There are certain things that its almost impossible to avoid, living in the US, if you wanna make a decent amount of skrilla. Christmas. White people. And, for the past six months, two new unescapable phenomenon have intruded on the public consciousness.

The TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

The marketning phenomenon called Pokemon.

The operative sighs loudly, knowing even his 9 year old brother is a Pokemon fanatic, as his mother stares riveted to Regis' shenanigans

In and of themselves, both of these things are probably harmless. As game shows go, Regis will never top the 1950s drama of Twenty-One, scaring game shows out of prime time with fixed questions and a scandal that shook up television (at the time, they didn't have sex scandals yet).

As far as Japanimation, Sailor Moon's erotic subtext (don't front like you never tried to look under those schoolgirl skirts) or Robotech's rampant militarism are way more dangerous than the purely marketing-minded machinations of the possibly twenty billion Pokemon characters and their money driven motto, "Gotta catch 'em all."

The problem is when they go too far and you can't escape them. When real television shows -- like, oh, Sports Night -- get preempted so America can sweat with some half literate peasant from Peoria who doesn't know who the Fugees are, something's wrong.

When there are commercials of Batman, the frickin' Dark Knight, singing (when does Batman sing?), singing "Jiggly Puff" to Robin to get him to go to sleep, something is seriously wrong.

Did we mention that more than 600 kids in Japan went into an epileptic fit watching a Pokemon episode. Chances are kids here are too hopped up on steroid in the meat and sugar to even notice the difference.

As mentioned, even the operative's own little family has succumbed to the lure of these alleged cultural factors. When asked what they like -- both of the, mind you, a nearly 50 year old woman and a 9 year old boy -- they respond almost identically. "I dunno. I just like it." The boy traded his game system for more Pokemon cards, now having 294 (some of which are valued between $50-$75 dollars. That's Amerikkkan money. Not rubles, or francs or some odd isht. Real money.

As for Regis' festival of overwrought hand-wringing (when on David Letterman's show and confronted with a picture of him in a suit made of dollar bills, Dave commented, "You just can't say no to anything, can you?"), it has spawned prime-time game shows on every major network, to the point where NBC's entertainment president Garth Ancier said, "There's nothing like it in modern programming. It's like crack. Once you get on it, you get these giant ratings." Sitcoms? Please. Too expensive and too shortly lived. Dramas even more so. The cheapest things to put on TV are game shows (give away a million or two in prizes, make fifty or a hundred million in advertising ... deal!), reality shows ("... next, on When Hot Wings Attack ..."), and newsmagazines, ("... we're here outside the home of someone who may have known the President's prom date ..."). All questionable value (i.e mad boring) and stealing valuable real estate and promotions dollars from really good shows.

Fox's Chuck Woolery-helmed game show Greed killed Action, one of the best shows ever put on TV, with Jay Mohr as a nearly unredeemable Hollywood insider, showing people a lot more about the truth of the industry than they could have ever suspected. The aforementioned, brilliant Sports Night fights for its own time slot against Regis' smarmy mug. It's sickening.

So the operative put in a few calls.

After that fateful night in the '80s where I may or may not have been involved in brokering the deal with the devil that started the career of Bruce Willis, some old contacts were always helpful. Sure enough -- the fifth ring of hell held a file, signed in the blood of a marketing executive, insuring at least two billion in raw profits from both franchises discussed here. The connection at last -- Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Pokemon are both the work of the devil, both a connected conspiracy to dumb down the world in preparation to lock them into the Matrix.

Unfortunately, due to another non-interference pact (triggered by the assassination of Princess Di), the operative was bound by honor and a very stringent contract to let these filth ridden excuses for entertainment continue their march across the wallets of the world towards trendy obsolescence. Damn.

"What's an operative to do?" our young hero asked himself? Shelling out sixty five bucks for a Mew card that would please his little brother more than anything in the world, he obviously saw that it could only be endured, not destroyed. Luckily, there was always a quote that brought him great comfort in these times ...

"One day, we'll all look back on this, laugh nervously, and change the subject."