Speaking of the frivolously sugary

I have trouble keeping track of the love lives of actual celebrities. Sometimes my husband and I stand in the Safeway checkout lines and try to figure out how many people we can identify who are pictured on magazines. On our most recent visit, I think we could figure out who Brad and Angie were, but there was some woman who we could identify dating a guy named Mark who we could not. My husband is better at this than I am, largely because he sometimes reads about some of these people on the sports pages, which is why he could explain to me who the Kardashians (sp.?) are. It is true that I sometimes read fashion magazines, and he does not, which contain articles interviewing celebrity . But I mostly skip the articles, which are long on musings about astrology, annoying folksiness ("I was just such a nerd in high school") , and scientifically unfounded diet advice ("My friend Dr. Throttlebottom is amazing. He showed me the One True Faith about how pomegranates are loaded in super-cala-fragalicistics, as is whole-wheat pasta, and now I eat whole-wheat pasta tossed in pomegranate juice for lunch every day!") Instead, I concentrate on looking at pictures of pretty clothes and the occasional useful article comparing lipstick brands.

That said, I am far from above the instincts that drive others to read these magazines. I have instead channeled them into unhealthy fascination with the personal lives of prominent libertarian and conservative bloggers. The fracas over Todd Seavey's denouncing ex-girlfriend Helen Rittelmeyer in pointed personal terms on a CSPAN televised panel was tailor made for indulgence of said unhealthy obsession. Just when I thought the dust had settled, apparently Seavey is doing a Month of Haters series on his blog in which he responds one by one to each of his detractors re: the C-Span incident. Alpheus of Athens and Jerusalem is right that this makes for oddly gripping reading. The world is mad, but gloriously so.