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the monarchy
the royal family of france (boo). spent their time blowing money on big castles and eating cake in a time of famine; understandably, many in france had decided they wanted them gone. in the grand game of revolution, they were more or less the ball being kicked around by other factions. but that's no reason to lose your head.

the sans-culottes
the masses of dispossessed and discontent in paris leading up to the revolution. their name is an indicator of how badly off they were, as it means they could not afford the fancier kinds of pants (which looked like crap and which nobody wears nowadays anyway). their popular movement was the irresistible tide which carried other factions into government as the final traces of the old rule were wiped away.

jacobins
a radical anti-monarchist political club which had numerous members in france's national assembly. when the blood had settled, the jacobins were the dominant force in france (this didn't last). famous jacobins included mirabeau and robespierre.

girondins
a faction that appealed to the provincial nobility outside of paris. they started as a somewhat more moderate wing of the jacobins until robespierre forced them out for being *too* moderate. one of the more famous girondins was charlotte corday, who liked killing people while they bathed.

cordeliers
among the most extreme factions in play during the revolution, calling for such radical reforms as universal suffrage and democracy. like the girondins, they lost significant power leading up to the revolution and the remaining members were declared public enemies by the jacobins after that. famous cordeliers include danton (a big ugly buff guy), marat (who liked getting killed by women while he was bathing), and hébert (one of those guys who died by ironic guillotine)

cozumel, an idyllic island between cancun and cuba, offers opportunities for sightseeing, diving, and food which are not to be passed up by the adventurous traveler. however, it is paramount to be wary of the chief threat on the island, extremely pushy stall vendors

to walk down the corredor de artesanos is to run the gauntlet of shell jewelry, textiles, sunglasses, and the odd jar of local preserves. avoiding their gaze will not deter them. politely declining will not dissuade them. they cannot be haggled with, they cannot be reasoned with, they do not feel pity, remorse, or fear. they absolutely will not stop until the cash in your pockets has been converted into kitsch

but if you can get by them there's a pretty good taco place on the beach.

(n.) a hard confection made from molten sugar and butter. resembles the nose of a late-stage syphilis sufferer, or at least that's what popular knowledge would have us believe

gianello della torre (1500 – 1585) was a renaissance-era inventor who made his home in spain (where his name is best known) and could have been as famous as his contemporary leonardo da vinci, if people's brains were capable of storing the names of more than one renaissance-era inventor

does not have a ninja turtle named after him

a monster who does not belong in this world, who steals men's souls and makes them his slaves. mankind ill needs a savior such as him

... you see what i did there? huh? huh?

possibly derived from "looming naughties," which sums the concept up rather nicely

pizza done in the style of hawaii. putting aside that it was created in canada by a greek guy.

traditionally the toppings placed atop the cheese base will include ham or bacon, and little cubical prisms of pineapple. the blend of sweet and savory is generally regarded as an acquired taste, or, in other words, something you won't like until you've tried it a few times.

like airline food, hawaiian pizza is one of those easy targets for comedy, presumably because it doesn't fight back

the last big hurrah of the 18th century, featuring liberty, equality, and brotherhood as side dishes alongside a main course of blood, horror, devastation and death. brought to us by france; we assume it was all staged in an attempt to win at eurovision

what exactly happened (in a nutshell): after several massive wars, droughts, hailstones, and the aftermath of a massive volcanic eruption in iceland, france was facing a fairly serious famine and economic crisis. public sentiment was tipping very heavily against the monarchy (at the time, headed by king louis xvi), and this finally reached its fever pitch in 1789, when an angry mob raided the bastille (a political prison) to steal weapons; three years after that, the monarchy was abolished, and two years after that, after the king was caught sneaking off to austria to raise an army against the revolutionaries, he was messily executed with members of his family.

so democracy came to france, and many people were executed, and eventually a war broke out across all of europe. then napoleon came into power and even more war broke out across all of europe! good times

in the end: it wound up not mattering a whole lot because after napoleon fell in 1814 france went back to being a monarchy. live and learn.

learn about the major players in the french revolution by clicking here! well, not here-here, i mean where those blue words are.

a lovely woman, really. I won't hear a word spoken against her character.

have you called your mom lately? she would probably appreciate it.

the purported secretive cabal consisting of key influential individuals in the many halls of power, and which engineers globally insidious undertakings of all descriptions, including the activities of satanic cults, the cia, the military, ancient egyptians, atlantis, alien invaders, the entertainment industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the arms industry, the confectionery industry, unhinged lone wolf assassins, the knights templar, your mom, french revolutionaries, freemasons, and underappreciated webcartoonists of the 2010s who just sort of stopped updating with no warning one day.

... but not coofl. definitely not coofl.

a vague and nebulous abstraction derived from the paranoid ravings of certain activists or cynics, embodying the sinister and skullduggerous authority figure who is the butt of countless standup routines

or at least that's what (also: illuminati) wants you to think

a song that constantly plays in the background whenever italian things are happening

you know the one i mean.

a form of music once popular in cuba, generally characterized by quick pace, jaunty drums, bells, flute and violin sounds. usually meant to be accompanied by salsa dancing. goes down great with cocaine, one assumes

sort of the spanish tarantella

(adj.) greyish and somber-looking, as from advanced age

one of those words you've got to be pretty careful using

(n.) a small tree able to be held between two fingers, used to scrape leftovers from between your teeth or debris from other hard-to-reach spaces.

... usually it is considered a bad idea to do both with the same toothpick.

formal name for the shape formed by the overlapping portion of a venn diagram

informally called a vag

vlad iii (1428ish-1476ish) was a ruler in romania who became famous for brutally massacring turkish people to get out of paying them back for their assistance in brutally massacring the hungarians

he was not a vampire, but at some point bram stoker, and then the entire world, decided he would be more interesting if he were a vampire. so now everyone just pretends he was. today, dracula-the-vampire is one of the most prolific characters in all of fiction, but has probably not seen a penny of the royalties himself, which just goes to show who the real bloodsuckers are.

the ancient gaelic harvest festival, held at the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. by happenstance this causes the date to coincide with the modern holiday of halloween

the word would most properly be pronounced as "so-when," because the irish evidently just do not give a damn

a component of the social fabric of pre-meiji japan, samurai were warrior nobles sworn to the service of lords and emperors. in times of war they were highly trained combat elites in swordsmanship, horsemanship, archery and tactics; in peacetime they were expected to take on administrative duties or enjoy their own cultural pursuits such as calligraphy, poetry, and hanging out with geishas (not prostitutes... okay, mostly)

for the purposes of foolish ignorant pig westerners, samurai are just guys with ponytails and white robes who go around making "ho! ha! hokkaido!" noises.

a fixture of japanese pop culture who may arguably qualify as a middle-tier deity. first reaching movie screens in 1954 as the brainchild of screenwriter shigeru kayama, director ishiro honda, special effects whiz eiji tusburaya, and a nuclear bomb, godzilla traditionally takes the form of an oil-tanker-sized, bottom-heavy lizard with lumpy skin (though his name originally meant "gorilla-whale").

originally intended as a parable for the devastation wrought on the world by the advent of atomic weapons in the mid-20th century, and the lingering trauma felt by those who saw firsthand the dehumanization of war, nowadays he just kinda fights other big monsters and aliens and robots and so on so we can marvel at big flashy explosions. In this way he could be regarded as an inspiration on those rambo movies.

godzilla's long career can be divided into several distinct eras:
* Showa (1954-1975)
* Heisei (1984-1995)
* Millennium (1999-2004)
* And Reiwa, the attempt to bring him back to his arthouse origins. Also, the Americans tried making their own godzilla films, but they tried making their own chocolate too, and look how that turned out.