Hard Digest May 5: Early Access New Order, Chuck Klosterman, and Bird Watching

New Order Fan Bummed Her Current Love Triangle Is Actually Pretty Mundane

BY JOHN DANEK

MANCHESTER — New wave obsessive and romantic introvert Jana Chapman is disappointed to find herself in a love triangle that no one could possibly consider “bizarre,” embarrassed friends reported.

“I’ve asked three different people and they have confirmed my worst fear: my current love triangle is as boring and conventional as they come,” admitted a crestfallen Chapman, whose commitment to ‘80s fashion and music has caused loved ones some degree of worry. “I’m in love with my office mate, and the IT guy is very clearly into me in a big way. I thought becoming a mid-level manager would be way more erotic. This love triangle is boring as hell and hardly worth singing about over synth baselines and ancient drum machines. Fuckin’ sucks.”

Those close to Chapman recount the peculiar ways in which she is easily excited by situations similar to those described in new wave and post-punk songs.

“Last summer she was utterly obsessed with ‘The Lovecats’ by The Cure, but not because she had a summer fling, she just heard two cats loudly fighting and fucking outside her window,” recalled Paul Grant, whose ‘80s phase ended appropriately at age 20. “And don’t even get me started on her ‘Sunglasses at Night’ phase. She tumbled down the stairs four times before giving it a rest. But New Order will always be her #1. I have to block her phone every Monday just to avoid ‘blue’ puns.”

Bernard Sumner, iconic frontman of New Order and member of Joy Division, stressed the strange nature of his first love triangle which inspired the iconic track.

“I was in love with an ex-felon who mugged my mate, and she was in love with an elderly man she met at a bus stop–now that was goddamn bizarre. Of course I had to write a song about that,” said Sumner, whose recent hobbies include creating burner Reddit accounts to talk shit on Peter Hook. “But ever since that romantic struggle, the rest have been utterly mundane and not particularly inspiring. Our pool boy loves my wife, who loves me. I dare you to try to come up with catchy lyrics for that.”

As of press time, Chapman is reportedly further disheartened, as subordinates claim that in no way can her management style be described with the phrase “Power, Corruption, & Lies.”

Weird! All of this Millennial’s Opinions About Pop Culture Align With Chuck Klosterman’s

BY BEN FRIEDMAN

It’s been said there are no such thing as coincidences, and that naturally occurring phenomena can be explained no matter how bizarre it may first appear. So you would have to excuse us in suspending our belief for a moment after we’ve come across one of the strangest occurrences in recent memory.

Behold, the curious case of 40-year-old Matthew Sullivan, whose opinions about western pop culture align exactly with those espoused by writer Chuck Klosterman. We hardly believed it ourselves until we sat down with him. Literally everything that came out of his mouth matches up with what could be found in any given Klosterman essay or personal story.

“I am perfectly capable of forming my own opinions! As far as anyone is concerned I alone have spent years over-philosophizing about the cultural legacy of ‘Saved by the Bell’,” said Sullivan. “Look me in the eye and tell me Motley Crue isn’t the greatest rock band of all time. Sure I haven’t listened to a single song of theirs, but I just have this nagging feeling that it’s true.”

The mind reels! Every opinion he’s formed since the early 2000’s perfectly syncs with a certain bespectacled best selling author and columnist. It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that Sullivan is a secret Klosterman clone, or perhaps that they literally grew up with the same pop culture references. That or there’s some spiritual mind meld occurring that requires the intervention of a medium.

“Why does everyone think I’m copying him? Sure, it’s possible I may have glazed over an article or two of his. And yes, it appears all of his takes on philosophy and culture resonate with me on a spiritual level like no other. But I swear I figured out that Radiohead predicted the events of 9/11 song by song on ‘Amnesiac’ at least three or four days before ‘Killing Yourself to Live’ was published.”

If we didn’t know any better, Sullivan clearly absorbed Klosterman’s entire school of thought via osmosis in the most bizarre case of parallel thinking of all time. Whether or not his musings on the Lakers, living in North Dakota, Billy Joel fandom, blaming John Cusak for setting unrealistic relationship expectations, or overusing the word ‘ANYWAY’ are creations of his own mind, it’s undeniable that he and his kindred spirit Chuck are very, very annoying.

Ornithologists Admit They Were “Super Horny” When They Named All Those Birds

BY PATRICK COYNE 

NEW YORK — A group of admittedly “horned-up” and “desperate” ornithologists confessed that the majority of questionable bird names were direct results of their uncontrollable randiness.

“There are three main things to know about ornithologists. We have dedicated our lives to the study of birds, we’re all incredibly horny, and we are all very bad at picking up on flirting and innuendo. The majority of names we’ve invented for various feathered theropods started as failed attempts to hit on coworkers. But they took it at face value and we were too embarrassed to correct them, so the names all stuck,” explained Dr. Nicola Odling. “Great tit, funky American woodcock, rough-faced shag, red-shafted flicker, hoary puffleg. Does that really sound like a list of majestic birds, or crass nicknames and crude sexual acts?”

A previously anonymous whistleblower named Dr. Theresa Adler recently came forward to highlight the depths of the community’s debauchery.

“Ornithology has a history of sexual perversion so sick and twisted it makes those freaky melittologists look like choir boys. In fact, birdwatching originally started in 1901 after a mid-climax Sir Edmund Beswick, founding member of the Richmond Park Ornithological Society, noticed a particularly beautiful goldfinch while getting his old-timey ass munched,” said the anonymous Dr. Adler of Katy, Texas. “This also explains why a prerequisite to earning a PHD in ornithology includes successfully hosting an ‘Eyes Wide Shut’-style orgy, complete with bird masks, BDSM, and random bird trivia. Not sure how that’s still legal, but it’s tradition, I suppose.”

Historian Howard Hobbs pointed out that this phenomenon of down-bad scientists is not limited to the field of ornithology.

“Show me any major or minor scientific discovery of the last 1,000 years, and I’ll show you an act of randy desperation,” explained Hobbs. “Some, like the ‘Big Bang,’ are obvious. But others are more surprising. For instance, the legend goes that Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity after seeing an apple fall from a tree. In reality, Newton was trying to fuck the apple, but it kept slipping off his hog. And the less said about the many, many times Louis Pasteur got caught raw dogging his neighbor’s dairy cows, the better.”

At press time, ornithologists have chosen to use a recent, post-orgasm refractory period to rename the seed-eating dickcissel bird something way less suggestive.