Some of you may not be aware of this, but the contract for being a Cracked Blogger states that you have to share a house with all of the other Cracked Bloggers. I moved in a couple of weeks ago. It’s not so bad. I share a bed with Gladstone, who is, astonishingly enough, even hairier than he looks on film. I miss my girlfriend and family and sometimes it’s a little uncomfortable, living in a small house with five other guys. Also, I don’t think Swaim knows that I’m part black. I’m running out of excuses to give him when he asks me to accompany him to his White Supremacist meetings, which actually happen a lot more frequently than you might expect.

It gets awkward.

No matter how strange and often aggravating living in a Cracked House gets, I can’t imagine that it would ever be quite as irritating as sharing a house with that bitch who plays Hannah Montana. What is that belief based on, you ask? An irrational hatred that, perhaps, borders on obsessive? Not this time. (Those other times, though, yes, absolutely.) This time around, I have hardcore evidence to back up my reasons for thinking Hannah “The Holocaust Never Happened” Montana would make an awful roommate. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present that bitch who plays Hannah Montana’s new Youtube show “The Miley and Mandy Show.”

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I can’t tell you how often I get into a heated argument with someone about the economics of Pedophilia. Although I can tell you how many establishments those arguments have caused me to be banned from: six. Seven if you count museums as establishments. But can you blame me? It’s a woefully underreported area, and one that craves an answer.

Enter Michael Jackson, grabbing his crotch. And by “his” I mean Macaulay Culkin’s.

Following a series of financially draining legal battles and career hits, the perennial post-op has put his famed Neverland Ranch up for auction. You know, that place with the amusement park rides and cotton candy, just like a ranch. Perhaps the lucky buyer will bring some cattle in and legitimize the joint, who knows? All we know for sure is that things have been looking down for MJ ever since newspapers started running headlines like “Wacko Jacko Fondles Sacko.” Pedophilia, one could infer, is a financial killer.

But how mistaken you’d be, my shortsighted friend! For in the right circumstances, can it not also be a money-making proposition? Take the inspiring story of Louis Conradt, the late former prosecutor who is best known for his guest appearance on NBC’s To Catch a Predator. After he shot himself in shame and humiliation, his family sued NBC for 100 million dollars in damages. And it’s starting to look like they might just get it.

So, let’s recap. Pedophilia = financial ruin. But, pedophilia + suicide = big bucks! The question becomes: is suicide the only variable one can combine with child molestation to create financial opportunities? Perhaps adding a public apology or religious conversion into the mix would generate some capitol. Maybe adding a murder would push the whole thing back around to positive. What about molesting an old person to cancel out the pedophilia?

It’s clearly a complex issue, and one that I trust is currently being pondered by the finest minds in modern Pedonomics.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael entraps child molesters as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

In a move straight out of Science Fiction, environmentalist scientists in the Norwegian government have built an immense underground “Doomsday Vault” inside a frozen mountain on a remote island as a bulwark against the inevitable nuclear apocalypse.

But rather than hunkering down in said vault with porno mags, cans of beans, and the complete Lost on DVD, the Norwegians are doing something even crazier: filling it with seeds. And trust me, it’s way less arousing than it sounds.

Scientists have collected, frozen, and entombed more than 2 billion seeds from millions of plant species, hoping that in the case of a War Games scenario, the vault can be opened and provide humanity with instant food. Well, “instant” give or take a few seasons of cultivating fallow, irradiated soil with no tools while trying to fend off hordes of shambling mutants.

It’s kind of like the Veggie Tales version of Noah’s Ark, except with more seeds and without being a laughable superstition. No, you know what it’s like? It’s like Titan A.E. What? No one saw Titan A.E.? Okay, moving on.

This is a failure. Not in planning or engineering, but in imagination. You’ve got the world’s biggest time capsule, and you’re going to fill it with seeds? Seeds? Come off it Norway. I can think of ten things off the top of my head that would better occupy a Doomsday Vault. And here they are.

Let’s Play… Bunnock!

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, the Third Annual International Indoor Bunnock Tournament was held this past weekend at a shopping mall in Edmonton, Canada. I couldn’t make it, unfortunately, but I hear it was nothing shy of phenomenal. There were some truly top-notch bunnock players present, and the competition was fierce. You know how those bunnock games get, what with all the, uh, the bunnockballs flying all over the place, and the scoring of bunnock points and whatnot. I’ll bet there were tons of cracked bunnock paddles by the end of the day! Yup - nothing like a good round of indoor bunnock on a cold winter afternoon.

Alright, you’ve got me: I have no idea what bunnock is. Or I didn’t, anyway, until I read its (very short) Wikipedia entry. Now I know that it involves two teams, a field, and a whole bunch of horse anklebones. The two teams stand on opposite sides of a field and try to knock each others’ anklebones down with - get this - MORE BONES.

I was going to make a list of other activities that you’d have to call “games” if bunnock is one, things like “roll the mayonnaise jar down the stairs without it breaking” and “transport the bag of dirty laundry to the washing machine,” but you know what? If there was another team trying to break your mayonnaise jar or beat you to the washing machine, those actually WOULD be games. I guess the joke was supposed to be that bunnock is a made up game, but aren’t all games made up? At the end of the day, is “knock down the horse anklebones” any weirder than “run back and forth and throw the ball in the basket” or “hit the ball with the stick and run counterclockwise around the diamond”?

Well, crap - I started this post as a “check out this KUH-RAZY sport!” thing, but somewhere along the way it turned into an “all sports are weird!” thing. Oh well - at least I raised some awareness about bunnock.

You’re welcome, worldwide bunnock players. All nine of you.

The Return of the Sexman

I’ve featured the unique YouTube stylings of Pruane2Forever here on the Cracked Blog before, and I’m happy to say that he’s still up to his old tricks, churning out video after video about everything from Keanu Reeves to Carlos Mencia from the relative safety of his bedroom. He’s been kind of blowing up lately: He got a shout-out from Attack of the Show recently, and his epic panning of the movie Jumper has been making the rounds in the last 24 hours, but I’d like to focus on a different video of Pruane’s; one that doesn’t involve movies, celebrities or “jackin’ it.” This video paints a much different picture of The Sexman than we’re used to. Apparently there’s a little boy underneath that tough exterior, and this is a video of that inner little boy doing what he really wants to do:

Playing with his father.

And there is nothing even remotely embarrassing about that, either. Everyone has videos on YouTube of their dads throwing them onto a bed these days, don’t they? Isn’t it pretty standard practice to have a slow-motion replay in the videos, too? You know - so the entire world can see each and every individual frame of you and your father sharing a tender embrace, just before you soar through the air with an enormous grin on your face, like it’s the greatest moment of your entire life? That’s what the kids are doing these days on the YouTube, isn’t it?

Oh - and I’m pretty sure they all make movies called “The Sexinator” too. This kid can do no wrong!

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve watched the Gene Simmons sex tape just so that I can discuss it for the benefit of you heathen monkeys. Do you understand the sacrifice I’ve made here? I expect rose petals strewn at my feet wherever I go, including to the kitchen where I will grab a steak knife and gouge out my eyes.

As for the tape itself, it features the same grainy cinematography we’ve come to see as the standard in our celeb sex tapes. Honestly, where would the Meg White, Paris Hilton, Screech, and Sizemore tapes have been without obscuring, impenetrable gray fuzz screening us from the horrors occurring before our eyes?

Frankly, I thank the Lord that for some reason, despite living in a time when cameras the size of a push pin can deliver stunning color and clarity, all the people taping past-their-prime celebrities having sex are apparently doing so on old Hi-8 cameras smeared with Vaseline.

There are really only two notable things about the tape. Firstly, these clips where Simmons’ gal pal, when not slamming her stunningly huge and stunningly fake breasts against one another like someone trying to start a fire, refuses his repeated attempts to kiss her. I’m guessing she was worried his massive tongue would somehow reach into her body, then find and crush her still-beating heart. KISS used to have him do it on stage to kill time while Ace Frehley went to the bathroom.

The second interesting thing is the fact that everyone seems shocked. How could Gene Simmons, second only to Wilt Chamberlain in the field of bimbology, betray his longtime girlfriend by sleeping with a blond Austrian supermodel in a hotel room far away while on tour promoting energy drinks? Answer: with his penis, his t-shirt, and absolutely no emotion whatsoever.

Honestly, it’s as if the guy’s just so used to banging whatever women are around that he considers it a diplomatic duty. I wouldn’t be surprised if their sexual relationship began with a fifteen-minute break between public appearances and the sentence “well, I guess we should, you know…” followed by a long sigh and a tic mark in a tattered leather notebook.

All of which makes it a little disingenuous to make your sex track “I want to know what love is.” Seriously Gene, if you haven’t figured it out by this point, I doubt putting your junk inside this girl’s junk is going to provide the epiphany you’re looking for.

You’ll get there some day, though you be weary and offensive to the senses. Fight on, gentle soldier, fight on. Oh, and sorry about how (much more) fucked up your kids are about to be.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes amateur sex tapes as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

• Six sitcom characters we would never want to hang with: Urkel. Phoebe. Al Boreland. Grace (as in "Under Fire.") Grace (as in "Will.") Alf. #
• Six sitcom characters we’d LOVE to hang with: Chandler. Doogie. Vicki ("Small Wonder"). Wilson ("Home Improvement"). Mork. Kramer. #

Dustin the Turkey - “Irlande Douze Pointe”

I can’t think of many things that draw a clearer line in the cultural sand between Europe and America than the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It’s one of the longest-running TV shows in history, it’s watched by 600 million people worldwide, and nobody in America has any fucking clue that it even exists.

The details are a little fuzzy to a cheeseburger chewin’, Budweiser swillin’ cowboy Yank like myself, but from what I can tell, each country picks a song to represent them in the contest, and then the viewers vote to determine the most popular song. That sounds like it should be pretty straightforward, but here’s the problem: This year, Ireland has chosen to be represented by a puppet named Dustin the Turkey. And that, unfortunately, is where I cease to understand what the hell this competition is all about.

Why would you want to send an obnoxious turkey puppet to represent your country in an international competition? Does this enter some sort of bizarre grand tradition that we here in the States aren’t aware of? Is it customary for countries to be represented by bizarre animal puppets? Is France sending a water vole with a mustache? Does Germany send a highly fashionable goose with a strong work ethic? Your European customs are strange and frightening to my American eyes. I’m not making fun of you, Europe; I’m just trying to understand you. Please explain yourself in simple terms I can understand. You know - by using the words “freedom,” “terror” and “McDonalds.”

Do it fast, though - American Idol’s on soon.

A recent article in the New York Times highlighted a study that finds more than a quarter of Americans have left their faiths in order to join a new religion at some point in their life — a number that jumps to over 40% if we count all those wishy-washy Protestant faiths. In terms of levels of commitment, this puts religion at roughly the same level as claiming that your favorite ice cream is chocolate, or that “you’ll only drive a Ford.”

The report goes on to outline how this trend has been growing in the past few decades, with all religions gaining and losing adherents at roughly equal rates, with the notable exception of those who claim no affiliated religion, a group that has been steadily growing in numbers since the early 1990’s. As a side note, can it be a coincidence that this rise in faithlessness began at almost the same time television’s Murphy Brown bore a child out of wedlock? The answer: yes, probably.

So what is the reason for this growing trend towards people changing faiths? Rather than talking to a bunch of people who have changed religions, or even reading the rest of the article I linked above, I’m simply going to make up a few reasonable sounding answers below.

Reasons cited for changing religion

Convenience, e.g. nearer place of worship, better parking, etc…

More fashionable clothes/accessories, e.g. red string bracelets, ceremonial daggers, enormous hats

Prior to a marriage, e.g. prospective Father in Law insisted upon it.

After a divorce, e.g. ex-Father in Law insisted upon it.

After a divine message appeared in my Alphagetti.

Just a super-big Cat Stevens fan, and this was the only way to get on his mailing list.

New Pope has shifty eyes. (ex-Catholics only)

Old religion considered many things I do a sin; changing religions easier than giving those up.

Following conversation with Burning Bush.

Following conversation with Tom Cruise.

___

Chris Bucholz is a writer and a robot. His personal blog, robotmantheblog.com contains a great deal of other humor articles, all of dubious quality and taste.

The Black Crowes are furious with Maxim magazine. No, Maxim didn’t spill bong water all over the Crowes’ stash. It’s far worse: Maxim panned the new Black Crowes album without even listening to it.

The review, published in Maxim’s March issue, gives the Crowes’ ”Warpaint” a rating of two-and-a-half stars out of five.

”The writer - who has not heard the album since advance CDs were not made available - wrote what appears to be a disparaging assessment anyway, citing, ‘it hasn’t left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.”’

Sure, it’s easy to criticize Maxim and their lack of journalistic integrity, but I’m willing to bet everything I have they’re right. The new Black Crowes album will suck as sure as you can get a contact high from touching Chris Robinson’s beard.

Here are some other fearless predictions requiring no further validating information:

• American Idol winners will continue to have short-lived careers based entirely on records sales to 14 year old girls.
• Scott Weilland of STP with OD ASAP
• Lennon Murphy will be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for penning I Am The Walrus.
• Movies made using the lyrics to random Bealtes songs as 85% of the script’s dialog will suck.
• One day Clay Aiken and Lance Bass will share an awkward elevator ride consisting of Lance continually checking his watch in pantomime, tugging on an imaginary long white beard and coughing “come out already” under this breath.
• Eventually, everyone in creation —even die-hard Metallica fans— will come to the realization that the boys may have made some great Metal, but they’re a bunch of whiny, insufferable pricks.
• It’s only a matter of time before I write another post alienating most of my friends.