(Note to any readers suffering from a frail constitution: You may want to skip this post. It contains one hundred and thirty four percent of your daily recommended allowance of iron, potassium and uncensored, almond-flavored hate. At times, it could be said that I revel in my vitriol — assuming "revel" is the word you want to use for when a gentleman strips until nude then dances around a geyser of pure liquefied anger while singing eerily melodic nursery rhymes in Nordic dialects of long dead Semitic languages.)

Sony's going to debut a PlayStation Network-exclusive reality show later this month.

They call it The Tester.

I call it "Your Worst Day, Times Seven, Plus A Mouth Full of Scorpions And Mustard" (but only because I couldn't make the phrase "cunt bazooka" sound angry enough).

The show is something like a hybrid of Big Brother and The Real World, only the end goal is neither niche fame amongst a select group of pudgy Britons, nor the chance to televise six months of your attempts to bump squiggly bits with drunk co-eds to whoever it is still watches MTV. Whichever one of the momentary infamymates manages to go without dignity the longest will win a massively uncoveted contract testing gig in Sony's gaming division.

("How uncoveted is it?" I hear you theoretically echo back, like a flock of trained parrots raised on Don Rickles jokes from the days after the Rat Pack fell apart, but before he found renewed Hollywood fame thanks to appearances as himself in films detailing the criminal underworld of Las Vegas and my stereotypically felonious Italian brethren.

Let me put it this way: "contract tester" is the only gaming industry gig that actually has fewer qualifying requirements than "unpaid games blogger.")

In the interest of fairness, if Sony is allowed to actually unleash something like this on the general public in a form not spread exclusively by rabid, shit-flinging simians, I feel I'm near-obligated to offer an opinion on the thing. My opinion?

The Tester sucks.

The Tester is not just the epitome of everything wrong with modern television, it's also clearly indicative of why the last generation may be the first in recorded history to have a very good point when they shake their heads and sigh sadly at every stupid little thing their kids do.

Thanks to a friend behind the scenes at Sony, I recently watched most of the first episode. I'm still wondering what I did to her to deserve that kind of punishment.

Just that fleeting glimpse of Sony's maleficent opus (and the inevitable contemplation of what it all means in the context of a universe in which the pedestrian ideal of a good and loving deity hasn't entirely been eradicated by raging, turtlenecked philosowannabes wandering the aisles of their local library with a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra clutched like some kind of hyper-pompous aegis against people who stopped reading this sentence the moment I mentioned turtlenecks) actually made me want to kill myself, but not in an admirable, romantic, poetically morbid kind of way.

I just sorta welled up with tears like a watery bee sting victim, began mumbling incoherently, and headed straight for the sink in a bid to start chewing on any powders of a color not found in nature hoping that I wouldn't have to witness whatever The Tester might spawn as a result of its infernal success. Yes, somehow The Tester even sucks the glamor from the suicidal tendencies of a native Portlander!

I could continue, but I know how much blunt negativity wounds your tender ears. Though, if you've now developed a taste for the tart flavor of detestation, the always eloquent lads at HG101 have taken a few minutes away from writing up ridiculously detailed analyses of obscure Korean brawlers from the late 90s to brew up a rant on the subject.

Among their other salient points, that bit about the testing job being a completely bullshit reward is both totally true, and still confusing the hell out of me.

*cue cliché record scratch*

The one possible bright point in this whole bloodstained clusterfuck is the baffling involvement of tiny comedian/possible LGBT icon Hal Sparks.

(Aside: He was, like, that guy on Queer As Folk, right? Is that enough to make someone a gay icon? If I was running the LGBT community I'd drop the Village People in favor of Hal ... but I'd also form an awesome gay religion around the worship of Freddie Mercury's wicked 'stache and the inalienable right to wear tube tops ironically all the damn time.)

Sparks still holds the title of "Greatest Talk Soup Host Not Currently Starring In A Sitcom With The Remnants Of Chevy Chase's Career," and while I have no faith in his ability to do anything but add the same kind of snarky quips that have earned him a permanent place next to Michael Ian Black on VH1's I Heart Tuesday, May 3rd 1976, that alone will be the only palatable part of what I see as a televised catastrophe on par with an imaginary reenactment of The Hindenburg Disaster populated entirely by quietly shrieking Preemie babies, kittens who've had their tails eaten by wasps and Audrey Tatou with half her hair in curlers.

If you want to destroy everything your mother ever liked about you, you can catch The Tester on the PlayStation Network come February 18. Just find the section that looks like the blackened, sucking wound where Jay Leno's soul used to be.

OOOH! TOPICAL!