COLUMBUS – Self-proclaimed anti-capitalist, James McCarthy, expressed his true feelings for his long-term partner by forgetting it’s Valentine’s Day for the fourth year in a row.
“It’s just despicable that these greedy fat-cats think they can capitalize on something so pure as a human’s capacity for love. It’s a scam really,” explained McCarthy. “I don’t need a holiday to remind me to forget that my girl really likes roses and other small gestures. What’s great about our relationship is that she doesn’t need a special day or even the slightest hint of romantic affection from me to know that I’m sorta into her. If you ask me, February 14th is just another day where I forget to text her back for hours at a time, just like the day before, and definitely like it will be every Christmas for the foreseeable future.”
While McCarthy’s partner, Hilda Ryder, agreed to an extent that Valentine’s Day is over-commercialized, she still admitted that being acknowledged would be nice.
“Sometimes it feels like we’re not even dating. Every holiday is like this, not just Valentine’s Day. Last year on my birthday, he told me his ‘presence’ was my present after showing up six hours late to my birthday dinner,” lamented Ryder. “He won’t even celebrate our anniversary because he thinks that the calendar year is just a ‘man-made construct to suppress free will.’ He puts so much work into these bogus excuses. Seems like it would be easier to just get me a card and move on.”
According to Jeremy Clinet, a marketing advisor for Hallmark, sentiments like McCarthy’s are the single biggest threat facing the greeting card industry.
“I’ve seen my fair share of adversity in the greeting card game, but nothing keeps me up at night more than the public’s slow but steady realization that Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a profit driver for companies like ours,” stated a visibly sweaty Clinet. “To date, we have pumped millions upon millions of dollars into innovative rebrands to specifically target this demographic, but we’re really losing our grip here.”
At press time, McCarthy was seen eyeballing a Valentine’s Day card that read “I wanna seize the means of dat ass!” before quickly scrolling past it.
Are you fucking kidding me?!?! That call was bullshit! Well that’s just fucking great. My team’s season is done, I’m in a terrible mood, and once again the NFL is an exploitative death machine hellbent on squeezing every dollar out of its players regardless of the long-term consequences of their health.
I, for one, am no longer watching this soulless, capitalistic “sport” that might as well be played hundreds of years ago in the colosseum. It’s barbaric. It’s inhumane. And it’s no longer worth watching if I can’t cheer on the guys I like.
I may be out 100 bucks but at least I’ve gained my sense of integrity back.
What the hell happened to the NFL? It was much better back in the day. Today, I mean. It was much better earlier today when the team I root for was cracking their heads into the heads of the team I now hate with every fiber of my being. But now all I see is a bunch of human beings limping to an early grave while old men in suits throw stacks of money at each other.
Now that my team has been eliminated from Super Bowl contention, I think the team that beat them should wise up and refuse to play until the NFL provides better conditions for these athletes. Plus, that would leave an opening in the Super Bowl and I’m confident my team would scab the fuck out of that picket line. Then I can enjoy getting shitfaced and yelling at the TV one last time this season. Granted, I’m gonna get shitfaced and yell anyway but if my team’s involved then at least I can pretend it means something.
It’s time we finally take a stand against the soulless, money-grubbing institution that is the National Football League. That is until next season when Lamar gets back out there. Go Ratbirds!
LAKEWOOD, Ohio — One-time Lakewood High School football legend Jaime Garner made the long and treacherous journey back to his hometown mere days after graduating from Fairview University in an effort to find a mate and procreate, scientists studying the phenomenon explain.
“I had totally planned to move to Cincinnati, but something inside me was pulling me back to my roots. I didn’t even need to use Google Maps on the 12-hour drive home. I was able to navigate detours and road closures by instinct alone,” said Garner while attending a football game at his alma mater in his ill-fitting letterman’s jacket. “It’s been a little tough because a lot of the other guys from my high school seem to be showing up at the same time. But I’ve been doing the biggest burnouts in the parking lot of Scooter’s with my truck, and I can spit chewing tobacco way further than any of these chumps. They don’t stand a chance.”
Locals noticed a sudden influx of young men looking to “settle down.”
“This happens every year once we get the first glimpse of nicer weather. Lots of guys in boot cut jeans and passionate opinions about Joe Rogan will come to our one local bar in a desperate attempt to find a wife,” said longtime resident Carol Burns. “I don’t understand it. All I know is that most of the Cheerleading squad that graduated a few years ago are inexplicably hanging around the bowling alley. The women’s softball team however left and never looked back. Apparently they all live in the city now and brag about their dogs all day.”
Biologist Paulette Mullins has been researching the mating rituals of these individuals for over a decade.
“There is something deep within the genes of these creatures that compels them to return to the mating grounds of their ancestors and begin the life cycle anew,” said Mullins. “I don’t know if they are driven by pheromones or sound, but travel from as far away as Arizona State University and flock back here to start a family and ultimately return to work for their dad.”
As of press time, Garner was heard to do a mating call known as karaoke in an attempt to catch a female’s attention.
You know, it’s not every day you get invited to an orgy. Especially when you’re approached by a stranger while shopping for bottles of Bud Light shaped like your favorite football team’s mascot. Granted, my orgying prime is well behind me, but this was a “Super Bowl” themed orgy so I decided to come out of retirement for one more romp. Well, now that I’m here, I’m getting the feeling that everyone would rather have group sex than watch the freaking Super Bowl!
It’s the Chiefs going up against the 49ers, baby! Who’d want to miss this championship rematch? Mahomes and Mr. Irrelevant will be going at it on the field, but I won’t be able to concentrate on the game because all these losers around me are too busy going at it with each other.
Where the fuck is all the classic Super Bowl watch-party shit? I’m talking about wings, pizza, chili, and spinach-artichoke dip. None of that is here. Sex toys have filled what I assumed was a chip bowl and the “lube station” is sorely lacking a nacho cheese option.
Look, I get it. Maybe football isn’t for everyone. But the people at this orgy have ignored every single commercial so far. I get it if you’re gonna fuck during the actual game, but these companies paid millions of dollars for 30 seconds of ad time. Have some priorities!
Oh, but you’ll all stop banging each other during the Halftime show. Dammit, this is the one thing I wanted to skip. Fuck this, I’m gonna masturbate in the bathroom. Someone let me know what Usher is wearing.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Local man Will Chalke shared his health-conscious drinking regime this morning, noting that – in order to keep himself in check – he only drinks on weekends, except of course for special occasions, and also weekdays.
“It’s really important not to overdo it. That’s why I keep weekday drinking to a minimum, reserving only for birthdays, or work outings, or it being a little cloudy out,” noted Chalke, hoping that the eye doctor he’s seeing after work has beer on tap. “Full moon? Gotta drink, would be bad luck not to. Cold out? Hot toddies are nature’s blanket. Townhall meeting for a city I don’t live in airing on C-SPAN? It’s my democratic duty to get so hammered that I permanently alter my DNA.”
Liquor store owner Ashley Tummerop admits she is always making sure to keep her shelves well-stocked in case Chalke makes one of his 12 to 16 daily visits.
“Will’s patronage has changed my life,” noted Tummerop, from the deck of her newly purchased yacht. “He always comes in with some insane excuse about how he’s allowed to have a little nip because it’s two months until his mom’s birthday or something. I mean, I didn’t even know there was an International Cats Who Are Not Scared of the Bath Day. But I let it slide because… I mean, come on, this boat has a combination grill/hot tub.”
Chalke’s personal life coach, Billy Gup, swears that his insane list of exceptions is all part of a bigger plan.
“It’s important to set limits for yourself I follow a similar code myself. I only smoke weed after work — unless of course I’m on my way to work, or on a break, or if nobody’s in the employee bathroom,” claimed Gup, author of the book “How to Just Kinda Do Whatever You Want.” “You need to have boundaries if you expect to lead a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. Now if you’ll excuse me, it just switched from a.m. to p.m. in Europe, which means I simply must light up.”
At press time, Chalke was seen chastising his friend for cheating on their diet, while drinking straight from a bourbon bottle in “celebration” of his daughter’s currently-happening christening.
Hear me out: Muppets make everything infinitely better.
From nonbinary icon Gonzo the Great to unconventional couple Kermit and Piggy, the Muppets offer an entire universe of diverse character options. And with the reboot trend sweeping TV, I present to you the following evidence that ALL TV shows would be better if redone with Muppets:
The White Lotus
In Muppet White Lotus, Miss Piggy plays Jennifer Coolidge’s character beautifully and we get to watch her have a nervous breakdown, drink excessively, and throw her mother’s ashes into the sea dressed like a Sicilian widow. Meanwhile, sober hotel manager Big Mean Carl has confiscated a bag of drugs from poolside peanut gallery Statler and Waldorf, and he’s about to relapse, hard.
Yellowjackets
The Electric Mayhem are on their way to a gig with their manager and a handful of roadies when their tour plane crashes in the wilderness. The band slowly runs out of snacks. The rest of the first season is a flirty will-they-or-won’t-they waiting game between Dr. Teeth and Janice while viewers wait eagerly to see when the Muppet cannibal bloodbath will finally happen.
The Great British Baking Show
The show that normally has xanax vibes is given a chaotic twist, with the Swedish Chef both hosting and judging. No one knows what’s going on. When it comes time to be judged, the Chef waves his weird human hands maniacally, spews gibberish and throws thebaking back at the contestant. Again, no one knows what’s going on, and everybody loses.
Queer Eye
A complete life makeover: Canonically Queer muppet Uncle Deadly throws all your clothes away and replaces them with new, better ones. Kermit life-coaches you until you cry and finally love yourself. The Swedish Chef teaches you how to boil rice correctly. You and Miss Piggy jade roll together and talk about self care, then she frames your face with some subtle highlights. Underappreciated Scooter redoes your entire house in three days.
Law & Order: SVU
Five hundred seasons later and still, no one has seen SVU like this before. Criminal Muppets guilty of the most egregious sex crimes are caught and served piping hot justice while we’re made privy to the inner workings and complicated relationships within the bureau and their puppet families. Every episode is an on-the-edge-of-your-seat cat and mouse chase as we cheer for the core team of Rowlf, Sweetums, Yolanda the Rat, and Animal. Produced by Muppet Dick Wolf.
Euphoria
Debauchery, sex, and violence know no bounds in the Euphoria universe, which will be lovingly reanimated with only Muppet actors in this reboot. You have not seen Euphoria until you have seen Janice nod out on fentanyl. Or seen Sam the Eagle, a father who is leading a double life and desperate to get his sex tape collection back, beat the shit out of his blackmailing son, Bobo the Bear.
Squid Game
The show everyone was talking about in 2021 just got a whole lot better, because Muppets Squid Game has something the original Netflix show does not: Desperate Muppets playing brutal life-or-death children’s games and turning on each other, with the only human actor being Michael Caine, playing his role as serious as a heart attack. The games come to a head when childhood friends Kermit the Frog and Fozzie the Bear are made to fight to the death in a muddy field. In an unbelievable twist, we find out the unlikely overlord is bored, dying billionaire, Joe the Legal Weasel. The show remains emotionally devastating.
Breaking Bad
Nerdy, mild-mannered and newly cancer-stricken chemistry teacher Dr. Bunsen Honeydew has medical bills to pay, so he teams up with street-savvy meth addict Rizzo the Rat to cook the finest blue artisanal crank. They expand business through local money-laundering chicken chain restaurant owner, Pepe the Prawn. Business booms and shit gets more and more complicated.
Too Hot to Handle
We have gathered all the sexiest Muppets and put them on a picturesque tropical island together, where they will try their hardest not to fuck each other. Will they succeed and learn there is more to a good relationship than felt-on-felt sucking and fucking? or will they descend into the full-on Muppet orgy we know we all secretly are yearning and watching for?
Fear Factor
Watch your favorite Muppets as they face their deepest fears in front of a live audience. Will Camilla the Chicken be able to eat chicken eggs without puking? Will Kermit be able to eat a porkbelly sandwich in front of Miss Piggy? Will anxious Walter break through his many neuroses and be able to sit in a closed coffin full of worms without losing his shit? These challenges and more will no doubt have you cheering for the contestants. Or not, you sick fuck.
LOS ANGELES — Production of two new “Mission Impossible” films came to a grinding halt after Tom Cruise received news that dictator of the galactic confederacy Xenu’s return is imminent, Paramount Studio executives have reported.
“The ‘Mission Impossible’ franchise has been our cash cow for over 25 years now, and the one time we decided to roll two of them into one production Tom has become convinced that a serial murderer from planet Zorp Zop is about to unleash deadly space lasers and only he can stop it. Excuse me for not getting the fucking memo,” said studio head Brian Robbins. “I don’t know what bullshit intergalactic transmissions his buddies at Gold Base have been relaying to him, but we can’t take a hit like this. Of course we took out an insurance policy for every conceivable disaster under the sun except for aliens attacking our studio with bad vibes.”
The ramifications of the shutdown have had a ripple effect through Hollywood, as crew members have suddenly found themselves out of a job.
“I moved all the way here from a backwater town in Tennessee to pursue my dream of working in movies, and I worked every shitty job I could find before landing what I thought was the entry-level gig of a lifetime. That is, until the ‘aliens’ arrived,” said PA Tom Chambers. “I thought I’d be doing stuff like grabbing coffee orders or picking up dry cleaning, not running to Home Depot for materials to build battle armor for my mom’s celebrity crush. My question is, will he still be doing his own stunts when he’s trying to stab space invaders with a trowel tied to a PVC pipe?”
The Church of Scientology attempted to quash rumors that the almost billion-dollar production has been single-handedly shut down by their biggest star.
“Tom is one of the greatest actors of this or any generation, and his dedication to his craft goes beyond method acting. The films are on a temporary pause so that he can prepare his body for the grueling 12 hours scenes which will happen to take place in the exosphere above an active volcano,” said church spokesperson Michelle Dennings while loading a rifle. “We do not foresee this as a long-term setback, as even the definitely hypothetical report of a certain out-of-this-world, genocidal warlord escaping from his secret mountain prison shouldn’t impede production of several future projects.”
As of press time, Paramount immediately restarted production of the films after replacing Cruise with the much more expendable John Travolta.
EVANSTON, Ill. — Economists at North Western University published a new study this week showing a single parent of two must distribute their collective bargaining efforts across multiple low-wage positions to afford life just above the poverty line.
“This is the new normal,” reports lead researcher Elizabeth Lhodi. “Data from more than 3,500 families reliably shows that additive-collective-organizing, particularly if you are a single parent, is the only way to accumulate benefits and cobble together something that resembles a living wage. On the bright side, our study makes it plain that the negotiations between management and workers will become more efficient when they incorporate several managements. We did test cases with Carls Jr./Granger/Hostess; and Miracle Whip/Raid/Hilton. We found that if negotiating together, three low-paying employers could provide wages and something like a social safety net for an individual working 105hr/week supporting 1.55 children.”
Lindsay Ramirez, 32-year-old mother of two, is one of the many Americans who participated in the study.
“I’m looking for insurance from Kellogg, child care from KFC, and tuition assistance from United. I can usually put together rent and groceries from the three wages, but my kid broke his wrist running for the school bus and those medical bills are sinking me,” said Ramirez. “For the most part my schedule was working out. I was able to take quick naps at the longer red lights on my commute between jobs, but once KFC said we couldn’t take home any of the leftovers at the end of the night I knew something had to change.”
Service Employees International Union rep Howard Rutger shrugged off any optimism for brass tacks pragmatism.
“Look, we’re all used to working a few gigs to make ends meet,” said Rutger. “But if we’re being frank, no one company’s ever going to voluntarily pay enough to afford groceries, clothes, housing, internet, a phone, insurance, dental, vision, all of the above plus school supplies for two elementary school girls. Only rational thing is to triple up your efforts. Collective organization can improve your station in life, but there’s really no future where workers at these multinational corporations will be able to survive on fewer than three jobs, so you’ve got to work to make them all better.”
Lhodi looks forward to expanding this practical research with her next study entitled Advantages of Corporate Fiefdoms In the Age Of An Impotent American Political Left.
Imagine this: It’s a perfectly sunny day and you decide to sit outside strumming your acoustic guitar under the shady branches of a towering oak tree. You notice your guitar is a little out of tune so you start adjusting the knobs accordingly until one of the strings is starting to feel a little tight… too tight. Then suddenly, the D string breaks and whips across your face, slicing both of your eyes wide open. Your pupils are splattered across the fallen leaves of the shady oak and nobody is around to hear your cries. Your mahogany Fender has betrayed you.
Don’t worry. The chances of this happening to you are slim, but totally possible. Depending on the guitar, a steel string tends to break once every four months. That’s four chances a year that a string could come barreling towards your eyeballs, leaving them severed in the jam room of a Guitar Center. In fact, in 2021 there were about 300,000 cases of string-to-eye incidents in the United States alone, and eight of them were fatal. You might be thinking, “That’s a lot of incidents. Should I be worried about this?” Maybe not, but you will absolutely worry anyway.
Basically you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than getting your eyes sliced by a broken guitar string. Then again, you don’t dick around with lightning storms for hours every day, so, weigh it against that.
Many renowned guitar players take preventative measures to protect their eyes when tuning their guitars. Even Eddie Van Halen would put on a pair of goggles when he was tuning during his concerts, and Neil Young wears an entire welding mask to protect his face when it’s time to tune. With more than eight hundred guitar string related eye injuries reported every day in the US, it’s no wonder even the greatest guitar players of our time are obsessively scared out of their minds.
Unfortunately, a guitar string can also sporadically snap when you are not tuning. Experts suggest changing your strings frequently to avoid this, but it might be best if you just give up on playing guitar forever. Do you want to end up like Jane Dollman? Oh, you’ve never heard of her? That’s because her career ended as soon as her eyes were sliced open by a flailing guitar string. But don’t worry, that will never happen to you… Until it does.
LAS VEGAS — Organizers of the When We Were Young Festival announced that they have set aside 700 parking spots specifically for teens waiting to pick up their parents from the festival grounds.
“My wife and I lost our shit when we saw the line-up, but the excitement ended almost immediately once I realized that our transportation situation was fucked. I’m not such a great night driver anymore, plus my wife insisted we Robotrip during Jimmy Eat World. Luckily for us, our daughter Brannon just got her learner’s permit,” said Aaron Carmichael. “She made it explicitly clear she wanted nothing to do with ‘our music,’ but she’s being a good sport and agreed to wait outside for us with the other kids. At least she and his grandfather will have something to commiserate over next Thanksgiving, right?”
Children of the festival’s target demographic were ambivalent about having to chauffeur their parents around the city.
“All of our moms and dads are going apeshit over this thing, it’s all they talk about and spam Instagram about. My parents brought up carpooling and I was, okay cool, have fun, but then they had the balls to ask me to drive them and their little friends! My brother and I drew straws and I got stuck picking them up. Is this karma for replacing their vodka with water?” said Logan Stills while gassing up the family minivan. “Last thing I want to do on a school night is wait around 12 hours just to cart a bunch of drunk 40-year-olds home through the desert while they scream Hawthorne Heights songs.”
Festival organizers at Live Nation have promised that the auxiliary pickup lot will give concertgoers and their offspring the best of both worlds.
“With an event of this magnitude, we needed to ensure all of the bases were covered. We hope it’ll allow our ticket holders to rip whippets in the portable toilets with peace of mind, knowing their children are just outside the venue,” said logistics coordinator Chad Williams. “But the main takeaway is that we’re trying to help recreate that magic of seeing your favorite bands in 2002, which was usually capped by wandering through a sea of agitated parents who had better things to do. Now their kids can be part of those memories as well.”
Live Nation also announced plans to make the experience even more authentic by placing the exits to the parking area as far as possible in order to make it a complete clusterfuck when trying to leave.
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