I feel ashamed and guilt-ridden for having watched.

I couldn't help myself.

Did anyone else catch this week's episode of "Wife Swap?" They featured a gal who ate four-month-old raw meat she called "high meat," licked kitchen floors, brushed her teeth with butter and clay and served her family at 2 a.m. some kind of gelatinous cream.

At one point in the show her husband was huddled next to bathroom toilet sobbing uncontrollably after eating a regular hamburger and French fries.

Riveting stuff. My eyes were glued to the set.

My boss has me reading Ray Bradbury's short novel "Fahrenheit 451" as part of the Fond du Lac Library's literacy promotion that invites the community, beginning March 1, to read this book together.

Ray, Ray, Ray. You are freaking me out.

All these reality shows and vicarious thrills - he wrote about its coming to fruition - back in 1953.

In his futuristic world they burn down houses and any books sheltered within, in an assurance that this is what a dumbed-down society wants and needs.

The premise is that everything offends someone, so why not just forbid it all?

The walls inside the homes of characters living in Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which a book ignites) are television screens giving viewers the only thing they seem to want anymore.

Rapid-fire images that startle and coddle senseless minds.

I have a confession.

I have been known to turn off the President's State of the Union Address to watch a tape of "Big Brother Season: Season Four."

Sometimes I can't take anymore news, so I do get it Ray. I get how it happens - the media feeding us what we want - news stories reduced to Web hits.


My guilty pleasures: "Beauty and the Geek," "America's Next Top Model," "Rock Star," "The Bachelor" (sick, I know), and the "Biggest Loser."

There. Now you know the sordid, seedy side of me.

At this age, I do love to veg out.

If Ray's world happens, it will be our own fault.

Do you smell something burning?