Every other show on the discovery health network:

Some missionary/DWB/nurse/good samaritan goes to a 3rd world country and finds Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang, generally a young child, who has some horribly disfigurment that has caused them to be social outcasts in their small dirt hovel town. Phone calls are made, camera crews are readied, and young Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang is whisked off to America in order to get treatment for this horrifying disfigurement. While there, they stay with Happy American Family! Happy American Family does not live in a hovel. They live in the suburbs. With running water and a big back yarn YARD and a fridge full of junk food. Over the course of the next 5-12 months, Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang has multiple painful surgeries, and every painful tear is caught on film. In between surgeries, however, Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang is treated to every good thing America has to offer. Nice clothes, healthy meals, UNhealthy meals, candy, the zoo, Disneyland, X box, iPod, and every other excess we take for granted. Little Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang is showered with gifts and love and adoration.

Then comes the day when Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang is all better. The horrendous deformity has been fixed, and now comes the time they have eagerly awaited – the return home to the hovel, to be reunited with their parents and 12 brothers and sisters. Where we can watch ON CAMERA, the slow realization that they will never again be able to go to disneyland, play x box, or even turn a faucet to get water any time they want…because now they are home. And while the many painful surgeries have allowed them to become members of the society that shunned them, they will, in reality, ALWAYS be outcasts. Because they have seen life better…got a small taste of it, and then been returned to the squalor from which they came.

It is almost cruel. I watched a show in which a little boy, happily reunited with his family, tearfully asked his mother if the Doctor would take him back to America.

I suppose the optimist would say the child’s experience with a better life, even for a short period of time, might inspire them to do better for themselves. To try to get a better education, to leave their village, to become more than a simple farmer. But in reality…what are the chances of this? I suppose maybe the chances are slightly better than being found by a missionary/samaritan/etc in the first place.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t help these kids. God knows, giving them the medical treatment they would never get otherwise saves their lives and helps them for the better. But part of me feels so damn sorry for them afterwards. Will they ever truly fit back in to their society? Will they ever be able to re-accept their old way of life? As soon as those cameras are shut off, I have to believe Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang is stripped of their nice clothes, farewell gifts from their american hosts taken away and redistributed throughout the village, and it’s business as usual. Little Mutambe/Paco/XiangXiang grows up, something that might never have happened otherwise, and does no better or no worse than his/her parents…but with the devastating awareness that a better life had been dangled in front of them like a carrot, then jerked away.

Anyone besides me find this just a little cruel?

I followed the recipe here, which is from Good Eats. I had watched Alton Brown make them a couple weeks ago on TV and after wiping the drool from my boobs (geez, those things collect everything) I decided I MUST MAKE THEM!

I only made a couple changes out of necessity to the pattern. First, I was just a tad short on AP flour, so I had to use a little bit of wheat flour to make up the difference. The dough ended up being very sticky – I couldn’t remember, was it supposed to be THIS sticky??? So while the dough was kneading in the mixer, I sprinkled in about a 1/4 cup more of the whole wheat flour. The dough was still sticky, but manageable.

Secondly, the salt. Now Mr Brown is a big proponent of multi-tasking on his show. That means that whatever he uses in his kitchen must do multiple things. However, he generally only applies this to hardware – gadgets and tools and stuff. He NEVER applies this to actual ingredients, often recommending purchasing weird and exotic recipe-specific ingredients that you could really not apply to anything else. Not OFTEN, but enough.

For the pretzel recipe, he recommends buy pretzel salt. On the show he explains that pretzel salt is made by compacting smaller crystals of salt together, so that they break apart and dissolve quickly on the tongue. This gives them a more pleasing salty flavor and texture.

Whatever. What do you use pretzel salt for? To make pretzels. How often are you going to make pretzels? I don’t know, couple times a year, maybe? At the most? Probably not often enough to go online and buy a couple pounds of it. None of the grocery stores around me carry it. And even if they did, I’m not sure I would buy it. I have enough crap in my kitchen, I don’t want to store excess!

What I do have plenty of is coarse sea salt. Which is crunchy and salty and good enough, dammit.

The “split” look I got with the finished pretzels I think is because even though I oiled the bowl and covered it to let the dough rise, I still got some crust forming. The crust got twisted into the shapes and then split when cooked. Doesn’t affect the taste AT ALL, though.

And ohhh…so good. With mustard!

and oh yes, it is an obsession. I watch Dateline Tuesday like a dope fiend. (are there still dope fiends? Do they watch Dateline?) I get a dark deep thrill from watching the expression on those creeps’ faces when Chris Hansen comes around the corner. Watch them stutter and sputter and try to come up with a lame excuse for the KY jelly in their back pocket. I squeal with GLEE if they try to run! Or beg from mercy from Mr Hansen! Who only wants an explanation for what they meant when they said they wanted to “run my tongue over your *bleep!* and make you feel good” to a 13 year old girl.

OH YES! TAKE THAT PERVERT DOWN! And I don’t care that people have questioned the methods they use. I don’t care that some jerk killed himself rather that surrender himself to the police. BAD! GET HELP OR GET IN JAIL! HAVING SEX WITH KIDS IS WRONG WRONG WRONG! Don’t ever stop, Dateline Tuesday.

I have a theory why watching these perves get what’s coming to them brings me so much joy. Because online predators who target kids? Are wrong. Very wrong. There is no gray area there. It’s very black and white. You want to have sex with a 12 year old? That is WRONG. VERY WRONG. GO TO JAIL NOW. DO NOT PASS GO.

And there is so very much gray area in the world today, isn’t there? The war is bad, yes? But we can’t just pull out, right? There are people there who’s lives have been shattered completely who would would not survive without our help. And we need to give them help, because it’s our fault in the first place, right? Or was it Saddam’s fault? Or is it their own fault? Maybe we should just pull out completely?

I don’t even know anymore. I’m so sick of politics and knee-jerk reactions of republicans=bad, democrats=good, when democrats haven’t covered themselves in glory lately, either. There is so much gray area, in politics, in religion, in almost every facet of life I am faced with. It is almost too much for me – I crave happy endings, which is so naive. So uncool. But there ya go. I’ve never professed to be cool. Well, maybe I have, but I was lying.

But…there is one thing I KNOW TO BE TRUE: sexual predators targeting children is bad, mkay?

So take ‘em down for me, please, Mr Hansen. It is the only thing I know is right, right now.

says Rick: “This is going to be the next great american invention, I just know it! All these other people can go home right now!

His mother’s dying wish was for him to be successful. And look, here’s his youngest son, Jimmy, fresh from the hospital where he just received his second chemo treatment for brain cancer.

Jimmy: *cough cough* “I hope my daddy wins because we need money for my medication.”

He’s poured his heart, mind and soul into this invention. Let’s see how he does in front of the judges.

Judge #1: So…what do you have for us today?

Rick: I have here…an invention you are ALL going to love…ladies and gentlemen, I give you…the SANI-HAT!

Judge #2: …what is it?

Rick: It’s a ball cap that dispenses hand sanitizer

Judge #1: let’s vote. No.

Judge #2: You have got to be kidding me. No

Judge#3: No

George Foreman: I like it. Yes.

Rick storms out in anger. Little Jimmy meets him on the other side. “Am I going to die, daddy?” *cough*

*parody! but close enough to the truth. This show is a train wreck and I CAN’T LOOK AWAY!