Tuesday, January 10, 2012

It's time for a 'Reality' check

Reality television stars. We all have heard about them, seen them in tabloids or if your desperate to inject some adventure into your life, have dared watch their antics live and in person (using the tv screen as a buffer though). For experiencing this type of reality without the eight teaser warmups has proven hazardous to your health. What I'm talking about is the shows merciful though relentless five second clips throughout that give us a taste of what is going to happen next. Many outsiders are left to believe that they are used simply to keep us in suspense and fill the 45 minute gap between actual events on the show worth watching. It all seemed too simple to me, so I looked into it deeper. It turns out, many pilot episodes were performed to see just what type of effect reality television would have on people. Sort of like clinical trials for medication. We all know of the ever popular little blue pill commercials where dirty alleys transform into lush green rain forests, complete with a bathtub where poisonous insects and man eating reptiles have been removed or at least put behind an electric fence. But there is much more to it than that. Prior to turning your blah night into 3 hours and 59 minutes of immense pleasures once unreachable by man, a lot of secret testing was done. If you listen closely during these magical journeys you will notice a 4 hour limit imposed on your erection. Those who dare try to eat of the apple known as the 'post fourth hour' have been said to witness their own penis explode. Don't feel bad for the clinical trial participants though. They were well compensated with $75 dollars, a lifetime of company advertisement pens and a stress ball. The same diligent research is performed for the reality audience. Besides experimenting with having a live studio audience at the Bachelor mansion, which ended up just being awkward due to the lack of bed space and bathroom privacy, they experimented with a test audience having been shown no teasers before and after every single commercial. This ended poorly when it was realized that the actors, pardon me, the reality stars (who are carefully chosen from a very select world wide 'U.S.' population that can ignore a camera guy following them around closer than a Bahamian native at a village market) only did something interesting for eight minutes of every one hour show. But when they did, and without the teaser buffer, half of the viewing audience was found in some sort of frozen, eyes wide open, mouth gaping shock by the other fifty percent that were in the bathroom or refilling their chip bowl at the time not knowing the 'good part' was coming up. Attempts to find out what they missed were futile. When coming to, all they could say was "I....did NOT...see....that coming!" Dvrs froze up, noone could rewind, technicians were, and still are, baffled by this phenomenon. So there you have it. So much more is done to provide the viewing public with the safe much needed reality break it takes for us to have a meaningful life. So tell your crazy stalking girlfriend or boyfriend to stop causing a scene in front of the cops, cancel that ridiculous trip to the hidden villages of Tibet, stop mercilessly working out to lose weight and saved your life, and put down that microphone. Because it is once again time to experience reality. Weeknights at 8 and 10.

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