ver the hills and far away, Teletubbies come to L.A." I remember this billboard clearly on a trip to Los Angeles some years ago. I also noticed that a lot of people were driving Volkswagen Beetles. Only now do I realize that it was a conspiracy, and the only thing that kept our world from being dominated by the Ottoman Empire and the ghost of Winston Churchill was the fact that the Teletubbies sucked.

The faces of fear.

You see, Teletubbies was a British children's show designed for people between the ages of one, and one and a half. Every broadcast, Tubbyland is enriched by routine events such as the screaming baby in the sun, consumption of tubby custard and tubby toast (the only toast that smiles at you as you eat it), and the watching of a video. Of course, there are always random events (i.e. "One day, a flag appeared in Tubbyland.").

The video is an abomination in itself. The teletubbies stand in a line once they sense that it's coming. They wait anxiously, the camera checking their faces, and finally, a teletubby's face lightens up with perverse delight as it recieves a signal through its antenna. All the other teletubbies crowd around the chosen one's TV screen on its belly, and the camera zooms in. (This is where the fun begins!)

The video is about some inane thing, such as "Washing Dishes" or "The Jumping Gang". (That last one creates the mental image of a Brooklyn street gang hopping along as they cap suckas in their way, but it's actually about a bunch of two-year-olds who like to jump.) So why is washing dishes inane? Because it's this little British black girl who's showing you how to rinse dishes, apply soap, and cry when you drop them. (But it has a happy ending; her mom hugs her.)

The screen will then go back to the teletubbies. They'll wait until the video completely fades away, and then excitedly chant "Again!". Anit it will happen again, and they'll shout "Yay!". And it's exactly the same. (And they do this every bloody episode.) Once it finishes, they'll call for it to happen again, but it won't, mercifully, and they'll mutter "Aww" and walk away.

I won't go over all the teletubbies, their items and their personalities (not that they have personalities), but I will talk about my favorite one, Tinky Winky. Tinky Winky's the purple one with the upside-down triangle as an antenna, the sign of the French Revolution. And of womens' pride. He carries a purse, and when my parents are out of the house, he comes over and teaches me things.

Don't you see what this means? The fallen Ottoman Empire is planting engines powered by the windmills from Tubbyland into Volkswagen Beetles! With the help of Winston Churchill and the United Kingdom, it's going to influence the world's armies to use Beetles as assault vehicles. All at once, the vehicles would explode with Tubby overflow, rendering the world defenseless! It's that simple.