the passionate ailurophile

There are commercials on both TV and the radio for Comcast (evil cable company from hell) that really annoy me. They talk about how slow DSL is, how it takes forever to download pictures, music, and all.

It annoys me because this is an out-and-out LIE. I have DSL, and have NEVER had any complaints about the speed of a download. I can go to iTunes and other music download sites, and download lots of music, video, games, etc for my iPod…and it’s always fast…it just takes a few seconds to download a song, for example.

Maybe cable is faster, I don’t know. It can’t be THAT much faster, though. They are acting as if DSL was as slow, or slower than dial-up! I have no complaints with my DSL, and it pisses me off when Comcast feels that have to LIE to people to get customers.
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I’m always complaining about how people move to this country, and can’t be bothered to learn the language. My great-grandparents moved here from Norway a hundred years ago, and they learned English. Most immigrants did, as they had to in order to become gainfully employed.

I have a lot of respect for anyone who makes the effort to learn English. Looking at it from their point of view, it’s a hard language to learn. So many different ways to spell words that sound the same, and then there are words spelled similarly, but pronounced differently (such as tough and cough). I can see how it can be very confusing.

And how about the fact that many words have more than one meaning, sometimes totally unrelated. For instance, I recently came upon the term plasma cutting. It sounded to me like some kind of medical thing involving blood. But I looked it up, and the term has to do with metal cutting. It uses something called a plasma torch.

So, yes, I can see how hard and confusing it is to learn English. But I still believe that if you want to live and work here in the U.S., learn the flippin’ language!
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I don’t have cable at home (see rant above about the evil Comcast), but when I’m someplace that does, I love to watch the Food Network. But one person on there that I can’t stand is Sandra Lee. I watched her show, “Semi-Homemade Cooking” a few times, and I think it’s awful. She uses way too much overprocessed stuff, and that can’t be good. Most of the dishes look and sound gross. And her “tablescapes” are tacky…at least the ones I’ve seen.

So I was watching some Food Network yesterday morning at the hotel in Portland, and saw promos for the upcoming All-Stars Thanksgiving special. I saw clips in the commercials with Emeril, Rachael, Giada, Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Tyler Florence, my man Alton Brown, etc. But I did NOT see Sandra Lee.

I wonder if she’s even going to be in this one. I watched an All-Stars Christmas show last year, and she was in it. For one segment, she was paired with Bobby Flay. I don’t remember all of the details, but it looked to me like Bobby was trying not to laugh (or gack) over some disgusting-sounding dip she was making. Also, she came off like an idiot when she didn’t know what some ingredient that Bobby was using for a dish was. I don’t recall what exactly it was now, but it was something I’d heard of, and that most food professionals should have, as well.

She contributed little to the show, as she doesn’t have the know-how that the others do. How’d she ever get a cooking show, anyway? I imagine that the other Food Network stars were frustrated over having to work with her…hell, if she came into my kitchen, I’d probably beat her over the head with a skillet. I’d be frustrated, too!

I guess some people must like her, because she’s still on the air. But at least I can choose not to watch her.