View Single Post
  #1  
Old 09-13-2005, 10:16 PM
PointyHairedJedi's Avatar
PointyHairedJedi PointyHairedJedi is offline
He'd enjoy a third pie
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: The Scotlands
Posts: 4,354
Send a message via ICQ to PointyHairedJedi Send a message via AIM to PointyHairedJedi Send a message via Yahoo to PointyHairedJedi
Default The Grmphnyacken Times - Pie Study Publishes Conclusions

Quote:
Five-Minute.Net May Be Linked To Rising Obesity Levels, British Researchers Warn

Can fivers make you fat? This is the startling question posed by a report that was published yesterday by a research group after an intensive year-long study. The group, based at an Oxford university (you know, one of those really posh ones), had originally been studying the statistical correlations between the consumption of alcohol and the consumption of kebabs and other such takeaway foods by means of rigorous field analysis, but but abandoned the study in favour of looking into the effects of fivers on appetite and weight gain after stumbling on Five-Minute.Net's website one night whilst drunk.

“We'd just come back from our latest statistics gathering expedition to the local pub and Indian takeaway, only to discover that the telly was on the blink,” explains Dr. Martin Hibbley-Smith, as we both sit in his comfortably appointed office, trying to ignore the muffled explosions coming at irregular intervals from the chemistry lab across the way. “So, whilst attempting to settle a bet by looking up the specifics of 'Dalek sex' on Google, we came across this fascinating site, Five-Minute.Net. Now, of course, being very tired and emotional, we none of us took more than a cursory glance at it at that point, but later one the next day, whilst I was hiding from the Dean in my office, I remembered it, and intrigued, investigated further. Needless to say, I was astounded by what I found.”

What he found astounded him. Though ostensibly a parody site, working on the unique principle of condensing episodes of various television shows, films, and other media into textural parodies one-twelfth their original length, it also contained numerous references to food, and in particular, pie. There are four thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight references in total, and the number goes up daily. These include:

Horta: (writes) "No Kill Pie." ...I mean, "I."
Kirk: I would never kill pie! It's so sweet and squishy....
Horta: No, "I." It says, "No Kill I."
Kirk: ...especially pecan pie. It has two words that start with "P", and -- I don't think it understands me, Spock. Analysis.
- Five-Minute “The Devil in the Dark”

Tucker: Mmmmmm, pie. Want some?
T'Pol: N--
Tucker: Get your own! Nobody shares my pie.
T'Pol: Oh, shut your pie hole.
- Five-Minute “Breaking the Ice”

Spock: Here creature creature creature...
Creature: Yeah, like I'm gonna fall for that.
Spock: I've got some pie for you.
Creature: Oooh... pie!
- Five-Minute “Operation: Annihilate!”

Picard: It really sucks that my family's all dead.
Troi: Your family history means a lot to you, doesn't it?
Picard: Yes, I remember learning about the Picard that won all the pie-eating contests, the Picard that crossdressed, the Picard that slept with his best friend's wife and had a son named Wesley....
- Five-Minute “Star Trek Generations”

This ingrained culture of pie seems to be mostly thanks to one math nerd, Colin “Zeke” Hayman, who is the webmaster of 5MN, and is rumoured to have links to the often controversial Church of Pientology. This link was later to become a very important part of the Oxford group's conclusions, but at that time, Dr. Hibbley-Smith and his colleagues dismissed the link as irrelevant.

Talking to one of those colleagues, Dr. Wilfred Womble, I learned just how the study came to be set up. “Martin came to us with these really amazing figures on this website. Amazing, man. They were just awesome. Where was I? Oh yeah, the figures. So, taking as a given that this was deliberate – how could it not be? - we set ourselves to thinking of a possible motive behind it. After much hard though, lubricated by some truly awesome beer – when I say awesome, I'm not exaggerating, I can tell you – we came to the inevitable conclusion that we had no idea whatsoever. So we set up the study, and given that too much pie makes you fat, we thought: why not? Ah, are you going for another round? Mine's a pint, thanks.”

So, the study was set up thusly – for one whole year, one group of volunteers, three times a week, was asked to sit for half an hour and read randomly picked fivers. Afterwards, they were then offered pie, and could have as much as they wanted. A second group, the control, were kept in tiny cages, and also read random fivers for half an hour three times a week. Afterwards they were asked if they wanted pie, and if they replied positively, were administered electric shocks (although naturally they soon enough learned not to, apart from a few persistent cases).

After twelve months, the results were clear. The first group had gained weight so dramatically that they were no longer in many cases able to move under their own motive power. The control group, by contrast, had actually lost weight. The result of the study was clear enough: reading fivers could under some circumstances actually encourage obesity, but the question remained – why?

“Subliminal messaging is the only reasonable explanation,”says Dr. Hibbley-Smith. “For whatever nefarious reason, Colin Hayman is encouraging those with easy access to pie, who are already a vulnerable group to begin with, to gorge themselves silly and become grossly fat. By the way, this steak and kidney pie is lovely. Are you certain you don't want any?”

Our story does not end there, however. Just last week the FDA and the FBI launched a joint investigation into the activities of the Church of Pientology and those associated with it. A source from within the FDA revealed to us exclusively that there is a very real concern by the government that Pientologists are planning on taking over the entire North American continent by a scheme of making it's inhabitants so unhealthy that they will be unable to oppose the Pientologists when they do finally make their bid for power. Even more interestingly, it is thought that Colin Hayman might be one of the masterminds behind this scheme. Although there is no direct evidence to support this yet, given his involvement in the 2002 attempt to eliminate the word “the” from all acronyms, it does not seem an unreasonable assumption to make. That particular plot was foiled by the timely intervention of several time travellers from the future, but if this threat is as the US Government believes credible, will we be so fortunate this time? Only pie will tell. Err, time. Only time will tell.
__________________
Mason: Luckily we at the Agency use use a high-tech piece of software that will let us spot him instantly via high-res satellite images.
Sergeant: You can? That's amazing!
Mason: Yes. We call it 'Google Earth'.
- Five Minute 24 S1 (it lives, honest!)

"Everybody loves pie!"
- Spongebob Squarepants
Reply With Quote