News You Can't Use: Anger Rooms Are All the Rage

It's time for another story that just screams "societal health" and "Edward Gibbon didn't write about this sort of thing." It's an amazing tale about how ostensible adults (millennials, so call that one a push, to be fair) have been reduced to special smash rooms to cure the ennui that sometimes arises from having "whatever my professor told me" as a unifying belief system. Yes, it's time to wreck material objects to temporarily cure the massive void within and if we can earn a few federal reserve play-money notes in the process, well we are capitalists again now that whats-his-name went back to his native Hawaii or Indonesia or whatever.

Smashing things may not seem at first blush to be a winning idea to wrap a business around.

A demolition business? Removing decrepit buildings to make way for new and better construction. That's just, like, not a winning idea. Stick with this B-boy Crew, that's where the real money is.

Since March, however, nearly 1,500 people have shown up to break housewares, electronics and furniture at the Wrecking Club, two reinforced rooms in the basement of a building in the garment district of Manhattan.

New York don't play, sucka. My idea of weekend recreation is smashing a fudging microwave and putting the boots to a living room set. You in the garment district now, fool. Get out while you still got yo' life.

Many of this number are couples looking for something more piquant than the usual date-night fare, said Tom Daly, the Wrecking Club’s proprietor.

I've finally found a good place to take my "fatal attraction" head-case. You can just pretend you're killing my daughter's rabbit and then cooking it.

“That’s the cool thing about addressing an instinct,” he said on a recent steamy afternoon. “Everyone’s got it.”

Nihilistic and pointless destruction, the common glue that unites all of humanity. Who hasn't wanted to kick the stuff out of a love seat or whatever? If you said "no," you're a liar.

Last fall, politics drove the business at the Anger Room, which opened in Dallas in 2008. 

A city populated by costumed junkies, mole people and dangerous break-dancers and the one that shot Kennedy. These are the best sources of that highly non-decadent modern culture.

Clients showed up by the hundreds to batter human effigies of Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: democracy is bad.

“We’ve helped a lot of angry couples,” said Stephen Shew, the owner. (His date-night package, $70 for two electronic devices and 20 items of crockery, from lawn gnomes to ceramic vases, is wildly popular on Valentine’s Day.)

Pleasuring yourself while openly weeping is also popular on that day, but I'm not sure how I can monetize that.

A starter session costs $30 for 30 minutes with two or three electronic devices and a bucket of dishes. 

You're paying for your time with the dishes. Whatever you mutually agree to do while together has nothing to do with the "donation" you already paid.

Die, flatware!!!

Sometimes people donate things, Mr. Daly said, adding that everything smashed at the Wrecking Club is properly recycled.
 

See, it's not wasteful idiocy from adult babies. We're saving the environment.

Mr. Daly has happy memories of demolishing a swing set in his parents’ backyard, at their request, after he and his siblings had left home, and these sparked his imagination.

I have warm fuzzy memories of busting swings.

“I wanted it to have a Brooklyn-in-the-1990s vibe. I think he crushed it.”

This is a joke. Why aren't you laughing?

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Sanders Supporters Banned from Tinder After Campaigning on Dating App

You know you live in the best of all possible worlds when meaningless and soul-destroying physical encounters with random warm bodies can be easily accessed by flicking a screen with a finger or two. There are, however, snakes in this garden. The quest for some of that sweet "let's just get this over with" and "please don't look directly at me, it's easier if I can pretend you're an object" is being derailed by Crazy Bernie supporters. Instead of launching the meat rocket and causing lasting damage to your ability to bond with others and form lasting relationships you just might get requests for your  vacuum pennies from communists.

Stumping for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Tinder is getting some women banned from the online dating app after sending campaign messages to prospective matches.

Now if they could just get going on banning the fat ones, too. Am I right, bro? Oh yeah, you know it, woo woo.

Two women - one from Iowa and the other from New Jersey - confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they received notices from Tinder in the previous 24 hours that their accounts were locked because they had been reported too many times for peppering men on the site with messages promoting Sanders' candidacy.

The type of "Bern" you generally get from Tinder is the one that comes when you're trying to urinate the morning after, not this. But please, tell me all about the senile half-dead marxist, baby. It's getting me all worked up. He wants to tax and spend? I'm about to blow my top.

Robyn Gedrich, 23, said she sent messages to 60 people a day for the past two weeks trying to convince them to support the U.S. senator from Vermont in his race for the Democratic nomination against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In today's spiritually leprous America I suppose it is possible she was interested in all 840 mindless and faceless romance vectors, but it seems more reasonable to assume that something more sinister was at work here. This is not the solution for uncontrolled horny levels. This is not change we can believe in.

"Do you feel the bern?" her message to other Tinder users read, parroting a Sanders campaign slogan. "Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks."

If you were starting to get optimistic about Generation Nothing this should end that.

Haley Lent, 22, a photographer from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Reuters in a Twitter message that she also got locked out of the app on Thursday night after sending messages trying to convince people to vote for Sanders the previous night.

I misused a one night stand service to promote Red Grandpa Simpson and they banned me. This is an outrage.

"I would ask them if they were going to vote in their upcoming primaries," she said. "If they said no or were on the fence, I would try to talk to them and persuade them to vote."

"What are you wearing? Could I take it off?"

"Are you going to vote in the New Hampshire primary?"

"I want to blank your brains out, I can't help it."

"Here's how you get registered..."

Tinder trolls and your frustrated lust, a metaphor.

A spokeswoman for Tinder, which is part of Match Group Inc, owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp IAC.O, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. 

What do they have to hide??? What are your crimes, nameless spokeswoman???

The two women are the not only ones making unusual use of Tinder, better known as a "hook-up" app, as a campaign tool. A Facebook (FB.O) group "Bernie Sanders Dank Tinder Convos" has 782 members.

American democracy is a serious business.

Gedrich said she got mixed responses from the 300 Tinder users who replied. "Some people would ask what is this for, and I would kind of explain," she said. "Some of them would unmatch me or report me as a bot." A bot (or robot) account is a scam profile used to send spam messages.

Woman posts obviously worthless spam, 300 replies. Man creates thoughtful and clever profile, tumbleweeds roll through.

Some responses simply read, "Trump2016," expressing support for Republican candidate Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon. "It was really alarming to see that a lot of people don't know what's going on in the world," she said.

Me, I support a failed ideology from the last century and believe everything my professors say, so I've earned the right to look down on real estate tycoon supporters.

None of her matches resulted in an actual date, she said.

About the success rate you'd expect from communism.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

News You Can't Use: Billionaire Steyer Calls for More Democratic Debates

Great news everyone, Rich Uncle Pennybags has noticed that zero Democrat debates have occurred and he wants more. The even better news, if that first sentence didn't already get you into a lather, is that this should be no problem since, if you want to get super technical, it would be impossible to have fewer debates than the current goose egg. And who doesn't love a good argument between the heir presumptive and some elderly sixties leftovers? Yes, as usual a billionaire who did some sort of capital management that you wouldn't understand and would be appalled and enraged if you did has shown us all the way.

Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer on Friday afternoon called on the party to add another debate focused on climate change and clean energy, adding his voice to a pitched disagreement over the number of Democratic debates.

Yeah, that would be exciting, watching everyone agree that climate change is real and we need more clean energy. Who can shout the affirmative the loudest, this is the big test before we hand you the reigns of the world's only remaining Super Power.

Wait, we got downgraded from that? Something, huge debts, something, China? Oh, never mind then.

Steyer, an environmentalist who is one of the party’s major financiers and who already hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, said he wants the debate to occur before the Iowa caucuses in February.

Is his support for one of the candidates a conflict of interest or have we all stop carrying about "rules?"

“Since the candidates — and the Democratic Party — understand that climate change is our greatest threat, they must allow voters the opportunity to hear a thoughtful and robust discussion — not just a single question — about their plans to solve this issue,”reads the release put out by Steyer’s group, NextGen Climate.

Several thrilling hours of agreeing on everything but ultimately meaningless minutia and discussing wind farms, bicycling everywhere, solar power success stories like Solyndra...good seats still available. 

But the DNC showed no willingness to budge on Friday, instead suggesting that Steyer could host a candidate forum, not a debate.

You can do an autograph session and maybe some gimmick tables but nobody wants a thoughtful and robust discussion of anything, let alone alternate energy and eliminating the flush toilet and automobile for anyone with a net worth less than $1,000,000,000.

Bernie Sanders has also urged the DNC to add more debates, while Clinton — who Steyer has not formally endorsed — has simply said she is open to participating in more.

As long as they don't conflict with the court dates, of course.

Later I'll show you this clock I took apart.

Steyer, whose wallet would be significant to any presidential candidate, recently praised Clinton over her opposition of the Keystone XL pipeline. 

We want your wallet, not your wet-brain single issue fixations.

The first Democratic debate is currently set for October 13 in Las Vegas.

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas, hopefully. 

Full Article.

Komment Korner  

How can one be so, so rich and yet so, so stupid? 

I've­­­­­ made ­­­­­$84,000­­­­­ so­­­­­ far­­­­­ this­­­­­ year­­­­­ working­­­­­ online­­­­­

go back to china, Uzbekistan, or wherever you are...

Sanders isn't a socialist. He's a democratic socialist. 

I'd like to see Hillary and the ancient commie go at each other with whips and cattle prods.


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Hong Kong Leader Tells People to Act Like ‘Sheep’

Happy Kung Hei Fat Choy, everyone! Just as I was getting used to writing "Horse" on official documents it's time for a new animal, one that so totally embodies positive characteristics that Great Leader might even suggest you emulate it. Yes, as we kick off the first day of the (great) year, it's time to consider the virtues of grazing wool-makers and how they can help you be a better human unit number within your glorious collective.

Hong Kong’s unpopular chief executive has infuriated pro-democracy campaigners by using a Chinese New Year message to urge the former colony's citizens to act more "like sheep".

Leave it to our unpopular leader to do something unpopular. 1 = 1, in other words. Can't get enough of that reflexive property in journalism, no sir.

In a brief video address commemorating the start of Year of the Sheep, CY Leung said sheep-like behavior was required in the wake of the turbulence caused by last year’s street protests.

Well, that or "corpse-like behavior" depending on how fast you were able to run.

“Last year was no easy ride for Hong Kong. Our society was rife with differences and conflicts,” the chief executive of the former British colony said.

Hopefully this next year for Hong Kong will be a slow ride, take it easy. Appease me, appease me! Slow ride dictatorship, you're so fine.

Also, I get that it once was a colony, you don't have to keep bringing it up because finding other ways to say "Hong Kong" is difficult.

“In the coming year, I hope that all people in Hong Kong will take inspiration from the sheep's character and pull together in an accommodating manner to work for Hong Kong's future.”

"You might find that not asking questions is an enjoyable past time."

In case his message had been missed, Mr Leung noted that the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac had 12 individual "character types".

Sorry if the obvious symbolism was lost on your pea brain. Here, let me really break this thing down.

"Sheep are widely seen to be mild and gentle animals living peacefully in groups," he said.

Yes, that's the usual implication. This is why "Sheeple" is a compliment.

“He has every intention of gobbling up Hong Kong for his Beijing master,” said Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy legislator, noting how Mr Leung’s detractors knew him as “the wolf”.

Whoa, there Claudia. Ask yourself how a lovable sheep would handle this.

Celebrate by watching lots of television!

Mr Leung had a track record of tactlessness, Ms Mo added. “Once he told his supporters that if others have different opinions [they should] go and shout at them.”

Yeah baby, mmmmmmm, you got some different opinions on you, aw yeah. Let me holler at you, get all Mr. Leung up in here with you.

Ma Ngok, a political scientist, told the South China Morning Post, the comment was “not smart”.

Next time just call them the Chinese language equivalent of "folks" and insist that your megalomaniac plans are "The right thing to do."

“He seems like he wants the people to blindly follow what he says like sheep following the shepherd. And CY Leung preaching more peace is kind of ironic because many people see him as the guy causing a lot of conflicts in Hong Kong."

Calls for peace but causes conflicts. That really is ironic, Alanis.

The pro-Beijing leader’s impoverished childhood instilled in him “the importance of determination and perseverance,” the profile said.

See, this is why electing silver-spoon plutocrats is the wise course of action.

Full Article.


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.