Top Ten Lesser Well Known Horsemen Of The Apocalypse

10. Horseman of Amateur Heavy Metal
    His victims belt out mostly unintelligible words and profanities in styles copied from Metalica, Megadeth & Pantera. Death usually passes over HoAHM’s victims, as most of them didn’t have a life before being harvested.
    
9. Horseman of Lazy Rude Disrespectful Children
   HoLRDC got his start in the middle of the Victorian era and it has only been upward for him since. HoLRDC has had to pace himself however, making sure to only corrupt each new generation a little more than the last. How long can he keep his streak going? The other horsemen formed a pool over 150 years ago and all have seen their target dates come and go. Pestilence predicted the latest date of 1980 and felt he was a shoo in with the advent of Elvis and just a little latter the sexual revolution of the Flower Power generation, but no -- HoLRDC has continued to best himself every generation since he started. Despite predictions by many that HoLRDC’s proclaimed law of More-Lazy-Rude-and-Disrespectful couldn’t hold for many more generations, HoLRDC has always confounded the experts by finding new means of corrupting the young to greater and greater degrees, often relying on technology to do so.
   
8. Horseman of Congressional Inquiry
   This horseman is a triple threat causing pain and suffering for the Congressmen that summon him, the victims they sacrifice to him, and the constituency forced to watch. The irony being that whatever political side summons HoCI they always think they will be unscathed by the forces they unleash, leading to an unending cycle of one side after the other summoning him.
   
7. Horseman of Unsolicited Advertising
   Once an almost unknown player in the saga of human suffering, HoUA has seen huge gains in his ability to inflict suffering with the advent of the Internet. No longer content to send gaudy bulk rate junk mail, HoUA now interferes with just about every aspect of our computerized and interconnect way of life. Should his power increase he may make a bid to displace either Famine or Pestilence as one of the four poster-boy Horsemen Of The Apocalypse.
   
6. Horseman of Whole Life Insurance
   One of the most stealthy of all the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he has an army of drone like followers to do his bidding. Only after years of deprivation do his victims realize he has left them a pittance compared to the retirement income they could have had, had they invested in stocks, bonds or a 401K instead.
   
5. Horseman of Computer Obsolescence
   A relative newcomer to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, HoCO studied at the feet of the Horseman of Planned Obsolescence whose hay-day was in the Fifties and Sixties. Unlike HoPO, HoCO doesn’t create shoddy items that break with little wear or tear, but instead creates newer, better, faster models every few weeks. Instead of forcing his victims to buy new replacement appliances and cars for ones that have expired, HoCO tortures his victims with feelings of inferiority until they can no longer stand it and rush out to buy the latest model -- even when all they use their current still fully functional computers for is to balance a check book or keep cooking recipes.
   
4. Horseman of Bad Hair Cuts
   This horseman use to be almost universally ignored even as he inflicted his malice far and wide -- no one seemed to notice bad hair when everyone had bad hair. These days HoBHC has learned to be selective. By only practicing his craft sporadically through out his victim’s lives has he found he can maximize their suffering. This has also made room for a new apprentice: Horseman of The Bad Hair Day.
   
3. Horseman of Inappropriate Office Behavior
   This horseman has reinvented himself several times. Once known as The Horseman of Inappropriate Sexual Advances in the Office and later as The Horseman of Political Correctness, his most recent former incarnation being The Horseman formerly known as HoPC. HoIOB thrives in the new repressive office environment his former incarnations have led to and now strives to define new means for people to give offense where none is intended. While no new incarnation is planned or needed HoIOB has been pondering a name change to Horseman of @#&*! -- pronounced with the sound of a cheek being slapped.
   
2. Horseman of Entertainment Disguised as News
   HoEDaN had a brief rise in stature at the end of the 19th Century when newspapers published knowingly false articles in order to spur sales. He had been on the wane until most recently, but has had a meteoric rise and comeback with the spread of cable television. HoEDaN hasn’t just been content to corrupt the accurate reporting of news by corporations that have cross-promotional ties to plug, but was instrumental in the inspiration to create the Infomercial – an achievement he considers his crowning glory.
   
1. Horseman of Unnecessary Medical Procedures
   This horseman use to have little to do except to follow HoIA (Horseman of Inflamed Appendix) around. Now he is one of the most overworked horsemen in the trade. Somewhere in the early Twentieth Century he asked himself the following simple question: Are people vain enough to subject themselves to pain and mutilation in order to pursue bodily perfection? The results are legendary. Not content to rest on his laurels however HoUMP saw that progress in the diagnoses of disease could lead to treating every minor malady as if its suffers where on the brink of death. Tests could lead to more tests that could lead to more tests in an escalating orgy of blood samples, X-Rays, CAT scans, PET scans, biopsies and exploratory surgeries. Now his suffers not only suffer the pain of procedure recovery, but the pain of financial ruin as well in many cases. HoUMP is one of the few horsemen to be in direct conflict with another horseman: The Horseman of the HMO.