Ross Wolinsky is taking a personal day today. Filling in for him will be his grandfather, Pappy Wolinsky.

Hello, internet! How are you all doing? I’m doing fine, thanks!

You know, back in my day we didn’t have much scratch, but that was a different era - one where men wore hats, women wore dresses, and there was never any confusing the two!

We’d do all kinds of things for kicks back then - if we had the dough, we’d get dolled up in our best glad rags and head to town for some giggle water, but more times than not we were left flipping eggshells and spinning nuts - if you could get your hands on them! Hoo wee! We didn’t have the cable TV and Nintendro machines driving us all bugaboo back then! Heck no! All we needed was a bottle of hooch and a dame in the struggle buggy, and anything beyond that was just padding the butler’s ankles as far as we were concerned!

Things were a lot cheaper back then, boy I’ll tell you what! Back then you could get a gallon of milk for a penny, and a gallon went a lot further than it does today - we didn’t have those big fancy drinkin’ glasses you kids have today! I used to drink milk out of a rusty old tin can! There was only one tin can in the house that didn’t have any rust on it, and everyone knew that one belonged to Pa. It’d be coolies bending the trolley tracks if you drank out of Pa’s tin can - he’d box your ears but good!

Pa was a man who was hitting on all sixes for sure, and he could be tougher than a Chinaman’s mule on a hot Tuesday morning, but every once in a while he’d take us to town to see a talkie. Back then talkies only cost a nickel, and they were better than the garbage you get in the movie houses nowadays! That was when entertainment was on the level, boy! Now you’ve got your hotsy-totsy computer effects and your Iron Men and whatnot… horsefeathers! That ain’t entertainment! Nobody knows how to make a good movie anymore! Bah!

Back in my day, we didn’t need all these fancy effects and flashy cars and rap music to make a good talkie! All we needed was a good story - preferably one about a group of dogs having a party together, and if one of the dogs tried to rape one of the other dogs, all the better! If you could get a couple of dogs, some tiny evening wear, some string, and a jar of peanut butter together, why, you’d have a plum-ducky film on your hands!

And boy, those dogs were disciplined back then! We didn’t need some Spanish poolboy “whispering” at them to get them in line, no sir! But like I said, it was a different era back then: one where men wore hats, women wore dresses, and dogs knew their place. These films nowadays… applesauce, I say! Applesauce!

Dear People With Very Specific Skills Who Put Repetitive Videos Of Themselves Showing Off Those Skills YouTube,

First off, I’d just like to congratulate you all: You’ve created a new artform for the internet era, and for that you should be proud. I’m not going to deny that your videos are amazing, but I can’t help but wonder: What did you guys do before YouTube? Did you backflip into your pants whenever more than a handful of people were in the room? Was it hard to do it live because you didn’t have the luxury of editing out all the failed attempts? Did your friends & family get sick of you always trying to backflip into your pants at parties, or did they accept it as part of what made you a beautiful & unique snowflake?

Either way, you guys must be loving this whole YouTube thing, huh? You know - what with all the millions of people out there who haven’t seen you showing off your very specific skills. The view counts keep rising, the comments keep rolling in, and you’re left sitting there, watching it all happen and thinking to yourself, “Gosh! These people love me! They really love me!” I’ll be honest with you, people with very specific skills who put repetitive videos of themselves showing off those skills on YouTube: I’m not entirely sure why we, the YouTube viewing public, eat shit like this up with such a voracious appetite. Yes, your videos are impressive, and no, I don’t think I could backflip into a pair of jeans if I wanted to, but does that really explain why these videos end up being viewed by millions of people? Are we all just jealous of your unbelievably specific skills? I don’t think that completely explains it.

So why then? Why do the guys throwing bottles and sunglasses and jumping into pants get all the internet fame while more deserving characters (like the naked Japanese guy cooking mushrooms) fall by the wayside? I’m going to take a guess: It’s because people are more likely to forward a video of some guys throwing sunglasses onto each others’ faces than a video of a naked Japanese guy in a horse mask cooking mushrooms. People feel comfortable sending their parents and coworkers a video of some guys doing backflips into Levi’s, but a naked Japanese guy cooking mushrooms? Ehh… not so much.

So I have a challenge for you all today (and now I’m talking to all Cracked readers, not just the people with very specific skills who put repetitive videos of themselves showing off those skills on YouTube): I want you all to email the naked Japanese mushroom chef to a parent, relative, or coworker today with a message that says “Thought you would enjoy this LOL!” Let’s give the weirdos their due today.

When is the world going to end? That depends on who you ask. Scientists say the sun will burn out in a couple billion years, Nostradamus had it down to an exact date (December 20, 2012), and Jehovah’s Witnesses have struck out numerous times, predicting all-out apocalypse in 1914, 1918, 1925, 1941, 1975, and 1994. I appreciate all of their efforts, but guess what? They’re all wrong. I can’t give you an exact date, but I can easily tell you what year the world is going to end.

The world is going to end in 2022.

Why 2022? It’s not Peak Oil, global warming, or terrorism that I’m concerned about. No - 2022 is the year that kids who are 7 years old right now will be turning 21. That means that 2022 will be the year that today’s 7-year-olds will be legally allowed to drink alcohol, which means that 2022 will be the year that bars become overrun with people who have fond childhood memories of seeing Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Will they remember Terminator 2? What about Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure or Back To The Future? What will they say of these movies? “Oh,” they’ll say, “Aren’t those, like, old movies? I don’t like old movies.” Then they’ll ask the bartender for some crazy futuristic drink that I’ve never heard of, and then they’ll turn back to their friends to wax nostalgic about that movie they saw when they were 7 years old with all the rapping CG chihuahuas, and I’ll return to Gladstone’s birthday party (89 years young!) and stew in the corner, nursing my whiskey and muttering to nobody in particular about how the world has gone to hell in a handbasket.

But then God will be like, “What the fuck?!” and smite everyone, because CG chihuahuas?! COME ON. He must have said SOMETHING about that in the Bible, right?

If you’re like me, you’re sick and tired of watching stuff on a regular TV. In fact, if you’re like me, you’re fed up with even HAVING a TV at this point. I don’t care if it’s an old CRT with rabbit ears or one o’ them fancy-pants LCD whatsits hangin’ on the wall; either way it’s time to call up the Salvation Army or Goodwill or whatever and have them haul that embarrassing hunk of garbage out of your house. It’s 2008, and regular TVs are for poor people. You have discerning tastes, you have disposable income, and dagnabit, you deserve a projector that’s shaped like R2-D2.

And we have the technology. Thanks, Nikko Home Electronics.

Complete with inputs for a variety of analog & digital signals, built in speakers, and a projector that can crank out a 260 inch-wide picture, the R2-D2 Digital Audio & Video Projector is 100% guaranteed to fill that void in your empty apartment that your ex-girlfriend left when she moved out on you because you bought an R2-D2 Digital Audio & Video Projector. Gut-wrenching loneliness got you down? Try the Millenium Falcon remote control. Crippling depression and abandonment issues bubbling to the surface after years of suppression? Did I mention the iPod dock?

The R2-D2 is also able to recline and project a signal onto your ceiling. For example, if you had a home movie of you and your ex having a picnic together, and you wanted to project it onto the ceiling above the bed that the two of you used to share so you could watch it while crying and masturbating at the same time, the R2-D2 Digital Audio & Video Projector could TOTALLY handle that without a problem.

You could also use it to watch one of the many fine Star Wars films. Or Terminator 2, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, or Look Who’s Talking Too. Or any other movie you wanted to watch, really. They would all probably work.

The fame that comes with being a Cracked blogger has its pros and cons. I can always get a reservation at fancy restaurants, I get into all the most exclusive night clubs, and thousands of women email me pictures of their junk on a daily basis. That’s great and all, and yeah, I’m filthy rich and everything, but it’s not all cash and clubbing and ill-lit close-up jpgs; the schedule can be exhausting, the gossip mags say the nastiest things, and I can barely walk down the street anymore without a dozen women throwing themselves at my feet. It can get to be a little much sometimes, but hey

This gig is my Different Strokes (Gladstone is Willis, Swaim is Kimberly, and Daniel O’Brien is the maid). That being said, what’s going to happen to us when it’s over? Swaim will end up doing porn and OD’ing (but we all knew that was going to happen anyway), and Gladstone will knock out Vanilla Ice on Celebrity Boxing, but what about me?! Will I be making diaper rash cream commercials and making fun of myself on any show that will take me? Will I run for Governor and get 14,242 votes? Perhaps most importantly, will I end up on Divorce Court with my beastly ginger wife and talk about my inability to get an erection on national television? Is that’s what’s going to happen to me?!

How much money could Gary Coleman have possibly received to appear on this show, and at what price does it actually become worth it to tell the world you’re packing a limp noodle? My guess is that he got paid $10,000 for this. Times must be rough for Gary Coleman.

You know what he should probably do with that money? Go to community college and get an associate’s degree. Something practical. Data processing, or maybe stenography or something. Anything to get this guy a steady paycheck and some dignity. Seriously, Gary - get it together.

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: For best results, hit play on the top video, let it play until the kid starts dancing, and then hit play on the bottom video.

Sometimes I have to make difficult decisions. Today I had to choose: Should I post the fat kid’s pantsless home workout video or the Saudis skating down the highway at 80 mph in their sandals? As you can see it was a very tough call.

I knew I could come up with some hilarious zingers about the fat kid exercising, but I already made fun of a child yesterday. I’m pretty sure that at some point you’re supposed to stop making fun of children, right? This little guy is probably too young to know that he’s just set himself up to be the next Star Wars kid, effectively ruining his entire life, and that’s not all that funny, I guess, but you know what is? Watching him flail around with no pants on. WHY ISN’T HE WEARING ANY PANTS?

So yeah, that one’s kind of a mixed bag - part funny, part gut-wrenchingly depressing - but the one with the Saudis skating down a freshly-paved highway? That one’s just flat out confusing. Why are they doing that, and more importantly, HOW? Not only does that look like the most dangerous thing of all time, but it also seems to defy the laws of physics. Also, the title of the video is “Only in Saudi Arabia.” When did Saudi Arabia gain this reputation for wackiness? I figured if I posted this one I could say something about that, make fun of the guys for wearing those Islamic man-dresses, drop in a few Darwin references and call it a day. Easy enough, but would I really have enough to say about it to make the text wrap ALL THE WAY AROUND THE VIDEO?

I was sitting on the couch, trying to decide which one to post. I showed them to my girlfriend, flipping back and forth between the two windows. “Which one of these is funnier?” I asked her.

“Use both of them,” she said without even looking away from America’s Next Top Model.

I pulled them up on the screen, hit play on both, sat back to watch them at the same time, and was like, “Whoa - these are actually pretty awesome to watch side by side.” Then I tried to find another video to use, but by then it was getting late, so, you know, here we are.

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.

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.”

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.