11 Things I Learned from Writing 100 Cracked Articles

This installment of Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle is my 101st column here at Cracked, so I want to go back and take a look at some of the things I've learned from 100 weeks of Cracked.com hilarity and all of the things you've had to say about it. We're going to learn a lot about ourselves, readers, but I have a feeling none of the stuff about you is going to be good.

They say when a man writes 100 comedy columns, only then does he know what's truly in his heart. Here's a graph of what's in mine:

Man Comics is the official magazine of every STD clinic in Valhalla. For 11 issues, the innocence of Popsicle Pete, the wholesome values of Dick Whiskey: Drunk Cop, and the foresight of Spontaneo: The Dog Who Doesn't Give a Fuck have given us face-sexing adventures safe for young people that will ensure future generations don't grow up to be a bunch of whining pussies like mine.

When I write characters like Dick Whiskey, Bozo the Schizophrenic Clown, Major Mars, Smokey the Bear, Punchmaster!, Punchmaster!!, and Punchmaster!!!, I tap into a dark hardness our ancestors used when they had to retract their penises to climb trees. It's been an ambitious project using classic comic books to toughen up our gentle modern world, and fertility doctors have complained to me many times that Man Comics are taking away their jobs. But I'll tell you what I told those assholes: stop counting my sperm, I'm only here to meet chicks that can't get pregnant.

In all seriousness, sometimes when I'm writing Popsicle Pete he knows I'm there.

Only once did Man Comics attempt to expand its market to include women when I published Woman Comics: Romantic Comics For Women. It focused on female problems like how people call them fat and then they cry. I'd venture to say it was the easiest satire that's ever been slow-pitched to a reader, but I was still drowning in hate mail from angry ladies for weeks. Whatever sexist jerk said that women don't have a sense of humor must have tried making jokes in front of one.

I like to write about movies; they're probably our culture's greatest shared experience. Why, if a man and a woman enjoy cinema enough, it might be years before they find out they've completely run out of things to talk about. Luckily, if that happens with me, I can hold up both ends of a Jean-Claude Van Damme discussion long past the natural lifespan of a human woman. I shared some of this enthusiasm in my first Cracked article on Jean-Claude Van Damme and then again in The Return of Jean-Claude Van Damme. I can sum them up if you're in a hurry: splits, balls.

I also wrote A Tribute to Patrick Swayze, 10 Irreplaceable Comedy Performances, 6 Hilarious Turkish Special Effects, and Ong Bak: Batshit Awesome Thai Warrior. You can tell a lot about a person by what kinds of movies they watch. For example, if there aren't two Rambo films in a man's top ten, be careful; he's waiting for you to fall asleep so he can rest his mouth around your penis. Okay, now that 10% of the readers are in the comments section telling me how I hate homosexuals, let's talk about those people. And by that I mean those readers, not those homosexuals.

The most rewarding and annoying part about writing jokes is watching people not get them and then react violently. I used the example of homophobia above, which I get called 25 to 100 times an article, even if I've used the word faggy in its purely scientific context. This is strange to me because none of my gay friends have ever called me that, and I'm constantly violating their social mores. For instance, I won't finger a waiter's butthole even if that's the polite way to order another round of mimosas when you have two or more gays at brunch. And the last time I was at the airport my own state senator left the bathroom telling me I have sex like a barely bi-curious virgin gorilla.

I live in San Francisco and my favorite places are bars, gyms, and used book stores. When I'm meeting a blind date I tell her to find me by looking for the only man not wearing roller skates. If I was scared of gay people, my only hobbies would be shrieking and putting on more pairs of pants. I guess my point is: readers, if you're enjoying a comedy article and it's satirical and ironic for 1000 words, stops to humorlessly mock a social group or race for one sentence, then gets satirical and ironic for 1000 more words, you either uncovered the worst hidden agenda in history or didn't get a joke. It might be time to return your Defender of Human Rights Badge until you're not a retarded fag.

I've found that every time I write an article about a TV show (See: 6 Ways to Fix Reality Dating Shows), many of the commenters are excited to show off the amazing degree to which they have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. Do you know what it's like to work day and night putting together a hilarious article about something and hearing from your readers, "I READ THIS AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT ANY OF THESE THINGS ARE!" It's confusing and paradoxical. You see, to the remedially intellectual, television is something you're more ignorant for knowing more about. Which is a second paradox. Oh, and for the idiot television viewers, that word "paradox" means "when there are two Timecops."

I've seen some awful things on TV like Angela Lansbury Jerking Off in a Tub and Steven Seagal: Lawman. But my favorite guilty pleasure is reality show auditions (Part 1 and Part 2). Talentless, entitled assholes watching their American Dreams get dragged into the street and shot... you can't get that anywhere else. Seeing douche souls shatter makes me understand why Dr. Doom never seemed to actually be trying to the Fantastic Four-- because under the right circumstances, a person can feed on human suffering. For more interesting facts about cartoons see Frosty Declares War on the War on Christmas, The Super Friends vs. Dr. "Non" Dinosoid, and Herculoids!

There's some more readers I want to talk about, so let's get rid of them for a bit. Police Academy 3 came out before Police Academy 2 and 8 is the best one. That should keep them busy. Now my point: a serious problem with the Internet is that everyone thinks they're smarter than everyone else. And if you're writing an article about TV, everyone knows they're smarter than you. There's a weird phenomenon that when you're reading an article by someone whom you're sure is dumber than you, the jokes stop making sense. Sarcasm, irony-- it all just looks like insane errors. I'll give you an example from Comedy for the Deaf, one of my most polarizing articles: "I don't want to start a scandal, but if I was a TV executive and William Shatner gave my wife head lice, Shit My Dad Says is exactly how I would get my revenge."

Normally this would be a simple joke about wealthy men trading head insects and vengeance. But since I'm clearly an idiot based on my viewing of television, the intellectually superior reader now needs to help me figure out what I meant. Some might say, "Actually, William Shatner is quite famous for wearing a hairpiece. You'd know this if you weren't such a fool." Smarter readers might quip, "Did you even know that show was based on a Twitter feed? Knowledge fail." And the smartest will simply inform me, "i don't watch this show like you c**t. looks lame. fire this f**k." These commenters' need to explain things that everyone else has a clear understanding is embarrassingly stupid, but it's also sincere. It's like someone jumping up at the Special Olympics and shouting, "Stop the race! There's something wrong with all these children! Something medically wrong!"

Every time I've ever mentioned a TV show (See: The 6 Worst Marvel Cartoons of All Time, TV Re-Mistakes, or The Star Wars Holiday Special ), dozens of condescending readers have posted irrelevant trivia that I "missed" as if they have a different Wikipedia than me. They also like to argue with jokes as if they're facts. This has happened often enough that I now only have one hard rule that I live by: if I ever see someone playing devil's advocate to a joke, I punch them in the stomach until they vomit. Because that person clearly has no soul and probably someone's baby in their stomach.

I've written a lot about video games (See: 6 Games Too Insane To Release or The Official Nintendo Seal Awards) in my career, but not because I like them. I'm in it for the girls, especially the nerdy porn stars. See figure 32D.

Aside from them being lady magnets, the only thing I ever learned from video games is misplaced rage and how to clean and load an AR-15. Like all gamers, I find myself to be constantly oppressed by tyrannical censorship laws. And despite the fact that the tyrants have yet to win a single fucking fight against our lusty need for tits and violence, I make it my duty to speak out against this oppression like some kind of shit-painting performance artist in his first year of college. See: If Violent Video Games Really Got Banned.

As a long time gaming journalist, I find myself to be more scientist than social critic, like when I proved that Dead Rising 2 Has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, explored The Mysteries of the Human Mind With the Sims 3, or decided that Red Dead Redemption Hates Women.

To be honest, that last one was the result of me playing Red Dead Redemption and hating women all week and desperately trying to spin 40 hours of wasted time into "research."

I've also always been fascinated by the world that exists parallel to ours, The World of Warcraft. The WoW player is a bitterly determined but crappy gamer, with atrophied reflexes that make them helpless against even the slowest of incoming dangers. But since any discussion about Warcraft sounds like total gibberish to non-Warcraft players, I figured World of Warcraft Explained Using Super Mario Brothers was the only article I could ever possibly write about it. And it was, unless you count the one I did about Blizzon Report: 8 Questions Every WoW Fan Apparently Needs Answered. But you shouldn't-- that was just me destroying nerds because their swine flu conventions make me cranky. Not everything happens for some big profound reason.

Now that we all live on a planet where everyone plays video games and grew up watching Star Wars, comic books are one of the few places you can go to still feel like a real nerd (See: Marvel Super Heroes RPG for Drunk Children. People like nerdy things because it reminds them of happier times when I had more time to myself and it was nothing to masturbate 8 times in a day. There's something about Old Comic Book Ads, Racist and Useless Sidekicks, and Badly Written Psychoses that take me back to an era when a boner seemed to always know the worst possible time to appear. For example: swimming lessons, piano recitals, and breast feeding.

Super heroes are the most adapted and well-known of any characters in the history of literature, and like many authors, I have my own take on them. I explored the likely scenario of Daredevil Prematurely Ejaculating All Over Everything and wondered what would happen if Wonder Woman Was a Smartass Bitch, Green Lantern Was a Pervert, Aquaman Was an Idiot, Batman Was a Frat Boy, The Hulk's Rage Was Impotent, or if Aquaman Was in the Bible.

Not all my comic articles have been about super heroes and adult situations. I once did an article where I built a robot specifically programmed to rewrite dipshit Family Circus cartoons to be funny under the strict MPAA guidelines for a PG-13 rating. It was probably the strangest, most over-complicated comedic hook I've ever used, and the perfect example of another thing that happens when you write jokes on the Internet: no matter how unique or original what you're doing is, people accuse you of stealing.

The comments section of PG-13 Family Circus Rewritten By a Robot, again: the most absurd article concept ever, was filled with accusations that I plagiarized it from dozens of different websites. This came as quite a surprise to me after I'd been writing original jokes for the better part of two days, but it turns out the idea of replacing the words on a cartoon had already been invented. Now I get that the Internet is an incestuous Me-Too industry. 98% of it links back to the 1% making original content and the other 1% blatantly copying it. There's so much thievery going on that maybe these Internet nutbags can't even tell what's actual stealing anymore. But listen closely because the rest of this paragraph is being submitted for Pulitzer consideration: If you accuse me of plagiarism because my genius robot made fun of Family Circus and someone in 2002 added bad poop jokes to Marmaduke, I'm going to kick your mom's coughing vagina for having the same haircut as Osama Bin Laden.