The 50 Creepiest Pieces of Romance Advice Ever Published

Sorry, single people, this week's column is for lovers only. Now that those lonely people are gone, hold that lover close and enjoy 50 highlights from three romantic books that offer tips for every day of the year: 365 Ways to KISS Your Love, 365 Great Ways to Say I Love You, and 365 Ways to be Romantic by everyone's favorite human dispenser of castration chemicals-- Godek. Warning: romance books are not good. Your reproductive systems are about to crawl out and run straight away from this page.

Gregory J.P. Godek is the author of 1,001 Ways to be Romantic and 1,001 More Ways to be Romantic. If you're a longtime Cracked reader, you know that most of his tips involve a pun or a pizza, and the rest are Top 40 love songs he remembers. He's made a career out of being stupid and lazy, and if you still aren't on board with him being the biggest piece of shit in the world, the only book he's ever written that wasn't a list of corny, vagina-drying romance tips was a shameless attempt to make money off 9/11 with a completely random list of "American" things. Godek is what abortion doctors picture to make their jobs easier.

Godek's idea of clever is writing "Forget-me-not" on a forget-me-not. I always wondered what kind of person they were picturing when they decided to add instructions to a bar of soap.

Is this to convince her that I'm gay or that I forgot which day was her birthday? It actually doesn't matter. She's going to accuse me of both.

Ladies, let me save you some time. No one in their right mind would ever do this, but if you do buy every card in the store and give them to your man, you'll hear one of three things:

1: "Is this because I hate you? Because you weren't supposed to find out about that."

2: "You idiot slut, can I assume the rest of these envelopes are also birthday cards so we can just put this event behind us?"

3: "Hello, Batman? I work at the Hallmark store and I'm pretty sure you're about to start finding birthday-themed murders all over the place."

You can try this one, but I'm pretty sure women are trained from a very young age to not put their mouth on anyone who hands them a Garfield balloon.

Godek, you fucking dumbass. Only you could walk into a card shop and shout, "Hold on, I just thought of something! You could give these things to people! Sir, what are they called again? C-aaahh-errds?"

What Godek is saying is that most women are happy to ignore your lack of wit if you give them expensive things. Godek had to buy his wife a car to get his first blowjob. And the entire time she was doing it, he handed her blow-pops and screamed, "Get it? Get it!?"

This is the romance guru equivalent of tech support asking you if your computer is plugged in. "Sir? I'm sorry to hear about your marriage. Have you tried buying an instruction manual on sex and fucking your wife? Okay, try that and call me back."

I imagine a normal day for Godek's wife is tearing the fruity puns off all her household products in a desperate attempt to find one poisonous enough to kill her.

That's lucky, Godek because after reading one of your romance books, the thought of an erection makes a penis sick.

Even after all these years, whenever Godek leaves a present for his wife, her first thought is, "I'm being stalked by an eight-year-old rapist."

Thirty percent of this book's advice is to buy greeting cards and now the idiot who wrote it is concerned about us wasting money and being predictable? I think Godek is probably just pissed off at roses because he couldn't think of a pun for them. He sat at his keyboard for a week thinking, "What could a stupid fuck write on a rose... I get a ROSE out of you! No... Rose rose rose your boat... not quite... ARGH! Fine! I guess roses aren't romantic. That Snoopy balloon, on the other hand, is making me rock hard."

He was right about a dozen roses being common, expected, and expensive. Luckily, naming your boat after your wife is none of those things. Following Godek's logic is like watching a kid play baseball. If he simply picked one direction and ran that way, you probably wouldn't even notice that he's just stupid.

"And what's the deal with men's fashion? Why should us fellas have to wear t-shirts when nursing bras fit so much better?? And don't even get me started on grocery stores that sell the maxi pads alongside products for women. Men bleed out of the holes in their genitals too, ladies!"

Go ahead, but I think it might backfire the next time you get in an argument. "Honey, you can't watch the game. You're taking us to my sister's brunch today. And before this turns into a battle of wills, let's try to remember which one of us is a giant pussy. Oh, look! A check for one million kisses, signed by you! How about you go get changed and meet me in the car, tough guy."

That makes sense. Do I get in the elevator with her too? I don't want her endorphins to reach lethal levels from all this romance. She kind of looked like she was going into toxic shock when I handed her the stuffed tiger that said "Grrrrrrr!" on it.

At first I thought "kiss" might be some kind of G-rated code for "bone," so if your great-grandchildren found this book they wouldn't know it was about making whoopie. It turns out each of these 365 tips are literally about kissing. It also turns out that if you and your husband need a manual for working out your intimacy problems and you're not even on first base yet, go ahead and buy a book on masturbation and another on divorce while you're there at the book store.

When you're kissing someone this dull, be careful that your mouth doesn't drift off and start spelling something more exciting and erotic like G-U-M D-I-S-E-A-S-E.

And then what? She drives off the road shrieking because she thinks her fish made her a mix tape?

Another morse code kiss? Tomima Edmark must make out with a lot of mute sailors. And if they're sitting through this kind of stupid shit, they're also probably dead.

It does add a bit of adventure when you know your partner has been putting his or her lips on things near the toilet, but I don't think it's good for a relationship when you're literally wiping your ass with each other's love notes.

Try to do this early so he knows you're a fucking dingbat before things get serious. Does Tomima think before she types or does she just rip a hole in her chest and let the locusts fly randomly into the keyboard?

Ladies, leave a bookmark on this page so investigators know why your husband killed you.

The collarbone? Oh, Tomima... you whore. Look, I don't want to judge someone for having a terrible sex life, but this level of prudeness is environmentally hazardous. Tomima is so asexual that when she wades crotch-deep into a swamp, it dries up 15 acres of alligator habitat.

If you got to work, opened your briefcase, and found a scented coupon for one passionless kiss on the toilet, would you even bother going home ever again? Legally, Tomima has to add a warning to the bottom of every coupon that says, "The bearer of this document is now sterile."

Lady, if I already have a briefcase full of kiss coupons, I don't need a kiss certificate. What I need is a woman whose barren orifices don't shear the skin off my fingers. You flaky cow, if you're writing a book about 365 different kinds of kisses and you have no standards, at least make them all different. After Godek, the last thing the world needs is a second Alzheimer's victim with mannequin genitals declaring themselves an expert on relationships. Next thing you know Tomima will be telling us to write a personal check for kisses.

Jesus fucking Christ, Tomima. The only thing you have left to do is suggest using pizza as an expression of love, and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete.

You uncultivable bitch. After you're done apologizing to your gynecologist for turning his arms into snakes, I demand an apology of my own.

And then what? Watch them cry? You can't just prance into a room with a bag on your head and destroy someone's life like this, you monster.

Is this still a book about kissing? Because it's starting to look more and more like a scheme by Tomima and her divorce lawyer to get her husband to take a swing at her. "Sugar Frosted Lips" alone probably got her full custody of the kids. And God bless those brave little bastards. They never let Tomima hear them scream even as her rostrum pierced their spines and drained the fluid from their tiny husks.

When you're at the grocery store, you can easily spot which men have gone home with Tomima. They're the ones curled up at the end of the cereal aisle, whimpering and peeing on themselves. They also have medically unexplainable tendrils probing out from their bite wounds.

So you want me to get a person alone and show them a film I made of me with a bag on my head telling them how I want to kiss them? Do you romance authors ever stop to think, "What if someone is actually dumb enough to listen to me?" or are you too busy picking maggots out of your underwear?

This tip will come in handy if you're ever infiltrating a society of sex offenders and one of them says, "Do something that proves you're not a cop."

It was exactly here where Tomima lost the bet she made with her Illithid friends that she could sound like a human past tip #256.

If you're doing this, you'll also probably want to explain to your love that not everyone was lucky enough to have parents that could afford car seats or books about the dangers of dropping babies.

Right. The joke's on them. Those fools will never guess that the corny couple giggling into each other's mouths are the ones making pointless, stupid sounds! I've read some bad romance guides, but Tomima Edmark wrote the only book that's so unsexy it can only used by necrophiliacs trying to prolong their orgasm.

Why not? Nothing gets a woman in the mood like a clumsy argument with a dead murderer's ghost.

Be sure you're ready for this level of intimacy. A lot of couples fall apart once their flaming effigies bring forth the coming of Surtr.

Not all of the book is about summoning dark forces. Some of it is merely fucking dumb.

This won't keep the birds from coming. The scarecrow is only there to bear witness to the prophecy.

What better way to tell someone you love them than by writing it on the actual sky?

And oh yeah, she should have mentioned this 53 tips ago: make sure sky writer includes your names because every asshole for a hundred miles took credit for the last sky writing you bought.

Mara Goodman-Davies writes about romance with the whimsical likeability of a doctor writing about your brain parasite.

This is the perfect way to blame missing ice cream on semi-literate, womanly intruders.

"Hi, honey, I guess you're too busy to pick up. Anyway, I found a pair of your underpants wadded up in the glove box. So I guess I'm calling to ask if maybe next time you use your own car to violate our marriage with someone else's dick? Thanks!"

Look, I know not everyone can be funny or interesting people, but does the author really have to wallow in it like this? It's adorable when a kitten drives itself into a happiness frenzy with only a string. However, when a human couple is happy and compatible enough to do anything close to an English Accent Endurance Match and then live with themselves, it's tragic and annoying. It's like saying, "Nyah nyah, we grew up in bedrooms covered in lead paint and now we can enjoy everything!" I'm so tired of the stupid throwing it in our faces.

But what kind of life is it when some horrible thing like this might appear in your pocket at any time? Judging by Mara Goodman-Davies' sweet talk, someone really needs to tell her lover's second grade teacher that she's not his grandma.

If I'm dating a woman dumb enough to think this is cute, I wouldn't trust her to understand it's a joke. I'm not even sure how it's a joke and I write jokes for a living. This poor girl is going to hang up the phone and immediately tell her Wal-Mart manager that he'll have to get someone else to moan at customers when they come in because she quits! And she is going to be so pissed when she gets home and realizes the grand prize in the love lottery is a cologne-drenched coupon for a FIRE EXTINGUISHER KISS. Finally, those damn stupids will get their comeuppance.

For more on romance, see 4 Romantic Books to Disgust and Annoy Your Lover or The 5 Most Ridiculous Self-Help Books.