The 35th Precinct

I finally bestirred myself to update Facebook just so I could friend Dug the dog from Up. While there, I noticed that Statler and Waldorf, those venerable Muppet hecklers, were also members, and I duly friended them. Yes, I am a sad specimen frozen in toddlerhood. I find comfort in these gentle, unassuming characters, especially waggy, slobbery Dug, who just makes you want to hug him and scritch his belly until his legs splay bonelessly and his eyes roll back in his head. Dug and his ilk keep me from washing my hands of the whole human species and declaring my independence thereof with the help of dual mounted machine guns and a bag of ammunition. Every time I convince myself that humans are nothing but a horde of irredeemable fuckwits, I just see Dug and Wall-E and Statler and Waldorf and remember that some humans are capable of great and wonderful imagination. I just wish there were more Jim Hensons and John Lassiters and Brad Birds and fewer Ann Coulters and Fred Phelpses and teenage girls who think it's funny to stuff kittens into ovens. Fewer bus drivers who take time from their day to ensure that I know what an irksome burden I am to transport. Fewer passengers who piss and moan that I should segregate myself to the exceedingly limited and cripplingly expensive "disabled transport" to save them five minutes. After all, haven't they be so gracious and accommodating to me, what with letting me live and allowing me to venture out in public at all?

He might be for children, but I need Dug's goofy sunshine, too. Does anybody know where I can find some LJ icons?


( The Next Food Network Star, Week 3--SPOILERS )

My predicted winner: Jeffrey, though his odds might be hampered by the fact that Food Network is rapidly becoming a sausage fest.


I managed to plunk out a few lines of my criminally-overdue spn_halloween fic. Not many, mind, but enough to rekindle the passion long enough to finish the fic, I think. I finally know how to get where I need to go.

Once I get it finished, I need to do the following:

-finish "C Is For Confession" and post it.

-start Stella's chapter of History Lessons.

-start Part XIII of Et Tu

-start that Dowdfic I've contemplated for years.

-either throttle or nurture the My Bloody Valentine plotkit that hopped into the hutch the day before yesterday.

-decide if I want to write the two ideas for Rammstein RPF that have taken root in my brain recently. While I wrote reams of dreadful New Kids on the Block RPF badfic during early adolescence, when the world began and ended at the end of my nose and celebrities existed solely for my amusement, I have since developed pangs of conscience when it comes to writing about living people who might be angered, hurt, or offended by what I wrote. Someone suggested that I write it for my private satisfaction, but I have discovered that when it comes to my writing, I'm a potty-training toddler. I just have to show someone what I made.

For a brief time last night, Brett Austin surpassed Debbie Lee on my Food Network Star Douchemeter. Not just surpass her, but blow by her like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner across the Bonneville Salt Flats. What cretinous, amoral, pathetic boob is so insecure in his manhood--not to mention his culinary skills--that he offers to help a contestant plate and then uses that offer and the acceptance thereof as proof that the contestant he helped lacks the skills to compete with the rest of them?

"I think me and Teddy's help saved the dish."

You spooned the scrambled eggs into a rammikin.. That's it. You didn't have a jot to do with the cooking of the dish. You extended the offer of help to her. She didn't ask for any help and only accepted because she didn't want to be perceived as a snotty, ungrateful ass. If you thought that your "help" with the oh-so-daunting task of spooning eggs onto a plate would give her an unfair advantage, then, why, prithee, did you offer to help her at all? Let her flounder if your sense of fair play is so grievously wounded by the thought of having compassion. Let her flounder, step on her head, and gloat when she fails. Don't pretend to care about her and then attempt to save your own ass by throwing her under the bus when Bobby Flay points out you have the poise and panache of an anal wart. Be an honest tool, at least.

His ploy failed, by the by. He was sent packing. I can only assume that the judges were as put off by his whining and finger-pointing as I was and decided to nip his histrionics in the bud rather than endure any more. His food, according to them, was among the best of the night, but since they're looking for a personality to sell the network as well as the food, he wasn't up to snuff.

With him gone, Debbie can safely resume her place as Queen of the Cuntwaffles, which she promises to do with elan next week if the promos are even half-true.


Roomie is a big damn hero today because he unclogged the shower drain with a little help from the Internet and a wire hanger. After a few minutes of fruitless fiddling, he pulled a wad of soap-scummed hair the size of a small gerbil from the drain, and the water receded with a triumphant glug. I can finally shower, and thank God, too, because I have class tomorrow, and there was no way I could've gotten by with a sponge bath, not with four days of biological sludge to wash from the various cracks and crevices and temperatures in the 100s. He's my hero, and he knows it, too, because he spent the rest of the morning with a swagger in his step.

His hero status was further cemented by the smiting of a bug that shot from beneath the laundry pile and made a beeline for the living room. He was summarily squashed beneath a paper and banished to the garbage can. Shortly thereafter, Roomie rewarded his labors with lunch, while I reluctantly went to mine by starting my final paper for Central Asian History.

I hate it. Loathe it. Despise it. I would rather gnaw off my own nipple than write one more word of a comparative essay about the administration of Central Asian government under Tsarist and Soviet rule. I would rather lock myself in a broom closet with a cadre of dyspeptic German tourist who've just come from the rotkohl and sauerkraut buffet, but I will finish this evil, rank bastard of a paper, because when I do, I'm done until August and can spend my summer writing and eating ice cream and squeeing over Rammstein.

Seventy-two hours to freedom. I can do this. I can.

The Red bloat cometh, and with it cometh the usual round of bathroom didoes, and that's all I'm going to say on the matter. Bleagh.

I watched the premiere of Top Chef Masters last night. I'm disappointed with the format, which reduces the show to a more marquee version of Food Network Challenge. Part of the appeal of the original Chef is that it forces thirteen people to live together during the competition, and you can thereby get an idea of their personalities. By having twenty-four chefs competing in fours with three eliminations per show, they've (a)cheapened the suspense and (b)pandered to pampered foodie prima donnas who can't be assed to truly rise to the challenge by putting their careers and lives on hold. I know they're bighshot chefs with restaurants that rake in the cash, but so what? Some of the non-elite contestants were chefs and restaurateurs, too, and they took the risk, a risk that was likely greater for them because they didn't have their overblown reputation to fall back on if the business tanked in their absence. I guess a millionaire's livelihood matters more than that of a lowly chef like Fabio, who was making a decent living. Whereas the regular contestants lost six to eight weeks of their lives, these lofty "masters" will only have to show up once in six weeks, and twice more after that? My heart, it bleeds for them.

The judging scale is beyond moronic. A star scale? How very kindergarten. Yes, I know restaurants are rated on such a scale, but the presentation of the stars is like a bad kindergarten awards ceremony where every kid gets a certificate, even the one who shoved the elbow macaroni up his nose. "You earned...(lame dramatic pause)...three stars." Who cares? Judge One just said his food tasted like freeze-dried goat balls. I'll translate that to Sane Folk for you: It sucked. So how the hell did it earn three stars? Because the freeze-dried goat balls were pretty on the plate?

And the critics acting as judges are a motley band of self-important goots. Gael Whatserface looks like Gloria Swanson in a wind tunnel. If I hear "flavor profile" one more time, I'm going to call Bobby Flay and beg him to smug them to death.

Stupid show, but I'm rooting for Hubert Keller. He might be so out of touch with reality that he thinks microwave ovens are for drying newspapers, but he still has enough gentle whimsy to create tiny white chocolate mice for a children's dessert. Plus, he had the ingenuity to make prawn macaroni and cheese with a hotplate and the communal shower in a Pomona College dorm.

Speaking of Bobby Flay, I watched the second-season premiere of The Next Food Network Star on Sunday. I hope a house crashes through the ceiling at Whole Foods and pancakes Debbie Lee. What a lying, simpering cooze. How else to describe a woman who forgot and/or substituted her team's ingredients to save money, made "an executive"(and dreadful)decision about a formerly agreed-upon team dessert, and claimed that it was a "mutual group decision" at the judging when it blew up in their faces? Way to throw your team under the bus to save your own incompetent ass, you dithering, stoner Margaret Cho impersonator. I hope they return the favor should the opportunity arise.