Author: Bry Berry

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill.—The CompTIA trade association has announced that acoustic guitar training will be removed from the curriculum for their industry-leading Hottie+ certification program as of January 2026. The company cited the rise of digital audio workstations as the reason for the move, which will allow them to focus on more high-demand skills, such as learning to cook a single Asian dish and tanning. “Regulation hotties face heavy competition in today’s climate, and class time is limited,” said program director Lamar Glover. “Strumming in the park simply doesn’t move the needle like it used to.” “Music is all so synthed…

SISIMIUT—An expatriate assigned by NASA to track Arctic shelf thinning has­ announced plans to bump into his third-grade love interest while buying groceries, at which time their courtship can finally begin, as if by fate. Further updates indicate that three decades of near isolation can never hinder that which is meant to be. It remains unclear when the chance meeting will occur. “Oh, I don’t know,” the wistful Herbert Derevyanko, 42, said when pressed for specifics. “Who can say about these things? Surely it will happen when neither she, an Aries, nor I, a Pisces, expect it. Perhaps one day—an…

NORTHBROOK, Ill.—A family of five received a shock Friday when a visiting relative suggested that events portrayed in the classic holiday film Home Alone would in fact be “impossible”. During one scene in which a steam iron falls three stories and strikes a home invader—(“Marv”)—in the face, the guest went on to say that the trespasser “would be dead” if that “happened in real life”. “At first I thought maybe I’d heard him wrong,” said Ali Buford, 28, of her uncle Jeffrey Todd, 56, as she recalled the moment. However, the wife and mother of three then overheard Todd again, this time…

TINLEY PARK, Ill.—On Monday the Mayfield Family Funeral Home dropped the once-lauded audience score feature from their website, announcing plans to reserve condolence privileges for certified commenters only. The move comes amid concerns that online ideologues can now flood the tribute walls of funerary clients with negative reviews to skew public perception. “Trolls can pop up out of nowhere and say anything these days,” said third-generation Mayfield owner George Tasso. “It only takes a few troublemakers to leave bad ratings and bungle someone’s KPIs.” “We have to maintain the integrity of our information,” agreed Edward Knorr, Mayfield’s embalmment specialist. “If…

CHICAGO—In a street interview Sunday outside Lincoln Park’s new Barnes & Noble, one patron leaving the store expressed her excitement for the five to seven business days she’ll now spend picturing herself reading the book she ordered. “The best part is when you pick it up from the bookstore,” said Lesley Gill, 36, dreamily. “The whole drive home you wonder what’s inside and really start to believe you’ll read it. Books have the power to spark your imagination that way.” “It’s something a movie can never give you,” she added. The book—a friends-to-lovers romcom by Emily Henry—is slated to find…

LAS VEGAS—Scandal now looms over the World Apples to Apples Tour after the league’s governing body voted Monday to bring charges of collusion against finalists at this year’s $3.5 million main event. According to CasinoPulse.com, tour veterans Jeff Munson and Earl Stupak now face allegations of marking green apple cards during one another’s “red apple” rounds to try and take home the top purse. “For me, when [Munson] ‘decided’ that ‘bankruptcy’ was ‘juicy’, that was the last straw,” said Kevin Bryce, 36, a first-time finalist. “Like earlier when he picked ‘chewy’ for ‘Claude Monet’, I thought, alright, I can see…

FUNKYTOWN—Local senior citizens gathered this morning to commemorate the historic Funkytown Community Dance Hall one last time before its scheduled demolition tomorrow, a move that officials have dubbed necessary to help grow emerging industry. The facility slated to replace the old building received unanimous support from area manufacturers last June and will specialize in leopard print strobe lights and Rubik’s cube ottomans. “Gotta move on,” said Jeremiah Alcott, a 97-year-old retired cowbell repairman. “Gotta move on.” For Alcott and others, the occasion marked a bittersweet end to an era as they bid farewell to the ballroom that hosted their proms…

ELMVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill.—A neighborhood Wendy’s location has filed a request for official recognition as the area’s good Wendy’s, citing new self-order kiosks and “no pickles when you say no [expletive] pickles” in the briefing. “When you order a Frosty, they write ‘Enjoy!’ on the cup by hand,” said one patron. “Or, ‘Mmm!’—sometimes they write ‘Mmm!’” Another source added: “When Brenda is there, she puts two exclamation points and makes them into a smiley face.” If granted, the petition would reinstate the location as the good Wendy’s for the first time since 2013, when it was designated the crappy Wendy’s on…

OAK LAWN, Ill.—A fourth-generation Irish-American family saw their weekly gathering take an unexpected turn Sunday when attendee Walter McGlynn, 73, suddenly started to tell his daughter-in-law about this here while he thought of it. “This here,” he added, after a pause. “From before.” Sources now say that guests had been discussing rain gutters prior to the retiree’s interjection. “It’s always gutters or aluminum siding or something,” commented neighbor Edmund Kowalski. “On Sundays when I hear them out on the patio, it reminds me to take my back pill.” It was during Walter McGlynn’s second pause that his longtime wife Fran…

SALT LAKE CITY—Patrons of frozen yogurt titan TCBY believe that superstring models are more likely than loop quantum gravity to produce a unified field theory wherein all physical laws converge, a company-run survey suggests. The survey, accessed via QR code at the bottom of customer receipts post-purchase, found that two thirds of respondents somewhat to strongly agree that “superstring theory clearly offers the better framework, despite no current evidence of supersymmetry between bosons and fermions”. Responses to the essay portion revealed a general reluctance to supplant “galaxy formation models reliant on dark matter” with recent Modified Newtonian Dynamics models like…