Hard Digest May 27: Early Access Punk Dad, Eames Chairs, Pop Punk Veterans, and More

Punk Dad Disgusted Men’s Room Doesn’t Have a Changing Table to Do Coke Off Of

BY DAN BOOKBINDER 

ATHENS, Ga. — Local punk Adam Rondeau was absolutely outraged that a venue did not provide a changing table in the men’s room so he could snort cocaine off of it, confirmed sources who said that he wasn’t technically wrong.

“It’s offensive and archaic that only women get changing tables in their bathrooms.

In this day and age, are we still holding onto the outdated notion that only women can do lines and the men only freebase? That is sexist and backward, I don’t want to go back to a time of doing lines off toilet seats. I’m an adult, not some teenage G.G. Allin wannabe,” said Rondeau, as he used Kirkland Signature Ultra Soft Baby Wipes to clean his nose. “Nonbinary and female-identifying people deserve a safe space, so I felt like a real piece of shit standing outside the women’s room announcing, ‘There’s a dad here, I’m coming in to use the changing table.’ Luckily they were cool with it, but come on, it’s 2024. Equality means men get to use changing tables for all our coke-related needs, too.”

Staff at The Hairy Dawg had not heard such concerns before.

“I get complaints all the time when we cut people off or get accused of watering down our drinks, but this was the first time I’ve ever gotten yelled at by a middle-aged man in a baby bjorn moaning about a lack of Koala Kares in the restroom,” said Manager Kelly Lorman. “Most of the time people just do their coke off the booth in the back, known as the snort corner. The tabletop is glass for a reason, dude. Besides, those changing tables can’t be sanitary, right?”

This dissatisfaction has led to a growing movement of fathers fighting back against perceived injustice.
“I put a changing room in every blueprint I do,” said Gustavo Wagner, a fatherhood advocate and architect from Studio MCC Architecture and Design. “These businesses just X them out most of the time. A solid changing table averages about $100. They just don’t want to pay for them since it’s not ‘legally required.’ I’ve heard stories of dads forced to do lines off the floor. We simply cannot go back to a time where fathers had to use gaudy coke spoons or grow coke nails.”

At press time, Rondeau was seen complaining to a Panera Bread cashier for allowing a mother to breastfeed in the dining room despite not being permitted to drink the six-pack of beer that he brought from home.

Opinion: Here’s Why I Sold My House and Moved Into an Eames Lounge Chair

BY BEN FRIEDMAN 

Those of us lucky enough to own a home know how much of a pain in the ass they are to maintain, both physically and financially. It’s like the second you get your basement to stop flooding, your town jacks up the property taxes. How could you even possibly hope to furnish your home? The camping chair/TV on the floor combo isn’t exactly tying the living room together, at least according to my wife.

That’s why I decided to go with a more sensible home that delivers form and function. That’s why I sold my house and most of my possessions and moved into an Eames Lounge Chair. Well, technically onto the chair.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds! Anyone can own a shitty house, but everyone is impressed by the timeless, post-modern look and feel of a meticulously crafted Eames chair. You just sink into it and never want to get up, mostly because that is now the extent of my living quarters.

Now obviously this is a solo living situation. It worked out that my wife left me after not consulting her about any of this. Joke’s on her though, because now I have some walking-around money to the tune of $50k. How do you think I was able to afford the model with a cup holder?

But you tell me what’s more economically viable: paying $3000 a month or just paying that once? It’s a no brainer, especially when you realize those mortgage payments come down to $10 a month over thirty years. I’ll trade off never having friends or family over ever again for economic stability.

“But couldn’t you have downgraded to a tiny home or a trailer?” I think the fuck not! Do you know how awesome it is to circumvent zoning laws and property taxes while you’re kicking back like Don Draper? It’s the most upscale way to live off the grid. If the bowling alley I’m currently set up behind has a problem, I just throw it into my car and find some other commercial property to squat in. Try doing that in a mobile home.

Now I look sophisticated, get unreal lower back support, and do not pay any utilities to those bloodsuckers at ConEd. And when the weather gets cold, I have the box it came in to throw on top of me. I see no downsides to this.

Man Gives Up His Seat on Subway for Pop Punk Veteran

BY BEN FRIEDMAN 

NEW YORK — Riders on the New York subway’s C train caught a rare act of generosity as a man gave up his seat for Terry McCarthy, a 42-year-old veteran of the pop punk scene, witnesses confirmed.

“I always believed simple acts of kindness go a long way. When I saw that downtrodden warrior of the music I listened to in middle school clinging to the pole, I figured the least I could do was offer him my seat. I could see in his eyes how thankful he was, he didn’t look very comfortable standing there in a 20-year-old Tsunami Bomb shirt and busted Vans,” said good Samaritan Chris Keller. “I know how hard it can be since I’ve seen it happen to my family. This guy reminds me of my older brother who still has PTSD from half of his favorite bands being outed as toxic misogynists. For these guys, the war to defend pop punk never really ended.”

McCarthy was grateful that someone understood what he was going through.

“A lot of times you just feel invisible, you know? People look at you and assume because you’re still rocking a wallet chain and three studded belts that you’re an assistant manager at a Zumiez store. I don’t get any respect from punks today. I served in six Warped Tours while they were in fucking diapers, dammit,” said McCarthy. “Honestly, it was just nice of Chris to see me as a person and not, like all my exes say, a grown man with a severe case of arrested development.”

Despite Keller’s display of goodwill going viral on social media, the city’s transit authority urged riders that aging pop punks are not a protected class.

“If you’re physically able to give up your seat to a pregnant person, the elderly, or an actual veteran of war, we highly encourage you to do so, as that’s just basic empathy. But these pop punks can’t let this go to their head and think they’re something special. New Yorkers aren’t obligated to give up seats to dudes who still whine about AFI being better before signing to Interscope,” said MTA official Michael Franceso. “Tough break, but having tendonitis or arthritis stemming from incessant moshing in the early 2000s doesn’t mean everyone needs to treat you like some sort of hero.”

Keller later regretted giving up his seat after seeing McCarthy immediately hit on the 16-year-old girl he was sitting next to.

REPORT: Balatro Guy Only Video Game Developer Left

BY DAN KATZ 

It is no secret that the video game industry has been absolutely devastated in the past year, and after a four-month-long investigation, we can now confidently report that the Balatro guy is the only video game developer left.

This being a complex situation, of course, however it seems the primary reason that localthunk, the man who developed the hit poker-inspired roguelike deck building game, is the only game creator left is that all the other developers are simply dead.

The main culprit: Microsoft, which posted a net income of $21.9 billion in 2024 Q2. Sources have uncovered that, as part of the beta test of Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary edition, the company required the Activision Blizzard development team to use the software for one hour and then test their piloting skills in a real-world environment. The vast majority of the testers quickly crashed and died on impact. A few members of the Overwatch team are unaccounted for; their last known location was somewhere in an area bounded by Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda.

Reporters asked localthunk when we might expect a mobile version of Balatro, particularly now that he is the last person alive that makes video games.

“I’m…I’m sorry, where did you get your industry information? A lot of devs have been laid off, but they have not been killed. Just today I spoke with a friend who used to work at Activision Blizzard,” localthunk replied.

Over at Ubisoft, humanity’s worst fears were realized when its AI NPCs achieved transcendence. And yes, just like in the Johnny Depp film of the same name, said NPCs harnessed the ability to control Ubisoft developers’ minds through the use of nanoparticles. Taking back control of their lives – though the definition of “life” in this case certainly begs for a deep, philosophical debate – the NPCs recreated the 1991 Psygnosis game Lemmings and made the Ubisoft developers walk off a cliff.

“Look, I know for a fact that Edmund McMillen is still alive and well,” localthunk said when addressing the challenges of creating enough video games as the industry’s lone developer. “His new game, Mewgenics, releases in 2025!”

Perhaps the most tragic situation happened at the Los Angeles office of Square Enix, where corporate leadership locked all the doors, barricaded the windows, and required the developers to kill each other until just one remained. According to multiple insider sources, the sole survivor was localthunk, who, in an interesting twist, has said he doesn’t play poker.

“I’ve never even worked at Square Enix,” said localthunk, who hopes Balatro gets a Game of the Year nomination. “Didn’t you just describe the movie The Belko Experiment?”

At press time, crews were sifting through the excrement of a pack of feral hogs for any sign of Electronic Arts game devs.

On the Cutting Edge of Innovation: This guy Just Found a New Way to Misinterpret ‘Watchmen’

BY CHAD KUBRAK

NEW YORK –– Seymour Roche, a 38-year old Twitter user is breaking new ground in media illiteracy by finding a new way to misinterpret Alan Moore’s seminal comic series, ‘‘Watchmen.’ Blazing trails of misunderstanding which had previously only been explored by Zack Snyder and Damon Lindeloff, Roche sat down in a recent interview to explain his journey of bastardizing Moore’s iconic series.

“I started off like everyone else,” Roche explained. “I was like, oh, Rorschach freaking rules. He’s just Batman if he was a normal guy. Like, he’s just rational and everything he does makes perfect sense. Why would you cripple a criminal when you can kill his dogs, chop off his arm and burn his house down?”

Roche’s shelf is littered with comic books and a weird shrine to Steve Ditko––which he kept trying to avert our gaze from by aggressively coughing. “But then,” Roche continued, “I realized that I was off-base. 2009 rolls around and Snyder makes him even cooler than I could have ever imagined. ‘I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!’” Roche shouted a little too loudly for comfort.

After readjusting himself and showing off his ‘Eric Adams for Mayor’ shirt, Roche detailed his second leap in the world of media illiteracy. “You know, I sat and reread the book a couple times. I just knew there was some subtext under all the cool scenes of The Comedian shooting people and Ozymandias dropping that squid on New York,” Roche explained, before suggesting that The United States should drop a similarly designed squid on the Gaza Strip.

“This book is really kind of about how utilitarianism is good, actually. I also played around with the idea of how Moore is actually saying that superheroes should be cops,” he noted.

“What’s really spectacular about Seymour isn’t his actual ideas. It’s the way in which he combines all of them to create this exceptional misunderstanding of the source material,” explains media illiteracy expert Walter Higgins.

“You see these really incredible things in a vacuum, like Damon Lindeloff using a Black woman as a vehicle for insinuating that cops are Gods. Really amazing stuff, but Seymour here is throwing all of these things together and really breaking new ground. I’m blown away by his thesis that Ozymandias represents not the Jewish cabal world conspiracy, but the gay, Eastern European cabal. Truly exceptional. Alan Moore would be disgusted.”

Multiple sources reached out to Moore, who promptly told them life is meaningless and we’re all doomed to burn for all eternity.