Hard Digest February 16: Early Access Decisions, Adulting, Photography, and More

Dad Must Make Heart-Wrenching Decision Between Deleting Family Pictures or Drum Samples Off Hard Drive

By Jose Balderas 

FULLERTON, Calif. — New dad and aspiring musician Gerry Malnati was forced to decide whether to delete pictures from previous vacations and gatherings with family or drum sample libraries from his hard drive to make space for a new Mac OS update, confirmed sources.

“It’s like a modern day Sophie’s choice,” said Malnati while rubbing his temples. “Once my wife asks to upload a few SD cards from our last trip to Knott’s Berry Farm I know I’ll be sitting at my desk late into the night trying to figure out if I should delete a picture of my daughter picking blueberries or another sweet, tight snare from the pop punk drum pack I got on sale during Black Friday 2022. But I know I’m going to accidentally delete the one picture my wife has been thinking about since we took so it means I usually just delete one of the 15 versions of a crash cymbal. It still hurts though. They’re like my children.”

Malnati’s wife relayed a previous experience she prefers to not relive.

“We knew this was a problem and required a sit-down talk after I went to pick up our Christmas Day pictures at Walgreen’s and they were just images of GarageBand waveforms for some ‘80s synthwave beats he had purchased as his own present,” said Mei Malnati. “I can’t keep paying for pictures of music he never plans to let me hear. It’s the only reason I bought him another portable hard drive. We have a good 25 of them and it’s still not enough.”

Best Buy Geek Squad manager Hank Concepcion explained how this is not a rare occurrence and is only becoming a growing problem.

“We’ve seen an uptick in fathers, husbands, and boyfriends rushing in at closing or opening requesting lost and deleted file retrieval,” said Concepcion. “It’s the reason we now offer a new 2-in-1 hard drive that allows users to store their precious family moments on one section and their own hobby junk in the other. Of course, it still means the owners need to show some restraint and discipline and not start saving the wrong items in the wrong section.”

As of press time, Malnati deleted pictures of his childhood dog from his portable hard drive to make room for guitar pedal plug-ins to replicate his real-life pedalboard.

Adulting? This Woman Meal-Prepped By Ordering a Large General Tso’s Instead of a Small

By MJ Elliott 

The benefits of meal prepping go beyond saving time and money. It also frees up your brain so you can spend less time thinking about what you’re going to make for dinner and more time thinking about important matters like, “Do all my coworkers secretly hate me?’” and “What if my parents die before they ever get a chance to be proud of me?”

After carefully weighing the pros and cons of ordering the large General Tsos chicken or the small, Door Dasher rewards member, Lilia Thompson decided to shell out the additional two dollars and fifty cents for the large order. “Financially, it will set me back a little, but that’s what investments are all about,” said Thompson. She’s even considering walking the four blocks to the Chinese restaurant instead of ordering delivery to count as this week’s workout.

Contrary to popular belief, fancy Tupperware is not necessary for meal-prepping. If you want to save time and effort, just dump the entire atrocity into a comically large bowl, pop it in the fridge, and cover it with a dinner plate. Although this method doesn’t seal in as much freshness as Tupperware, when you’re standing in front of your fridge pantless and drunk, still mourning a relationship that ended 4 years ago, and eating pork lo mein with your hands, freshness is not a priority.

While meal prepping has its benefits, eating the same thing every day can become monotonous. Reheating that takeout container that’s been begging to be put out of its misery since last Saturday for the fifth day in a row can start to tug at the strands of your sanity and lead you down an existential rabbit hole wherein you begin to ask yourself, “Is my life just one big version of ‘wash, rinse and repeat’?

On the last leg of her meal-prep race, just when the general Tsos chicken had been molecularly altered from time and constant reheating, and the rice had turned hard as gravel, Thompson felt she couldn’t bear to eat one more bite of last week’s takeout, she remembered she had half a bell pepper and some teriyaki sauce in the fridge and decided to make a nice little stir fry with what was left.

First Year Photography Student Wondering if You’ve Ever Modeled Before

By The Hard Times Staff 

BOSTON — Freshman photography student Elias Carbone reportedly crossed four lanes of heavy traffic to ask you if you’ve ever modeled before and if you’d be interested in helping him with a school project, you confirmed while trying to hide your smile.

“I was just minding my own business when this guy with a camera came out of nowhere to tell me how beautiful I was. And I mean I definitely didn’t look cute, I was coming back from pilates so my hair was a mess, I ran out of contacts so I had to wear my glasses, and I was all sweaty. I’m not sure what he saw in me,” you said after sitting down to compose yourself. “He said ‘Beauty like mine needs to be preserved for the ages,’ can you believe that? I agreed to go to his apartment in Allston this weekend for a shoot. He told me to bring a few different outfits and to be prepared to ‘push my boundaries.’ I’m debating on whether I should tell my friends about this, I think they would probably be pretty jealous that they weren’t asked.”

Carbone admitted he asks multiple women a day if they would like to model for him.

“I want to be the next Terry Richardson or Marcus Hyde, and the best way to do that is to lure as many impressionable young women to my apartment and convince them to pose naked for me. I feel like my best bet is to ask women who look painfully insecure,” said Carbone. “I haven’t been able to convince any of my models to take off their clothes, they usually realize they made a big mistake and leave right away. But these are the tough lessons I need to learn. I want to get to that level of fame where A-list celebrities come to my defense saying how sweet and professional I am when some no-name accuses me of problematic behavior.”

Photography Professor Phillip Rouse says a majority of his male students use art as a way to see women naked.

“This has been going on since the camera was first invented. Young men will use a camera to position themselves as an authority on beauty in order to see a boob or two. I hate to admit it, but I did it myself,” said Professor Rouse. “But now things are different. As an educator, I’m able to exert my authority in a different way and I have students lining up to pose naked for me. I promise them a better grade or introductions to some of my established photographer friends. It’s almost too easy.”

“At press time, Carbone asked if you had any good-looking female friends that you might be comfortable kissing for a project about “taboo expression under the Trump regime.”

More From The Hard Times:

Five Songs We Listened To This Week That ‘Ruined’ Our Valentine’s Day Dinner

New Version of “Yakko’s World” Replaces All of the Countries With “America”

BY Peter Cunis 

WASHINGTON — In a last-minute executive order issued right before he left for Mar-A-Lago, President Trump declared that Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. will be pressured to rewrite the song “Yakko’s World” from Animaniacs and replace every country with “America”. Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav announced in a press release that Warner Bros. would be cooperating with the order.

The order states, “Today, I am dispatching the Secretary of Education to Warner Bros. Headquarters in Burbank, CA with the intent to meet with the Animaniacs themselves. The song ‘Yakko’s World’ has always been an example of American excellence, and it should represent American values. Therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, hereby declare that ‘Yakko’s World’ shall be rewritten with the exclusion of all un-American lyrics to better reflect the superiority of our great nation. Zip zop zoo!” In a footnote, President Trump explained that he’s trying out some new catchphrases, and that ‘Zip zop zoo’ is “still a work in progress.”

The creators of the song had mixed reactions to the executive order. 

“On the one hand, this song is one of the highlights of my career,” said Rob Paulsen, the voice of Yakko, “On the other hand, it’ll be so much easier to recite at cons.” Randy Rogel, the writer of Yakkos’ world, had a more positive reaction: “This is actually the way I originally envisioned the song. I was just young and felt like I needed to be politically correct, so I added all the other countries.  ” 

Meanwhile, the Public Relations manager for the Animaniacs  reports that Dot is feeling “A lot of irritation and violent impulses regarding this decision” and that Yakko is “Fighting this in court by doing a pitch-perfect impression of Dustin Hoffman in the climax of Lenny.” As of writing, Wakko was still in rehab and was unavailable for comment.

While some informational resources, such as Wikipedia and Ultimate-Guitar.com, have resisted pressure from the White House to revise the lyrics in their respective databases, other sites such as AZlyrics and Genius have replaced their existing entries for “Yakko’s World” with the revised version mandated by the government.

According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, President Trump plans on ordering a “drastically shortened version” of each government-focused song from Schoolhouse Rock!