Bridget Callahan is Your Best Friend

So Sundays nights are fast becoming my connection with Popular America. I make a wholesome turkey dinner with my boyfriend, we spend the day drinking, and then the crowning moment is 9pm, Iron Chef America. It's a testament to how much Fox TV sucks now that I really feel Iron Chef America is where my crowd is. Used to be Simpsons and X-Files, now its Cora vs. Stupak and I'm all "Holy Shit, Stupak! Awesome!" I know the win/loss records of the Iron Chefs. I remember when Alton says the same fact twice for the same secret ingredient. I am mostly able to guess the secret ingredients based on the time of the year, unless there's no holiday, in which case its probably fish.

But the best part is that while watching Iron Chef, I can secretly watch the crappy shows on the network channels. Like, last week was the Super Bowl. And this week it was the Grammys! Yay the Grammys! America really needs a justifiable reason to see Cyndi Lauper and Hannah Montana in the same frame, interacting! Also to hear that Alicia Keyes song one more fucking time. With John Mayer coming out for a guitar solo, like he's some sort of guitar bad-ass. Remember when we all wrote off John Mayer as crappy but harmless? It's come back to haunt us, we weren't vocal enough in our hatred. This is why we have forums and Pitchfork Magazine, to uphold TASTE. Wake up indie America, we need your generalized hostility! What have you been doing since the last Bright Eyes album? Oh that's right, you're watching Iron Chef. And thinking about how much you'd fucking love a mixer like that. This is why My Chemical Romance is considered a "serious" band now.

I read a very creepy article in the NY Times this morning about whether or not fetuses feel pain. This isn't a new debate of course, but I did learn a couple new facts. Like, for instance, when a fetus feels a scalpel, it recoils. Oh, and ALSO that up until VERY RECENTLY, they didn't use anesthesia on newborns who needed surgery? THAT scares me. I mean, I'm passively anti-abortion, so I kinda think it doesn't make a difference if the fetus feels pain in the womb, cause you're killing it anyway. But a newborn? That's so sick, and so creepy, and gives me that weird "oh my god, history is so not far from over" feeling. You know, the one you get when you realize that people still happily consume Yellow dye #5 with no afterthoughts, and they still think blind people are also retarded? It's an Upton Sinclair sort of thing.

It's very cold. Blindingly cold. The type of cold that makes me feel like a moron for thinking human beings are meant to survive in this climate. But that makes us all morons, cause we've been living North for millennium. My stupid ancestors leached all the melanin out of their legs to live in the ice and the snow. I have albino legs because it was really really important to live where there's no sunlight and lots of freezing rain, preferably a swamp. Why can't human beings learn to not live in swamps? Why do we have this thing for it? Living in a swamp automatically shortens your life span by thirty years.

I've fallen on my ass four times in two days, and I'm having lots of fun leaving my car doors unlocked because I'm afraid I won't be able to get back in. I wonder how high car thefts rise in the winter? I wonder if someone will steal my car? I wonder if they will also lock themselves out and not be able to get the gas cap open for two days? Bully for them! That's a dedicated car thief. Or a very desperate homeless person.

When its this cold, all I can think of are the dogs and cats freezing to death outside. I walk around in a constant nightmare picturing it. It's the worst thing I go through every year.