It’s strange how some situations can mirror others almost exactly. For example, a tennis match can look indecipherable from a pickleball match to an outsider. A city council meeting can easily be misconstrued as a school board meeting, and we’d be hard-pressed to tell you the difference between a symphony and an orchestra. It’s a good idea for all of us to prepare ourselves for these situations so we can properly identify what we’ve walked into. As such, let’s take this time to test our knowledge with a little quiz.
Try to identify which of these situations are describing the depths of hell or a Luke Bryan concert in Mansfield, Massachusetts!
1.) Question: You traverse a parking lot filled with Ford F150s bespeckled with Blue Lives Matter and FJB bumper stickers to enter an arena, only to have your ears assaulted with song lyrics that make Jimmy Buffett sound like Elliott Smith.
Answer: If you went with “Luke Bryan Concert in Mansfield, Massachusetts,” good job! This indeed sounds very similar to the Stygian abyss of the dreaded Dark One, so don’t get down on yourself if you answered incorrectly. Try to make up for it with this next question!
2.) Q: The temperature is impossibly high as you witness thousands of tortured souls wail in agony while countless demons rid them of their skin and force-feed them their own eyeballs.
A: That’s right, you’re in the depths of hell! It definitely doesn’t seem pleasant to us, and we’re *almost* tempted to wish we were back at the Luke Bryan concert! On to the next one!
3.) Q: You’re forced into a naked procession of the damned with a pitchfork constantly at your back. At the front of the line is a pit of fire in which the dancing flames will lick your flesh for all of eternity, simply because you did not make it to Confession in time to cleanse your soul before you perished.
A: Yep, it’s hell again! You’re doing great!
4.) Q: You’re surrounded by Miller Lite-swigging men donning cowboy hats (virtually none of whom have ever even sat upon a horse, let alone been employed as a farmhand) cosplaying as Southerners despite the fact that they are hundreds of miles north of the Mason-Dixon line.
A: This was a toughie, but it’s a Luke Bryan concert! We know it sounds like a clever punishment from the devious mind of Lucifer himself, but the trickiest demon is no match for modern-day country music!
5.) Q: You’re in a crowd of white people singing along to the lyrics “Girl you make my speakers go ‘boom boom’, dancing on the tailgate in the full moon, that kind of thing makes a man go ‘mmm mmm.’”
A: Well, you’re at a Luke Bryan concert, but why are you at a Luke Bryan concert? That’s right, you’re in hell!
There you have it! We’re sure you performed fantastically, and if not, at the very least we hope you’re a little more equipped to differentiate between these two situations. God willing, you’ll never need this knowledge, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared!
Trump has long considered The Smurfs to be dangerous communist infiltrators and therefore viewed their arch-nemesis Gargamel to be an ideal fit for Attorney General. A brief look at the dark wizard’s track record and lifestyle, however, soured him on the choice. In all of his years of trying Gargamel has yet to kill a single Smurf despite towering over them physically, plus he’s childless and lives alone in a dirty shack with a cat. Gargamel and J.D. Vance wouldn’t get on, and Trump has no time for infighting when he’s got an entire democracy to dismantle.
Not much is known about Dr. Claw and that’s exactly what Trump is looking for right now. He admires the way Claw operates from the shadows “like the Gestapo.” Trump was excited to become one of the few people to ever see his face, giving his team the out of claiming he would only meet on Zoom with the camera pointed at his sinister metal hand. Insulted, Trump vowed to increase funding to the Inspector Gadget program and moved on.
Trump was impressed with Burns not only as a fellow decrepit capitalist but as an innovator. He thought Burns’ plan to increase Springfield’s dependency on his nuclear power plant by blocking out the sun showed real moxie. He figured the two of them working together could finally find a way to stop the wind once and for all. The infatuation was short-lived. During the vetting process, certain questions came to light about the nature of his relationship with longtime assistant Waylon Smithers, prompting Trump to dismiss Burns as “one of those types.”
Say what you will about Trump’s callousness, he really seems to have a genuine soft spot for men with a history of violence against women. When he heard that Dick Dastardly had caught a bad rep from the liberal media for his penchant for tying Penelope Pitstop to the railroad tracks, he thought he would throw the guy a bone and offer him a job. Trump was also impressed with the way Dastardly blamed all of his failures on his subordinate, Muttley, a classic power move. It went downhill from there, however. By the end, Trump decided that a guy whose catchphrases include “Drat!” “Double Drat!” and “Curses, foiled again!” was simply not a winner. According to rumors, Dastardly is now being courted for a high-ranking position in the DNC.
It’s not clear if Trump was seriously considering Oroku Saki for the position, the truth is that a meeting with the Foot Clan leader has always been something of a white whale for Trump. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, he would frequently gripe about the ninja master’s elusiveness. “I know everyone in this city! Giuliani, Epstein, Crang… Why the hell won’t this Shredder bozo meet me face to face?!” Currently, he’s out of the running, but that could all change as several members of the Trump transition team are still tasked with sending a communication to Dimension X.
Trump’s initial thinking was “My supporters wear skulls, this guy is a skull, he should be the Secretary of Labor!” He has long held sympathy for the former Eternian despot, ever since Castle Greyskull was stolen from him by the Sorceress, whom, as Trump understands, is the head of Eternia’s liberal elite. His interest halted abruptly upon seeing a Skeletor positivity meme page. “Cancel all my calls to Eternia people, Skeletor has gone woke!”
Trump admires Mojo’s hard stance against notorious woke radicals like The Powerpuff Girls. Unfortunately, Mojo proved to be too much of a know-it-all for the incumbent President’s liking, (he’s already got Elon to deal with,) and he told his aids to cancel scheduling a sitdown with him before the second commercial break. About 20 minutes later he was heard shouting “Get Johnny Bravo on the horn!”
Elon is the only villain on the list Trump actually managed to meet with face to face, and boy did he regret it! Talk about annoying. There’s “cartoony” and then there’s this unbearable jackass. It quickly became apparent to Trump that suffering Elon’s company was barely worth the votes he illegally purchased, there was no way he was going to put him in a position where they would have to work together in any regularity. In the end, Trump gave Elon the “Daddy make work” position of The Department of Government Efficiency, which of course does not exist. This way Trump only needs to meet with him about twice a year and when he pitches things like “Let’s use Acme dynamite on trans athletes” he can say “Great idea champ, action that, put it on the fridge, whatever.”
Megatron’s story captivated Trump, and it’s not hard to see why. He’s a former socialist freedom fighter who saw the light, embraced strongman totalitarianism and literally transformed into a giant gun, basically a conservative folk hero. Once Trump heard Megatron complaining that the Matrix of Leadership was “stolen” from him by Optimus Prime, he knew they had to collaborate. He ordered his aids to make contact with Cybertron immediately. When they nervously protested that attempting contact with the alien robot planet could potentially embarrass the administration, Trump simply insisted “We should be friends with Cybertron.” They wound up telling Trump that Megatron simply wouldn’t take their calls. Infuriated, Trump declared “When those lug-heads run into another energon crisis they’ll get no aid from us!”
Of all the ludicrous picks Trump had before finally settling on real-life sex offenders and con artists, this one set his team on the biggest tailspin. At first when he started saying things like “I need the sort of generals Golobulus had, you know, Cobra Commander and Destro!” they thought he was simply using his trademark hyperbole. Nope. They soon had to reconcile with the fact that they worked for a man who not only believed G.I. Joe was real, but that the character he saw the most potential in was Cobra Commander. Not Duke, not Roadblock, not even the hillbilly guy with the rebel flag belt buckle, fucking Cobra, a foreign military leader with a history of terrorism on American soil. Eventually, they convinced him that the constitution, as it stood, would simply not allow him to appoint a foreign enemy commander to a cabinet position. Trump relented, but privately reached out to Project 2025 thinktank group The Heritage Foundation and urged them to see what they can do while some other “loyalist stooge” keeps the seat warm.