suspension of disbelief that comes with superhero stories set in a shared universe is that superheroes can’t be everywhere at once. Superman can’t always come help Batman, Thor can’t always help Spider-man. But here’s the big problem with a story like the one featured in IRON MAN 3: the entire nation was under attack at the time. If the entire story was limited to, say, California, then it would make sense that the other Avengers and SHIELD may not be able to get there in time. But the film takes place over several days. Where was Captain America when the President of the United States was attacked and kidnapped by terrorists? Where was Nick Fury and SHIELD when Tony disappeared? Are you telling me that Hawkeye, Black Widow, and the Hulk did nothing when the Mandarin’s attacks started? We aren’t even given a one-line explanation like “Oh, SHIELD’s busy rebuilding after New York” or “Thor’s off fighting something.” They just aren’t there. And in a franchise like the Marvel Cinematic Universe where the central selling point is the fact that all of these heroes exist in the same world, that is inexcusable.

Article written by Nathanael Hood

The likes of Rocky (1976) and its many sequels, Cinderella Man (2005) and The Fighter (2010) have all attempted to capture the essence of boxing. Some are more successful than others, but many actors and directors have walked away with Oscars and plaudits from critics and fans alike. Sylvester Stallone will always be remembered as The Italian Stallion.

What doesn’t always get recognised however, is the appearance of boxers in movies. Sometimes they are playing themselves in a cameo (like Sugar Ray Leonard in The Fighter or Roy Jones Jr. in Devil’s Advocate), and other times they play characters in films, like 70’s heavyweight contender George Chuvalo in 1986’s The Fly or former three weight world champion James Toney, who played Smokin’ Joe Frazier in Michael Mann’s Ali biopic in 2001.

In most cases, the fighter is doing his part to help out the film or to raise his profile, and it usually doesn’t affect their career. But there are four examples of fighters who went to Hollywood for a film role, and their ring career suffered as a result.

Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko

There is only one example where two fighters starred in a Hollywood film that subsequently saw them fall in the ring shortly after. Lennox Lewis was undisputed heavyweight champion of the world in 2001, with Wladimir Klitschko the heir apparent. When the two were asked to play opposite each other in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven remake, they jumped at the chance. It gave them the chance to hang out in Vegas with the likes of Brad Pitt and George Clooney, and it also gave them the chance to size each other up in the ring. They were rivals, after all.

Lennox Lewis was due to meet the massive underdog Hasim Rahman in a routine title defence in South Africa in April, and while Rahman was training and acclimatising to the humidity and the heat of Johannesburg, Lewis was pretending to box Klitschko in a Vegas Casino fight that is cut short when the power is cut and Danny Ocean’s men hit the casinos.

Two key rules in boxing: 1) Protect yourself at all times, and 2) Never underestimate your opponent. Lewis broke the second rule first, turning up for the fight in less than peak physical condition. He broke the second rule when a Rahman right hand laid him flat out on the mat in round 5. Lewis was embarrassed and relieved of his title. But he did get to hang out with Julia Roberts in Vegas.

Lewis avenged the defeat in November of the same year by 4^th round knockout, but boxing purists will always say: Wouldn’t it have been better to have done that the first time, and knocked the Hollywood cameo on the head?

Wladimir Klitschko’s downfall wasn’t as immediate, but you can argue that his ‘rising star’ image and HBO backing in America was making the Ukrainian champ a little too cocky. In March 2003, Klitschko turned up to fight South Africa’s Corrie Sanders, a hard puncher but past his best at 38. All the talk was of a Lennox Lewis fight for real this time. Klitschko looked past Sanders, but didn’t get past him. He was bludgeoned to defeat in two rounds, suffering four knockdowns in under four minutes.

What was the second rule again?

Roy Jones Jr.

Roy Jones Jr. had earned the nickname ‘Superman’ after winning world titles from middleweight right up heavyweight, beating John Ruiz in 2003 to become WBA heavyweight champion. That summer, the Matrix Reloaded was released to huge hype, with Jones playing a small part as Ballard. Boxing and Hollywood were the Pensacola born fighter’s oyster.

However, by the time the Matrix trilogy came to its end the following year, Roy Jones was looking less like superman and more like Clark Kent. Instead of staying at heavyweight for lucrative fights with Lewis or Mike Tyson, Jones decided to boil himself down to light heavyweight to defend his old title against the cocky and brash Antonio Tarver, who was on a mission to goad his fellow Florida native into fighting him.

After winning a razor-thin decision in the first fight in November 2003, but having looked more vulnerable than ever in the ring, Jones accepted a rematch with Tarver, after Tarver cried robbery. Tarver left no doubt in the rematch, knocking Jones out in the second round. Jones went from unbeatable to mere mortal in just six months, and lost three in a row after Tarver landed the knockout blow. The Hollywood career never truly took off for Jones, and his boxing career was never the same.

Antonio Tarver

Although Antonio Tarver proved that superman was very much a mere mortal like the rest of us, he also came across the Hollywood curse that fighters sometimes have to ensure.

Sly Stallone was looking for authenticity for the sixth and final Rocky film in 2006, and who better to play Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon than the mighty mouthed light-heavyweight champion of the world? Full of confidence and with more charisma than most, Tarver got the job and put in a solid performance as the untested champ who has to face Rocky Balboa to prove himself.

In the same year, Tarver defended his light-heavyweight title to Bernard Hopkins, one of the greatest middleweights of all time who was looking to jump two divisions to win the title. Tarver underestimated how difficult it was to get back to 12st 7lbs after putting on pounds to play the heavyweight Hollywood champ, and was lethargic and poor in the Hopkins fight, where he was dominated over 12 rounds.

These fighters are all great fighters, and in the cases of Lewis, Klitschko and Tarver, all became world champions again (Klitschko still is and has defended his titles more than any other champ other than the great Joe Louis and Larry Holmes). But sometimes even greatness takes a detour, usually when Hollywood comes a-calling.

1.  The Original

Anthony Perkins was the original Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. In Robert Bloch’s original novel, Bates was a middle aged guy with a gut. In short, Bates was more like the man who inspired him which was serial killer Ed Gein. Of course, after Perkins played the role, every actor after Bates simply had to be a skinny brown haired guy acting like Anthony Perkins. Perkins was that influential in the role. Of course, if Vince Vaughn was to play the role tomorrow, there is a more than decent chance that Vaughn would be the first guy to accurately match Robert Bloch’s original description.

2. The Unknown

If you have been to the Alfred Hitchcock museum at Universal Studios in Orlando, then you may have seen a short film in which Anthony Perkins claims he did not actually do the crime. Apparently, Perkins had other commitments during that time and they used some guy off of the set to be a stand in for one of the most famous scenes of all time. Unlike in The Princess Bride, no one decided to actually record any of this for posterity and the guys name was lost to history. Who stabbed or pretended to stab Janet Leigh in the shower? As they said in JFK , it’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Not even the stabber knows.

3.  The Stand-In

If Anthony Perkins is the “land war in Asia” version of Norman Bates, the Kurt Paul would qualify as “Never argue with a Sicilian when death is on the line” version of Norman Bates. Paul was a stand in for Perkins in Psycho II and Psycho III  for stunts involving Norman. You can translate the word ‘stunts’ as ‘having to fight people while wearing an old lady’s dress.’ In Psycho IV: The Beginning, Paul would get a small speaking part. In the 1980s, Paul became something of the Anthony Perkins Lite of being Norman Bates. He only had one calorie but he tended to get a little more work. Paul would actually parody Bates in an episode of Sledge Hammer! as well as play a version of Norman in Knight Rider of all things. In 1987, Paul would star in a television movie / pilot attempt at a series called Bates Motel. This is not to be confused with the current A&E series. In the 1987 version, Norman was grown and had a roommate. Yes, try and imagine the Odd Couple meets a wacky Jeffrey Dahmer. In the 1980s, they gave Manimal a season and not this?

4. The Kid From E.T.

Lets face, there are precisely two things that you know Henry Thomas for. You know that he played Eliot in E.T. and you know that he wore a barbed wire blanket in Legends of the Fall. In Legends of the Fall, you may have remarked ‘Hey, aren’t they riddling that kid from E.T. with bullets?’ That is why you might want to go back and watch Psycho IV: The Beginning. That is where you get to see young Henry attempt to not be ‘the kid from E.T.’  while getting some good old fashioned forced feminization and momma Norma smearing him with lipstick. Yeah, who could have guessed that would turn out wrong?

5.  Norman Goes Old School

If we were to tell you that Psycho was going to have an actor who later did Old School and added masturbation, you would probably be more convinced that was the parody than a stunt double doing a comedic turn in Sledge Hammer. However, Gus Van Sant and crew were completely serious even with hiring lesbian (at the time) Anne Heche in the Janet Leigh role. Van Sant wanted to make a shot by shot remake of Hitchcock’s classic to get immersed in the Hitchcock process. Two things occurred. First, Van Sant actually did start to make better movies after he made Psycho. Second, Vaughn would learn the value of jerking off and people that jerk off regularly as an audience for all of his future projects.

6. The Copy Of A Copy

In the 2012 film Hitchcock, James D’Arcy plays Anthony Perkins interviewing to be Norman Bates. That means that D’Arcy is supposedly the Norman Bates in the final version of the film. You never actually see much of the film Psycho in Hitchcock because the entire point is that Hitchcock is about the making of Psycho. The thing about it is that if you want to get just a little ‘meta,’ the actors in Hitchcock could in theory re-assemble to make a really good faithful re-make of the original. Imagine if they actually made Psycho with Scarlet Johansson as Marion Crane, Jessica Biel as Lila Crane, James D’Arcy as Norman Bates, and Josh Yeo as Sam Loomis. At the very least, it might wash out the bad taste left by Gus Van  Sant’s science project.

7. Charlie And The Murder Factory

Who would have ever thought that Henry Thomas’ turn in Psycho IV: The Beginning would ever amount to something akin to a proud tradition? Apparently, hiring former child actors to play Norman Bates is now the new black. In A&E’s series Bates Motel  (again not to be confused with the 1987  TV Movie) Freddie Highmore takes over the role of Norman Bates. Now, Norman is a normal high school teenager with a cell phone whose Mom happens to hack up the former owner of the hotel in the first episode. Its not easy being a teenager these days. This kitsch factor to it all is that Highmore was Charlie Bucket in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as Arthur in Arthur and the Invisibles. That means that the kid from Wendell and Vinnie might want to go ahead and start shopping in the junior miss department right now.

Pay Attention To The Celebrations

If you watch the end of  RETURN OF THE JEDI: SPECIAL EDITION, where are they celebrating? They are celebrating on Coruscant, the Cloud City at Bespin, and the Moon of Endor. Lets examine each one of these locations reasoning for just a moment. In Coruscant, Emperor Palpatine had dissolved the Galactic Senate on a planet that was dedicated to being the political center of the universe. It was dissolved in favor of territorial governors. That means that the base of legislative and executive operations moved to the territories away from the previous hub. In short,  imagine the economic disaster to Washington D.C. and northern Virginia if the government suddenly declared Congress and the Executive branch out of work. Now,  picture there is a great big statue of Barack Obama celebrating everyone being out of relatively good jobs. The minute that he is gone? Yes, the statue is going down.

The Cloud City at Bespin?  How many years exactly has that little spot of Heaven been under direct Imperial control now? When they were flying under the radar under Lando’s stewardship, no one was bitching at all about it.  As a matter of fact, they were pretty happy to run their operation under the Empire with low interference. If the Rebels had left a garrison there mucking with their money and made their leader a fugitive, everyone in Bespin would be wearing their Darth Vader Underoos up until the end.

Endor? Until the Rebels arrived, the Ewok community appeared to be relatively undisturbed by the Imperial prescence on their planet. The tribe had to be convinced to fight. Even then, the Imperial troops were only fighting back against a launched offensive. It was a purely defensive maneuver. There was not even a prescence in the tree cities or any needless atrocities committed against the Ewok community. Even during the battle, the Imperials did not launch a counter offensive against the Ewok’s homes, only against the teddy bears that were attacking them. Does this seem particularly representative of a universal celebration or a few selected locales with a gripe?

The Death Star / Alderaan Tragedy

Two of the greatest tragedies in American history are without a doubt the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the attacks on September 11th. Before we start, keep in mind that both had conspiracy theories painting the United States government as the ‘bad guys.’ Imagine if the news came over the wire that both had occurred on the same day. A sneak attack on a military installation resulting in the loss of life of all the soldiers, engineers, and government officials involved. Picture this news hitting about the same time that the news of an entire peaceful planet of civilians being killed on the same day. Do you think that the Rebel base in Hoth was set up there merely because they liked to wear warm clothes? The Rebellion was immediately blamed for both atrocities.

Even if you had been sympathetic to the Rebellion up to that point, then all of that sympathy would have gone up in the same flames as the Death Star and Alderaan. The Rebels were not hailed as heroes. They had to go to the farthest coldest corner of the universe to merely survive. Hoth had to be inhabited only by space camels and Yeti precisely because the Rebels did not trust anyone to not rat them out. If you lived on one of the many planets in the solar system, not only would no one be raising a glass to honor the valiant Rebels; you might well spit on them if you heard such a treacherous traitorous statement.

The Mon Calamari Were Dangerous Pirates

Lets take just a moment to examine those nice lobster men like Admiral Ackbar. How did they get those ships that they had in the battle with the second Death Star? By all accounts, they committed mutiny on what were essentially luxury liners and weaponized those same said luxury liners. Try and imagine if  today Somalian Pirates overtook a fleet of luxury liners, mounted cannons on them, and then declared war on the countries of the world. Who exactly would you be rooting for in this scenario? Admiral  Ackbar could broadcast on interstellar television that this government had slaughtered and subjugated his entire race. You still are not going to be in support of him taking the QE2 and turning it into roving weapon of war underneath his sole command. What are you?  Insane? This is the dangerous terrorist that you would want in a position of greater power? You would hang on the news of the Imperial Navy tracking down and destroying every one of these ships. This is especially true if you were planning on taking a space cruise some time soon. After all, it is never really mentioned what happened to any of the passengers out there.

The JEDI Would Be A Generation’s Al-Qaeda

Obi Wan Kenobi lived in a cave in a desert planet. Yoda was consigned to a swamp planet as a retirement plan. Why? Because that was the only places in which they were safe from not only the Empire, but also from the locals. The JEDI were seen as religious zealots who attempted to assassinate the universe’s most respected leader. Of course, they had a different point of view. Osama Bin Laden frequently made recordings to tell his point of view. What did those do? They scared the living hell out of anyone who heard that he was still alive. Just imagine the following new story “Former Clone Wars General and now intergalactic terrorist Obi Wan Kenobi who still adheres to his ‘Force’ religion recorded the following statement. We believe from the background that he may still be on a desert planet possibly Tatooine…”

Why was Luke so enthralled with the possibilities? He was a kid living out his entire life on a dirt scratching farm on the desert planet. How exactly doyou think young terrorists get recruited in the first place? They are young men adhering to a religious belief who happen to live in a horrible situation. Hell yeah, they are up for grabbing a weapon and going after whatever oppressive society that is doing this to them. Who else did Obi Wan work with? There was a smuggler on the run from a gangster and his personal body guard. The mission itself was a prison break of a fired government official accused of treason and sedition. Do you honestly think that you would be on the side of the sword wielding old mystical zealot branded a assassin as well as a member of a dangerous religious sect decades ago? Is that where you are lining up your allegiances?

The Old Republic Was Actually A Bloated Two Headed Monster

These days, one of the most dangerous regimes in the world is considered to be Iran. Iran is a mixture of an elected body as well as religious council. Iran has a President as well as a Supreme Ruler. If there was a counter revolution tomorrow which overthrew the Iranian system of government, there would a nearly worldwide celebration. Certainly, an Iranian Spring would be viewed as a wonderful thing in the west. Now, think about how the old Republic was run. You had the JEDI Tower which obviously was seen as a branch of government in and of itself. They had the power to mediate disputes as well as restore order. That sounds all fine and dandy until you see some guy in a flowing robe having taken a vow of chastity wielding a light saber whose word is automatically law. On the other hand, you have the Galactic Senate which struggles to get anything accomplished.

The system failed precisely because Palpatine knew how to create the exact situation to make the system fail. If it had not been Palpatine, it would have reasonably been someone else.  Imagine if a large corporation with a license like the Trade Federation had survived several attempts to bring them down  for trying to start a war in the court system. Imagine that they not only weren’t punished, but also got to keep their trade license. Nothing happened to them. After the verdict came out on the officers involved in the Rodney King beating, there was open rioting in the streets. How do you think the news of the Trade Federation was received multiple times? People were already saying that there were problems with the government. The people like Obi Wan, Yoda, and Amidala trying to hold on to the old way of life were the people actively benefiting from the Old Republic.

It stands to reason that they were not cheering for the Chancellor’s expanded powers. That power had to come from somewhere. They knew that the power was being taken away from them. Ultimately, you would have supported a new Republic because a successful military coup would have established one. However, do not actively try and say that everyone was happy about the Rebels winning or even that you necessarily would have been either.

Nicolas Spark’s Mr. Freeze

Comic by the Author of The Notebook

It may seem a little odd at first, however you have to remember who the character is and what the novelist generally does. At his heart, Victor Fries is at the center of a tragic love story. His wife Nora has an advanced illness, and Fries doomed himself to sub zero temperatures trying to save her. Without  the science fiction subtext, it really is the type of story that Sparks has expertly dealt with in novels like  The Notebook and Message in a Bottle. At the very least, a Sparks treatment of the love story leading up to Victor and Nora’s tragedy would be nothing short of a phenomenon. It is a treatment which could permanently enhance an already compelling character.

Chuck Palahniuk’s Firestorm

Comic by the Author of The Fight Club

This would actually focus on the original Ronnie Raymond / Martin Stein version of the character. The Teenage Raymond sharing a mind with Nobel Prize winning physicist Stein as well as molecular altering abilities. For the writer of Fight Club and Choke, a split personality with the basic powers of an every day god would be a natural. Properly understood, Firestorm was always a ticking nuclear bomb. If the teen angst could not be properly tempered by Stein, then the fabric of society itself could come apart. It would be almost irresistible for  Palahniuk not to explore that kind of angle.

E.L. James’  Wonder Woman 

Comic by the Author of 50 Shades of Gray

When psychologist William Moulton Marston designed Wonder Woman, she was basically an extended domination fantasy. The author of the current extended domination fantasy Fifty Shades of Gray and its sequels would be ideal to return Diana to her real, dare we say, adult roots. The two basic problems with most Wonder Woman writing is first that it is done by men and second the writing is done by people who have no appreciation for the culture which created the character in the first place. If you want a true Wonder Woman, then why not get some one who really gets the subtext that started it all.

J.K. Rowling’s Spider-Man

Comic by the Author of The Harry Potter Series

Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book Hero With a Thousand Faces would ideally encompass both Peter Parker and Harry Potter. There are enough wrinkles in both characters to give them uniquely different challenges. Ideally, Rowling would write the adventures of the teenage Parker. You have Gwen and Mary Jane as foil and possible love interests. There is tragic characters such as Curt Conners who seems like a natural comparison to Lupin. There are high school protagonists such as Flash Thompson. Also, you would have the familiar theme to Rowling of great power bearing great responsibility and having been orphaned at a young age to live with once removed family members.

Stephanie Meyer’s  Superboy

Comic by the Author of The Twilight Series

To some, it would be complete blasphemy to compare a teenage Clark Kent and Edward Cullen. However, the sparkly kid with superpowers analogy is not as terribly far off as you might think. Ultimately, the Twilight series was about attempting to integrate into society  even with different abilities. Meyer’s Kent would be a romantic reluctant to allow others into his world. It would be a melding of the classic comic book Superboy and the modern take from Smallville. In addition, Meyer seems to demonstrate an intimate knowledge of small town life in her novels.

Anne Rice’s Wolverine

Comic by the Author of the Vampire Chronicles

At her best, Anne Rice writes about vulnerable potential immortals. Also, the original Vampire Chronicles novels in essence focused on the problems of a closeted homosexual underground. Logan, like Lestat, is a complicated violent character in search of his most basic humanity. He exists in a community that must hide itself  against a world that fears and does not understand them.  A Wolverine who is alone and traveling the world encountering unlikely mutants is precisely the sort of character that Rice’s fans love seeing her write. It would also give Rice the freedom to populate that world with new compelling background characters to further enhance his own personal mythos.

Stephen King’s Fantastic Four

Comics by the Author of The Shining and Carrie

In addition to monsters and the northeast, Stephen King has two types of novels that are notable. They concern people attempting to deal with superpowers ( Carrie,  Firestarter, The Shining ) and a world spiraling towards the apocalypse ( The Stand, The Gunslinger Novels ) . With the Fantastic Four, King would have all of these elements ( including monsters and the east coast ) as well as a family dynamic which is at the core of his best novels. The great thing about King’s novels is that they appear grounded in a reality you can believe even when dealing with an alien invasion like The Tommyknockers.

Tom Clancy’s  Iron Man

Comic by the Author Tom Clancy

The thing that is often missing from the writing on Iron Man is writers who legitimately love the source material. They like the technological and superhero aspects, but they would not actually get along with Tony Stark in real life. They consider a military industrialist obsessed with technology somewhat repulsive. This was even the case in Iron Man’s creation. Stan Lee believed it would be a challenge to make a fan base love an unlovable character. Iron Man is a culmination of everything that Tom Clancy praises in his books. From military history to technological advancement, Clancy is a relentless researcher who wants to make sure even the smallest detail is correct. Clancy does it out of a place of love for the material. Having a writer who loved him ( but not in spite of him) would be a direction that the Iron Man comic books have quite frankly never taken before.

Orion P. Howe

While you couldn’t sign up to be a soldier for the Union army during the Civil War until you were 18, young boys were allowed to enlist as musicians. Aged just 12, Orion joined up to help his country by rallying the troops with songs during the fighting. He ended up seeing 14 different battles, and while men twice his age at least entered the fray armed, Orion had nothing but a drum. During one battle he was instructed to deliver an important order, which he did, despite being badly wounded in the process. For his bravery he received the Medal of Honor, making him one of the youngest recipients in history.

Harriet Hanson Robinson

The mid-1800s were a dangerous time to be a poor child. Many of them were sent to work in the new factories popping up all over. Conditions were appalling and much of the work was incredibly dangerous. Harriet was just ten years old when she started working as a “bobbin doffer” in her local mill, switching out the bobbins full of thread with empty ones. But just a year later the mill workers organized a strike when they were docked 12.5% of their pay. According to her autobiography, on the day of the strike many of the women and girls Harriet boarded with were having second thoughts about not showing up for work. The 11-year-old motivated them all to strike for the pay they deserved. Harriet obviously enjoyed her first taste of activism, as she went on to fight for women’s right to vote.

Iqbal Masih

In 1993 at a carpet making factory in Pakistan, the conditions were even worse for the child laborers. Iqbal was one of thousands of children living in virtual slavery, working up to 14 hours a day, chained to their looms so they could not even take bathroom breaks. At age 10, Iqbal escaped but was caught and returned to his captors by the police. Not one to be discourage, he escaped again almost immediately. Over the next two years he campaigned to draw attention to the torture he and so many others were subjected to every day. It is estimated he helped save over 3,000 children from bondage. Shortly before his 13^th birthday, Iqbal was shot and killed; possibly by people who didn’t like his message that child labor is a bad thing.

Sybil Ludington

Paul Revere is famous for his midnight ride warning the colonists that the British were coming, but he was far from the only person who made similar rides. Another was the 16-year-old Sybil, who rode all night in the rain to alert 400 militia members. While Revere barely managed 20 miles, Sybil covered 40. Along the way she was attacked by a highwayman, but managed to beat him off with a stick. General George Washington singled her out for her bravery.

Allen Jay

The Quakers were against slavery so when the Civil War broke out the Jay family decided to turn their religious convictions to action. Allen was only 14 when his parents’ home became a stop on the Underground Railroad. In his autobiography, Allen recounts how escaped slaves would show up at his house and he would hide them in the cornfields. It was his job to feed the “passengers” so that his father could truthfully deny ever seeing them when authorities came by, which they did on occasion. At night Allen would take a wagon to his grandfather’s house, the next stop on the railroad, and drop off any escaped slaves. Many of the people he helped managed to find freedom in Canada.

Helmuth Hübener

Many of the people who stood up to the Nazis in their home country were surprisingly young. The Hübener family was Mormon, and that church was against many of Hitler’s actions. Helmuth started listening to foreign radio reports, which alone was enough to have him arrested for treason. Then he took it a step further by penning anti-Nazi literature, and recruiting friends to the resistance movement. Together they distributed more than 60 different pamphlets around Hamburg.  Helmuth was still only 17 when he was caught and sentenced to death for his treasonous actions. He was executed by guillotine in 1942.

Melba Pattillo Beals

The desegregation of southern schools was a difficult process for everyone involved, and perhaps none more so than the “Little Rock Nine,” who were chosen to start the desegregation process in Arkansas. Melba decided to attend an all-white high school when she was just 13, although she was 15 by the time she actually enrolled. From the very beginning she was subjected to dangerous levels of harassment. First the Army had to be called in just to get her into the school. She was spat on, tripped, and in one extreme incident acid was thrown in her face. Her family received hundreds of threatening letters and phone calls. Despite all this, Melba continued to attend the school and was only stopped when the Governor shut it down.

10. Harry Connick Jr.

Poor Harry Connick Jr. is a Pop Standards legend in an American Idol era.  Most people know Connick from his TV and movie roles, which he is almost forced to take to subsidize his music career.  With nearly a dozen #1 Jazz albums in his career, a dozen Grammy nominations, and even a Tony nomination, Harry Connick Jr. has only skirted mainstream success.  His nearly 30 album discography has moved over 25 million units, but only 2 albums broke into the mainstream Top 10, and neither cracked the Top 5.  It doesn’t seem like you actually hear Connick unless you are listening to NPR.

9. Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  He released over 60 albums during his short life, for he passed away at age 52, and his family released nearly 30 more posthumously.  Zappa played rock, he played jazz, he played anything.  Musicians from all walks of life cite him as an inspiration.  The charts were not as kind, though.  Zappa only had 2 of his albums go Gold, and only one cracked the Top 10 on the album charts.  As a matter of fact, his highest charting single was 1982′s novelty hit “Valley Girl” that shot up to #32.  Most Americans remember Frank Zappa in a suit and tie in 1985 testifying before Congress about the importance of free speech.

8. Dandy Warhols / Brian Jonestown Massacre

You may not know either band by name, but I bet you’re familiar with one of the best documentaries ever made (not directed by Micheal Moore).  In 2004, the documentary film Dig! won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.  The narration of Dig! is simple, it is the story two bands, The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre and how their band’s careers paralleled one another.  The Dandy Warhols seemed to have mostly good luck, whereas the Brian Jonestown Massacre seemed to have predominantly bad luck.  Despite positive reviews and a cult following for both bands, they both seem to have been relegated to middle of the night listening on college radio.  The Brian Jonestown Massacre have released over a dozen albums that have barely dented any charts and The Dandy Warhols have a few singles (and no albums) that have slipped into the Top 40.

7. John Frusciante

You may not instantly recognize the name John Frusciante, for most fans know him as the other guitarist in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Frusciante is on numerous lists as one of the top guitarists in rock history, but what you may not know is that he has released almost a dozen solo albums to universally glowing reviews.  Drug addiction took him to the brink of death while with the Chili Peppers, which was recorded by a documentary film crew, then rehab opened a whole new avenue of creative exploration.  Hardly any of his solo work has made it into the Top 200 in the United States while he has collaborated with artists as varied as the Mars Volta to the Wu-Tang Clan.

6. Patti Smith

“Because the Night” is Patti Smith’s signature song when it comes to the mainstream, but few people know that that song is her only Top 40 single in her career.  Smith has released over a dozen albums, her last, “Banga” in 2012, received good reviews, but only two albums in her career even got into the Top 20.  Known as the ‘Godmother of Punk,’ she also produces quality poetry and visual artistry.  Despite her successes and activism, I’m still not sure how she makes money.

5. David Byrne

David Byrne was the lead singer of the critically acclaimed, and successful, band the Talking Heads.  The Talking Heads broke up in 1991, partially because of David Byrne’s need for musical challenges.  Never looking back, except for a brief re-union when admitted to the Rock Hall, Byrne has released over a dozen solo and soundtrack albums.  The critical praise continues as the sales have basically stopped.  None of his solo projects have nudged the Top 40.  He has also been the guest vocalist on over 2 dozen other band’s albums from Dizzee Rascal on one end of the spectrum to La Portuaria on the other.

4. Prince

Nothing says 1984 more than “Purple Rain.”  A good movie with a great soundtrack.  If you had to chart the peak of Prince’s commercial success, it would have to be right about there.  Hits continued until the early 90′s, with his last #1 song being in 1991, but the Grammy nominations continue to roll in.  Remember when Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in his well documented legal battle with Warner Bros.?  Well the fallout ended with Prince being emancipated and releasing about an album a year for 20 more years.  I believe the Prince math is that he’d make more money self-releasing albums that sold a tenth of the units to hardcore fans than when he was with a major label courting the casual fan.  I think many artists respect the freedom of his business model as much as his music.

3. Public Enemy

When Gansta Rap first broke in the late 1980′s, Public Enemy was at the forefront, despite the band being more of a politically aware outfit than a gun toting caricature.  Controversy dogged the band right from the beginning and most of their exposure came from news reports as opposed to singles.  At the turn of the millennium, Chuck D had become a talk show host and Flavor Flav became a Reality Show star.  But something funny happened to Public Enemy, it seems that the accolades never stopped as musicians from all walks of life continue to cite them as an influence.  P.E. still releases relevant, well reviewed albums that no one buys.

2. Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel started his career with the band Genesis.  The band blazed a trail as pioneers, but they were primarily an underground incarnation.  After Gabriel left the band, Genesis had their drummer Phil Collins take over the lead vocal position and megastardom ensued. Gabriel went on to put out some well reviewed music, but it was his videos, especially “Shock the Monkey” and “Sledgehammer” that put him into the public consciousness.  (Yes ladies, and the song from the movie “Say Anything.”)   But Gabriel never stopped working.  He’s been a guest on over 2 dozen other artist releases, dabbled in World Music and even re-worked many of his hits with an orchestra.  Never one to rest on his laurels, the awards pile up on his mantle as the mainstream wonders whatever happened to Peter Gabriel?  Quick, name a Peter Gabriel song since “In Your Eyes.”  See, you can’t do it.

1. Bob Dylan

Arguably the most influential artist of the 60′s counterculture, Bob Dylan is a songwriting and folk music legend.  By the time 1973 came around, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” would be the last time a single of his would even sniff the Top 10 Singles Chart.  But Bob Dylan never stopped making music.  This year he released his 35th studio album “Tempest,” which the old fogies at Rolling Stone magazine promptly slapped a perfect 5 star review onto.  Bob Dylan has Grammy awards, an Academy award, a Golden Globe award, and you can find him in the Rock and Roll and the Grammy Halls of Fame.  And to top it all off, he received the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year.  Whew.  Now find me someone who’s not a dirty hippy living on a broken down bus who listens to his new music.

Author:  Fred Hunt

The Death of the Party

The 16^th century Dane Tycho Brahe is famous for his work in astronomy, and the fact that he lost his nose in a duel. Despite his interesting life, his death may be even more so. While historians are divided about how he met his fate, legend has it that he died because he just couldn’t bring himself to leave a party. In those days it was considered bad form to get up before a meal was finished, and banquets could take hours. Brahe filled up on wine but didn’t get up to use the bathroom, until eventually his bladder burst. As uncouth as it might have been to leave during dinner, we can’t imagine it was much better to die in the middle of one.

So Funny You Could Just Die

Numerous people in history are said to have died from laughter. Just in case you’re too afraid to ever watch your favorite sitcom again, most of these people had underlying heart conditions. In 1975, Englishman Alex Mitchell laughed for almost half an hour straight at an episode of The Goonies and then collapsed. His widow bore the show no ill will, though, sending a thank you note for making his last minutes so enjoyable. In 2003, a Thai man was having the funniest dream ever. He started laughing in his sleep and even though his wife tried to wake him up he died while still unconscious and still entertained by whatever was going on in his head.

The Ultimate Gamer

People all over the world are obsessed with computer games, to the point that they lose sleep to keep playing them. But rarely are people so engrossed in a videogame that they forget to eat, sleep, or look away from the screen for days at a time. But one South Korean man did just that in 2005, playing Starcraft at an internet café for 50 hours straight. He had already been fired from his job since he forgot to show up once he started playing the game, so he had all the time in the world. Witnesses said he only paused to use the bathroom and to take power naps. The postmortem indicated he had died from heart failure due to exhaustion.

Making a Point

Here’s a tip: if you work in a skyscraper, stay away from the windows, even if they are supposed to be unbreakable. In 1993, Gary Hoy, a Canadian lawyer, decided to prove to an office full of people that the windows on their building were really solid. This was especially ridiculous since they worked on the 24^th floor. But Gary did prove his point, because when he threw himself at a window he just bounced right back. His big mistake was doing it again, just for emphasis. While the window itself stayed solid, it popped out of its frame and he plummeted to his death.

Old West Justice

Lots of people were shot to death in the old west, but very few of them did it to themselves. Clement Vallandigham had an illustrious career in politics although his opinions on the Civil War were so controversial he was actually expelled from the Union. After the war was over he returned to the law and in 1871 was defending a man accused of shooting another in a bar fight. Vallandigham wanted to prove to the jury that there was a possibility that the deceased had actually accidentally shot himself. To do this he put a pistol in his pocket and recreated the man’s movements in the fight. He proved his point a bit too well, as the gun went off and killed him. His client was acquitted.

Crocs on a Plane

Tiny planes are dangerous. So are crocodiles. Combine the two and you have a recipe for disaster. In 2010 a plane crashed in the Congo and originally it appeared like they had run out of fuel. But the one survivor of the crash told a different story. During the flight a crocodile escaped from someone’s hand luggage. (He was probably smuggling it to sell illegally.) Because crocodile have big pointy teeth, the 20 people on board panicked and ran to the front of the plane. The sudden shift in weight threw the plane off balance and the pilots were unable to regain control. Incidentally, the croc survived the crash.

Not Monkeying Around

Parts of India have a big monkey problem. As the population on the subcontinent explodes, humans and animals are living in much closer proximity, and the monkeys are fighting back. Attacks are relatively common in Delhi, but deaths less so. In 2007, however, the Deputy Mayor of Delhi himself was set upon. He was relaxing on his balcony when four monkeys surrounded him slowly creeping closer before they attacked. Witnesses say he tried to fight back with a newspaper, but they somehow managed to push him over the edge and he died of wound sustained from the fall. Local politicians said more had to be done to curb the “simian menace.” This sounds a lot like how Planet of the Apes probably started.

Sexed to Death

It’s hard enough being married to one person, so the pressure of keeping half a dozen spouses happy is probably almost unbearable. One man in Nigeria was literally forced to have sex with his six wives until it killed him. Last year a man named Uroko Onoja came home at 3am and decided he wanted some alone time with his youngest wife. But his five older wives felt he had been spending too much time with her and invaded the room armed with knives. They demanded their husband have sex with all of them, one at a time, right then and there, starting with the youngest. Onoja managed to do the deed with four of them, but as his fifth wife walked towards the bed he stopped breathing, killed from the sheer exertion of keeping his women satisfied.

Eat Right, Die Anyway

A lot of people are obsessed with eating healthy and exercising, in the hopes that they can put off the inevitable a bit longer. But in some cases such dedication can be just as deadly as sitting on the couch all day eating potato chips. In 1974, Englishman Basil Brown died of an overdose of carrot juice. Brown, whose healthy eating regime involved drinking one gallon of the stuff a day, had had an orange tint to his skin for some time. But drinking one gallon of almost anything other than water a day isn’t great for your liver, and after years of the practice it finally shut down.

One Gun Salute

John Kendrick had every reason to be happy as he sailed into Honolulu harbor. He had spent years on the sea, finding new trade routes, making friends with native peoples, and sometimes fighting them, but usually winning. Now he and his crew were coming to Hawaii for a victory celebration. As his boat sailed into the harbor, other boats fired their cannons as a welcome salute. Normally this involved removing the actual cannonballs before lighting the fuse, so no one would get hurt. One boat forgot this basic safety instruction though, and a cannonball ripped through Kendrick’s ship, killing him and several crew members. Definitely not the best victory parade ever seen.

If you want to know about crazy things that happened after death, check out Kathy’s new book, Funerals to Die For.

This could be interpreted in so many ways.

Lately, more and more people have been jumping on the “hate her” bandwagon, because the sooner a pretty blonde girl falls to Earth, the sooner ugly bald people can feel better about themselves. Everything she does lately is fodder for jokes, scorn, or both. Hell, even Alex Trebek is getting in on the fun:

What are “crappy memes we thought you were better than,” Alex?

Wow, when even mild-mannered game show hosts take you to task, you must really be screwing up. Either that, or you’ve won too much money and the show now hates you. But last we checked, Taylor Swift has never even been on a game show, so what exactly did she do? May people offer reasons for giving her Hell, but virtually none of them hold up under scrutiny. Why? Because the crap we sling at her is the same crap we sling at damn near everybody!

Why even bother venting your spleen at Swift, when she’s just another pop star of many who:

4. Writes Silly, Child-Like Lyrics

Yeah, Swift’s lyrics sure do suck, don’t they? They read like 2^nd grade poetry, they do. Now admittedly, she’s not Joni Mitchell. She’s not even Joni Mitchell after three bottles of whiskey and a gallon of NyQuil:

“Music starts playin’ like the end of a sad movie, 
It’s the kinda ending you don’t really wanna see. 
Cause it’s tragedy and it’ll only bring you down, 
Now I don’t know what to be without you around.”

We’d post more examples, but then we’d be here all day. Clearly, she’s not a Poet Laureate. But neither are, oh, 99% of musicians ever. It turns out that the age-old adage, of lyrics simply being poetry set to music, is a gigantic fib. The vast majority of lyricists, even the well-respected ones, liberally season their work with clichéd imagery as clear as the moon in the sky, awkward rhymes all the times, asinine alliteration, filler words totally designed to very much stretch out a whole entire meter, and juvenile reactions to ultimately trivial poopyface matters. They’re about as poetic as a Hallmark card. Isn’t that right, Hall Of Famer Paul Simon?

“She said there’s something about you / That really reminds me of money
She is the kind of a girl / Who could say things that / Weren’t that funny
I said what does that mean / I really remind you of money
She said who am I / To blow against the wind”

Precisely. So let’s retire this belief that Taylor’s crappy words are a new breed of awful from which music will never recover.

3. Crafts Simple, Uncreative Song Structures

Another common dig on Swift’s artistic genius: her songs could have been composed on children’s building blocks. “Ooh, this block says A! I will play an A chord then. And the next one says G? I can play that one too, yayyyyy! Hmm, an L? What’s that, one of those weird jazzy chords? Heck no! Let’s play another A!”

Guess what? The four or five chords she uses for most of her songs are pretty much the same ones used by, again, everybody. Rock, pop, country, folk, metal, and blues are basically the same tunes over and over again, with various window dressings smeared on top to make them seem innovative.

If you’ve heard one A-D-E chord progression, you’ve automatically heard hundreds of songs, all at the exact same time. Spend a weekend with a guitar, learn A, C, D, E, F, G, A-minor, D-minor, and E-minor, and you’ll have gained the chops to play nine out of every 10 songs released since 1955. If you master B and B-minor on TOP of that, you might as well book a world tour because, by that point, you’re all but a virtuoso.

And yes, we just called Taylor Swift a virtuoso with that last joke. If it makes you feel any better, so are Hootie and the Blowfish. That didn’t make you feel better, did it? Well, we tried.

2. Acts Shocked Every Time She Wins Something

You know you hate somebody when THIS bugs you. Taylor Swift wins a Grammy or an MTV award, or $2 on a scratch ticket and then turns into a nine-year-old boy who just discovered the passwords to Dad’s porno sites. She’s giddy, she’s happy, she says “my God,” more often than Jesus, and she’s overall really excitable. And people HATE her for it.

Seriously, Google “Taylor Swift surprised face.” We’re not kidding; do it. That’s your homework tonight, and there’s a test tomorrow. How many pictures like the one above do you see? Quite a few? And how many blog posts and articles take a gigantic dump on her for doing so? Also a lot. They think it’s fake and over-the-top, and it eats at their insides whenever she does it.

Well, if you hate seeing a rich, successful, good-looking superstar habitually act like she found her puppy after three months of searching, then just gouge your eyes out now, because everyone does it. Young, old, male, female, rookie, veteran, first-time winner, serial trophy collector – it’s just the way histrionic celebrities are.

If the citizens of Famous People Land were calm, cool, and collected, casually strolling onstage to claim their prize before thanking their Mommy and Daddy and then leaving, the gossipheads and bloggers of the world would cry boredom in a heartbeat. So, in a roundabout way, celebrities like Swift are giving us exactly what we want, whether we know it or not.

1. Obsesses Over Boys And Breakups

And, the big one. Miss Swift’s critics are frothing at the mouth full-time over her unthinkable decision to write song after song after song about her failed relationships. If that’s not enough, she has the unmitigated gall to blame – brace yourselves – THE GUYS for the breakups. What a jezebel.

Apparently, Taylor Swift, a pop-country singer who writes pop-country lyrics about pop-country subjects, is supposed to sit down and write psychological epics that tackle all sides of a breakup at once. She is then to examine what went wrong, how she is to blame for losing yet another man, what she could have done to make things better, and what she can do in the future to ensure it does not happen again. Because music is known for that; psychological epics are all over the Hot 200.

Let’s face it; simple themes are the way for most musicians. My man done me wrong, my woman done me wrong, our government done us wrong, I love something, I hate something, I wanna sex up something. Even the most respected of artists fall into this trap. “You’re So Vain” is basically Carly Simon calling some dude an arrogant prick, and not focusing on his good side at all. It’s simple, it’s snarky, and it’s successful. “He’s So Vain, But I’m Also Pretty Flawed Myself” would not have sold, no matter how fair it treated both sides.

And neither would “Maybe I’m The Problem” which, according to every anti-Swift site out there, is what she should name her next album. This joke has been told more times than Swift has sung whiny couplets about her crappy love life. That’s the ultimate tell-tale sign to let an old joke die a peaceful, quiet death.

As you can see, anyone spewing venom Taylor Swift’s way should simply simmer down and wait for her to go away. Don’t worry; it’ll happen soon enough. How much shelf life could a pretty, blonde, pop-country girl, singing relatively simple songs about love and heartbreak, consisting of a few basic chords each, possibly have?

Oh

Jason Iannone is a humorist and editor for hire. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.