t was another surprise ending for The Bachelor, though this one was a little more Crying Game and a little less America’s Sweethearts. The question had been hanging in the air like a flatulent eagle all week: Would bachelor Andrew Firestone choose spunky Kirsten, whose ass he’d been blatantly checking out since the beginning of the season and who jealous former contestants gossiped was carrying his baby? Or would it be Jen, the slightly less stunning drama queen favored by the show’s viewers and the 23 catty former contestants who lay slain on the battlefield of bogusly contrived romance? Oh shit, dog.

When the answer finally came, it was with the bang of 25 pancake-makeupped jaws hitting the floor in unison. In an unprecedented and possibly illegal move, Firestone passed up both Kirsten and Jen to give his final rose, and we guess a marriage proposal, to former Bachelor star Aaron Buerge.

Asked on-camera what he was thinking when he made such an unorthodox choice, Andrew smiled to the audience and beamed proudly.

“Are you kidding, all those bitches is crazy!”

At that point viewers at home went berserk, throwing chairs and Kleenex boxes around like disappointed apes. In the background, Jen and Kristen held each other’s hair back as they vomited in tandem into a bucket of champagne.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gay. I just couldn’t handle hanging out with those crazy bitches any longer,” Firestone confided. “If I hear one more girl talk about what font she’d use on wedding invitations, I swear to God I’m going to go all American Psycho on everybody. Shit! Anyway, I met Aaron backstage one night when he was cruising for some rejected bachelorette skank, and we really hit it off. We talked about handguns and the Red Sox, and not once did he bring up floral arrangements. It was the best time I’ve had in months.

“That’s when I realized marrying any girl desperate enough to let a gameshow determine her mate for life would be a huge boner. Woo, dodged a bullet with that one!” Firestone exclaimed, exchanging a high-five with Buerge. “Talk about ‘Until me wrapping my lips around a shotgun barrel does us part’! Damn!”

Buerge, star of The Bachelor season two, ended up not getting married to that season’s winner Helene Eksterowicz, invalidating the gift certificate to Crate & Barrel that was provided courtesy of the show.

“Yeah, things with me and Helene didn’t work out. After the excitement of the show had worn off, I realized all the bright lights and pressure made her seem better than she was. Kind of like on the old Wheel of Fortune when the winner would have all that money to spend, and they’d get the bedroom set with the porcelain Dalmatians. It seems like a good idea at the time. But when you get home, what in the hell are you going to do with a set of life-sized porcelain Dalmatians?”

Irate viewers expecting to see one woman’s heart crushed on national television, not two, flooded ABC’s switchboards with complaints, but Firestone insists it was all for the best.

“Are you kidding me? Aaron saved my life back there. I felt like I was headed down a dark tunnel with no way to turn around. Then Aaron pulled up in a sweet convertible, or whatever the analogy is, and saved my ass. I could kiss that dude. Not literally though, just ‘cuz he wears my ring doesn’t mean nothing but we’re buds. I go strictly for the easy poontang, as the last six weeks should have made clear.”

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Things have been gloomier than usual here at the commune offices, as Flatbush, New Jersey goes through another rain-drenched March. Some have always admired rain, looked into the gloomy darkness overhead and the water fluttering down from the sky and seen it as some kind of cleansing of the earth, a washing-away of the dust and grime coating the planet and the nourishing of its lush green life. I say that's horseshit. Rain is nothing but the entire population of a city, state, or country being thrown into the swimming pool a teaspoon full at a time.

God's laughing at us when it rains. That's right—I accept the Judeo-Christian concept of God, and sometimes He's a right asshole. If He's so perfect, couldn't he find a more productive way of doing whatever rain has to do? Why make plants that grow in the middle of a landlocked mass need water at all? It makes less sense than a movie starring Adam Sandler as a romantic lead. God's capable of making spiders, who reproduce with hundreds of offspring and spin elaborate webs to feed themselves, but the best he could do to get water around to all the soil is just to drop it out of the sky. I'm surprised He stopped there. Why not just have chicken wings plunge from the clouds whenever people need feeding? Hold your mouths open like turkeys staring at the sky, spit out the bones, there's no need to even take lunch. It's better than getting soaking wet through some ill-conceived water delivery system.

Imagine the scenario, good people: You've put on your best work suit, combed your hair into a stylish pompadour that's a magnet for the ladies, and you strut out the door early in the morning. Then some obstinate little shit pelts you with a condom full of mineral water. I suppose you addle-minded hippies would look up at him and blather on about the inherent beauty of getting pranked by a little preteen bastard. You'd write songs about water balloons and lovers would curl up next to the fire telling each other they sure like the smell in the air after you get socked in the face with a swishy prophylactic. To hell with that. You've been punked, nature-lover.

I'm not sure why I alone have this special insight, that rain is nothing but an amateur April Fool's joke. Perhaps standing at 3-foot-eight-inches and being particularly vulnerable to floods and watery basements makes me warier of water falling from the sky than most people. I don't accept all of the Bible as a literal interpretation, but I do believe there was a flood. I admit, I skipped around through parts of it, but I think I have the general gist—40 days and nights of rain (yeah, God, real funny), build a monstrous boat, take two of each animal. I'm not sure the wisdom of that, taking a couple of dinosaurs that are bound to eat the rest of the animals, instead of taking your hundred or so best friends. But I'm not concerned with that, I only want to keep a close eye on rain in case it gets the wise idea to do the same thing again. I haven't exactly kept up with my boat-making skill, and if I were hard-pressed to start collecting animals right now, I would only be able to find a couple of diferent breeds of dogs and a cockatiel.

However, let's make one thing clear: I will not hear a word against snow. Snow is the antithesis of rain—it's light and flickering instead of pelting and obstinate; it's pure and charming, instead of cruel and clothes-ruining. Plus, it sticks together and makes snow men. Anything that allows itself to be shaped by men into mock people cannot be bad. You just try and make a rainman, see where that will get you—a watery retarded man who counts matchsticks easily. Yeah, that was a great idea.

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You see, George? I told you the name of that movie was Deep Blue Sea, the one where the sharks eat the people. I should know, it's probably one of the best movies I've ever seen. Yet you doubted me. Well, tonight I dine on victory.

Lake Placid? How you could get a movie about a giant alligator in a small town confused with a movie about hyper-intelligent sharks eating all the people at a floating sea lab? No victory for you, George. You clearly don't keep good inventory on your mutated-creature-attacks-people movies. I, on the other hand, who do keep good inventory on my mutated-creature-attacks-people movies, will be eating big fat slabs of victory tonight, right off the bone.

Not that Lake Placid is a bad film, George—that's not my argument at all. Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, a great cast all around. But are you honestly telling me you mixed up Oliver Platt with Samuel L. Jackson? An incalculable error on your part, George, which is why I munch victory chips and you get crow. Enjoying your crow, George? I've had to eat crow far too many times to feel sorry for you. I've eaten enough crow for the population of India in my years. And they're practically starving, George, so you know they would eat a lot of crow. But tonight my soup is filled with chunks of victory.

What about the sheriff? There's not even a sheriff in Deep Blue Sea. Not that I'm not enjoying delicious victory-chip cookies over my win, but I don't understand how you could so clearly confuse a small town with a partially submerged sea lab. Did the diving suits not give it away at all? When the fellow at the party asked what was the movie with Samuel L. Jackson where the sharks are trying to kill him, and you said, "Oh, Lake Placid!" did it not seem at all possible that sharks in a movie about a lake was a major blunder?

The more I think about it, the victory isn't all that sweet. Sure, it's good, especially for a change since I've so often had big fat crow while you chomped victory, but I didn't want to win this way. It takes some of the fun out of it. Did you let me win on purpose? Is it possible you fouled up the movie title so completely hoping that I would pick up the ball and run the touchdown? Seriously, George, it's starting to bother me—are you retarded? Not that it's a problem if you are, but if you have suddenly become retarded during the course of the party last night, I need to know. I sure didn't want to win this way.

I'm starting to see you in a whole new light, George. Sitting here, cutting my victory into small pieces and eating it quietly… you're not at all the impenetrable fortress of knowledge I once thought you to be. You're truly fallible, aren't you? Especially where your weak knowledge of modern giant creature movies comes in.

It was bound to happen, I guess. Maybe before I was too awestruck by your ability to recall most movies without failure, to beat me to an answer and make me look like a jackass. I imagine those days are over, and I'm a little sad. I won't be eating crow anymore, just sweet, sweet victory, but still, it changes the way I see things now. The rosy-colored glasses are off and I see you for what you are—a buffoon, I dare say, when it comes to telling the difference between giant shark and giant alligator movies. God forbid someone ever asks you about Gator or Jaws—you're liable to burst a blood vessel and drool all over yourself and become a complete vegetable.

Let's hope it was a one-time thing, for both of us, and never speak of it again. Here—share my victory. Just this one time.

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