I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but we’ve been plugging Grand Theft Auto IV pretty hard this week. Some of you have probably been wondering how much free shit Rockstar has been giving us, how many sacks with dollar signs we’ve had to haul to the bank in the last week. Before today I would’ve dismissed such insinuations with a wave of my hand. “No, no - you’ve got it all wrong,” I’d say. “We’re plugging the game because we’re fans, not for material gain.”

Or at least that’s what I would’ve said before I saw this trailer for 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Although if you caught me right after I saw it, I probably still would’ve said something like that because, you know, I thought it was a joke. But if you caught me a few minutes later, after I’d googled it and confirmed that it was a REAL video game about 50 Cent killing terrorists, well, I’d probably say something different. You know - something like “Fuck GTA IV - this is going to be the greatest video game of all time.”

The plot of the game goes something like this: 50 Cent and G-Unit play a concert in the Middle East for some reason, the promoter pays them with Damien Hirst’s “For the Love of God” (retail price: $100 million), and then some bad guys steal it and 50 has to try to get it back. It’s important to note that, according to the game’s Wikipedia entry, “much of the game is spent following 50 Cent when he is without the skull.”

Thanks, Wikipedia.

It’s been almost seven years since that whole 9/11 thing happened. (See? We TOLD YOU we’d never forget!). Why in the name of God has it taken SEVEN YEARS to start seeing video games where our favorite rappers roam the Middle East killing terrorists?! If you’re reading this, video game industry, please make a game where you play as Biggie and have to chase Bin Laden through the caves of Afghanistan… on GO KARTS. Or how about one where you’re Snoop Dogg and you have to find weed to buy in Fallujah? (Snoop LOVES weed.) Wait, no! Make one where you have to keep P. Diddy’s fancy clothes clean in the middle of war-torn Baghdad! You could call it Super Keep-Diddy’s-Clothes-Clean Man or something. Whatever - it’s a working title. If you hire me, video game industry, I promise I’ll come up with a better one. Although you should probably just hire me regardless. See all those ideas? I just made those up in like 10 seconds.

Please hire me.

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!