"Like Shakespeare--only better and cuter!"

So just to update you on a few things, I still can't find my dinner rolls anywhere, I have almost more work than I know how to handle, I survived having to stand out in a cow pasture in the middle of a lightning storm during a football game, and despite my initial outrage and bravado, I surrendered to the bureaucratic Powers That Be at Delta for a mere $100 and the promise of a gift basket. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a gift basket.

After I emailed the head of customer service, I got a response 2 weeks later that actually addressed all my concerns personally, so I was partially appeased. They still insisted that giving me the $100 voucher + the gift basket was all they could do, and I guess I could have kept fighting, but in the end after all that emailing and waiting, I just didn't have the time or the energy to fight the good fight against Delta anymore. I assume that's what companies like Delta hope will happen, that people with complaints will grow tired of complaining and just accept defeat. So yeah, well played, Delta.

(I will add, though, that in the last letter I got from Delta, I was told that if I combined the $100 voucher with the $200 voucher they'd originally given me, that I would then have $300 in vouchers, so hey, not only did I get the vouchers and the gift basket, but I also got a free math lesson!)

But the real reason I'm blogging tonight is not to fill you in on the latest installment of the Delta Saga, but to write about my latest reality TV addiction, Bachelor Pad.

I admit that when I first saw the promos for Bachelor Pad during last season's Bachelorette, I was skeptical. It's not often that I deem a reality show unworthy of my viewing time--I mean, hello, I was a major fan of Rock of Love I, II, and Rock of Love: Tour Bus--,but Bachelor Pad looked too much like Dating in the Dark or The Cougar, i.e., a crappy reality show.

But then I tuned in and within minutes was hooked. What I liked about it was the fact that I felt I *knew* a lot of the contestants on the show since they're all rejects from previous seasons of Bachelor and Bachelorette, so I was already invested. It was like Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains (greatest reality show season of all time) in a way, though with a lot less emotional attachment to the people on my end and a much higher skank factor on their end.

The girls on Bachelor Pad are horrible. There's Tenley who's an idiot with a high-pitched voice and a tendency to cry for no reason, there's Natalie who's orange and who said, "I'd make out with everyone on the show for, like, $20 bucks," there's Elizabeth who obviously fell for someone's cruel trick and thought she'd look better as a blonde, there's Peyton who is weird-looking but who won the kissing contest, and there's Gwen who's old. On the men's side, there's Dave who exhibited anger management issues on the Bachelorette back in the day but who's now sort of oddly appealing and who won the kissing contest, there's "Kovacs" who is sort of dating Elizabeth and who looks like a neanderthal, there's Kiptyn who has a ridiculous name and zits (which I can now see all too clearly on my supersonic HD 3D TV) and is balding (sorry, Caroline Altshuler, but it's true), there's Jonathan who now goes simply by "Weatherman" because he's a meteorologist and a loser, and there's Wes who used to be a jerk but sort of redeemed himself and who was referred to by Gia as "a modern-day Shakespeare, but better and cuter."

I never thought of the original Shakespeare as being cute, so Gia may be right on that point, but as for the "better" part, well, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet; Wes wrote this: "I've been told a time or two, don't you know you've gotta be strong.... They say that love, it don't come easy. When you fall too quick, it must be wrong. Loving you, baby, don't take that long." I know--it's a tough call.

But I digress. Back to Bachelor Pad, the premise of the show is that all of these people go on dates and do different challenges and vote each other off, and then in the end, one of them wins $250,000. It sounds stupid and is stupid, but it's also a riveting 2 hours of television every Monday. The show is much more light-hearted than Bachelor or Bachelorette; you don't have all these people questioning each other's motives and wondering if someone is there "for the right reasons." Nope, there's no pretense of true love on Bachelor Pad. Those people are there to make out for the cameras, ride in helicopters, and to win money. And so it's totally ridiculous, a bit scandalous, and often hilarious. And I for one will be sad when the season is over.