Under normal operations, we here at the Calamity are extreme in our fastidious endeavor to curate the best possible experience for all of our most esteemed guests, which includes you. To this end, we rely heavily upon a carefully constructed roulette wheel by which we score our attractions, price our products and services, and determine whether or not to showcase performers.

And by “carefully constructed,” we mean to say we purchased the largest wheel we could find at the cheapest price possible.

This system, so far, is proving to be effective in our decision-making process, as no attraction, souvenir, or performer is left waiting on confirmation by committee. The jury is out on whether this system will be effective in the long term, but that is also by design: we never brought in a jury to begin with.

Now then, while we happily operate in terms of misfortune and happenstance in the most strictest and severest sense with regard to carnival operations, we do recognize that most of the outside world—those of you absolutely refusing to revel in your own madness—operate with systems that are “measurable” and “predictable” providing “stability.” We have been advised to take these strange polysyllabic words seriously in our efforts to score content produced outside of the Calamity, as those of you “sane” guests will have a better time orienting yourself to how we feel about such things. Therefore, we gathered the entire staff of the Calamity and conferred with one another—this, of course, being me, myself, and I—to determine a "measurable, predictable, and stable” content rating system.

JEST is the acronym for the Judgement of External Stories and Tales, as this is the entire purpose of this rating system. We are not at all interested in rating our own stories and tales, aka attractions. Not one bit. However, as we will be sharing stories and tales whose origins lie outside of the Calamity, and highlighting them as guest attractions, we thought it proper to rate them so you, our most esteemed guest, can determine how best to spend your time.

Now then, since it is our purview here at the Calamity to execute on things backwards, upside down, or inside out—sometimes all three all at once where we can manage it—we have determined to run JEST backwards, as our attempts to run it upside down or inside out were immediately frowned upon by one study group after another. As there were, in fact, no study groups involved in this process, we simply adopted the first method we came up with.

So, JEST is backwards and denoted by clowns, and can be explained simply thus: one clown concludes the content to be worthy of consumption and is the highest praise to be afforded any creative piece, whereas five clowns denotes the extreme absurdity one must allow themselves in order to possibly enjoy the content in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. Five clowns suggests the writers, directors, and producers must all have been clowns to create the content, and you must be a clown to consume and enjoy it. Follow so far?

Here let me draw you a picture:

The Best 🤡 <———————> 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 The Worst

This seems like it should be intuitive—the more clowns, the more ludicrous; however, it is unfair to assume to that anyone would find this intuitive at all, considering the rationale works against years, decades—hell, perhaps even centuries—of conditioning where ratings outside of the carnival are concerned. Hence this article that solely exists for the purpose of carefully defining this backward system.

If you understand this right away, one clown for you; great job. If it takes you multiple times in reading and processing this information before you finally grasp the concept, one clown for you as well, as you finally got there. If you get it and you think this is stupid, five clowns for you, what are you still doing here, we have enough clowns on the grounds and are not currently hiring.