Our last nerve.(the bent pin)(Essay)

AMONG the intimacies that used to be saved for marriage were the words, "If you do that one more time I'll scream." Nerve-wracking, however, is not what it used to be. Our era of overexposed celebrities has turned us into molar-grinding practitioners of promiscuous irritation aimed at people we don't even know.

An epidemic of incipient screams currently surrounds Rachael Ray, one of the cooks from Food Network, whose recent consecration by Pope Oprah has resulted in so much overnight world-class fame that her face is on everything but the cover of Tool & Die Quarterly. TV is now all Rachael, all the time. There's her cooking show, her eating show where she samples restaurants, her own talk show, guest appearances on other people's talk shows, books, book tours, and so many tie-ins and endorsements that she's all over the commercials too.

She's 38, looks 18, and acts 12, which is why I stopped watching her original midday show, 30 Minute Meals. There was the giggle, the rushing around, and her practice of assembling all her ingredients in a single trip from fridge to stove, and then wobbling across the kitchen, nearly dropping everything, grinning and yelling "Whoa!"

I thought I was just being old and crotchety, but then I discovered the "I Hate Rachael Ray" blog, whose Gen-X contributors hate her so much that they watch her shows so they can hate her some more. Far from the obscene churls found on many blogs, they come across as a bold anti-Oprah underground armed with a sense of the absurd, ready to do battle against the cult of mediocre celebrity.

They also have the cadences of contemporary insult down pat. Their Rachael is a "perky demented food chipmunk," which is in a class with cheese-eating surrender monkeys. They have nicknamed her Retch, Rectal, and The Raytarded; called her "a banshee on amphetamines" and a "freakazoid"; compared her laugh to a bicycle horn and her mouth to the Joker's in Batman: "She never stops with the crazy pathological smile."

What will make them scream if she does it one more time? That's easy. She abbreviates extra-virgin olive oil to "EVOO"--and then explains, "That's extra-virgin olive oil." She does this without fail every single time so there's a lot of screaming on the blog: "Why, dear God, why does she keep SPELLING OUT AN ABBREVIATION!!!"

One blogger wrote: "She just poured the penne into the water and said, 'let's get the kids into the hot tub.' I think I've lost it. I can't take it anymore." Another told of opening his utility bill and finding the company's helpful little monthly brochure, which always contains recipes: "Guess whose? Yup, The 'Tard's." Some recoiled at the names she gives her recipes ("I call this one the Gutbuster because you can't stop eating it!"). Another, who could no longer bring himself to go ...