There are notable benefits to this. For one, it gives you an opportunity to act like a genius if you can deconstruct Top Gun, or discuss the science of the Infinite Monkey Theorem. However, while this is all fun and innocent, there’s also the stuff that is fun and not-at-all innocent, that is, the dark side of pop culture.

For me, this stuff is even more fascinating, considering the nature of the beast. After all, we all like to think of pop culture as nothing that is ever really dark. It’s supposed to be about remembering who sang which corny 80’s song, or who divorced who, and ignoring things like how Michael Hutchence of INXS died after attempting autoerotic asphyxiation while whacked up on Prozac. For me, that’s what makes case studies like the following all the more fascinating. So I suggest you only read on if you’re as screwed in the head as I am.

Stay Away, This Thing Will Hurt Someone

About a month ago, I was in one of my typical funk, and out of morbid curiosity was looking at NNDB’s list of all the famous people who had committed suicide (including those famous exclusively for having done so), when I stumbled upon the case of Budd Dwyer.

Robert “Budd” Dwyer was actually the treasurer of Pennyslvania in the mid to late 80s. Late in 1986, Budd became the center of a controversy for having received a $300,000 kickback. By 1987, he was clearly finished as a politician, and decided to hold a televised press conference. In it, he ranted about his innocence, calling himself a “victim of political persecution”, you know, standard political b.s. However, things then started to go awry, as he handed his aides three envelopes, then pulled a fourth out from the podium, and removed from it a .357 magnum. The people in attendence, understandably, were shocked and implored Budd not to do anything crazy, though he simply said “Stay away, this thing will hurt someone”, which it then proceeded to, as he shot himself on live television (the picture above was taken seconds before the act).

As far as I can tell, Budd is one of perhaps only two people to have done this (the other being newswoman Christine Chubbuck). So, are you convinced of what an insane world it is we live in yet? If not, I have more.

Fanta For Der Fuerher

Now, when you think Fanta, you probably think of that soda sold by Coca-Cola that is usually hawked to us by “The Fantanas”, i.e., a color-coded cabal of Latin-American women extolling the benefits of the soft drink through zesty salsa jams (wanta, Fanta, doncha wanta, wanta fanta, etc.) However, as it just so happens, Fanta found its origins not in some hopping South-American bungalo wallpapered with sexually viable bombshells, but instead in that other haven of fun and multiculturalism, Nazi Germany.

You see, due to trade restrictions during the second World War, it became impossible to get Coca-Cola syrup to the Third Reich, which left German Coke factories at a loss. However, in an effort to keep the company’s assets afloat in the country, the German CEO, Max Keith pulled together a few ingredients and created Fanta, which subsequently became a big hit in the republic. So the next time you sip a Fanta, you can think with pride of it as the beverage that stalwartly kept Coke’s foreign assets afloat during World War II!

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering how Coke actually feels about Latin-Americans, you can go check out www.killercoke.org (though I suppose the Fantanas aren’t Union Leaders).

Custer’s Revenge

Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the anti-video game nutcases should really count their blessings. Certainly it’s a little unseemly to have 13-year olds playing Grand Theft Auto, but come on guys, they could be playing Custer’s Revenge.

Already I’m sure you’ve seen the case there and wondered what the hell is going on here, but I swear that I am not making any of this up. Ahem….

Back in the days of the Atari 2600, there existed a video game company called Mystique, which specialized in pornographic video games. Obviously most video game publishers these days are willing to settle for more soft-core fare (Tomb Raider), but Mystique wanted to push the bland pixel graphics of the Atari to it’s naughtiest. This meant games like Beat “Em and Eat “Em, where you control two naked women and try to catch semen ejaculated from a well-endowed man on a rooftop above you, and, even more infamously, Custer’s Revenge.

I assume that most people know the story of General Armstrong Custer, who went down in history as one of the only generals in the US Army who couldn’t successfully carry out the genocide against Native Americans (known at the time by its euphemism, “Manifest Destiny”). Obviously, the producers at Mystique did, as they took the perhaps-a-little-ill-advised step of making an erotic video game out of the subject matter. I will grant that it’s astoundingly creative as a type of revisionist history wherein you, the gamer, get to control the randy and insatiable rascal Custer in his quest to rape physically restrained Indian women with the best graphics the Atari programmers could afford you:

So for all the flack Custer may get from the “Racially-tolerant decency-mongers”, let it not be said that the man did not have an enormous, pixelated penis.

I hope this has been informing, and will perhaps make you think twice before you spend more than a few minutes trawling around Wikipedia.