Anyway, this weekend I was all I’m gonna organize! I’m gonna get shit done! I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna! and now it’s Sunday night and I haven’t even finished that one load of laundry. HOWEVER. I’ve yet to find a person out there who hasn’t read Stieg Larsson’s Millienium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and I’ve been anxious to watch the movie. A quick search of the on-demand movie channel revealed that the first two books are now movies in Swedish with English subtitles. Let this not deter you, Internet! These movies are OUTSTANDING.

If you’ve read them, you know how graphic they are and the movies do the nasty parts some serious justice. They are entertaining and stick with the story pretty closely, but by far the most fun for me was learning Swedish words. For instance, did you know that “okay” in English and “okay” in Swedish are the same? ME EITHER. And “holy shit” and “what the fuck” sound exactly the same, except with extra syllables. I always thought Spanish was fun, but Swedish? Well. I haven’t asked anyone about this officially, but I’m pretty sure Swedish is a combo of German, French and English, and maybe some other languages, and they use all those fun letters with the dots and slashes through them, like the No Smoking signs. SO FUN, RIGHT?!

Now this is interesting: I just looked on Wikipedia and it turns out that Swedish is the official language of Finland, too. Which totally confuses me, because I would think that Finnish would be Finland’s language, but does that mean that Finnish isn’t a language? Or do people in Finland not like their own language? Or is it like Canada, where people speak English but probably don’t want to, and feel like Americans just shoved English down their throats and so they rebel by saying “oot the door” and other weird stuff?

These are the questions that keep me up…in the afternoon. I didn’t even nap today thinking about this stuff. I blame Stieg Larsson.

In other news, everyone in these movies drives a Volvo. Or, if they’re executives at their jobs, they drive Audis or Mercedes. Can you imagine living somewhere where there isn’t a tacky 12 year-old domestic death trap parked on every street corner? Me either. And all the houses in Stockholm looked really quaint but modern and Ikea-y and the rural towns have names like Uppsala and Hedestad. I said on Facebook today that I wanted to plan a trip to Sweden soon and one of my friends sent me the current weather in Stockholm, which was 22 degrees, and I said that I didn’t mind because hello? It’s colder than that in Pittsburgh today. (I only know that because I’m watching the Steelers play the Jets, and that’s only because my friend Kristen showed me Heinz Field when I was there a few months ago and now I feel beholden to Pennsylvania.)

Tomorrow I’m going to see the lu-lu doctor, which is not the vagina doctor. Apparently this is confusing to some people. I’m going to ask her what I’m supposed to do about taking my crazy meds when I’m sick with a stomach virus, and also about Ambien amnesia, which is happening more and more. Maybe I’ll come out of there with some new prescriptions, and if that’s the case, I’ll be sure to let you know what’s good and new on the crazytrain market.

Until then…

Var är toaletten? (I’m asking you where the toilet is, please, when I’m in Sweden. Or Finland.)

Anyway, over the last 5 years or so, the Miss America pageant has suffered a loss of viewers and pageant organizers have been desperate to win them back. There was the Swimsuit Uproar that allowed contestants to choose a one-piece. There was the host switch-up that was so painful I almost deserted those 53 precious pumpkins. Then there was the venue change, the reality-show component, the we’ll-try-anything-to-get-people-to-take-us-seriously stunts.

Last night though, Miss America returned to ABC with perfectly respectable Chris Harrison (The Bachelor) and Brooke Burke (Dancing with the Stars). There were only a few moments of cheese and behind-the-scenes, and the interview questions were inane, but overall it was a delight to longtime watchers. I mean, I didn’t actually ask those other 4 longtime watchers, but I feel I can speak for them.

MIss America 2011, Teresa Scanlan, Miss Nebraska

I tell you what though, there were two girls who just defied explanation. There was Miss Delaware, who has a tragic case of alopecia and is very proud of her wigs and hairpieces and such, and there was Miss Arkansas, whose enviable talent was – are you FREAKING READY FOR THIS – Yodeling Ventriloquism. If only I could make this up, y’all. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before and hopefully like nothing I’ll ever be blinded by again.

The winner was Miss Nebraska, Teresa Scanlan, who is but a baby at 17. The hair and makeup put her at least at 26 if not 35, and she is blonde, which my gal Ashley Gross noted has been missing the last few years. Hot dog for her, quelle horror for Miss North Carolina Adrienne Core, who didn’t make the top 10. She did, however, win the talent competition earlier in the week and for that we are proud.

Miss Hawaii Jalee Fuselier (Lifestyle & Fitness) and Miss North Carolina Adrienne Core (Talent)

I vow to try really hard to remember to use my muscles a little more often.

Since Christmas, the house has been quiet but tumultuous, if that’s possible. I had a three week break from school over the holidays, which I really enjoyed but which threw my circadian rhythm off so much so that I worried for days about oversleeping on my first day back. The first week back was a blur of training, registration, lesson planning, putting out fires and getting back into a regular sleep schedule. The second week back was about as awful as I would expect in January. We discovered mistakes we’d made with advising this past semester and had to rectify those quickly, until it snowed and I got the stomach flu and we had extended drop/add and my co-workers were short staffed and OH GOD THE STOMACH FLU.

From what I know, it’s spread like wildfire around this town. From what I’ve heard, it’s all over everywhere. I think I’d rather be shot in the toes than have that again. Not even kidding.

So I guess the point of my story is that my mind has been elsewhere and I’ve suffered because of it. There are so many things that I think Oh! I need to remember to blog about that! and then a day goes by and I forget, or it’s not relevant anymore. I watched some serious TV over both the holiday and The Illness of January, and I’m happy to report that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is my new discovery. It’s just…genius. I can’t believe I hadn’t found it before, but I owe that show a debt of gratitude for helping me climb out of a panic attack the other day. The thing about a stomach bug is that if I can’t keep anything inside me (I know this is gross, but most of y’all are moms and your gross-o-meter should be tolerating higher stuff than this) I can’t keep my medication regulated. So it stands to reason that without the good drugs, I am a pure-T nutcase. I’m telling you, this week was not pretty.

Catching up on Google Reader was a treat this week, as I’m woefully behind on my reading and have so much more to go. A lot of your posts have given me good ideas and some have even helped me come up with things to talk about in my class this semester. Y’all are so smart. I feel so…inferior.

In other news, things that have been rocky are slowly rocking themselves back right again. I wish so much that I could talk about this here, but the important thing is that you know I am and will always be a shiny, sparkling, extra wonderful, fantastical rock star. I just don’t see how you could argue otherwise. I didn’t make new year’s resolutions because frankly, who keeps them? (not me), and most of them cost money (gym, diet crap, buy a fancy planner, buy organization shit that will sit in a bag for a year) so I just scrapped that plan. Instead I am resolving NOTHING. I promise you absolutely nothing, I don’t guarantee a single thought, idea or gesture, and I surely am not planning to live up to anyone’s expectations.

See what I did here? I lowered your opinion of me so when I do good shit, you’ll be all surprised and impressed. I said it already: I’m a genius.

Finally, this exercise of the writing here has sparked some ideas so I’ll be back in the next few days to write specifically and, perhaps, intelligently. I ask that you stick with me, and I ask that you do this one huge thing for me that would make me happier than all the Doritos on the planet: send your love, your happy thoughts, your prayers for good and your healing powers to my friend. She is an even brighter and shinier star than I, and she needs a few peanuts in her gallery.

Thanks bunches.

Some people in the morning, after they are caffeinated, are all buzzy and chipper and energetic and some kind of shit like that. In the morning, I have a moderate amount of caffeine in my Diet Coke Pepsi, go on about my day and that’s that.

It’s at the nighttime, the glorious nighttime!, when my wild buzzy chipper side awakes and my smart, practical Ambien is supposed to take me back down to lala land. I’ve discovered though that when the Ambien is having a half-ass workday, my productivity goes WAY up. Case in point: tonight I take the Ambien a little before 9. I get in bed, watch the end of a football and basketball game, and decide to check Twitter one last time. But see The Bloggess has this gravy pony thing for arthritis going on, and then someone talks about how many DMs they get and I’m jealous, and then I get the idea to throw a last minute New Year’s Day supper and OOH! the recipes I can find on Food Network right now!, and it’s fucking almost midnight again for the 17th time in a week (yes, I did the math), and I’m sort of feeling great. My mind is racing but in a hyper-productive way, not in an panicky one. Let me step from behind my keyboard, though, and then I’m all swimmy, I can run and hop and skip through the house eating whipped peanut butter and honey, and being none the wiser until the morning. Because somewhere in all that I have finally crashed.

There are the other kinds of nights in between the zonked out immediately and the night I’m having tonight. Those in betweens are shitty because I don’t get the mania and I don’t get the sleepy and so instead I have insomnia and I’m annoyed at TV and I’m hungry for…what does Taco Bell call it? Fourth Meal?…yeah, I’m hungry for Fourth Meal.

Mmm…Fourth Meal. Happy Meal. Full Meal from Waffle House. Waffles with bacon. Fried hot dog wrapped in bacon from Food Network. Ooh, Food Network at this hour.

This is my brain, and it’s on Ambien.

Other than my self-diagnosed addiction to refined carbohydrates, I have never been addicted to anything other than cigarettes. Alcohol is a for-fun thing for me that I don’t really miss when it’s not there. But I can see – just a little, tiny, eensy little bit – how people can be dependent on a drug. I believe that if I had an addictive personality, this would be the easiest drug to abuse. You take one or two, don’t fall asleep and HELLO! the fun begins.

Full disclosure: If I got behind the wheel of a car right now, I would arrest myself faster than I could buckle my seatbelt. If I tried to text right now, my text would read as a 13 y.0.’s and if I were to carry on a conversation, I would plan grand things and tell you tall tales of my childhood.All of this is why I am restricted to the computer – Twitter, email and the blog – when it’s bedtime, on the off chance I stay up and do some accidental damage.

Getting slizzered, for me, is mainly harmless because I try to limit potential dangers. Some days it works, others it doesn’t, but I am never anywhere but inside my bed when I ingest that pill. So, to sum it all up, henceforth I am campaigning for Internet breathalyzers, or otherdrugalyzers that can measure your level of inhibition and stop you immediately from shitty blog posts, dumbass emails to people, and posting pictures on your Facebook page that will inevitably ruin your political career 30 years from now.

Trust me on this, Internet.

A few thoughts and observations, in no particular order, about no particular or singularly fascinating thing:

My friend called me tonight to tell me that he ran into the woman he THOUGHT he was dating, except she was having dinner with another man – her steady boyfriend. The “other man” was wearing a blue wife-beater, a camouflage hat and a gold rope chain. My friend wears tweed sport coats and those leather driving moccasins with the buckles. The irony was not lost on us.

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I went to the beach this week and it was absolutely beautiful. Fall is my favorite season anyway, and anywhere, but the beach this time of year is perfect. The crowds are gone, the air is crisp and salty and the seafood is extra fresh and comes quickly. Days are warm, nights are cool, and any time of day you can watch huge white yachts cruise by on their way to warmer climates. You really can’t beat it with a stick. True story: some giant rusty barge slammed into the side of a really shiny yacht from the British Virgin Islands while we were having lunch on a dock. It was kind of awesome. (I’m not evil; no one got hurt, except the side of the shiny expensive gigantically huge rich people’s yacht.)

I went to the beach this week because we’re on fall break and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I always lust for vacations from work because, let’s face it, I don’t like to work. I don’t like to do much of anything, really. But what always happens has happened again: I got home from my trip, have had a few days to myself and I’ve wound up couch-potato-ing the days away because I am out of my routine. I’m like a three year-old who missed a nap. When I’m out of my routine, I don’t take my crazy meds on time, I sleep too late, I take too many naps and I have chronically dirty hair. Not to mention the fact that the pantry mysteriously gets emptier and emptier. Remind me of all this two weeks from now when I’m counting the days until Thanksgiving.

What I need to do is grade papers, calculate percentage points, pay my business taxes before I get sent to jail and finish up invitation orders already. Someone tell me how YOU get motivated when there’s all this free time ahead of you, because frankly I’m stumped.

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In other news, the famed Power-Tool Pumpkin Carving Party is next weekend and as usual, we don’t have a pumpkin yet. Also as usual, I’m worried about what to wear around the 20-somethings. If I wear clogs, they’re in boots. If I wear jeans, they’re in cords. If I wear a sweater, they wear t-shirts and those infinity scarf things. If I didn’t actually care whether or not a 20-something looked my way, I’d drink more pumpkin ale.

Also in other, scarier, news…there is an arsonist loose in our neighborhood. I’m not even remotely kidding and I get terrified every time I leave the house that I’ll come back to fire trucks. Two houses that were recently vacated have burned in the last 6 weeks, and that’s just on the next street over from us. There have been other fires nearby and the police have resorted to fliers asking for leads in exchange for reward money. This is quite unsettling, and yes, we’ve checked the smoke alarm batteries.

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The Seven Year Itch. Yeah, Internet, we’re gonna talk about it. Not right now, of course, because that’s a whole other casserole in the oven. But it’s there. IT’S THERE. I’m referring of course to relationships and not a condition that requires vagina cream, if you were wondering.

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Finally, I miss – like, in my bones and my heart and my soul – my co-workers, specifically my shiny light, C. This new job is fantastic, wears me out, makes me feel challenged and yadda yadda but I don’t see her every day anymore. I actually don’t see her at all and our phone conversations are short and somewhat stilted. I love her more than life and I miss her deeply. Don’t let people fool you: your co-workers are closer to your heart than you think, whether you love them or hate them. When you leave them or vice versa, you will miss them. Mark my words.

I’m going to bed, y’all. I’m going to sleep well because the windows are open and it’s 40 something degrees out – YES, BITCHES, THE HEAT IS GONE! I AM NOT SWEATING! HALLEFLAPPINGLUJAH! – but I will dream about this blog and wonder if you’re still out there reading.

I sincerely hope you are.

1. I have something. It’s some kind of snotty, nasty, energy-sucking thing that’s also causing panic attacks. I wish I were kidding.

2. I have to teach a class at 5:00 today. It’s technically the 3rd week of class but I’ve only laid eyes on these people once, and I swear to you, for all I know they are Joan Rivers look-a-likes. Yes, people. I am THAT good at education.

3. I have fallen out of favor with the socialites, and I wish I could say that I didn’t care, but I also wish I could say that I did. In reality, most of my frenemies need AA. Just a little message. (Did you like my Danielle Staub reference there? What? You don’t know who she is? Get thee to a television NOW.)

4. My hair is dirty and it’s possible that I also smell, showers notwithstanding. I think when you’re sick AND you’re in a bad mood, stink just seeps out of your pores.

5. I just lost 5 readers and 1 Twitter follower for that graphic and vaguely disgusting imagery.

6. The heat, y’all. The goddamned heat. If Hurricane Earl comes this way, and it’s kind of looking like it, there better be rain and at least 5-degree cooler temperatures. OR ELSE I’M MOVING TO MAINE. Consider yourself warned, Maine.

7. On a good note, the friends loyal and true to me are ones who warm the cockles of my heart. I have this one lovely friend who flew to NC this weekend just so she could host some friends for dinner at her mother’s house. She had me print up menu cards and she cooked a three-course meal, in the grand tradition of Southern hostesses. I swear, Yankees, I’m just not sure you know what you’re missing.

8. Hey, did you watch the Emmys? The dresses were ridiculously ridiculous this year. Actually I’m just talking about January Jones. The rest of them were kind of boring. Woo, but do you know who’s NOT boring? Tom and Lorenzo. The love I have for those boys is just ginormous and I think I need to up the gay quotient in my life. I really think that’s what might be missing, y’all.

January Jones, looking ridiculous at the 2010 Emmys in Atelier Versace.

9. I’m all done with the listing for today, mostly because the Diet Coke has kicked in and I’m a twirling, nervous wreck. What is it about illness that brings on the panic attacks? I’ll never know.

Have a great Tuesday, dolls. In the words of the ever-profound New Jersey housewives, I am not garbage.

…painting. Redecorating. Organizing. Spending money I don’t need to spend.

So – and I’ll post some pictures to really illustrate my point – our third bedroom, which we’ve been using as an office, has become a dumping ground for junk. Like, real live junk. Amongst other things, there are plastic bins full of photographs, baskets, old bank statements, Christmas ornaments and random paper. There are stacks of things to be recycled; DVDs that actually get watched on a regular basis and remote controls that don’t work or need batteries. There are shoes, an old rug, two suitcases and a computer monitor. I swear we’re not hoarders, though that’s what this is starting to sound like. We’re just two people with stuff we’re not sure what to do with that live in a house with three closets and virtually no attic space. Who can blame us?

To boot, this room is painted army green. No, seriously. Like, look at a tank, lighten up that green a notch or two, and that’s our room. It’s hideous and I can’t believe I ever agreed to paint it that color. It’s beyond awful. This green looks like moldy mud and it makes the room even more drab and miserable than it was to begin with.

Solution? Paint it darker! Bear with me here, because I know this sounds a little unconventional. We’ve decided to go with a dark navy blue for the walls (we already have off-white trim and molding) and a pale robin’s egg blue for the desk and maybe a side table. I want something rich and bold, but also something that will stand out behind the stacks and stacks of paper I’m accumulating from my business. (And before you complain, the paper is NECESSARY. This is a stationery business. It’s mostly envelopes and miscellaneous sizes of stationery.)

The plan is to get steel shelves from the home improvement store for either side of the window. I think the chrome color will look good against the blue and will give it kind of a modern edge that the rest of the house really doesn’t have. The baskets and bins will go up on the shelves – which means off the floor! – and I will become at least somewhat more organized.

All of this is just a picture in my mind; I haven’t drawn anything out or done anything except get paint chips. BB isn’t so much on board with painting it ourselves because he finds painting to be mundane and peasant and he’d rather spend his day off watching All in the Family. He’s such a party pooper.

So here’s to the 4th of July: the perfect time to work on house projects, grill something delicious, and watch Real Housewives reruns. Hope yours is just as fun.

36 years ago today, your mother lay in a hospital bed staring out the window at the Chowan River. She was 36 years old. She had three older children, one of them 15 and rebellious. She had a 5 year who wanted a baby sister and instead got a brother. She had a 10 year old who had no time for babies, only time for riding bikes.

And she had you, a ball of energy from the start, a head full of dark blonde curls, and brown eyes that twinkled.

Now she is 72, a happy grandmother to 7, a woman with a more active social calendar than Lindsay Lohan and who wears the same perfume she did when you were a child.

You are a grown up, with a head full of dark brown curls, brown eyes that twinkle, and a line on your forehead that comes from too much worry and not enough vacation. My friend at The Daily Snark wonders what life it too short for, and I took the liberty of answering that for you.

Life is too short to…

…Let your bank account determine your station in life.

…Watch others get what they want and not grab some for yourself.

…Let your wife erase “Good Times” from the DVR.

…Spend your days off clipping hedges.

…Worry about what you can’t change.

…Not change the things you can.

…Let other people get away with things they shouldn’t.

…Not pick your battles.

…Take birthdays for granted, even 36^th ones.

So how are y’all? I, for one, am still under the influence of last night’s Ambien, which means that I am super sleepy and not at all alert and aware. Please do not sneak up behind me today; most likely I will be all Whaaa? and it will ruin the surprise and not be fun at all for you. Sorry.

It’s been kind of a busy week since last we spoke. Molly and Jason from the Bachvomit got married on TV last night, the tail end of which I was able to catch after I got home from business class. THAT’S RIGHT, I’m taking a BUSINESS CLASS, bitches. Check your jealousies at the door. (More on that in a minute.) Last week we were getting the kiddies all ready for their spring break, the one where they get to go home and do whatever it is that they do there, and the one where I HAVE TO BE HERE. AT SCHOOL. IN MY OFFICE. I’m totally not bitter, y’all.

In other news, our fun friends Butt Pirate and Rump Ranger came over for dinner Saturday night. There were lots of laughs but I’d say there wasn’t nearly enough name-calling, so I call a do-over RIGHT NOW. As a hostess gift, Pirate and Ranger brought us a rain gauge. It is 8 kinds of awesome. Yes, you should be jealous. (Except I think I told you to check your jealousies at the door, so…we’ll work on that.)

Do you see? DO YOU SEE? This is what the Ambien does to me in the mornings. I cannot be held responsible for my written actions. (Did I just steal that from a Kennedy kid? It sounds familiar…) Anyway, so then we finally went and bought a dryer on Sunday, which is just in time because this morning I went to get my jeans and they stunk like mildew in the cold dryer, which is when I realized that the stuff in there was STILL DAMP and it pissed me off and made me almost cry when I had to wear some other pants. The new dryer comes tomorrow night, and it’s not really the dryer that dreams are made of, but it’s fine. We searched four hours for that damn thing, and by the end we were all Yo, pack that shit up. Even if it’s a Maytag.

So back to my new bidness! I’m so excited about it, and you should be too because it might mean that I have extra dollars to do stuff with. Except that last night my friends and I went to this class on how to write a business plan, and apparently people who start their own businesses start out with like no money and wind up with even less money until 10 years later when they collect an annual salary of like $50. THESE ARE MY ASPIRATIONS.

It’s going to be a stationery and invitation printing business, where you’d come to my house, tell me what you need said invitation for (your divorce is final, your 40th birthday has come around again for the 7th time, your kid managed to make it another year without breaking a limb, or whatever) and we sit down together to design it and make it happen. Or you can be boring and flip through some books and order crap out of there, too. Except it’s TOTALLY not crap. It’s fine, expensive but affordable paper that you and everyone who sees it will love. My goal is to build a base of satisfied and loyal customers who will return holiday after miserable holiday to buy their paper goods from me because I am skilled, personable, and offer competitive prices.

Or at least that’s what I’m telling people.

I have decided right this second that I’m going to have a contest! With a PRIZE! Like a real.live.giveaway y’all. I need a name for this business that is going to rocket into the universe at lightening speed and return to earth with buckets of cash. I’m not sure that “Buckets O’ Cash” is quite catchy enough for an elegant invitation business, do you? Well, maybe you do.

Anyway, cough up your ideas in the comments section, and the one I like best (but am not contractually required to use) gets a gift card, probably to iTunes. Woot woot, ’cause who can’t use an iTunes gift card, yo?

So get to it: put on your thinking caps, get creative and do my work FOR me already. Sheesh. And also do it for the iTunes card. You know you want it…*said in sexy come-hither voice that is NOT AT ALL creepy.*

Now onto far more serious business: The Over-Saturation of our fair Bachelor, Jake Pavelka.

Or as I like to put it: VomitFest 2010.

I know a lot of you don’t watch The Bachelor at all, and therefore have no real interest in this post, but for the rest of you, let’s recap. Jake was originally on The Bachelorette seeking out the love of a cast-off from a previous show. Cast off himself, Jake became the sole recipient of dozens of expressions of love from like, 1,000 slutty-looking girls. He weeds the intelligent, Harvard-graduated group down to three and then two, and he’s left with Snow White and the Wicked Witch of the West (or east, or whatever.)

Snow White is Tenley, a really sweet-seeming girl from Oregon, who’s divorced but apparently dreams in cartoons and shits rainbows, according to her bachelorette roommates. She’s all googly-eyed for the square-jawed pilot and can’t help but fall in love with him on date after date after date after date…all on some island or in some swanky hotel or on some petal-strewn picnic blanket.

Wicked Witch is Vienna, tabloid-proclaimed trailer trash from BFE Florida, with a tattooed father, a Harley riding stepmother, a previous job as a Hooters girl, and a lovely hip tattoo herself. She’s “fun” and “passionate” and murders the English language every time she opens her mouth. (“Jake and I’s relationship couldn’t be better. I can’t wait to meet his sister-in-laws.”) She’s cast as the villain from the get go, arguing with her roommates and making enemies along the way.

And then, folks, there’s Reality Steve. I don’t read Steve’s blog or really know anything about it, but apparently he’s some guy who has predicted – correctly – all 10 winners of the Bachelor franchise. So he comes out early on with his prediction, and damn if he wasn’t right again. So mostly no one was shocked last night when Snow White dreamed her last Disney dream and was sent packing in tears. And Witchy got all weepy and accepted a fat Neil Lane diamond that will probably last on her finger, oh, six months. Tops.

Reading the Internet fallout this morning, I noticed that people kept saying that The Batch was “so sincere” and that the proposal seemed so “heartfelt.” And I thought to myself, I don’t know, I was too busy gagging myself with a spoon to notice, but they’re probably right. When you’re set down in the middle of a gaggle of blond blue-eyed girls whose eyes are only set on you, how hard can it be to find someone you kind of love? If there were 25 adoring people throwing themselves at you, would you be able to resist picking one out of the group to be your favorite?

I seriously can’t stop watching this show because it is such an addictive train wreck, and it boggles the mind as to how many stupid people there really are in this country. One of Jake’s cast-offs will be the next Bachelorette, and I’ll probably watch that, too, because she endeared herself to fans this time around, and now we all want to see what happens. But will Ali find love, we wonder? Will she be Cinderella and find her prince?

Truth be told, no one really cares.

What we do care about is the suspense of watching one guy or girl pick the lesser of 25 evils to spend the rest of their lives with. Out of all the fish in the sea, are these 25 the only ones you could ever possibly love? I guess we’ll see on May 25, or whenever that craptastic show comes back on.

In the meantime, the other favorite ABC reality show – Dancing with the Stars – has gone to the dogs by hiring the likes of Pamela Anderson, the almost-octomom Kate Gosselin, AND AS IF WE WEREN’T ALREADY SICK TO DEATH OF HIM, the newly-engaged Jake Pavelka.

For the love of God, ABC, these people are the stars of nothing and you should treat them that way.