Jon Snow, fed up with life, starts up vacation resort called South of the Wall

Jon Snow surveys his resort's new
amenities, including a Japanese water
garden and beach volleyball court.

Jon Snow, tired of a harsh, grueling life of perpetual winter cold, the constant threat of mutiny by subordinates in the Night’s Watch, and unpredictable, ferocious attacks by undead White Walkers, has cast aside all responsibility and familial oaths to start a chain of vacation resorts in the southern tropics of Westeros.

Mr. Snow, known broadly across the kingdom as the King in the North, opened a trio of resorts bearing the name South of the Wall, located along a swath of black-sand beaches on a remote peninsula due south from Highgarden.

“I swear, by the old gods and the new, this will be the greatest beach getaway since Sandals Jamaica,” Mr. Snow, sporting a palm-tree laden Tommy Bahama shirt, said while jamming an oversized lime into his Corona bottle.

“The demand has been incredible,” Mr. Snow added with a big smile, explaining that having an insane, power-hungry queen on the throne in King’s Landing and a gigantic army of zombie-like wights invading from Beyond the Wall has pushed people to his “little slice of heaven.”

“The hardest thing so far has been deciding if I should add fajitas or chimichangas to the menu of our on-site Mexican restaurant,” he said with a full-throated laugh while adorning his direwolf Ghost with a set of Hawaiian leis.

The former Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, a celibate band of miscreants and outcasts guarding the northern border of Westeros known as The Wall, decided he truly needed to “get away from it all” after discovering he had inadvertently engaged in sexual relations with his aunt, Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, first of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the first Men.

Mr. Snow, previously thought to be the illegitimate child of Lord Eddard (“Ned”) Stark, was recently outed as the son of Lyanna Stark, Ned’s sister, and Rhaegar Targaryen, Daenerys’ brother.

“I’ve lost countless friends and family members at the hands of my enemies, been murdered in cold blood by my brothers in arms, revived from the dead as but a shadow of my former self, humiliated my whole life as a bastard son, seen an entire village of wildlings cut down and reanimated as hellish minions of the Night King, and watched the love of my life die in my arms after being shot by the very boy I taught to wield a bow,” Mr. Snow said as he skimmed the resort pool and tested the water for proper chlorination.

“But to find out that the woman I’d just boned was actually my aunt, that was the last straw,” said Mr. Snow, who admitted that, sure, he’d “rubbed one out” to Daenerys Stormborn, the Queen of Mereen and Protector of the Realm, plenty of times, but that was before learning she was family.

When asked by one reporter for a comment on Mr. Snow’s new entrepreneurial pursuits and her central role in them, Daenerys, infuriated, screamed, “How dare you ask me, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, and the Breaker of Chains, such a thing.” She proceeded to have her dragon incinerate the reporter into a pile of ash and charred bone.

As of press time, Mr. Snow was trying to decide if he should maybe help the kingdom eradicate the invaders from the Lands of Always Winter, since their fate determined his ultimate number of paying customers.

Orcs storm court after Duke’s second-round NCAA win, leave trail of mayhem and death

An ecstatic fan admires his Duke swag on the jumbotron before beginning his lethal rampage. 

PITTSBURGH -- A pack of orcs vacationing from Mordor unleashed a wave of destruction and ruin during the second round of the NCAA college basketball tournament yesterday, after storming the court in a cataclysmic celebration of their favorite school, Duke, winning what amounted to a fairly routine match.

The grotesque, elf-like creatures of evil, some bearing the White Hand of Saruman, left spectators both awed at the carnage – which included scores of casualties, a defiled gymnasium and an overturned hot-dog cart – and bewildered by the sheer force of the spectacle, the kind typically reserved for major upsets or awe-inspiring buzzer beaters. This game had none of those theatrics.

Duke, the No. 2 seed in the Midwest region, maintained a big lead over No. 7 Rhode Island during the entirety of the game, ultimately winning the rather meaningless match by 25 points.

“This is our year. I can feel it!” said one excited orc, Kallukahh, who erupted into an energetic rendition of the Duke fight song before feasting on the entrails of a nearby cheerleader. “Blue Devils for life, baby!”

The orc pack, 127 members strong, brushed off reporters’ questions when asked if it may have been overkill to trample more than 40 innocent people, heave maggoty bread at the opposing team’s mascot, or defecate in the basketball shoes of the losing team. Reporters who pressed the issue further had their heads swiftly ripped from their torsos, loaded onto catapults and flung into the throngs of remaining Rhode Island fans. 

“If you think that was too much, just wait until we bring a 10,000-strong army of Uruk-hai to the Final Four!” another orc, Bazkahh, screamed before chugging a Bud Light from the hollowed-out skull of the opposing team’s head coach. 

The man-flesh-eating humanoids were nearly unanimous in their praise of Duke’s play on both sides of the ball, calling the team’s offensive performance “flawless,” lauding its tight man-to-man coverage as “superb,” and hailing coach Mike Krzyzewski as “a modern-day genius” who was welcome in Mordor for dinner anytime. 

“Coach K is my fucking hero!” Ahkktahh, whose gnarled, bare chest bore a giant letter D in blue paint, said while aiming a crossbow at an infant girl in a Rhode Island t-shirt.

The orcs’ zeal for the five-time championship winners stems from the Dark Lord Sauron, according to sources close to the gigantic eyeball ensconced in eternal flame. To underscore his Duke fervor, the black-hearted ruler of Mordor had a university flag draped over the Tower of Barad-dûr just before the first tip-off of the tournament.

The Great Eye has a deep appreciation of the school’s lust for championship rings, saying it reminds him of his own unquenchable thirst for the Ring of Power, according to an interpreter of Sauron’s deep-throated voice of hell just before getting dismembered by a cave troll.

As of press time, the creator of the One Ring reportedly ordered his orc minions to prepare a contingency plan consisting of burning Duke to the ground, rounding up all basketball-team players and personnel, and throwing them one by one into the heart of the volcanic Mount Doom if they fail to advance to the Final Four.