What 10 Countries Would You Recommend Visiting that Will Change Your Life?

Not-so-snappy answers to a stupid Quora question

For politics and current events conversations, skip this silly post and go straight to today’s live radio interviews with Alan Sabrosky and Peter McCullough and tomorrow’s False Flag Weekly News with E. Michael Jones.

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When I was a kid I enjoyed Mad Magazine’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” Then I hit puberty and graduated to the vintage 1970s-era National Lampoon. When I stopped laughing, I went to college and discovered humour noir and the theater of the absurd—which was not only good for a few more laughs, but powerfully communicated the existentialist realization or “noble truth” that life without God is utterly meaningless and pointless. Finally, in my 30s, I lost faith in nihilism, converted to Islam, and have since devoted myself to becoming the English-speaking world’s leading Muslim satirist.

Meanwhile, in a lame attempt to elicit satirical bons mots, Quora keeps sending me stupid questions, often coupled with even stupider answers. A few months ago they asked me “What Five Places Should You NOT Visit When Visiting Europe?” Now they’re back with another “make a stupid travel list” question. 

What 10 Countries Would You Recommend Visiting that Will Change Your Life? (Quora)

There are said to be exactly 195 acknowledged countries in the world: the 193 UN member states, plus Palestine and the Holy See. But none of them can change your life like a visit to one of the “unacknowledged countries.” Below is my list of the top-ten life-changing “unacknowledged countries.”

1) The Patriarchal Protectorate of East Angelica. This mysterious city-state is smaller and less well-known than the Vatican. Located somewhere between the 23rd meridian and 17th parallel, it is a haven for religious dignitaries from a faith so secretive that even its adherents have no idea what they believe in. The only way to find this mysterious little country is to stumble upon a decades-old Lonely Planet guidebook in a dilapidated used bookstore, turn to the “P” section of the index, and luck out. If you do manage to visit “the Protectorate” (as its aficionados affectionately call it) your life will inescapably change from one of brief moments of bliss intermittently interrupted by seemingly interminable hours of agony, to the exact opposite.

2) The Chicdom of Shuckashuck. This small desert kingdom earned enough in oil revenues to build a wall of invisibility around itself. But the Sheihk of Shuckashuck likes to be seen—preferably in the latest Parisian iteration of his desert robes and headdresses. So he renamed himself “The Chic” and has been popping up in places like Monte Carlo, St. Tropez, and Macao ever since. His country, however, is unfortunately still invisible. The only way to find it is to hire a camel caravan somewhere between Mali and Mogadishu, head in the general direction of the central Sahara, and keep going until you bump into an invisible wall. At that point you have to knock really hard and hope the Guardian of the Gates hears you and lets you in. If he does, you’re in for a treat, and your life will never be the same. If he doesn’t, you die of thirst. And that, too, is a life-changing experience.

3) The Intergalactic Ice Colony of Inner Antarctica. This is not exactly a country, since it is technically a colony of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization that likes to build snowmen. They have burrowed deep beneath the Antarctic ice to pursue their hobby. If you like snowmen, snow forts, snowball fights, and other winter amusements, you can spend a wonderful wintertime week, any time of year, and emerge refreshed and energized from your playful under-ice interactions with the ten-headed snow lizards from outer space.

4) Equatoria. A great place to go when you’re tired of chilly Inner Antarctica! This unique geographic entity is the world’s longest (24,901 miles) but is not considered a country because it has no width. The weather there is always tropical, but you never get sunburned because when you’re there you have no width either, which means that the sun’s photons go right by you on either side without ever hitting your skin. Being able to sunbathe in the exact dead center of the tropics all day long, even at high noon, and never, ever get sunburned, while pigging out every day at the hotel buffet while your waistline remains exactly zero centimeters, is an experience that will blow your mind and change your life.

5) The Shitty of London. Did you know that London’s sewage processing district is a sovereign entity unto itself? The roughly one-square-mile-wide district has its own police, makes its own laws, and processes almost 47% of the entire UK’s sewage. The world’s biggest purveyors of human excrement have their headquarters here, a fact which has fueled conspiracy theories about a secret plot to make the world really, really shitty. A visit to The Shitty will change your life in a bad way—you’ll never quite get rid of the smell—but also a good way: You will be so happy to have left!

6) The Polar Vortex. This mysterious country, vividly described by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” consists of a sort of rotating, whirlpool-like vortex in spacetime. Located deep in the southernmost seas, in the same general region as Inner Antarctica, the Polar Vortex is said to open into a planet in the Crab Nebulae famous for its bouffant hairdos and exotic footwear. You’ll return as a whole new you—from head to toe!

7) The Megalopolis of Invisible Hot Air Balloons. Technically not a country because it controls no territory, MAIHB consists of a swarm of gigantic hot air balloons tethered together with rope bridges and ladders. Each balloon’s basket is big enough to hold a small city. Using the same invisibility technology as Shuckashuck, MAIHB’s supercomputers frequently project UFO holograms to frighten pilots, change flight paths, and avert collisions. If you want to visit MAIHB, you need to fill out a visa application, tape it to a helium balloon, release the balloon, and hope that it reaches the MAIHB’s Ministry of Tourism and Cumulonimbus Affairs. If your application is accepted, a rope will be lowered from the sky. You need to grab hold of that rope and not let go! As you sweep up into cerulean spaces, passing astonished birds and even more astonished pilots, and are finally lowered gently into one of those gigantic invisible balloon baskets, stripped naked and rubbed down with invisibility potion by expert hands, you know that you are on your way to a vacation experience unlike any other. A week or two later, when they scrub off the potion and lower you back to Earth, you will feel refreshed, renewed, and ready to re-enter the depressing grind of daily life.

8) The Overpriced Principality of Bamboozalia. This shady but ostensibly sovereign entity, with embassies and branch offices scattered across the world, is known for the expensive and luxurious goods and services it sells but rarely delivers. A visit to Bamboozalia will definitely change your life: However much money you had before you went there, you will have a whole lot less when you return.

9) The Kaligulous Kaganate of Khazaria. Located somewhere near the northern Black Sea shores, with colonies in New York, Washington, Hollywood, London, and Occupied Jerusalem, the royal Kagan family, with its numerous neocon cousins, runs this hidden nation as its personal fiefdom. Khazaria, populated by ultra-ethnocentric tribesmen, is best known for its unique foreign policy, which is largely directed toward tricking large, actual nations into entering destructive wars, while committing genocide against people whose land it wishes to steal. With its national motto “it’s better to be feared than loved,” Khazaria is a scary place to visit. But it will change your life, because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

*Warning: If you are visiting Khazaria, or anywhere else for that matter, never, ever criticize Khazaria or its rulers! If you even mention that they exist, or hold any wealth or power whatsoever, they will prove they don’t by destroying you.

10) The United Snakes of Hysteria or USH. Formerly known as the USA, the USH is currently a hideous parody of its former self. Neither the genocidal dotard currently in charge, nor the even more genocidal narcissistic sociopath challenging him, have the slightest chance of altering this nation’s trajectory from the hellbound orbit in which it ineluctably plunges. A visit to the mean streets of its ghettos, the hideous sameness of its suburbs, and the obesity-infested aisles of its Wal-Marts will horrify and depress you to the point that your return flight back to wherever you came from will feel like a luxury vacation in the highest station of paradise.

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I hope you found this travelogue helpful. If and when you actually visit any of these ten countries, be sure to send me a postcard!