dream_game_show epitome of incomprehensibility It's more like a reality show, but it called itself a game show. It started when last night's dream_dog turned into Osama bin Laden. This made the audience surprise-laugh, which revealed that there was an audience, which made the producers decide to do a game-show spin-off. The objective: to have a baby who grows up to look like Osama bin Laden. The couple whose son looks the most like bin Laden wins. (Maybe time is magically speeded up after the baby is born. Maybe the show runners run some computer-based projection. I don't know.) So. It's time to conceive. I'm in a room with about seven other people. This main room is filmed, but people can go into smaller private rooms to have sex. Right now, they're just standing around, chatting. A few are drinking. One woman in particular feels awkward about having sex with a stranger, so she's gone through four or five beer cans. Briefly, I contemplate picking them up, if I have a bag to put them in; I can get ten cents for each at the grocery store. But then I remember the prize money. The prestige. The thrill of the game itself. In this dream world, I have no nervousness about sex with strangers. Unlike the woman who's had all those beers...who is now falling asleep on the couch. Perfect. I ditch the guy I've been talking to (Oliver-like behaviour, to borrow from dream_names) and approach the sleeping woman's planned partner. See, the one I was talking to before looked the most like bin Laden, but I *have* to think about how genes are likely to work together. My skin is fairly pale, so I need to reproduce with someone with darker skin in order to get a light caramel-coloured bin Laden lookalike. We go to a loft, which is a literal loft in a barn, with hay. But then the scene changes and I don't get to birth a bin-Laden lookalike after all. Pity. 260122 ... raze i can't see their faces, but i can hear the contestant and the host speaking. a woman and a man. there's no audience. only these two and the camera crew. i imagine her to have straight blonde hair and him to possess the bland, handsome features of an actor who never made the grade. the woman is confident without collapsing into arrogance. she's ready for every strange and difficult question the host throws at her. harmless as this all seems on the surface, it starts to sink in at some point that if she gets one answer wrong, she won't just lose the game. she'll lose her life. the only prize if she makes it to the end without stepping wrong is survival. when all the questions have been answered, the host tells the woman one of her early responses was incorrect. she guessed mozart's first name wrong. i walk into the living_room and look at the tv screen for the first time. the woman is standing behind a podium on a soundstage. her hair isn't as long as i thought it would be. after forming an image of her in my mind with an easy smile permanently etched into her face, it's jarring to see her confused and afraid. the whole point of this show is that everyone dies. no one knows all the answers. she's made a mockery of the whole enterprise. and the host isn't happy about that. he stands at his own podium, chastising her for missing something so simple when he knows she was flawless the whole way through. he isn't above lying to give the people at home what they want to see. "and_so," he says, "i've decided..." a long, uncomfortable pause. the camera cuts to the woman in closeup. then back to the host. "...to let you pass through." the host looks almost disappointed with himself for letting her walk away. i don't know where she goes from here. i don't get to see that part of the show. 260123 what's it to you? who go blather from