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Bits That Never Made It

I have another article on Cracked.com today, The Eight Most Baffling Sports in The World and like all articles that go through an editing process, things get cut.  So, I thought I’d stick the left-overs that got cut from my various articles on here for posterity.

 

Cut from The Five Most Ridiculously Unjust Afterlives

Church of Latter Day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS as it’s called by the cool kids on the street, or Mormonism by everyone else in the entire world), aside from suffering from a grammatically poor name, is an offshoot of Christianity, though its adherents do not consider themselves to be a part of the Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant traditions.

Mormons believe that Jesus Christ was the Divine son of God, and that all the suffering he went through – the shedding of his blood, his crucifixion, his death, the poor table service at the last supper, all of this was good enough to suffice the needs of eternal justice and make amends for the sins of everyone in the entire world. Ever. Before you head off to Salt Lake City, picking up wives by the dozen though, we think we should tell you it doesn’t mean Mormons spent their time drinking, shooting up, gambling and carousing (well, that last part might be untrue if their wives are up for it). Mormons think they should live their life in a manner pleasing unto God, which pretty much means no fun stuff. Even swearing is a bit off.

Because its basis is in Christianity, Mormons believe in a very similar afterlife, with some differences. When a person dies, Mormons believe their soul firstly heads off to a spirit world for some time, where it is given instruction and preparations for the final judgement, at which point it’s reunited with the body to live on forever . In the spirit world, if they have lived in a manner God would have given two thumbs up to, the Mormon will travel to the place where God lives and stay there for eternity – they can even reside with their family, if proper temple practices have been met. As for those who have rattled off strings of expletives their entire natural life, they may well find themselves in a temporary hell, awaiting the final judgement.

So why is it unjust?

At first glance, it all seems pretty functional – if you’re a dick, you fail the judgement in the spirit world and are sentenced to a time in hell, and if you’re good, you’re in heaven. But what caught our eye was the idea of the spirit world being some kind of initial judgement . Sure those Mormons who have rejected God find themselves in Hell, but it’s a temporary hell. They’re given an uncertain amount of time to think about what they’ve done. It kind of sounds like the naughty chair you were made to sit on in second grade when you had that off day and pulled down Paul Franklyn’s shorts in the playground and then threw a sandwich at Susan Plankton. You’re allowed off that chair when you’ve grown up and apologised to everyone involved, and that appears to be the same in the temporary hell of Mormonism.

We’re not saying Mormon hell is a chair in the corridor outside a room – it’s probably a lot worse than that. After all, Mormonism is entrenched in Christianity, to Lucifer and his cronies are knocking about. But if you remember to apologise on the day of final judgement, all seems to be forgiven – “After resurrection and final judgment, every person will be saved in a kingdom of glory ”.

If you don’t apologise on your final judgement and admit you were a total fag your entire life, then you are cast into an eternal hell, to be the plaything of Lucifer and the Sons of Perdition – sadly, not an eighties thrash metal band, but the souls who were cast out of heaven after a rebellion led by Lucifer. We can’t help but imagine that hell must be full of really fucking stupid people.

But what of non-Mormons? Refreshingly, this doesn’t appear to be a religion where non-believers are treated like any suspicious looking Arab at an American airport and slung straight into an eternal version of Guantanamo Bay. No, they seem to avoid hell all together, but instead are sent to somewhere where they live out eternity in a manner acceptable to that of how they lived out their life , but Mormons are sure to point out that it’s never going to be as good as proper Mormon heaven. It kind of sounds like you get to live on cloud eight. Sure it’s nice enough, but it’s not as good as that riotous party going on above.

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Cut from The Seven Most Retarded Ways Celebrities Have Tried To Go Green

Offering Free Gig Tickets For Eco-Friendly Fans

Who’s The Guilty Party?
Radiohead, for a Paris gig, offered fifty free front row tickets to fans who bicycled to the Parisian offices of their record label. Radiohead are renowned as an environmentally-friendly band, and as a band who like to give free shit away, as evidenced by their release of ‘In Rainbows’ because, seriously, who paid for that?

Why’s it futile?
Whenever Radiohead tour, they always request that fans travel to their gigs by public transport (a request which is usually ignored), and this seemed to be one step further – manually propel yourself to their offices and win a front row ticket. Surely their French fans would snap at the chance of having a nice bike ride and, at the end, getting some great tickets?

Well, no. Only fifteen were claimed. So either a legion of French Radiohead fans couldn’t find their way to the offices, or they were just too busy chomping garlic, smoking thin cigarettes and being Gallic to bother, and the whole thing left Radiohead feeling a little bit embarrassed.

Never mind chaps. If you’re feeling down, you can always listen to your music.

How Can It Get More Retarded?
Not so much for Radiohead, but for the citizens of Paris, who couldn’t even be bothered to drive to the offices and then lie.

“So, you came here on your bike then, Pierre?”

“Oui!”

Then (slightly avant-garde) Rock!

Swapping Your Cars For One That’s Not Much Better

Who’s The Guilty Party?
Iain Banks, the Scottish author (or, if you like spaceships, far away planets and exotic alien women with nineteen breasts, Iain M. Banks) traded in his £100,000 car collection, including a Land Rover, two porches and a BMW, for a Hybrid motor. “There was not a Damascene moment”, he said, using pointless words for revelation. “I have been reading about green issues in the Guardian and the New Scientist for about 15 years. And I’ve only decided to do something about it now because it’s suddenly become fashionable and talking about it might get me some poon.” Okay, he didn’t say that last part, but he was thinking it.

Why Is It Futile?
Trading in your motors for a hybrid is a worthy, if immensely smug, thing to do, but at least Banks is environmentally motoring around the Scottish roads, swigging whisky, eating Haggis and generally being inferior to the English, right?

Well, not really. If you’re going to trade in your cars for a Hybrid, Banks, get one with a decent miles per gallon. Banks bought himself a Lexus SUV Hybrid because, he claims, having four-wheel drive is necessary in Scotland (every Scottish road is made of mud, clearly). The Lexus has a mpg of 24 to 27 , though some places advertise it as more, but that’s if you just leave it in your driveway and walk everywhere. Laughably, that mpg is slightly less than what his BMW M5 could do on certain settings (27.7) , and considerably less than his Porsche Boxter S (27.2 to 36.7, depending on setting) .

If you’re going to get a hybrid car, Banks, and then spout forth inane, smug dickishness about it whilst popping your elbow out of joint trying to pat yourself on the back, make sure it’s actually worthwhile next time.

How It Could Have Been More Retarded
Banks could have instead opted for Lexus’ Lexus LS 600h, which has an mpg that makes a Sherman Tank look efficient. How could also have had it flown to him, but surely no one is that retarded. Right?

Picking Famous Celebrities To Promote Environmentalism

Who’s The Guilty Party?
Vanity Fair, or, if you need a name, Graydon Carter, the current editor. Vanity Fair, latching onto the current trend of environmental chic, got Madonna to pose on the front cover of their third annual ‘Green’ edition, in which they tell us how to be cool and environmental, what the President should do to make the U.S. both fabulous looking and eco-friendly, and also what the fuck vegan belts and shoes are. All this, of course, has been fronted by Madonna, who has long claimed to be a bit of an eco-warrior.

Why It’s Futile?
While Madonna has long claimed to be an environmentalist, she’s also long been slated for being a slovenly, planet hating arse. According to people who make their living by finding this shit out, Madonna is about as green as a Lake Erie who has really let itself go. She invests in oil exploration and mining companies , spends $120,000 a year on special Kaballah-blessed water which, she claims, is dynamic ‘living’ water (which just comes from a bottling plant in Canada, apparently ) and has a carbon footprint the size of Bigfoot if he really, really lived up to his name.

She’s not even bothered to buy herself a hybrid motor, which is basically par-for-the-course for any celebrity content to sit in the public limelight. We’re surprised she’s not scourged the earth around her English home with salt and bleach and is sitting there cackling maniacally as everything around her withers and dies.

She has since promised to go a bit more green though, once it was pointed out to her that she’s dirtier than that load of Dutch porn you once found under your Father’s bed.

How Could It Have Been More Retarded?
After reading the first sentence of the article, we don’t think it can;

The world is a series of rooms, which are arranged like concentric circles, or rooms within rooms, joined by courtyards and antechambers, and in the room at the center of all those rooms Madonna sits alone, in a white dress, dreaming of Africa.

Fucking hell, Vanity Fair. Fucking hell.

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Cut from The World’s Five Strangest Holidays

Kanamara Matsuri

Where:
Kawasaki, Japan

What is it:
Kanamara Matsuri, the festival of the steel phallus, is a popular Shinto festival (despite sounding like a Hardy Boys book that never made the cut) celebrated in the Japanese city of Kawasaki. It’s a fertility festival, which has roots penetrating back as far as the mid seventeenth century, to the Edo period in Japanese history.

That’s not so weird. Plenty of countries and cultures have fertility festivals which usually feature brightly dressed folk dancing around, banging drums and generally having a whale of a time. And so it is in Kawasaki – brightly dressed locals throng the streets, chanting and giving out intricate carvings. But, as this is in Japan, all the carvings are penises, the gaily dressed locals are transvestites and their clothes are bedecked in penises and over there is the centrepiece to the festival – the Mikoshi, or portable shrine, in the shape of a twelve foot long penis, being carried down the street by a lot of men.

Fertility festivals aren’t that uncommon in Japan, where around 90% of the population are Buddhists or Shinto and have sexual issues of Freudian proportions, but Kanamara Matsuri is more unique because of the sheer amount of dick on display. The whole festival has a very liberal mood, with the festival goers enjoying the chance to kick back and relax, basking in the shade of several penises. The festival attracts its fair share of foreigners too, all of which instantly buy several phallus shaped lollipops with the sole intention of getting female friends to suck them.

Why is it tradition?
The day is centred around one particular shrine where people hold the penis in a particularly venerable manner, a manner which is faithfully emulated on a nightly basis by Cracked’s writers. Local prostitutes used to pray for protection against STDs, and women often prayed for factors as diverse as easy delivery of children, family prosperity and suitable marriage. It’s a shame Britney Spears never found out about this place.

Slightly more bonkers and far more in line with the Japanese is a local legend connected to the shrine. In the legend, a demon hid inside a local girl and castrated any gentleman who may have tried to plunder her vagina for sexiness. So, in a move which makes great sense to the Japanese, a local blacksmith forged a steel phallus and recorded the first known incidence in history of a cockslap so severe it punched in a demon’s teeth.

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Cut from The Nine Most Obnoxious Memes To Ever Escape The Web

Leeroy Jenkins

Origins:
Leeroy Jenkins is a character created on the massive online gaming hit World of Warcraft, back in early 2005. The character became famous when a video featuring footage of the game circulated around the internet in the spring of 2005. The footage featured a Warcraft guild planning a meticulous attack in a game area called Blackrock Spire. One of the guild members, Leeroy Jenkins, is away from his keyboard, and has thus missed the planning. When he returns, he runs headlong into attack, totally fucking up all the planning and in a very short space of time, everyone is deader than Lindsay Lohan’s sense of self-esteem.

How it got too big:
The video was posted on a World of Warcraft forum, where it almost immediately turned viral. It quickly grew out of the gaming community as videos uploaded to Youtube had millions of viewers. In August 2005, the UK magazine PC Gamer wrote an article about the video, claiming that it was designed as a negative commentary on the geekiness inherent the game, and in being an irritating twat and ruining everyone’s fun, Leeory was actually the hero of the piece. Of course, that’s like saying someone who enters a mechanic’s workshop and shits on the sparkplugs is a hero because they’re attacking something inherent to a mechanic, and as such, PC Gamer UK should shut the fuck up for being idiots.

Around the same time, Upper Deck Entertainment created a World of Warcraft Trading Card game (and in doing so, cementing the enforced celibacy of thousands of youths across the globe) in which players can have a Leeroy Jenkins card, and the same company are planning to release a World of Warcraft miniatures game and a Leeroy Jenkins figurine will be included. Furthermore, Leeroy Jenkins appeared on an episode of Jeopardy! In October 2005, and a 2007 Toyota commercial spoofed Leeroy. There have been numerous mentions made in computer games, the most notable of which is in the 2007 game Mass Effect, which features a character called Richard L[eeroy] Jenkins, who gets himself killed in the opening stages of the game by running headlong into a battle. And musically, in 2008 the nu-metal band Linkin Park, in a desperate effort to appear hip and relevant, have sampled audio clips to use in the intros of live performances.

Interestingly, the video is entirely faked, as we’ve already pointed out, but as no one ever listens to us, it has continued to be a huge hit across the internet.

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Cut from The Eight Most Baffling Sports From Around The World

Radiosport

Where? Predominantly in Eastern Europe.

What is it? Radiosport is used to describe one of several amateur radio activities, that is, activities where amateur radio users try and contact one another, or interpret Morse Code as quickly as possible. The sport is very popular in Eastern Europe, and many other countries where the telephone has yet to be introduced.

The most popular version of radiosport is contesting. In this, amateur radio stations have to scan the amateur radio bands and make as many two-way contacts with each other as possible in an allotted time, and exchange information. We would bet our houses on the exchanged information not being about how many sexy amateur radio groupies they plan to bang that evening.

Though there is an International Amateur Radio Union, there is no official governing body for the sport, as that would be ridiculous. As such, each competition has its own set of rules and regulations, often leading to confusion, controversy and plenty of grown men bickering. You can’t help but think it might help if the organisers would transmit the rules on a random radio frequency and tell everyone to go looking for them.

Origins: Radiosports first started in the 1920s, when the first transatlantic radios started up. Amateur radio contests have been going on since 1926, making this the eighty-second consecutive year of frustrated wives and embittered divorces.

Interesting Fact: Other Radiosport disciplines are Amateur Radio Direction Finding and High Speed Telegraphy (interpreting Morse Code quickly). They are about as exciting as they sound.

Swamp Soccer

Where? Primarily in Finland, but it has spread to all filthy corners of the world.

What is it? It is a form of soccer, played in bogs or swamps. There are rules, but it’s basically a free-for-all in a huge muddy field. The sport caters for both genders, and thus pulls a big croud, because watching men compete in this physically demanding game is a thrill, and watching women rush around, knocking each other over and getting all muddy is just fantastic.

There are twelve players per team, of which no more than six players can be on the pitch at once (probably because no one else can be convinced to jump around in a pile of mud), and players can be substituted as often as they want. Games only last twenty six minutes, but that’s more than enough time for the competitors mothers’ to gather around the pitch, clucking and tutting about the washing they’ll have to do later, and brusquely informing their disgraced offspring that’s they’re to strip before they get into the car for the journey home.

Origins: Swamp Football is a new sport, beginning in Finland during the mid 1990s as an exercise for athletes and soldiers, both clearly held in precious little regard in Finland.

Interesting Fact: For large tournaments, the pitch, instead of being a swamp, is a flooded grassy field. Just goes to show that when a sport goes all commercial, it loses touch with its roots.

International Rules Football

Where? Ireland and Australia.

What is it? International Rules Football is a hybrid sport, a compromise between the similar sports of Aussie Rules Football and Gaelic Football which in themselves are a mixture of soccer, handball, rugby, blatant fouls and complete bafflement.

It’s played by teams of fifteen on rectangular pitches, with four scoring posts at either end, the middle two having a conjoining crossbar, forming a soccer goal beneath. Teams attempt to score either by kicking a ball between the outside posts for one point, over the crossbar for three or in the goal for six, though the latter is guarded by a goalkeeper.

Tackling is rougher than normal soccer, with slapping the football from opponents hand and shoulder barging being permitted, as well as rugby-style tackles between the shoulder and thigh, though the tackling rule tends to be stretched to breaking point, and seeing as the nations playing are the Irish and the Aussies, the game frequently seems to break out into gleeful bouts of wanton violence.

Origins: In 1984, the Gaelic and Australian Football associations played each other using a new set of rules , the International Rules, to better facilitate multi-national violence. And Football.

Interesting Fact: International Rules Football is one of a very few section of team sports without any dedicated clubs or leagues, presumably because everyone is too scared to actually play it in more than once a year.

Horseball

Where? France, but has spread to several countries.

What is it? In Horse Ball, the idea is for teams of four horsemen to throw a small ball through an upright hoop for a point. The ball has six handles for players to grab and is thrown between team mates while everyone gallops around at full speeds. Because of this, riders tend to keep their hands free and rely on their legs to manoeuvre their horses. Tackling is made by trying to snatch the ball from one another’s hands, but as you’re riding your horse no-handed, snatching attempts usually consist of hands flailing helplessly as the two horses gallop around in barely controlled equine excitement.

Shoulder barging is also permitted and indeed encouraged. Players will often look to unbalance their rivals in the hope of freeing the ball and possibly unseating a member of the opposite team. This is, of course, the only reason people watch the sport.

If the ball has been dropped, the only way to retrieve it is to lean over from the saddle and scoop it up at a dead run which several people try and do at once, leading to the kind of foolish bravery only usually seen during African tribal rites of manhood.

Origins: The game has evolved from Pato, which has been played in Argentina since 1610. Pato was plagued with violence, causing the game to be banned several times. In the sport’s early years, players were often trampled to death and Catholic priests denied Christian burials to Pato players who had been killed in a mid-game knife-fight . Take note, NHL. That’s how real sportsmen fight. None of this wearing pads and touching each other up until someone intervenes.

Interesting Fact: The word Pato means duck in Spanish, as early games used a live duck in a cage instead of a ball. We guess the early players thought trampling, knifings and death just weren’t violent enough.

Man vs. Horse Marathon

Where? Llanwyrtd Wells, Wales.

What is it? Some commentators have called it the toughest race in the world (clearly they have never raced John Goodman for the last slice of pie), the Man vs. Horse Marathon is an annual twenty-two mile cross-country marathon in the heart of Wales, scaling three mountains and crossing two rivers, with the competitors ascending a total of more than three thousand feet.

In the event’s twenty-eight year history, a horse has been beaten only twice by a runner, both times within four years of each other. In 2004, Huw Lobb beat the fastest horse by almost two minutes, collecting £25,000 prize money (the prize money of £1,000 for beating the horse had accumulated over the years), then in 2007, Florian Holzinger repeated the feat, collecting £3,000, and was probably quite pissed off that he hadn’t thought of winning the race five years ago, as Huw Lobb drove past in his nice new Mercedes.

Recently, the organisers have allowed mountain bikes to be used, but the horse riders called this an unfair move because horses find the handlebars terribly difficult to operate.

Origins: The idea was born in 1980 by then local publican Gordon Greene, who was arguing in his pub with a local huntsman about whether or not a man could outrun a horse over a long distance. Normally stupid drunken conversations get forgotten about the following morning, so we can only imagine the huntsman’s surprise when Greene turned up with a load of marathon runners and an “I fucking told you we’d sort this out” expression on his face.

Interesting Fact: The race attracts several hundred competitors from all across the world, both runners, cyclists and horse riders, though all the runners just want to beat the horsemen so they can crack a “why the long face?” joke.

Yağlı güreş

Where? Turkey

What is it? Yağlı güreş is the Turkish national sport. It’s more commonly known as oil wrestling because the competitors, huge, hairy Turkish men, lube themselves up with olive oil before wrestling. To top things off, the Turks displayed a terrific sense of humour by deciding that the vigorous oiling and subsequent wrestling wasn’t quite gay enough, and competitors should wear hand-stitched lederhosen whilst they fight.

To win a bout of Yağlı güreş, a fighter has to grab a firm hold of the lederhosen, or kisbet as it’s known. Obviously, because both wrestlers are smeared with more grease than a KFC bucket, this frequently ends up with both competitors thrashing around on the floor in a slippery pile of swarthy Mediterranean skin.

Yağlı güreş is predominantly Turkish, but it has spread to other countries, notably the Netherlands and Japan. Though that’s probably because they’ve spotted the huge financial potential of setting up a couple of cameras, getting some spandex costumes and replacing the strapping, hirsute Turkish men with blonde, lithe women.

Origins: The origins are linked to the popularity of wrestling during the ancient Greek empire, though and annual Yağlı güreş tournament has been going on since 1362, making it one of the longest running tournaments in the world. No one seems to know why they oil themselves up though, and direct questions are met with slightly embarrassed looks and barely-perceptible shrugs.

Interesting Fact: Originally, matches had no time limit, and could go on for hours, if not days. We’re not sure if this is a glowing endorsement of the Turkish male’s athletic prowess, or a horrific insight into the Turkish male’s sexual habits.