A column about nothing
So what’s the deal with all the reality based TV lately? Big Brother… Survivor… The Olympic Games… all containing a bunch of people competing against each other to become rich and/or famous. In the end a lot of us will just be disappointed by the results anyway. I remember when so-called reality TV needed a number of talented scriptwriters; now all it takes is a surveillance camera in your bedroom.
The lilting strains of the Olympic theme drifted quietly across the higher dimensions of MC’s sixth floor. They were then interrupted by a knock at the door of Sine’s apartment. Sine hit mute on his television as eLAN walked into the room. “Hey, did you hear they’re rerunning that ‘Survivor’ show with additional footage against the Olympics?” she inquired.
Sine nodded. “Yeah. You know, I never understood what all the fuss was about with that show.”
“Duh, it’s about being on TV and winning a million dollars!”
“But I thought that’s what ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ was all about,” Sine countered.
“Well, that show is for smart people, not normal people,” eLAN refuted.
“Smart people who think that the capital of Quebec is Montreal?”
eLAN shrugged. “Maybe it depends on if you’re watching the American edition, the Canadian edition, or the original one?”
“Is that your final answer?” Sine retorted.
Just then, Sine’s door opened again and Gee.org entered. “Hey, you guys see the latest on ‘Win Ben Stein’s Money’?” he inquired. “Some guy outwitted, outplayed and outlasted him!”
“Don’t you mean was smart enough, fast enough and had the guts?” eLAN wondered.
“Oh, this is ridiculous. There’s way too many get rich quick shows on television these days,” Sine declared.
“No, wait a minute, maybe the slogan was swifter, higher and stronger. Where have I heard that before…” Gee.org mused.
“Perhaps we should start up our own parody show here on campus?” eLAN proposed. “After all Sine, you’re the secret head of the Maintaining Flawed Computers Federation, so you should have some pull.”
“If we do that, I say let a Hooker win,” Gee.org stated.
Sine rolled his eyes. “Must you always make such references to people involved with the Hooke server?”
“How about ‘Who Wants a Mathematics Degree’?” eLAN mused. “And we’ll vote ten people on the Dean’s list out of the faculty each term…”
“Guys, check it out, mathNEWS is doing an Olympic-based parody!” Cray-mar interjected, bursting into the apartment unannounced.
“Hey, if anyone could do something based on those television shows, it would be those guys,” Gee.org remarked.
eLAN laughed. “What, you think they should vote out a mathNEWS editor every year?”
“The Faculty is already doing that,” Cray-mar commented. “Over the last five years they’ve voted out Chadwick “CAS” Severn, Matt “So-Krates” Walsh, Brian “Latrell” Fox, Mala “Crakko” Krishnan and Mike “Hammer” Hammond.”
“That can’t be right,” Sine said. “Matt is still doing the gridWORD, Mike wrote articles for Daglobenpost and I saw Brian around the building a few weekends ago.”
“Shouldn’t “Disco” Stu Pollock figure in there somewhere too?” mused Gee.org.
“Just because the editors get voted out with a degree doesn’t mean they leave,” Cray-mar observed. “After all, it looked like Richard Bilson was gone last Winter but now as a grad student it’s come down to him and Greg “hologrami” Taylor.”
“Maybe it was the ‘Survivor’ hype but my money’s on Richard then,” eLAN stated.
“Maybe Greg can come up with a random number generator to sway the vote?” Gee.org commented.
“Actually, he probably wants to graduate now,” Sine pointed out.
“Well either way, they’re already auditioning new editors for mathNEWS Survivor II: The New Millennium,” Cray-mar concluded, turning to leave the room again. “Now I’m off to deliver a copy of mathNEWS to Neumann.”
“Hm… mathNEWS and the Olympics… makes me wonder if the editors take performance enhancing drugs,” Gee.org pondered.
“Have you read mathNEWS?” eLAN refuted. “The drugs would not be performance enhancing.”
“Anyway, I think I’m going to go back to watching real Olympic events,” Sine concluded, grabbing his remote control.
“You know, those aren’t the real events,” Gee.org stated. “Everything already took place at 3am, what you have is recorded feed that’s been touched up with a lot of product placement commercials added in.”
“Oh, I’m only watching the Games to see who’s going to be appearing in commercials and on billboards for the next two years anyway,” Sine said with a shrug.
“Seems sort of pointless then,” eLAN remarked.
“Hey, so is a lot of the stuff that happens in this room,” Sine countered, turning the volume on his television back up. Again, the lilting strains of the Olympic theme drifted quietly across the higher dimensions of MC’s sixth floor.
-Greg “hologrami” Taylor
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[This appeared in the Olympic-based parody mathNEWS issue “Sports Integrated”, Volume 84, issue 1, Sept 22, 2000. Not in the sports parody part, but on page 14. Now, instead of being filler, it needed filler itself, as Bradley wrote about a muffin to fill the space. Might still be available here:
http://mathnews.uwaterloo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/v84i1.pdf
You might have noticed this is a year and a half after the previous entry. Again, this was never supposed to be a series, and so it ends here. Though alert readers might have noticed a brief shout-out in the "Quantum Loop" Entry 6, which had closed off 1999. So I'd never fully forgotten about it, and thus somehow (much like in Epsilon), all my universes are connected.
And yes, all the mN editor references are genuine, and as Sine says, I was into my last term and was interested in graduating.
Final thoughts about my twenty-year-old parody series'? Comments? Let me know, and thank you for reading.]
