[To best simulate the Expo Experience, listen to this track reading the article.]

On December 17th, 2011, with parts and support from its parent corporation, Reality™ Incorporated Co., The Reality™ Institute held its first Reality™ Expo at Control Room in downtown Los Angeles.

For the first time ever, patrons were able to get a visceral experience of what reality™ might look like by interacting with a variety of simulated recreations of the reality situation. Replicas of various “rooms of the house” were displayed with lifelike accuracy, including appropriate paraphernalia, cultural decor, and media apparatuses all curated by a highly-ordained staff of Reality™ Specialists.

As you can see from this map (created by Evelena Ruether), the exhibit was designed to give each “room” a heightened sense of authenticity, with each cultural item devised with a high degree of specificity.

The “teen’s bedroom” for instance, included an almost flawless recreation of a genuine video game, a compact disc player with fabricated music, and pornographic comic books (as seen individually here and here).

 The “parents’ office” was a highly detailed office simulation that included two different audiobooks (here and here), synthetic poetry, a small library, and a prosaic manuscript all carefully crafted to represent the tastes of the educated, uninformed class.

The living room broadcast on a 59″ screen an extremely realistic series of commercials, instructional videos and music videos, and other forms of propaganda on a 35 minute loop throughout the night.

Finally, there was the Reality™ Frontiers portion of the expo, which included projections into the future of the possibilities of reality™.

And, because all expos need some sort of break from the knowledge imparted in them, there was sanctioned entertainment from a variety of talented guests: Patrick Benjamin, Brian Pickett, Lan Phan, Byron Campbell, Chelsea Trescott, Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, Seth Blake, and Hillary Kapan.  Throughout the night, our Reality™ Representatives (including Adria Bregani, Scott Grunewald, Jonathan Loney, Danielle Matich, Laurel Rosales) surveyed the patrons to ensure the authenticity of the simulation by asking quality feedback questions like “Does this feel real to you?” and “Is this really happening?”

Other Ordained Specialists included:
Melena Baralis
William Kaminski
Anthony Lowder
Oscar Moralde
Ben Nyberg
Dave Perry
Nancy Romero

Master of Ceremonies and CEO:
Michael Molitch-Hou™

All in all, the participants seemed to learn a great deal about reality™ and Reality™ Incorporated Corporation learned a great deal more…

[Show as slideshow]

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Hillary Kapan

Seth Blake

Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal

Chelsea Trescott

Byron Campbell

Brian Pickett

Patrick Benjamin

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Part 1: How I Met George

Part 2: The Truth Is

Part 3: A Strange Boy Wearing Glasses, Smoking a Cigarette

Part 4: Count Basie

Part 5: He Keeps the Rhythm and, Therefore, He Keeps the Form

Part 6: We Called Him Mr. X

Part 7: A Comparison of Two Birthdays

Part 8: Beatlemania

Part 9: Is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds About Drugs

Part 10: The Break Up of the Beatles Looked Something Like This

Part 11: Imagine

Part 12: Goodnight

[Download the Whole Album]

You can’t count on other people.  You don’t need us to tell you.  You mustn’t need us to tell you, or we never would.  You know.

You’ve known it since your significant other left you stranded at the Senior Prom after driving your new truck through a loose field of jagged quarry-stones for a one-on-one with the captain of the Varsity Basketball team.  Afterward, they both Tweeted about it, which is how we found out.

You’ve known it since the only relative present at the birth of your first child was your first child.

You’ve known it since the only relative present at your birth was yourself.

You’ve known it since your suicide attempt elicited no more sympathy for its failure than for its pursuit.

You are a dissembler.  You are a waste product of the human soul.  Your undertakings have produced nothing but disgrace.  Had they gone one step further and incited humiliation, you would have deemed them an unmitigated success.  You’ve always known yourself capable of vast accomplishments, accomplishments with the power to shift paradigms, except the living and unloving universe at large is indifferent to your very existence.

There is only one thing for it.  No, not to organize.  That can be safely deferred until the perpetual next Tuesday.

No, I’m afraid it’s fallen to you to act as a force of dismantlement.  You must become the slipperiest substance, the most capricious of collaborators, the voice that always seeks to destroy the harmony of purring throats.  You must answer all challenges with vague questions concerning the proper endowment of responsibility and blame.  You must appropriate words, bodies, emotions, possessions, and cosmologies freely and vaingloriously.  It doesn’t look as though anybody else is going to step up.

The following collection of vague, spurious, or un-researched references won’t help you, but it will give you the feeling that it really intended to, at the beginning, before it realized what an utter misappropriation of resources that would be.  It will suggest new avenues of mischief, miscegenation, and misdealing, then fail to deliver.  It will inspire a near-congenital loathing for alphabetical symbols and glyphs in general, as well as their arrangements.

The Unreliable Library is an exercise in autoerotic mis-reading and creative undermining.  The books contained within may not actually exist, though that rule cannot be consistently relied upon.  Those that do may exist in forms disadvantageous to the practice of reading.  We can’t be asked to vouch for the accuracy or practical utility of this guide.  We can’t be asked for anything.  The authors and publishers mentioned here would rather you were dead, if they harbor any feelings toward you outside of abject insouciance.  You should consider it a miracle to discover any of their works in print.

An Artist’s Guide to Arson
Light, Agatha. Phoenix, AZ: Matchbook Press, 1977, 44 pp.
In this beautiful 2-color collection of photographs, the author provides examples of creative and aesthetically pleasing uses for unsolicited conflagration.

Tim says in his e-mail (dated 9/26/11) to me:

Hey!

I am releasing a beer, as you now know. And it is certified Real™. I brewed it with a brewery in Scotland called BrewDog, and it’s an 8.2% black lager made with miso and toasted walnuts. It’s in kegs now and we’re launching it in London tonight, and then we took about half the batch and put it into Bourbon barrels with apples and we’re going to age that before releasing it. I’m attaching the label.

I couldn’t be happier or more proud to see my little Timmy grow up to win a TV cooking show and then release a beer based off of his own beloved cartoon character. You’ve come a long way and you’ve got a long way to go. Way to go, Tim! Thanks for ensuring that reality™ maintains its integrity by certifying your product as real™. Now, everyone can finally drink something that isn’t a pure figment of their imaginations. The endorsement of a real Masterchef! Thanks!

Buy the record.

Or check it out on Spotify.