My first mistake was sitting down this afternoon with volumes one through four of Y the Last Man. I did not move until my stomach started to rumble at six o’clock. I tore through three of the four books. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I hadn’t spent half of Friday and half of Saturday reading Kafka on the Shore. If I had to guess I would say I’ve spent at least 15 of the last 36 hours reading. Call me, hermit.

My second mistake was turning on the TV to discover not one, but two documentaries on The Learning Channel about beauty pageants, specifically little kid beauty pageants. My jaw dropped sometime around 8 p.m. and I have no been able to pick it up off the floor since. Right now I am watching a mom make a dental impression of her seven-year-old daughter’s teeth so she can get some sort of dentures since the kid lost her two front teeth.

I can’t seem to look away. I am riveted. Why this is so fascinating is beyond me. I don’t even wear makeup because I think it is a waste of time and money, and yet I can’t look away from this show about a six-year-old getting a professional pedicure. I blame the Republicans. I spent a week masochistically watching their every move, and now they expect me to just quite cold turkey? No way.

It has become clear to me that I have replaced, rich old white people with young, painted women being warped by their mothers to believe that the only thing that matters is how they look, even if that look is totally unrealistic.