6 Superstitions We All Believe and Why They Actually Make (Some) Sense

Superstitions are only for the gullible, and old men to bark at you from their front porch while waving canes, right? Perhaps, and yet you’re probably not going to walk under a ladder if you can help it, there’s always that twinge of regret when you break a mirror, and you spent most of last weekend making sure that voodoo doll of your ex looked just right. Where do these almost universal superstitions come from, and could their origins be more logical than we think?


Breaking a Mirror

Break a mirror, get 7-years bad luck. It may seem silly, but you probably still take extra care never to drop one, and generally do your best to avoid hall-of-mirrors shootouts and kung-fu battles.

Where the Hell Did This Come From?

After a hard day clubbing various things to drag back to his cave and hump, a caveman wanders to the lake for a drink and sees his own handsome sloping brow reflected back at him from the water. Having no knowledge of optics (at this point mankind’s still struggling with pointed-stick technology) it was a logical leap for him to believe that this reflection was a duplication of himself and shared a part of his soul. This way of thinking stubbornly held for millennia, with the belief being that damaging a mirror would damage a part of your soul or cause it to be trapped in the mirror forever.

There’s also a more simple explanation. Glass mirrors (as opposed to less breakable ones made of polished metal) weren’t really available until the 16th century and were very expensive luxuries reserved for the upper classes. If the servants that cleaned these mirrors were to break one, well, let’s just say it was a lot easier to replace a human being back then than a mirror. Also, if a more middle class family were to buy one and then break it, it would probably take quite a while to scrounge up the money for a new one (say around 7 years). Well, unless they sold off a few kids.

Spilling Salt

Spill salt and you’d better toss a pinch over your left shoulder or you’ll be in for bad luck. Oddly though, if you do the same thing after spilling the ketchup people tend to get all offended.

Where the Hell Did This Come From?

Salt’s ability to cure infections, purify water and make your wife’s shitty cooking tolerable if you dumped enough on led to it being worshipped by much of the ancient world. But wait a minute, tears were salty and plants wouldn’t grow anywhere salt had been dropped. The message from God was clear, salt was pretty awesome stuff, but if you let any fall, watch your ass.

Aside from that, salt simply used to be very valuable (the term “salary” comes from the fact that Roman soldiers were paid in salt). Mindlessly spilling the salt at a host’s table back in the day would be the equivalent today of taking their fine china out back for skeet shooting practice, or accidentally sitting on their purebred Lhasa Apso’s head.

This thing is a Lhasa Apso. Explaining jokes makes them funnier.

But why toss it over your shoulder? Well people used to believe that evil spirits, or the devil himself, hung over your shoulder waiting for you to slip up. The goal of throwing salt over your shoulder was to nail that asshole in the eyes, a technique repeatedly proven effective by numerous 80s pro-wrestlers.


The Rabbit’s Foot

While not particularly lucky for countless bunnies left dragging bloody stumps around, millions of people each year buy rabbit’s feet hoping they’ll bring them good luck and prosperity.

Where the Hell Did This Come From?

The simplest explanation is that rabbits’ ability to pump out offspring faster than a Catholic Angelina Jolie resulted in them being connected with potency and good luck (in other words, you may want to watch out if you find a few in a girl’s purse guys).

Rabbits are also nocturnal, and thus have long been associated with the moon. Easter, the actual most important Christian holiday on the calendar for those who worship more than buying shit, is also determined by the phases of the moon. Combine the moon tie-in with rabbits’ legendary humping abilities (which signifies rebirth) and you see how Jesus somehow got associated with these fluffy rodent-ey creatures, and surely anything Jesus/Easter related has to be lucky (just ignore the whole crucifixion thing that precipitated the holiday).

But why is the back foot specifically lucky? Well hares (which are often confused with rabbits) are one of the very few 4-legged animals whose back feet hit the ground before their front feet while running. The bar for impressing people back in the day was apparently set pretty damn low, and the strange tracks hares left were enough to convince people the back foot must have magical qualities.


Four-Leaf Clover

This Irish symbol is possibly the most well known good luck charm in the world, which is somewhat odd considering the whole “luck of the Irish” thing is a bit of an oxymoron.

Where the Hell Did This Come From?

The simplest reason the four-leaf clover is considered lucky is because they’re so rare, with only around 1 in 10,000 clovers sporting four leaflets. At least they were rare, as these days there are numerous places to buy your very own four-leaf clover online (although if you’re the type of person who thinks paying 25 dollars for an clover on the Internet is a good idea, the problems in your life likely have little to do with luck).

The use of clover as a lucky charm dates back to pre-Christian times when Druidism was the religion of day in Ireland. Druids, basically the hippies of the day, were sun/nature worshippers and clover tends to spread in sunny areas, possibly explaining why druids felt a connection with the plant. The four leaves also have a fairly obvious cross-like appearance, which was a revered symbol even before Christianity.

Clover is also edible and in fact, quite nutritious (some people think it even helps fight cancer). The Irish probably considered finding a patch fortunate, if only because it was a change from all the goddamn potatoes. Oh, and the four-leaf clovers are totally the best marshmallow shape in Lucky Charms.

For those who don't have the time to wait to develop diabetes.

Groundhog Day

Every year on February 2nd people put their faith in the amazing weather predicting abilities of the noble groundhog, hoping he won’t see his shadow and doom them to 6 more weeks of snow, ice and numb testicles. Hey, why not? Its predictions are probably as likely to be accurate as any weatherman’s.

Now as you see here, my weathercock is balls deep in Indiana. Balls Deep.

Where the Hell Did This Come From?

Folks have always kept their eye out for the reemergence of hibernating animals, logically seeing it as a sign that spring was on the way. February 2nd is also the date for Candlemas, a holiday mostly celebrated in Europe (yes, there’s another Christian holiday out there that starts with “C” and ends in “mas”, please don’t tell Hallmark).

Like most Christian holidays Candlemas is basically an old Pagan tradition with fancy new Jesus decals slapped on. While the holiday is officially devoted to the purification of the Virgin Mary, in practice it was mostly used as the due date to throw out your Christmas tree and watch furry critters emerge from their holes. Germans had Candlemas traditions similar to Groundhog Day (except they used hedgehogs) and when they immigrated to America they tossed out all the religious parts of Candlemas, keeping only the fun “waiting around a varmint-hole drinking” stuff. The groundhog was chosen since it hibernated in the winter, sorta looked like a hedgehog (which aren’t native to North America) and because too many people got eaten when they tried waiting outside a bear’s cave.

But why does the groundhog seeing it’s shadow and returning to its burrow mean 6 more weeks of winter? Well there’s actually some meteorological truth to it. A winter day sunny enough to allow a rodent to see his shadow is likely to be colder than average since cloud cover actually insulates the earth. In other words, there’s nothing mystical going on here, Mr. Groundhog just went back inside because he was freezing his furry little ass off, and if it’s still too cold for him there’s probably more winter coming.


Black Cats

You’re walking down the street and freeze for a second as a strange black cat saunters by. Now in reality the cat was simply crossing your path because he saw a nice patch of unspoiled dirt he wanted to poop in, but superstition tells us we’re about to be visited by bad luck and death.

Where the Hell Did This Come From?

So how did something oh-so-cutesy and fluffy get associated with death, devilry and witchcraft?

Saints preserve us! It's a basket of Satan!

Well, a number of pre-Christian peoples such as the Norse, Celts and Egyptians had cat Gods, or at least considered the animal sacred. Once Christianity became the sexy new religion in town though, old beliefs were branded witchcraft and cats found themselves guilty by association. Often simply owning a cat was considered proof of witchery and there was widespread extermination of cats during medieval times, which kind of backfired when they were no longer around to kill plague-infested rats, which in turn wiped out half of Europe. Whoops. But hey, at least they were safe from those goddamn witches.

Cats have a few other habits that had a tendency freak people right out. They like to seek sources of warmth (sorry, Mister Fluffynuts doesn’t like sitting in your lap just because he loves you) and have an odd fascination with examining human faces. Often when a person passed away from fever or a baby died mysteriously in the night, they’d find a cat perched on their chest or in the crib staring into their face, and the logical assumption was made. No, not that the hordes of rats in the streets might be making people sick, or that feeding your baby narcotic filled soothing syrups then putting them to sleep in a crib full of toys made out of lead was bad for them, but that cats were harbingers of death that could suck the very life from you body.

I can has ur soul plz?

As for why black cats specifically were feared, well, you don’t need us to tell you that black has traditionally been associated with eeeevil. There’s a reason Darth Vader didn’t spend his time strutting around in a sporty magenta or mint green get-up.

Nathan Birch also writes the magically delicious webcomic Zoology.

Dickonomics: The Sneaky Ways 5 Ordinary Businesses Take Your Money

The economy is in the proverbial pooper and many are trying to cut back, but unfortunately few things in life are more difficult than sticking to a budget. The good news is it’s not entirely your fault that you came back with a new hi-def TV and 10-gallons of discount mayonnaise last time you went to buy bread. We’ve already detailed the advanced advertising techniques being used to turn us into a society of shambling Baconator-craving zombies, but the manipulation certainly doesn’t end once they’ve got you into the building…


The Grocery Store

How many times have you stood in your kitchen, packed with enough food to feed a starving African village for a day, and yet found you had nothing you actually wanted to eat? You’re not alone; 60 to 70 percent of grocery purchases are unplanned, as supermarkets employ an endless array of tricks to ensure your fridge always has 10 different types of pickles in it, yet no milk.

Rats in a Maze
Supermarkets are carefully designed to be migraine-inducing labyrinths, with the essentials tucked away in the outer reaches of the store. Food’s often shelved in seemingly random ways and stores reorganize their shelves every few months to keep you on your toes and send you scrambling again to find the Super Sugar Chocolate Breakfast Nuggets.

Supermarkets are designed to keep movement as slow as possible, with displays stuck in the middle of aisles to create bottlenecks, cart-slowing carpets placed strategically and smaller floor tiles in expensive aisles (cart wheels click faster over them making you think you’re travelling quicker and thus you subconsciously slow down). Oh, and we suspect something might be up with every shopping cart on the planet having at least one bad wheel.

Using Your Kids Against You
Walk into any supermarket and you’ll be greeted at the door by the mash-up of smooth jazz and at least a dozen squalling children. Candy, cookies and all the diabestest cereals are usually grouped together in a single aisle feared by mothers everywhere, with the most expensive stuff all shelved at kiddie eye-level. Some supermarkets even offer kid "cooking" classes, which teach a lot more about brand recognition than cooking. Your kid might not know his ABCs, but at least he knows I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter now has even more butter taste.

“Deals” That are Anything But
Most sales or discounts actually cost you money as typically only the most expensive items are marked down (your 10-cents off five pounds of beluga caviar coupon might night be the hot bargain you think it is). Beware “Buy 5 for 5.99!” style offers, as frequently it’s actually less expensive to buy the items individually. Also your friendly neighborhood grocer isn’t afraid to blatantly steal from you at the checkout, just ask the guy who, unlike most, decided to actually pay attention to the scanner at a supermarket where you got free items if you were overcharged. By the end of the year he took home $4,000 in free food.

Grab Bag of Douchebaggery
Supermarkets keep the lights too bright and Muzak overly loud because making you uncomfortable will keep you from making smart shopping decisions. Even those delicious cubes of cheese on toothpicks they give you are a scam (they don’t care about selling you cheese, they just want to get your gastric juices flowing). We suggest next time you’re hungry you save yourself a headache, grab a rock and see if you can’t nail yourself a squirrel for dinner.

The Restaurant

But perhaps you prefer to leave the tiresome business of food preparation to others. Well don’t think you’re avoiding being screwed (and we’re not just talking about the gallon of waiter and busboy fluids you’ve consumed due to your lousy tipping).

Eat and Get the Hell Out
There’s nothing casual about “casual dining” chains. Their goal is to make you spend as much as possible as quickly as possible then clear you out to make room for next minivan full of jalapeno popper hungry mouths. To keep you from lingering, chairs are ass-numbingly uncomfortable, the restaurant is divided up into sections to prevent a social atmosphere, and as many tables as possible are “un-anchored” away from walls or partitions (we tend to feel uncomfortable sitting out in the open and won’t stick around). Warm colors have been shown to make us eat more and move on quicker, as has fast paced music (as a rule don’t eat anywhere with “Flight of the Bumblebee” playing over the speakers).

Getting Less for More
In troubled economic times everyone becomes united in a single goal; chiseling as much money as they can out of everyone else, and restaurants are using the current economy as an excuse to raise prices while simultaneously cutting down on portions.

Plates are subtly reduced in size and raised in the middle, concealing reduced portion sizes. Even silverware is taken into account, as restaurants will use lighter forks, making the weight of the food on it more noticeable, causing you to think your bites are more substantial. The quality of ingredients is also dropping, with food being aggressively recycled, even picked right out of the trash, and less expensive ingredients are substituted for what’s printed on the menu (hey, it all tastes like chicken anyways).

Menu design has become an exact science with the most profitable items placed in the upper left-hand corner (the 3rd dish down is always the most popular item on any menu). Menus today are basically porn for fat people, with the emphasis on big sexy pictures and over-elaborate descriptions, with prices obscured or spelled out (instead of using numbers) so you won’t notice them until you’ve already become smitten with a particularly alluring chunk of meat.

The Dreaded Bill
Heart jump a beat when the bill arrived? Could be they were charging for those obligatory breadsticks, or pouring you bottled water instead of tap. They may have automatically included a 12 – 15% tip “for your convenience” which often leads to accidental double-tipping (and those automatic tips usually go straight to the owners, not the servers). If you don’t have enough cash to pay for the surprise total, they’ll add on surcharges for using your credit or debit card as well. It’s enough to drive a person to drink, speaking of which…


The Bar

There few things more easy, profitable (or fun) than scamming drunks, so it comes as no surprise that bars have their own list of ploys. Let’s look at a few of the ways you’re getting cockslapped along with your cocktail.

Less Socializing, More Drinking
Every time you use your mouth for frivolous non-drinking related activities like talking you’re costing the bar money, so they try their hardest to make sure your interactions remain at the basic head nodding and pointing out hot girls level. Music is pumped up to ear splitting level making conversation impossible and lights are kept dim, partly to disguise how dirty most bars are, but also because we feel uncomfortable talking to someone we can’t see clearly.

Your “Friend” the Bartender
There are many ways to cut down on the amount of precious alcohol actually getting into your glass. Taller, thinner shot glasses appear larger but actually contain less volume, and in fact simply tilting the glass toward the customer slightly while pouring creates an optical illusion making you think you’re getting more than you are. Measuring cups may have washers in the bottom ensuring you don’t get a full double, and narrow pourers are used on bottles ensuring a 3-second pour gives you less booze than you might expect. Oh, and in perhaps the most diabolical trick, fruity girl drinks may have the rim of the glass coated or straw filled with alcohol with little to none in the drink itself. Come on bartenders, if you’re not there to get girls sloppy on oversized pink beverages what exactly are you there for?

Of course as the night wears on the need for such intricate schemes melts away and bartenders will start charging whatever the hell they want on a person-by-person basis, using the “would I like to bone them?” scale. Also never offer to pay for your group’s drinks as most bartenders assume anyone generous (and dense) enough to do such a thing won’t mind them adding a dozen or so extra drinks to the tab.


The Mall

Ah the mall, the Mecca of North American culture. What makes it, and its shops, so enticing that people will refuse to stop shopping for anything, even the risk of being consumed by flames?

Rats in a Maze Part 2
Like the supermarket, malls aren’t actually designed for convenience, but to force you to do as much walking past as many storefronts as possible. This is why the up escalator is usually on the opposite end of the floor from the down escalator. Stores appealing to certain demographics are spread around the mall; you manly men will never find the beef jerky store next to the shiny new electronics store, nor will nerds ever have their dreams of a Taco Bell next to the Gamestop realized. On the plus side this extra walking is probably the best exercise most Americans get these days.

Malls are also filled with mirrors, which slow us down then make us feel like shit since we’re all vain, self-loathing bastards at heart. That “oh God, I look terrible” moment has sent more than a few people scurrying into shops for new clothes. Also when you first enter the mall just keep moving for the first hundred feet or so. There are two phases to shopping, deliberation and buying, and they’ve found that buying even a minor item will break us out of the deliberation mindset and get us spending freely, thus chintzy impulse items are kept near the entrance. That trip to the dollar store may be the foreplay leading to a spending orgy that ends in you tying a cashmere sofa to the roof of your car.

Little Retail Shop of Horror
Things don’t get better once you enter the stores themselves. First off, go left when you enter the store. Research has shown that most people go right, and thus the items most profitable to the store are on the right, with the best bargains hidden off to the left. A lot of “deals” this time of year are blatant bait-and-switches; a low price is advertised, with the truth that you have to pay for an expensive warrantee or buy the item as part of a bundle only revealed at the cash register. Salespeople use the “disrupt-then-reframe” sales technique, hitting you with sales pitches so complicated they may as well be speaking a combination of pig Latin and Swahili, then reframing it in an over-simplified way. We have a need to understand things, so when we get that “ohhh, now I get it” spark, our sales resistance is broken down. Electronics salesmen are masters of this, but then pretty much everything they say is a constant stream of verbal diarrhea.

Leading us by the Nose
Traditionally overlooked (except by uncles with fingers that chronically require pulling) our sense of smell is being preyed on by retailers with increasing frequency. Smells are impossible to escape or ignore, and scent marketing has been shown to increase buying by up to 300%. As a result most stores now have their own carefully researched scents. Scents have even been shown to increase gambling by up to 45%, speaking of which…


The Casino

Casinos are the kings of making ordinary people spend like MC Hammer at the billowy silk pants store. They kind of have to be, as they don’t actually offer any, you know, goods or services for your money. So how do Casinos get you to blow the kids’ college fund when clearly the hookers out front offer a far better value for your dollar?

Outside World? What Outside World?
Sunlight, fresh air, remembering the fact that you have a house payment to make this month; these are the enemies of the big casinos. Most have few windows and no clocks, and attempt to artificially simulate a daytime or outside environment, creating a world where time has no meaning.

Some even block cell phones; tearful calls from your kids asking where you’ve gone and why you’re not at their birthday party can really kill your mojo.

The Gambling Trance
There’s a specific fast-paced rhythm to everything that happens in a casino, making it difficult to break from the money hemorrhaging haze (especially when you’re half-wasted on free drinks). Oh, and there’s a reason every casino you hit is Vegas is packed with hot women, and it’s not your raw animal magnetism.

Casino managers don’t let any of your senses go neglected. Music is soothing and loops frequently contributing to your trance and loud ugly carpets and low hanging canopies keep your eyes focused on the one-armed bandits in front of you. Casinos pump up the oxygen levels to keep you alert and some have even been accused of spreading pheromones through the ventilation system (possibly explaining why people still get way too damn excited over Wayne Newton).

You Can Beat the Casinos. Really! You Can!
There’s no way to beat the casinos that won’t land you in jail or under a bright light in a backroom with a broken hand, but casinos love to make us think we can. Why else would Vegas fund and stage glamorous showings for movies like 21, a film built on the premise that your A in math class could allow you to legally scam casinos out of millions while having sex with Kate Bosworth?

The floor is filled with the sweet (and these days, usually artificial) sound of jangling coins and “loose” machines are placed in high visibility areas to give the impression payoffs are more frequent than they are. Slot machines are also designed to deal out a high number of “near misses” with, for instance, the first two reels set to land on the “Jackpot” far more often than the third reel, dealing you more false hope than your high school girlfriend.

Finally don’t be fooled by posted payout percentages. A machine might say it pays out 97% of the time, which sounds low-risk, but that’s a hypothetical number based on an infinite number of spins. Spin 10 times and you may lose 9, spin 100 and you may lose 50; you would have to pull that handle a massive number of times for it to finally even out at that 97% (a theory being put to the test by blue-haired slot jockeys nationwide).

So now that you know what kind of dickery our economy is based on, get out there and hold your head high knowing every time you’re screwed over you’re doing your part to fight the recession. Maybe, if we’re all just gullible enough, we can get through this thing.

Nathan Birch also writes the comic you can’t afford not to read, Zoology.

6 MORE Creepy Urban Legends (That Happen to be True)

Last year as part of our ongoing quest to let you know pants-crappingly terrifying the world really is Cracked brought you a list of creepy urban legends that were unfortunately all too true, and since we aren’t ones to let a good premise go unmilked here are six more true tales designed to turn you into an agoraphobic.


The Headless Lover

The Legend:
A woman cheats on her husband and he, in a rational well-considered move, chops off the lover’s head and gives it to her as a gift. This one comes in many forms with the moral of the story being fairly clear; stay the hell away from that Brazilian poolboy ladies.

The Truth:
Sgt. Stephen Schap and Diane Schap, an army couple stationed in Germany, found out in 1993 that they were about to be blessed with new bundle of joy, which would have great news if not for the minor fact Stephen had got a vasectomy the year prior. Whoops. In a “This Week on Jerry Springer!” moment Diane was forced to admit she had been having an affair with Stephen’s best friend Gregory Glover, and unfortunately Stephen would respond with something much worse than a few thrown chairs or tossing a midget into a wedding cake.

On a cold December day the pregnant Diane lay in a hospital bed talking on the phone to Gregory when the line, and for that matter Gregory himself, suddenly went dead. Diane wouldn’t have to wait long to find out what happened as around half an hour later her husband burst into the room, pulled Gregory’s freshly liberated head from a gym bag, shoved it in her face and according to Diane unleashed a line so cheesy it has to be true.

“Look, Diane - Glover's here! He'll sleep with you every night now. Only you won't sleep, because all you'll see is this," Stephen reportedly blurted out before plopping the bloody head down on the bedside table so it faced his wife. Say what you will Sgt. Schap’s mental stability, but the guy had a flair for the dramatic.


The Corpse in the Carpet

The Legend:
Somebody finds a beautiful old rug in an alley, takes it home and finds something horrifying wrapped inside (an experience familiar to anyone who’s bought a burrito from Taco Bell). Variations of this one include bodies being found in discarded refrigerators or wardrobes, but the message remains the same; don’t do your home decor shopping anyplace that smells of crackhead urine.

The Truth:
In 1984 three Columbia University students found a rolled-up carpet on the sidewalk and decided to drag it back home (we assume they were mainly looking for something to absorb vomit and Doritos crumbs, rather than accessorize their milk crate furniture).

Once they got the carpet back to their dorm they unrolled it and found an unidentified man with two bullet holes in his skull in the middle. Yes, three students from a 50-thousand dollar a year college carried a carpet all the way home without noticing something was amiss even though it contained a 200-pound stinking mass of decomposing flesh. At the very least we hope these fine young leaders of tomorrow didn’t just push the body into the corner and go back to playing Atari.


The Death Photos


The Legend:
Somebody goes to visit their eccentric grandmother (the one that smells like cabbage and carries her teeth in her pocket) and in a back room they find an old photo that makes the hair on their arms stand on end. The photo’s of a young boy in his Sunday best; his head hangs slightly to the side and there’s a haunting look in his cold eyes. The person asks their grandma about the eerie picture.

“Oh,” replies the old woman as she tries to stuff the cat in the dishwasher “isn’t that a beautiful picture? You can hardly tell he’s dead.”

The Truth:
While most folks today are too squeamish to take more than a glance into the casket during a funeral, in the late 19th through early 20th centuries someone dying meant it was time to break out the camera for a family photo. The practice was known as memorial photography and while it may sound like something out of a goth wet dream, there was actually a somewhat reasonable explanation for the practice. The daguerreotype process used to take pictures back then was expensive enough that it was a once in a lifetime (er, or shortly after a lifetime) thing for most, and required people to sit perfectly still for a couple minutes for it to turn out properly. If there’s one thing dead people are good at it’s sitting still.


Of course the family saying “cheese” around pine box isn’t exactly the kind of upbeat scene you want to hang on the mantle, so the bodies were often clothed and arranged to look as lifelike as possible. The bodies were propped up, eyes were held open and incase they still weren’t giving off that lively “I’m not a corpse harnessed to a chair” vibe, pink cheeks were sometimes added to the photo. Eventually the practice of memorial photography went out of style, mostly due to picture taking becoming more affordable (although we would hope it was partly because it finally dawned on people how painfully creepy the whole thing was).


The Toxic Woman


The Legend:
A woman is brought into the hospital, but before long the staff are in need of medical attention themselves as the woman gives off mysterious fumes so toxic that the people around her become ill and pass out (making her the 2nd most toxic thing in the hospital after the cafeteria tuna casserole).

The Truth:
On the evening of February 19th, 1994, Gloria Ramirez was admitted to a California emergency room, suffering from an advanced form of cancer (which she apparently got from living next to a nuclear waste dump if what happened next was any indication). When a nurse drew Gloria’s blood she detected a foul odor coming from it and suddenly hospital staff were hitting the floor like it was their first frosh party.

Eventually as many as 23 people were effected, the ER was evacuated and a decontamination unit brought in. The cause was initially written off as a case of mass hysteria, but considering the fact the worst effected victim spent two weeks in intensive care suffering from hepatitis, pancreatitis and avascular necrosis (a condition which literally causes your bones to die) we’d say that the doctor who decided this was hysteria must have got his degree from Dumbass University.

A mere 40 minutes after arriving in the hospital Gloria Ramirez would pass away. Her autopsy was performed by men in full hazmat moon suits and yet despite one of the most extensive forensic investigations in history it’s still not known what exactly infiltrated this woman’s blood. The best shot at an explanation we can come up with is that Gloria Ramirez may have arrived at the hospital shortly after doing battle with Ellen Ripley.


The Not-So-Death Defying Escapist

The Legend:
An escape artist demonstrates why guidance counselors rarely recommend this line of work when he fails to escape his predicament and dies in front of a live audience. This one is obviously encouraged by the escapists themselves as watching a man painstakingly pick locks and carefully contort his body isn’t exactly white-knuckle excitement. No, people find escape artists fascinating because they believe there’s a chance they may die a horrible painful death in front of them (which pretty much explains why anybody would ever watch David Blaine).

The Truth:
Despite the illusion of danger there are almost no instances of escape artists dying while performing a stunt. Most sensible people are going to make damn sure every possible safety precaution is taken when they’re straightjacketed and lowered into a shark tank wearing a meat codpiece. Joseph “Amazing Joe” Burrus wasn’t most people though, and he certainly wasn’t sensible.

Ironically given what would take place, Burrus’ stunt was to involve him escaping from his own grave. Amazing Joe was shackled in a clear plastic coffin, lowered into a 7 foot deep grave, 3 feet of soil was shoveled on him and then as icing on this cake of idiocy the rest of the hole was filled with wet concrete. All seemed to be going well until the concrete level suddenly dropped about two feet; the plastic coffin had collapsed and Burrus was doomed to suffocate under seven tons of dirt and cement.

While you have to commend Burrus for saving a gravedigger the work of digging a new hole for him, there was some evidence he knew the trick wouldn’t work and his accident took place on the anniversary of the Great Houdini’s death, suggesting he may have killed himself on purpose, in which case it was awful decent of him to do it at “Blackbeard’s Family Fun Center” in front of as many kiddies as possible.


The Downside of Decapitation


The Legend:
Your head remains aware even after being separated from your shoulders (giving you just enough time to reflect on how stupid you were to stand up on that roller coaster). Severed heads have been known to blink, react to stimulus and yes, even try to talk.

The Truth:
Despite being assumed instant and painless throughout most of history (the guillotine was designed as a humane execution method, the fact that it looked freakin’ cool was just a bonus) there’s much evidence that we remain aware anywhere from several seconds to a minute after our heads are lopped off.


One of the earliest and best-known proofs of this came from a Dr. Beaurieux who conducted an experiment on a French murderer named Languille. After he was guillotined Languille’s eyes and mouth continued to move for 5 to 6 seconds, at which point he appeared to pass on, but when Beaurieux shouted the subject’s name in his face Languille’s eyes popped open again like he’d just had a dream about a naked Rosie O’Donnell. In Beaurieux’s own words “Languille’s eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine, the pupils focusing themselves,” and the good doctor continued to get similar results for up to 30 seconds (at which point Languille possibly just got tired of playing decapitation peek-a-boo).

There are plenty of other guillotine related stories, but how about we bring the horror into modern day where we can all relate to and be nauseated by it? Here we find a first hand account of the aftermath of an accident in which one of the men in the car lost his head.

My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me.

Pretty chilling stuff, but we here at Cracked aren’t all doom and gloom. If you absolutely must be decapitated, we suggest you do it in Africa where certain tribes would tie your head to a springy sapling before chopping it off so that your last few moments of awareness would be of your head sailing breezily through the air. Really, there’s no reason your bloody demise can’t still be fun.

Nathan Birch also writes the still disgustingly cute webcomic Zoology.

Tainted Love: The 7 Greatest Romances You'll Wish You Never Heard Of

Ah love, it can be a beautiful, inspiring and, in some cases, kind of sickening thing. Unlike the candlelit world of romantic comedies, real life relationships often involve ball gags and people with more than one set of genitals. Here are some of the freakiest couples in history and what we can all learn from their example.


Chang and Eng Bunker and Adelaide and Sarah Yates

The basis for the term “Siamese twins” Chang and Eng Bunker were born in, you guessed it, Siam in 1811. Chang and Eng were two of the 19th century’s biggest celebrities, but eventually the thrill of being ogled and prodded by strangers began to wear off and the twins yearned for a quiet life living the American dream.

Now you may think Siamese twins joined at the sternum would have a hard time passing themselves off as your average 19th century American citizens, but damned if they didn’t try, moving to the hills of North Carolina, buying a farm, changing their last name to “Bunker” and buying themselves a whole lot of slaves to complete the illusion. Why you’d swear their ancestors were straight off the Mayflower.


They even started courting local belles Adelaide and Sarah Yates to which their fellow North Carolinians reacted with the kind of open-minded tolerance that remains that state’s trademark to this day. Love triumphed though, the couples got married, hit the double-double bed and got seriously busy with Eng eventually fathering 11 children and Chang 10 (in your face Chang).


It wasn’t all kinky conjoined sex though. The twins were wiped out financially when that inconsiderate jerk Lincoln abolished slavery, and the Yates sisters had a falling out, necessitating two separate houses be built. In a scenario out of a sit-com written by David Lynch the twins would alternate houses, with the "guest" brother having to do everything the "host" brother said. Eventually the brothers themselves would start feuding with Chang even threatening Eng with a knife at one point which not only goes to show that Chang was kind of retarded, but that even sharing essential organs won’t keep two people from acting like complete cocks to one another.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Remember that your significant other and their family are a package deal. Occasionally they may actually be connected via a fleshy bridge of cartilage, but most of the time they’re simply bonded together by guilt, obligation and passive aggressiveness. These days the former may actually be easier to sever.


Caligula and Incatitus

Roman Emperor, tyrant, lunatic, subject of the most expensive porno of all time and er, equestrian enthusiast; you could apply many labels to Caligula, none of them flattering (well except for the porno thing). Caligula was of course famous for his sexual deviance, but that’s nothing unique. It was pretty much a Roman tradition for Emperors to stick their dong in anything that moved (and a few things that didn’t). No, where things went from merely pervy to crazy with Caligula was in his relationship with his prize horse Incatitus.

Caligula loved his horse dearly and built it a marble stable, ivory manger, adorned it with jewels and had it attend glamorous banquets and dinner parties (where we imagine it drolly discussed pressing matters of the day over a nice salt lick). It’s been said he even appointed his horse to the position of senator and head priest, which admittedly couldn’t help but make Church a lot more entertaining. When it came time to produce an heir, Caligula was torn between marrying Incatitus or, you know, somebody human (clearly whoever gave Caligula the birds and the bees talk was hitting the opium pipe pretty hard beforehand). Sadly Caligula eventually chose the human option over Incatitus and with cruel biology keeping them apart Caligula reverted to the only thing he had much interest in other than screwing; killing stuff. Incatitus was taken out behind the marble stable and beheaded in an ending we’d call sad if the story hadn’t been about man/horse love.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

It doesn’t have to be a special occasion to give your mate a gift. Try surprising them with flowers, jewelry or a gilded, caviar filled feedbag.


Pope Julius III and Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte


Innocenzo was born in 1532 in Italy, the son of a beggar mother and a deadbeat father. Thankfully though the tow-headed urchin was saved from life on the street when Cardinal Giovanni Maria Del Monte adopted him. Now before you applaud the good Cardinal for his altruism we should inform you that, shockingly, the man had ulterior motives for plucking a good looking, eager to please 14-year old boy off the streets. Yes, those kind of motives.


With God apparently distracted looking down wench’s tops for most of the middle ages, Cardinal Giovanni Maria Del Monte managed to get himself elected Pope in 1550 (thankfully the process has improved significantly since then; these days they only elect former Nazis). The newly minted Pope Julius III immediately made Innocenzo a Cardinal then quickly elevated him to the Vatican’s top office and everyone involved knew exactly why, with the joke being that Innocenzo was promoted for being the keeper of the Pope’s “monkey” (proving dick jokes have the blessing of the Catholic Church). Julius would defend himself claiming he and Innocenzo were simply sleeping together in an innocent, non-sexual way like a father would with a child. So yeah, the Michael Jackson defense was being used as far back as the 1550s. By the Pope.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Don’t let religion get in the way of a promising relationship. More than a few of the guys to wear the ol’ Papal miter certainly haven’t.


Marquis de Sade and Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil

Ah the Marquis de Sade, the all-time grand poobah of perverts. A man so famous for his violent writing and sex life that his name is the basis for the term “sadism”; we don’t have the room (or the stomach frankly) to list all the forms of debauchery de Sade indulged in during his lifetime. Ironically though despite espousing a lifestyle free of restraints, religion or morals, de Sade was in fact married. A religious, reserved woman, Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil was nonetheless utterly devoted to her husband and apparently coped by treating his bodily fluid soaked adventures as just another mundane 19th century task to be managed between beating lepers and cooking dinner.


De Montreuil would organize orgies, haggle with prostitutes, hide her husband’s harem of young girls from the police and during his many stints in jail made sure he was provided with the essentials (which in Sade’s case consisted mostly of drugs and dildos). At one point she even disguised herself as a man and organized her husband’s daring escape from prison, but de Montreuil couldn’t protect de Sade against his greatest enemy; her mother. De Sade’s mother-in-law held a lifelong grudge against him and was responsible for many of his stints in prison, all because he had an affair with his wife’s sister. In the end for all his sexual misadventures the person de Sade ended up screwing the hardest was himself.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Take an interest in your loved one’s hobbies. Guys, give scrapbooking a try and ladies, you’ll never know how fun a sadomasochistic orgy can be until you try!


Juan Baptista dos Santos and Blanche Dumas

Juan Baptista dos Santos, born in 1843 in Portugal, was known across Europe as “the 3-legged Man.” While that may sound like innuendo, it’s not; Santos actually had three legs. If you wanted to get clever you’d be better off calling dos Santos the human coffee table, as in addition to his three legs he also happened to have two penii and three or four testicles (that’s right, the man has so many balls he couldn’t keep track of them).


To quote a man who photographed dos Santos, “the sight of a female is sufficient to excite his amorous propensities. He functions with both of the penes, finishes with one, then continues with the other." This not only confirms that dos Santos was a pretty awesome dude, but that there may be some undiscovered 3-legged man amateur porn out there waiting to be posted on 4chan.

Yes, dos Santos had celebrity and more freak show groupies then ever he could handle, but would he ever find that special someone? Well as luck would have it around this same time in Paris, Blanche Dumas was making her name as the “3-legged Courtesan.” Like Santos, Dumas had three legs, two sets of genitals and reportedly a voracious sexual appetite (you weren’t a truly accomplished deviant back then unless you’d pulled off the infamous Dumas-Clap). Upon hearing of dos Santos, Dumas expressed a strong desire to get down to some freak freakiness with him and it’s believed the two did just that in a scene we imagine resembled a porn shoot that had been run over by a train.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

There’s a soul mate out there for everyone. Regardless of your flaws, missing genes or superfluous limbs, fairy tales do come true!


Nero and Sporus

Yup, another Roman Emperor made the list. We told you some messed up shit was going on underneath those imperial togas. Now considering ancient Christian scholars pegged him as the Antichrist himself, it’s not surprising Nero also had a rather unconventional sex life with dwarves, animals and his own mom have all said to have been in on the act. Of course this is hard to verify and may just be the ancient equivalent of slash fiction (once a guy is literally declared the devil the gossip really gets going) but we do know his relationship with a slave named Sporus was very real.

Sporus was an underage boy who Nero fell madly in love with and since he was a Roman and not Greek Emperor this was actually an issue. Nero was a problem solver though and wasn’t about to let this keep him down (so to speak). He had Sporus castrated and essentially made a woman out of him, marrying him with all pomp and circumstance you’d expect, including Sporus being done up in full dress and bridal veil (we can only imagine how many people in the wedding party were put to death when it came time to ask if anyone objected to the union). Nero nicknamed Sporus “Sabina” which in a charming twist was also the name of his 2nd wife who died after Nero kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant. Nero paraded Sporus around town dressed as an empress, making out amorously and even putting on simulated sex shows with the kid (next time you find yourself embarrassed by George Bush, just take solace in the fact that at least the current most powerful man in the world isn’t a giddily outspoken member of NAMBLA).

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Don’t be afraid of public displays of affection. The occasional public cuddle, kiss or live sex show can show your mate just how much you care. Castration and forced sex changes on the other hand may not be for every couple.


Count Carl von Cosel and Elena Hoyos

The man you’re going to read about went by many names, but the one we’re using is “Count Carl von Cosel” since it sounds straight off of Bela Lugosi’s list of credits.


In actuality, the real Count Carl only looked marginally less sinister and his life was more macabre than anything you’re likely to see on the silver screen.


A German immigrant and doctor, Von Cosel became obsessed with 20-year-old Cuban tuberculosis patient Elena Hoyos. Intent on saving her Von Cosel subjected Hoyos to numerous cures of his own invention, but sadly brain frying electric shocks did little to cure her lungs (go figure). Despite his efforts she passed away and Von Cosel not only paid for her funeral but a lavish mausoleum. Gee, wasn’t that nice of him?

Problem was, to the Count the mausoleum wasn’t so much an eternal resting place for Hoyos as a secluded love shack where their romance could bloom amongst the maggots. For two years Von Cosel spent almost every night inside the mausoleum, before apparently deciding it was time to take the relationship to the next level and have Elena move in with him. In the dead of night Von Cosel stole her body from the cemetery, dragged the corpse to his house on the back of a toy wagon and reconstructed his beloved with wire coat hangers, wax and plaster. Oh, and what a job he did.


Von Cosel would live with Hoyos for seven years, keeping the body in his bed (where we certainly hope nothing untoward happened; they were unmarried after all). Elena’s sister finally began to suspect something was up (perhaps after noticing the door to his sister’s mausoleum hanging open for seven years straight) and the Count was arrested. He got off Scott free though as the statute of limitations on his crime had expired, plus we imagine neither the judge or jury wanted to spend any time in the same room with the dude.

The body was put on public display attracting nearly 7000 gawkers (proving folks back then were all about class) and eventually buried in a secret unmarked grave just in case ol’ Carl started jonesing for some mummified tail. As for the Count himself he became a minor celebrity, created a life-sized effigy of Hoyos and made money inviting tourists into his home (again, class). Von Cosel would even write an autobiography, which appeared in respected literary publication “Fantastic Adventures.” Fantastic indeed.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Your mausoleum doesn’t have to feel like a tomb! No wait, that’s stupid. Uhhhh, don’t throw away your old wire coat hangers? Okay, we give up on this one.

Nathan Birch also writes the fantastic adventure filled webcomic Zoology.

Ad-Attack: How Marketers Annoy Us Today and will Really Piss Us Off in the Future

Advertising, we all hate it, but show us a country with no advertising and we’ll show you a country you don’t want to live in. We’ll never be rid of it (the average person is exposed to around 6000 marketing messages a day) but we have been getting much craftier about avoiding it. Advertisers are far from defeated though. We may not have a cure for cancer or flying cars yet, but when it comes to something important like selling us shoes or Captain Crunch, technology and human ingenuity are coming together in ways most science fiction writers would never have dreamed of.

Buying and Selling Culture

Once upon a time advertising consisted a busty woman or rugged man’s man exaggerating the qualities of a product and slandering the competition while a catchy tune played in the background. Hell, back in the day even STDs were fair game for a toe-tapping jingle.

Eventually though the public started to get cynical and advertisers could no longer stick a couple ads featuring nicotine-addicted cavemen on TV during prime time and expect to have father, mother and junior all rush out to indulge in the rich full-bodied tobacco flavor. Outside of that loveable old-school huckster Ron Popeil not a lot of companies are selling anything today by simply extolling the virtues of the product.

Today advertisers sell us their crap by telling us how the item is supposed to make us feel or, more importantly, by making their product an accessory to a certain trend or lifestyle. For years Mountain Dew didn’t exactly set the world on fire with it’s series of odd, vaguely sexual sounding slogans (“Dew it To it”, “Get Vertical” and the near-pornographic classic “Mountain Dew...It'll Tickle Your Innards”) but then they decided to latch themselves onto the burgeoning extreme sports culture. Suddenly you couldn’t turn on your TV without seeing some guy doing something incredibly retarded with a Mountain Dew in his hand, and it worked. Today, despite it tasting like piss mixed with orange juice, Mountain Dew is the most popular soft drink after Coke and Pepsi.

What Marketers are Doing Now

Now from a marketing perspective glomming onto existing culture is fine, but the real money lies in creating and building your own cultural trend with your products woven inseparably into its fabric. For example look no further than current “urban” culture, most of which has been carefully concocted in corporate offices about 100 stories up from street level. The process has been refined to a science. Discover a new movement or trend at the grassroots level, carefully pick out and eliminate any meaningful or challenging messages like raisins from an oatmeal cookie, replace them with marketing messages then sell the culture back to the masses. Rap has headed straight out of Compton directly to Madison Avenue as today’s top hip-hop stars are at the center of mini-media empires leveraged by marketers to sell everything from laptops to cars more expensive than the houses of some of their fans.

Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?

The idea is to have every trend and movement concocted or co-opted by marketers and defined by what you buy, not ideas or philosophies. Products and brands are no longer sold to enhance your lifestyle they define your lifestyle.

“Bullshit! I’m an iconoclast, I’m hip and I reject your mainstream culture! You can’t market to me.” you say as you read this on your Apple laptop, sip Pabst Blue Ribbon and dream about what color of Converse Chuck Taylors you’re going to buy next. Sorry, but you could sell all your belongings and move to a cave in the hills and marketers would still find a way to make sure there was only one socially acceptable brand of burlap sack for hermits to wear this season.


Getting to Know You

Okay, so marketers are looking to slap their brand labels all over any new trend that comes down the pipe, but how do they know what the next trend is going to be? How do they know what specific niche they should be trying to sell their junk to? Market research used to be relatively simple, you just put, for example, a new hamburger in front of a group of people and had them fill out a questionnaire asking if they liked it, didn’t like it, and what degree of diarrhea it gave them. The problem with this approach is that most human beings are lying scumbags. People will fill out questionnaires based on who they wish they were, rather than on reality.

At first the solution to this problem was to send out “cool hunters” who would try to speak to kids on the street or infiltrate social events, but unsurprisingly not many people talked to the guys in suits and backwards hats diligently taking notes on clipboards. So how’s a poor market researcher supposed to get a straight answer out of us assholes? It’s actually quite simple; you collect the information you need without people knowing. Don’t worry, it’s not creepy, it’s just business.

What Marketers are Doing Now

On one hand the new digital world has reduced the average person’s attention span to that of a squirrel with ADD, on the other hand though this new technology provides powerful tools to learn about and exploit us. Your fancy new digital TV, the TIVo box granting you the miracle of advertising-free television, your debit card you bought it with and your cell phone you used to call your wife to tell her you sold your first-born to buy your new 80-inch screen is all constantly feeding information back to advertisers. The TV and TIVo log your viewing habits, the debit card your buying habits and the cell phone tracks who you call, text and even your present location with it’s built-in GPS. It’s Orwellian-tastic!

Of course the real haven for personal data mining is the Internet where practically every keystroke you make is recorded, saved and hoarded like a furry hoards pictures of Chuck E. Cheese. Ever wondered how Google made 4 billion dollars last year running a search engine? Where’s the cash in telling people where to find pictures of Lindsay Lohan’s vagina? Well Google’s real purpose is to collect and organize all the world’s information, and every depraved request you type is like mana from heaven for them. They know a lot more than just the embarrassing amount of times you’ve typed “Hanna Montana” into the search box though.

The major web companies have gone on drunken buying sprees as of late, snatching up any online advertising or behavioral targeting firms they can. “Behavioral targeting” is what companies like the AOL-owned Tacoda do. Tacoda’s technology is used on around 4000 websites (which reach around 70% of the total Internet audience). Every letter typed, every click or move of the mouse on the websites they’re associated with is tracked, and they’re hardly the only player in this game. Between the top Internet companies you never have to feel lonely or unappreciated. They’re always there for you and they find you fascinating.

Oh, and how about BuzzMetrics? If you’re still clinging to hopelessly antiquated notions like “privacy”, prepare to feel vaguely nauseous. Blogs, Facebook pages, message boards, chatrooms, Usenet groups or anywhere Internet denizens can post their Leet-speak filled opinions are being monitored, the conversation fed into computer programs that calculate the current buzz or trends. Yes, believe it or not someone out there does find your 20-page message board debate on whether the crunchy or puffy kind of Cheetos are better worthwhile.

Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?

The constant information gathering already rampant on the Internet is set to seep into every area of our lives as digital, network connected technology is being integrated into everything possible these days. We’ve already covered TVs, phones and computers, but what about vehicle diagnostic systems like OnStar packed into all new cars? How about your PDA or MP3 player? Hell, they’re even coming out with a wide range of “smart clothes” with computer functions built in. Soon vital data on testicular bunching, shifting and chafing can constantly be beamed straight from your boxers to sack-specialized advertisers. The ultimate goal of marketers is to have a constant stream of information on our behavior, buying habits, entertainment choices and even location being collected at all times and they’re not far from their goal.


Custom Made Shilling

So marketers know your habits, opinions and about the time you wet your pants in class back in 2nd grade, but what good is all this information? No matter how much data they collect there’s no way to craft an ad campaign to appeal to everybody. You may be able to grab one customer with an ad campaign promoting how fuel efficient your new car is, but what about his next door neighbor who leaves his car idling in the driveway 24-hours a day to avoid having to turn the key in the ignition? How do you snare him? With addressable advertising, that’s how.

What Marketers are Doing Now

Advertisers have been tailoring unique versions of ads for different demographics for some time now. If you live in a high-income area you might get an ad showing a man buying his wife a new diamond necklace, and if you live in a poor area you get the same ad except a bit where the guy pawns his TV and sells a kidney to buy the necklace is added to the beginning. This is just the beginning.

Marketers want to be able to send a different message to every house on the street and companies like Visible World are making that dream a reality. Ads are broken into interchangeable segments that can be recombined by your cable company based on data they’ve collected into countless variations on the same commercial. For example, this classic line from a current Bowflex commercial…

…could be swapped out for households not populated by gigantic cockheads.

Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?

Your cell phone rings, you answer it and it’s Starbucks offering you a dollar off on a white chocolate, pumpkin and whiskey frappuccino. Why that’s what you always order, and you just passed a Starbucks a second ago. What’s going on here? Well as we mentioned earlier, all your purchasing habits are being tracked, so they know what your favorite overpriced beverage is and the GPS in your phone told them you just passed the Starbucks.

The electronic devices collecting data on you, can be turned around and used to serve you highly specialized ads whenever, wherever. Your spending habits seem to indicate less money is being spent on fancy restaurants lately and more on buying drinks in singles bars. Maybe you’ve had a recent break-up? Well the marketing machine is there for you, your OnStar providing you with directions to Frank’s Discount Used-Porn Emporium, your cell phone sending you deals for malt liquor and your TIVo suggesting you download that classic ode to breakups and misogyny, Swingers. There’s even plans in the works for a fridge that will deliver ads based on what goes in and out of the fridge, and who’s standing in front of it. Advertising is set to become a one-on-one communication between you and marketers who know more about you than any friend you’ve ever had.


Going Undercover

There are always going to be those who hiss and recoil at the first sight of any ad. These people hate advertising out of principle. You could attach your ad to a puppy and they’d still refuse to read it and give the puppy a boot for good measure. How do you market to these stubborn bastards?

What Marketers are Doing Now

Most of us distrust advertisers, but we’re generally much more trusting of our peers. We’ll roll our eyes at a vodka ad on TV, but if your buddy declares it “the shit” 30 times in an evening before passing out on your kitchen table there’s a good chance you’ll be convinced it’s worth trying. Marketers hire plants to generate buzz anywhere they can, on messageboards, in chatrooms, at bars, in clubs or at parties. Like money-hungry zombies they’ll worm their way in anywhere, break down any door to try and convince us that blue cheese Doritos aren’t a completely revolting notion.

An attractive girl walks up to you in the street, tells you she’s from out of town and asks if you would take a picture of her in front of a local landmark. As your brain desperately races to come up with something witty to say to her, you raise the camera to take the picture and notice that it’s actually pretty damn nice. They just got you. That girl was hired by Sony to promote the new camera you’re holding. This is just one of countless examples as marketers have raised being annoying and invasive to the level of true art.

On the Internet front advertisers have found a new best friend in YouTube. Numerous companies have launched new ad campaigns with YouTube videos, some more stealthily than others. Take this video for instance…

…featuring a girl going nuts before her wedding and cutting off her hair. Despite not featuring any skateboarding animals or guys humping living room sets, it went on to garner around 3 to 4 million hits around the Web. Well this precious candid moment was in fact completely staged, intended to establish the term “wig out” as part of a new ad campaign for Sunsilk hair care products. Last year’s Spoiled Rich Girl viral videos staring an obnoxious teenage girl complaining the sports car she got for her birthday were also fake, staged by Dominos Pizza. Could the viral video your friend just sent you be part of an undercover advertising campaign? It’s entirely possible. From now on just play it safe and don’t watch anything online that isn’t porn.

Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?

By now it’s fairly safe to say everyone on the planet has watched this video…

The Diet Coke and Mentos guys weren’t paid to create their original video, but you’d better believe Coke and Mentos were eager to jump on the trend like poodle on leg, quickly releasing official commercials to tie in with the fad. Suddenly it dawned on marketers “hey, we can get the idiots out there to sell stuff to themselves!” and thus consumer generated advertising was born. Today numerous company websites allow people to create their own custom commercials, Doritos has even turned 2 million dollar, 30 second spots on the Super Bowl over to consumer produced spots.

Increasingly marketers are going to be using people just like us as tools. The regular folks on the street, sitting at their computers or even you yourself. You’ll sell your next-door neighbor something and then he’ll turn around and sell you something right back. Marketers want to do the unthinkable; they want to make you one of them.


Getting In Your Head

So, how much more invasive can marketing get? Where else could they possibly stick their nose in? Well, how about inside your skull? Tracking our habits is all fine and good, but for ad-men it’s not enough to merely get in your head figuratively, they want in there literally.

What Marketers are Doing Now

Using FMRI scans researchers are probing our grey matter to find out why we buy and they’ve found that it’s tied to the most primitive part of our brains, known at the “Reptilian Brain” (which explains why you always end up stuck in a line behind a couple gila monsters and a box-turtle at the supermarket). Researchers have identified which neurons in our brain fire when ads are effective and which neurons fire when they’re not.

But not everyone has an FMRI machine in their back pocket to scan their customer’s brains with. That’s okay, as marketers are using advanced behavioral studies and ethnography (the study of human behavior) to find out what we’re thinking. Take for example the marketers who gave a group of people money to allow them to film them showering for weeks. It wasn’t just a creepy excuse to gawk at soapy breasts, they were closely studying people’s habits in order help market a new line of Moen showerheads. Most of us don’t have cameras in our showers (at least not ones put there by marketers) but the cameras overhead in every store you go into these days see a lot more than the pack of tube socks you just shoved under your shirt.

Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?

Okay, let’s tie all this shit together. The goal is a world made of marketing, where every new trend or cultural movement is controlled and contorted by marketers to sell you the latest new, improved, whiter, brighter and better tasting products. The marketing machine will be your constant companion, one that knows you better than you know yourself and is always there to sell you something through your TV, computer, kitchen appliances, friends or family and when you’re not being sold something to you’ll be selling to others.

It all sounds a bit scary, doesn’t it? Well before you fashion yourself a tinfoil hat and start stocking the isolation bunker, just remember that no matter how advanced advertiser’s techniques become you ultimately still have the power in this relationship. You’re the one who decides when and where your money is spent and the onus will be on all of us to become increasingly discerning about plunking down our cash. With knowledge and a healthy dose of cynicism we should always be able to stay a step ahead of the marketers. Well, until they unleash the adverbots…

…then we’re pretty much screwed.

Nathan Birch also writes the invasively cute webcomic Zoology.

8 Amazing Child Prodigies That Makes Us All Look Pathetic by Comparison

Ah, childhood. It’s a magical time when you’re still allowed to be a non-productive drain on society and not feel guilty about it. But while most of us spent our childhoods trying to consume as many cartoons and sugary breakfast cereals as our eyes and pancreas could handle, some kids were more focused on things like composing symphonies, performing surgery or being nominated for the Nobel Prize. Here’s a list of some of history’s greatest child prodigies that make the rest of us look like a pack of chimps by comparison.


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Some of you may have heard of this guy. Mozart is not only one of the greatest composers of all time, but probably history’s most recognized child prodigy. There’s not an elementary school music room that doesn’t have a poster of Mozart up listing his early accomplishments in order to shame the kids into playing “Hot cross buns” on their recorders instead of using them as lightsabers or spitball cannons.

Mozart learned to play the piano at 4, composed his first pieces at 5 and at 8, an age when most us probably couldn’t even name half a dozen musical instruments if asked, Mozart wrote his first symphony. Young Mozart was quite the little celebrity, but sadly the fate of child stars was about the same then as it is now as his tumultuous life would end up lasting a mere 35 years. It’s proof the universe is fundamentally unfair that Mozart died so young while today we still have to put up with Danny Bonaduce. That’ll teach us to invent a cure for syphilis.

What Most of Us Had Accomplished Musically at That Age

We didn’t have time to be composing symphonies since we were too busy constructing our own instruments.

Akrit Jaswal

We don’t have to get into the Wayback machine to learn about this child prodigy who was born in India in 1993. This kid, India’s youngest ever university student and physician, makes Doogie Howser look like an unmotivated slob. “Oh that’s cute” you say, “they’re letting him play doctor”. Play nothing, this kid was performing operations when he was 7. He also has quite the pint-sized ego on him.

“People saw my potential and wanted to help me excel in life,” Akrit has said. “I think they’re of above average intelligence, but not as clever as me.” Doesn’t it just make you want to smack the little scamp? Although if Akrit’s current work on a cure for cancer turns out to be successful he can spend all day shouting about how smart he is into a golden megaphone for all we care. That said, Akrit has also claimed he’s going to make a dinosaur, so we’ll believe he has the cure for cancer when he rides down the street with it on a stegosaurus.


What Most of Us Had Accomplished Medically at That Age

Through painstaking research held during recess we’d discovered the difference between boys and girls (beside the other side’s debilitating cootie levels of course). Also we knew that the Ninja Turtle Band-aids totally made our scraped knees heal faster.


H.P. Lovecraft

One of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century, Howard Phillips Lovecraft learned to read at the age of 2 and was writing complex poetry by the age of 6 (we’d be especially impressed if he found a rhyme for “Cthulhu”). When not reading or writing Lovecraft spent his childhood amassing enough crushing trauma that writing stories about the incomprehensible mind-rending alien horror of the universe probably felt like a lighthearted departure from real life.

Young Lovecraft was sickly and spent much of his childhood in bed being told horror stories by his eccentric grandfather Whipple (whose ridiculous name was about as funny as Lovecraft’s childhood got). Lovecraft’s parents were proof lunatics attract, as his father was a syphilitic psychotic and his mother was a chronically depressed, frail, ghostly pale woman (she was likely being slowly poisoned by arsenic based syphilis treatments). His father would die paralyzed in an asylum, his grandfather would follow leaving the family destitute and then his mother would go, passing away in the same hospital Lovecraft’s father died in to complete the tragedy trifecta. If all this wasn’t bad enough every night when Lovecraft went to bed the very shadows around him would form into the monstrous black tentacles of a long lost burning-eyed God who would try to drag his body down to the depths of hell itself.

Well okay, we can’t prove that last bit, but it makes for a better story.

What Most of Us Had Accomplished in Literature at That Age

We’d authored the little known classic “The Ghostbusters meet Batman and GI Joe”. We were also masters at the art of the Mad-Lib.

William James Sidis

Some consider William James Sidis the smartest man who ever lived, with an estimated IQ of 250 – 300. For the sake of comparison, you only have to have an IQ of 136 to be a mere run of the mill genius, and your average person is somewhere in the 85 – 115 range. Surprisingly pictures of Sidis reveal that his head was only marginally bigger than average and not a throbbing translucent beach ball sized dome. Word is he wasn’t even capable of shooting psychic death rays.

Sidis could read at 18 months, had written 4 books and was fluent in 8 languages at age 7, gave a lecture a Harvard at 9 and entered Harvard himself at 11. Despite his brilliance in the fields of mathematics and cosmology, we do have to question Sidis’ intelligence in one key area as he took a vow of celibacy his entire life and likely died a virgin. It’s unfortunate because nothing gets the ladies hot and bothered like a dissertation on the theory of cosmological reversibility. Hell, Sidis could probably get a girl’s panties off from across the room with telekinesis if he wanted to and dammit, that’s just not something to be wasted.

What Most of Us Had Accomplished in Mathematics at That Age

We’d entered 55378008 into our calculators so many times we’d burned it into the screen.

Okita Soji

Okita Soji, who lived in mid-1800s Japan, is a bit different than the rest of the names found in this article. While the other people listed here were remarkable because of their mental abilities, Okita Soji was a prodigy at kicking ass. When most of us were still struggling with cutting our own meat, Okita began learning advanced sword fighting techniques at age 9 and at the age of 12 he defeated a master swordsman in combat (legend has it he underestimated his young opponent, spending most of the battle pretending to steal Okita’s nose).

Okita would officially become a master himself at age 18 and then become a founding member of the Shinsengumi, a legendary police force featured in TV, movies, comic books and video games in Japan to this day. While most of the guys on this list will make you feel stupid, Okita Soji isn’t content unless he makes you feel like less of a man.

What Most of Us Had Accomplished in the Field of Ass Kicking at That Age

Our skill at beating on our siblings with cardboard tubes was legendary.


Kim Ung-yong

This Korean super genius might just be the smartest guy alive today as he’s recognized by the Guinness Book of World records as having the highest IQ of anyone on the planet. Granted his record doesn’t quite have the cachet of other Guinness records like “World’s longest midget toss” or “Oldest male stripper”, but its still fairly impressive.

Kim entered university as a physics student at the age of 3. We’re not sure how many parties he got invited to at that age, but word has it nobody shotguns a juice-box like Kim Ung-yong. Later at the ripe old age of 7 Kim was invited to the United States by NASA to study, although to be honest we’re guessing he was invited because they suspected him of being an alien.

What Most of Us Had Accomplished Scientifically at That Age

Research on what different shit does when you put it in the microwave began (a study that continues to this day).

Gregory Smith

Born in 1990, Gregory Smith could read at age 2 and had enrolled in university at age 10. Yeah, we know what you’re thinking, “so what? Enrolling in college before the age of 12 doesn’t impress us anymore! Hell, compared to that Kim Ung-yong you just mentioned this Greg Smith kid seems like a bit of a slow-poke!” So what makes Gregory Smith special enough to earn the prestige of being mentioned in a Cracked article? Well, aside from being Tiger Beat cover material of course.

Well a lot of child prodigies are, to put it delicately, dicks. They tend to either know they’re awesome and aren’t afraid to flaunt it, or they’re anti-social weirdos. Greg Smith actually decided to put his intelligence towards the betterment of his fellow man though, founding an advocacy group for peace and children’s rights. He met with Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev, spoke in front of the UN and was nominated in 2002 for the friggin’ Nobel Peace Prize. Sadly he was beaten out for the honor by Jimmy Carter, who doesn’t look anywhere near as dreamy with a blonde mushroom cut.

What Most of Us Had Accomplished in Humanitarianism at That Age

We dutifully presented our UNICEF box at every house when trick-or-treating even though waiting for old ladies to fish through their purse for pennies totally cut into our candy scoring abilities.


Pablo Picasso

The popular image of Picasso (who's full name was, seriously, Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruiz y Picasso) is of the artist in his later years when Picasso was a loveable mistress-hopping misogynist who created art so filthy it would make a construction worker blush. Well, assuming you could make out what was going on.

Picasso went through many phases and made art for most of his 91-year lifespan. His artistic endeavors had to be briefly delayed until he learned to talk, but once that little hassle was out of the way he immediately insisted his father hand over his brushes and teach him to paint, and nobody says no to Picasso (a fact many a model in her early-20s would learn in later years). Before the age of 12 Picasso had a total grasp of the fundamentals of art and was producing photorealistic anatomical sketches, and in his teens he was already considered to be a mature artist who was producing significant works. In an ironic twist considering his amazing abilities as a youngster, as an old man Picasso largely took to drawing child-like pictures, often in crayon. But hey, he was Picasso, he could have taken to finger-painting in pudding and the pictures would still be selling for millions today.

What Most of Us Had Accomplished Artistically at That Age

The latest triumph in our “Turkeys made from tracings of our hands” series was on display at the prestigious Frigidaire gallery.

Nathan Birch also writes the blindingly intelligent webcomic Zoology.