Ahh, September! Long has it been one of my favorite months. Maybe it's the smell of fresh pencils and crisp, new pages. Perhaps it's the turning of the trees, the faint smell of hickory smoke and sweet decaying leaves carried on the bracing, chill fall wind. Or maybe it's because this month heralds the start of the glorious fall fashion season (fuck the autumn foliage ... it's tweed I'm after!).

No, actually, I'd love to have such lofty motives for my yearly borderline-psychotic anticipation of this most beautiful of seasons. Even the fashion excuse is better than the sad reality. I love fall most of all because it ushers in a new season of delicious, brain-rotting television.

Will Drs. Chen and Pratt survive the season premiere of "ER"? Will Rory Gilmore break up her ex-boyfriend Dean's marriage? And more importantly, what cutesy female name will that crazy Dr. Cox call Dr. Dorian next?

I have the answers to all this and more. But wait! you may ask. What is this season's Official Trashy WYD Reality Show?

I see you have been paying attention to my blog. Yes, there is, as usual, an official "can't miss" train wreck this season. How could there not be? There were so many contenders from which to choose. I mean, let's face it -- there aren't a lot of NON-reality shows left on the air.

I briefly flirted with the tawdrily-titled "Wife Swap" before realizing I couldn't tell people with a straight face -- even a proper ironic smirk -- what I was watching. I also eyed the similarly-themed show "Trading Spouses," but when I watched it, I realized that the Dave Chappelle skit of the same title was exponentially more interesting.

I skipped A&E's "Growing Up Gotti" because after "The Osbournes" and the deliciously drunken "Anna Nicole," the celebrity reality show was pretty tapped out. I mean, how can you top a drug-addled, overweight former stripper getting trapped underneath the kitchen table of a home she's considering buying? Or bedecking a friend's house in rubber dildos in a "Trading Spaces"-esque room swap?

And competition-based shows such as "The Apprentice" and its ilk are far too redeemable for my tastes.

When I go to the smutty pig trough that is reality television, no apples and nearly-whole ears of corn for me, thanks. If I'm gonna be consuming shit and refuse, I want the intellectual and sociological equivalent of rotting chicken carcasses and that unidentifiable smelly ooze in the bottom of the trash when you come back from vacation and realize you forgot to put it out two Fridays ago.

I need contestants with a unique blend of deranged sociopathy, crazed fandom and Disney-princess naïveté. I need tears and catfights and a sadistic panel of surgically-altered judges. In short, I need the third season of "America's Next Top Model."

Yes, I know this was also this blog's official reality show of the 2002-2003 TV season. And I have a perfectly legitimate reason for naming "ANTM" the official trashy reality show of this season as well.

What might that reason be? you ask. Well, if the catfights, fashion fabulosity, drama, tears, dorky runway struts and the harsh judgment of the original supermodel (and now plastic princess) Janice Dickinson didn't reel you in, I don't know what else I can say.

Other than these two beautiful words.

Bar brawl.

Oh, yes. This is going to be a great television season.

For the last several years, not for anything have I been willing to reinstall Windows XP over my old, slightly illegitimate copy. Not for improved speed and performance. Not for the sake of downloading service packs. Not even to prevent my computer from practically crashing in its over-earnest efforts to deliver to me the latest copy of Acrobat, which of course refused to install because of my aforementioned indifference to the need for those silly service packs.

But this past week, I backed up all every single file of remote importance (real or imagined) and let the boyfriend purge my computer of all its contents -- including the offending semi-bootleg OS -- and install a clean, shiny, brand-new copy of XP and all the attendant service packs and updates.

What precipitated this dramatic flipflop on the important issue of Windows reinstallation, a key plank in my perennial platform of computer-performance apathy?

Let us play Sherlock Holmes and use a little bit of simple inductive reasoning.

First, let us presume that I am still of sound mind and body and therefore don't really give a shit about the legitimacy of my software and/or whether or not I can download Microsoft's dubious service packs.

Secondly, let us suppose that as a sometime gamer and full-time hard-drive pack rat, the only reason I might possibly have to reinstall or remove ANYTHING would be for the sake of performance -- not just for a faster browser, either, for which I have infinite patience, but for a game or program of some sort. One that, theoretically, would have to take up a damn lot of space not only on my hard drive but in my heart and mind. Something that I'd anticipate even more than an original Sims expansion pack.

Finally, let us examine our calendar. Hmm. Today, the day my machine has finally become operational, is the 12th of September. In two days, on the 14th, The Sims 2 will be available for purchase in select cities.

Now I'm not going to come out and say I gritted my teeth, backed up several years' worth of crap and reinstalled Windows all for a silly computer game in which people run around eating chips and peeing themselves. But do I really need to?