Round
Acid     The
Clock
Tuesday, October 5, 2004
Cosmy Jeopardic
source: Academia USA
posted: Oct 5, 2004, 11:01 AM
by: jhc
The world was locked in a game of Cosmic Jeopardy. The host read the next answer:

Host: Because human nature is an unmitigated piece of shit.

Contestant #2 hit his buzzer (or whatever the fuck they do on Jeopardy) and confidently blurted out his question:

Contestant #2: Why, despite rapid technologic progress and a vast increase in understanding of both the nature of reality and the nature of man, why does human life itself appear to be growing ever more stupid, ever more vapid, ever more insipid, ever more fuckin' creepy?

Host: WRONG! Can you take it contestant #1?

Contestant #1: What is the state motto of Texas?

Host: WRONG! Contestant #3?

Contestant #3: What is the state motto of Florida?

Host: NO! Contestant #4, on the phone:

Contestant #4 (on the phone): What does "jejune" mean?

Host: NO!

Contestant #5 (in the space shuttle): Who said: "Ask not, yadda yadda yadda?"

The cosmic version of Jeopardy was based on the original TV Show Jeopardy, but its rules and the dialog and the flow of play had all been designed by someone who'd never actually SEEN the show and only knew about it from pop culture references and people using its structures in moronic stories meant to appeal to pop culture aficionados without whom there would be no such thing as stupid worthless pop culture since -- surprise! -- people, the people pop culture was intended for, you know, the robots and losers and lowlife scum out there, even they, the people, the robots and losers and lowlife scum out there for whom pop culture is designed, don't really give a flaming flying fuck about pop culture in ANY of its slimy deathly manifestations -- really, they only give a flaming flying about one single teeny tiny itsy bitsy little piece of pop culture, a single bleached out pixel in the pop culture bitmap -- and it's only the sum total of all these fucking LOSERS obsessed with some tiny creepy personal fetish, that combined and seen from preferably far far away in another galaxy, makes up the pop culture tchotchkasphere, of which Jeopardy, according to pop culture, is a shining point of light, despite my or the designer of Cosmic Jeopardy's knowing virtually nothing about it and having not the least iota of a velleity to know the least fucking additional bit more about it.

The only other thing about TV Jeopardy that I and the guy who designed Cosmic Jeopardy knew was, of course, the big plot twist about how the host is really supposedly giving the answer and the contestant is really supposedly asking the question, wink, wink -- like:

The answer is: Idaho.

and

The question is: what is the state whose capital is Boise?

or

The answer is: his face is on a 20 dollar bill.

and

The question is: who isn't Benjamin Franklin because his face is on a $5 bill?

Or

The answer is: the guy who fucked that Mafia whore.

And

The question is: Who was John F. Kennedy?

Cosmic Jeopardy had, of course, been created to end all War -- by channeling man's post-Cambrian aggressions through his Precambrian blindness -- so that, for example, man's instinct to be wrong about everything could be confined to games about words -- rather than spending itself building massive futile 500 mile high-energy particle accelerators to smash Higgs Bosons together in order to become even more wrong about the fundamental nature of being.

Host: It begins soft and sweet, one fucking accident at a time.

Contestant #6: What is everything?

Host: Correct! Here's your bonus answer: It takes no time for it to come into being, because it comes into being before it exists.

Contestant #6: Can I call my lawyer? She'd know.

Host: You have 15 seconds.

Contestant #6: What is Time?

The so called popularity of Jeopardy must have occurred because, as cosmic pieces of shit, we are constantly at risk, constantly in jeopardy, constantly having our team in first place with 4 games left and the last 3 against the team that's 3 games back, but despite coming back from 4 or 5 down in the 8th or 9th in 6 out of the last 11, the fact remains that we fucking HAD to because none of our fucking starters can go even 3 innings anymore without giving up at least 5 or 6 runs and, when one does (e.g. pitch 8 solid innings giving up only 1 or 2 runs), our team suddenly becomes totally incapable of coming back from being down by even 1.

Unfortunately, when we finally DO ultimately win, and then go on to win everything, and are finally OUT OF JEOPARDY -- and though the emotion we have is more than real and true, the only way we have to show it is through some deathly tired ritual, no longer fun or even amusing, like pouring hundreds of bottles of cold expensive champagne or huge buckets of ice over each other instead of exterminating emptiness. Whoeeee.

permanent link to this article

copyright © 2004 by HC