I always was good at games. They were fun,

I always was good at games. They were fun, but above all, they had goals which could be seen at a press of a button. Unlike so-called "life", which, apparently,

was beautifully chaotic and mysterious. At least that's what I thought. But one night after playing C.O.D. on Xbox I went for coffee. I noticed the world around me had patterns in

it that I never noticed before. For instance, the pigeon by the fountain flew in every fifteen minutes and repeated its ritual of pecking at the breadcrumbs that the pigtailed girl

had dropped from her sandwich. I also saw a man with black dog pass my bench every 40 minutes. A guy reading the Times sat next to me every half hour. The park was in a time loop.

I stared timing everything and began looking for the cameras. Being the main character in The Truman Show II was tempting. I could mess with them and pretend to strangle my puppy

, choke my chicken, flog my goat, arm wrestle my bald chimp, hack my hog and punch my possum. But I found out the Truman Show II was being sponsored by 'Break-the-Chains' Petshop

and as I practiced juggling gerbils, I had the dread suspicion this would be a lucrative sponsorship. In the other room, Truman Show II was auditioning some brown-nosing neighbors

for their new reality show: "My Neighbors Will Say Anything To Make Me Like Them." I was unimpressed. I knew I could be at least seven times more of a suck up than these lackluster

reality shows. I mean, really, what's next? A reality show about clogged toilets? It is enough to make me want to toss my TV out the window and take up stamp collecting.

I was about to do it too, but then I saw that "Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed Reindeer" was coming on next and, well, I couldn't miss that! I wanted to see if Hermy ever became a dentist.