PATCHOGUE, N.Y. — Jake Stamberg of local metal outfit A Stance Defiant borrowed fellow drummer Michael Fleisher’s drum throne only to line it with carefully placed strips of toilet paper from the venue’s restroom, confirmed sources. “I’m not making a statement on anyone else’s hygiene,” said Stamberg of his sanitary precaution. “It’s just my personal preference. It’s either this or squatting, which makes double kick playing very difficult. Besides, who says cleanliness doesn’t belong in metal? From what I understand, the great Dimebag Darrell was known to sanitize his liver daily with an alcohol-based solution, far more potent than anything we use on our hands, called Black Tooth Grin.” Though some audience members appeared baffled and even offended by Stamberg’s seemingly excessive health measures, Fleisher responded with a surprising amount of understanding. “Well, it’s weird that he would ask to use my throne in the first place, if he’s worried about my cleanliness,” said Fleisher. “But, I suppose metal has enough issues dealing with homophobes, and xenophobes, to worry much about germaphobes. Besides, this a rock, punk, and metal venue, I’m willing to bet the thickness of their bathroom tissue barely even amounts to a single ply.” Though some may think this kind of hygienic concern flies in the face of the gritty nature of heavy rock and roll, Dr. Beck Jeffrey of the Bayonne Institute says that this type of practice could be a smart move. “It’s actually not a bad idea to sanitize any area where bodily fluids could be exchanged,” said Jeffrey. “Contagious diseases, like Staphylococcal infections, Norovirus, and Pinworm, have been known to spread this way. I’ve seen entire live rock music scenes fall to their knees at such outbreaks. And no I’m not saying that because I’m in the pocket of Big Drum Machine. Though, I suppose I should inform them both that merely lining the periphery of a drum throne with three sheets of toilet tissue leaves both your genital and rectal areas exposed, and you’d think those would be the big ones.” Dr. Jeffrey went on to explain to both drummers some other practices they can employ to reduce germ-spreading at shows, including wearing plastic gloves when counting the cash they make. The post Drummer Using Other Band’s Drum Throne Lines It With Toiler Paper appeared first on HARDTIMES.
Fuck. Why the fuck would your aunt be calling you? Fuck. Someone’s dead. Someone is fucking dead. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why else would she be calling right now? What else could it even fucking be? Fucking good news? No. You barely even know this fucking person. Have you ever spoken on the phone with them? Ever? No, actually, have you ever spoken to this person one-on-one in your life? “Hi”, “Merry Christmas”, and “Goodbye” is not enough history for a phone call out of the fucking blue. Seriously, what the fuck is their problem? How many goddamn people died that SHE is the one calling you? What the fuck else could it be? Could it be good news? Obviously fucking not. What possible good news could your aunt even have? “Hey sweetie, just wanted to call and say your uncle bought a kayak. We’re calling everybody for some fucking reason.” You know what, they would. They would do that. They’re the fucking type. Un-fucking-believable. How do you answer? What the fuck are you supposed to say? “Oh hi? Oh, I sound weird? Hrmm, uh, I guess it might be because I’m in the middle of this fucking panic attack you just fucking caused. Now enough with the niceties and just fucking tell me when the funeral is and who the fuck to make the fucking card about!” Hold on, was anyone supposed to die? Not really. Your last grandmother died like two years ago. Fucking shit, did someone get in a car accident? House collapsed into a sinkhole? A fucking stroke? A heart attack? Suicide? Jesus fucking christ, why is your family so fucking stupid and unhealthy? Any one of these goddamn assholes could be dead. Fucking hell. Should you let it go to voicemail? Maybe you’ll be able to hear if they’ve been crying. But what if they don’t leave a voicemail? What if they send some vague bullshit text? What if they keep calling? Oh fuck if she calls twice, somebody SUPER died. Fucking ridiculous. They’re being fucking ridiculous. This isn’t how you treat someone. Okay, who could it be? Rob looked rough at Christmas…but he always looks rough. Did anyone mention somebody being sick? Why is the family text chain only about what dish they’re bringing to the next holiday? You can’t answer. You’re emotionally unprepared. Also, what voice are you supposed to answer with? Casual voice? Solemn voice? Tired voice? About-to-hear-terrible-fucking-news voice? What does that even sound like? Who knows, but you can’t answer all cheerful, like “Heyyyyy!” and then immediately find out that your uncle died under his riding mower. You’d have to downshift so hard. You do not have that kind of range. Fuck it. Just fucking pick up. Answer it. Come on. Fucking answer it. Let’s fucking go! “Hi sweetheart! Quick question. Do you still know computers?” This bitch’s husband better get ready to make some calls, because she’s fucking dead. The post Uh Oh: Your Aunt Is Calling You, Someone’s Definitely Dead appeared first on HARDTIMES.
NEW YORK — Local neurotic Lenny Malone discovered a range of new, worse ways to be insufferable after spending months in clinical psychotherapy, according to family, friends, and a steadily growing list of enemies. “When he took the plunge and sought professional help, we were delighted, we thought he was finally going to work on his litany of issues,” said friend Shawn Bugglar. “Instead he’s co-opted the lingo of that world and become incredibly condescending. Nowadays he has a lot of strong, unsolicited opinions on why the people around him are broken. I have an avoidant attachment style, apparently, and though his parents are still alive and they get on well he’s started calling himself a spiritual orphan. Whenever anyone gets mad at him he says they’re projecting. It’s like, dude, you just crashed my car and threw up in the glove compartment, the only projectile here is your vomit.” Malone himself reports feeling far more in touch with how profound and interesting he is, and how the world continues to fail him. “I don’t expect regular people to understand my depth, my trauma, the journey I am on. I’m not going to do the emotional labor of explaining myself. If anything I feel sorry for them,” Malone said while very, very drunk. “I’ve come to understand that well-rounded personalities and so-called ‘happiness’ are just repression, defense mechanisms. They’re not authentic, like me. I try to explain to them how damaged they really are but they won’t listen. They don’t understand. No one understands me.” Malone’s therapist, meanwhile, thinks he’s making great strides. “He’s making tremendous progress. We’ve been working hard on his inner child and his grasp of archetypes is coming along nicely,” said Dr. Belinda Carlisle. “Changes in behavior? That misses the point entirely. We’re here to reflect, analyze, and grow. But not too much. It’s all about what’s going on inside, forever. Besides, anyone doubting his life skills need only see the reliability with which he pays my $200 an hour fees. Or maybe it’s his parents who do that, I forget. Anyway, how would you describe your relationship with your father?” At the time of publication, Malone reportedly diagnosed most of his immediate friends and acquaintances as covert narcissists. The post Guy Somehow Even More Unbearable After Going to Therapy appeared first on HARDTIMES.
Major League Baseball apparently decided that every foul ball ever taken home is still theirs, and they’ve put out a tongue‑in‑cheek recall. The commissioner framed anyone who’s ever kept a stray ball as both a legal and moral thief, comparing the act to walking out of a restaurant with a plate you didn’t pay for. He stressed that the balls are “very nice” with leather coverings, and implied that fans should have just handed them over to security on the way out.
According to the announcement, there’s a 30‑day window for fans to drop the balls into collection bins placed around the stadiums. After that, the league says it could pursue criminal charges against anyone still holding onto a foul ball. The tone is deliberately overblown, treating a simple souvenir as a high‑value piece of property.
The whole thing reads like a parody of bureaucratic overreach, poking fun at how seriously some organizations take their own branding and merchandise. It’s a reminder that not everything that sounds official is meant to be taken at face value.
In short, the league is jokingly demanding the return of every stray baseball, offering a month to comply before threatening legal action, all framed as a mock‑serious crackdown on what is really a harmless fan tradition.
NEW YORK—Warning that millions of men aged 35 and older would be left utterly adrift following the traumatic loss, researchers at Columbia University published a study Monday that revealed the majority of middle-aged men in the United States lacked the support network they would need to handle singer-songwriter Neil Young’s death. “It’s deeply concerning that the average 45-year-old male does not have a single friend or relative willing to text their favorite track from Harvest Moon with the caption ‘GOAT’ typed underneath,” said lead researcher Shannon Bailey, noting that in the absence of the Godfather of Grunge, large swathes of American men would simply spiral into depression while listening to “Heart Of Gold” on loop alone in their apartments. “No other living artist can replicate Young’s raw, soulful vocals or match his mastery of both electric and acoustic sounds, and when he’s gone, men will find themselves searching for someone, anyone, to share in their grief. Unfortunately, less than 15% maintain the connections they made during the 1999 solo acoustic tour, and even fewer will seek out a therapist when they need to discuss Young’s collaborations with Crazy Horse. It’s a sad reality, but without intervention, these poor souls will suffer in silence.” At press time, the researchers published a follow-up study showing that suicide hotlines were woefully unprepared for the volume of calls they would receive when Bob Dylan passed. The post Study: Majority Of Middle-Aged Men Lack Support Network They’ll Need To Handle Neil Young’s Death appeared first on The Onion.
Philly sports fans have a reputation for being rough, and if you think this reputation is unearned, you should probably take a look at this: All 12 of the fans the dance cam just showed on the Jumbotron at the Phillies game were pissing into bottles. Yep, that’s not going to help their rep one bit. During a break in play during today’s home game against the Miami Marlins, the stadium’s cameraperson scanned the crowd for dancing fans to display on the Citizens Bank Park Jumbotron, but finding one who wasn’t actively pissing into something turned out to be an exercise in futility. A quick cut away from the first fan they’d found—a heavyset man cheering and dancing while blatantly urinating into a plastic Bud Lite bottle—only revealed yet another fan doing the same. After cutting away from more fans pissing into bottles, cans, and even a souvenir baseball helmet, the cameraperson, in a desperate attempt to locate a fan not actively urinating into something, honed in on a woman nursing a baby. Upon closer inspection, however, it turned out she was using a popcorn bag which appeared to still be half-filled with popcorn as a makeshift toilet. The disturbing 100-foot-wide display of debauchery ended with a young boy peeing into the straw of his soda cup followed by an elderly man who was just pissing directly onto a row of fans below him while waving to the camera. Ugh. Apparently this is not going to be the game that ends Philly sports fans’ standing as some of the most uncouth around. Hopefully these Phillies fans will have gotten all of their piss out by the next time the dance cam makes the rounds, but based on the fact that the camera just caught the actor inside the Phillie Phanatic costume holding a souvenir foam bat up to his crotch to soak up his piss, that seems unlikely. We love you, Philly sports fans, but some of y’all could really use some lessons in dignity.
Hark ye! I am hummingbird, tiny as a golf ball, dense as a chicken tender, with feathers the size of tomato seeds. I run on sugar. SUGAR. SUGAR WATER! Look look look look look look look, SHUT UP. Look. I built my house on your doorknob. Go around, use one of the other doors, climb in through a window. GO AROUND. Follow my logic: Here’s the thing: I AM KING OF YOUR EMOTIONS. I am very small. “Smol” in your new English, you reductive idiots. SMOL. I am the smallest dinosaur. Small as a Brazil nut. I’ve been inside a dog’s mouth. I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU. My zip-zipping around is about me, not you, me, not you. YOUR ARROGANCE IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS. I AM UNTETHERED TO YOUR HUMAN FEARS. I fear nothing but a STIFF BREEZE. I needed a place to build my nest while you were sleeping. You and the other one and the other two and the furry ones go IN AND OUT OF THIS DOOR all day long. Then the night arrived, and no one came through the door. The handle is curved and hard, and as good a place as a maple branch. IT MAKES SENSE. IT’S HARD TO MAKE A NEST ON A BRANCH WITH THE WIND, AND IT’S HARD TO MAKE A NEST ON A CURVED DOORKNOB. I’M A TINY BIRD. LIFE IS HARD. IN THE SKY, ON THE GROUND—EVERY CHOICE IS HARD. I can fly twenty miles an hour. Oh, you’re not impressed? Cool cool cool cool cool. How FAST can YOU fly? Dense ass bones, no wings—YOU CAN’T FLY FOR NOTHING. And that’s just cruising; when I dive, I can fly SIXTY miles an hour, which is as fast as a football travels in your two-legged boom-crash fight. Oh, NOW I have your respect? Fools. Back to my nest, we’ll just be here a minute because all things in life are temporary and hummingbird babies grow up and take off quickly. Gone, bitties, gone. No “Can I come home for holidays?”—no nothing. Everybody just leaves for good, and then we crawl into a quiet bush and die, OKAY? So you and your creatures went inside to stuff your flesh beaks with sauce worms and stare at your RAWRAWRAWR wall. The time was nigh and I went to work, collecting twigs and sticks and dog fur and stems and cattails and twigs and string and SNAKESKIN and bark and moss and fish scales and thistle and hay and twine and thread and tinsel and CAT WHISKERS and leaves and twigs and DANDELION DOWN and pine needles and Halloween wig hair and USED SPIDERWEBS—THEY WERE EMPTY WHEN I FOUND THEM, GET A GRIP, THE SPIDERS ARE FINE, YOU THINK A SPIDER’S NOT JUST FINE? They’re fine. Bunch of creeps, but they keep to themselves. Listen, I’m just gonna be here on your doorknob for a little while longer, two weeks tops. Don’t be a jerk about it, okay? Two weeks is one-sixth of my little hummingbird life if I don’t get eaten by a hawk in my first year. Two weeks for you? That’s nothing. Just keep looking at your doom squares and opening the door to pick up brown squares of varying size, AND YOU CAN’T DO THAT FOR A WHILE. NO MORE BROWN SQUARES HERE, GO AROUND TO THE SIDE. What’s that sound? Oh, it’s my babies. Yes, yes, take your pictures, you rubes, you voyeurs, I know you like tiny things. They take your mind off bigger things. Oop. One of them fell out and got eaten by a cat, such is life. And there go the other two, goodbye forever, my dearest children. You happy now? The doorknob is all yours again. Wasn’t even a full two weeks—the things NATURE DOES FOR YOU. Look, do me a favor: Keep my nest on a shelf in your living room and show it to all your visiting smols. They will be impressed. I am an architect. Okay, goodbye, and GET OVER IT.
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