Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

In the cosmic sense, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has no significance whatsoever.

I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia is an island nation in the Caribbean. It achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1979. The capital is Castries. Who has time for such things when one day all of us will die?

Saint Lucia's flag is brightly colored to distract its citizens from the inevitability of death.

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Saint Kitts and Nevis is the first of way too many inconsequential island nations whose names all start with the letter 'S', and will thus be afforded even less attention than most of the island nations I've already done. Located in the Leeward Island chain of the east Caribbean, Saint Kitts and Nevis consists of two islands: Saint Kitts, and another one whose name I was unable to dig up in my research. With a population of just over 50,000, Saint Kitts and Nevis is the smallest country in the Americas (in case you care [You don't though, so why did I bother? (Why do I do anything? What's the point? Does my life have any meaning at all?)]).

A view from Saint Kitts of the other island, whatever it's called. The blue part is the ocean.

Rwanda

Rwanda is a small African country that most people have only heard of because of all the terrible things that have happened there. I should probably be more specific, huh? This particular bowl of sad history (part of this complete breakfast!) is located in central Africa, just south of the Equator. Rwanda was a Germany colony from 1884 until World War I, when it was claimed by the Belgians, whose prowess at destroying the lives of dark-skinned people once nearly matched their waffle-making chops. The Belgians ruled through the Rwandan monarchy, favoring the Tutsi tribe over their main rivals, the Hutu, building up massive resentment between the two, which, in an event that was completely without precedent in African colonial history, led to civil war and ethnic cleansing. Up to a million people were killed by Hutu rebels during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, and that number could easily have been higher without the heroic actions of people like Don Cheadle. Rwanda is currently a major exporter of coffee beans, good for late nights awake in bed thinking about how humankind is a pitiable, hopeless race, cursed from the beginning of time to forever repeat the blunders of history.

Rwandan coffee farmers sorting the beans for Starbucks' new blend: ultra-dark, with hints of chocolate and regret.

Russia

Russia is the world's biggest country, a monolithic chunk of Eurasia that has fewer interesting things per square mile than any other nation on the planet. That's probably not entirely fair, as the western half of Russia has produced plenty of culture (mostly a lot of sad authors), whereas the eastern half is so desolate and miserable that one time a meteor exploded directly above part of it, leveling miles of forest and creating an explosion so large that it lit up the night sky all over the world, and almost nobody noticed. I think that's the part where famous dead person Yul Brynner was from. Siberia, one of the most famously shitty areas in the entire world, used to be where infamous dictator/mustache champion Josef Stalin sent people who he didn't like. Can you imagine that? What if an American president forced people to live in camps in the worst parts of the country for reasons other than because they were Japanese? Wouldn't that be crazy? Russia was ruled by a series of tsars from 1547 to 1918, when Nicholas II was doing such a lousy job that communism actually started to look like a more viable system of government. The October Revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin, whose crazy dream lasted for most of the 20th century before the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1991. During this time, the Soviet Union not only managed to make most of eastern Europe economically retarded; they also accomplished the previously unthinkable feat of launching a dog into space. This was, and remains, the most expensive way that anyone has ever killed a dog.

Following his death, Lenin's body was mummified and remains on display at his mausoleum in Moscow for the benefit of those who think he didn't look quite creepy enough when he was still alive.

Romania

Romania is a country in eastern Europe that is going to be difficult to talk about in an original way because I already used up all of my (admittedly pretty mediocre) scary accent material on Bulgaria. I am a lazy person though, so that's not gonna stop me from making hay out of the fact that Transylvania, located in Romania, was where vampires used to live before the crash in the housing market forced all of them to move to a sad, redneck town in the Pacific Northwest. Modern-day Romania was once home to Vlad the Impaler, a major asshole whose 15th-century reign of terror inspired characters like Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Count from Sesame Street. So at least his tens of thousands of victims can take solace in the fact that their brutal executions eventually resulted in an excellent means of teaching basic arithmetic to children. Plus, it's not like they wouldn't all be dead by now anyway (I'm a glass-half-full guy). The capital of Romania is Bucharest, which apparently has such a major overpopulation of stray dogs that the problem warranted a subheading on its Wikipedia page.

Bran Castle in central Romania. Forks, Washington is a pretty big step down in my book.