Author: The Terminal Times

COVID-19 is sweeping the globe, causing a health and economic pandemic. Through these tough times, it is a relief to know our dogs cannot contract or spread the virus. That’s what Jim Weatherby, 36, was relieved to hear, as he identifies as a rottweiler named “Pinata.” 

Jim, a biological human, was taken by COVID on March 17th after spending 2 weeks in a Veterinarian ICU. 

We caught up with Jim’s wife, Gretchen Weatherby, to get an in depth look at the life and death of a man who identifies as a rottweiler. 

 Q: How long was Jim a dog, and how did he lose the battle to the virus? 

“He was a dog for two years, or 14 in his years. When the news of COVID-19 hit our state, I tried warning him. I really did. But, no matter how much I pleaded and begged, he would just look at me and say, ‘Woof woof, woof woof.” It’s hard to tell someone they’re not really a rottweiler named Pinata.”

 Q: How did you meet him? 

“I first saw him in our local dog park. He was barking at a squirrel up in a tree. I went over to pet him, and we locked eyes. It was love at first sight. He might be man’s best friend, but he was going to be my boyfriend. As I turned to walk away, he buried his nose in my rear-end, and that’s when I knew he was the one.” 

 Q: Do you have any regrets? 

 “I regret playing into it for so long. Especially walking through the park in front of people… picking up his poop. It was humiliating.”

Q: Where is Jim now? 

“I considered what he would’ve wanted, so I buried him in the backyard by his bones. He’s forever in our backyard, 6 feet deep. Which is a relief, because 6 feet is also the guidelines set by the CDC. We might be separated by social distancing, but he’s always in my heart.” 

• Jake Shane, The Terminal Times 

A retired Budweiser Clydesdale named Rick has gripes with the US government and he’s not afraid to share them. After stumbling across Rick’s Twitter account dedicated to criticizing our Commander in Chief, we visited his private stable in a cozy suburb just outside of St Louis, Missouri. 

Jim prepared us a hearty dinner of 37 pounds of hay and 22 gallons of water before we began the interview. 

“Throw a saddle on me,” said Rick. “Let’s take a walk.” The 19 year old Clydesdale puffed on a post dinner carrot while cantering along his private dirt road with multiple reporters on his back- voicing passionate political opinions and expanding on his recent Tweets. 

“Everyone in this office is incompetent. How is it that after 230 years, our government is still full of jackasses? Hay, here’s an idea: we need a horse that can carry that load. My name is Rick the Horse, and I assure you, I am that horse.” 

Finally, some common sense in our government! When told what the cost of saving millions of lives would be, the Trump Administration made the sensible decision to give it some thought before rushing into anything.

Once again, we have leaders that count the costs. “We are constantly being told of all this rash, superfluous spending to ‘preserve’ human life when human life has barely shown it to be worth it,” said Jared Kushner while readjusting his eerily human-latex mask.

“Why should the economy die for people that wouldn’t die for the economy?” said Trump’s top medical advisor Rush Limbaugh, “Are we going to suffocate the free market just so a few million people can breathe?” In this time of national crisis, we find ourselves with  a leader who asks the important questions like, “Do we really need ventilators?” and “What’s a ventilator?”

This Administration has taken a hard stance against wild claims by the media. “I’m sure this is just another hoax like Climate Change,” says Vice President Mike Pence to a completely empty room, “after all, you can’t have global warming and a global cold, can you? I mean, get your stories straight.” 

Pence went on to say several other unrelated things about how he plans to “keep other things straight.” 

While Trump declines to give us the actual price his associates have placed on Public Health, he assures us that it’s, “Almost as much as the economy.”

• Jacob Nuckolls, The Terminal Times

For the past few weeks, people have been literally living and dying by the CDC’s recommendations. Today, they announced their most effective plan yet in combating COVID-19. 

The CDC recommends becoming an A-list celebrity and/or a tiger to increase your chances of getting tested for the virus. 

“Winning 4 Golden Globes and 8 Emmys has proven to be a highly effective strategy in obtaining a coronavirus test kit,” said CDC director Robert Redfield. “It wouldn’t hurt to become a tiger or the Prime Minister of The United Kingdom, either.” 

So if you’ve been waiting to become an international superstar or a tiger, now is your time. The only person standing in your way is you. 

• Jacob Nuckolls, The Terminal Times 

“Violence is a perfectly normal reaction to a situation such as this,” said a spokesman for the CDC on Sunday. “All we ask is that you sanitize your weapons before committing any form of purge related homicide. Violence is totally OK- just remember to do it safely.” 

Although axes, knives and pitchforks seem to be the stereotypical weapons in apocalyptic scenarios- the CDC advises looters to use weapons that can murder from distances of 6 feet or further. “Looting can stay safe and sanitary with the usage of weapons such as sawed-off shotguns, sniper rifles and rocket launchers. For extra cautious looters, nuclear warfare may be the safest option.”

Although blasting your enemies with bird shot isn’t the most romantic form of apocalyptic homicide, it will surely get the job done. We asked our trusty interns to try a few recommended weapons. Johnny, our accounting apprentice, tested a rocket launcher on the flock of geese that frequent our grounds and the results were nothing short of amazing. With just one firing, every goose was obliterated. “It was awesome,” said Johnny. “Now I’m just hoping for a pay raise.”

This article was written in memory of our Johnny- killed cleanly, but ever too soon. 

R.I.P Johnny Elhart

December 12, 2004- April 6, 2020

• The Terminal Times 

 If you haven’t heard the name “Lil Eddy” (and we know you haven’t) he’s an up and coming 21 year old SoundCloud rapper from Minneapolis and he’s ready for the fame and fortune that every rapper dreams of. He reached out to us to get an interview that will hopefully give his career the boost it deserves. 

“I’ve released nine songs already, I’m up to three hundred listens on my last single, and I’ve even done a collab’ with Mossy Jay who’s got like, almost one thousand followers. Which is like, so tight. I know I have what it takes. I just gotta keep hustlin and makin’ moves and imma take over this whole rap game.“

Eddy tells us he has been writing raps and freestyling since middle school. 

“It’s like, it just came to me, you know? I always had a notebook on me. I’d spit constantly in my head at school, on the bus, on the toilet, everywhere. It’s like music was a second nature.”

In Lil Eddy’s music, he talks about being white, growing up in the suburbs, and the hard music grind. Eddy told us that his music comes from real life experiences and things he dealt with as a kid.

My dad is a cop, so he was really hard on me when I told him I was thinking about rapping, and maybe even trying weed. He would tell me to shape up or ship out and the occasional, “You won’t get your allowance if you don’t mow the lawn” Which honestly I’m alright with cause i think of hella bars on a John Deere. Regardless, I’m telling you this guy’s a scumbag. I don’t talk about my folks too much outside of my music, but if you listen to my first song “Raised 2B Bad” you’ll get the bigger picture”

We did not listen to that song.

Eddy told us that he would spam all his friends on Snapchat weekly with his Soundcloud links and claimed to get good feedback from everyone who didn’t block him. Eddy told us he’s the only one in his friend group passionate about the art of rap and the culture behind it. We reached out to Eddy’s friend, Aaron, who told us a little more about Eddy.

“Yeah I mean, we went to school together and stuff. He was always kind of off, one time he told me this story about how his dad took away his Xbox for a whole day and asked if I wanted to help him make a beat so he could rap about it. I said sure because I like making music at the time. I actually thought he was joking when I heard the lyrics, “Always mad at my dad, I was born to be bad, fuck with me bitch, Ive got two dog tags” when I laughed at him, he told me he would cut me up. A security officer overheard and that’s how we got banned from the studio at our college. 

After our interview, we told Eddy to never stop following his dreams. He then got picked up by his 17 year old girlfriend, we decided it was best to block his number and not use his real rap name in this article.

• James Stanley, The Terminal Times

The color blue, loved by many and known by most, announced his retirement from being a color on Monday morning. “I’m throwing in the towel,” said the color in a recent interview with The Terminal Times.

“I had a good run as one of the main colors for the past 4.5 billion years. But now, I’m just gonna take it easy. Sit by the pool, play some golf and reminisce about all those years of being a color.”

People worldwide are shocked by the decision. The Blue Man Group, a theater company that paints themselves blue before performances, is desperately rebranding. “We thought about becoming The Black Man Group but we’re not sure that’d be sending the right message.” The Smurfs are in a similarly confusing grey area, hoping to sign a contract with red or yellow in the near future.

• The Terminal Times

After 3 hours of frantically searching for his keys and telling his wife “I’m not an idiot. The last place I had them was in my coat!” Jack reached into his pouch for the 4th time and blushed in embarrassment as he pulled out the keys to his sun faded Subaru Outback.  “Crikey, mate,” said Jack with a sigh of relief. “I’m late for my bloody boxing lessons!”

On April 1st, President Donald Trump entered a tense coronavirus press briefing dressed as a cartoonish Chinese man- a bold and hilarious prank designed to apologize to China for his insensitive comments towards the country. 

Trump entered the briefing sporting a sunhat, taped back eyes and a large calculator in hand. With a sly grin, he remained silent for a few minutes, basking in the hilarity of the situation. “I only used one layer of spray-tan to appear yellow instead of orange,” said Trump in his opening statement, completely disregarding any mentions of a global pandemic. “Me Chinese, me so dumb, me stuff dead bat up my bum,” sang the president to a dead silent crowd of worried politicians. “You have to admit, that’s pretty funny. I wouldn’t do this heartwarming tribute if I didn’t love China.”

After the briefing, Trump sang a rip-roaring cover of “Imagine” in a silly Chinese accent on his Twitter page, TikTok account and Youtube channel.

• The Terminal Times

PETA has been waiting patiently for the release of “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” a social simulation video game that places your character in a town full of friendly anthropomorphic animals, hoping that it might finally give them something new to complain about. Unfortunately, PETA has found nothing wrong with the game. “We greatly rely on animal cruelty to keep this business afloat, and the utter lack of it in Animal Crossing is disturbing and reprehensible,” said PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “At PETA, most of our time is spent complaining, and our greatest fear is that animals might start getting treated better so we have nothing new to complain about.”

Complaining is a multi-million dollar industry in the animal-rights world, and PETA was hoping to cash in on the new Animal Crossing depicting mistreatment of fictional animals in any form. In a recent study published by Forbes, this situation may have cost the animal welfare organization $25K on advertising dollars for potential disgruntled tweets. “We were hoping the game would depict some form of mistreatment of the animals- from misgendering, to cursing near them, or even just bad haircuts,” said Ingrid. “The animals seem pretty thrilled about the situations the developers have put them in, and here at PETA, we can’t stand by that.”

PETA has a long and troubled history of speaking out against the mistreatment of animals in video games. In 2011, PETA criticized “Skyrim: Elder Scrolls V” for their insensitive glorification of dragon poaching. “In Skyrim, dragons should not be ostracized for wreaking havoc on fictional towns such as Windhelm, killing thousands of characters and burning children to death with their flames.”

Although Animal Crossing seems pretty animal-friendly to PETA, they still have a few suggestions for the developers. The one issue PETA has with the game is the fishing feature- which allows characters to go fishing for food. “You’re allowed to go fishing, which we think is demented and archaic. You can catch bugs in the game, why not eat them? Everyone knows they don’t have feelings!”

In her closing statement, Newkirk threatened violence towards her adversaries. “Animal Crossing is too nice to the fictional animals, and anyone who disagrees with us will be euthanized.”

• The Terminal Times