I was supposed to be on a two week vacation from Cracked. I’d even cleared everything with my editor, Jack O’Brien. But late last night, I got a desperate phone call:

“Gladstone. Come back. I need you.”

By an amazing coincidence, a compliant and sexual curious Gillian Anderson had said the same thing to me only hours earlier. But this was different. This was Jack. And he was in a bad way. At first, I assumed he was still grieving over his ridiculous decision not to feature my Radiohead video on the home page. But, incredibly, it turned out that wasn’t it at all.

“It’s my girlfriend,” he said. “I think. . . I think she’s fucking Justin Timberlake!”

I was shocked. I’d known Jack for almost three years and not once in all that time did it ever occur to me that he was straight. But apparently, as Jack explained, he’d been in a serious relationship with Miranda “LaserBeam” Johannsen —dental hygienist and former American Gladiator— for over six months. I tried to take that all in as I quietly unwrapped the Village People box set I was about to send him for his birthday.

“Gladstone, are you there?”

“Not only am I here, but I know four simple steps to help you find out for sure.”

“Could you tell me?” Jack asked. “And more importantly, could you turn it into a column because, I gotta admit, the blog’s turned to pure crap without you the last ten days.”

FOUR SURE-FIRE WAYS TO TELL IF YOUR GIRLFRIEND IS SCREWING JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE

1. She Keeps Grooming You To Look More White Trash and/or Orthodox Jew

Seriously, how does he do it? With a minimum of effort Timberlake can go from the kind of trailer trash who puts pork rinds on a fluffernutter sandwich to the truly devout who shuns both pork and shellfish based on passages in the book of Leviticus. Most impressive, is that Timberlake achieves both these extremes in his failed attempts to be Black. I’m not sure why your girlfriend digs this. Perhaps, her first love was Rabbi Scooter Bob Horowitz? But you know what they say: “Once white trash/Orthodox Jew in a failed attempt to be Black, never back.” So odds are good that if she’s bedding down with Timberlake, then she’ll want more of that good stuff from you.

Jack’s Score:

Yes, Jack can be made to look white trash — hell, he does that to himself by shopping at the last remaining Chess King in existence— but make this guy look Jewish? The only time people say “Jack O’Brien” and “beard” in the same sentence is when they’re referring to his girlfriend (who may or may not be fucking Justin Timberlake).

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Note: Today’s Nooner is being written immediately after purchasing Grand Theft Auto IV for Xbox 360. It is sitting unopened on my coffee table right now, and yet here I am, 100% focused on writing, not thinking about Grand Theft Auto IV at all.

My greatest regret isn’t a girl that got away, skipping my high school prom, or not getting to say goodbye to a loved one before they passed away. It isn’t running away from a problem, missing a career opportunity, or getting that tattoo of the kanji symbol for “two-car garage” that the tattoo guy told me meant “strength.” Yes, I’ve done all of those things, and sure, not a moment goes by that I’m not ashamed of every single one of them, but that’s all eclipsed by my greatest regret:

Why the fuck didn’t I commit more crimes when I was young enough to get away with it?

Sure, I broke some bottles and lit some fires when I was younger, and yeah, one time in junior high we stole my friend’s mom’s car (it wasn’t our fault - “Welcome To The Jungle” came on the radio and we got all pumped up), but we only made like two houses down an alley before we crashed into some rubber garbage cans at about 5 mph, and then we ran away and hid until the cops came. On a scale of one to “cool” that ranks somewhere between a two and a “suck.”

Why didn’t we go on a crazy crosstown rampage like this kid did? Maybe we were better behaved, more respectful and fearful of authority. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because this was the pre-Grand Theft Auto era and we just didn’t know how. Not that a rampage in GTA involving two mailboxes and two parked cars would be very impressive, but for a real life 7-year-old? That’s nothing to shake a stick at - particularly considering he couldn’t even see over the steering wheel.

Come to think of it, this might just be some crazy viral advertisement for GTA IV or something. One that, based on my ability to focus intently on writing this Nooner without thinking about GTA IV, is clearly having no effect on me. Which reminds me - I have to go now for a completely unrelated reason.

Concerned parents of America, a blight has infected our children with perversion and bloodlust, and it is our duty to stand against it. No, not gang violence, or street drugs. I’m talking about the digitized filth of video gaming, and particularly the latest travesty in a series of affronts to family values.

That’s right; I’m talking about Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm.

Now, I know many of you grew up in the era when video games didn’t fill the player with an insatiable urge to hump and kill things, all the while “tripping on balls.”

There was a time when the worst you could expect was to see a frog get crushed by a truck, and after watching this year’s crop of toads destroy my wife’s herb garden, I wouldn’t be too unhappy if kids imitated those games.

But today games aren’t all PacMoon and Man Patrol. Today, games like Deadliest Catch (I believe a reference to Herpes Simplex II) teach our kids to drink hot blood and put their penises into holes God never meant there to be penises in. Like mouths.

Some of my detractors have said that I have no right to judge a game before playing it. Well let me tell you something: I can judge whatever I want. You’re a heathen. See? I did it right there.

And there’s no way in Heck you’re going to use your devil-logic to trick me into actually playing one of these monuments to pagan impulse. I don’t want to end up baying naked in a field, manually pleasuring myself while my friend chokes me with a controller cable.

Which is exactly what your son or daughter will do if you let them even see the cover of this game. In fact, if you’re under 18, do yourself a favor and DON’T look immediately to the right of this text. Otherwise you risk killing your family and making love to the still-warm corpses.

And that includes the game title; don’t read it! If you ask me, even the words themselves are unfit for children. Alaskan Storm? Why not just call the game Deadliest Catch: Bukkake and be done with it?

This game is all that is wrong with the world. How do I know without playing? Simple; I observe. I watch the news. I see the world around me get worse and worse, school shootings rise and rise, kids having sex younger and younger, my own children calling me things like “out of touch” and “fear mongering.”

And at the same time—the same exact time—I see that video games are also being made and distributed. How long would you ask me to ignore the plain facts?!

Violence. Sex. And video games. All existing simultaneously, by sheer coincidence? I doubt it! It’s called correlation, and it’s science.

Not to mention the first-hand evidence I get every day listening to my own children! I made the grave error of allowing my 16-year-old to go to a friend’s house without my full supervision (last time I make that mistake!), and lo and behold he comes home saying things like “you wouldn’t believe how many crabs I got today” and “a hook, right to the mouth. That’s how you get them.”

I can only imagine he’s describing making love to a prostitute, then killing her with a massive meat hook. And if that’s the kind of “virtual experience” Deadliest Catch is delivering to our youngsters, you can count me out!

It’s time for parents to band together, crush these filth mongers, and reclaim our kids! Let’s take a page from President Bush’s playbook and preemptively strike! Judge before playing, condemn before understanding, and be afraid of things that you think may be happening. It’s the way our country’s been run for the last eight years, and if you ask me it’s the only way to keep our daughters from injecting crack into their nipples.

In the meantime, I’ll be confining my children’s video gaming to good, wholesome religious games like this Halo I’ve been hearing about.

Yours truly,

Jack Thompson

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael tries to catch up on episodes of Peep Show as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

Pop quiz, hotshot: It’s 11 a.m., you have a righteous hangover, and you’re on the set of a hardcore pornographic film that you’re about to star in. The director hands you a t-shirt that says “Canada” on it, mumbles something about garter snakes, and then gets a page on his beeper and storms off to go return the call on his “car phone.” If time were on your side you’d be at home right now, doing lines of blow and leisurely shaving your balls, but the schedule says you need to actively fucking by 12 o’clock sharp, and not only have you not seen a script yet, but you haven’t even eaten BREAKFAST, and everyone on the set knows it’ll be a cold day in the San Fernando Valley before your dick’s gonna get hard without a plateful of scrambled eggs and some black coffee to charge the ol’ meat battery.

But you don’t have time to worry about that, because now the camera is rolling and some Hungarian girl who barely speaks English is staring at you, waiting for you to say something. You welcome her to America, then remember that your shirt says “Canada” on it, but justify it to yourself by thinking, “I meant ‘America’ like ‘North America.’ You know… like… the continent.” Next thing you know she’s smelling some leaves because, hey, that’s what you do when you’re trying to get your bearings in a strange new country, but then all of the sudden she’s screaming and you’re wrestling a giant rubber snake on the ground, thinking to yourself, “Whatever - beats the 10 p.m. - 5 a.m. shift at The Nutbush.” Then the snake slithers away, the cameraman yells “CUT!” and you have just enough time to chew some aspirin before you have to start having sexual intercourse with a Hungarian girl who has jewelry stashed inside of vagina.

Moments later you remember why you got into this business in the first place. Then you go home, do a few lines of cocaine, shave your balls and think to yourself, “It’s a living.”

So by the time you’re reading this, you may very well have been playing the just-released Grand Theft Auto IV for 8 straight hours, and in that time, formed some pretty firm opinions on the game to go along with the magnificent odor you’ve also probably developed. Sadly I can’t count myself amongst your number, as having both a job and a girlfriend, I have certain non-optional sleep and odor-maintenance regimes. Consequently I haven’t played a bit of the game, so were I actually to attempt a review here, I’d be making a mockery of the journalistic standards that Cracked magazine has long stood for.

Instead, I’m going to recap some of the absolute favorite things I enjoyed about the past GTA games, which should be a good way for me to fill out a blog post, and also not get too stinky.

My Favorite Things about Grand Theft Auto:

Reverse 180’s. In some cars like the taxi or police car, these are so easy to do, it’s delicious. I think I pulled one of these accidentally about 5 minutes into the original GTA III. As I recall, after my eyes resocketed themselves, I stood up and exclaimed “Holy Crap, I’m awesome!” It’s such a small thing, but making the player feel like the Golden God of All Things On Wheels is one thing that makes this series so great.

Creating a whole logjam of cars and then blowing them up in a chain reaction. Once you realized that multiple gunshots could destroy cars, tell me within minutes you weren’t piling up cars in an intersection like a lunatic valet?

This one time in Vigilante mode. This mode seemed kind of lame at first - mostly just chasing crooks down, smacking their rear quarter panel and shooting the hell out of them with an uzi. But there was one criminal who I couldn’t pin down at all, and as the clock was running out, in an act of desperation I slammed him off the side of a bridge and into the ocean. One of my favorite gaming moments ever, and it hopefully sent a message to everyone else in Liberty City who had four outstanding parking tickets: there was a new sheriff in town.

Big dirty handbrake turns through intersections. Drifting used to be so cool before the Japanese ritualized it and turned it into something incomprehensible. They did the same thing with sex, and I’m still pissed off about it.

The Sentinel. I find that all the love in this series goes to the street bikes or the sports cars, but for my money the Sentinel and it’s variants are the best cars in the game. Not over-awingly fast, but just so unflappable in bumps, hard turns and under braking. I can’t count the number of times I lost the handle on a Cheetah while traveling at top speed and spun out into three prostitutes, snuffing out their already tragic lives. But that almost never happened in the Sentinel. This goes back to that whole “feeling like a Driving God” thing I spoke of earlier.

Motorcycle assisted BASE jumping. Just like watching a Vin Diesel movie, except you don’t feel embarrassed talking about it afterward.

On that subject, check out some guy’s hilariously ruined Quad Bike BASE jump:

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Harrier dogfights. San Andreas had such a retarded amount of unlockable content, that this probably shouldn’t have surprised me when it happened, but it did. Sure, the dogfighting was actually pretty terrible, but it boggled my mind that it was even in there, and again, allowed me to relive some favorite movie moments.

My roommate: “What’s going on in here? Why are you screaming ‘Goose’ over and over again?”

Me: “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!”

Turning the turret in the tank around 180 degrees and repeatedly firing the cannon to accelerate forward. You almost never see tanks do this in real life, and I’ve always wondered why.

Running over Crockett and Tubbs in their own Ferrari. In Vice City when you achieved a certain wanted level, a Cheetah with two cops in pastel suits will come after you, just like Miami Vice. However unlike Miami Vice, they were about as hard to kill as a baby duck. Which I found perfectly delightful. “People who hate and want to murder Don Johnson” have been a curiously under served gaming demographic for a long time.

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And while we’re all sitting here,

My Least Favorite Things about Grand Theft Auto:

Molotov Cocktails. Fuck those things. I don’t think I’ve ever used one of these things that didn’t end up with me in a heap, a polyester suit permanently fused to me corpse.

Eating. In San Andreas you had to eat food periodically otherwise your character would bitch and moan at you. Who’s great idea was a video game that simulates eating? Fucking Taco Bell? The whole point of video games is letting the player do stuff they can’t do normally, i.e. drive a firetruck at full speed off a ramp, and into a fountain where they’d earlier parked two helicopters.

Stuff appearing and disappearing when you turn your head. The game wasn’t too bad about spawning stuff when you were driving, although it was far from perfect. But when you’re on foot, cars and swarms of gangster would appear or disappear as soon as you turned around. It was really disorienting and unsettling, and I’m guessing it’s exactly how old people feel all the time.

__

So what were some of your favorite GTA moments? And who’s got GTA IV? Is it any good? Can you send me your copy? Why not? What’s your problem, dick?

I’ve heard people say they’d probably keep working if they won the lottery. Those people are completely full of shit. You really expect me to believe that you’d keep going to your crappy dead-end job day-in day-out if you didn’t need the money? You know - the job that you complain about incessantly and fantasize about quitting on a daily basis? You must have a great work ethic. Either that or you’re mildly retarded, but most retarded people would quit their jobs if they won the lottery¹, so I guess that means you have a great work ethic. There’s just one problem with that: you DON’T have a great work ethic, so I guess that means you’re completely full of shit. QED.

I don’t even need a big jackpot to quit my job. Give me a scratch-and-win worth enough cash to buy a baby chimp, a pair of drawstring pants, and a comfortable couch, and I’ll have my desk cleaned out within the hour. Then I’ll swing by Baby Gap, pick up a tiny polo shirt for my new chimp, stop by the liquor store and grab a bottle of whiskey, and head home for the most awesome afternoon of all time.

Then I’ll sober up and realize that I have no job, no savings, and a new baby chimpanzee to feed. Then the chimp will start throwing poop all over my house, and I’ll be like, “Oh yeah - they do that.” Then I’ll try to sell the chimp for animal testing, but the scientists will be like, “We can’t possibly accept this chimp, sir - he’s drunk.” Then I’ll have to open an animal testing facility in the spare bedroom in my apartment, which will make me a ton of money until the animal rights people show up to protest on my front lawn, but then I’ll get evicted and have to find a new apartment, and how the hell am I supposed to find a place in Chicago that will rent an apartment to some unemployed guy with a pet chimpanzee and no shirt on?

See, this is why I don’t play the lottery. Mo’ money, mo’ problems.

¹ As you all know, scrupulous fact-checking is of the utmost importance here at Cracked.com, and my editors had our research department conduct a comprehensive survey to verify this claim. Of the 2,500 people surveyed, 73% said they would quit their jobs, 4% said they would continue working, and 23% mumbled something about cookies and licked their own hands.

There’s a news story we here at the Cracked Blog offices have been asked not to post on. A topic so taboo, we can only discuss it openly while so drunk there’s no hope of remembering what we talked about.

Generally, this means Gladstone talks about it a lot, and the rest of us have at one point or another been awoken by the unwelcome torrent of human urine.

But dammit Cracked, I am a blogger of the people, and the people must know! Ladies and gentlemen, at the risk of my own life, I must warn you: The Demolition Man is coming. No, they’re not re-releasing the movie; I’m telling you that the plot of The Demolition Man is coming true.

Don’t believe me?

Exhibit A, the much-forwarded story of Wesley Snipes’ 3-year sentence in prison for tax evasion. Or should I call him by his soon-to-be prison name, Simon Phoenix?

Exhibit B, Sylvester Stallone. What’s he been up to? Using illegal growth hormones, practicing his killing skills, and fighting robots. Could he be getting ready for the inevitable embrace of Cryosleep as he awaits the year 2032?

The media’s got all the pieces, but refuses to make the connection. News items presaging the events of the landmark 1993 Stallone/Snipes vehicle have been cropping up for months now, and still…forced silence, even from Cracked, the leaders in breaking stories about future anti-utopian action scenarios. WHO’S PAYING YOU TO KEEP THIS QUIET?!

Fortunately, it’s not too late to prepare. Until certain key events play out, we’ve still got time:

Before all of this inevitably happens, I suggest we form some kind of team, or group dedicated to maintaining a resistance against the corrupt and insensitive future aristocracy; a team of downtrodden patriots awaiting the opportunity to rise up and help dismantle the sterile horror our lives will have become.

I mean, wiping your ass with shells? Last time I checked, this was America!

And in America, the only kind of “Vir-sex” we have is in our imaginations and movies…and clips on our computers, and TV if it’s late, and also sometimes in magazines (although not as much anymore). See, we’re already on a slippery slope! This is why we need a team!

And let’s give the team a cool 20’s name, like “Moxie Men,” or “Scrappy,” or “The Pizzazz.” Oh I know! The Scraps!

Oh my God…it’s happening.

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

Nope.
Well, not yet, anyway, but I think should focus all of our efforts on making that happen. In case you didn’t know, Late Night’s Conan O’Brien will be leaving in 2009 to take over for grinning chin-monster Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show, and the race to fins his replacement is on. According to this article, the frontrunner is the totally relevant and always professional Jimmy Fallon. Really, Fallon’s a terrific choice. Remember that time he giggled his way through six seasons of SNL? What about all those great characters he created, (that guy who really like Noma, or the guy who often folded shirts, or the annoying asshole who kept laughing during skits)? And who could forget his illustrious film career which includes new classics like Taxi, an action comedy that teamed Fallon with a sassy, talking car that solved mysteries, (if you’ve ever seen Taxi, you are now well aware that I have not)? Also, Fever Pitch. Jimmy Fallon has truly earned the Late Night desk.

Horseshit.

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Dear FatMan27183141,

Based on your 71 YouTube videos, your YouTube profile name, and your website URL, fat-man.us, I’m starting to get the idea that being fat is your “thing.” I don’t think you need to be ashamed of your size, FatMan27183141, but I’d like to take a moment to talk about this particular video and what it says about you.

I’m not gonna lie - you’re clearly overweight. Your gut is huge, your breathing sounds labored, and you’re probably at risk for all sorts of weird health problems I’ve never even heard of, but let’s face it - your belly hasn’t “come alive” and it doesn’t have any interest in “eating directly.” That’s just your way of saying “I drew a face on my unbelievably fat torso - here’s a video of me shoving potato chips into my own belly button.” That’s entertaining, FatMan27183141, but at the end of the day do you really feel like you’re living up to your full potential?

Chris Farley. Late-career Elvis. The McCrary Twins. These were men that transcended their fat and rose to greatness. Did they deny being fat? No. Did they try to sweep their fat under the rug and pretend it wasn’t there? No. These were men who CELEBRATED their fat, but always to some sort of greater end, and never just for the sake of fat itself.

Chris Farley would put on a tiny, ill-fitting suit, sweat profusely in it and then fling himself through a coffee table. Why? To make America laugh. Late-career Elvis would put on a form-fitting rhinestone-encrusted jumpsuit and sing his heart out. Why? Because people loved to hear him sing. The McCrary Twins? Sure they were fat, but more importantly, they rode side-by-side on tiny matching motorcycles to comedic effect.

Making a YouTube video of yourself being fat and smashing potato chips all over your gut? That’s easy. If Farley, Elvis, or either of the McCrary Twins were alive today they could probably do it, too, but WOULD they? No. Wanna know why? Because they all knew something that you clearly haven’t figured out yet: sometimes just being fat isn’t enough. Next time you make a YouTube video, we’ll be expecting you to either hurl yourself through a coffee table, sing a song about Las Vegas, or ride around on a tiny motorcycle.

The world is watching, FatMan27183141. Get on it.

Sincerely,
Ross Wolinsky
Cracked.com

It’s not easy to admit some kinds of personal tragedy. Breaking it to your extended family that you’re going to die because a horse’s cock ruptured your colon isn’t my idea of a good time. But when you’re at the end of your rope with no other options, sometimes all you can do is confide in your loved ones and hope for the best.

Cracked readers, you are my family, and I must tell you: my penis has been stolen.

When I booked my recent trip to the Congo for the purposes of extreme birdwatching, my travel agent warned me about a rash of penis thefts that has struck the area. Like many of you are probably doing now, I laughed.

“Penis thefts?” I chortled “What, are they out of dildos?”

I then patted my carry-on case of dildos, momentarily wondering what kind of profit I could turn selling them to the dildo-starved locals. But I didn’t turn a profit, ladies and gentlemen, and I came home less of a man that I’d been upon arrival.

For you see, while I scoffed at the idea of a shadowy, hunched figure, loping off with my freshly-severed penis on his way to a black market fertility clinic, or perhaps to prank a local hot dog-eating contest, I made the cardinal mistake made by tourists throughout time.

I forgot about shamans.

Shamans, people. Witches and warlocks trained in the dark art of penile enchantment. Chode sorcery. Dick wizardry. The forgotten rites of cockmancy.

Such men, according to the locals, have been plaguing the region, rendering once-proud and robust African cocks shriveled, tiny, and limp (although of course by white American standards, still fairly impressive). And despite a recent wave of shaman-lynching, there seems to be no end to this tide of genitalchemy.

I don’t know when it happened. Maybe a shaman hexed my package right as I stepped out of customs. Maybe if I’d tipped the bellboy I’d still be plowing women with the confidence I once enjoyed.

Hell, maybe it was one of the many times I stopped in the street to let old black men touch my penis and mutter. The point is, there’s no way of knowing for sure.

Meanwhile, the attacks continue. And while local police try to deny the existence of magical penis thievery by pointing out that “alleged victims clearly still have penises,” there’s no argument against cold, limp facts.

Countless Congolese men have stood up, braved slander, and shown off their tiny penises as proof of the shaman blight. And who are you going to believe? A police officer?

Or a guy who claims that the reason his penis is tiny is because a shaman bewitched it with dark magic?

Ask yourself, who has more reason to lie?

Please, let my tragic example be a warning to you all. Clutch your penis tight. Hold it dear. Appreciate it while you can.

Here are a few tips to help you guard against these opportunistic magicians (a great band name, by the way):

And finally, no matter how much you want to blend in with local customs, don’t let anyone dip your penis into a small sack of twinkling powder or chicken’s blood. Rude as it may seem, just politely decline and walk away.

Trust me, you’ll be the better for it.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael stares at the place where his penis used to be and weeps as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!