Andrew Keith Spaulding, Author at HARDTIMES

Republican Senator’s Mistress Too Busy Getting Abortion to Celebrate Big Win with Him

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Dianne Nora

WASHINGTON – The much-younger girlfriend of a prominent Republican Senator is disappointed that she will be too busy having an abortion today to join the raucous celebrations her boyfriend would be hosting in honor of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, confirmed sources who asked to remain anonymous.

“I’m fucking heartbroken about what happened today,” said the 23-year-old, whose sexagenarian boyfriend paid for her to get a safe abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol, while publicly lauding the six conservative Justices of the Supreme Court for denying access to healthcare for millions of Americans. “Not because I’m getting an abortion–that’s exactly what I wanted and I don’t regret it for a second. And not because of the ruling: I’ve got plenty of access to money so I’ll be able to get another abortion if I need one. But the celebratory orgies might be the wildest of the year. Chuck Grassley is everyone in the GOP’s hookup for cheap knockoff Viagra, and who knows how much longer he’ll even be alive. I’m sure he and Madison Cawthorn had something really special planned for tonight, and I’m just devastated that I can’t be a part of it.”

The Senator admitted he was sad his mistress couldn’t join him but was comforted by the fact many of his colleagues were in a similar position.

“This is why we just can’t trust women to make decisions about their own bodies,” he slurred, spilling drips from his glass of California champagne over his American flag lapel pin. “I carve out time in my busy schedule of meetings with oil executives and pharmaceutical companies to cum inside her after three to five thrusts several times a week. It’s called responsibility. If she were this careless with a less powerful man, she might be forced to raise this child, and from what I’ve heard parenthood ain’t getting any cheaper..”

Jade Needham, a representative for Planned Parenthood, said that the wives, girlfriends, and daughters of prominent Republicans were among the demographics most reliant on their abortion healthcare services.

“After today’s ruling we are all worried about what will happen to Planned Parenthood,” Needham said, stoic in her resolve. “But so many people who engage with powerful men need our services that it’d be practically impossible for us to close. Whether you get an STI from an insurrectionist or need emergency contraception after an encounter with Donald Trump, we’re determined to stay open and available to you. We may not get why you’re fucking these assholes, but we’ll still work to keep you safe.”

At press time, the Senator was seen asking Matt Gaetz to help him find someone else to enjoy the evening’s festivities with him.

Democratic Party Rushes to Open Additional Bank Accounts in Anticipation of New Fundraising Talking Points

Posted on June 24, 2022 by The Hard Times Staff

WASHINGTON — Leading members of the Democratic Party scrambled to open a slew of bank accounts to store the money they hope to raise from promising to act on abortion rights during the mid-term campaign season, confirmed excited Wells Fargo, Chase, and Bank of America representatives.

“Promising to deliver on abortion rights has been an absolute fucking cash cow for us. Every time we bring it up it’s like money rains from the sky,” said DNC Chair Jaime Harrison. “We probably could have delivered actual legislation years ago that would have protected a woman’s right to choose, but there is an old saying in Washington ‘no cash when laws pass,’ so we just sort of played it by ear. We obviously disagree with today’s Supreme Court decision, but holy shit, someone call the Fed, because the real inflation is going to be in our bank account, baby.”

Women across the country are desperately trying to figure out the best way to maintain bodily autonomy without continuing to support inept politicians.

“I’ve identified as a Democrat for years because it’s the party that is kind of aligned with my values, but when I actually looked at what they stand for I realized they are a far-right party pretending to be progressive,” said 23-year-old Marla Lynch. “I want to elect politicians that will fight to make a change in this country, but every single Democrat that gets elected just says a bunch of horseshit and then they let the Republicans run the show.”

Political analysts say the abortion debate has been one of the biggest drivers of campaign fundraising on both sides of the aisle.

“The Republicans are going to take a hit here, but thankfully for them, they always have the gun control debate. Republicans will always be able to pound a Bible and say every American has the right to a gun and people will throw money at them,” said political scientist Ezra Howard. “Democrats on the other hand are about to cash in. For the past 50 years Dems have used Roe v. Wade as their own personal ATM, and now it will be like a Brinks truck exploded. Will they use that money to deliver on promises? No, absolutely not, but they might use it to get you a tax credit if you install solar panels.”

At press time, Nancy Pelosi announced that all the free pens the banks gave the Democratic Party for opening new accounts would be donated to local school teachers.

Slash’s Behind-the-Head Guitar Solo Actually Played by Hat

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Joanna McNaney Stein

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Legendary rock guitarist Slash performed his signature behind-the-head guitar solo at a Guns N’ Roses’ concert last weekend, which eyewitnesses claim was actually played by the enormous top hat he wears regularly.

“I’ve seen 18 Guns’ shows since ‘92, but that was wild,” confirmed superfan Marc Kelly while scrolling through hundreds of photos of the incident on his phone. “When I zoom in on this photo here, you can see what looks like little robot hands or something poking out of the back of his hat, but I guess they could be those silver buckle things…. I don’t know how he did that, but it wasn’t Slash shredding up there on ‘Paradise City,’ it was something else. Something… inhuman.”

“Either way it fuckin’ slayed though. GNFNRN-the hat!” he added.

Slash’s long-time dressing room attendant, Cindy Andersen, recalled Slash acting strangely before showtime.

“Well you didn’t hear this from me, but I was dropping off his leather boots as usual, when I saw him talking to that damn hat all quiet like he does sometimes, and waving one of those Swiss Army thingamabobs around,” Andersen stated. “He may have put down the booze years ago, but that man’s still got his demons, alright. And that’s not even counting Duff.”

Robotics Engineer, Dr. Bruce Byers, asserted that small robotic arms could play the electric guitar solo if installed and programmed properly.

“As we age, our shoulders have difficulty lifting without strain or even dislocation. Slash may have self-installed robotic arms in his headwear to handle the solo, or, like many artists of his caliber of fame, could have struck a deal with a malevolent force that can fingerpick. It happens all the time,” Beyers claimed. “If it were the latter, it would be best to have a professional do the installation in the future though, especially since several tricky circuits running at once near the metal band around the hat could create an explosion.”

At press time, the hat was overheard recording the orgasm sound bite in ‘Rocket Queen’ behind Slash’s back.

Photo courtesy of YouTube.

Wish It Was Cooler in Your House but Also That It Had More Bugs? Open a Window

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Zachary Wolf

As summer begins in earnest, many people are wondering how they can beat the heat; and also how to let more bugs into the house.

Temperatures are going up faster than the spiderwebs that already cover your windows, and a slight breeze from outside can be enough to fool oneself into thinking it makes any fucking difference. That’s why we recommend you open your window. Don’t worry about those webs either, the actual spiders are already inside.

Your friends with air conditioning already ditched your sweaty ass for the summer, but that’s okay. They never loved you anyway. Now you can not only cool off, but you can also hang out with flies, fire ants, hairy caterpillars, dragonflies, fruit flies, crickets, black widows, mosquitoes, gnats, horse flies, sand flies, wasps, flying cockroaches, bed bugs, ticks, termites, moths, beetles, and those gross little pincher ones. They are your friends now. And if you think your screen will keep them out, think again.

I hope you’re ready for a summer of seeing tiny masses skittering out of the corner of your eye, mistaking arm hair for spider legs, and wondering how many insects in your home are pregnant with more little antennas and thoraxes that will soon live hidden in your walls. You’ll be so preoccupied with all the bugs crawling over you and your stuff that you’ll simply forget to be hot!

And if you’re looking for something to do with your window open, why not reorganize that paperwork that the wind blew all over the place? The roaches are already under everything you own, so why not put them to work? Maybe it’s a good time to watch that silent movie you’ve been wanting to see because you won’t hear any dialogue over that loud-ass street noise. Plus the bugs will also get a kick out of it since a TV is basically a big square light bulb.

The best part is not only can you get rid of your air conditioner, but you can also toss out the vacuum too. The bugs will just naturally eat any crumbs off the floor for you. Roommates that clean? You can’t beat that!

Woman Asks Guy Wearing “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-Shirt to Name Three Feminists

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Khadija Hassan

MEMPHIS — Local artisanal oil maker Lacy Timber demanded that a man wearing a “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt name three feminists on the spot, sources who aren’t posers confirmed.

“I encourage everyone to contribute to this scene, but I could tell just by looking at him that he probably got that shirt from his older sister and is now using it to get into the scene,” Timber recalled, of the shirt seen worn at a local anti-deportation rally. “He only knows the super well-known feminists like Angela Davis and he named Rebecca Solnit but her ‘Men Explain Things To Me’ blog was huge, so that’s a no-brainer. He couldn’t even name a third one and probably couldn’t name any 16th to 18th-century feminists, but he’s kind of hot in a dumb guy kind of way.”

Timber’s best friend Mary Heller adjusted her pussy hat while commenting in support of Timber.

“He didn’t even think of Hillary Clinton and she was just on the chopping block,” said Heller. “Honestly, men would rather wear a feminist T-shirt rather than work on their patriarchy through therapy, am I right? We were trying to educate him and have a conversation with him but he kept running behind the booths. It just goes to show that if you confront these kinds of posers, their true self comes to light.”

A local organizer at the demo, Slade Christianson, begged to differ.

“Yeah, I don’t know who those people are, but Adam [Flaust] has been volunteering at every demo event for the past four years that I’ve been a part of organizing it. He might have been here before me,” Christianson explained. “They’re berating a volunteer at a deportation demo. It reminds me of Patricia Hill Collins’ Matrix of Domination theory where we are all in the position of oppressor and oppressed depending on the context. At this moment, they seem oddly oppressive and just generally weird.”

At press time, Timber sent suggested reading materials to multiple members of the press as a means of “sharing some important information.”

Back in My Day, We Toured Year Round Because We Were Shitty Dads

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Robert John Scucci

I was looking at tour dates for one of those younger up-and-coming bands and I couldn’t help but notice that their tour was broken into a number of different legs. What are they even doing on those breaks? Spending time with their families? Maybe I’m just an old fuddy-duddy but that just doesn’t seem very rock n’ roll to me. When I was a young wild hog chasing the glory, we never fucking stopped. We toured year-round because we were shitty dads and I never felt more alive.

Nowadays I see all these wannabe rockstars going out on month-long tours, but that’s not how we used to do it. Back in my day, we redlined as many credit cards we could get our hands on, blew coke through the burnouts, got sent to the hospital out of state after starting fist fights in dive-bar parking lots, and sent the bills to our home address. And that would be the most correspondence we’d have with our families that year.

I’m not saying that kids these days are taking the easy way out, but I feel like they’re missing out on some of the best years of their life by not totally abandoning their responsibilities for months on end. Eventually, they’ll come home for another stint at rehab before going out and doing it all again. At first, I was so proud to see that my own son followed in my footsteps as a working musician. That is until I noticed how he was also balancing his time at home and on the road. He’s worrying about soccer practice instead of hanging out in a stranger’s hotel room at 3 a.m. like a real musician. For fuck’s sake, if family means so much to him, then how come he never calls his old man?

New High-End Goth Clothing Line Comes With Cat Hair Already on It

Posted on June 23, 2022 by Chris Taaffe

LOS ANGELES — A new clothing line known as Claw promotes itself as the first luxury brand specifically tailored for the goth market and sells all of its products pre-covered in cat hair, pale-skinned sources confirmed.

“I’ve been fully entrenched in the goth scene since I first saw ‘Addams Family Values’ when I was a child,” recalls Claw founder, Serena Nicholes. “The contrast of ghostly white skin with jet black clothes, the dark makeup, the shiny spikes and studs, and most importantly, loads of cat hair completely covering every inch of fabric. If I see a goth person with no cat hair on them I just think they are a complete poser. But I realized that a lot of members of the goth community had trouble finding high-quality clothing and had to painstakingly make alterations and add cat hair themselves, I saw an opportunity. That’s when Claw started.”

Customers of Claw have been raving about the craftsmanship and selection provided by the brand.

“I really love everything that Claw makes,” remarks frequent customer, Eric Lashley. “No more hunting through thrift stores or laying around with my cats for days in order to break in a new piece of clothing. These clothes are perfect right out of the box and it looks like a cat slept on every piece for at least 18 hours. You know that feeling you get when you try on a brand new outfit and it looks great on you? You’ll never feel that way with these! I put them on and just feel like a depressed creep right away. It’s very comforting.”

Fashion expert, Mariana Hampton, notes that when a clothing brand really understands its consumer base it’s a recipe for success.

“Designers need to understand the culture behind their target buyers if they expect to generate any sort of brand loyalty. Claw does this better than any company I’ve seen. Not only do they have the cat hair, but any customer that spends more than $100 gets a complimentary book of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories,” said Hampton. “Some outsiders might think it’s ridiculous to buy clothes that desperately need to be cleaned, but people said the same thing about buying ripped jeans. It’s about making a statement and one of the core statements in the goth community is ‘I’m a sad person who never goes outside.’”

At press time, Claw is gearing up to release a summer line of pants and long-sleeved shirts that have sweat marks.

Nine-Day Vacation Referred To As “That Time I Lived In Brazil”

Posted on June 23, 2022 by John Danek

MADISON, Wis. — 24-year-old aspiring writer Ricky Trout is generously referring to a brief nine-day long spring break vacation as “that time I lived in Brazil,” irked friends report.

“When I lived in Brazil, I was really immersed in the Spanish language. I was basically fluent, but I already forgot it all again,” stated Trout, whose nine-day trip reportedly included two solely for travel to and from his home in Wisconsin. “It really changed my life. I stayed with this wonderful woman Antonia who was like a mother to me. I think everyone needs to spend a hearty amount of time outside the USA. As a bonus, it’s really inspired my writing.”

Friends claim Trout’s highly exaggerated stay in South America’s biggest country didn’t even include the typical perspective-widening experiences that come with living abroad.

“He’s technically not wrong, but he’s also technically an asshole,” declared friend Kelly Palzer, who declined to join Ricky’s trip due to already being on a semester abroad in Turkmenistan. “Yes, he did in fact ‘live there’ in the sense that his body existed within the country’s borders for a while, but that’s not what the implication of ‘live’ means. And according to his Instagram stories, he just got blackout drunk at the Jack Daniel’s Rock Bar. And Antonia? She was the maid at the Hilton hotel that his mom got for him. She probably cleaned up his puke no less than four times.”

Sociologists have varying theories on the rise in exaggerating the importance of brief international vacations.

“As time goes on, people realize that the United States of America is a dogshit third-world country, so any sort of cred one can accumulate elsewhere helps one’s image,” explained Dr. Eric Weathers, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But keep in mind that people can see right through more egregious overstatements. Don’t claim you ‘lived’ somewhere unless you had to account for rent back home. Even one month is pushing it. I’d say two months is a good general guideline, unless you were studying abroad, in which case go fuck yourself.”

Reports indicate that friends are growing increasingly irate with Trout, as he insists on ordering fajitas at Chili’s with a hyper-emphasized accent.

We Ranked Every Episode of “Law & Order: SVU” and Got Halfway Through Season Two Before We Lost the Will to Live

Posted on June 23, 2022 by Ella Gale

“Law & Order: SVU” spans so many hours of content, that watching it and ranking all of its episodes would take months, if not years. But we’re not afraid to feed the internet’s ravenous desire for numbered lists. Gird your noggins, Stabler enablers, we’re about to go for a very dark dive.

Nocturne: Season 1, Episode 21. This episode really pushes all the buttons, including molestation, intergenerational trauma, and piano lessons.
Confession: Season 2, Episode 1. Yes, I googled “Clockwork Orange eye holder thingy price” while watching it, because we all need a little help getting through the work day. But much like its first victim, this episode is on fire. Powerful people get their comeuppance, with classic Benson and Stabler along the way.
Manhunt: Season 2, Episode 18. To be completely transparent, I didn’t watch this episode. What’s the point? Do you realize how many terrible things happen to human beings? Also, what’s the deal with all these child actors? Are their parents protecting them from the show’s sewage-steeped content? Some of them are pretty young! Maybe SVU should do an episode about a child star who later commits murder because when they were young they were traumatized by acting in an episode of “Law & Order: SVU.”

You know, it’s pretty unreasonable to expect me to rank these episodes. There are more than 300 assault-drenched hours of TV here, and it’s hard to watch more than a dozen a day now that I need sixteen hours of sleep a night for some reason. Not to mention the three boxes of Kraft mac and cheese that is suddenly the only thing my corroded guts will tolerate. Yesterday I peed neon orange, and it was so thick my toilet clogged.

Do you think SVU has an intern whose job it is to google “sex crimes”? Maybe they don’t even get called an intern. Maybe their business cards say “Sex Crime Googler,” and their floor is littered with tiny pieces of ripped headlines that they no longer have the will to vacuum away.

Maybe I’ll just read recaps of the other 20 seasons.

Hmm, for some reason all the recappers stopped after season 2.

Opinion: Quitting Drinking Was the Best Court-Mandated Decision I Ever Made

Posted on June 23, 2022 by Bobby Korec

Every sober person will tell you that quitting drinking was the greatest decision they’ve ever made. I didn’t believe them at first until out of nowhere some court made that decision for me three months ago. So far it’s been an involuntary blessing.

You just don’t know what it’s like to never wake up with a hangover until mandate stipulations clearly forbid you to. I’ve also never felt healthier, been more productive, or felt my free will gently slip away from me so quickly in my life. Cheers to that.

This isn’t the first court-mandated decision that’s been made for me either. One time the judicial system decided I shouldn’t have a driver’s license for a little while. Turns out you have to actually pay your traffic tickets in order to keep your license. Anyway, thanks to their decision I was forced to walk and bike everywhere. I lost a good 20 pounds from that court-mandated decision alone. Thanks, Judge Benedict. Or should I say, personal trainer Benedict?

The justice system has been crushing it so much with my decision-making that I’m thinking about letting them plan every single other part of my life too. Kind of like giving them power of attorney. After all, I’m clearly not very good at life choices.

Just last month I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take a vacation to France or Portugal. So when I asked the courts which one I should travel to, they quickly reminded me that I’m not allowed to leave the state because there were still nine months left of unrelated probation that didn’t allow me to. That made my decision super easy. I simply vacationed at my nearest convenient Dave and Busters instead. If you squint long enough in their prize store, it really feels like you’re in Paris.

Long story short, I learned the hard way that actions have consequences that can result in other people making decisions for you that improve the quality of your life. Thanks to the justice system I’ll never touch another drink ever again for the next eight months three weeks four days and nine hours.

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