The CameraPeople: Watchin' Future TV

CCTVs from some of the world's most dangerous and accident-prone stretches of road were programmed, unmanned, to be able to predict crashes, so that the TV show or channel would tune in to crashes from all over the world, right as they were about to happen. In the spirit of bigger is better, the show would therefore keep having more exotic, fast, or confusing stretches of road, and bigger pile-ups. Irony or humour would sometimes be an undertone of short voice-overs, though everything was delivered under the tone of safety and prevention.

After one mountain retreat rush-hour speedy pile-up in which the icing on the cake was a confused cop car, the voice-over came on saying that camera crews were on the way to the house of the person who caused the crash.

Outside the house, you couldn't tell if it was night or day, because all the camera people from different or the same (?) TV stations had their spotlights lighting up the whole outside of the house (yellow) and the entrance-way inside. Some of them eventually made their way in through the storm door.

"Are you worried about your father?" said a cameraman with a British accent.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" was the reply of a scruffy middle-aged man, clad in trucker hat and white undershirt, blue jeans. (His tone was saying, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?")

"What's his status?" the cameraman said.

"He's been released.": the undershirted man again, hostile look in eyes, a grin.

"Where is he?" a North American-accented cameraman asked. (You were kind of given the impression from the TV that the man in question might be out drinking somewhere.)

You could see on TV that this house was way messy and occupied by a huge family that would stereotypically be called "trash." The camerapeople kept looking around for safety issues to bring up and show to the viewers at home, while the family kept trying to tell them to leave already.

One cameraman asked about the overflowing deep freezer in the basement which could be seen through one part of the sagging floor, "Aren't you scared you're fumigating yourselves?"

A teenage-ish boy-child in yellow short-sleeve button-up shirt tucked into purple underwear shook a half-finished 2L of soda at him., "LEAVE!" he yelled with his head shaking/jittering more rapidly as he spoke more angrily.

The camera crews kept looking around, remarking or asking idle questions about the hospitalized man not present, or about safety as they tried to set up or take better shots, but wouldn't leave because they saw that the family was going to keep doing all this wacky shit. The family would go between yelling at them to leave, ignoring them, or the children trying to get the camerapeople or TV audience - you couldn't tell - to come play with them.

"And dammit the tools are all out!" a freckled blonde ten-year old-ish boy in a dirty white dress shirt said, picking up a drill from a cluttered large glass dining/kitchen table then throwing it down.

A bleach-mulleted haired woman walking by had been trying to tell camera people to leave, but seeing this immediately turned around and yelled, "Why won't you stop wringing my damn neck?" and grabbed the boy around the neck, her head shaking more rapidly as she got angrier. This head shaking jerkily tick was a trait the family had when angry, you could see, maybe was being seen as comic relief.

She let go of the boy angrily, and he fell backwards over the glass table and started to fall down the basement stairs.

Halfway down, due to clutter and loss of momentum he stopped sliding down. He adjusted himself to sitting, chin on hands, and harrumphed, then picked up a doll close to him and activated it so that it started winking to the camera and singing, "Party over he-ere, party over he-ere," the child making it dance and wanting you to come play. The doll started playing Spanish Flea and doing an automated dance routine as the child behind it stared directly in the camera, it zooming in and out, and refocusing.

At this point V woke me up asking, "What's so funny?.. What are you dreaming about?" When I told her all the above, she was quiet then said, "That's not funny at all. That's really really terrible."