Celebrity Aversion Therapy

Lindsay Lohan's asthma attack made Forbes magazine. The apocalypse is nigh.

Last night (actually, this morning) I could not sleep. I tossed, turned and played cards on my PDA until 4 a.m. I tried 'watching' tv (it usually affects me like a vacuum does a colicky baby) and I was inundated by the most insidious of scriptwriter-unemployment-makers: Celebrity Reality (is that an oxymoron?) television. Somewhere between Paris Hilton's Naughty Bits and When Celebrities Go Bad there was Celebrity Fit Club. Now I understand the meaning and implications of the phrase "like watching a train wreck." I do not care about Jeff Conaway's urinary habits (which was more of a running joke than the doggie doo debacle in Clue) and I actually wonder if the producers were trying to make the series's gay quota by having two-- count 'em, two!-- "out" (no, not a double-edged pun) characters/ personae/ celebrities (which is it, I don't know), Bruce Villanche and Chastity Bono.

At least Circus of the Stars offered talented acrobatics!

As a chubby, wheezy nobody, I wonder what the fascination is. I've tried, I really have. I want to be engrossed in the antics and the tantrums, to savor each second of The Surreal Life, to become devoted to the daily depositions uncovered on Celebrity Justice. Am I, as Everywoman, supposed to feel somehow comforted that famous people get sick and suffer setbacks, eat their way through depression, can be really rotten roommates, and are otherwise possessing of traits that are commonly noted as human? Or should I be outraged because my foray into fake nails that left me with blue lips and a request to become an organ donor didn't even make the local Reminder?

Oh screw it. It's a government plot to turn our attention away from the chimp behind the curtain.