Metal Band’s Vinyl Album Packaged Without Record Sleeves

Posted on by Bobby Korec

CLEVELAND — Local metal band Wretched Defiler defied industry standards last week by releasing the vinyl version of their album “Tethers of the World Asunder” without any protective inner or outer sleeves, sources vehemently flipping through a stash of records confirmed.

“Since we have chosen a life of metal, we are simply adhering to the recommended ‘no sleeves’ policy,” drummer Mike Lampen said while adjusting the saran wrap over his fresh upper arm tattoo. “Also, it was way cheaper. Do you have any idea how much those things cost? We already had to hire an artist to design all the demonic phantasms and raging fires for the digital cover, buy the most sinister logo font we could find from Adobe, and rent a photographer to take a band shot in the desolate landscape and abandoned warehouse of our choosing. All that adds up real fast, and we just couldn’t dip into the band’s booze fund any longer. No sleeves were the obvious choice.”

Vinyl enthusiasts were quick to notice the lack of the traditional packaging.

“There I was, flipping through the metal section at the record store, when all of a sudden a dangerously loose LP caught my undivided attention,” said aspiring audiophile D’arcy Wessel. “It really spoke to my anti-sleeves mentality. But by the time I got home, the record was almost unplayable due to all the scratches it got from the dust, sharp objects, and general filth in the backseat of my car. On second thought, sleeves are pretty vital, for my sake.”

Wretched Defiler’s record label applauded the move as an innovative way to entice fans to purchase physical music over simply streaming it.

“This was a no-brainer from a marketing standpoint,” said Jennifer Walebum, owner of Triceratops Skull Records. “We hired a brand ambassador who suggested more consistency in metal packaging as a whole — it was then ‘Operation: No Sleeves, Yes Satan’ was born. The idea’s been so popular, it inspired Iron Maiden to ransack a few record stores of their own to rip the sleeves off their already packaged albums. This is a game changer, folks.”

The band is in discussions to package their follow-up album with denim record jackets.

Daniel Johnston Fan in Too Deep Now to Admit He Only Liked the Shirt

Posted on by Dan Kozuh

AUSTIN, Texas — Lester Bowen, a supposed diehard fan of eccentric singer-songwriter Daniel Johnson, admitted today that he only got into the late musician because of the ‘Hi How Are You’ T-shirt popular in the ’90s, annoyed friends report.

“OK, yeah… I’ll admit I bought the shirt because I saw [Kurt] Cobain wear it before I knew it was even related to Johnston,” Bowen said. “Then some guy at college called me on it, and I had to pretend that I loved Johnston’s music. But when I finally actually heard his music, I knew I was fucked — it’s so bad, it sounds like a hamster yelling into a broken dictaphone. I was going to come clean last year, but then the dude had to up and die, so I had to post his awful music all over social media as a tribute.”

Bowen’s friends were particularly upset by the revelation.

“I mean, that’s Lester’s thing — everyone knows he’s the Daniel Johnston guy,” said Pat Howell, Bowen’s former college roommate and friend of 25 years. “You mean all this time he’s forced me to listen to cassette tapes that sound like a drunk Kristen Schaal was because of a shirt?! He even dragged me to a Johnston show a few years back! That’s four hours of my life I will never get back.”

Music experts are very aware of what they call “The Johnston Phenomenon.”

“This is a very common occurrence, actually: that one shirt guilted a bulk of Johnston’s fan base into pretending to like his music,” music historian Eileen Buchanan, Ph.D. said. “The rest of Johnston’s fan base are either fans ironically, or feel bad saying they don’t like his music because of his struggle with mental illness.”

Bowen now plans to only wear the shirt to his local coffee shop because a cute barista complimented it once, three years ago.

Here’s the Definitive Ranking of the Four Times I Felt Good This Year

Posted on by KC Phillips

Every moment of this waking nightmare that calendars call “2020” has been full of hair-pulling, heart-wrenching, tooth-gritting despair. My friend told me her therapist suggested making a list of the positives in my life but now all I can think of is how none of those positives include the ability to afford a therapist. Fortunately, an ASMR video on YouTube told me the same thing, so here’s the definitive ranking of all four times I felt good this year:

12:31 PM, January 1st – Woke Up
I rolled out of bed and onto the floor onto a big pile of dirty clothes. It was winter so even though there were empty cans and half-eaten pizzas all over the house, there weren’t any ants! The internet had been turned off but the heat was still working. A pretty solid start to a year for me.

11:47 AM, April 2nd – Found an (Unopened) Kind Bar on the Bus
Well, salt my nuts! And here I was thinking rich people and their fancy granola didn’t take the bus. I was on the way to find wifi so I could attend my grandfather’s funeral when I found this little treasure looking for a new home. Now, as far as my wallet is concerned, I’m normally more of a half-eaten package of Donettes kinda guy, so my system was in shock. This is what cranberries taste like?! My parents used to tell me cranberries were only for wanted children. This event marked the halfway point for the number of good experiences I would have in 2020.

2:12 PM, May 29th – Saw a Cool Bird
I knew things were looking up! It was late in May and I hadn’t left my home in two months, partly because of the pandemic and partly because my landlord was gonna change the locks if I left. During one of my hourly wistful window-stares, a cool looking bird landed right on my window sill! I don’t know who he was or where he was going but when that little dude landed outside my window I knew this was gonna be one for the history books. I’m talking red feathers, yellow beak… all the classic bird stuff, right down to the chirping. Damn, that was a good day.

Unknown Time, Unknown Date – Watched an ASMR Video that Told Me to Be Positive
Don’t know how I got down that crazy YouTube rabbit hole or what day it was. I did know that time was not a flat circle, rather, an endless pit that I continue to pray I’ll find the bottom of, head-first. But then I saw a video where a lady dressed like an orc told me the secret to happiness was to write down all the bad things in my life and add a positive spin! Oh, okay, so like last month when I watched an old woman next to me take a teargas canister to the chest. I guess my positive spin would be, “I am happy that I was not hit in the chest with that teargas.” I feel better already!

It’s been a rough one, but the year is still young. There’s a chance that something else good will happen. The future is a wonderful mystery and as long as I still have this Kind Bar as a reminder, I know things will be okay.

UPDATE: The bird came back and stole the Kind Bar. Fuck that bird.

Shower Somehow Makes Crust Punk Grosser

Posted on by Patrick Crooks

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Crust punk Brad DelFino’s bathing attempt brought tragedy to his community yesterday, as sources report the 10-minute shower somehow left DelFino grosser than before.

“I don’t know what the hell Brad did, but we’re going to need a goddamn priest to salvage this fucking bathroom,” roommate Aaron Henning said angrily. “He’s been crashing here for six months and this is the first time he’s used the shower, so initially we were all stoked, because he was getting kinda ripe. But whatever he did, somehow both he and the bathroom were worse: he showered fully clothed, and all the crap on them made some kind of sludge that left this thick coat on the tub. We tried everything to clean it — bleach, lye, even a belt sander — but nothing made a dent.”

“I’d kick his fucking ass if I could stand to get near him,” Henning added.

Reports confirm disgust with DelFino does not end with his roommates.

“I got hit by this ungodly odor like a punch in the face — I thought there might’ve been a chemical spill, or maybe a sewage pipe broke,” admitted local bookstore owner Jen Wallace. “But sure enough, it was coming from the dirty guy who is always playing Woody Guthrie songs outside my store. He was dripping wet and struggling to light a cigarette, and I was afraid toxic fumes coming off of him might ignite and blow the entire block up, so I got out of there as fast as I could.”

For his part, Delfino agreed that showering was a mistake and is taking steps to correct his error.

“Yeah, I know I smell like the inside of an asshole on a piece of roadkill during a summer day — you don’t have to keep pointing that out,” Delfino said while Henning hosed him down. “I only took the goddamn shower because I had a parole hearing coming up. I legit feel shitty about this, and hope we don’t have to move out of the house. But on the plus side, my parole officer told me to come back when I didn’t smell like a John Waters movie.”

At press time, Henning had been dispatched to Costco for tomato juice in a last-ditch effort.

Photo by James Webster.

Gamer Sets Life to Hard Mode by Sleeping 3 Hours Per Night

Posted on by Andy Holt

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Local gamer Niles Rosenbaum decided to increase the difficulty level of his life by reducing his sleep to three hours per night, creating a more challenging experience that feels more rewarding at the end of the day.

“Life was fine before, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that it started to feel too easy. I would wake up in the morning, shower, make breakfast and get to work on productive tasks without much of a struggle,” said Rosenbaum, who has since started a new Morrowind playthrough that keeps him up until at least 5 a.m. each morning. “But now that I’ve switched my life to hard mode, every day is like facing a brand new challenge.”

In addition to reduced speed, stamina, and intelligence stats, the increased difficulty also adds completely new obstacles to his life, including an appearance modifier that makes it nearly impossible to pass dialogue checks with other characters.

“I was on a Zoom call for work, and every time I piped up, people would just kind of pause and clear their throats, and then keep going. My coworker later said that there was a huge ketchup stain on my shirt and bags under my eyes. So now I’m going to have to figure out how to work around that,” said Rosenbaum excitedly. “Such a cool feature!”

While Rosenbaum has found the extra difficulty to be enriching, other people in his life claimed it’s just an excuse to game all night and ignore his responsibilities.

“Niles used to pay his half of the electric bill the second I asked, no problem,” said his longtime roommate Drew Thompkins. “Now I have to ask him like five times because he always ends up getting distracted. He says he likes the ‘tactile stimulation’ of trying to work Venmo when he can barely keep his eyes open, but either way, I’m the one getting screwed.”

At press time, Rosenbaum was reportedly working on a social media post complaining about those who sleep eight or more hours per night, claiming they are lazy casuals who cheapen the experience of life for everyone else.

Check out our comedy podcast The Video Game Super Show! Show, in which two of our editors watch and discuss every episode of  1989’s Captain N: The Game Master:

Belle Delphine Arrested for Selling Gamer Girl Uranium to North Korea

Posted on by Brandon Puff

WASHINGTON — The FBI confirmed today that viral internet celebrity Mary-Belle Kirschner, better known as Belle Delphine, has been taken into custody for her attempt to sell gamer girl uranium to the North Korean government.

“We have taken Kirschner into custody for her conspiracy to sell nuclear supplies to North Korea,” said FBI spokesperson John Alden in a prepared statement. “Based on our initial investigation, we believe that North Korean officials set up this sale not only to acquire the uranium, but more importantly for the purpose of meeting Kirschner in person. This is consistent with financial records we retrieved which indicate that Kim Jong-Un himself was a majority purchaser of her ‘gamer girl bath water’ last July.”

“Our experts on the ground in North Korea have confirmed that King Jong-Un specifically requested that the uranium be ‘extra kawaii,’” Alden added. 

Upon raiding Kirschner’s residence, the FBI says it found a much larger stockpile of gamer girl uranium than expected.

“On the Kirschner property we recovered enough gamer girl uranium to supply the nuclear program of a very small and cute country,” continued spokesperson Alden in his prepared statement. “Gamer girl uranium is not like other types of uranium. This uranium is enriched with a combination of both gamer isotopes and girl isotopes when a gamer girl lies in a bathtub filled with unenriched natural uranium. It is this deadly combination that gives it a unique pink glow and the potential to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth.”

“We don’t know exactly how Kirschner acquired natural uranium in the first place,” he explained, “but we have taken in several of her stans who work in the chemical engineering industry for questioning on the matter.”

As of press time, the most recent appearance from Kirschner has been from inside of her maximum security holding cell, in which she has been seen streaming and showing her viewers how to make a wide variety of gamer girl shanks and shivs.

Check out our comedy podcast The Video Game Super Show! Show, in which two of our editors watch and discuss every episode of  1989’s Captain N: The Game Master:

Top 5 Black Site Prisons You Just Have to Be Disappeared to This Summer

Posted on by Dan Kozuh

So, you’ve been scooped up off the street by Trump’s secret police and whisked away to an undisclosed location for interrogation and torture. You don’t want to have your habeas corpus suspended for just any old police station or military base. You want excitement, mystery, and bragging rights!

Check out these five places that will have everyone wondering, “Where did you go? We love you and we’re scared.”

Wright Patterson Air Force Base – Area 51 is old news. Where you really want to tell people you had your fingernails removed is Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Imagine, after you are dumped naked on a rural road, you can brag that you were held in the infamous “Hangar 18.”

Mount Weather – No one knows what the Department of Homeland Security does at this remote location in Virginia. Imagine the FOMO your friends and followers will have when you post Instagram stories of yourself getting waterboarded by the very men and women that waterboarded alleged terrorists. You might even get to meet America’s shadow government before your memory is wiped and you wake up in your own bed having no idea how you got there.

Cheyenne Mountain Complex – The vintage facility with mid-century charm is making a comeback. We recommend you get your testicles tased in it now before Vice does a piece on it and it becomes yet another literal tourist trap, which is exactly why North Korea isn’t on this list. This site was the inspiration for infamous Skynet headquarters in the film Terminator 3. After your release, be sure to check out Herkimer, The World’s Largest Beetle in nearby Colorado Springs!

HAARP Research Station – If you are lucky to have your hood removed before arrival, take in the breathtaking mountainous view in this remote Alaskan spy facility. Sure, this facility is known to have the ability to “weaponize” the weather, but it’ll be nothing but clear skies as you sit in your cell looking out the tiny slit of a window, forgotten by your captors and treated worse than an animal. Who knows, you just might want to change your name and live out the rest of your life in picturesque Gulkana, Alaska.

Abandoned Nekoma Pyramid Complex – This supposedly “abandoned” military base in North Dakota sure is a hotbed of activity for a place that was deactivated in the 1970s. This missile silo has miles and miles of underground tunnels for you to be dragged through as your constitutional rights are violated. It also happens to be only 40 miles from the Canadian border, where we recommend you take a few decades to unwind after your traumatizing ordeal.

Last-Minute “lol” Saves Text Dangerously Close to Being Sincere

Posted on by Chuck Kowalski

HARRISBURG, Pa. — The last-minute addition of a “lol” in a text last night from 32-year-old Tom Jannuzi salvaged an otherwise genuine attempt at vulnerability and emotion, sources now adding emojis after every message “just to play it safe” confirm.

“I woke up to like, four messages from Tom in this group chat — they seemed pretty serious, but he capped it with an all-caps LOL, so I’m super relieved he doesn’t actually have a ‘drinking problem’ and doesn’t really ‘wonder if anyone would even notice if he wasn’t around anymore,’” said friend Missy Hill. “I’d have been too worried to enjoy trivia, let alone wings tonight, karaoke tomorrow, and that pub crawl we’re doing this weekend if that quick ‘lol’ afterwards hadn’t made it clear he was yanking our chains and that we shouldn’t read any further into that whole ‘I desperately need help’ thing.”

Hill was not alone, as other members of Jannuzi’s social circle also didn’t realize his texts often carried ominous undertones.

“I knew he was just messing around. He’s totally unflappable,” said Shawn Porter. “Like, most people would speak up if you missed an art show dedicated to their deceased grandma for happy hour. Tom, though, just said, ‘it’s cool’ and pounded shots with us afterwards until he got tased for trying to fight that cop. Then from the hospital, he texts, ‘Well at least I get to see what a real courtroom looks like’ with the crying-laughing face. What a prankster.”

This was not Jannuzi’s first time using minor, in-the-moment alterations to save similarly perilous messages.

“I remember when I almost demanded a client pay me on time for a commissioned logo,” the freelance graphic designer said. “Luckily, my hands reacted like lightning and put in, ‘If that’d be OK,’ a ‘ha,’ and four exclamation points before firing it off. Can you imagine if I came off as actually upset he still hadn’t paid me two months past some silly contractually stipulated deadline? I’d have felt like a real dick, and they might have thought I was an asshole, so I figure just burying everything until it bubbles over in self-destructive ways is always my best bet. Better safe than sorry.”

As of press time, however, sources in the group chat reportedly wondered “what Jannuzi’s deal was” after he ignored one member’s birthday party invite, only to ask her for a ride to rehab.

Cool! This Cute Little Kid Likes Stuff From the ‘80s Because His Dad Makes Him

Posted on by Ted Pillow

Aww! This adorable little boy loves retro ‘80s stuff because he’s a walking monument to his dad’s crippling nostalgia!

Even though he was born in 2016, Donatello (get it!?!?) still absolutely loves movies, cartoons, and just about everything else from the ‘80s. Why is this precious 8-year-old obsessed with disposable pop culture from over 30 years ago created to sell breakfast cereal and action figures? Because his dad makes him, silly!

“My favorite movies are ‘The Goonies’ and ‘Back to the Future,’” explained Donatello while futilely blowing on a Nintendo cartridge that hasn’t worked since 1991. “Well, technically those are the only movies I’ve ever seen. We watch them every Friday during Family Movie Night. Afterwards, my dad quizzes me for hours on the canonical backstory of the ThunderCats. And if I get every answer right, I even get to have a sip from his vintage collection of Hi-C Ecto Cooler boxes. It’s so fun! I guess.”

Sure, Donatello has trouble making friends at school since all of his peers are interested in things that didn’t exist in the ‘80s, like Minecraft, Pokémon, or TV shows with diverse cultural representation. But those kids’ parents are probably old, lame baby boomers or something. Not young, fun Gen X parents!

“I want my son to have the same carefree childhood I had,” Jason said while meticulously dusting his shelf of Hulkamania memorabilia. “Like, the exact same childhood. That’s the whole point of having kids, right? You get to live vicariously through them as they experience things you already experienced. That’s how it should be at least… I didn’t get such great parenting when I was Donatello’s age.”

“My dad never took an interest in my life when I was a kid, so now it’s my young son’s job to take an interest in my life when I was a kid.”

Young parents, unite! Let’s follow Jason’s example and create a new generation of ‘80s kids who love Pac-Man, have the hots for Ms. Pac-Man, and who only eat fruit when trapped in a digital maze.

It was Whitney Houston who once sang, “I believe the children are our future.” Well, that didn’t get her very far, now did it? Why let the children be our future when they can be our past? After all, if you wanted some “Fortnite”-playing, TikTok asshole, you could’ve just adopted.