THE SQUID WEEKLY​

ISSUE 72

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 Warning! The Smash-O-Deluxe Hammer should only be used to destroy someone’s cell phone in dire need—say a “I hate everything to do with that thing in front of your face, and my rage is a cosmic, untamable detonation of abandonment and social anxiety” need.
 Maybe an example would help. Say, if someone hauls out a phone during conversation, carelessly constructing a Berlin Wall—except instead of ideology and politics, it’s photos of latte art, some crap to do with Cameron, and reminders they are no longer winning in the race to have cute, well-dressed children. They slap it on the table like a steaming pile of shit, like, What? This is how I do all my conversations.
 Or a friend may text when they drive, ensuring you will die—not for your dreams, not as a martyr, not from Iran or North Korea or because Uncle Joseph is a crazy shithead—but for a text to an off-again-on-again, it’s-just-I-like-you-but-I’m-also-in-a-weird-place-emotionally-right-now relationship.
 Post-accident, you’ll wander, a sodden, bleeding mess covered in glass, radiator fluid, and regret, franticly searching for your arm in case a doctor could slap it back on—because it totally works that way—and your friend will only care if his text sent, the same one that affirms his passive, wishy-washy commitment to a girl who only eats food a specific shade of orange. 
 In either of these situations, your Smash-O-Deluxe hammer will be snug by your side in something not unlike a holster. Then it’s only KA POW, KA CRASH, KA ZITTO, KA SABOOM, KA WIKKI KIKA CHA SLAM THAT SUCKER. It will be pulverized into parts that can’t be fixed, like your future relationship with this person.
 After using our product so successfully to pound so exquisitely, you may wonder how the Smash-O-Deluxe so effortlessly solves your frustration with modern technology. What makes it special? Nothing. It functions like a sledge hammer because it is a sledge hammer. It has a metal head, a wooden handle, and is heavy as all hell. It was made for laborers beating chunks of concrete into smaller chunks of concrete and the occasional murderer.
 The most important thing is it has a logo and a snappy catchphrase that give you permission to do what you want to do, like a fancy can opener or a Nike shoe. And a free market economy means if something was made for something else, you have the right to buy that product and use it for that something else… unless it’s meth or, like, a bomb.   
 The Smash-O-Deluxe Hammer weaves into that delicate place between active aggression and passive aggression. You are actively pursuing passive aggression. It’s similar to when you talk with someone you live with about the laundry, and it doesn’t go well, and then you hit them with a hammer. 
 No longer are you powerless, a mere pawn in big tech’s scheme to make your friends into monosyllabic gooseflubs. You too can be a crazy person who goes on and on about how Amazon, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft spy on you, cater advertisements based on your search history, sway your opinion in devious ways, and get you banned from Subway and the library—because they do.
 In fact, the more you use the hammer the more you may question what isn’t the perfect situation to use it, especially after you give the hammer a nickname like “Mr. Pound,” “Crunch Son of Crunchitize,” “The Annihilator,” “Instagram This, Biyatch,” “Trump’s Reckoning,” or “Hammer.” It’s fun taking on the radical, unpredictable nature of someone who just freaking does things, and you can brand yourself a freedom fighter or someone who sees the world in terms of Whack-A-Mole.
 Never forget we need people like you, doing the Lord’s work and vainly disregarding the obvious consequences of your actions. You’re Batman without money, i.e. a loser who dresses up as a bat. You don’t need friends. You need to discover other people’s faults and by god, when they reveal those faults, you will solve them or be arrested in the process. And you will do it with the Smash-O-Deluxe.      
   
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