thehardtimes

Hard Digest November 19: Early Access Pantera, Sobriety, Rap, and More

Added 2024-11-20 01:00:08 +0000 UTC

Southern Poverty Law Center Updates Hate Map to Coincide with Upcoming Pantera Tour Dates

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Legal advocacy organization Southern Poverty Law Center recently updated its Hate Map, an interactive tool to track hate groups, to coincide with dates from an upcoming Pantera tour, sources report.

“Honestly, this is just a huge timesaver and allows us to better focus our energy on offering our legal expertise against white supremacist groups and promoting tolerance education opportunities,” SPLC rep Jonathan Horvat said. “Given Pantera’s long and sketchy history, and the even sketchier appearance of their fans, it was a no-brainer for us to just take a map of their upcoming tour dates and superimpose it onto our existing one. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do. The current state of our country doesn’t really leave an organization like ours with a lot of downtime.”

Phil Anselmo, lead singer of Pantera, reacted to the news with confusion.

“I don’t get it, man,” the prolific frontman slurred as he finished a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. “Just because I’ve slipped up a couple times in the past by going on between-song rants about how it’s OK to be proud to be white, failing to openly disavow open racism displayed by my fans, and even performing Nazi salutes on stage, people think a band that I’m in might have some problematic followers. Well, our semi-reunited lineup is open to anybody willing to shell out $80 for a ticket. How’s that for racist?”

Fan Chuck Stottle scoffed when he heard of the recent development.

“Yeah, I’m not surprised that some group of liberal idiots thinks Pantera fans are suspect. Next they’re going to tell me that Skrewdriver was just a bunch of skinheads hellbent on promoting white power,” Stottle remarked as he sat back in the bed of his Ford F-150 against the back window, which was adorned with a gigantic Confederate flag decal. “These days, you can’t say anything without the woke mob coming for you. Just yesterday my buddy lost his job just because a video surfaced of him hurling racial slurs at some lady in a Target parking lot. How’s that for freedom? I don’t care what some bullshit Democrat organization thinks; nothing is going to stop me from getting blacked out on Busch Light and singing along to ‘Walk,’ which just so happens to be the only Pantera song I know.”

At press time, the software running the Hate Map became overloaded and crashed when its operators tried to add upcoming Jason Aldean tour dates.

Sober Icon? This Man Only Drinks on Weekends

By Dom Turek

People in recovery talk about the benefits of transcendental mediation, counting days, and daily journaling, but hidden behind all this self-improvement jargon stands an unsung hero; a man who only gets fall-down, black-out, shit-faced drunk on weekends, and lives the rest of the week as a functioning member of polite society.

Part-time drunk and full-time icon, David Nevins, is living, breathing, dry-heaving proof that yes, we do recover. Every single week, for the last ten years, he has spent Monday through Thursday nursing himself back to health after going on heinous weekend benders that begin the moment he clocks out on Friday and last until Sunday evening. If that’s not recovery, I don’t know what is. Relapse can be one of the biggest teaching moments in sobriety, which is why he’s just as committed to his relapse as he is to his recovery.

His ability to switch between party mode and work mode is the stuff of superheroes. Would anyone care about Superman if he wasn’t out on nights and weekends wrecking cars, causing havoc, and having unprotected sex? Not a chance. He’d just be another underpaid journalist on the brink of divorce known to his coworkers as the guy who keeps to himself and microwaves fish in the breakroom.

Remember the saying, “Everything in moderation?” Well, that also includes moderation.
Positive affirmations like, “One day at a time,” can be helpful, but only if those days are relegated to weekdays, with the exception of holidays, birthdays and the occasional hump day. If you binge-drink any less than two days a week you run the risk of hanging out with people who talk about their favorite flavored seltzers at parties, or turning into the guy who orders an $18 sage-infused mocktail called “The Citrus Fizz” at dinner.

What some may see as a double life, others see as balance. What some may perceive as weekend alcoholism, others view as weekday sobriety. So what if he keeps an emergency Tito’s nip in his desk drawer? So what if he finds a little baggy in his coat jacket with coke residue still clinging to the sides and gums it in the workplace bathroom? Sometimes a little bit of drugs and alcohol are all it takes to get through those rough patches of sobriety.

Gen Xer Misses When Rappers Began Songs With Their Name and What They Were Here to Say

By Tim Graham

DANBURY, Conn. — 48-year-old Bruce Wallach wishes contemporary rappers would introduce themselves as they did in ‘80s hip hop, sources near him in line at Trader Joe’s confirm.

“I liked it when rappers obeyed some basic rules of etiquette. Things were so much simpler back then,” said Wallach while enjoying some extra-mild buffalo wings. “For example, if I were writing a rap I’d say, ‘My name is Bruce and I’m here to say / I like to drive my Prius every day.’ See? Right at the outset of the song, you know who I am and something about me. Rap made after 1989 or so is basically incomprehensible. Who are they and what do they want? There are like 40 people in Wu-Tang—how could I ever sort them out without formal introductions? And don’t get me started on these mumbling Soundcloud rappers. Their intentions are never clear.”

Longtime friend Connor Hanson suggests Wallach needs to get with the times.

“Bruce was never even a big rap fan. I gave him a Public Enemy tape for his thirteenth birthday and it never left the shrinkwrap,” said Hanson. “He preferred the Phil Collins’ ‘No Jacket Required’ tape his mom gave him. Bruce is falling into the trap of romanticizing the past and getting hung up on nostalgia. I’m still seeking out new music and going to shows while most of my friends just pine for the old days. They watch old music videos online and order ‘80s toys on eBay, all while complaining that everything new sucks. Frankly, they’re starting to sound like Boomers.”

Old school hip hop artist DJ Tonearm claims that a lot of people are misremembering the history of rap.

“When these middle-aged white dudes reminisce about early hip hop, most of them are actually just recalling the 1988 Fruity Pebbles commercial where Barney Rubble says, ‘I’m the master rapper and I’m here to say / I love Fruity Pebbles in a major way,’” said the DJ while crate-digging in Bushwick. “Other than that, the line appears very seldomly in actual hip-hop songs. Guys like this think the pinnacle of rap was the scene in ‘Office Space’ where they beat the shit out of the printer to a Geto Boys song.”

At press time, Wallach had been overheard lamenting there being “no good bands like Pearl Jam anymore,” despite them still being an active touring and recording act.

Top 30 Shoegaze Songs That Were a Terrible Idea to Play as the Wedding DJ

Nintendo Sues You for Reading This Article

BY Graham Morris

TOKYO — A court filing revealed that Nintendo Co., Ltd. is pursuing $30 million in damages for the act of reading an article about Nintendo’s legal endeavors on the gaming satire website Hard Drive, presenting this article as evidence for immediate relief.

“It was simply a matter of tracing the defendant’s IP-address, cross-referencing with local informants, and paying a team of private investigators to break into their house,” said Nintendo attorney Spencer Nelson. “After compiling all available evidence, we were able to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant read the article ‘Nintendo Sues You for Reading This Article,’ and therefore we had basis to pursue this suit.”

Nintendo’s president Shuntaro Furukawa commented on accusations that the company’s legal team had been overzealous in their pursuit of fans for engaging in activities like emulation, game preservation, participation in unsanctioned “Super Smash Bros.” tournaments, and reading this article.

“‘Oh no, Nintendo’s suing people! Oh no! They shouldn’t do that! Wahhh!’ Literally that’s what you sound like,” said Furukawa. “That’s what you sound like. But you’re still going to buy our reheated Pokémon game next year, aren’t you, huh? You little bitch. You’re gonna post a comment about how we are actively working against the preservation of games as an art form and then you’re gonna make a thread on Resetera speculating when we’re gonna announce the Switch 2. I’m gonna sue you for even asking me about this. And you’re gonna pay $90 for the next Zelda which runs on the equivalent of an iPhone 4s. Because it’ll be incredible. Suck my asshole.”

Your best friend spoke to Hard Drive about the pending case.

“I mean, is it even legal to sue someone for reading an article? That seems like a First Amendment thing, right?” said your best friend. “I can’t imagine that’s legal. But Nintendo has an incredible team, so they’ll probably win this one. Someone’s got to stop them, they can’t keep suing everyone who looks at them wrong. Anyways, do you think they’ll do a remake of ‘The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons’ in the style of ‘Link’s Awakening’? That would be sick, right?”

At press time you were last seen drinking heavily, looking at your bank account, and crying, before booting up “Animal Crossing: New Horizons.”

Breaking Games Changes “Secret Hitler” to “Straight-Up Hitler”

BY Peter Ferrarese

NETCONG, N.J. — Board game manufacturer Breaking Games and distributor Blackbox announced that they have changed the title of the popular social deduction party game “Secret Hitler” to “Straight-Up Hitler.”

“We felt that this change will make the game more accurately reflect the times that we live in now,” said Breaking Games founder Shari Spiro in a statement. “Being current is very important to us. Back in 2016, it seemed like a lot of people might have secretly been Hitler, but now, in 2024, it looks like the masks are off and we have full-on Nazis walking around again. There are people flying swastikas in Columbus, Ohio, for Christ’s sake. So, yeah. ‘Straight-Up Hitler’ it is.”

While Breaking Games and Blackbox ultimately decided on this change, it was also agreed upon by the board game’s designers, Max Temkin, Mike Boxleiter and Tommy Maranges, who have made some interesting changes to the core gameplay in order to reflect the game’s new title.

“So what we’ve done is removed the Liberal faction from the game completely,” Temkin said. “Now everyone is a Fascist automatically, so it’s much easier to pass Fascist policies. We’ve kept the Liberal cards in, just in case you want to be an epic troll and totally try to disrupt the flow of things to absolutely no avail. You can give it the ol’ college try – just like real life! We’ve also updated the cutesy reptile designs for the fascists and Hitler. Now, whoever’s Hitler has a grainy photo of their hero Adolf to stare at for the whole time they’re playing.”

While the move may have seemed controversial on the surface, a shocking amount of Americans are totally cool with this choice and have even embraced it, per multiple reports.

“This is great news. I’ve been looking for a game that caters to me and my beliefs.” said local white guy Kevin Brewster. “Screw those dirty commies. It’s time to Make Germany Great Again! I’m excited to pick up Straight-Up Hitler and play it with my liberal friends. Oh man, they’re gonna be so pissed.”

At press time, copies of the new and “improved” version of the game were seen being delivered to the doorsteps of each of president-elect Trump’s cabinet members.