Cracked/Mad Feud Reaches Fever Pitch

Sylvester P. Smythe was seen slapping Alfred E. Neuman with the backs of his hands yesterday, as the decades-old feud between Cracked & Mad continued its bloody reign.

News of Mad Magazine's recent hardships only added gasoline to what has already been a dark spot in the usually sunny world of humor periodicals. Cracked, (which is actually no longer a periodical) (which also actually hasn't even used Sylvester P. Smythe in years) tried to send an olive branch of sorts to Mad in the form of a post written by Daniel O'Brien.

Entitled, "Cracked Officially Starts Feeling Sorry for MAD Magazine," the post is a love-letter of sorts to the magazine that started America laughing more than fifty years ago.

"I wanted to reach out to you, but I just got so busy; see, we were installing hot tubs in all of the Cracked offices at the time, which required a ton of my attention, (you can’t install hot tubs within five feet of a chocolate fountain, which we’d just installed in October). They’re kind of tacky, I know, but we had some extra cash so why not, right?"

O'Brien also gives us a glimpse into the rich history the two humor magazines share:

"Oh, but one more real quick thing. As different as we are, (in terms of success, our adaptability with regards to the shifting trends in media, our superior sexual behavior), we do have one similarity. According to legend, longtime MAD editor William Gaines reportedly kept a voodoo doll in his office, in which he would stick pins, all labeled as various MAD “imitators,” (Cracked, Sick, The New York Times), and he would remove a pin whenever one of these imitators would stop publishing or disappear. At the time of Gaines’ death, there was only one pin left, and it was labeled “Cracked."

Which, of course, brought to mind:


It is my belief that only Obnoxio the Clown can bring these two sides together and restore the friendly rivalry they shared in the good old days, the days of reading material made of paper.

When You Know It's Time To Switch Lines At Rite Aid

This actually happened about a half an hour ago --

We were at our local Rite Aid, buying this and that, looking at the already insanely stocked Valentine's Day displays and Spider-Man mask chocolates in heart boxes.

Then we go to checkout. The prim middle-aged lady with the gigantic glasses and sensible shoes in front of us is returning one of these:

It's an Acu Vibe "personal massager," available at the "health" section of Rite Aid.

She says to the clerk,

"Yes, I'd like to return this; it didn't work the way I wanted it to."

"What exactly was the problem?"

"It didn't work the way I wanted it to."

The clerk looks skeptically at the box, which has apparently been torn open at the edges. The lady pokes at the soft part of the massager to make her point.

"Was a part broken," the clerk asks.

"It didn't work the way I wanted it to."

"...I'm not sure we can accept returns on these."

"It didn't work the way I wanted it to."

"Do you have a receipt?"

"No."

"..."

"It just didn't work the way I wanted to."

You know, back when I was a kid, the only "respectable" place you could get these "personal massagers" were in those Fingerhut-type catalogs. But now traditional "big box" drug stores have totally embraced this market.

As a side note, you can get these awesome Valentine's Day toy cellphones with candy inside and buttons that really beep. But something tells me I'm getting the Spider-Man mask chocolates.