I've always been suspicious when I walk into a home that is too perfect. The beds are made as if no one really sleeps in them. The couches look like the plastic just got taken off. No stains in the bathroom, no smudges in the kitchen. Pictures of strained smiling loved ones stare at me with forced Americana. If everything looks perfect, it probably isn't. Evil is probably involved. Such is the case with Martha Stewart.

To be bluntly honest, I never cared one way or the other about the lady. She represented style and grace, the art of proper social appearance, and many things I never held dear. I didn't mind that millions of women admired her. For a lady pushing 60, she looks pretty good. As long as no one got into a long-winded discussion about her, the occasional reference to her neat and anal ways went by without a second thought.

Martha Stewart worked hard to get to where she is. She modeled as a young woman to pay for college. These days, many girls become "dancers." She had a daughter and became a housewife for a little while. No doubt, this helped her influence the minions of stay-at-home moms in the future, but staying at home was not enough. She became one of the first woman stockbrokers on Wall Street. We'll get back to that. In the early 1980s, she started catering and mastered the art of creating proper parties. In 1982, she wrote a book called "Entertaining," and she finally found her niche. The talented, beautiful and ambitious Martha Stewart was the poster woman for style and grace.

More books, TV shows, guest appearances and an entire line of fancy junk at K-mart came her way, and she took it all. For the most part, people ate up all the dishes she cooked. A love-her-or-hate-her mentality developed. Whenever I caught a glimpse of the prim and proper media mogul, I always wondered what happened when all the make up came off. Now, we all know that a dash of evil goes well with elegance.

This week, Martha Stewart was convicted of insider trading. To be exact, there were four charges of conspiracy, making false statements and obstruction of justice. In other words, she took the money and lied about doing it. She got a tip from her broker that the stock she was responsible for creating was going to plummet. Instead of nobly going down with the ship, she jumped on the only life raft and filled it with the money of others. I'm sure she did it with more style and grace than the rest of us put together.

She still claims she did nothing wrong, but this seems rather hollow. She was a stockbroker herself and couldn't use the dumb blonde defense of "I didn't know I couldn't do that, hee hee." Her intelligence and style finally backfired, and the hidden evil popped out of the closet. For those of you that don't know yet, the worst evil in the world comes from people who don't think they are wrong in any way, and they will commit the same evil again in a heartbeat.

If anything hits home about all of this, it's that the people who stress a certain type of lifestyle don't really care about you in the long run. Some of them are wackos like David Koresh or Jim Jones who will sacrifice you to prove a point. There are ministers and holy men who preach and preach about being good while they collect your money and sleep with prostitutes. There are politicians, lawyers, and cops who stress persecuting criminals to the fullest extent of the law until one of their kids screws up. There are media moguls who tell you exactly how to make your life look that certain type of perfect, and then they take the money and run the moment before the house comes crumbling down on the lacy doilies.

If nothing else, the saga of Martha Stewart is yet another warning to the masses. Don't invest too much in specific types of lifestyles. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't admire or envy the lives of others too much. In the end, most people won't give two squirts of piss about you. Given the chance, they will step on you to get ahead, take money you invested to climb to the next tax bracket, or even take your life to prove a meaningless point. The worst part about their brand of evil is that they'll swear to their dying day that they did nothing wrong.

Chris Jungle lacks many social graces, but he still gets served at the restaurant.