The Konstantino, Author at HARDTIMES

Opinion: You Have Nothing to Fear If You Have Nothing to Hide and No Basic Understanding of the Constitution

Posted on July 25, 2020 by Dan Rice

Well, looks like the liberal media is up to their old sensationalist tricks, yet again. First, Trump couldn’t have his personal friend Vladimir Putin help him win the election without it being called “collusion with a foreign power.” Then, he couldn’t detain and torture a bunch of immigrant children without it being called a “concentration camp.” And now, all of a sudden, he can’t send a bunch of federal agents in paramilitary gear to throw his political critics into unmarked vans without a bunch of snowflakes calling it “secret police.”

Don’t fall for these liberal scare tactics. The fact of the matter is that the average, law-abiding American with no firm grasp on constitutional rights has nothing to be afraid of.

Think about it. Why should you be afraid of a secretive militarized task force wearing clothes identical to extremists operating under a deliberately vague agenda and attacking American citizens when you don’t even understand how illegal that is? Why should you care that they are detaining peaceful protesters in unmarked vehicles when you have no notion of the dangerous precedent that sets? You probably didn’t even understand what half of those words meant, so relax!

Do not let these commies and their oh-so-precious amendments frighten you. You only need to be concerned with one amendment. No, it’s not the first one—for the love of God DO NOT read the first amendment—it’s the second one. These liberals are always trying to take your guns away and that’s why they’re out in the streets protesting for all you know.

Look, at the end of the day, there are people who read 1984 in high school, and then there’s you. You’re safe!

If the liberals had their way, our cities would be swarmed with Barrack HUSSEIN Obama’s private army, enforcing his agenda with no regard for the law. That’s why we need Trump’s private army with no regard for the law in all of our major cities, to make sure that doesn’t happen. Or, to make sure it didn’t happen. Look, it’s all confusing. Aren’t you tired? You should fry something, it’s delicious.

Ok, let me put it this way. You know how not understanding the risks of Covid-19 means you don’t have to wear a mask? Same mechanics in play here.

Long-Term Boyfriend Finally Proposes Anal

Posted on July 25, 2020 by Laura McCarthy

DAYTON, Ohio — Local romantic Colin Novak finally proposed anal to his longtime girlfriend Amanda Hale yesterday at the couple’s favorite tapas restaurant, in front of family and friends following a two-year courtship that survived three cities, four jobs, and one rescue Pomeranian.

“After her father gave me his blessing, I knew the time was right for me to ask Amanda to get down on all fours and make me the luckiest man alive,” Novak said, as Hale’s friends admired the simple but elegant cock ring Novak picked out for the occasion. “And she said ‘yes!’ I was so nervous. I can’t wait for the big day — this is every man’s dream.”

Novak was hardly the only person excited by the big news.

“I was starting to worry he’d never ask,” Hale’s mother Sherry said through happy tears. “Ever since Amanda was little, I’ve dreamt of the day she’d take the big plunge, and now my fantasies are coming true! I’m so happy they’re taking their relationship to the next level — as a mom, a bit of me worried he was only wasting my daughter’s time with vaginal sex and light oral. ‘In-the-shitter, or get off the pot,’ I was about to tell him, but thank God he came around. I couldn’t be happier!”

Friends and relatives were quick to offer advice to the happy couple, with some recommending an event planner so that the two could lay back, relax, and have as pain-free an experience as possible, while others suggested beauty tips and spa treatments to help Hale look perfect for her special day.

“We want Amanda’s asshole to be the most beautiful thing Colin has ever seen,” said Hale’s close friend since childhood Dawn Kim. “When he unveils her right before their union, she’s going to be all perfectly puckered-up for him, just like we always imagined when we were little. It’ll be so radiantly white, it’ll bring tears to Colin’s eyes.”

Though the couple’s proposal was public, Novak and Hale confided to their least judgmental relative that they wanted the happiest day of their lives to be small and intimate, with only a photographer and webcam present.

“In this economy, we don’t want to blow our wad on all the pomp and circumstance,” Hale said. “We’re aiming for an intimate occasion, with just us and a few of our closest OnlyFans subscribers.”

Gamer Dad Proudly Shows Off Son’s PlayStation Trophies

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Dan Kozuh

AVON, Conn. — Local gamer and father Byron Phelps proudly flaunted his son Bradley’s video game talents in front of the boy’s new girlfriend by showing her a trophy case filled with trophies representing those he’d won playing PlayStation games, a mortified Brad told reporters.

“Oh my god, it was so embarrassing. Before she even had her coat off he took her into the living room to show her my All Will Fall and Primordial trophies from God of War,” Brad Phelps said. “He engraves these for every one I get in a game. No one should be proud of their son’s ‘Rope-A-Dope-A-Dope’ achievement from Arkham Asylum on PS3, that you get just for dropping a tied up henchman on another one. I’m not a little kid anymore!”

The elder Phelps, however, doesn’t see anything wrong with showing off his son’s talents.

“What? A dad can’t be proud of his son?” Byron questioned while adding a newly received ‘The Warrior Monk,’ trophy from Ghost of Tsushima to the cabinet. “I guess he wants me to be one of those mean dads that tells him to stop playing those damn video games. I know I am biased because I’m his dad, but he might go pro one day and ESPN will do a 30 For 30 on him and I’ll be there saying I knew from day one that he was special.”

Bradley’s girlfriend, Gina Garner, was slightly taken aback at the altar to her boyfriend.

“It was neat, but it was hard to act impressed as his dad read off all three hundred and eighty two awards,” she said following an awkward dinner with the Phelps family. “I mean is it really that big of a deal that he placed ten stickers on a pod in LittleBigWorld? I don’t even know what any of that means. Honestly, it was just more of a wakeup call to see how much he played video games.”

As of press time, Byron Phelps has already ordered thirty-five new trophies in anticipation of his son crushing Cyberpunk 2077.

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:

RPG Quests Distract Player From Hours of Riveting Menu Gameplay

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Chandler Dean

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — After sinking a solid weekend into the RPG Manifest Beyond, local gamer Mallory Cruz began to realize that the game’s elaborate quests were distracting her from what she really came for: countless hours of navigating various menus.

“My favorite part of playing an RPG is the sense of endless possibilities,” explained Cruz, whose favorite menus include Fallout’s Pip-Boy, Pokémon’s Pokédex, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Sheikah Slate. “On any given day, I might end up on the skills menu, the perks menu, the inventory menu, or even the stats menu. But those menuplay possibilities are severely limited when you have to engage in combat, follow a story, or explore a rich, vibrant landscape. Just let me get to the good stuff!”

Cruz decried what she described as “narrative grinding,” also known as the trend among gamers to focus exclusively on immersing themselves in the story arc of an RPG instead of looking at numbers on a screen for hours on end.

“It just takes all the joy out of it when you treat a game like a chore,” Cruz lamented. “I don’t understand people who sort of mindlessly invest in characters, strategy, and skill-building, when they could be pursuing true fulfillment: watching your XP go up, watching your achievements go up, and watching the number of energy cells in your inventory go up.”

When reached for comment, Manifest Beyond developer Kelly Mizma outlined how the menus serve as an incentive to motivate players to drudge through intricate gameplay.

“We’ve listened to our audience, and we know that people are tired of suspense, humor, romance, and all the other filler material we have to incorporate to get players from one menu to another,” Mizma assured fans. “But we want to remind everyone that these sort of speed bumps are necessary to make the ultimate menu-staring experience truly satisfying.”

At press time, Cruz was pursuing 100% completion after hearing a rumor that it would result in an additional button being added to the main menu.

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:

Where Are They Now: The Huge Spider I Just Saw in My Shower

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Ben Friedman

The shower is one of the last refuges in modern society. Only within that 2×4 foot space can you shut out the worries of the world, rejuvenate yourself, and win 100% of imaginary arguments.

So I’m sure you could imagine the surprise on my face when just a few minutes ago, washing the soap out of my eyes when I witnessed a massive wolf spider crawling up the shower curtain, barely eight inches away from me.

And yet here I am now, half-naked with a spatula in hand and the spider nowhere to be found. I mean this dude has vanished. It was literally motionless in the shower like two seconds ago. How can something the size of an iPod just disappear into thin air?

Maybe it left through the air vent! Yes, of course, spiders prefer the dark, damp innards of a 100-year-old brownstone than the confines of the one place where my genitals are most vulnerable.

It probably went down the drain, of course! It’s the closest point of entry, and probably where it – JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THERE IT IS – that’s just my loofa. Word of advice: don’t buy a brown loofah, and don’t turn your back on eight legs of nightmare fuel even for a second. But you can’t dwell on what’s already happened. You can only keep looking and hope to get the jump on it.

Maybe it crawled behind the toilet? No, in the toilet. Oh, my dear spider, you may be the master of hunting bugs and given your size, maybe small rodents, but you cannot outwit the likes of me! I’m a grown man who makes $32,000 a year!

If you’re like me and have clearly underestimated this thing, you may want to grab a larger killing apparatus like a hammer or a gun. I mean it has four times as many eyes, it can probably see me coming from angles I can’t even perceive.

Why would God give such a thing amazing peripheral vision?

Eventually, you just have to take a deep breath and remember that not only are you much larger than a spider, but it’s probably more afraid of you. It’s probably cowering in fear at this very moment, the big idiot!

Yes, I must have scared him off. That spider knew when it was beaten. Just to be safe, let me anxiously check my back ever 40 seconds for the rest of my life.

AOC Becomes First Woman Encouraged to Turn 35

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Lana Schwartz

NEW YORK — U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the first woman in the history of humankind last week to be encouraged to turn 35, the age a U.S. citizen must be in order to run for president, in a watershed moment for women everywhere.

“I know AOC is still only 30 years old, but is there anything she could do to turn 35 sooner? We need her in the White House now — we can’t wait five years,” said Michael Reyes, founder of the AOC 4 Prez Already, Hurry Up PAC. “I already have five different computer hackers on deck ready to change her birth certificate and all of her official government records at a moment’s notice. Seriously, I can call them right now.”

Many pundits speculate that encouraging Ocasio-Cortez to turn 35 may or may not help normalize the aging process for women everywhere.

“What we’re seeing here is really unprecedented. Historically, of course, women have been encouraged not to age, but rather to transform from ‘Baby’ into ‘Sexy Baby’ into ‘Rapping Grandma,’” said Terry Potts-Bailey, professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Wellesley College and author of “From Out of the Cave and Into the Kitchen: An Exploration of Women’s Roles in Media, as Portrayed by the Media and the Portrayal of that Media.” “It’s difficult to grapple with what sort of ramifications the encouragement of a woman turning 35 might have on the country — and the world, even — or if this is just one very particular, special case. What’s next, letting a woman French-braid her long, grey hair? Trust me, people don’t like that.”

This sudden and ardent support for Ocasio-Cortez turning 35 — and potentially one day getting even older — could possibly change the way young girls are raised, in illustrating there’s a world where it’s O.K. for them to no longer be a “barely legal” teen.

“I tell my daughter she can be whatever she wants to be when she grows up,” said local mom Tara Zakarian. “Of course, I don’t really believe that. But I would like to imagine a world where she doesn’t have to lie on her dating profiles, or ‘turn 29’ for the sixth year in a row — a world where she can have the egregious sex scandal and not have to resign from office. Hopefully that’s what we can expect from an AOC presidency someday.”

As support for Ocasio-Cortez’s potential aging continues to grow, scientists from MIT are researching a gene sequence that would allow her to turn 35, but not age one single day after that.

There Are Plenty of Good Cops, I Know Several From My Dog Fighting Ring

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Anna Walsh

I’ve heard a lot of my fellow Americans question the moral compass and general decency of the fine men and women who serve in our great country’s police force. Well, I disagree. As a tax-paying, church-going, mother of two, and third-generation dogfighting ring owner and operator, I can tell to tell you that all the cops I’ve interacted with are real stand-up guys!

I’ll have you know, I had to pull myself up by the bootstraps to get my start in the dogfighting business. As an owner of a small business, I support limited federal government. That way, the out-of-touch politicians in Washington can’t tell me what I can or can’t do with my body, or my dog’s body, or the bodies of any dog that just didn’t want that W.

Even more than freedom itself, I support protecting that freedom. No matter the cost. For me, that cost is letting entry fees slide when Conor, Dylan, and Kyle are coming off a high from a long, skull-cracking day at the office. Sorry, I mean officers Murphy, Kelly, and O’Brien.

The police are a wonderful addition to my community! They always make sure what we’re doing is protected. Plus, they really know how to rile up a crowd. These are real Americans with real American values: a love for spending money, doing illegal shit from a position of power, and bloodsport. I cannot stress how valuable the police are to someone like me.

Your white kids and non-canine pets could not be safer under these boys’ watch and that’s all that matters to someone like me. We have an old, but true saying in the dogfighting world. “All Cops Are Dogfighters. And all dogfighters are good.”

First Release by Newly Formed Metal Band Is Statement Apologizing for Racist Remarks

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Dan Kozuh

CLEVELAND — Recently formed metal band Blood & Soil has forgone music as its first public release, instead issuing formal remarks apologizing for every band member’s previous history of racist remarks.

“We weren’t sure if we wanted to release a single or an EP, or even wait until we have a full album of material before we put anything out,” Blood & Soil frontman Mark Buchanan said. “Then we realized that every member of this band has a history of saying racist things, reposting racist memes, and supporting racist bands, and I’m sure there’s more. We thought the first thing people should hear from our band is that we are definitely not racist.”

Guitarist Leo Dean agreed with Buchanan’s decision to cover the band’s collective and individual asses by releasing the public statement.

“We figured we should get ahead of it with one of those, ‘This is not who we are in our hearts,’ ‘If you were offended by this we apologize,’ and ‘We are learning and listening’ Facebook posts,” Dean said. “Honestly, that says more about our band than any music we could put out. I’m sure photos from that Halloween I wore blackface are going to surface sometime. But in my defense, 2016 was a different time.”

Despite seeing through the band’s blatantly transparent actions, heavy metal historian Kara Ingram Chavez believes this was a smart idea.

“I think we all know what it means when a band tells people they used to be racist,” Ingram Chavez said. “They say things about how it is ‘just songs about history’ and how it was ‘a joke taken out of context,’ then suddenly they have a lot more white, male fans. Most metal bands all sound the same, and this is an easy way to set yourself apart from the crowd and give yourself an identity.”

Blood & Soil is allegedly hard at work on their next apology for naming themselves after a Nazi slogan.

Man Expected to Remember What Happened in Comic Book He Read a Month Ago

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Dan Kozuh

RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — Local comic book enthusiast Casey Little was frustrated and slightly offended that the writers of his favorite comic books expect him to remember what happened in the last issue that came out over a month ago, sources have confirmed.

“I stopped by my favorite shop where my pull list was waiting for me, but when I got home and opened Venom Beyond #26, I had no idea what the hell was going on,” said Little, who had read Venom Beyond #25 as recently as 30 days ago. “Can’t there be, like, a ‘previously on’ section or something? I went back to the last issue and I don’t remember any of the details in the slightest. I’m constantly juggling the lore of several video games, comics, and TV shows in my head simultaneously. How do publishers expect us to remember these things?”

Gail Townsend, Public Relations Specialist for Image comics, says that this is a very common occurrence.

“We get readers contacting us all the time by email and on social media asking us to recap last month’s issue of DIE!DIE!DIE! Because they can’t remember what happened,” Townsend said. “Many say they forget story developments as soon as they finish the issue. Most Deadly Class fans have a hard time remembering what the entire series is even about.”

While most fans suffer silently when trying to retain the latest plotlines, some shop owners try to assist their customers as best as they can.

“I like to print out the plot section of the book’s Wikipedia entry and put it like a bookmark in the issue,” said Faith Kim, owner of Comic Pavillion. “But most of my regulars don’t even have the attention span for that. I’ve offered to buy people’s unread collections for their trouble, but most of them hilariously expect these books to skyrocket in value someday.”

After several more attempts to understand what’s going on in Venom Beyond #26, Little says he’s given up trying and that he’ll just wait to find out what happens when Netflix eventually adapts the series.

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:

Valorant Player a Disappointment to All His Friends in Real Life Too

Posted on July 23, 2020 by John Danek

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Local gamer Harry Olsen continues to frustrate his friends with a total lack of awareness and poor decision-making both in Riot Games’ Valorant and in his everyday life, exhausted sources have confirmed.

“I don’t understand what everyone is getting so angsty about. How was I supposed to know Phoenix’s flashes don’t exist to beneficially brighten your teammates’ monitors?” protested Olsen, who has been unwittingly removed from multiple group texts. “Sorry, I’m in a terrible mood today. My roommates are pissed because I ordered pizza for us over and just assumed they had cash to pay for it. You would think after multiple instances of this happening, they would start going to the ATM ahead of time to anticipate our pizza needs.”

Even Olsen’s longtime best friend and neighbor Bess Walsh, who has known Harry Olsen since they were in elementary school, questioned the point of continuing their relationship.

“I’m not sure why we’re even still friends. I guess because our dads are friends? But every time I watch him shoot Sova’s recon bolt out of bounds or forget to feed my cat when I’m away, I second-guess everything that’s brought me to this point in my life. How many times can one person pick up the spike, then forget they have it two seconds later?”

Group therapist Dr. Dorothy Spano has noticed an increase in friend groups seeking group therapy for Valorant-based issues.

“It used to be that private group therapy was limited to dysfunctional families or Metallica,” explained Dr. Spano, whose practice has grown with an influx of eSports teams and MMORPG clans. “But now we’re seeing the strain that online games can have on real-world relationships due to miscommunication, lopsided responsibility sharing, and bush-league n00b shit. Like killing your own teammates because you’re trying to pull off sick jumps with Raze’s rocket launcher. Just stop it. You’re only going to get 200 Reddit karma for a clip like that anyways. Is that really worth risking your friendships or your teammates’ ranks?”

When asked for comment about his son’s character, Olsen’s own father grumbled that he had no idea what the hell Valorant is, but that Harry “always ran to third base instead of first.”

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:

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