Today I had to have a minor recall service performed on my automobile. Knowing full well that nothing involving the servicing of a vehicle is, by law, allowed to take less than one full hour, I come prepared. I hand over the keys and they show me to the waiting area, indicating along the way the intricate process involved in operating the coffee machine.

New fangled, single-cup, pod-based coffee machine. Probably not worth the effort, but I appreciated the tutorial.

I find a chair as (seemingly) isolated as possible and pull out a novel. "Ilium" by Dan Simmons. Not too far into it, yet, but it's an interesting bit of science fiction. Perhaps I'll tell you nice folks about it some time. I begin to read...

Agamemnon is giving his dying brother one hell of a eulogy. I see him cradle Menelaus' head and shoulder in his arms and hear him go on about the terrible vengeance he--Agamemnon--will wreak on the Trojans for the murder of noble Menelaus.

"Wait, wait, wait", grunts Menelaus through gritted teeth. "Did you hear about Britney?"

"Ah, yes," says, Agamemnon. He almost, not quite, sounds disappointed. "And what about Anna Nicole?"

"Who's gonna take care of the babies?" gasps Menelaus.

...I grit my teeth and furrow my brow a little. The ambient level of conversation in the room has risen steadily since I got there and now, clearly, bled over into my reading. It was supposed to be an hour of quiet waiting, but instead I am treated to, ugh, celebrity gossip.

For the next 59 minutes I am forced to listen to a handful of, let's say, past-middle-aged people prattling on about Britney, Lindsay, and of course, Anna Nicole. I tried to bury myself in my book but I have very little tolerance for outside noise when I'm reading--I tend to have trouble blocking it out. So, instead of pondering over the Trojan War taking place on the surface of Mars in the distant future, I am instead trying to figure out if it's possible that Menelaus could have cheated on Helen and had a love child with Anna Nicole before Paris had her killed. Or, something.

Needless to say, it wasn't long before I was begging a mechanic to shove a screwdriver through my eardrums (or temples, you know, whatever works). Fortunately I am "saved by the bell" (sans Screech) as it were, and I leap out of my seat in the waiting area so fast you might have thought my ass was on fire (which is wasn't, because today is not Taco Day). I have no doubt that I will have to go back and reread the chapter I started. I'm pretty sure there were plenty of spears in the ranks of Greeks, just none of them a crazy, bald pop diva.

Well, except maybe Ajax.