WASHINGTON — In a real turnaround from its decades of financial ruin, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that, actually, Twitter is, always has been and always will be, profitable and that there’s “nothing the woke DEI mob can do to stop it.”
“Today marks a momentously momentous moment in our Glorious Great Nation’s Extensive History, as the greatest social media platform of all time moves out from under the very wrong, very bad, very incorrect notion that it’s ‘a digital pit for setting real money on fire’ and is ‘overrun with bots that neither spend money on advertised products nor accurately account for the goings-on of reality,’ and into the 20th century as the MOST PROFITABLE AND BEST PLATFORM EVER,” The President posted exclusively to Truth Social immediately after signing the order.
Elon Musk, Twitter owner, CEO, and catalyst for a mass-exodus of advertisers, was ecstatic at the news.
“Honestly, after spending billions of dollars to prove I was shadow-banned, a real thing I am still fighting and will never give up on, I’m just happy and thrilled that reality has finally caught up to what I’ve always known in my heart and my gut: I have money, I’m right. No one else is more right than me.” Musk later clarified that the President had potential to be more right than him, under the correct circumstances.
DOGE officials celebrated the move, releasing terabytes of private information freely onto the platform in celebration.
“There was a great man who carried the wisdom of our forebears and founders when he said: If the President does it, it’s not a crime. I believe his name was Ronald Milhouse Reagan and his reich will last a thousand years!” the official later clarified he meant “reich” in the traditional Autistic twitch/Roman sense.
At press time, Congressional Democrats assured voters that with a few dollars more, they could start to look into the legality of any of this.
LOS ANGELES — Physical media fans getting their hands on the 4k UHD of Nosferatu this week will be in for a surprise when they open their steelbook to find a single Marlboro Red cigarette.
Writer and Director, Robert Eggers, appeared on a promotional video on Twitter to announce the groundbreaking special feature in length.
“We’ve partnered with Philip Morris International to deliver a home viewing experience like no other,” Egger’s said before taking a long drag of a cigarette. “Included with each steelbook is a single loosey for your movie viewing enjoyment. Take a puff after each sex scene in Nosferatu and get that post-plow release that only Marlboro Red can give you.”
The video then depicts Egger’s enjoying his cigarette in silence. His eyes pierce the lens of the camera, as if he’s staring into the viewer’s soul. He finishes his cigarette, pulls out a copy of Nosferatu, and retrieves another Marlboro Red from the steelbook.
“Nosferatu is a loveletter to my hardcore sickos,” Eggers said, flicking ashes from his cigarette into a steelbook. “Eggheads were tired of all my sex depraved characters. It reminded them of all the sex they weren’t having. So I caved and made a sexy movie full of sex. But now the fans are reminded even more of all the sex they’re not having. So, uh, the cigarettes are an apology to my sexless fans. Did I mention they were in the room with us when we filmed the sex scenes? Yep, even the one with the dead body. Now leave me alone, I’m off to make a movie about a sexless werewolf.”
Egger’s finishes another cigarette and pulls out another steelbook. He lights his third Marlboro Red as the disclaimer plays him off.
“Robert Eggers does not condone necrophilia or smoking tobacco,” the disembodied voice said at lightspeed. “You will never look as cool as Robert Eggers smoking a Marlboro Red, so don’t even try. If you’re thinking about watching Noseferatu and then complaining about inconsistencies on IMDB, please stick your feedback up your ass. Annoying Letterboxd reviewers should consider smoking a pack a day until they die.”
At press time, Eggers tweeted an image from the set of his latest film depicting a werewolf wearing a chastity belt, with the caption “Back to my roots.”
Most people will tell you The Simpsons got stale decades ago, but I’ve been watching this whole time. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve got their four-fingered hands on the pulse of culture. They’ve been here since Reagan and they know what’s gonna happen next. They predicted Trump’s presidency, Siegfried and Roy’s tiger attack, and that the 20th of the month would eventually fall on a Thursday. Little did I know that they were predicting my life, too: I’ve got jaundice and I’m as yellow as Homer.
I’m surprised that the writers were able to see this coming, considering I’ve never met them, but that shows the genius of the writing team! Heck, they had a bunch of Harvard guys like Conan O’Brian — the king of TBS! — on staff. They’ve put so much effort into making the show believable; it’s no wonder they’ve built a world that’s basically exactly the real world. I find some solace in knowing I can believe what those eggheads put on screen. As soon as I realized I had bulging eyes, three strands of hair, and neon-yellow skin, I knew where I could find representation on TV.
My doctor (who is kind of like real-life Dr. Hibbert) says that my habit of drinking Miller High Life (which is kind of like real-life Duff Beer) every day made health consequences inevitable. That seems pretty suspect to me. We live in reality. Just because Homer and I both go to a bar every day and are filled with hairpin rage doesn’t mean I’m going to turn out exactly like him. Doctors shouldn’t make diagnoses based on a sitcom. What’s next? Telling me I’m gonna turn out like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory just because I have an annoying roommate and I used to be young?
In spite of my doctor trying to scare me, I’m not worried. The prognosis is good. If I’m anything like my heroes, I’ve got 35 more happy years of progressive decline ahead of me.
DANBURY, Conn. – Three unarmed civilians were somehow struck by gunfire at Gamer’s Grove Classic Arcade after a police officer decided to play 1995 light gun game Area 51, sources report.
“I like to come in here during my breaks,” said the culprit, Officer Gary Rabowski. “I just love these old games; plus they help me unwind from my shifts. Unfortunately, I forgot how jumpy this one in particular makes me. I guess I must have used my actual gun when the game told me to fire off screen to reload, and it looks like I did it more than once, because there are several people lying around here with gunshot wounds. I’d say ‘my bad’, but I probably shouldn’t say anything that looks like an admission of guilt.”
Eyewitness Lauren Burke remarked on what she had seen.
“I was playing The Simpsons Arcade Game when I heard this series of deafening gunshots,” Burke commented. “I looked over and three arcade patrons had been shot near some idiot cop with a literal smoking gun in his holster at the Area 51 cabinet. The most shocking thing about it is that he just kept playing his game, and appeared to be completely unaware that he had just shot three innocent people who had been playing close by. I swear, they should just ban cops from this place entirely.”
Criminal justice reform expert Miguel Abarca weighed in on the situation.
“We’ve all seen countless incidents of jittery, trigger-happy police officers shooting people during traffic stops,” Abarca offered. “However, cases of them not even being able to play video games without committing manslaughter tend to get covered up. Whether that’s because the departments are embarrassed, or they simply know they can get away with it depends on the incident. I wish I could say this Rabowski guy is going to be punished for this appalling dereliction of duty, but we all know he’s going to be put on paid leave for a few weeks before getting away scot-free.”
At press time, Donald Trump has announced he will be awarding Rabowski the Presidential Medal of Valor.
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Former Activision Blizzard CEO claimed that a lawsuit filed against the company by the state of California was a conspiracy organized by disgruntled employees to attain restitution for acts of discrimination and harassment.
“You look at these fake lawsuits against companies like us and Riot, and it’s wild,” said Kotick during an interview on Grift, a podcast produced by venture capital firm Kleiner Gurkens. “These wagies conspired against us in an unjust effort to stop us from not only extracting their labor, but demeaning them while doing so. It is the natural right of the tech executive and his court to treat his workforce as subhuman and grind them into dust. What compensation could we possibly owe them?”
Former EA executive Bing Gordon also appeared on the podcast and broadly agreed with Kotick.
“What these gray little peons don’t understand is that we who have been chosen to rule live under an immense burden,” said Gordon. “Sure, we may appear comfortable as we sit our cushioned throne surrounded by unimaginable riches, but the slime-covered slugs we call employees can’t see that there is a sword hung above our head suspended by a thread of barest gossamer: a sword inscribed with the words, ‘Possibly Not Making Even More Money.’ Under such conditions, you must forgive us the occasional aggressive sexual proposition or death threat. It’s not like your bodies or lives actually mean something the way ours do.”
Industry insiders noted that these reactions were common among wealthy tech investors and executives.
“You have to understand, they’ve been saying these things privately for years,” said Bryce Tang, who has written four separate biographies of Elon Musk. “They just thought they couldn’t say it all publicly or they wouldn’t be invited to cool parties. The advent of the second Trump administration made them all realize they could do or say whatever the hell they want, now. And it’s not just gaming execs. It’s Bezos, Zuckerberg, hell, even that weenie Steve Huffman from Reddit. They’re very small, pathetic men, and all they do all day is sit around and imagine that they’re actually impressive people and that any criticism of them is unfair. I’m sure Kotick has convinced himself that this lawsuit actually is bullshit.”
At press time, Kotick claimed that his name only appeared in Epstein’s black book due to a, “legitimate invocation of prima nocta.”
SEATTLE, Wash. — Alan Murk, a local boyfriend who has professed a fear of long-term commitment, reportedly watched the first episode of One Piece and intends to watch the whole thing.
“We’ve been together for years,” said Murk’s girlfriend, Pam Dylan, who has yet to formally meet his parents. “He’s told me we can’t move in together because it’s too fast and too big a move and he’s scared of being tied down. Yesterday I went to his place and I could hear the One Piece theme tune through the door. I would have preferred hearing another woman’s voice.”
Anthony Ryland, a relationship expert, said this was a common behavior in young people who are commitment averse.
“We’re seeing more and more of this each year,” said Ryland, who is waiting for A Song of Ice and Fire to be finished by George R.R. Martin before he can propose to his boyfriend. “A man will pick up the first volume of Golgo 13, an ongoing Manga with 215 volumes, before they will introduce their girlfriend as anything other than their friend.”
Murk defended his choice as being the smartest move in the long run.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Pam,” said Murk after finishing the Arabasta Saga. “But is she as dependable as Luffy? As Usopp? I mean, she hasn’t got a patch on Zoro. Once I hit episode 1000, I’ll be ready to talk about thinking about the conversation we could have about considering moving in together. Or maybe I’ll wait for Eiichiro Oda to finish the whole thing. Oh, I’ve just got a text from Pam. Yeah, she broke up with me.”
At the time of reporting, Murk decided that this is the perfect time to start watching every episode of classic Doctor Who rather than talking to his girlfriend about whether she should have a toothbrush that she leaves at his apartment.
BISMARK, N.D. — A panel titled “Go Woke, I’ll Fucking Kill You” that took place at the first annual “Gamers’ Rights” convention at the Bismark Airport Drury Inn conference center broke out into the most public display of lolicon defense in recorded history.
“This was staged by wokie agitators,” said event organizer Derek Fleegan, known as “Buck Chudley” on YouTube and X. “We came here to peacefully discuss why people who force woke ideas into games should be killed. That’s it. Video games are supposed to be fun, not make you think about stuff. Especially not stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable or like maybe there are things about yourself that you are too emotionally fragile to contend with, and if I ever were to accept myself for who I was, I might actually have a shot at being happy…but as I was saying, once that rabble-rouser disrupted the panel I had no choice but to defend the arts.”
The rabble-rouser was Danielle Cooper, the lone female attendant of the convention who shared her experience online.
“The person sitting next to me asked if I was a fan of a certain anime I won’t name, and I told them I thought it was a little creepy ‘cause of how young the characters look and how they might be just a little sexualized,” Cooper said. “He stood up so fast it knocked his chair down and he shouted, ‘She said lolicon is creepy!’. Then Buck Chudley pulled a megaphone out from under the table, started shouting, and ordered the audience to throw their body pillows at me which they did without question. Some of them were full of Beyblades. I had to get eight stitches on my head.”
Hayden Brayden-Jayden, the attendee who alerted the others to Ms. Cooper’s comment, spoke in defense of his actions.
“Once again, feminism has stooped to a new low by planting a mole among our numbers,” Brayden-Jayden said. “As if anyone worth their salt would believe for an instant a woman who might be interested in defending games would come here. Real Gamer Girls know it would be unwise for one of the fairer sex to be exposed to such concentrated levels of Alpha Gamer, and thus the only logical conclusion is the one who did have the misguided notion to ingratiate herself with us would have to be a mole. There’s no other logical explanation. She was wrong though—about the lolicon. These liberals love to defend art when it’s something queer like a book, but when it comes to real art then suddenly censorship is justified. My philosophy is: If I can’t goon to it, I’m not interested.”
At press time, Buck Chudley had uploaded ten separate videos explaining how none of this was his fault and that next year’s convention would take place in another city as all attendees had been permanently banned from the city of Bismark.
HYRULE — Concerned Kakariko Village parents began to petition city officials to fence off a local chasm when a third child plummeted into the Depths after wandering into it, sources report.
“How many more of our children have to die before the Hylians who’ve sworn to protect us do something about it?” resident Saphie told reporters. “The people of West Necluda are perpetually in a state of mourning because that infernal chasm has claimed three of our babies, and what is that supposed hero Link doing? Last I heard he was out in Central Hyrule running over Bokoblins in poorly-built, Zonaite-fueled vehicles that he fashioned together. Our next best option is to plead with our public officials to build a fence and prevent more deaths.”
Kirru, a local merchant, agreed with Saphie.
“Yeah, this town just isn’t as safe as it used to be,” Kirru reflected “It used to be that you could venture out of town at any time, but ever since the Upheaval, you’re liable to come across one of those huge chasms or, even worse, a horde of murderous Lizalfos. I’m always warning the children around here to stay away from that chasm, but you know how they are. Telling them not to do something just fuels their desire to do it, and now Kakariko Village has three dead kids on its hands. We’ve just got to build that fence.”
West Necluda Head of Public Works Fildi weighed in on the situation.
“Listen, I commiserate with these poor parents. I really do,” Fildi said. “It’s just that revenue in this part of Hyrule has skyrocketed ever since that chasm opened the door to the puffshroom trade, and fencing it off might negatively impact our routes to the Depths. King Ganondorf has imposed some very strict fealty taxes throughout Hyrule, and we need to make up that lost money somehow. I’m not saying the deaths of those children is a fair tradeoff, but the town has never been in a better place financially.”
At press time, Fildi compromised with the parents by giving each child in Kakariko Village a paraglider.
WASHINGTON — In a last-minute executive order issued right before he left for Mar-A-Lago, President Trump declared that Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. will be pressured to rewrite the song “Yakko’s World” from Animaniacs and replace every country with “America”. Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav announced in a press release that Warner Bros. would be cooperating with the order.
The order states, “Today, I am dispatching the Secretary of Education to Warner Bros. Headquarters in Burbank, CA with the intent to meet with the Animaniacs themselves. The song ‘Yakko’s World’ has always been an example of American excellence, and it should represent American values. Therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, hereby declare that ‘Yakko’s World’ shall be rewritten with the exclusion of all un-American lyrics to better reflect the superiority of our great nation. Zip zop zoo!” In a footnote, President Trump explained that he’s trying out some new catchphrases, and that ‘Zip zop zoo’ is “still a work in progress.”
The creators of the song had mixed reactions to the executive order.
“On the one hand, this song is one of the highlights of my career,” said Rob Paulsen, the voice of Yakko, “On the other hand, it’ll be so much easier to recite at cons.” Randy Rogel, the writer of Yakkos’ world, had a more positive reaction: “This is actually the way I originally envisioned the song. I was just young and felt like I needed to be politically correct, so I added all the other countries. ”
Meanwhile, the Public Relations manager for the Animaniacs reports that Dot is feeling “A lot of irritation and violent impulses regarding this decision” and that Yakko is “Fighting this in court by doing a pitch-perfect impression of Dustin Hoffman in the climax of Lenny.” As of writing, Wakko was still in rehab and was unavailable for comment.
While some informational resources, such as Wikipedia and Ultimate-Guitar.com, have resisted pressure from the White House to revise the lyrics in their respective databases, other sites such as AZlyrics and Genius have replaced their existing entries for “Yakko’s World” with the revised version mandated by the government.
According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, President Trump plans on ordering a “drastically shortened version” of each government-focused song from Schoolhouse Rock!
I didn’t get the chance to play Urban Myth Dissolution Center at last year’s PAX West, but it was lurking over my shoulder. A prominent booth near several of my other appointments featured UMDC, with enormous key art that featured some guy staring at me with ominous intent. I figured I’d have to check it out eventually, if only to find out what it was.
UMDC came out this week, and it turns out that it’s a detective-themed visual novel about solving folklore crimes. The vibe can be adequately described as a PG-13 season of “Scooby-Doo”; it’s a spooky all-ages story about a teenage detective who has the worst first day at a new job since Leon Kennedy.
You play UMDC as Azami Fukurui, a university student in Japan who’s started seeing strange spirits everywhere she goes. Worried that she’s going crazy, she decides to visit the offices of an obscure government organization called the Urban Myth Dissolution Center to see if it can help her.
The Center’s director Meguriya explains to Azami that what she’s seeing are actually images of the recent past, as she’s weakly clairvoyant. Meguriya gives her a pair of special glasses that allow Azami to focus her gift to the point where it’s useful, but also blackmails her into working for the Center as a field investigator.
Azami’s clairvoyance gives her the potential to become a great detective, and her job at the Center is to determine the truth behind sightings of the supernatural throughout the city. However, her appearance at the Center is also apparently the first confirmation of a prophecy that foretells the end of the world.
UMDC plays out over the course of 6 episodes, each of which is built around a new case. Notably, Azami isn’t sent to actually solve crimes, but instead, to figure out the truth behind reports of paranormal activity. Sometimes someone’s using an urban myth as cover for something more mundane; other times, there actually is something supernatural going on, even if it’s just Azami herself. Either way, Azami’s job is to flag the specific phenomena and clear out. She’s not a cop.
In each scene, your goal is to discover a set number of possible clues through interviews, exploration, monitoring social media feeds, and using Azami’s clairvoyance to get hazy visions of past events. Once you’ve got enough information, you can put together Azami’s working hypothesis through a simple word puzzle, then present your conclusions to Meguriya to close the case.
The first real hurdle to enjoying UMDC is that it’s absolutely aimed at a young teenage audience. If you’re an adult with any taste for mysteries at all, you’ll likely figure out each of UMDC’s cases about half an hour before Azami does. You have to cut Azami some slack, as she’s explicitly traumatized from the jump and only becomes more so over the course of the game, but I can only take so much haplessness in a protagonist at once.
The second issue is the same problem I had with Vampire Therapist: UMDC doesn’t appear to have any failure conditions. You can’t miss any clues and I couldn’t get Azami to move forward with a flawed hypothesis. There’s nothing at stake here besides wanting to see what happens next.
That being said, I probably would’ve gone crazy for UMDC when I was about 12. It’s a young-adult interactive horror manga in the spirit of something like Goosebumps or “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”, with a love of creepy monsters and weird history. There’s even an occasional halfway decent moral, like “don’t be a dick on social media.”
Urban Myth Dissolution Center falls into a critical blind spot, as I’m well outside its obvious target audience. For adults, it’s slowly paced, features some entry-level pseudo-mysteries, and revolves around a few obnoxious story beats. Azami simply rolls with every punch she’s given, rather than ever exhibiting the slightest hint of a spine, and it makes her hard to empathize with. (The American adaptation of UMDC begins the same way, but the moment Meguriya starts the blackmail plot, American!Azami tases him and runs for the door.)
On the other hand, if you know a kid who’s a big manga and/or horror fan, UMDC would be perfect for them. It’s a gateway product by design, made as a useful introduction to a few interesting, potentially socially devastating topics at once. As an elder weirdo, anything that’s meant to inform and create future generations of young weirdos has my uncritical support.
[Urban Myth Dissolution Center, developed by Hakababunko and published by Shueisha Games, is now available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam for $17.99. This column was written using a copy of the Steam version that was purchased by Hard Drive.]
