I don’t own square plates and I don’t garnish anything with wrinkled shrubbery.

There must be something wrong with me. At 5:30 this morning I woke up with a craving for spaghetti and meat sauce, and it was so bad that I sat at my desk playing out the entire scenario in my head for at least half an hour, including how to get my great big pot out of the cabinet without making any noise and wondering if we have enough parmesan cheese. (I like a LOT of parmesan cheese.) Eventually I wound up going back to bed and didn’t actually eat anything until lunch, at which time I reheated an unusually large bowl of Five-Minute Stupid Soup leftover from last night’s dinner.

It is presently 6:40 p.m. and once again I find that I’m obsessed with spaghetti and meat sauce. I’ve got a package of Carb Counters Skinni Spaghetti calling my name from the pantry, and with only 12 carbs in the whole damn box I can go for total gluttony if I want to. Either that, or I might print out a sheet of new spice jar labels and order Mongolian chicken. You can stay tuned for my final decision but it’s not likely that anybody really gives a crap about this.

For the record, my spaghetti and meat sauce looks exactly like this photo except I don’t own square plates and I don’t garnish anything with wrinkled shrubbery.

Show of hands. Does anybody besides me think Manti Te’o should be a mental patient instead of a linebacker? You know, that football doofus from Notre Dame who’s mourning a dead girlfriend who never existed? In a press conference today Te’o finally admitted that he had an online romance that began in 2009 with a fake girl named Lennay Kekua from Stanford University who was in a fake severe car crash and died — tragically — of fake leukemia on December 6. Apparently the only thing that’s real here is his stupidity.

An article today on Deadspin.com uncovered all the facts behind Manti’s almost unbelievable tale of deception:

“There is no SSA record of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper. Nor is there any report of a severe auto accident involving a Lennay Kekua. Background checks turn up nothing. The Stanford registrar’s office has no record that a Lennay Kekua ever enrolled. There is no record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there’s no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed. The photographs identified as Kekua — in online tributes and on TV news reports — are pictures from the social media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te’o.”

While sports commentators are throwing around the possibility that Notre Dame will probably dump him, I think Te’o has a strong future and a shot at the NFL. Not too many players start their football careers with an advanced case of brain trauma.

Thank you for reading this.