Monday, January 5, 2004

The End of Civilization As We Know It (1 of 2)

I went to the gym today.  (No, that's not the end of civilization.)  While chugging away on my friend the Elliptical Machine, my eyes glanced up to the television, which was showing an episode of "Fear Factor." 

I've never actually watched this program before -- not outside of the gym.  Today's episode featured twins.  The segment I saw involved bees.  Near as I could figure -- from the closed captioning -- here's what happened:  You take one twin sister.  You paint her with bee pheromones.  You chain her to a couple of posts.  Then you cover her up with a couple thousand bees.  (Out of the kindness of their heart -- and, I expect, their legal department -- the television show has provided her with a pair of goggles.)  There are locks on each of the four chains (ankles and wrists) holding her to the posts.  The twin's sister has to dig through some boxes (also filled with bees) to find the keys to the locks, and release her sister.

Even before the timer started, sister number one started getting stung.  The bees were stinging her neck, she said.

The host counts down "3 - 2 - 1..." and apparently sister two jumped the gun and went on "1" rather than waiting for "go!"  The host chided her for her eagerness and made a joke at her expense.  Of course, nobody had told the bees they weren't supposed to start stinging until the host gave them the magic word.  So, sister number one just got to stand there getting stung while everyone worked out the timing.  Ha ha.  How very funny.

Once things got going, sister number two had a little trouble -- she dropped a key and couldn't find it.  Now, since I couldn't actually hear the program, I could only imagine the intensity with with sister number one was speaking.  The captions said things like:

"Hurry.  Hurry.  They're inside my shirt."

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