by Lore Sjöberg

Frogs
Normally you wouldn't expect a plague of frogs to convince Pharaoh to let the cat out, much less free thousands of slaves, but imagine this: you wake up one morning, get out of bed and -- SPLORCH -- step on a frog. Freshly dead amphibian ichor between your toes first thing in the morning. Pretty icky, huh? B

Locusts
Not bad. Locusts are horrid little insects, plus they eat crops. It's two great plagues that plague great together. One wonders, though, if the frogs ate locusts or if the two plagues had a truce like that time G.I. Joe and Cobra had to team up to fight a common enemy. Didn't think I'd be able to work 80's cartoon shows into this one, did you? A-

Blood
A river of blood. Creepy. But in the end it sounds better than, say, a river of motor oil, syringes and abandoned shopping carts. At least blood is organic. Still I can see how when you've got a majorly river-based economy going, it could be difficult to make a transition to a massive blood-flow economy. B+

Hail
This is about when you realize you really are dealing with God and not just tough luck and weird weather patterns. Hail, okay, fine, you just do the ancient Egyptian equivalent of rolling up the car windows. But fire and hail in tandem is a big-ass clue that perhaps you're dealing with the chosen people and maybe you should just let them go and build your own damn stone monuments. C

Death of Cattle
It's pretty tough to rationalize what the cattle did to deserve the celestial smackdown. But admittedly that's a revisionist, post-Babe take on the situation. The Big Guy was never big on animal rights, what with the scapegoats and fatted calves and such. He am that he am, pardner, cows or no cows. D+