AND I ACTUALLY BECOME PUBLISHED

Not on paper, but it's something.   Please check it out!

OUR ONLY HOPE IS REALITY TELEVISION

Mother?  John Junior?  Myrtle?  Jennifer?  Cousin Nathan?  I just heard from that fella at th' bank.  The news...it ain't good.  He gave us three months to make up everythin' we missed out on payin' for th' past six.  I tried to tell him, I tried sayin' "if we couldn't make them payments on time in th' first place, how the hell we gonna do it in three months?" He didn't say nothin' to that.  Oh children, he just stared at me.  I think they mean to take th' farm from under us and leave us all on th' street.

So it's come to this.  Our only hope is we get one of us on some kinda reality programmin'.

I never claimed to be an educated man...shut up, Cousin Nathan.  Now's not the time to be a-jokin'.  You can save it for them cameras, if we's lucky.  But listen, all.  If there's one thing I know?  There's two basic truths about the basic cable TV.  They's got boatloads of money, and they love filmin' them some quirky country people.  And if we're gonna save this farm, we need to be as quirky as possible.

Mother, you an' I already have us a headstart what with your drinkin' problem and my pill addiction and my drinkin' problem.  How many of them intervention programs are there now?  Two or three?  Well one of them suckers is gonna eat us up with a spoon.  Especially when they see the secret bottle setup I got in my wooden leg, here.   I'm...sorry this is how you were to find out about this, children.

But the wooden leg!  That's the key!  John Junior, this wooden leg right here?  You made this, an' a fine piece of work it be.  But it's yet another thing we could try'n sell to one of the TV people.  That's gotta be worth a half hour to one of the networks.  Ain't there a home and garden channel?  Or some kind of DIY show where you teach people how to make new stuff for th' kitchen or th'...an outhouse or some such?  Maybe if you was to focus on whittlin' fancy soup bowls and cutting boards instead of replacement limbs and teeth we'd have somethin' good goin' on there, John Junior.  And to think of how I and your mother used to taunt you over you and your whittlin'.  Well I'm sorry son, that were the liquor talkin'.  For these past twelve years.  

Now, Myrtle and Jennifer?  You two don't have no viable talents, but you're at least a little bit easy on the eyes.  So we're gonna have to take a whole 'nother tactic on you two.  I'm sorry to say it, but th' grease that lubricates th' very gears of reality TV is...drunken harlots.  So you two sit right down and have a drink with your momma and me.  Have a couple.  And let's get to tearin' the legs off of them blue jeans.  Afterwards, we can take a video on the camcorder of you two tryin' to drive a tractor on the highway or somethin'.  I'm sorry girls.  It does turn my stomach to have to do somethin' like this but if one of you had a craft like your older brother and his pansy whittlin' we wouldn't have to slut you up like we is.  

Now for you Cousin Nathan, I don't know where to begin with you.  You're a goldmine.  You got the hut where you tan your roadkill, the Animal Planet will want some of that.  You have the shack where you barbecue the roadkill, that's goof for one o' them cookin' channels.  And your whole house at th' end of the property, well you can't even sleep in there no more can ya?  On account of all th' trash you done collected?  Sorry, Nathan but it is trash.  What you say you collect is literally garbage.  You have more black garbage bags in there than you do furniture.  But you know, I used to judge you for that and I do apologize.  Now that I realize how many of them hoardin' TV shows is out there; your obsessive compulsive behavior is like unto a goldmine to this family.  And you got a serious drinkin' problem too, that's somethin' special!  We can have a super intervention or some such!  Yeah, that's gotta be somethin' the TV will want to air.

Family, we need to come together in this time of crisis.  But I am convinced that the only way we's gonna save th' farm, is if we can sell ourselves to some sorta basic cable reality TV programmin'.  And I think we can do it.  We all have somethin' special, somethin' that people want to watch and learn from.  Or at the very least watch, and gawk at.  If we can succeed in whoring ourselves out to the TV and selling our way of live as disposable entertainment, then we will preserve our very way of life itself.  It's our only chance, I jus' know it.