Hard Digest 12: Early Access Velvet Underground Shirts, Nostalgia, Dog Parks, and More

Guy Fleeing From Pack of Escaped Gorillas Regrets Wearing Velvet Underground Shirt to Zoo Today

By Joe Rumrill 

SAN DIEGO — A frenzied man was pursued by an entire cage of gorillas after they took too strong a liking to his shirt festooned with the recognizable banana-based cover art of “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” sources also hauling ass confirmed.

“You think you put on a Velvet Underground shirt and you’re not ruffling any feathers, y’know? But, I guess feathers isn’t the thing I’m worried about, it’s fur…and the skin of my own hide if I don’t run fast enough,” said Rupert Comers, while rounding a corner at a full sprint. “I’ll tell you something else, this particular Sunday morning isn’t like the ‘Sunday Morning’ on the album at all. Ol’ Lou forgot to put some lyrics in about running for your damn life to get away from the pack of hungry zoo animals who think you’re a giant piece of fruit. Buddy, it’s not the ‘world’ behind me, it’s potentially rabid gorillas! Oh, but he got the ‘restless feeling’ part dead on, I can confirm.”

Original Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker confirmed that the band had a long and tumultuous history when it came to primate aggression.

“A lot of writers over the years have used ‘primal’ to describe our sound, but it more described our merch table, what with all the apes and chimpanzees from surrounding exotic animal compounds who would flock to it,” said Tucker, whose sunglasses did nothing to hide the fear in her eyes. “It was probably why so few people initially bought our first album…because they didn’t want to get bitten by the orangutan trying to eat it. That old saying is true: every person that did buy that album went on to get attacked by a gorilla themselves. Uh, at least I think that’s how the saying goes. I’ll be honest, we hid it well, but we actually did an awful lot of drugs over the years.”

Noted primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall expounded on her experience with the Velvet Underground’s music during her time in Gombe.

“It took my 30 years of research to confirm it, but it’s true: primates love bananas. And some will do unspeakable things in order to get one. So, when I lived among the chimpanzees, we had to be sure to only listen to ‘White Light/White Heat’ or ‘Loaded.’ The self-titled, good as an album as it is, was out of the question for exactly those reasons,” said Goodall, flanked by her formidable record collection that no one knew she even had. “Oh, but we’d never listen to ‘Squeeze’…fuck that one, of course. I’m not committing that kind of animal abuse.”

At press time, matters were made even worse when Comers finally removed the shirt, revealing an entirely unhelpful tattoo of “a bunch of bamboo shoots with ants on them” on his back.

Help! We Tried To Nab Some Easy Nineties Nostalgia Clicks by Interviewing Stephen Gammell and He Trapped Us Inside One of His Drawings

By Steve Packosky

OK, so this one’s at least partially on us. We’ve admittedly been slacking off here at the Hard Times, and the deadlines have been creeping up. We needed clicks FAST, and we figured we’d just revert to some nineties nostalgia, which is always a surefire way to get the job done. So we contacted every goth millennial’s artistic hero Stephen Gammell for an interview, and he invited us out to his house. Piece of cake, right?

Wrong. We should’ve known something was up when we were making the three-day trek through the Minnesota forest to reach his home. Our compass kept spinning wildly out of control and we would awaken to strange little stick figures propped up outside our tents. Nevertheless, we finally reached his dilapidated shack and prepared to begin our interview.
We had been expecting him to be eccentric, but we certainly had not been anticipating him uttering an ancient incantation while lightly touching each of us on the forehead with his pencil. All of a sudden, we were enveloped in a cloud of suffocating, black smoke while a booming voice cackled in our ears. Once the smoke cleared, we found that we were no longer in Stephen’s shack, but inside the haunted graveyard drawing that had been displayed on the easel behind him!

Now here we are: trapped in this horrifically bleak and clearly haunted graveyard, presumably for eternity. Worse yet, the shrouded specter of a weeping woman is perpetually wandering amongst the headstones. We’re not sure if she’ll cause us any harm upon seeing us, but holy fucking shit we don’t want to find out.

The arch at the entrance of the graveyard bears an inscription describing the “amulet of desolation which slumbers everlasting within the folds of the dark sorcerer’s robes,” which we think might be our ticket out? The only problem is, the graves aren’t marked, so we have no idea which belongs to the sorcerer. We’ve been scrambling to dig up each grave (with our HANDS, no less, because of course that asshole Gammell couldn’t have been bothered to draw us a fucking shovel), only to be forced to stop and hide in the shadows every time the weeping woman circles through.

So if you’re reading this, we’d appreciate it if you called the police on Stephen Gammell, because we’re pretty sure whatever he did wasn’t legal. At the very least, could you contact our editors to let them know we need another deadline extension? Again, we fully admit that our laziness led to this predicament, but an eternity of confinement in this nightmarish hellscape because we were too lazy to write an article about Vampire Weekend seems like an inordinately harsh punishment.

Punk Dog Park All Opossums

By Joe Rumrill 

CANTON, Conn. — A local canine owner was stunned to see that his neighborhood’s dog park was completely overrun by opossums owned by dedicated members of the punk community, nervous sources confirmed while Googling “rabies how get.”

“I mean, no exaggeration, there were like two dozen opossums just scurrying around this park, cheered on by their bizarre masters. It was unnerving. I had to keep my lab-mix Fletcher on a short leash just because I didn’t trust anything about my surroundings. And, I’m talking about the freaks hanging out who apparently owned these pests, as well,” said new-to-the-area Seth Cupertino. “I swear at least a few of them were rabid… Again, I mean the owners, not necessarily the opossums. Oh, and speaking of! Don’t call those things just ‘possums’ either. Hoo boy, the owners hate that. I guess those are only in Australia or something? Either way, creepy if you ask me. ”

Local installation artist and devout opossum owner Parveth “Pinner” Harkwell expressed his affinity for the non-traditional pet.

“They make great companions, especially if you don’t want lots of other humans around bothering you,” said a relaxed Harkwell, as one of his three blue-ribbon eating opossums nestled into his lap. “When some argue that me and my friends ‘took over’ the dog park with our pets, I simply extend a hand and say their dogs are welcome to play with my ‘Opie’ or his sister ‘Hiss America.’ Just don’t be put off if they start roughhousing a little bit. Snarling and skittering around and generally unsettling everyone around them to the point of disgust is just how they play. Isn’t it, boy? Isn’t it? Aw…”

Local PetCo employee Sheila Grebin states that the prevalence of the marsupial led to a complete store overhaul.

“Oh, corporate came in and added a whole wing dedicated to the opossum owners in the area. Yeah, got rid of all the bird stuff to make way for it, too, so my apologies to any parakeet owners in the Farmington Valley area,” said Grebin, as she dumped the morning shift trash can out into the opossum aisle. “I don’t mind stocking the products, I just wish more of our customers would purchase the grooming items. We’re backed up on opossum shampoo and conditioner, and when they bring in the little guys to sniff around, man, do they seem to need some help with hygiene. But, I guess, it’s like the old saying goes: ‘like owner, like pet,’ y’know?”

At press time, Cupertino was seen frantically searching for his dog, after witnessing five opossums dabbing the side of their mouths and belching.

Pip-Boy Adds Screen Asking for Tip

BY Kyle Duggan 

NEW VEGAS — A remote update has added a new, mandatory tipping interface to RobCo’s ubiquitous Pip-Boy device, sources confirm.

“I was just trying to get rid of a Radscorpion infestation on my farm,” said Dylan Wyatt, a local homesteader. “I encountered an individual who seemed up to the task. They went by some kind of try-hard pseudonym; I can’t quite remember it. ‘The Lone Dweller,’ or maybe ‘The Vault Courier.’ That should have a red flag. In any case, we came to what I thought was a reasonable agreement regarding payment for the job. Imagine my surprise when he came back after killing the scorpions, turned his Pip-Boy’s screen over to me, and said, ‘It’s just gonna ask you a few questions.’ He wouldn’t even make eye contact after that. He knew what he was doing.”

One Pip-Boy user, who wished to remain nameless, argued that he had no choice but to follow the device’s prompts.

“Look, I’m not happy with this system, either,” said the survivor, who was alone, “but that’s just the way it works. When I’m closing out a transaction at the end of a mission, the tip screen just comes up automatically. I’m not trying to make anyone feel obligated to tip. I guess I could click through the screen myself, but, like, what if they think I did an especially good job defending a settlement? They should have an option to tip, right? And it’s not like that’s the only question they have to answer. They need to select if they want their receipt printed, through text, or through email.”

Cultural observers noted potential misunderstandings.

“Well, it’s obviously not a ‘thing’ to tip in ghoul culture,” said Callum Sweet, self-proclaimed folk-sociologist from Megaton. “They just don’t understand the practice, so when you flash this fancy screen in their face, it drives them mad. In my opinion, it’s the number one cause of feral ghouls. RobCo was really irresponsible with this update.”

Several commentators wondered about the potential fallout that this type of Pip-Boy software might cause in Europe, but as of press time, there is simply no official way of knowing.

Boxing Gold Medalist Wrongly Accused of Having Unfair Advantage

BY Matt Fresh 

PARIS — Controversy has overtaken the world of Olympic Boxing as recent Gold Medal winner Matt is facing harassment after being wrongly accused of having an unfair advantage over his competitors. 

Both Matt and his coaches have come out with statements condemning the accusations. 

“I want to make it very clear that Matt did not have an unfair advantage over any of his opponents and he definitely isn’t overtuned,” claimed head coach Kazuchika Takeshita who moonlights as a Nintendo game developer. “Matt is simply an elite level boxer and the only advantage he has is his opponents lack of skill. If his opponents spent more time getting good instead of making baseless accusations maybe they would have done better.”

Matt himself is planning on pursuing legal action over what he claims is defamation.

“To see everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve be trivialized by these false accusations is heartbreaking and fills me with rage. I have looked into my legal options, my coach knows some great lawyers at Nintendo who are all too happy to help. I’ve tried so many sports before finding my calling in boxing. I’m absolutely terrible at tennis and baseball but boxing, that’s my calling. I’m a multiple time champion and I even spend my off time coaching the next generation of boxers that I then destroy.”

Despite all the evidence pointing to Matt simply being an extraordinarily skilled boxer, some are continuing to believe the ridiculous and baseless claims about him.

“I trained with Matt for a while and under his guidance I was able to breeze through most of my competition before facing him for the championship and he hit me with absolutely unreal combos right out of the gate,” claimed Jackson Hale on Twitter. “I couldn’t defend myself, I couldn’t get a hit in and even when I did he just kept coming. I was a champion in several other sports by the time I fought him and he still handled me like a ragdoll. It definitely wasn’t me not being good, he was just unfair, I was fighting in the Mii League but he fights like a Punch-Out boss. His presence is bad for the integrity of the sport.”

At press time, many of those who have been relentlessly harassing Matt online are reporting that they are extremely distraught and offended over being told they should simply git gud.