First, if you really understood "Great Expectations," you know that Mrs. Havisham was intending to turn her ward into a soulless, loveless creature, then transfer her brain into the girl's body so she could have another lifetime of sowing bitterness and spite. With, of course, the help of her robot monkeys. (This was the South Park version of the story, the only really definitive one. It was, after all, narrated by A British Person.)

The robot monkeys are the people who think Havrilesky is a good writer. They were probably Bush supporters or Limbaugh ditto-monkeys before Mrs. Havisham reprogrammed them.

Second, when a person opens up her personal life as grist for a column, a desperation tactic that suggests she has nothing else like knowledge of the subject matter to get traction on the actual writing, this makes her life fair game. If I were to write an article and describe some of the crap that's happened to me, even as a lame opening gambit for the article, I would be giving anybody carte blanche to anally rape me for those things. And they will, especially Heather's robot monkeys, because that's how robot monkeys are.

Such was the case with "not in a million years" who was foolish enough to think Havrilesy was praising his letter, then saw her rip him to shreds in print. Which is why I entitled my original post "profesisonal jealousy." Although I can't really think of Havrilesky aspiring to be Simon Cowell. Her life goal would be like the pro wrestlers from the WWE who use "scientific techniques" to beat her opponents (i.e. the rest of the world). "Scientific techniques" like smuggling into the ring what Mean Gene used to call "a foreign object" and scratching the opponent across the eyes with it.

And "million years" still loves Havrilesky, even without something like Boudreaux's Butt Paste to ease the abrasions she gave him. He praises her wit, her style and her "valid opinions." He wisely does not talk about her knowledge of the subject of television, either of programming history or of the business itself, or knowledge of human nature in the vast world outside her cappucino restaurant, or her viper's treatment of her readers. After all, who gives a damn if you know what you're talking about, as long as you're stylish?

That's Zacharek's apparent mission in this article; find which reality show has the least pointy barbed wire, the lowest-voltage cattle prods, the nicest insane doctors killing their patients. I suppose it was inevitable; reality shows are so cheap to produce and contain so much of the cruelty the American public desires that they've become a permanent genre.

This is not a criticism of Zacharek, by the way; I wish she would become the regular television columnist instead of the cappucino-drinking egotist Havrilesky, who needs an assistant to help her spell-check words like "reality." It's just that in trying to decide if Buchemwald or Bergen-Belsen is nicer, a choice more or less forced by the preponderance of these shows, she picked the one that has my class of people as inmates.

We nerds know full well what "no name given" said, about economics, is only part of the truth. (By the way, fellow, get a name and post under it; anonymity is cowardice.) We may or may not have the potential to make money, but even if we did gain it, we would know that attractive women would only like us for that money. Which would make us pimps and them whores, a relationship in which love is irrelevant.

We also know that we will never "change" enough to be able to fake social skills or interest in brands of moisturizers to pass for white - I mean cool. Those factors are determined between the womb and age seven. Those lucky enough to get the right lessons go to Hollywood and live there comfortably. The rest of us work in tech support, with no hope of retirement, until a heart attack brings us sweet relief. And anyone who tries to pass for white...well, Anna Nicole Smith tried, and see what happened to her? (It was suicide, in case you didn't know, with the death of her son, like Monroe's own lost baby, as a strong depressing emotional trigger. Although just like Monroe, there will be conspiracy theories and rationalizations galore.)

In terms of character and socialization, you can't win and you can't break even; you can only get out of the game. And Beauty and the Geek makes the only rational choice, getting the hell out, failure. It'd be hard to find a better definition of a concentration camp.