SO Exactly. I was just thinking of Kathleen Turner, and how John Waters' movies are about seeing how shitty the strait-laced people are from the perspective of the people of the underworld. I like the dichotomy of, "You think it's nice, don't you? Well, it's not."

When I was writing a lot of this, I was working at an ad agency, and I was constantly bombarded with product names and messages about why products are awesome. There are write-ups where I talk of specific company names. One cake that we did for the book is all about the ubiquity of antidepressants and other blockbuster pharmaceuticals like Lipitor. It's called Big Pharma Nut Cake.

People talk and write to me about the apocalypse more. Someone will say, "Hey, I found this article about the Super Hadron Collider and black holes." But do I see the apocalyptic in the everyday? Not really.

In writing this book, I had to learn about the ten plagues of Egypt. The apocalypse hasn't come to me — I had to go to it. *

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