by FRED FLEEGLE-GRIEBFLEISCHER, Alternate Reality News Service Journalism Writer
Ordinary people (read: people who don’t make a living asking complete strangers uncomfortable questions so that their worst behaviour can be exposed to the public) have a distorted sense of what reporters do. Some think we make up stories about people throwing themselves off tall buildings at Christmas to shame people into being better to each other at Christmas (Meet John Whatsisname has a lot to answer for!). Some people think it’s about drinking a lot of coffee and smoking a lot of cigarettes while chasing down leads and meeting sketchy people in dingy parking garages (All the President’s Monkeys has a lot to answer for!). Some believe it involves smart, witty young people confronting moral dilemmas while shagging everybody they can find (Aaron Sorkindsorpleasant has a lot to answer for! – even though he does it with such amazing dialogue).
In the real multiverse, journalism may contain small elements of each of these examples, but it’s not like any of them. In the real multiverse, practising journalism is dangerous to a reporters health, and getting it right is worse.
Take Scaramouche Flackseid, who was assigned to write about the economy on Earth Prime 4-7-7-8-9-0 dash Theta (aka: The Porn Planet), a place so full of sexual activity that no amount of antibiotics can keep a visitor from contracting at least three sexually transmitted diseases (with a 43% chance that at least one will be sentient). As it happened, all three of the STDs she caught were sentient. This caused Flackseid to be paralyzed whenever she had to make a difficult decision because the voices in her head constantly argued with each other. She could not continue as a reporter. Last I heard, she was a New Democratic Member of Parliament.
Perhaps the most dangerous of the known universes is Earth Prime 1-6-7-1-8-2 dash Psi, where the United States of Vesampucceri is the world’s leading idiotocracy (which is clearly rule by the stupidest – clear, that is, to everybody except the people who live there). That place is nasty!
Meatyor – Meterolalala – Metooeeryoreol – Weather Writer Veronique Pistachiopasticheeo, for example, has to spend a day silently meditating in an ashram for every week she spends reporting on Earth Prime 1-6-7-1-8-2 dash Psi. And before she was assigned there, her idea of spirituality was binge watching Sex and Velocity over a Xanax-fuelled weekend!
After a month on Earth Prime 1-6-7-1-8-2 dash Psi, Sports Writer Alexander Biggs-Tufts-Mann started chugging bottles of Mrs. Gawdfeerinleper’s Finest. And he is allergic to tannins!
And who could ever forget…
…uhh…
So, umm, anyway…why is this reality so hard on journalists? “Err, ayep, Could be the corruption. Could be the endless personal attacks on anybody who disagrees with the government, especially journalists. My money’s on the relentless assault on reality itself by President Ronald McDruhitmumpf, everybody in his government and all of his backers in the media, ayep,” said Pops Moobley, the closest thing to a philosopher that the Alternate Reality News Service has.
Pops Moobley said that living on Earth Prime 1-6-7-1-8-2 dash Psi is like living in an * UNHINGED ZONE *, a cluster of universes where linear causality has broken down, but without its inadvertent stream of hilarity.
“Y’all forgot the ayep,” Pops Moobley said. “Ayep.”
I pointed out that it wasn’t a direct quote.
“Ayep. Even so,” he said, “it was an expression of my thoughts, and it should have included the catchphrase that’s associated with me. Sort of like, ‘Don’t let go of the velociraptor tail, baby Buddha bubbe!’ only not as contextually dependent, ayep.”
The constant assault on consensual reality creates an uncomfortable dissonance within the minds of people, especially those who come from a different reality grounded in some kind of…reality, Pops Moobley said. Journalists, who pride themselves (to the extent that people who are professional snoops can be said to have any pride) on ferreting out facts in order to expose bad behaviour and other inconvenient truths, are particularly susceptible to this dissonance.
“Ayep.”
Anope.
“Son, you really wanna argue with a Pops? The last person what tried it was last seen collectin’ carts in the parkin’ lot of a MultiMaxiMegaMart, and he didn’t even work there! Ayep.”
Ayipe!
“Ayep. Close, but not quite celebratory snacks-worthy. Wanna giver one more go? Ayep?”
A…yep?
“Ayep! There ya go! Now, really, was that so hard?”
The best way to remain safe is to have a solid moral core and stay hydrated, Pops Moobley stated. Ayep. Have a solid moral core? And become a journalist? That didn’t sound right to me, but by then Pops Moobley, satisfied that he had converted another journalist to the church of folksiness, had turned his attention to the Grand Unified Theory of Nothingness.
Ayep.