Cracked Round-Up: 2012's Last Chance Edition

The end is near. Not of the world, because those Mayan hacks turned out to be as bad at predicting the apocalypse as they were at building pyramids without steps, but of 2012's chance to be a significant year. We had so much hope for it back in January. The presidential election was ramping up with a bumper crop of lunatic candidates, the weather was crazier than a shithouse rat and every new-age chucklefuck thought some sort of magic cataclysm was mere months away.

And yet here we are, at the close to yet another December with the same ol' sane dude in office and the vast majority of the world un-destroyed. If 2012 wants to go down in history as anything beyond a great season of the Daily Show and 'that time Manhattan lost power for a couple days', it had better act fast. Just a hint, but there's still a solid 48 hours for Quetzalcoatl to come back and eat Houston.

The coming of Christmas and our imminent office New Years party made this a rather light week for the Cracked columnists. Most of them were busy hunting down goats for our annual blood sacrifice to Ba'al, god of Violence and Page Views. Kristi Harrison held up the fort, with a collection of awesome photos that will make you happy to be alive. Luke McKinney looked into the craziest holiday episodes of your favorite 80s cartoons and John Cheese explained the easy solutions to problems we all complain about. Felix Clay closed us off with his list of dangerously influential dimwits.

HOLIDAY NIGHTMARE

9 Disturbing Christmas Ads You Won't Believe are Real It's beginning to look a lot like...terrible judgment.

Notable Comment: "They hung guns by the trigger? That almost makes me feel like we're delegalizing manliness altogether"

Nothing is more manly than suicidal recklessness, anyname.

YULETIDE TERROR

10 Christmas Decorations That Will Haunt Your Dreams Just because Christmas is past doesn't mean the demons trapped inside these "decorations" won't steal your immortal soul.

Notable Comment: "It took five people to compile this? How many have we lost?"

Well, A884, let's just say many of our intern's families will be celebrating the holidays alone this year.

OBSCURE FATALITIES

Where Aren't They Now: 13 Overlooked Deaths of 2012 Rest in Peace, you unsung heroes.

Notable Comment: "I do have the greatest respect for Gad Beck, but when you challenged me to think of any worse situation than being a gay Jew in Nazi Germany, all I could think of was being anyone besides Ghengis Khan while Ghengis Kahn was still alive."

Sseibert83 makes a fair point.

ASSHOLE GENERATOR

6 Things That Secretly Make You Act Like a Jerk Now all you assholes have an excuse!

Notable Comment: "If being creative makes you dishonest, then why are criminals so spectacularly unimaginative when it comes to committing crimes?"

Gyrfalcon, the criminals who get caught aren't imaginative. You don't tend to hear about the ones who aren't creative.

FAMOUS ROOMS

6 Places You'll Recognize From the Background of Every Movie As it happens, Hollywood sets are just as recycled as most of the plots.

Notable Comment: "Cost saving idea: just move one diner, one staircase, and two mansions over to Monument Valley and movie studios will cut a huge amount of money out of the travel budget."

LaughingTarget just dreamed up the only small desert town we'd ever want to visit.

CRACKED Staff

Santa Throws a Badass Afterparty How else would you relax after the busiest day of the year?

YOU YOU YOU!

If People Actually Said What They Really Mean We're practically giving money away! Wait, not practically. Totally. We're totally giving away money to people, people with mediocre to decent Photoshop skills. People like you. Wouldn't you like to be a person like you? This week, you can be by entering our latest contests, If Famous Movies Were Revised for Political Correctness, Biased News Stories from Inside Video Game Universes, When Changing One Letter Ruins Everything and Mind-Blowing "Then VS. Now" Comparisons.