No One on SongMeanings.Com Even Fucking Close

Posted on by John Danek

CHICAGO — Singer-songwriter Kyla Bernhardt learned today just how much her fans have failed to successfully parse the artistic intent behind her songs and many others’ on lyric site SongMeanings.com.

“I had to refresh my memory for an upcoming livestream, so I ended up at SongMeanings.com to see if I could whip up some talking points to share with fans. But holy shit, I can’t believe what these morons think I’ve been singing about,” explained Bernhardt, whose abstract lyrics have netted her a devout cult following. “I understand that music is open to interpretation, but you can still be a total dumbass about it.”

“One user confidently stated that my song ‘Tequila & Constellations’ is about intergenerational trauma of the people of Romania,” recalled a befuddled Bernhardt. “But I wrote it about being drunk in the desert with my partner. If this is how my music is analyzed, it’s time to sell out and start making music for VW commercials. At least it’s not just me — multiple people seem to think ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is about the military-industrial complex. Idiots.”

Artists with small, devoted followings like Bernhardt’s seem much more susceptible to batshit insane theories on SongMeanings.com.

“I’m so honored that Kyla keeps writing songs about me and my great Aunt Betsy, who died in the 1960s,” says SongMeanings.com admin and superfan David Richards, who Bernhardt vehemently denies knowing. “But I also love her early era, when she sang primarily about Evangelion and the filmography of Charlie Kaufmann. SongMeanings.com gives my life meaning. Since I’m an admin, I’m lucky enough to ban anyone who disagrees with my interpretations.”

Education experts posit many theories on how fanbases can be so terribly wrong about the deeper meanings behind works.

“Well, for one, schools have almost eradicated funding for creative programs, so no one coming out of the public school system can tell a metaphor from an allegory,” explained Dr. Sarah Donahugh, professor of education at MIT. “So you have a generation of people who think Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ is about Lana wanting to bang Gex the Gecko, or that ‘Hey Jude’ is about actor Jude Law. Poor math education also plays a factor in the latter example.”

The founders of SongMeanings.com, who allegedly created the site to debate the meaning of Ben Folds Five’s “Brick,” are working on a slew of spinoff sites, including MovieInterpretations.com, TacoMeanings.net, and IkeaFurnitureExplanations.org.

Aspiring Video Game Writer Didn’t Expect Job Application to Involve So Much Writing

Posted on by Andy Holt

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Prospective game writer Evan Richards quit halfway through a job application to an independent game studio this morning, complaining it had “a bunch of typing.”

“I figured I could just tell them my idea to mix Spider-Man with Doom, but they wanted me to type a whole paragraph about why I want to write games, and if that’s not enough, they asked for two writing samples.” said Richards, typing ‘game writer job’ into Google again. “What am I, Hemingway?”

Richards also complained that, in addition to being too long, the application asked “really dumb questions” with no bearing on writing video games.

“They wanted me to list three of my favorite games and what I liked about the writing. What kind of question is that?” said Richards, who hasn’t liked the writing in a video game since the first Assassin’s Creed. “I have a whole essay about how The Last of Us 2 sucked, but there’s nowhere to paste it.”

Friends and family were unsurprised to learn Richards didn’t finish the application.

“This is like that time he was going to be an airline pilot,” said longtime friend Sofia Mills. “He sent an email to Delta, and when they didn’t answer after two weeks, he said ‘planes are dumb anyway’ and switched to wanting to be a park ranger. I don’t think he’s ever been camping.”

At press time, Richards had decided writing games was for suckers, and began to pursue a career reviewing video games for his blog.

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IGN Content Team Announces Mandatory Crunch To Release ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Guide On Time

Posted on by Kevin Flynn

SAN FRANCISCO — In an effort to keep pace with the expectations their millions of devoted readers, the gaming news website IGN announced yesterday that they would be enforcing mandatory 60-hour workweeks for their content team in order to release their hotly-anticipated walkthrough guide for Cyberpunk 2077 on time.

“Obviously, none of us here at IGN are happy about this, and we don’t believe that crunch should be necessary to deliver a high-quality gaming walkthrough to our readers,” said IGN Editor-in-Chief Tina Amani. “However, we’ve exhausted all of our other options. This game is simply so immense, with so many sprawling dialogue trees, quest lines, and different ways to customize your character. It’s going to take 110% from all of our employees to make sure we deliver a guide that’s as high quality as Cyberpunk 2077 itself.”

Fans were excited for the walkthrough’s imminent release, but many were torn and concerned about the work conditions necessary to complete it.

“Of course I’m excited to get my hands on [the IGN Cyberpunk 2077 walkthrough], it looks absolutely massive,” said Ricardo Munoz, a longtime IGN reader and CD Projekt Red fan. “I can’t wait to get lost scrolling through the headers, sub-headers, and embedded links that the guide has to offer. At the same time, though, I wouldn’t mind if they just released a guide for the first few chapters and then pushed updates every couple of weeks. It’s not like I’m going to read the whole thing in one night, you know?”

At press time, IGN released a follow-up statement assuring readers that the content team would be compensated for their extra effort with 10% of the ad traffic revenue generated by the walkthrough.

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Woman Wishes She Hadn’t Used Pandemic Excuse to Get Out of Last Year’s Thanksgiving

Posted on by Rob Walker

DENVER — Local woman Stephanie Robbins admitted today she now wishes she hadn’t already used the “deadly pandemic” excuse to get out of last year’s Thanksgiving when her parents hounded her to come home for the holiday.

“In a weird way, I almost feel like COVID-19 is my fault. How was I supposed to know this virus was going to change the world? I was desperate to get out of going to my parents’ house, ‘28 Days Later’ was on TV, and I panicked. And I couldn’t stand getting seated next to cousin Cliff again,” said a frustrated Robbins as she hid behind the shed in her parents’ backyard to avoid talking to family. “When my mom called me up yesterday to ask when I’d be coming over, I had no excuses ready… and she told me, ‘I don’t want to hear any nonsense about a new plague-like last year.’ Now I’m in charge of the cranberry sauce.”

Despite the very real pandemic that has resulted in over 250,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, Stephanie’s family has been firm on their commitment that their holiday dinner will go on as planned.

“If we made it through the ‘Viper Clam’ epidemic of 2019, she can sure get her bottom here during this whole coronavirus kerfuffle,” said Murriel Robbins, Stephanie’s mother, referring to the made-up virus her daughter told her was ravaging the country last year. “I’ve been making pies all week, and Aunt Gini is making orange juice candied yams, for Pete’s sake. It’ll just be so nice to have everyone under the same roof. Besides, Fox News says this ‘disease’ is no worse than the common cold, so I think having a nice family dinner is worth the risk.”

Medical professionals have pleaded for Americans to forego attending family gatherings for the holidays.

“Every hospital bed is full, and our staff is exhausted. We know a lot of parents will make their children feel bad by saying, ‘This could be your Aunt Lonnie’s last Thanksgiving,’ but if these gatherings happen then that’s going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said local physician Dr. Emily Schwartz. “We recommend feeling angry and guilty at home alone for the day instead of feeling angry and guilty in front of disease vectors with whom you share DNA. Also, no one wants their last meal to be turkey. That shit is so overrated.”

The Robbins family dinner has since been cut short after Stephanie upset her uncles by saying she was thankful that Biden won a free and fair election.

If I Wanted To Kill Grandpa This Thanksgiving, I’d Do It With My Bare Hands or Maybe a Big Stick

Posted on by Ted Pillow

Stay home, everybody! Please limit this year’s Thanksgiving celebration to include only the people you live with. Larger gatherings could have potentially fatal consequences, especially for at-risk family members. And if I wanted to kill my grandfather, I would rather do it with my bare hands or maybe even by fucking his ass up with a big stick.

Sure after a year marked by isolation, it would be wonderful to spend Thanksgiving feasting and relaxing with loved ones. But take the case of my grandpa, who is 92 years old and very vulnerable to respiratory complications. It would be reckless of me to see him this year. Sad as it may be, I must wait until vaccines are readily available before I can hit him repeatedly in the nuts with a golf club, or maybe one of those retractable baton thingys.

As you might have guessed, I don’t get along very well with my grandpa. He’s kind of a dick, actually. The dude’s pissed off pretty much all the time and usually spends Thanksgiving drinking peach schnapps from a flask and blaming all of the country’s problems on Japanese automakers.

Nonetheless, I realize that traveling to visit him would be extremely dangerous for the cranky old bastard. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want grandpa to die because some guy sneezed on me in an airport. I want him to die peacefully in his sleep after I give him literally the ass whooping of a lifetime.

I am a very strong boy, and he is a weak old fool. I don’t need some pandemic to help me out. I’m not afraid of him. You hear me you old fuck?! I’m not afraid of you anymore!

It’s important to remember that just because your family shouldn’t meet in person doesn’t mean you can’t still spend quality time together. In fact, my relatives will all be gathering via video-chat to safely celebrate our first-ever Virtual Thanksgiving. We’ve already emailed grandpa the instructions and everything. See you on Zoom, you little beady-eyed turd!

Please follow my lead. This holiday season, I’m doing my part to ensure my grandfather is still around next year for a proper Thanksgiving. Plus, that gives him 12 months to start practicing self-defense techniques. I want that bitch at the top of his game.

Friendsgiving Gathering Limited to Five People Reveals True Hierarchy of Social Group

Posted on by The Hard Times Staff

WEYMOUTH, Mass. — The guest list of an annual Friendsgiving celebration, truncated this year due to COVID-19 mandates, has shown excluded members their exact status within the friend group, sources who swear this isn’t a big deal confirmed.

“Yeah… it’s cool. I don’t mind sitting at home, eating a microwaved Hungry-Man dinner that’s been sitting in my freezer for three years, while my so-called ‘friends’ get a break from isolation and carve up a sweet bird and eat apple crisp,” said low-level friend group member, Terry Sullivan. “Who would want to be part of an intimate gathering like that anyway? I’ll just live Tweet ‘Planes, Trains, and Automobiles’ on TBS and interact with everyone online who also can’t relax because of the knife firmly planted in their back.”

Organizers of the Friendsgiving took pains to assure friends who didn’t make the cut that this was “nothing personal.”

“All of us know it’s not a good idea to visit with our families this year, but some of the gang thought it’d be good to still get together. It was tough to keep the invite list to just five, but we told everyone else they could Zoom in if they wanted,” said party host Asher Klein. “I do admit it was easier to exclude some people — like Gordy Rourke, who got drunk at Friendsgiving last year during the Cowboys game and then slapped my girlfriend on the ass before calling her a bitch. He gave a half-hearted apology, but I’d still rather just not deal with that again. And Samantha Clifford has been posting a lot of stuff about how COVID-19 is a hoax, so I’d prefer to stay away from her before, during, and long after Thanksgiving, probably.”

The CDC released a series of recommendations to help people choose which friends to include in your Friendsgiving.

“We want everyone to be happy, but most of all, be safe. Our first bit of advice is to immediately cut any friends who keep complaining that they can’t go to brunch — those people need to realize this pandemic has killed over a quarter million Americans, and that their mimosas can wait,” said CDC spokesperson Izzy Landers. “Most importantly, we suggest that persons don’t invite any friends who have recently become interested in CBD or streamed ‘Emily in Paris.’ Not for any health reasons, but just because the conversation will be very annoying, at best.”

County officials noted that people who claimed they volunteered at a local food bank, but actually just stayed home and masturbated, remain safe to invite.

Opinion: Keep Your Friendsgiving Close and Your Enemiesgiving Closer

Posted on by Dan Rice

Like many Los Angeles transplants, I don’t go home for every holiday. And since I don’t want to miss out on sick-ass Christmas gifts, I usually opt to stay here on Thanksgiving. Luckily, I’m not alone. So every year I gather my closest friends for a Friendsgiving to rival any family Thanksgiving in warmth, good food, and togetherness. Yes, our yearly Friendsgiving is close to my heart indeed. But I’m no fool. That’s why I keep my Enemiesgiving just a bit closer.

Friendsgiving is all about spending time with the family of sorts you’ve made along the way, and it’s important. But what’s more important is rubbing elbows with your enemies, creating a near laboratory-condition environment where you can study them, figure out what they’re up to, and size up their weaknesses before you make your next move.

Every year on the Friday after Thanksgiving I reach out to the people directly in my way for a thinly veiled game of cat and mouse under the pretense of social engagement: “Enemiesgiving.”

To the uninitiated, it may seem silly. “Why would someone accept a dinner invite from an enemy?” you may wonder. Well, they often don’t accept and that’s half the point. The enemies who decline or outright ignore your invitation are not a threat to you. They lack the abstract mind necessary to play chess in three dimensions.

Perhaps you’ve received such an invite and thought, “Why would this person invite me to dinner? I’m ignoring this.” Well, congratulations. You essentially just rolled over and showed your soft pink belly to a shark.

The true fools of the lot are the ones that offer an excuse for their absence. Sue has been seeking the same promotion as me for months now and it’s neck and neck. Today she told me she couldn’t come to my “dinner party” because she had black Friday shopping to do. In doing so, Sue has given me something far more valuable than money; information. Now that I know Sue is struggling financially, I can exploit for my own gain down the road.

Of the 80-some-odd Enemiesgiving invites I send out, about a dozen actually show. This is the cream of the crop. The enemies that deign to play your little game are the ones you need to watch out for. They know that your little olive branch is nothing but falsehood, but they are savvy enough to step into the lion’s den and show you they are not afraid. Respect.

And so the game begins. A dozen sharks hiding behind false smiles. It’s a feeding frenzy and the main course is secrets. Ted, the accountant who audited my expenditures last March, isn’t having any stuffing. Does he have a gluten allergy? Mark and Sabrina aren’t making eye contact. Overcompensation? An affair, perhaps? Our sales manager Yevon hasn’t touched her wine. Does she have a problem?

Over canned platitudes and hollow food-related compliments (it’s pot-luck), I note these things, creating a catalog of observations. The seeds of cut-throat long-term plans I will enact to burn these people’s lives to the ground. Are they doing the same with me? Of course. It wouldn’t be any fun otherwise. Go ahead and call us cold, calculating, manipulative, etc. But if you look at the history of Thanksgiving I think you will find our little soiree is a little more on-brand than yours.

Canceled Thanksgiving Trip Home to Leave Punk with Eight Loads of Unwashed Laundry

Posted on by Krissy Howard

ROSEDALE, Miss. — Local punk Kerry Gagne is stuck with several loads of unwashed laundry that she was planning to wash at her parents’ home before their Thanksgiving plans were canceled in compliance with COVID-19 precautions.

“I do my best to avoid going home for any reason, and it’s hard to get out of everything. But this year, God threw me a bone and no one can go anywhere. I thought I had it made ‘til I remembered I saved all my laundry for that six-hour visit,” Gagne stated. “I just really wish I didn’t put all my eggs in one basket. Not literally these baskets, though. There’s definitely no room for anything in any of them at this point. Three of them aren’t even baskets — they’re trash bags that used to have a bunch of leaves in them that I stole from my neighbor’s yard, and those are full, too. Fuck me.”

Gagne’s parents made the hard decision to cancel their family’s annual dinner plans, which they report was surprisingly hard on their 35-year-old adult daughter.

“Ker never really seemed to care much about the holiday, as far as I know. But when I told her that her father and I weren’t hosting and she can’t come over, she yelled the ‘F’ word really loud,” said Gagne’s mother, Frances. “I knew she liked my pecan pie, but I didn’t think she liked it that much. I feel just terrible. I’ll try to send her one in the mail.”

Experts who foresaw such outcomes occurring across the country are prepared and standing by.

“Thousands of young adults, and older adults who are still major fuck ups, will be left without any way to do unreasonable amounts of laundry at once and for free now that Thanksgiving visits are being canceled. We’re ready to pick up that slack,” said Wash-O-Matic owner/operator Rosie Givens. “To prepare for what we expect will be the largest influx of users possibly ever, we made sure to section off at least half of our dryers, jammed up the last washer in every row with a weirdly bent Canadian quarter, and set the change machine to only accept $20s. All in all, we really didn’t have to do much — we’re just happy to help.”

At press time, Gagne was counting her remaining socks against a calendar to see if she could possibly hold out until Christmas.

Surprise Nintendo Direct Announces That You Can Play ‘Breath of the Wild’ Again Any Time You Want

Posted on by Kevin Flynn

KYOTO — Startling and delighting fans who had been starved for exciting announcements from the company, Nintendo announced in a surprise Nintendo Direct presentation today that you are entirely free to play through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild again any time you want.

“Get excited Zelda fans: the most revolutionary adventure game of all time has already been at your fingertips for almost four years now!” began the presentation, with swooping motion graphics and gameplay clips identical to the ones that accompanied Breath of the Wild’s various preview trailers dating back as far as E3 2014. “If you love Breath of the Wild and are still eagerly waiting for its sequel, then you’ll love replaying Breath of the Wild!”

Fans online rejoiced at the news that their favorite game was now, and always has been, available on the Nintendo Switch.

“Wow, ever since I finished it in 2017, I completely forgot that Breath of the Wild exists,” admitted lifelong Nintendo fan Jessica Harmon. “My nature as a Nintendo fan is to always be complaining about something else I don’t have access to, but I really needed to be reminded that I already own the best game ever made and I can boot it up again at any time. Thanks, Nintendo!”

At press time, Nintendo confirmed that, yes, they are still charging full price for the DLC.

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COVID-19 Gears Up for Another Double-XP Weekend

Posted on by Jeremy Kaplowitz

ATLANTA — Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed that the COVID-19 virus is gearing up for yet another Double-XP Weekend, this time Thanksgiving-themed.

“The first few times COVID-19 experienced a Double-XP Weekend, it made good use of it. This is a very frightening time for anyone on the ladder,” explained CDC scientist Maria Keyes. “COVID-19 isn’t just racking up gold to buy some new skin. COVID is going through the ranks. It’s getting all the upgrades. It’s unlocking the weapons that it did not previously have access to. It is gaining access to maps and players it previously was gated from entering.”

Despite warnings, however, many players across the United States have ignored COVID-19’s advance.

“Yeah, maybe that matters if you’re MLG or whatever, but we’re just a casual family doing our thing! It’s very sad to hear about in the news, but it just doesn’t really apply to us, considering our level of play,” said Wisconsin resident Stephen Strickland. “We’re just going to stick to our little custom lobby, and have our family Thanksgiving. Strict cap of 7 people. Plus boyfriends and girlfriends and such, so maybe closer to 10. And then, of course, if anyone brings a friend, we’ll cap the lobby at an even 20.”

As of press time, enough people nationwide had joined the [COVD] clan that the novel coronavirus became eligible for a Triple-XP Weekend.

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