For some reason Nightline though Rachael Ray was worth interviewing, and the subject of those infamous FHM photos came up.

I say “infamous” because for the life of me I have never been able to figure out why FHM thought they was reason enough to ask her to pose, and then why she was willing to accept.  Although she may have accepted because she originally thought the title stood for “Food and Home”.

Yeah… I know… she’s a brain trust as that would have been”FandH”,  “FaH” or “FH”, not “FHM”.  No one ever said she was quick.

What we did learn from the interview, which I did not watch, but saw the clip later, was that her mother was, and still if, furious over the photos.  Yet, oddly, her husband was all for them!  Imagine that.  Truly surprising.

I have never made my utter hatred of this woman exactly a secret around this blog, but I truly can’t figure out why anyone finds her even remotely interesting.  The fact that Nightline wanted to interview her is odd enough, but why bring up these photos that were published in 2003?  Did anyone even remember they were still out there?  Did anyone even care?  Cynthia McFadden, the reporter interviewing her, acted like it was some great revelation they even existed.  Anyone who has ever done an Internet search on the woman’s name has seen them, even I knew they existed and I can’t stand the woman!

You can watch the video on the Nightline site if you want (I couldn’t find an embed feature), but it just makes me laugh how the whole subject is broached like its some horrid secret from her past.

I think I figured out why I am having trouble getting in to the spirit of Christmas… I lack an Oprah snow globe.

The Chicago Tribune brought the ultimate Oprah collectible to light last week with an entire aticle centered around the wonders of the Oprah snow globe.  It seems that you have to go to the actual Oprah Store in Chicago as I can not find it in the online Oprah store.  However, my life will be far more complete once I have a journal with an Oprah quote on them.

Back in February I asked “Can Someone Explain The Cult Of Oprah To Me?“  I did get a few replies about how she speaks to women, and she somehow captured their emotionalism… and it appears once she has you, she has you.

Now, I actually have a small collection of snow globes, I happen to like them, and most of them are based on movies (mainly Nightmare Before Christmas) and a few Disney World Haunted Mansion ones.  The thing is, those characters tend to lend themselves to being sculpted in or on a snow globe because they aren’t humans.  Oprah is… I know, she’s not a goddess, she is indeed human… and it doesn’t work quite as well.  She looks, well, like a badly sculpted snow glove here.

Then comes the uestion of how you’re supposed to hold this thing and shake it, but hey, it’s Oprah, it doesn’t have to be practicle.

Again, I am befuddled by this whole thing.  It’s one thing to like Oprah, but to adorn your house in her?  When is she finally going to build “The Oprah Worship Centers” around the country?  If she speaks to a part of your soul, I would ask why?  What is it about her that makes fans of her love her so?

I’ve already beat this subject, so I’ll leave it at that, but this snow globe just pushed me over the edge again.  Darn you, Oprah!  I am just thankful she didn’t make a matching one for Rachael Ray… -shudder-

As long time readers of my blog will attest, I despise Rachael Ray. I have even likened her to “Satan’s evil servant“, she annoys me just that much. However, and this may cause the Earth to be torn asunder… I think this criticism of her is just ludicrous.

In a recent online ad for Dunkin’ Donuts, Ms. Ray is seen wearing a scarf that some people, mainly conservative bloggers, say looks too much like a keffiyeh. Once the controversy started, the donut chain originally said they would not pull the ad, but they have now bowed to pressure, and it has been removed.

For those unfamiliar with the piece of clothing, yes, it has been adopted by the Palestinians, but the keffiyeh has a long history, and is even used by British and American troops in Iraq to help with the arid conditions. It is a utilitarian garment, as well as a symbol to some.

In the case of the one around Ms. Ray’s neck in the ad… it’s not. It’s just a normal scarf with some strings coming off of it. To me, I’m sorry, it doesn’t even really look like a keffiyeh. They tend to be more square, and larger. What is around Ms. Ray’s neck is obviously thinner, and cut as a scarf.

Of course, Michelle Malkin, the author of the previously linked blog post, thought to cut off such an argument from me after the company had already pulled the ad:

It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists. Too many of them bend over backward in the direction of anti-American political correctness. Naturally, liberal commentators on the Internet are now up in arms over Dunkin’ Donuts’ decision to yank the ad and mock anyone who expresses concern over the keffiyeh’s symbolism.

It’s just a scarf, the clueless keffiyeh-wearers scoff. Would they say the same of fashion designers who marketed modified Klan-style hoods in Burberry plaid as the next big thing?

Of course I would be offended by “Klan-style hoods in Burberry plaid”, but, sorry, I’m not offended by a scarf that MIGHT look like a keffiyeh to some. (If anything, the tassels remind me more of a Jewish prayer shawl than a keffiyeh, but, hey, what do I know, it’s still just a scarf.) I’m fully against jihad, and I am rather blunt in my hatred of extremists, Islamic or otherwise, but I also don’t go around seeing Communists under my bed either. Oh, make no mistake, this is exactly like McCarthyism where the whole country was seeing communists everywhere they turned, now we’re just seeing Islamic jihadists under our beds… and hawking donuts.

Is this what the country is coming to? We are now going to police fashion for something that may, or may not, look like a piece of clothing terrorists wear? You know, Osama Bin Laden has been pictured many times in olive drab military garb, are we now going to say everyone wearing olive drab military garb is an Al Qaeda sympathizer? Wow… our military is going to have issues then.

Honestly, I know it’s difficult coming up with blog posts all the time, but come on, really? This was the best a bunch of them could do? “Look, it’s black and white… those Islamic jihadist-loving bastards have infiltrated our coffee!” You’ll convince me this was even remotely jihadist in nature when Rachel is sitting in a cave with a machine gun propped against the wall, until then, give it a rest, and peddle your McCarthy communist hunt somewhere else, folks.

Now… I must go claw my eyes out for actually defending Rachael Ray -shudder-

Before I even begin this, let me stress that my dislike of Oprah Winfrey has nothing to do with her being African-American.  I bring this up because the last time I made an off-hand comment about Star Jones, I had to spend the next day explaining how my dislike had nothing to do with her ethnicity.  Same goes for Oprah, she annoys me, as does 99.9% of the population in some way or another… I’m very equal opportunity in my dislike of people.  It’s a thing.

So, I have been home sick all this week (I won’t disgust you with the details), and naturally I have caught more daytime television than I normally do, and a couple of times I have found myself coming across Oprah.

Now, I already dislike her for the mere fact that she unleashed Dr.Phil and Rachael Ray onto the daytime television world, but seeing her actual show… I get it even less.  What is the allure of this woman?  Is it the fact she feels compelled to yell her guest’s names?  (William SHHHHAAAATTTTNNNNEEEERRRR)  Or perhaps it’s the fact that her audience screams like Howler Monkeys whenever she says they’re going home with something?  I mean, honestly, how many of the women in her audience were THAT excited to be going home with the remastered DVDs of the first season of the original Star Trek series?

I think where she totally lost me (not that she ever “had me”) was her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.   While it seemed like a good idea on the surface to give underprivileged girls in Africa an education, there has been numerous controversies over how the girls are allowed to interact with their families, not to mention the allegations of sexual and physical abuse by an administrator.  If you’re going to set up a program such as this, it is your personal duty to make sure every person is fully vetted, and safe guards are put in place to protect against such things happening.

I’m all for people doing good deeds in the world, and I’m all for them having success, but I would like someone to explain to me WHY she is successful.  When I have talked to Oprah fans, they always say things like, “She’s so wonderful!”, but when you ask them “Why?”, they kind of look at me blankly like, “Don’t you get it?”

Er… no… I don’t.

I don’t get why she can put her stamp of approval on a book, and it sells millions of extra copies.  Because that was such a good thing in the case of A Million Little Pieces.  I just don’t get so much about her.  So, here it is Oprah fans, leave me a comment and tell me WHY you love her, why she is the greatest thing ever, why does she make you her fans into rabid Oprah-zombies?

The Parents Television Council is back… oh how I have missed them. Mind you, my true love is the American Family Association, but they have been oddly quiet lately. (Call me? I miss your nuttiness)

For those unfamiliar with them, the PTC is one of those groups that is convinced they know what’s best for you when it comes to what you see on television. They, and their ilk in the AFA and similar groups, feel that they are the guardians of morality on television. It boils down to that only G rated fare should be on television, and anything beyond that shouldn’t even be allowed to air because no one should be exposed to such material. The last time I wrote about them was in December of 2006 when they were all upset over a video on the Internet… you know… not on television.

At least this time they are sticking to the medium that is in their name, “television”, and taking on CBS over the airings of the critically acclaimed series, Dexter.

True, Dexter is the story of a serial killer who only kills murders who can’t be brought to justice, all the while he works as a forensics expert for the police. Yes, the subject matter is a bit grim, and it is about murder, but you know that makes it so different from CSI… and CSI: Miami… oh, and CSI: New York… and Cold Case… or any other number of shows about murder that treat us to graphic depictions of violence. True, Dexter aired on Showtime originally, and these episodes have been cut own for over-the-air broadcasting, but the PTC say it wasn’t enough and are calling for a boycott of the advertisers who supported the show.

Mind you, Dexter is airing Sunday nights at 10 EST/9 CST, after the “watershed” hour for adult material to be aired. It does carry a TV-14 rating, and they warn of the content of the show. All of this means nothing to the likes of the PTC though, they won’t be happy until every show has been sanitized to within an inch of its life. They are saying this is magnified by the issues of mass killings all over the country, and how insensitive it is of CBS to air a show about a serial killer when there has been so much tragedy.

Um…

Don’t get me wrong, I feel nothing but sympathy for the families that have been touched by those senseless, violent actions, but a serial killer and mass murderer are very different creatures psychologically. Also, add in that in the case of the recent shooting sprees (Kirkwood, MO and DeKalb, IL) were committed by people with known mental conditions, it is highly doubtful they were influenced by things such as television shows. I think it’s tasteless of the PTC to even bring them into their “argument”, but I have come to expect arguments from them to not always be connected to reality.

As I have said more times than I can count, you have the ultimate control over what you watch; if you find something offensive, you simply turn the channel. You control your TV and what is shown on it, and when you allow groups to force their morality on to the airwaves, we all lose and art suffers. Sure, there is some stuff that should never air, I would have problems with a show glorifying bestiality, but I also know I can turn the channel any time I want. I mean, if I wanted to rally behind getting something offensive off of television, don’t you think I would have forcibly had Rachael Ray

I recently wrote a list for Mashable about preparing for your death on the Internet. It was actually inspired by a story I came across for another list I was working on (I swear, I make lists in my sleep now). It was a blog post done by a blogger who had been killed in Iraq. He had the forethought to write a post to be published after his death, and posted by a friend when they got the news he had died.

There’s nothing to say about that except that it touched me, and it made me wonder what would happen to my online presence if I was to suddenly die. Thus was born the “death list”.

It may seem like an odd thing to sit around and think about it, but with our online lives becoming such a vital part of our everyday lives, it has to be adressed. I have always thought about my eventual death in real world terms, even to the point I made my will when I was 18, but the online part of life just had not crossed my mind before, which surprised me.

So, what do you do? How do you even know when or how it will happen? The blogger I mentioned above, Major Andrew Olmdstead, at least had a clue what might happen. For all I know I could die at the age of 98 from the bite of a badger, or I might keel over tomorrow as I tear the hair from my head over having accidentally turned the TV to the Rachael Ray show, you just never know what’s going to happen.

And, as I said, worrying about what will happen with your online persona may seem silly, but it is such an integrated part of my life, I have to. When Adam Finley, a blogger for TV Squad, was killed by colliding with a bus while riding his bike, his coworkers didn’t know for a few days. If I don’t set up some sort of system to alert people, you might all be coming by this blog for a year, thinking I just turned in to some lazy ass who never updates. Who would tell my bosses at Mashable? I’ve never met any of my co-workers in blogging, I don’t even have phone numbers for a goodly number of them. Would my social networking profiles stay on the web for an eternity? Would my membership to NaughtyGrandmas.com keep auto renewing?!? (note: I randomly picked that name… then learned it was a real website… I then died a little inside)

For now, I plan to write some sort of “I was killed by a rabid squirrel” post, that I will keep up-to-date as time goes on, and I am talking with someone about posting it for me when they would get the notice I had passed. I am also making a list of all my accounts on every site I belong to, the usernames, and the passwords so my family or someone else can go in and deactivate all the accounts. I’m not thrilled about writing all that information down somewhere as I then have to worry about keeping that physical list safe, but I’ll figure something out.

This post doesn’t serve much purpose beyond telling you I plan to do all of this, but I also hoped it might motivate some of you to start thinking about your plans for that inevitable moment that comes to every one. Are you prepared? Do you have a will? Someone that will let your blog readers know that you have moved on to signing the choir invisible?

No matter how old you are, it’s never the wrong time to start thinking about this stuff, no matter how depressing you may find the subject, just remember how bad it could be folks if you didn’t plan. I’ve found the best way to get around it is to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing, as you can see from this post. Sure, I don’t want to die anytime soon, but I also realize I have no control over this, it will happen when it happens, and it’s better to be prepared, because you sure don’t get a second shot at this.

Can we all just agree that Oprah must be stopped from picking any more protégés?

I was perusing TV Squad today and came across this amazing nugget of info.

During a holiday party in Beverly Hills this past weekend, Dr. Phil told People magazine that Lynne Spears, mother to Britney and recently pregnant, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn, is a “great and dedicated mother”. He admits that things aren’t looking up for her right now (ya think?), but McGraw adds that the Spears matriarch has her feet firmly on the ground and that she is turning to her faith for strength in this situation. In fact, Lynne told her friend Dr. Phil that they are turning to prayer to get past this all. No offense, but she must be praying nearly 24 hours a day.

Okay, look, everyone is entitled to their opinion, no argument there, but… she’s a great mother?

Dr. Phil has annoyed me for years, but nowhere to the degree of Rachael Ray (if you don’t know of my hatred for her… you must be new here), so I have always left him alone.  This, however, is SO monumentally stupid, you just have to go “huh?”

And seeing as both Dr. Phil and Satan’s daughter Rachael Ray are the spawns of Oprah… I don’t get where she finds these people.  Dr. Phil and his “down home” hokum psychology has always annoyed me, and to call Lynn Spears a “good mother”?  She let her 16-year old daughter move in with her boyfriend… yeah… good mother there, Phil.  Why don’t you go spout off some analogy about coyotes, as you are want to do, and go away.

I forget sometimes that this is the WORLD Wide Web, and Roy reminded me of this when he commented on my last entry by Rachael Ray. I have several international visitors, and I guess I could finally explain who this woman is that I despise so much.

You can read her history at Wiki, of course, but I’ll give you the nitty gritty. In 2001 she joined the Food Network hosting a show based on her book, 30 Minute Meals where she would show you how to prepare a full dinner in 30 minutes. Well… it was bull. If you ever paid attention, you realized she didn’t count in prep time. That aside, she got popular for some odd reason, mostly based on her annoying habit of abbreviating EVERYTHING. Extra Virgin Olive Oil became “EVOO”, sandwich’s became “samys”, and yummy became “YUM-O!”.

Well, the success grew into three more shows on the Food Network. $40 a Day, Inside Dish, and Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels. It was $40 A Day that drove me bonkers. The premise was she could go to any city an feed herself three great meals for $40. Well, as an experienced traveler… $40 a day is insane. Even when I’m in an expensive city I can get away for $20 – $30 max. Her orgasmic reactions to ALL food, and the fact she giggles at everything she says, just drove me finally insane to where I can’t even look at her now. It pretty much made the Food Network unwatchable as she was on nearly 30 hours a week at one point.

At some point along the way, she launched a magazine and became friends with Oprah. The media mogul set her up with her own daily talk show, and now she is even in TV ads for Dunkin Donuts.

Basically she is an inescapable force of nature at this point that makes my ears bleed and drives me to want to claw my eyes out.

Found this on Salon.com just now. Yep folks, this woman is making like $12 Million a year now and this is how it started.

I think I could do this… I think a trained monkey could do this. This was actually what started me hating on dear old Rachael. She has no opinion other than to think ALL food is orgasmic.

I am coming to the conclusion that I am not a “people person”. Funny since I work in retail, but it’s true. A great many people in the world annoy me. My latest annoyance?

Billy Mays.

He’s been on late night TV for what seems like forever now. Shilling whatever new “miracle” cleaning product is out there, but as of late he is really grating on my nerves. Now, he’s no Rachael Ray mind you, but he ranks up there. His loud, aggressive voice… telling you what the “secret” is… giving that stupid thumbs up he does. Billy, newsflash, you aren’t my friend, shut up and go away.

Honestly, I am finding that most TV personalities annoy me. I really could care less what “Oprah’s Favorite Things” are. My dislike of Oprah really came to a head last week when I saw an ad for her show (no, I don’t watch it, the ad’s alone annoy me) where she was going to go meet her neighbors. The most irritating moment came when she is standing in some woman’s kitchen and said something to the effect of “You throw parties a lot and entertain, but you’ve never invited me?!”… wow… can we say “awkward”? You just berated a woman for never inviting you over. Wow. I have had many neighbors in my life I never even met, let alone came over for dinner. It just seemed blatantly rude to me.

What is it about appearing on TV that makes you think you are somehow superior? It seems to make people act in ways that any normal, sane, person never would. Rachael, Oprah, Billy, Dr. Phil, Regis… all annoying. Yet, they all seem to get legions of fans. Am I missing something? Is there some part of me that just doesn’t function correctly and I am incapable of falling into these people’s vortexes of popularity?

Update 06/28/09: Billy Mays has died.

There’s a motto I live by when I travel: Why should I eat at any restaurant I find in my own home town? It seems pointless to me. On my first trip to Japan in August 2000, one of the guys I met up with there ate Wendy’s almost every night we were there. It drove me nuts. I have a Wendy’s less than two miles from my house! If you’re going to go through the trouble of going some place new, then be adventurous and eat new foods! Expose yourself to what the world has to offer.

With that in mind, there is a show on the Travel Channel I love called Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. Anthony is a professional chef who has lived a “colorful life” and makes no bones about it. However, he has an acerbic wit, paints vibrant pictures with his words, and has a motto I love; “Be a traveler, not a tourist“.

And as if I didn’t have enough reasons to love him, two weeks ago he was a guest blogger on Rhulman.com and the following to say of my girlfriend, Rachael Ray:

RACHAEL: Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”

But I digress…

Back to what I was saying about trying new things (sleep…sleep…aspire to nothing), I think everyone has to remember something about “odd foods”. Just because they are odd to you, doesn’t mean they are odd to the locals of where you are. Even if you are traveling across country, try a local cuisine. If you travel to another country, I beg of you, try the local dishes! Sure, you’ll run in to some things you don’t like, but aren’t there things here in your own country you don’t like eating? Just because you don’t like one dish in another country’s cuisine, it doesn’t mean you write them all off.

So why did I mention the Rachael Ray thing? (beyond my hatred of the miserable little chipmunk cheeked harpie?) Just as he said she lulls you in to a sense of not aspiring to better cooking, I think the same can be said of Americans when we travel. We fear change, we want the safe and familiar. Watch an episode of Bourdain’s show, see how he’ll try an ostrich egg cooked in a dirt oven, or eat a dish made of rat, or the lower intestine of another animal. Some of it he likes, some of it he doesn’t, but doesn’t the old saying go “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”?

Not only did the nutjob celebrated chef, Rachael Ray, get her craptastic Yum-o food on the latest space shuttle mission, she’s now in the frakkin’ Oxford American College Dictionary! Yes folks, you can now look up:

EVOO: abbr. extra-virgin olive oil

Excuse me? How…HOW does this rate being in the dictionary? A catchphrase said by one nutjob of a talentless “chef”? Why does this reek of “publicity stunt” to me?