LOS ANGELES, CA—Due to spiraling production costs and stagnant advertising revenue, two of the top cable television networks—TLC and Animal Planet—have decided to combine two of their most popular programs into one, confident the shows will complement each other, and, in many cases, be hard to distinguish between.
19 Kids & Counting, the TLC program that chronicles the lives of Arkansas’ Duggar family, has introduced viewers to what it’s like when every birth control method known to man has failed you miserably. And when their next season begins filming in November, producers of Animal Planet’s Confessions: Animal Hoarding, which provides a weekly look into the hellish, filthy lives of individuals who obsessively collect anything that walks on four feet and relieves themselves solely on carpet, will lend their assistance to help create the new show—Kid Hoarders.
“I’m not sure I’m totally onboard with the name,” said Jim Bob, the Duggar family’s patriarch. “Hoarding is such a negative word. I prefer the word collecting. Or maybe Kid Compiling would work.
“But Michelle and I do breed like bunnies,” he continued, laughing.” I fully expect to father several more litters over the next few years. She’s now on fertility drugs, you know.” He shakes his head. “But I don’t call it hoarding. Would a hoarder memorize most of their kids’ names?”
Unbeknownst to the Duggars, the show’s producers will be implementing a light, game show touch each week by sprinkling additional children into Jim Bob and Michelle’s house, then seeing how long it takes for them to notice. A jackpot will increase by $1,000 each week, and once—or if—the Duggars notice a child that Michelle didn’t birth, a random viewer will receive the jackpot. Should it get to $50,000, the producers will begin inserting children of different races, at which point the jackpot will increase by $2,500 each week.
Former Vice President Al Gore, whose 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth won the Academy Award for best documentary, has unexpectedly piped up about Kid Hoarders, unhappy it’s been given each network’s green light. Gore’s concerned with the spate of television shows that feature families with, as he puts it, “an obscene number of kids.” Continued Gore: “If Obama would ever return my call, I’m going to propose we litter the streets with two-for-one vasectomy flyers, then raise taxes to defray the cost. A Snip Tax, perhaps.”
But Gore’s not upset because the Duggar family has exhausted far, far more than their fair share of natural resources, or that they empty 10 cans of aerosol hairspray onto their heads—and into the atmosphere—each morning. Gore is upset that rumors about the breakup of Jim Bob and Michelle’s twenty-three year marriage are unfounded.
“I’m getting divorced, you know,” said Gore, batting his eyebrows. “I’m actively searching for the next Tipper. But finding another lady named Tipper is next to impossible. I met a Topper a few months ago, but she turned out to be a carnie and stole my wallet at knifepoint.
“So I’ll settle on a Michelle. And that Michelle must, well, you know…a lot! Tipper?” He shakes his head. “Not so much.”—Citizen Dick Arneson reporting
To learn more about corporations—and people—running amok, pick up your copy of the novel Citizen Dick at http://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Dick-Richard-Arneson/dp/0981939309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276615151&sr=8-1[1].
A recent review in the Chicago Sun-Times called Citizen Dick “the kind of spontaneous, belly laugh-evoking funny that caused my wife to banish me from the living room until I was finished reading it.”
And don’t forget to visit http://www.citizendickthebook.com and check out the Dick Strips!
www.citizendickthebook.com | © Richard Arneson 2010
