You wish to APPEAR in this spectacle?

So I'm enjoying The Amazing Race last Sunday night, as I do. There's this team of two guys who were Olympic snowboarders. One of them looks like David Soul, and the other like Bjorn Borg. They have run a good race so far, making good decisions, roshambo-ing to figure out who does what challenge (cracks me up), taking at least a little time to appreciate where they are, that kind of thing. They're pretty hilarious, and had become my favorite team so far.

Until ... [sad trombone] ... it comes out that they're Jesus-jumpers. And just like that, I'm completely off of them. I don't hate them or anything; it's just that what I took for general enthusiasm for adventure and whatnot is suddenly revealed to be religio-based, and therefore (to me) less organic, more deliberate, and therefore inauthentic and suddenly annoying. Why? And what does that say about me? Ugh.

But even worse, they were one of several teams who had misgivings about one of the challenges -- they had to disassemble this Buddhist model shriney thing, take it to another location, and reassemble it (basic memory/stress challenge). But the Christianists among the group (which I swear was half of them, gaah), all expressed -- on camera -- their feelings that what they were doing was bad or wrong or ... something, with the clear inference that they thought that putting their hands on, and moving around, the tchotchkes and knickknacks of another religion would somehow infect them with that religion, leading them astray (and doubtless into hellfire and eternal damnation yada yada yada). And while they're all whining about this, I'm thinking, "If you're so sure of your god, why would this stuff be any more than JUST STUFF to you? How little power does your god have, that touching another god's trinkets & gewgaws would be able to interfere?" Still don't get it.

And on that note, about religious people and reality shows: I have long thought that Survivor ought to do an Atheists v. Christians season -- you wanna juice the ratings, that'd do it. I'd go to the CBS website and buy the stupid buff for THAT shit. Of course, you'd have to endure death threats, possible firebombings of regional network ad sales offices, those Westboro asslinings, and endless condemnatory bullshittery from Repuglican presidential "candidates," but like I said: Think of the ratings!

Woke up quick at about noon / just thought that I had ta be in Compton soon

Tuesday Goulash

Things that have been said to me by my boss via email in recent days:
--You are passive.
--You need to really own [this stupid fucking assignment that means nothing to no one but him]
--This is not CC’ing anyone else or BC’ing anyone else, FYI
--Anyhow, all this falls into the “bold conversations” reference, as we need to have these.
--This is a critical tool for us, and I know we can all do better around it.

TV right now:
--The Middle makes me laugh so hard that I have to mash the heel of my hand on my belly button to keep it from sproinging off across the room. A couple of times I've thought I might be on the verge of a stroke, unable to catch my breath -- Christ, it's funny! Except when I'm dying of sympathetic cringery for Sue. Oh, Sue. [virtual hug]
--Boardwalk Empire: Shit is gettin REAL up in here. It took all of last season to really find its footing, but now it's one of my favorite things on the teevee.
--The Walking Dead: Hoofaaah, this is some intense olde-tyme horror show stuff. Love it.

Late-Pregnancy UltraVivid Nonstop All-Nite Technicolor SurroundSound Dream Theatre feature from last night: Me and Tina Fey were getting shitty on some cocktail she kept mixing up (which had a vodka base, plus NyQuil and Coco Loco and some other stuff) at her house. My sister came by with some super-buzzkill fundamentalist evangelical xtian friend of hers, who kept trying to evangelize us but thought he was being real subtle. He even asked for a Scotch, to prove how Down he was. Me and Tina just slumped behind the wet bar, giggling, and drank some more FeyBombs while he droned on and on. (NB: This was a much funner dream than the one the other night which ran five times, back to back, in which I went into labor four weeks early and had to keep waking myself up to check whether this was, in fact, happening. It wasn't.)

WHAT does Marsellus Wallace LOOK LIKE?

Bed Bath and Beyond is the worst store ever.

I've become quite the connoisseur of America's big-box stores, living where I do, and I say this as a credentialed expert: That fucking place sucks.

There's a huge one about half a mile from us. It's acres and acres of fluorescent-lit agony, a carnival freakshow of stuff that looks like something from afar, only to resolve into not a goddamn thing when you get close up.

Having struck out at the comparatively wonderful Target, Pier One, Costco, Cost Plus World Market, and even Toys R Us (a nightmare for another lifetime), I went in there looking for curtains for my kid's room, and some sort of closet organizer system. You'll probably agree that both of these things fall under the first B in the store's name, one-third of its entire goddamn raison d'etre -- "Bed."

Well. It's not like they don't have selection. The joint is jam-packed with what I have to conclude are factory seconds from a fourth-tier manufacturing town in the most benzene-and-bisphenol-soaked valley in China -- every inch of the walls, every inch of floor, hanging from the ceiling, falling out of display stands, there is product. But none of it is quality, none of it is what you need, all of it is some weird third-cousin offshoot of maybe some brand you might have heard of once. The sizes aren't standard -- everything's like two-thirds of an inch off. It's all flimsy, and nowhere near as cheap as the goods warrant. You keep thinking, "Ahh yes, this is the section I need ..." and you wander in and thirty minutes later you're still pawing through this insane jumble of curtainlike matter, mumbling "Who makes thirty-one-inch curtains? Is this faux leather? What's that green -- oh god, I saw this at the mortuary at my grandmother's funeral ..." and finally you leave the store, exhausted and demoralized, with nothing but a little tube of tiny M&Ms that your kid found in some random display near the exit and you want to burn the place down with everybody in it.

Worst. Store. Ever.