After decades of disappointment, Roman Santino is beginning to wonder if the day David Byrne warned him about will ever come.
“I’m starting to think that guy is full of shit”, he told our team.
Hearing “Once in a Lifetime” at a very influential (albeit naive) age, Roman was convinced that if he just zoned out for a few years, he’d wake up to someone else having accomplished his goals and aspirations for him. Unfortunately for him, he mostly checked out of the song after that.
“I mean shit man I’m still living with my parents and don’t even have a girlfriend. I should be like a millionaire or something. I got ideas, man!”
When we asked what sort of ideas he had, they mostly centered around a microwave that heats your food thoroughly. Or at least the idea that someone should make it.
“Look at Steve Jobs! That guy didn’t do shit other than yell ideas at people which is exactly what I’m doing! Where’s my Ashton Kutcher movie???”
We tried pointing him in the direction of some resources to help put his ideas into motion, but he said that before he tried that he was going to check out for a few more years just in case anything happens. I suppose we should just be grateful “Psycho Killer” wasn’t the song he was convinced would happen for him.
The tables just never stop turning do they? In what came as a shock to local father Horatio Gomez, his son’s usual Saturday morning cartoon time was disrupted by calls to play cars.
“I mean it’s like I don’t even know him anymore. And they JUST dropped those new episodes man like what the fuck?”
Horatio’s son (whose name is being withheld so as to not adversely affect any job prospects he might some day have) said he just wanted his father to sit down and play with him. Another sign of this generation’s endless entitlement.
“I pleaded with him. I stomped and cried and bargained but he just sat there. Stoic. Unbothered. I’ve raised a monster.”
From what we are told, Horatio is looking into hiring a local priest to perform an exorcism, and we can only pray that he is able to get the help he needs.
who doesn’t love a good “will they, won’t they” love story? it’s the centerpiece of every successful show since the beginning of time. sam and diane from cheers. jim and pam from the office. sheldon and his mother from young sheldon. the list goes on and on, but the formula is not exclusive to TV.
books and movies have been abusing the formula for ages. the great gatsby is one of my favorite examples in classic literature, but modern romance novels illustrate the point far better. take ten minutes to swipe through the grool-covered “BookTok” community and you’ll find no shortage of variations on a single theme. sure, there are different methods of making these two characters blow their fictional loads in, on, and around each other, such as “friends to lovers,” or “forced proximity,” but the singular premise remains the same: will they? or will they not?
most of these stories resolve within a single book. the more ambitious (see also: “hopelessly horny”) authors will turn their fuck novels into a series with recurring characters, raising the stakes and load counts with each sequel. i think you might see where i’m going with this (especially if you read the title of this article).
enter JRR tolkien (cue the wistful pan flutes, please). after inventing a new language, this mf decided that his language deserved a book to go with it. after casually inventing one of the most expansive and detailed fantasy worlds in history as a means to justify this new language, he created one of the most legendary creatures to ever grace fiction (at least until rian johnson created porgs for the last jedi): a hobbit.
hobbits are simple, folksy farmers who represent all that is good and pure in this world. they live not just in tolerance of nature, but celebrate it and cultivate the earth with reverence. they work to live, enjoy good food, tobacco, and friends. say what you will about peter jackson’s adaptation of the LOTR series, but he nailed this culture of middle earth. in my opinion, jackson also had a strong grasp on tolkien’s themes of strength through courage, friendship, and love in the face of insurmountable odds.
but did jackson fully understand the love? we may never know—jackson lives in new zealand and i can’t afford a plane ticket to ask. but we can be sure that tolkien understood the love. his writing was way too sexy for him to be unaware. take for example, these real af, not edited in anyway whatsoever quotes from the LOTR books:
“Tom put his mouth to the crack and began singing into it in a low voice. They could not catch the words, but evidently Merry was aroused. His legs began to kick.” — The Fellowship of the Ring
“‘All right,’ said Frodo, as if returning out of a dream. ‘I’m coming. Go on!’ Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze…” — The Two Towers
“It went in at last, and Butterbur’s face was a study in wonder. The eyes in his broad face grew round, and his mouth opened wide, and he gasped. ‘Strider!’ he exclaimed when he got back his breath.” — The Return of the King
and these don’t even include the long, lustful stares that legolas and gimli share throughout the adventure, the bubbling sexual frustration between aragorn and eomer, or the entire chapter of the two towers in which merry and pippin penetrate themselves repeatedly on treebeard’s limbs in fangorn forest. you’re telling me there was no intent behind tolkien’s writing?
the sad truth, however, is that tolkien wrote this epic homoerotic adventure in an era in which to be anything but cisgendered, white, and aggressively straight was met with passionate, coordinated hostility. and while not much has changed in the last century, we can at least look at his intent with fresh eyes now that historians have finally admitted that all those historical women who were “best friends” could possibly have been more than just a knitting club that wasn’t accepting more than two members.
so tolkien wrapped up frodo’s beautiful cumming of age journey in the guise of “friendship” and left readers to decide for themselves how frodo and sam kept themselves warm all those nights spent in the mountains. half a century later, jackson secured the funding and rights needed to take the biggest swing of his career and give the LOTR books the big budget, silver screen adaptation it deserved. and we may never again see such an ambitious, faithful, and well-intentioned adaptation of a beloved book series again. but it is the official opinion of me that peter jackson missed the subtleties of tolkien’s erotic intent and accidentally created a trilogy so faithful to the source material that the eroticism slipped in as easily as a hobbit eating a bucket of fried chicken can put on the one ring.
if you don’t believe me, i’ve saved the most damning evidence for last. compare these two quotes from interviews with jackson and tolkien, respectively, and come to your own conclusion:
“Frodo and Sam are best friends. They’re closer than most friends will ever be. I suppose I can see how people might view them as lovers retrospectively, but they’ve been through so much by the end of [Return of the King] that we simply can’t fathom how deep their bonds of friendship go.” — Interview with Peter Jackson, Entertainment Weekly, 2004
for full effect, please click on this selection from howard shore’s masterful LOTR soundtrack prior to reading tolkien’s quote below: soundtrack here!
“Yeah, hobbits eat ass. Hobbits eat ass for foreplay. They build little chairs into the corners of their hobbit holes so they can watch their neighbors eat out their wives. Frodo and Sam were filling each other up every night, sometimes two, three times a day when they couldn’t travel for fear of being caught by the servants of the Dark Lord. Hobbits are mad freaks fr.” — Interview with J.R.R. Tolkien, 1956
In a scene for the ages, your coworker was able to ignore not just your verbal disinterest, but also all of your body language; resulting in a marathon of lacking self awareness.
Not even you turning your chair back to your computer made any difference, as they continued rambling about a political stance that you really did not have the energy for.
We tried to reach out to them for comment but they just went on another rant about whose fault rising inflation is and what they would to to fix it. Even as we hopped in our van to leave they followed us and leaned on the door of it to make sure we fully understood what they were talking about. (We didn’t)
Never before has the world seen a talent of this caliber, and we really hope for our sake that we don’t ever again.
Life sure comes at you fast doesn’t it? You spent years creating the perception that your taste in music was exquisite and convincing people that anyone who disagrees with you is a sheep but between work and relationships, now you couldn’t name a single current act doing anything that “matters”! Don’t worry, here are a few tips on where to go from here:
1. Stop taking yourself so fucking seriously
Here’s the good news: your music taste probably wasn’t ever actually that good. Different doesn’t always mean better and your friends have been trying to tell you that for years. Lighten up!
2. Find something else to be a dick about
Alright, alright. We know what you’re thinking on that first tip. “Nooo please I need a thing! I can’t be a person without a thing!”. Fine we get it. Consider picking up a new hot take to base your entire life around! Maybe insist that reverse searing steak is the only real way to do it now since “we’re not fucking cavemen anymore”. Perhaps we can interest you in a Trump flag or 12? How about getting really good at lawn care and then judging the shit out of anyone else’s (Bonus points if their lawn looks better than yours but you insist it looks awful). The possibilities are endless!
3. Gaslight people into forgetting you ever were a music snob
This one is our favorite. It’s really fun to go back and “start liking” the same pop music you used to shit on. If anyone calls you out on it, call them a fucking liar and insist there’s no way they know you better than you know yourself. Some people are going to fight you pretty hard on this one so just make sure you’ve got something unsavory on all of your friends; that way you can instantly invalidate anything they say by making them sound like a total piece of shit.
4. Double down! Insist the music you used to like is where music peaked
This one is the most common route, which is ironic when you consider how unique you insisted you were. But hey, no judgement here! We’re just like you! A fun spin on this one is saying the music you liked was so far ahead of its time. “What’s that? This is what music sounds like now? Well the new generation didn’t do it first so it’s derivative and also that just reinforces what I’m saying”.
That’s all we’ve got for now, but we’re confident that if you pick one of these steps and fully commit to it, you’ll be able to maintain that exhausting energy you’ve come to be known for. Good luck!
A major win for the proletariat in 2024? Yes please!
With so many laws being passed that seem to be aimed strictly at kneecapping the working class, desperate times call for desperate measures. Workers in Riverside county have taken an unorthodox approach, with staggering results.
“I was just having such a shitty day I was worried I was going to lose it and start wailing on my boss. Right at that moment my body took the wheel and gave me the answer to all of the problems I was having.”
Javier Mendez was in the middle of being reprimanded for breathing outside of his allotted “state mandated respiratory recuperation break”, when he began urinating on himself.
“I just started pissing, man. My dickhead boss just froze mid sentence and when I realized that, I knew we were locked in a battle of wits. I maintained eye contact without blinking and after a few seconds he crumbled and walked out of the room. I thought to myself, ‘this is big.'”
He then ran to a few of his coworkers and told them what happened. One of them, Stephanie Donaldson, knew exactly what situation she could leverage this information for.
“They had been jerking me around for a while about a raise so I figured I’d give it a shot. I went in there, demanded a raise, then just let it rip. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence he said I could have whatever I wanted as long as I stopped.”
After that they told a few more friends, who told some others, and now the entire county is in a yellow stained worker’s rights Renaissance. The workers are excited to weld this power for another while, or at least until management is ready to start shitting themselves to combat this.
In another blow to the Nintendo fanbase, Nintendo has announced their next Metroid game will feature a different type of space pirate as the main antagonist.
For years now, Nintendo has been waging war on the emulation and modding communities of their games. Countless fan-made games have been hit with cease and desists, mods have been removed from sites, and children’s drawings of Mario have been burned in front of them. These actions have been mostly received unfavorably by the community but Nintendo hopes to sway public opinion to their side with Metroid: Basement Dwellers (Yes, that is the real name).
The recently released demo puts players straight into the first mission of the game, where they have to hunt down a toddler who was reported for playing Pokemon Maroon Version on their parent’s old cellphone. In an effort to make the game less violent, Samus’s arm canon has been removed, but the developers decided to replace it with a spiked fist. A questionable choice from our perspective.
Leaked documents show that when Nintendo of America was asked which route they thought the next game should go, they wanted Samus to stop Space pirates from giving space abortions. Luckily Nintendo headquarters felt that wouldn’t be as accessible in the rest of the world.
We reached out to a representative from Nintendo for comment, but we don’t speak Japanese. We will continue to post updates as the game nears release.
It was a beautiful Tuesday morning. The weather was cooler than it had been in a week and Stan Levinson woke up feeling well rested.
“I felt really good. It was one of those days where you wake up feeling like it will take a lot to kill your mood.”
But it didn’t.
“When I got in my car to drive to work I thought about the fact that I hadn’t listened to Sigur Ros in a while so I threw that on and just totally fucked my day up.”
The song that played was “Alright”. What possessed him to throw on such an emotionally devastating song at 6:30 in the morning is beyond us, but he did nevertheless.
“About halfway through the song I realized the mistake I had made but goddamn that song is so good. I couldn’t bring myself to turn it off so as soon as it ended I just spent the rest of the drive picturing horrible situations happening to me and my family”
Stan claims the experience carried over to after he got to work. He had trouble focusing, little motivation, and felt like he just wanted to listen to more music that would make him feel even worse.
“I mean fuck man the government has to do something about this. My kid could have heard that song you know?”
When we attempted to follow up with him the night after we interviewed him, he still looked like shit and wouldn’t talk to us.
(I can’t be the only person who does this, right?)
Scientists have discovered new evidence to support the claim that it isn’t actually your food that ants want. A study that has taken three years to complete has determined that most ants are attracted to the smell of Polyvinyl Chlorides, and the rarer the pressing, the stronger the scent to them.
“We really pulled out all the stops for this study”, says Dr. Thaddeus Crunk, the head Myrmecologist on the study. “I even personally supplied my super rare mono DJ copy of In The Court Of The Crimson King, which was immediately ruined by all of the ants in the study filing the grooves of the record with their semen.”
Using the latest technology, we were able to communicate with a local ant colony and ask the queen about why they so strongly pursue these records.
“What a casual ass question. If you have to ask you’re not gonna get it. Dork.”
After learning this information, we couldn’t help but wonder… if ants are attracted to rare vinyl, what is used to make ant repellant? We spoke with a representative from Raid and they finally spilled the beans on the secret ingredient they had kept under wraps all these years: ground up unsold Hit Clips of Mmbop by Hansen.
In a shocking turn of events, it was discovered this morning that the thing you’ve been procrastinating hasn’t gone away. While this is certainly unprecedented, more than one of our people on the scene have confirmed this to be the case.
In an effort to understand how this could be possible we reached out to Dr. Franklin Lindholm, a theoretical physicist whose work has revolutionized his field. “No fuckin way. You’re full of shit. Suck my cock you goddamn liar show me some proof.” An uncharacteristically animated response from a notoriously stoic man. However after we showed him how we were able to prove this findings, he was even more shaken. “Oh my God. This can’t be. You don’t understand, this invalidates all of my work from the past 7 years. This will ruin me. You can’t publish this article PLEASE I BEG YOU”.
It was at this point that he pulled out a gun. His eyes went black. Sweat appeared on his forehead and he shook uncontrollably.
“I don’t want to do this” he said, “But I have no choice. I’ll be a laughing stock.
“No one has to publish anything” My editor Paolo DiVincezo said ” And no one has to get hurt. Just please put the gun down and we can talk about this.”
Paolo had been my editor for well over a decade. We had been so many placed together and reported on so many things, but this was different. An event we never could have thought possible, and now we were looking down the barrel of a gun held by one of the leading thinkers in our country. It couldn’t end like this.
I racked my brain trying to think of how I could take the gun from Dr. Lindholm but as I tried to come up with a plan fate seemed to intervene. There was a golf ball on the floor that the doctor had dropped a few days prior but kept putting off dealing with. As he approached us he slipped on it and Paolo pounced on him before I was able to react. They began wrestling for control of the gun when a shot rang out. Silence filled the room as we tried to determine who has struck by the bullet. Paolo had been hit.
This man had saved my life so many times and I had returned the favor just as many but now I was powerless to help him. I ran to his side and just as I got to him a security guard kicked in the door and detained Dr. Lindholm. “PAOLO NO! PLEASE LOOK AT ME PAOLO. THIS IS GOIGN TO BE FINE YOU’RE ALRIGHT”, I cried. His laughed weakly. “I had been meaning to get a gun but… I kept putting it off. Looks like the only thing going away… is me….”
“That couldn’t have sounded as good as it did in your head”
“No it didnt”
And he was gone. This article is in memory of Paolo DiVincezo. The best editor I ever had. I’ve been meaning to tell his family about what happened but I’m sure if I wait long enough someone else will deal with it.
pete n' tony's internet adventure 