You know that the best part of the carnival is seeing one of the hot shows they put up. And in your very own town, too!

Which one do you want to see?

You head over to Games Alley, where caustic flashing lights and loud, blaring noises excite your every sense. And here’s a kid who just won big and is so happy! And there’s a very still crow on top of that awning over there! Why won’t it move, even an inch? Cool.

Which game do you want to play?

You step up to the counter, where a carnival worker is at a laptop.

“Sorry, friend. Just working on some code for a web browser I’m creating that’s identical to Google Chrome except it has the legal power of attorney. Five dollars for three balls, please.”

“Oh, wow! Most people just pay me a dollar, so it’s a real treat to get the full five.”

He hands you three balls and points to the stacked milk jugs.

“Throw these balls at those jugs. If you knock them all down, you win a fabulous prize. That is the game. That is how the game is played,” he says.

You take aim.

You throw the ball and miss completely.

“Rats!” you think to yourself.

You look at the carnival worker, whose mouth is agape.

“That’s...that’s the best throw I’ve ever seen,” he says slowly. “And I’ve worked here for 80 years.”

“If you don’t take it from him, take it from me,” says a voice that is strangely familiar.

You turn around and see that the voice belongs to former Texas Rangers ace Nolan Ryan, who is at the carnival.

“You’ve got the stuff, kid,” Nolan Ryan continues. “The good stuff.”

“Nolan Ryan hit it right on the head,” says a voice that sounds strangely familiar.

You turn around, and the father you haven’t seen in 15 years steps out from behind Nolan Ryan.

“If I knew you threw like that, I never would have left you and your mother.”

With tears burning in your eyes, you run up to your dad and give him a great big hug. Even though he left you and your mom, he’s still your dad, after all, and you are overcome with emotion.

“Hugs? Being overcome with emotion?” your father says. “This is all very off-putting. I’m the CEO of a Fortune 500 salt mine consulting company, and I can’t be seen being hugged. The salt miners would have a day with this.”

Your father pushes you off of him and walks away into the setting sun..

This is going to take some serious repressing!

You approach the basketball toss game and find the carnival worker slaving over his MacBook Air.

“Oh! Hello there,” she says. “I was just plugging away at this idea I had for a web browser. It’s just like Google Chrome, but every time you minimize a window, it sends an email to the NSA saying you have made love to Osama bin Laden and enjoyed it.”

“You have one basketball,” she continues. “If you get it in the hoop, you get a big prize.”

“Hold on,” you say. “I have to find someone cute nearby to impress before I start shooting.”

You find a cute girl nearby and get her attention with a “check this out” look in your eye. She smiles at you expectantly.

You spin the ball on your finger.

Out of the corner of your eye, you can tell the cute girl is pretty impressed.

As the ball spins on your finger, you blow on it, pretending that your breath is the thing keeping it spinning.

The cute girl smiles and brings her hand up to her face to tuck her hair over her ear.

Knowing she’s still looking, you coyly take the ball from your finger and put it under your shirt so it looks like you’re pregnant, then mime childbirth and pull the ball out and wipe it down. You finish with a little cradling motion. You feel kind of light-headed.

The cute girl has stopped smiling and even looks slightly concerned.

Please consider not hamming it up any more and just shooting the ball, as your ham levels are incredibly high.

You pretend that the basketball is a cauldron of soup that you add carrots and lentils to. You mime tasting the soup with a spoon, but mime that it’s a little too peppery. You look over at the cute girl and wink a few times.

She looks at you, concerned. She points at you and whispers something to her friend, who puts her hands to her mouth in shock.

You realize that blood is trickling from your nose.

Your ham levels are peaking. No one can sustain this much hamming it up for too long. Taking the shot now is really the safe thing to do here.

With blood now pouring from your nose, you begin balancing the ball on your head like a seal. You then pretend to be the zookeeper who comes over to the seal and admonishes it for having too much sex with the other seals.

The cute girl and her friends look horrified. One of them screams, “We need help over here!”

It is becoming imperative that you shoot the ball now, because your ham levels are off the charts and you don’t want to do irreparable damage to your body.

You shoot the first ball and sink it with a satisfying swish noise. You look over at the cute girl you are trying to impress, but she doesn’t seem interested. It’s probably because you didn’t ham it up enough.

Having sufficiently hammed it up for the cute girl, you shoot the basketball. It clonks off the backboard and then rolls precariously around the rim eight complete times before coming to a full stop, balanced on the rim.

“Come on, come on...” you whisper to yourself, knowing the cute girl is watching.

The ball stays up there for another four minutes before finally listing into the hoop.

“Woo-hoo!” you shout.

“Well done,” the carnival worker says to you. “I hope the launch of my web browser is as successful as that shot you just took. Take any prize you’d like.”

You look over at the cute girl. She’s pretty impressed, and you know that giving her this giant bear will seal the deal.

“Give me the giant stuffed bear,” you say. The carnival worker hands it to you wordlessly.

You look down and are immediately transfixed by its cold, lifeless eyes. They seem somehow familiar, like a song you’ve heard through a wall.

The unblinking plastic eyes of the bear demand your attention. They examine your soul and see its darkest contents. The bear seems to know you intimately, better than you know yourself.

You try to tear yourself away from the bear’s knowing eyes, but you are helpless to do so.

Now, the bear’s eyes are underwater, slowly falling away from you. You reach for the bear from your boat, desperately trying to fish it out of the lake.

“Lucas!” you shout. “No! Lucas! You can’t die! We’re just kids!”

You plunge into the water after Lucas, but those eyes, those wide-open, lifeless eyes, continue staring hauntingly back at you. The faster you try to swim, the more Lucas remains just out of reach.

Finally, your muscles and lungs start burning, and you have to return to the surface, gasping the cool air. You were just kids.

“Are you okay?” asks the carnival worker. “You’ve been staring at that bear for six hours.”

You look up and see that it’s dusk. The cute girl is nowhere to be seen. You are alone.

“Okay, you only paid one dollar,” says the carnival worker. “That’s fine, I’ll cover the rest!”

He hands you three balls and points to the stacked milk jugs.

“Throw these balls at those jugs,” he says. “If you knock them all down, you win a fabulous prize. That is the game. That is how the game is played.”

You take aim.

You continue peering into the stuffed bear’s eyes, completely transfixed by its gaze.

Now, the bear’s eyes are underwater, slowly falling away from you. You reach for the bear from your boat, desperately trying to fish it out of the lake.

“Lucas!” you shout. “No! Lucas! You can’t die! We’re just kids!”

You maintain eye contact with Lucas for a long time as he slowly sinks to the bottom of the lake, his dead gaze peering up at you in the comfortable confines of the boat. Even though the lake waters are brackish, it’s as if you can see Lucas and his slowly sinking eyes for hours until they finally fall out of view.

“Are you okay?” asks the carnival worker. “You’ve been staring at that bear for six hours.”

You look up and see that it’s dusk. The cute girl is nowhere to be seen. You are alone.

“I didn’t accidentally run into you at this carnival to get lectured,” your absent father says. “I’m so out of here.”

As he walks away, you turn to Nolan Ryan for some guidance.

“I’m outta here,” Nolan Ryan says. “You can’t even keep a father. How are you going to handle the pressures of Major League Baseball?”

You are now alone.

You peel back the flap of the tent containing the Great Lobster Murderer and find a seat near the front.

“Hark!” she says. “Watch in amazement as I murder this very living lobster right in front of your very eyes.”

A man next to you leans over and whispers, “I saw her do this in Tallahassee last April. She’s good.”

“And it is done!” the Great Lobster Murderer exclaims. “I have murdered this lobster!”

You clap your hands together.

“Now, I need a volunteer.”

“Okay, you, the pathetic person begging to be onstage,” the Great Lobster Murderer says, pointing at you.

You hop onstage to scattered applause.

“To prove this lobster is dead,” the G.L.M. says to you, “I want you to eat this lobster, along with its many corn wives.”

“You,” the Great Lobster Murderer says. “The one person not raising their hand. Come up onstage.”

You get onstage to mild applause.

“To prove this lobster is dead,” the G.L.M. says to you, “I want you to eat this lobster, along with its many corn wives.”

You eat the lobster and it tastes exquisite. Better than any food you’ve ever had.

“Ta-da!” the G.L.M. says, and the place erupts in applause.

As the audience files out, the G.L.M. turns to you and hands you a check for $5,000.

“Because you were part of the show, we have to pay you,” she says. “It’s a Carnival Union thing. Now, I have to get back to work coding this idea I have for a web browser that is like Google Chrome but doesn’t let you go to .org sites.”

“This I gotta see,” you say to yourself as you peel back the tent flap.

You take a seat in the front row and see a normal rubber duck just sitting there in a tub.

You continue to wait patiently, but this dumb duck is still just floating there. You can see that others in the crowd are getting restless. This gently bobbing duck isn’t much of a freak.

Still you wait, and still nothing.

“Shit out a businessman, you dumb duck! I paid hard-earned money for this!” says someone in the front row.

Suddenly, the duck makes a low rumbling noise.

In the time it takes to blink, the rubber duck shits out a businessman in a suit and tie. The businessman gets out of the tub and walks offstage while saying “Time for a meeting!” The rubber duck remains floating in the tub. The crowd goes wild!

“Now shit out an angry one!” someone yells from behind you.

Amazingly, the rubber duck shits out an angry businessman just as quickly as the first! The new businessman gets out of the tub and walks off while saying “I’m late for a meeting!” The crowd is hootin’ and hollerin’ and havin’ a great time. The rubber duck gets a standing ovation.

What a freak this rubber duck is!

You peel back the tent flap and step in to see The Woman Who Is Also A Cousin. You take a seat near the back.

“Hello,” the woman onstage says. “My mother has a sister named Margaret. Margaret married Jim, and they had two children. Thank you.”

The entire audience stands up and cheers as the woman exits the stage.

Everyone knows that the rides are the best part of any carnival. You sprint to the midway with the stunned excitement of a newborn exiting its mother’s birth canal.

Which of these exciting rides do you want to go on first?

You walk up to the booth to buy a ticket for the Ferris wheel. The carnival worker looks up from his laptop.

“Sorry, I was just coding a new web browser that’s like Google Chrome but makes an incredibly loud ‘whoosh’ noise every time you click on a link.”

You try to pay for a ticket, but he stops you.

“No need for money,” he says. “The Ferris wheel is a beautiful tradition of old-fashioned fun and wonder that no American should ever have to pay for. It’s our birthright. Have three tickets, in fact. I toast your desire to ride this grand tradition.”

You hop into a Ferris wheel cabin and the machine slowly starts up. You begin to rise into the air.

Wow. You are almost above these houses now. And your Ferris wheel cabin is climbing higher still. What a rush!

Wow, you are above the tree line now! It looks like the world goes on forever. You see far and wide, all thanks to the simple beauty of the Ferris wheel, one of America’s greatest exports. The Ferris wheel climbs higher still, and you look forward to indulging in more naturally stunning vistas.

You clutch the brass bar of your gondola, peering out over the soft, pillowy clouds, a simple voyeur to God’s mastery. The golden sunset has dipped below the churning currents of clouds, and you are at peace.

You hear the soft hum of the Ferris wheel motor, and a simple smile spreads across your face.

Look out! Plane!

Phew! That was close!

You climb even higher in the beautiful metal circle.

Wow. Just wow. What a Ferris wheel ride you are having.

Up and up you go, and you are afforded more all-American views that spread out fo—look out! Comet!

Phew! That was close!

Wow! And higher still the great steel wheel climbs. Look at these great views of Heaven! Say hi to God and Glenn!

The glorious metallic lady continu—Look out! Heaven Triangles!

As the Ferris wheel continues its ascent, you get a great view of Glerbinal. Only the pure of heart can see the little girl sitting in The Red Seat Of Glerbinal.

Cool! What a beautiful Ferris wheel ride you are having.

Phew! That was close!

The Ferris wheel climbs even higher, and you start to recognize where you are. You’re back at the carnival!

“Okay, time to get out,” says the carnival worker who gave you your ticket. “The ride is over, and I found a bug in the Boolean file of my web browser code.”

What an experience that was! What do you want to do now?

Ah, yes! The unmarried uncle of the carnival: The Tilt-a-Whirl.

You step into line, excited to ride, when you hear a voice.

“Psst!” the voice says. “Over here, by the reeds.”

“I have some information that might be of use to you,” says this man in a trench coat. “Pertinent information.”

“Last year, on this very Tilt-a-Whirl, a kid died,” the man continues. “I’m talking bye-bye-Mommy-and-Daddy dead.”

You blink, and the man has disappeared.

Oh, wait! There he is!

“Sorry, I was just tying my shoe,” says the man. “That kid wasn’t the only one to die on this Tilt-a-Whirl. Six more died the day after, then 53 the day after that, and 1,081 the day after that. This one ride is, statistically, the single highest cause of juvenile death in this country. Look at it right now: There are five kids currently dying.”

“I lost 18 of my 19 children to this Tilt-a-Whirl,” says the man, emotionally. “That’s why I spend all my days in these reeds, trying to save people from its unrelenting violence.”

The man puts his sunglasses back on and looks to the sky wistfully.

“God has a plan for all of us,” he says. “For 18 of my children, it was for them to die while on a goofy carnival ride.”

The man removes his sunglasses again and takes a deep breath.

“Beverly?” The man takes another deep breath. “Beverly is the Tilt-a-Whirl operator.”

“Fine,” he says. “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to make choices to go on incredibly violent Tilt-a-Whirls. Have fun!”

He then recedes into the reeds; it’s as if he was never there at all. You notice he’s left his pair of sunglasses, so you pick them up.

And whoa! You’re next in line to get on.

You hand $5 to the carnival worker.

“Hey, you weren’t waiting down by the reeds just now, were you?” she asks. “A build-up of putrefying sediment and critter corpses releases a bog gas that often causes people to hallucinate. The hallucinations usually take the form of a grieving but pragmatic father.”

The carnival worker hands you a pamphlet.

“Also, I’m beta testing this web browser I’m working on that is identical to Google Chrome, but you can’t go to Amazon.com,” she says. “Here is a download code. Please try it!”

“Oh yeah?” the carnival worker says. “Prove it.”

You reach into your pocket defiantly and pull out the sunglasses.

“Look! I have his sunglasses!” you say as you open your hand, revealing a decaying clump of mud and filth that stinks to high heaven.

“Dear God!” the carnival worker says. “You can’t ride the Tilt-a-Whirl with that in your pockets. The G’s will fling it from your pocket and get it all over everyone. Get out of here!”

You ashamedly walk past the carnival worker and strap into the Tilt-a-Whirl. It starts speeding up. Was the man in the coat really just a vision? Or did he really lose an unreasonable number of his children to this ride, which is going faster and faster each second?

The man down by the reeds must have been real, because you just died on the Tilt-a-Whirl! Why didn’t you heed his warnings??

Say hi to God and Glenn!

The Tilt-a-Whirl! Hey, that was fun!

And you survived it! That man down by the reeds must have been a swamp gas apparition after all! Only two or three of the riders died.

What do you want to do now?

As everyone knows, the best ride at the carnival is deep-fried slop roller-coastering through your lower intestine.

You step up to the food counter.

“Hey there, friend,” says the carnival worker. “I was just finishing up some JavaScript on this web browser I’m designing. It’s just like Google Chrome, except that every time you hit the back button, a little pneumatic piston installed in your grandfather’s casket shoots out and pokes him in his side.”

“Now,” he continues, “what can I get ya?”

“Great choice!” says the carnival worker. “While you’re waiting for your food, come take a tour of our state-of-the-art carnival kitchen! I insist!”

“Here’s where the magic happens!” Randy says. “By the way, my name is Randy!”

“This is our prep kitchen, but your food will actually be cooked in our subterranean kitchen. Want to check it out?”

“Here it is! Our beautiful carnival kitchen,” Randy says, beaming like an idiot father. “With over 40,000 square feet of floor space and 300 workers, we are able to serve over 80 hot dogs, funnel cakes, and sodas every day.”

“Now, let’s go meet some of the people who make your food happen!”

“This is Pete,” explains Randy. “The machine he’s using makes half of a chicken tender. When he’s finished here, he’ll head to our satellite factory in Aurora where there’s a machine that makes the second half.”

“I only speak English,” Pete says to you. “They won’t let us learn other languages.”

“Here’s Kinsellia,” explains Randy. “She’s buffing down a 20-ounce cup of Sprite with this tool.”

Kinsellia looks up and speaks to you. “I desperately want to learn Arabic, but they won’t let me,” she says.

“Here’s Blueshert,” beams Randy. “He’s trying to release a hamburger from the engine block of this rusted old car. All of our hamburgers are shipped to us hidden in different parts of old cars. For freshness.”

“I grew up speaking English, and I’ll die speaking English,” says Blueshert. “If this carnival has its way.”

“And here’s Jordan,” says Randy. “He was in a horrible car accident two years ago, and the only way doctors could save him was to turn him into 12 industrial pipes. We have a big bucket under our Tilt-a-Whirl to collect patron puke, which then passes through Jordan back to here, where it’s reconstituted into more food.”

You nod.

“You can only rent food ’round these parts!” laughs Randy. “Do you want to see the farm where we grow all of our food?”

You and Randy walk through the back door of the kitchen and step out onto a private airstrip.

“We source all of our carnival treats from a farm in New Zealand, so we’re gonna need to hop on our private plane.”

“Hello, my name is Old Roger,” says the pilot. “I’ve never flown a plane before because all the manuals are in Spanish and the carnival will only let me know English.”

“Hey! Hey! HEY!” Randy says, snapping his fingers in your face. “Stop falling in love with Jordan! I know his chrome-finished ducts are irresistible, but he has a job to do and can’t be going on fun dates all the time. Now, are you ready to continue the tour?”

“All right, that does it!” shouts Randy. “The tour is over and you have to lea—”

As Randy is finishing his sentence, Jordan’s valves let loose a torrent of steam, covering the entire factory floor in a dense, moist fog.

“Yes, I’m here,” says Jordan by controlling the noise of steam blasts, conveyor-belt hum, and gears clanking to create human speech.

Somewhere in the steam bath you hear Randy scream.

“Jordan, did you kill Randy with a steam blast???” you ask.

There is a moment of complete silence.

“Randy wanted to stop us from being together,” Jordan synthesizes.

“Now that I know I can have you, I no longer want you,” barks Jordan in his industrial voice. “I am a fickle machine-man.”

“I have killed the evil Randy,” Jordan continues. “Take your fill of funnel cake, free of charge, and return to the carnival. Do not think of me again, for those memories shall only bring you pain.”

“You’re the boss,” Old Roger says, and he starts the plane up.

Old Roger does a pretty good job piloting for a guy who has never done it before.

“We’re almost there!” says Old Roger 18 hours later.

“Welcome to New Zealand!” says Randy. “Our farm is on the tip of that mountain: Mount New Zealand!”

“Here we are!” says Randy. “This is where we grow everything for the carnival. If it doesn’t grow in 7 feet of lightly packed snow, we won’t sell it. That’s a carnival guarantee.”

Randy dips his hands into the snow and pulls out a piping-hot funnel cake.

“Now here’s that funnel cake you ordered!” Randy says.

“Well, this is where I leave you,” says Randy as he throws himself off the mountaintop. “Goodbye!”

“Oh. Well, I guess I don’t really give a shit,” chirps Randy.

“Now, this is where I leave you,” Randy says as he throws himself off the mountaintop. “Goodbye!”

You open the flap to the tent to find a television playing The West Wing Season 2 Episode 22, “Two Cathedrals,” and it looks like it’s already started.

There is a mess in Haiti, and the boys are in the Situation Room trying to sort it all out!

President Bartlet is pretty stressed because he has to admit to the entire nation that he covered up having multiple sclerosis. Now the president is smoking in the National Cathedral. Whoa!

Oh, C.J.!

The president is seeing the ghost of Mrs. Landingham! Whoa!

The president is all wet, but he’s still running for reelection. He’s going off-script! Wow.

What an episode. A real classic of American television.

What do you want to do know?

“You’re telling me,” he says.

He then recedes into the reeds; it’s as if he was never there at all. You notice he’s left his pair of sunglasses, so you pick them up.

And whoa! You’re next in line to get on.

You open the flap of the tent, take a seat near the middle, and look at the stage. On it sits a single black shoe.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” a voice booms, presumably from the shoe. “It is I! The human shoe!”

Everyone stands up and cheers wildly, then leaves.

You walk into the tent and take a seat. An announcer in a fine tuxedo walks onstage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “we are just moments away from seeing the amazing ‘feets’ of the Human Slipper.”

This gets a laugh.

“But before we do, I’d like to welcome to the stage our special opening act, the Deftones!”

The Deftones take the stage.

“Thank you, carnival!” says Chino Moreno, lead singer of the Deftones. “We’re super pumped to be opening for the Human Slipper. Now, let us rock you, as we have trained to do.”

And with that, the Deftones launch into all their classics: “Change (In The House Of Flies)”; “Digital Bath”; “Back To School”; “Minerva.” They do a great job.

“All right!” says Chino Moreno. “That’s all we got! Now, put your hands together for the Human Slipper!”

A red slipper walks onstage.

“Yes, yes. Thank you,” says a booming voice, presumably coming from the slipper. “And a big thank you to the Deftones! Give them another round of applause.”

A couple people clap.

“It is I! The Human Slipper!” the booming voice says.

The entire audience gives a standing ovation, complete with hoots and hollers, and then files out of the tent.

You are about to go into the Dog With The Face Of Van Buren tent when a police officer stops you.

“Sorry, friend,” the police officer says. “The Dog With The Face Of Van Buren has just been murdered. Shot 280 times with a machine gun, all in its Van Buren face.”

The police officer sees that you are sad.

“Cheer up, kid. It’s not like you’re dead,” he says and walks away.

You enter the Hall of Wonders ready to be amazed. And amazed you shall be! You ascend the grand staircase to the first exhibit, all of your senses heightened in anticipation.

Whoa! It’s the 18-foot-tall baby who can’t stop doing pull-ups!

Hey, it’s Bad Sculpture. Awesome!

Marc Antony’s water bottle? Wow! What wonders there are to behold in this strange place!

Incredible! These beautiful jewels were found in the Tomb of Princess Diana.

You can’t believe your eyes: it’s The Bucket That Is Also A Pail!

Just a normal fish tank? Hardly! Every one of these fish have seen at least one president masturbate. Incredible!

You walk into the next room and are blown away. This is Of Course Marcus! Splendid!

And last, but certainly not least, the original prototype for the letter “L”!

What an amazing time you had in this Hall of Wonders.

“Let’s get you my hair!” the carnival worker says while chopping off large swaths of her hair. “You shot the basketball well, and now you shall have my hair.”

She hands it to you in big clumps. You ask for a bag for all the hair, and she just stares at you, smiling, and says, “You sure shot that basketball well.”

Now you have a bunch of hair. And the carnival continues to beckon!

“I went through all this trouble to give you a tour of our operation, but you must have better things to do,” Randy says. “It must be so nice to have better things to do than see a tour that I worked really hard on.”

Randy walks away in a huff. Looks like you really hurt Randy.

What do you want to do now?

You find a cute guy nearby and get his attention with a “check this out” look in your eye. He smiles at you expectantly. He’s on the phone, but you can tell you have his attention.

You spin the ball on your finger.

Out of the corner of your eye, you can tell the cute guy is pretty impressed.

As the ball spins on your finger, you blow on it, pretending that your breath is the thing keeping it spinning.

The cute guy smiles and brings his hand up to scratch the small of his neck in a suggestive way.

Knowing he’s still looking, you coyly take the ball from your finger and put it under your shirt so it looks like you’re pregnant, then mime childbirth and pull the ball out and wipe all the blood and mucus off of it. You finish with a little cradling motion. You feel kind of light-headed.

The cute guy has stopped smiling and even looks slightly concerned.

Please consider not hamming it up any more and just shooting the ball, as your ham levels are incredibly high.

You pretend that the basketball is a cauldron of soup that you add carrots and lentils to. You mime tasting the soup with a spoon, but mime that it’s a little too peppery. You look over at the cute guy and wink a few times.

He looks at you, concerned. He points at you and whispers something to his friend, who puts his hands to his mouth in shock.

You realize that blood is trickling from your nose.

Your ham levels are peaking. No one can sustain this much hamming it up for too long. Taking the shot now is really the safe thing to do here.

With blood now pouring from your nose, you begin balancing the ball on your head like a seal. You then pretend to be the zookeeper who comes over to the seal and admonishes it for having too much sex with the other seals.

The cute guy and his friends look horrified. One of them screams, “We need help over here!”

It is becoming imperative that you shoot the ball now, because your ham levels are off the charts and you don’t want to do irreparable damage to your body.

You shoot the first ball and sink it with a satisfying swish noise. You look over at the cute guy you are trying to impress, but he doesn’t seem interested. It’s probably because you didn’t ham it up enough.

Having sufficiently hammed it up for the cute guy, you shoot the basketball. It clonks off the backboard and then rolls precariously around the rim eight complete times before coming to a full stop, balanced on the rim.

“Come on, come on...” you whisper to yourself, knowing the cute guy is watching.

The ball stays up there for another four minutes before finally listing into the hoop.

“Woo-hoo!” you shout.

“Well done,” the carnival worker says to you. “I hope the launch of my web browser is as successful as that shot you just took. Take any prize you’d like.”

“I...I don’t go by that name anymore,” says the carnival worker, fighting back some large emotion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just get on the ride. Forget that you ever talked to me.”

Beverly greedily snatches the sunglasses from your hands.

“You fool!” screeches Beverly. “These sunglasses free me from my eternal servitude at this Tilt-a-Whirl, and now you must while away your days chained to this post! So it is said!”

Beverly scampers away, cackling.

You look around. There doesn’t seem to be anything keeping you at this “eternal post” or whatever.

Toby Ziegler is being offered a job at a media company. Don’t take it, Toby!