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Part personal essay, part humorous take on the news of the week, all "wow, this person spends wayyy too much time on the internet".

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Mouth Bees

Internet round-up for the week of April 22, 2024

Kelley Greene

Apr 26, 2024

Hello, and happy Friday!

First up, a hearty welcome to all of the new TMI subscribers! Excited to have you here to discuss the gems I discovered in my internet dumpster-dive this week.

Chicago is, as is often the case, rainy and overcast today. We’ve had too many nice days in a row and clearly winter feels it has to send us a little reminder that it’s never really gone. I even had to use the space heater today. What a travesty.

My week has been fairly chill overall. I’ve been working on a couple of projects — mostly trying to meet a deadline on a short story for a zine I wanted to submit to this week. But I’m not quite happy with where it’s ended up, so I think I’ll take a little more time on it and try submitting it somewhere else. Either that, or I’ll spend the rest of the day obsessing over it and then send it in at 11:59 PM. Who’s to say?

Otherwise, the take-home test I mentioned a couple of weeks back didn’t go so great, and I’ve been rejected from that interview process. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Full-time-job-wise, that leaves me with one remaining lead at the moment. I’m hoping to hear good news there soon so I don’t have to unspool the resume dispersion firehose again. For now, though, I am here, and I am corralling internet junk.

So, without further ado, onto the trash from this week:

RIP Rat Hole 🫡

Earlier this week, the Chicago Rat Hole™ was removed from its home in Roscoe Village and moved to an undisclosed location by CDOT.

Headline that reads: Chicago Rat Hole Removed By City — But It’s Being Preserved While Its Fate Is Determined — via Block Club.

The city said they’d “been getting complaints from people for months now” about the sidewalk, and elected to “repair” it.

A city street in Chicago. A bobcat has the entire concrete slab containing the rat hole on the front and is wheeling it away from its original location. That area is now a dirt patch in the sidewalk. — Drive the slab over to my apartment, please. I’ll take good care of it. I promise.

My guess is that the complaints were coming from some nearby residents who were less worried about a stroller wheel or bike tire slipping into the rat depression and more worried about the dozens of people that were still coming by to pay their respects every day.

Normally, I figure they’d just fill it in like they do with the post-winter potholes, but fortunately the city understands the value of this concrete slab.

Crews removed and successfully preserved the square of sidewalk containing the famous “Chicago rat hole” and are storing it temporarily while its future location is determined.

Yes, it’s actually being held by CDOT. In fact, someone managed to snap a pic of its current location:

A tweet from @RiotFest that reads "I see you, Chicago Rat Hole..." and features an image taken through a chain-link fence. There's an area with a bunch of yard equipment and old chairs and stuff, and the rat hole slab is just sitting on the ground nearby. — Look what they’ve done to my boy

Riot Fest is actively trying to buy the concrete slab to display at the festival. I love the idea, but it’s just once a year. Where would the Rat Hole live the rest of the time1??

My suggestion? Embed it somewhere inside the proposed new Bears’ stadium. I’d happily give my tax money to create a Rat Hole shrine.

Who approved this product?

Longtime subscribers of TMI will not be surprised to learn that the brands are, once again, Branding™.

First up: Real life Calico Cut Pants.

A guy in a black bomber jacket wearing light denim. The crotch of the denim is dark, making it look wet -- nearly all the way up to the pockets. Also he's wearing a pair of glasses that look like safety glasses. Modeling. — That’s got nothing to do with piss. Those pants come like that. (via NY Post)

According to the NY Post2, these pants by the designer brand Jordanluca cost $811.

And I know what you’re thinking — expensive, right? Well,

Tim Robinson in the Calico Cut Pants sketch from "I Think You Should Leave." His eyes are open wide and the caption reads "You gotta give."

And then:

Headline that reads: Magnum’s got some new ice creams out and this most unfortunate still reminded people of something else — via The Poke.

I snagged a pic from their advertisement video on YouTube, which you may be surprised to learn did not feature women running through fields of flowers or playing sports (or a disembodied hand dumping blue liquid into a menstrual product):

Three bare ice cream bars with a chocolate topping slowly dropping down onto them. Each one has a colorful center in the middle of white ice cream, that resembles a menstrual pad. They're pink, tan, and purple, respectively. — Great, now there’s poop on the pads.

These are part of a launch in the UK they’re calling “Pleasure Express.” Y’all realize this is an ice cream bar, right3? Not a porno featuring Hercule Poirot?

According to the Magnum site, that pink one on the left has “surprising popping candy to ignite your senses.”

How indulgent! Can’t wait to unwind for a night of self-care and … now there are bees in my mouth. No thank you.

Anyway I guess Magnum took the hint, because other than the video, they seem to have scrubbed the internet of any of their pad-like stills. Now everything looks like this:

The Pleasure Express advertisement. It's a sunset background with a purple train traveling across a suspension bridge, and in front are the two chocolate bars. This time they're fully covered, with a bite taken out of each revealing the colorful center. But it's too late, you know? We've already seen what's in there. — It’s too late. We’ve seen everything. We’ve seen it all.

Which is better, I guess, except they really need to calm the fuck down about these ice cream bars.

Speaking of Magnums and the “Pleasure Express”…

The ‘Girthmasterr’

Twitter has a new main character this week after a company called getahead talked to this friendly-looking guy (conveniently holding his hands over his junk) in a man-on-the-street-style interview about his day job.

He happily shared that he’s on OnlyFans, and is in the top .1% of earners, making 40-80k per month. Of course, people wanted to know more, and, well…

A tweet from Ashley Reese (@offbeatorbit) that reads "Well I just did some research and holy shit it is quite literally the size of a bottle of wine" — I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen it all. 👀

I’m not gonna post the picture here in the newsletter, but his Twitter handle is literally “girthmasterr,” and he is…not hard to find. Er…hard not to find. *Ahem.*

Anyway, Rolling Stone did a very...in-depth interview with him. *Waggles eyebrows*

The Onion is free

In ACTUAL, REAL, good news this week, The Onion was finally freed from G/O Media and sold to a company called Global Tetrahedron (NYT gift link, you know I got you, babes!). And they’re even having fun with it!

I’m so excited to hear this. It’s been painful to continue to watch all the best websites slowly drained by the relentless pursuit of profits, leaving artists (me!) struggling to find gainful employment in their desired field. The new owners have said they intend to keep everything the way it is, and even expand going forward.

Plus, they’re staying in Chicago! Here’s hoping they actually have some jobs available soon that I can apply for. In the meantime, it gives me an excuse to keep pitching headlines. 😈

Randomly selected animal cutie

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Hey now, how did this person find a video of me and every TMI Subscriber enjoying a lovely little stroll along the water?? Welcome to the skunk zone, babes. ❤️ 🦨

That’s it from me this week! I’m off to finish up a few chores before either avoiding or spending more time poking at that short story that’s plaguing me. Have a great weekend (also Saturday is indie bookstore day, so go support your favorite local shop)!
K

If they sell it to some rich boy and it becomes privately owned I will spontaneously combust.

While I was perusing this article, one of the giant popup videos was an ad for diapers. Has the algorithm become too aware??

An ice cream bar that comes three to a package, I might add. Who is this for? Y’all can’t put an even number in there for sharing? All packages of treats should be required to have a minimum of six items. This is a hill I will die on.