Think yourself fat

It’s not chocolate and booze that are making me fat, it’s all the thinking.

A study in Canada has found that the more you work your brain, the more you want to eat. This is extremely bad news for a large segment of the New Internet Economy -- people who sit at computers all day, thinking about stuff. It’s not bad enough that we lead such a sedentary lifestyle. Now it turns out that the stress of mental work makes us want more food.

Researchers at Laval University reported the study in a recent issue of “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal.” (Don’t you love that there’s a publication called “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal?” I used to subscribe to it, but I thought it was making me sick.)

The researchers measured food consumption after subjects did reading/writing tasks or performed computerized tests. The study was done on 14 students (the white lab rats of humanity), who were turned loose on an all-you-can-eat buffet after performing the 45-minute tests.

Students who read a document and wrote a summary of it ate 24 percent more than students who simply rested in a sitting position during the test period. Students who did the computer test activity ate 29 percent more than those who rested.

“Those who had a more demanding mental task were more stressed and ate more,” said researcher Angelo Tremblay and, yes, that’s his real name.

Tremblay and his fellow researchers found that stress from mental work increased the hormone cortisol and also affected glucose levels, both of which can stimulate appetite.

Unfortunately, other studies have found that brainwork does nothing to burn calories. That seems unfair. Sure, our brains will spur us to visit the buffet again and again, but when it comes time to get rid of those accumulated calories, the brain can’t be bothered. It’s too busy pondering the infield fly rule or trying to remember the name of that cross-eyed kid we knew in third grade.

So what’s to be done? You already know the answer: physical exercise. Most of us don’t do enough manual labor to burn up the calories we consume; we’re too busy sitting at computers, playing Spider Solitaire. Since our brains won’t help burn calories, the only solution is to make our bodies do it through regular workouts, the researchers said.

They did find one glimmer of hope for the exercise-phobic, though that wasn’t their intention.
Because brain chemistry apparently can make us overeat, “mental work is a worse activity than simply doing nothing,” Tremblay said.

So there’s your answer. Stop using your brain so much, and maybe you’ll eat less. If you can stand to sit and stare into space without fidgeting or thinking, you’re all set.

This doesn’t explain why you run into so many stupid people who are also fat. But perhaps even a little bit of thinking is harder work for such mouth-breathers and therefore more stressful.

You’ll notice one important omission in the Canadian study: Television. Sitting and staring at TV is completely passive, but it clearly stimulates those same brain chemicals because nothing makes us want snacks more than televised sporting events. If sitting at a computer and thinking about stuff makes us fat, then sitting in front of a TV should make us HUGE. I know it’s working for me.

Anyway, that’s my theory about this new obesity study. I put a lot of thought into it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat. I’m starving.

That's a laugh

Of all the things I find annoying -- and, boy, there's a list that just keeps getting longer -- laugh tracks are near the top.

I've all but given up watching TV situation comedies because of the canned laughter that erupts every time a character so much as exhales. Sometimes, the laughs come from a "live studio audience" of morons, but usually the laughter and applause are generated by a machine.

One of the worst offenders is a sitcom that is, naturally, a favorite of my teen-age sons. "That '70s Show" can be pretty funny at times, especially for those of us who can remember the actual '70s and the stupid clothes we wore, but the sitcom is ruined by the loud laughter that spews after virtually every spoken line. I can recognize the show by its waves of fake laughter, even when I'm in the other end of the house, and I'm sometimes forced to hide in the bathroom until it's over.

What rankles is the feeling that sitcom producers believe that we, the television audience, are too stupid to "get" the jokes unless we hear other people laughing, too. Plus, they apparently feel they can get away with weak material if they "sweeten" the laughs with machine-made hahas.

The rest of us don't get off so easy. If we tell a joke to our coworkers and it flops, that's just too bad for us. If we try to be witty at the dinner table and we bomb, nobody's going to "sweeten" the moment. We're left struggling through a red-faced explanation of what we meant, or awkwardly identifying the "funny part" for an audience that's uninterested, impatient or outright hostile.

Perhaps we should all have our own laugh tracks and applause machines. Then we could get away with lame jokes, too, and we'd feel a lot better about ourselves. A typical office exchange could go something like this:

Bill: "Hey, Bob, are you working hard or hardly working?"

(Laughter.)

Bob: "Keeping my nose to the grindstone, Bill. How about you? Still having an affair with your secretary?"

(Chorus of laughter and knowing "Oho's.")

Bill: "Very funny, Bob. I told you not to mention that again. Guess I'm going to have to fire you now."

(Groans, sporadic laughter.)

Bob: "Don't be hasty, Bill! I've got photos to show your wife."

(Laughter.)

Bill: "Haha! You got me there, Bob. Guess I'll have to run over you in the parking lot later."

(Sustained laughter. Applause.)

Cut to the parking lot, end of the workday. Bob's bent over, petting a stray kitten.

(A chorus of "Awww's.")

A pickup truck bears down on Bob. An irate Bill is behind the wheel. Fade to black just before the collision.

(Wild laughter. Applause. Roll credits.)

See? Life could be improved immeasurably with laugh tracks and applause machines (unless you're the freshly deceased Bob). You'd always have a willing, appreciative audience. Every gag would get a laugh. Every snippet of dialogue would get a reaction. Every time you accomplished anything, you could take a bow.

Would it change the way we do things? Would we ignore our family members, who just don't "get" us, in favor of canned laughter? Would we become applause junkies, doing things twice so we could trumpet each "encore performance?" Would we run over coworkers in the parking lot for a cheap laugh?

Sure we would. And then we'd be ready for prime time.

And that's the end of this column. Ta-DA! Thank you. Thank you very much.

Deck the halls

With the leaf-whump arrival of autumn, it's time to snuggle indoors in front of a hearty fire and notice that you've never really liked the way the living room is arranged.

That's right, it's Home Decorating Season. The season of thumbing through catalogs and designating a place for the Christmas tree and locating "just the right thing" to dress up that naked corner before relatives arrive to visit.

It's too cold to plant anything else in the yard, so the women of America move indoors and start rearranging the furniture. Just in time for football season.

Across the nation, men are sacked out on sofas, watching ESPN and trying to avoid raking leaves, and their wives stand in front of the TVs with fevered eyes, saying, "Put down those Chee-tos, and help me nail these pine boughs to the mantel."

Sorry, ladies, but guys are blissful idiots when it comes to making the house look nice for the holidays. It's all up to you. As long as you don't stand a lamp in front of the TV, we're OK with whatever you want to do. Just don't expect us to know anything, to have any opinions or, frankly, to care about slipcovers or potpourri or tinsel. Not with the playoffs coming up.

To understand how little the subspecies "guy" thinks about interior decorating, look at the basic bachelor pad, the nest of the undomesticated male. There are three rules for home design in bachelor living:

1) The sofa shall be parked squarely in front of the TV. No matter what.
2) The fewer the steps from sofa to fridge, the better.
3) A bed is nice, but not absolutely necessary.

Beyond those precepts, guys simply don't care. We could live in a cave as long we get cable TV. Or, we can live in a room where all the rickety antiques are draped in matching frilly chintz and every square inch of every wall is covered in holiday finery. It doesn't matter to us.

Men who settle down soon learn to pretend to care about how the home looks. We learn to murmur appreciatively over new purchases and to have the right opinions about "window treatments." We learn to go into hiding if we see our wives cooing over "Sunset" magazine.

Most of all, we learn to notice when our wives place little decorative touches around the house. If we know what's good for us.

This busy time of year, guys should make a cursory reconnaissance of the home every night, in search of new stuff that has been hung by the chimney with care.

First of all, you can mention how nice it looks (be specific!) and score much-needed Home Decorating Season points. Secondly, you can keep track of how much is spent spiffing up the place and consider working some overtime. Most importantly, a quick nightly check of the home's current status might prevent you from later falling over a table in the dark.

Beyond simple "noticing," guys should try to get into the spirit of the season. Grunt up off the sofa and help nail some stuff to the walls. Move some furniture. Bring some leaves in from the yard and arrange them into a colorful centerpiece.

You can get a lot accomplished during halftime.

All thumbs and out of control

If you want to know whether you're out of shape, take this simple test: Count the remote controls you have lying around your house.

If the number exceeds, say, four, then you're probably not getting enough exercise. If it exceeds six, you don't need a mirror to tell you that your jeans are too tight. Ten or more remotes mean you're lucky your heart still beats.

The remote control is one labor-saving device that does its job all too well. It's possible to keep ourselves entertained in countless ways without ever moving from the sofa. The only muscles many of us work with any regularity are the ones that move our thumbs.

Not that jumping up to switch channels was such great exercise. I remember those pre-remote days, when TVs had dials on the front of them, and it wasn't much of a workout to take those few strides over to the channel changer. But even then people found ways to avoid hoisting themselves off the couch. The only reason families had children was so the parents could order them over to the TV to switch from "Ozzie and Harriet" to "Gunsmoke."

Back then, we only had three or four channels. Now, we have hundreds of channels, and there's still never anything good on TV. But we idealistically hope we'll find something worth watching, and the remote control makes the channel-flipping search possible.

Here's the way most people (or, at least, most men) watch TV: Flip, flip, flip, flip, pause for show that might be interesting, nah, flip, flip, flip, brief nudity, flip, flip, flip, flip, check the score, flip, flip, flip, oh, look, sharks, flip, flip, flip, flip, funny commercial we've seen 200 times, flip, flip…

We have Dish Network at our house, and all I watch anymore is the on-screen guide that tells what's on the many, many channels. I scroll up and down, scanning titles and times, searching for something, anything, that might keep my eyeballs busy for an hour. I could spend that same amount of time and brainpower reading a book or puzzling over life's mysteries or planning my financial future, but no, I'm busy hunting for basketball highlights.

Our newest remote arrived when we recently replaced our 20-year-old "hi-fi." Naturally, the new stereo came with a remote control. Now I can play hours of music without jumping up to change CDs or adjust the volume. I can even skip that one lousy song that's federally mandated to be included on every album.

The stereo remote brings the number of remote controls in our living room up to four. (Household-wide, we have eight, I think, but I might've missed one.)

Since I insist on being in charge of all the remotes, my place on the sofa looks like Captain Kirk's command chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. I've got complete control of all electronics, and I'm steering us right into the Obesity Nebula.

I know there are "universal remotes" out there that combine all the functions of all the electronic gizmos onto one skateboard-sized device, but I'd never be able to program one. My VCR said the time was "12:00" for years, until my kids got old enough to fix it.

So, I'm stuck with my many remote controls, exercising control over my electronics, but little else, only getting up from the sofa to fetch more snacks. (If they ever design a remote control for the fridge, I'm doomed.)

But my thumbs are in great shape.

Swords, sorcerers and Dad

Now that the fall television season has arrived, I'd like to tell you about my favorite program.

It's an action-packed adventure show full of martial arts and magic and mystery. It usually stars superheroes or warriors or cartoon characters (sometimes we hit the trifecta: Superhero cartoon warriors!) who are seeking a treasure or trying to save the world from imminent destruction. Our heroes travel through fabulous settings -- everything from sandstone castles to futuristic space cities to Infernal Fire Swamps of Despair -- while they overcome evildoers and cast spells and achieve great things.

I'm sure you'd enjoy this program, too, but you won't find it on any cable channel. The show's only available in homes equipped with video games and the teen-agers necessary to play them.

I don't play video games myself, and know so little about them that I'm probably the world's least qualified person to write about gaming. But that's never stopped me before.

Despite my ignorance, video games have become a big part of my life, and I occasionally find myself shouting something like, "No! You should've used the Great Mallet of Confusion! Now you've got to start over."

Here's how it happened: My wife and I finally caved and bought our two sons a Playstation 2, which is a flat black box that attaches to a television via cables. Not to get too technical here, but game cartridges are inserted into this box and the games take place on the TV screen while the players fondle handheld controllers that make the on-screen characters do stuff.

When we bought this satanic device, we figured the kids could hook it up to the Old TV in the bedroom and spend hours in there, polluting their minds with kung fu fighting and witchcraft while we adults loitered in the living room, watching "Reno 911" on the Good TV.

Alas, we erred. The Playstation 2 cables would not connect to the Old TV. They would only connect to the Good TV. Which means two things: 1) we now have cartridges and controllers and snaking cables all over the living room, and 2) anytime I want to watch the Good TV, I must extricate the remote control from the claws of a glassy-eyed teen who only wants to play more games.

If I want my traditional place on the sofa, with the reading lamp and the handy snack table, then I'm exposed to a certain amount of video gaming.

Parenting experts probably would laud this situation because it's Quality Family Time Together and at least I'm regulating my kids' video gaming. Those experts would be wrong. Just the opposite happens. Instead of exercising some control over the gaming, I become captivated.

No matter how hard I'm trying to read or nap or otherwise act like an adult, I find myself staring at the cavorting ninjas on the TV. Before long, because I'm a dad, I'm offering advice.

"There's your problem right there," I'll say. "You should've climbed that staircase to the Hall of the Dead, then taken out Graydork the Terrible with your Sword of Swarthiness."

My teens roll their eyes at my kibbitzing. Because that's their job, and because they know I have no idea what I'm talking about. Then they start a new game while I watch over their shoulders.
It's great interactive TV. And no commercials!

We're wasting time together. As a family.

Talkin' about sufferin'

Voiceover: "They get rich trafficking in human misery. They prey on the poor and the stupid and the immoral. Drug dealers? No, an even worse form of lowlife: Daytime talk show hosts. Today on 'Dr. Feel.'"

(Theme music plays. Camera pans hopeful crowd before settling on large bald man.)

Dr. Feel: "Today, we're talkin' about a social ill that infects our whole country. Whether you live in a small town or a big city, whether you're in a healthy relationship or one tainted by alcohol and abuse, whether you feel good about yourself or not, at some point you've watched daytime TV. Maybe you were unemployed or home sick with the flu, but you gave in to the talk show temptation. Next thing you know, you're watchin' some shriekin' trailer trash havin' a fistfight because somebody slept with the family goat. You know you watched it. Take responsibility for your actions! You can't get anywhere in life unless you own up to your own victimization!"

(Applause)

Dr. Feel: "Our first guest today is Montel. He's a striking man, might even have good advice to dispense. But he's addicted to discussin' other people's adultery."

Montel: "Wait a min--"

Dr. Feel: "Hang on there, Montel. Let me finish before you get your nose out of joint. Like we say down home, you can't chase the chickens with a sack over your head."

Montel: "Huh?"

Dr. Feel: "What are your qualifications, Montel? How come you don't have 'Doctor' in front of your name, like some of us?"

Montel: "You son of a--"

Dr. Feel: "Let me interrupt you there. I want to bring someone else into the conversation. Joinin' us now is Pat, a relative newcomer to daytime TV."

Pat: "Thanks. Good to be here. I've often--"

Dr. Feel: "Let me cut in there, Pat. Aren't you just another rich white guy who owned a professional sports franchise?"

Pat: "I'm an experienced motiva--"

Dr. Feel: "How does that qualify you to give advice to everyday folks?"

Pat: "I feel I have a lot to offer--"

Dr. Feel: "Do you think people in this country mistake wealth for talent or ability?"

Pat: "I've never really--"

Dr. Feel: "What I'm sayin' here, Pat, and please let me finish before you go shootin' your mouth off, is this: Just because a fella's rich doesn't mean he's smart, right?"

Pat: "What are you--"

Dr. Feel: "I mean, heck, Saddam Hussein was worth billions, but I wouldn't want his advice on how to live!"

(Appreciative applause.)

Dr. Feel: "Our next guest is the daddy of 'em all when it comes to mockin' human suffering. Please give a warm welcome to Jerry!"

(Crazed hooting and whistling.)

Dr. Feel: "So, Jerry, do you ever feel guilty about taking advantage of the morons who trot out their personal problems on your show?"

Jerry: "I beg your pard--"

Dr. Feel: "Where do you find those losers anyway? We need to get us some of those. Haha."

Jerry: "I, um--"

Dr. Feel: "You encourage your guests to fight, don't you, Jerry? C'mon, admit it. You provide foldin' chairs for 'em. You're the World Wrestling Federation of talk shows--"

Jerry picks up chair and brains Dr. Feel.

(Theme music. Audience cheers while Pat and Montel take turns stomping Dr. Feel.)

Voiceover: "Tune in tomorrow when Dr. Feel comes to you live from a hospital suite! Nurse Glenda has a bad attitude because she's got no man in her life! Can Dr. Feel help her? Or will she inject him with an artery-clogging air bubble? Tomorrow, on 'Dr. Feel!'"

Housewives aren't the only desperate ones

Suburban life's never seemed so mysterious as it does on the surprise hit of the television season, the dark comedy "Desperate Househusbands."

Hysteria Lane appears to be an idyllic suburban street, where the lawns are manicured and the vinyl siding never needs painting. But dark secrets exist behind the facades of those ranch-style homes.

On Hysteria Lane, the women work and the men stay home, diddling computers and tending the children and ignoring the housework. It's a traditional family structure turned on its head, and the consequences can be extreme -- social stigma, tax audits, bad debt, even murder.

Let's meet the "Desperate Househusbands:"

--Leonard Downsizer had a high-paying corporate position until his job was shipped off to India. Then he and his wife decided that she'd work and he'd stay home with their four small children. Leonard questions this decision on an hourly basis, particularly when the little hellions set his minivan on fire or run the neighbor's hamster through the blender. Leonard never knew it would be so difficult to "manage" the children. He regularly thinks about going back to an office to escape the kids, but the family dog keeps eating his resume, then woofing it up on the carpet. To deal with the everyday stress, Leonard's developed a bad habit: All-day cocktails, milky concoctions of rum and Mylanta that he calls Housework ("Just doin' the Housework, dear. Hic."). Will Leonard admit his problem when his friends mount an "intervention?"

--Edam Limburger, a perky redhead of a man, keeps a perfect house and raises seemingly perfect children. But something stinks in the Limburger household. Edam's wife, Gouda, is having an affair with her boss, and Edam has found out. Now he'll do everything he can to torture poor Gouda. The Limburgers' eldest son, Jack, has moved back home from Monterey, and he's troubled by the marital discord. He thinks the only solution is to slice all the neighbors into wedges. Edam, meanwhile, is spreading himself too thin: He's captivated by two sisters who live with their redneck daddy in a nearby trailer park. Will Edam let these crackers ruin his life?

--Divorced and alone, Larry Loosebottom lives on Hysteria Lane only until the mortgage company catches him answering the door. He spends all day every day in his bathrobe, unwashed and unshaven, browsing his computer rather than doing the work that's piled up next to all the unpaid bills. Larry once had a wife, a family, a position of responsibility in the community, but he lost it all because of his dark secret -- an addiction to E-Bay.

--Stuart Schniffle, the neighborhood snoop, wastes much of every day peering out his windows. Alone at home all day, Stuart is desperate for contact with the outside world. Every noise, every passing wisp of gossip, drags him away from his work. Disgusted by his nosiness, the neighbors shun Stuart. His own family has begun to avoid him because he never has anything interesting to say. But Stuart's snooping has finally paid off. He's found out a dark secret: The women of Hysteria Lane are planning an uprising.

When they first agreed to the husbands working at home, the wives felt daring and bold and proud of their men. But now that they've seen what a cheesy mess their husbands are making, they're ready to turn the tables. They'll trade in their bosses and deadlines for the isolation, tedium and child endangerment that comes with working at home.

If they hate being at home, they can always get together in the afternoons with their fellow housewives. To comiserate. Over a pitcher of Housework.

Reality shows we'd like to see

Is anything more unreal than "reality" shows on TV?

All across the nation, slack-jawed viewers spend hours every week watching people get fired, swap wives, jump from cliffs, eat spiders, lie down with snakes, race around the world and vote each other off islands.

The central conceit of such programming is that it's all "real," that we're watching a slice of actual life. This is, of course, complete and utter bunk. These shows are no more about real life than "The Jerry Springer Show" is about helping families solve problems.

There's nothing "real" about being stranded on an island with a half-dozen strangers. It almost never happens in real life, and when it does, there aren't dozens of cameramen, producers and caterers running around in the background.

On all these shows, the contestants know the cameras are there, and they can't help playing to them. Emotions are ramped up. Everybody's trying for an Emmy.

Despite every attempt to drum up the fake suspense, we viewers know nothing too terrible will happen on these shows. If somebody got killed skydiving on "The Billionaire," we'd read about it in the newspaper long before the show ever aired. In fact, the network probably would cancel the show rather than air an episode that included an actual death. Probably.

Networks like reality programming because it's cheap to produce -- no scripts -- and because it gets good ratings. People watch; I don't know why.

But I wouldn't be a true-blue American if I didn't try to make a buck off this trend. I'd like to suggest that the networks focus on people like me, who work at home. For those of us trapped at home by our jobs, housework and children, life is just brimming with "reality." We can hardly move around the house without stepping in some.

Here are some ideas for home-based reality shows:

"Smear Factor"
Eleven kids are given jars of strawberry jam and are turned loose on the eggshell-white walls of a suburban house. Hilarity results when the homeowner has a heart attack.

"Stupor Nanny"
Parents leave their kids in the care of a gin-soaked British nanny, who promptly passes out, giving the children the run of the place. Soon, the house resembles a scene from "Lord of the Flies."

"The Amazing Grace"
Each week, cameras record a family dinner where someone goes on and on, blessing the food, which gets cold while the others fidget and fret. Suspense builds until the prayer ends, either with an "amen" or when someone gets stabbed with a fork.

"American Midol"
A PMS-crazed mom faces a demanding husband and screaming children. Tension mounts until she snaps and sets the house on fire.

"Pants Swap"
A comedy show about people forced to trade pants for a week. Fat guys nearly always lose.

"Super Bowl Dad"
Wife and kids risk their lives by standing in front of the TV at crucial points in the game.

"Who Wants to Bury A Billionaire?"
Advice-spouting rich guy parachutes into a suburban neighborhood where all the residents have been armed with shovels.

"Survivor: Laundry Day"
Parents are stranded in a washateria with their family's filthy clothes. Dare they wash the kids' jeans without first checking the pockets? What if a red sock gets mixed in with the whites?

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice"
Donald Trump's comb-over magically becomes a dancing broom.

"Extreme Makeover: Television"
Network programming is rebuilt from the ground up. All entertainment and creativity are removed, replaced by regular folks doing inane things in their homes until, eventually, each home is equipped with a camera and we all just sit around, watching other couch potatoes staring at TV.

Now that's what I call "reality."

Make Your Acronyms Simplify Situations (MYASS)

From ASAP to TGIF, acronyms infiltrate every aspect of corporate life, providing a handy shorthand for those who are ITK (In The Know).

Acronym use exploded as computerspeak began to crop up in everyday conversation. When you hear people say LOL (Laughing Out Loud) rather than actually, well, laughing out loud, then you know the Era of Acronyms has reached its peak.

How long before we incorporate acronyms into our speech at home? Lord knows we could use some kind of shorthand when it comes to conversing with our children.

Wouldn't it save a lot of breath if a parent could just yell GOAP (Go Outside And Play) rather than spelling it out 27 times a day? The same goes for CUBY (Clean Up Behind Yourselves) and -- my personal favorite -- DILLYM (Do I Look Like Your Maid?).

Acronyms save steps. Instead of racing to referee every spat, parents could simply yell code words: WHIT (What's Happening In There?) and WICAW (Who Is Crying And Why?). KAMU (Kiss And Make Up) works on small children. For teens, you might need DYMMCAP (Don't You Make Me Call A Policeman).

Parents can use acronyms to signal their moods and needs to the children. They can tell the kids to GAB (Gimme A Break) or even GAINT (Go Away; I Need to Think). When it's really tense, parents can warn that they're close to SMOHO (Snatching My Own Hair Out).

When a kid complains there's NOTV (Nothing On Television), parents should respond with RABYD (Read A Book, You Dolt).

At our house, my two sons regularly pray for relief from the GODS (Grumpy Ole Dad Syndrome). They know that when it's been a DADAW (Darned Awful Day At Work), they should RAH (Run And Hide).

When parents desire privacy, they can tell the kids to LTD (Lock The Door) because MADNAM (Mom And Dad Need A Moment).

Every afternoon, housebound parents could make use of ACHOO (All Children Hush; Oprah's On).

Kitchen bulletin boards could use acronyms to communicate housekeeping messages to the whole family. Some examples:

--LUWD (Laundry Undone; Wear Dirty)
--WITMASO (Why Is The Milk Always Sitting Out?)
--TOC/FOYO (Tired Of Cooking/Forage On Your Own)
--OBIP (Oh Boy, It's Payday)
--LEO (Let's Eat Out)

Acronyms are perfect for everyday frustrations.

SACCK (Spilled Another Coffee; Computer Kaput) says it all, doesn't it? When things go really wrong, try ICTOW (Infuriating Computer Thrown Out Window).

NAPPP (Not Another Pesky Plumbing Problem) is naturally followed by PYECHART (Plug Your Ears, Children, or Hear An R-rated Tirade).

BID (Bike In Driveway) serves as a warning. When it's already too late, try ROBS (Ran Over Bike. Sorry).

Greet bill collectors with NOTATA (Not At This Address; Try Argentina). Eviction notices could be shortened to four letters: PROM (Pay Rent Or Move).

Lazy neighbors get this note: FYLOFLA (Fix Your Lawn Or Face Legal Action). And put this one under a windshield wiper -- TOOPSI (Take Only One Parking Space, Idiot).

Acronyms are especially useful when discussing finances. For example, kids apparently think MOM means Made Of Money. And DAD stands for Debts Accruing Daily. But did you know MONEY means More Overtime Necessary Every Year? Financial troubles might make you WOMEN (Worry Over Money Every Night) or even desperate enough to JOB (Jump Off Bridge), but take heart: ICACMO (It's Cheaper After Children Move Out).

Well, I'm OOS (Out Of Space), which means I get to retire to the sofa now for some TV.

ACHOO.

TV or not TV

In our "15 minutes of fame" world, most of us will get an opportunity, at some point in our lives, to be on television. I'm here to tell you: Given this opportunity, you should go sit in a dark closet until the urge passes.

We're such a TV-oriented society that the prospect of appearing on the small screen tends to make us, as a people, stupid. Look at the idiots jumping around in the background of any "live" news disaster, mouthing "Hi, Mom." Or, watch any episode of "Fear Factor," where people eat worms while skydiving through fire, just so they can be on TV.

Since one of my life goals is to stop being stupid in public, I made it well into middle age before appearing on TV as anything more than a face in a crowd. But I recently succumbed to the television infection.

What made me do it? I was trying to promote my books. In the current publishing climate, desperate authors will do anything to sell books, including eating worms while skydiving through fire. Or, in my case, appearing on a midday talk show in a market so small, there may have been more people in the studio, operating cameras, than were watching at home.

I confess I was nervous. I spent two decades as a newspaper reporter and, therefore, carry around many prejudices about the people who work in TV "news." Newspaper people tend to believe their TV competitors are shallow, egotistical poopheads.

But I discovered that TV people really are a sensitive lot who devote their lives to helping others. Kidding! While there may be TV people who fall into the "sensitive" category, the ones I encountered were -- surprise! -- shallow, egotistical poopheads.

Here's how they prepared me and the other guests on that day's program: They pinned microphones on us and had us count out loud.

That's it. No pep talks, no prepared questions, no deep breathing exercises. We didn't even get any make-up, so all the guests looked like pasty terminal patients next to the hosts, who'd been hosed in Liquid Tan.

When the cameras were not rolling, the TV professionals so thoroughly ignored us guests that I began to worry that I'd become invisible. Each time we returned from a commercial break, a new guest would be in the "hot seat" and the hosts would feign extreme interest in what the guest said, until they couldn't stand it anymore and had to interrupt with their own personal anecdotes, a la Regis Philbin. This usually took 2.7 seconds.

As I anxiously took the guest chair during a commercial, the young-enough-to-be-my-daughter director asked, "Are any of your books inspired by something that happened to you in real life?" Since my fiction tends to be about murder and bank robbery, I had to say, "No." She looked disappointed.

Three-two-one, we're live on TV. The smiling co-host introduces me and asks her first question: "Are any of your books inspired by something that happened to you in real life?"

Let's say I didn't respond well. Other questions followed, but I have no idea what they were or how I answered. I was too busy kicking myself for being on TV in the first place.

(I do remember that the other co-host told a personal anecdote about how he once read a book. It wasn't one of mine.)

As soon as the talk show was over, I kicked myself all the way home and hid in a dark closet until the humiliation passed. I swore to never be on television again.

Why? Because I looked stupid in public. Because it embarrassed me. Because I'm certain it didn't help me sell any books.

Worst of all, because I forgot to say, "Hi, Mom."

Galloping through hotels

A note to all you business travelers who spend half your lives in hotels: I don't know how you survive it.

Granted, as a work-at-home type, it's hard for me to relate to you who hop from city to city in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Most days, the farthest I travel is out to the driveway to pick up the newspaper. So maybe it's just me -- I'm not accustomed to life on the road. But I've traveled a lot in recent years on book tours, etc., and I don't see how anyone ever adjusts to night after night in strange beds.

Whether it's a five-star hotel or a cheap roadside motor inn, renting a place to spend the night always comes with problems. Everything's unfamiliar. You're far away from all your usual stuff. Every "amenity" in a hotel room reminds you that you're not in the one place where you'd really like to be -- home.

Hotels beds are too hard or too soft, compared to your usual bed, and the sheets never stay on right. The coffeemaker's tiny. All the light switches are in the wrong places. Something's making a buzzing noise. The soap smells weird. The towel rack is perfectly placed for bruising your shoulder every time you turn around in the bathroom.

Just when you've mastered the learning curve of a new room, have figured out which switches operate which lamps, it's time to move to another city and start all over again.

My main problem with hotels is that I can't sleep in them anymore. Since the whole idea of a hotel room is to provide a temporary place to sleep, insomnia more or less defeats the purpose. If I'm going to be awake all night anyway, why spend money on a hotel? I could've stayed at the airport.

Not only can I not get comfortable in hotel beds, there are all those unfamiliar noises. The air conditioner sounds like a jet engine. Drunken revelers are partying in the hall. The people next door apparently smuggled in a horse and are riding it around the room, whooping.

(I recently stayed in a kitchenette suite, where I was awakened every hour by the KA-CHUNK of the icemaker. No sleep, but more ice than Antarctica. I could've counted ice cubes rather than sheep.)

There's not a lot to do in a hotel when you're wide awake at 3 a.m. -- unless you're in Las Vegas.
If sleep's out of the question, then a hotel room becomes simply a place to wait for the next appointment. By yourself.

Solitude and strange surroundings and spare time conspire to breed bad habits. Pretty soon, I'm sitting around in my underwear, watching endless hours of idiotic TV, scratching and burping, snacking too much and drinking alcohol from tiny airline bottles.

I use way more towels than I would at home, then throw them on the floor, knowing the maid will pick them up. Spend too much time in front of the fluorescent-lit mirror, sighing over gray hair and wrinkles. I start thinking: What this hotel room really needs is a horse . . .

Then it's daylight again, time to pack up and move to the next city, the next business appointment, the next hotel.

Until the trip's over and I can go home. And finally get some rest.

Flipping out

If you want to see the average American male go spiraling into squirming insanity, take away his television remote control.

Men feel it's our inalienable right to hold the remote. It gives us a sense of command, of standing at the helm among the day-to-day storms of life. We might relinquish every other responsibility around the house, but when it comes time to turn on the TV, we men want to be in charge.

Take my household, for instance. My wife is a smart, capable former executive. She manages our household, competently dealing with accountants and utilities and government entities. I believe she essentially can master anything she attempts. I, on the other hand, am lucky to find my way out of bed each morning.

But when it comes to flipping through TV channels, she doesn't do it right. She leaves the sound on, for one thing, so we're exposed to blaring snippets of every passing program. She lingers on the wrong channels, such as the one that shows disgusting surgery 24 hours a day and causes me to run screaming from the room. She skips ahead at crucial moments, such as when a basketball game is going into overtime.

When she's flipping channels, I get itchy all over. It's all I can do not to snatch the remote control away from her. If she'd just hand it over, I think, I could zip back to the important programs necessary to being an informed adult, such as "SportsCenter."

To her credit, my wife recognizes that I feel this way and she usually gives me the remote rather than torture me. I think it's all the sighing and fidgeting I do.

But that's not the case in every household. Some women insist on running the remote, no matter how much it disturbs their spouses. If sociologists studied the root causes of domestic discord and divorce, they'd find that a substantial number of marriages hit the rocks because of the remote control.

It's a matter of tempo. When you're in charge of the remote, you pause on each channel just long enough to register the program in your brain. Then, bam, it's time to move on because -- let's face it -- there's never anything good on TV. The amount of time you stay on each channel depends upon your own interests, and those are different for each person.

Most guys, for example, can't hit the button fast enough if we land on "Oprah," while a woman might at least pause to see if the talk show topic is relevant. If a man hits a sporting event, he'll stick around long enough to check out the score, even if he has no interest in the game. And if he lands on a program that features women in bikinis, he'll probably hang around at least until the next commercial interruption.

It's not merely an issue of gender, however. Men typically don't share the remote with each other, either. The average man would no more let other men handle his remote than he would let them give his wife a bath.

We recently had a houseguest who wanted to watch TV and, as a matter of courtesy, I let him flip the channels. Within minutes, I was going nuts with thoughts like these: Why are we stopping on this station? They've never got anything worth viewing. Wait, go back, that was my favorite show. My God, he's watching commercials! And listening to them! Doesn't he know you only do that during the Super Bowl? Doesn't he know the damned remote has a "mute" button?

I had to leave the room before I throttled him. When I returned, he'd fallen asleep on the sofa. I gently removed the remote from his limp hand. Once it was back in my possession, all was right with the world. I turned off the television and hid the remote under the couch cushions. Better to live without TV than to let some other guy run the show.

To sum up, most men see it like this: You can have our remote controls when you pry them from our cold, dead fingers. And then -- finally -- you can watch whatever you want.

Hunker in the bunker

In these troubled times of international saber-rattling, missile-wielding madmen, rising gasoline prices and daily "booga-booga" terrorism alerts, nobody could blame Americans for wanting to spend all their time at home.

Our homes are comforting hidey-holes, quiet sanctuaries where we can shut out the tumult of this crazy, mixed-up world. They're the only places where we'll feel relatively safe for the foreseeable future or, at least, until the next presidential election.

But there are dangers to hunkering down at home. Chief among these: You can become a hermit, cut off from friends and relatives and fellow citizens.

The isolation hazard is especially severe for those of us who work in home offices. If we don't have to leave the house to go to a job, why leave at all? Next thing you know, we're indoors all the time, unwashed and ungroomed, fearfully monitoring CNN and mumbling to ourselves.

It's a fine line between cautious "cocooner" and full-blown paranoid, crazy-as-an-outhouse-rat hermit. But how to tell the difference? If you spend all your time at home, how do you know you haven't already crossed the line?

What follows is a handy quiz for determining whether you've become a wartime hermit. Ask yourself the following questions:

--Do you spend more than 22 hours a day inside your home?

--Are you afraid to fly? To drive? To walk in any position other than a crouch?

--Is your only form of human interaction via e-mail?

--Do you remember the names of your neighbors? Your friends? Your children?

--Can you use the term "cocooning" without smirking?

--Do you carefully monitor the federal government's indicators of terrorism danger? Can you recite the color code by heart?

--Do sonic booms make you "duck and cover?"

--Do you watch so much television news that you've started referring to the anchormen by their first names? Do you find yourself harboring a "crush" on Wolf Blitzer?

--Do you consider television to be a "weapon of mass destruction?"

--Do you keep careful written inventory of your duct tape, flashlight batteries and canned goods?

--Does your idea of "casual wear" include a gas mask? Kevlar pajamas?

--Have you drilled your family on how to respond in case of an airborne bioterrorism gas attack? Have the drills included seeing how long you can hold your breath? Have they included the phrase, "Pull my finger?"

--Do you have a backyard bomb shelter? How about an "entrenching tool?"

--Do your neighbors describe you as "a quiet person who always kept to himself?"

--Do your neighbors provide such descriptions to the FBI?

--Are you afraid of strangers? Arabs? The French? All foreigners? Men with mustaches? The Avon lady? Teen-agers who wear their baseball caps backward? Your mother-in-law?

--Do you answer to the term "shut-in?"

--If you encounter a stranger and he smiles at you, is your first reaction: "What's wrong with that guy? Maybe I should call the FBI!"

--Are you so lonely that you welcome calls from telemarketers? What about obscene phone calls?

--Do you fantasize about visiting the airport, just to get a strip-search?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you're in danger of becoming too isolated, also known as "Hermit Code Orange." You should immediately get up and go outside and breathe some fresh air. Maybe have a chat with your neighbors.

If it goes all right, signal to the rest of us hermits that it's safe to come out. Send word via CNN.

Crunching through reality TV

Is there anything less "real" than the reality shows on TV?

You know the ones I mean -- highly popular shows that feature jerky cameras following vacuous contestants as they're tortured, stranded, set up on blind dates and/or urged to lie, cheat and steal.

Strangers are cast away on a deserted island where the only potential food items are insects and sand. Celebrities are forced to face their fears by dangling from tall buildings while eating insects. Beautiful people do stupid stunts such as eating insects while amongst them is a "mole" who'll tell if they're not actually swallowing.

These reality shows are intended to prove the contestants' mettle. Near as I can tell, they prove two things: 1) Insects are good food, and 2) Some people will do anything, and I mean anything, to get on television.

Viewers seem to enjoy watching people make complete asses of themselves. Apparently, nothing's more fun that witnessing people stabbing others in the back or trying to seduce a "millionaire" who's really a blue-collar, insect-eating shlub.

The fact that all these situations are artificial -- implausible set-ups with the cameras rolling, carefully edited to make the contestants look their absolute worst -- doesn't seem to bother the television-viewing public. In fact, that makes it all the better. There's comfort in the notion that these fools knew the cameras were on them when they gulped down those insects. And they did it anyway.

Our own lives may be the pits, full of stupidity and poor choices, but we can always watch a reality show and smugly say to ourselves, "At least I wouldn't do that. Not in front of 30 million people anyway."

TV producers, pursuing a hot trend like lemmings off a cliff, are going farther afield in search of more "reality" to dump onto our vast cultural wasteland. Before long, we'll see a show in which a group of disgraced former CEOs are stranded on a deserted island with nothing to eat but insects. Each executive must take out the others, armed only with subpoenas, insecticide and an M-1 Abrams tank. Winner gets to be Secretary of the Treasury.

Before it comes to that, TV producers should look closer to home. Regular American neighborhoods are full of fear and danger and intrigue and insects. Take the cameras to average homes, and we can all eagerly watch as families and friendships implode before our very eyes.

Some suggestions:

--"Survivor: Suburbia." Harried parents are trapped in a ranch-style house with three teen-agers. The house is equipped with only one bathroom and one telephone. Chaos results.

--"Chill Factor." He's too hot. She's too cold. Married couples bicker over thermostat settings.

--"The Bachelor." This version of the popular program won't focus on women slavering over some handsome single man. Instead, it'll show the bachelor hanging out with his buddies, all of whom are married. He'll spout long anecdotes about his exciting single lifestyle -- leggy women and late-night discos -- until the married men gang up and beat him to death.

--"Joe Poverty." Eight bachelorettes visit the suburban home of Joe, an unemployed construction worker with a beer gut, poor hygiene, a mountain of debt and sole custody of four surly children. The cameras roll as the women try to persuade themselves that Joe is a "good catch." First one to run screaming from the house loses.

--"The Mole-Rat." This show centers on Chuck, a fat, hairless man with buck teeth, who moves in next door. Chuck refuses to mow his lawn, borrows tools and never returns them, and complains endlessly about the contestants' barking dog. The goal is to see which family holds Chuck down and forces him to eat insects.

--"Fear Factory." What's so scary about dangling off tall buildings? If you want to witness real fear, then videotape parents as they deal with their children. Suggested events: bedtime, eating broccoli, learning to drive, going off to college.

Any of these proposals would draw high ratings as weekly television shows, but don't expect TV producers to offer them anytime soon. They're too close to real life.

Let's face it: Most of us have all the "reality" we can stand.

TV or not TV, that is the question

Parents often ask themselves: "Are the children watching too much television?"

The answer is a resounding "Yes!" If there is a TV anywhere in your home, then the children are watching it too much.

I believe this not because I'm one of those hard cases who thinks any television is too much, or even because my own two sons have become TV zombies. No, this opinion is based on what I hear children say.

An example: Recently, my boys were playing with some electronic toy that began emitting a horrific noise. Did they run screaming from the room? No, they did not (though I did). Did they believe the toy was irretrievably broken? No.

Instead, one of them calmly said: "You've activated its 'special feature.'"

Where would they hear such a thing, except on TV? Where, but on TV, would an it-must-be-the-end-of-the-world noise be considered a good thing?

Listen to children on a playground and you'll hear non-stop references to Pokemon and Bart Simpson and Britney Spears and other cartoon characters. Kids act out their favorite episodes of such outlandish fictional fare as "X-Men" and professional wrestling. They sing advertising jingles while swinging on the monkey bars.

My 10-year-old does dead-on impersonations of the voices from a cartoon called "Ed, Edd and Eddy." The fact that this cartoon depicts three morons with bad teeth disturbs me. (Could be worse. At least he's not doing "Beavis and Butthead.")

My 13-year-old is a dedicated viewer of sitcoms aimed at teens, all of which seem to center on who's most popular in school (the cute, shallow kids) and who's a dweeb (dads and other authority figures). He's apparently gleaning important tips on socializing and family life from these programs. (Again, it could be worse. He could be watching "The Osbournes.")

Children's brains are like sponges. They absorb and retain everything they see and hear (except for dutiful parental instructions and admonitions, which seem to go in one ear and out some other orifice). Television, with its flashing images, thunderous volume and catchy advertising slogans, is designed to infiltrate their brains and permanently set up camp there.

Don't believe me? Then try, right now, to sing the theme song to "Gilligan's Island." You can, can't you? Even if it's been years since you've heard it, that song is still with you. And, you can probably recall specific episodes as well. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

For three or four generations now, parenting experts have warned that too much television will make children fat and stupid. If you're a Baby Boomer, you probably can recall how your concerned parents tried everything to keep you away from the TV. Were they successful? Sing it with me now: "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip... "

The harsh truth is that parenting is such a demanding, 24-hour-a-day job that most parents simply give up at some point and resort to the "one-eyed babysitter." We know TV's not healthy for the children. We know they're exposed to things they should not see. We know kids should be doing something creative and intellectually stimulating instead. But we're busy, we're tired and, besides, we're trying to find a quiet moment to watch our own favorite show.

But parents should keep trying to limit TV's effects on their kids. Pull the plug occasionally. Set specific boundaries on how much they can watch and which programs are age-appropriate. Tell your kids too much TV will give them "square eyes." Engage them in family activities that last longer than a "commercial interruption."

Your children will ignore this advice and sneak around and watch shows that are bad for them, just as you did when you were young. But maybe, if you parents exert enough effort and demonstrate enough patience and perseverance, you can steer them away from reruns of "Gilligan's Island."

(Editor's note: Now that my sons are all grown up, TV viewing is no longer a problem. They're too busy watching YouTube.)

Broken news

"Good evening, and welcome to Eyewitness On-the-Spot First Live Late-Breaking News. I'm Tony Wardrobe. Jana Divot has the night off because she's having a bad hair day.

"We'll get to our Big Exclusive Story in a minute, but first this Breaking News you'll see only here on Channel 5. Bob Gocup reports live, right now, from high in the sky in our exclusive helicopter. Bob?"

"That's right, Tony. Chopper 5 was first on the scene at this fender-bender on a gravel road approximately 37 miles from downtown. No one was injured, but you can see from this shaky aerial shot that police cars are on the scene."

"I guess this will tie up the evening commute, Bob."

"Not really, Tony. This is a dead-end road that's rarely used. But, as you can see in our exclusive shot, the police cars are flashing their pretty red lights and that makes darned good video."

"Thanks, Bob. Now for tonight's Big Exclusive Story. Crime. It's everywhere, all the time. There's probably a criminal lurking outside your bedroom window right now. You should hide behind your sofa until the police get there. Stay with Channel 5 for the latest updated Crime News.

"Now let's go to Wilbur Forehead for our First Look at the weather. Wilbur?"

"Thanks, Tony. It's been a pleasant day so far, but I can see through our exclusive studio window that there's one small cloud near the western horizon. Anything could happen. You viewers shouldn't go out of the house without first taking proper precautions. Keep it tuned here for further weather reports."

"Thanks, Wilbur. We'll get back to you for the Full Forecast in a few minutes. But first, a follow-up to a Big Story you first saw here three days ago. Channel 5 was first with the exclusive story about a tragic incident that forever changed the lives of one local family. Death, property damage, bad vibes. All because someone used a hair dryer in the shower.

"We'll be back to hold the victim up to ridicule after these words from our sponsors. Coming up: Will we go to war with Iran? Did the local basketball team win? Are you about to have a heart attack? All that and more when we return."

(Insert six minutes of moronic commercials here.)

"Welcome back. Tonight, we'll bring you disturbing video of a high-speed chase by police in a distant state, the latest congressional scandal, a new terrorism alert and your full seven-day forecast. But first these messages."

(Six more minutes of inanity.)

"We're back with the latest crime news. Robbery. Murder. Arson. Assault. These crimes and more could happen any minute. Quick, run out and buy yourself a gun and some body armor.

"If you know anything about these crimes or if your neighbor's dog won't stop barking, you should call Crime Stoppers and rat somebody out."

(More commercials.)

"Now for an investigative story you'll only see here on Eyewitness On-the-Spot First Live Late-Breaking News. Are M&Ms hazardous to your health? What about the green ones? For the latest on this troubling investigative story, we go to Juanita Botox, 'live' in the newsroom, which means she's maybe six feet from where I'm sitting. Juanita?"

"Thanks, Tony. So far, the makers of M&Ms aren't returning our phone calls. And we all know what that means."

"Thank you for that exclusive report, Juanita. It certainly does look suspicious. We turn now to international news in this 'World Minute' that I taped during my lunch break.

"Crises in the following countries: Iraq. Iran. North Korea. Israel. Venezuela. Could these international developments affect you? Will gasoline prices rise? Could this be the end of the world? Tune in at ten, when we'll give you the full details.

"We'll be back in a few minutes with more news, weather and sports. But first, the really Big Story of the day. Our ratings are up! Thanks to viewers like you, who demand nothing more, we can spend all our time on self-promotion, meaningless crime scares, long-winded weather reports and cute video of little doggies, and we're the No. 1 station in our time slot! Now, for more exclusive commercials. . . "

Ladders, adders and TV cameras

"Extreme" sports are all the rage these days, feeding an ever-growing hunger for fast-paced action, sudden violence and crass "reality."

In case you've been living in a nice safe bomb shelter for the past decade, let me explain: "Extreme" sports (also known as X-sports, X-treme sports, X-tra Crispy sports and various other near-names) are those televised athletic "events" that involve elements of danger.

For example, a show called something like "Real Triple-X-Treme Real Sports Challenge of the All-Stars" might feature real juvenile delinquents on skateboards flying high off a plywood "half-pipe" at breathtaking speeds, performing various twirling moves in the air and almost landing in a pit of irritable vipers before being yanked to safety by a bungee cord attached to their feet. The show's shouted advertising slogan will be something like: "WHO'll still be standing at the END?"

This kind of programming is irresistible to a large, mouth-breathing audience composed entirely of those who wear their baseball caps backward. Since that's the perfect market for Zima, motor oil and other such products, these shows have proven to be commercial gold mines.

Naturally, such a restless audience grows increasingly desensitized to fake suspense and "real" mayhem, which means the shows must keep ratcheting up the level of risk so the goobers will keep tuning in. Before long, extreme sports will feature athletes who, at breathtaking speed, fashion their own bungee cords out of irritable vipers before leaping directly into a pit of bubbling lava.

Extreme sports is changing the whole definition of sports. Many of us remember when a "game" usually involved something called a "ball" and was played by professional athletes with recognizable names. Extreme sports feature athletes you've never heard of doing dangerous, unseemly things with strange combinations of equipment, such as a downhill snowboard race through a forest fire with each participant simultaneously lifting weights and playing the nose flute, all while being pursued by angry National Rifle Association members on snowmobiles.

So far, network producers have overlooked one area of real everyday risk-taking that should be considered an extreme sport -- homeownership.

American homeowners regularly take our lives in our hands, working around the house. We use dangerous, unfamiliar tools to attempt repairs we're not qualified to make. We use whirring blades and whipping plastic line to trim our lawns. We perform complicated aerial maneuvers involving aluminum ladders and overhead power lines.

What's riskier than mowing a yard dotted with hidden metal sprinkler heads? Is anything more dangerous than a power saw in the hands of a klutz? What's more thrilling than a fat man climbing a rickety ladder while wearing sandals and trying not to spill his beer?

Such everyday events may seem catastrophic in real life, responsible for property damage, divorce and overcrowded emergency rooms, but let's face it: They'd make good television.

All it takes is a little organization and a video crew, and we could take TV by storm. We could call the show "The Real Extreme All-Star Homeowners Challenge." Plenty of homeowners would volunteer to play, particularly if free beer is involved. We'd stage the events in the participants' own homes, recording their every move with handheld video cameras. Their critical neighbors would eagerly volunteer to be judges.

Participants would race the clock while facing extreme challenges, such as an overflowing toilet with rusty parts flooding a carpeted bathroom. Each barefoot homeowner would be armed with only a monkey wrench and an electric hair dryer. Imagine the possibilities!

Sure, much of the work could be boring, but careful editing would result in clip after clip of homeowners skinning their knuckles and tripping over live wires and doing backflips off parapets while holding TV antennas. That, folks, is entertainment. If you don't believe it, ask your neighbors.

If such basic competition fails to keep our show's audience loyal, we can always elevate the risk and add to the gear involved. Imagine high-speed ladder-climbing by cigar-smoking men carrying buckets of combustible roofing tar and wearing heavy tool belts and funny hats.

Now that's extreme. If that's still not enough, we can always throw in a few vipers. Particularly if free beer is involved.

Cutting-edge TV

Now, just in time for summer, comes the latest hot new TV destination aimed at sluicing advertising dollars toward an increasingly narrow market share.

That's right, folks, the same people who brought you the 24-hour Shark Channel and the Poetry Channel and the Expensive-Mansions-You-Could-Never-Afford Channel now present the cable network for Everyman: YW, the Yardwork Channel.

Cable viewers tune in to YW for how-to shows and infomercials and "news" programs that feature the latest cutting-edge technology in lawn mowers and power pruners.

YW's programming is targeted toward middle-class homeowners who have their own dreams of someday redoing their home landscapes -- homeowners just like you. And most of our shows include segments featuring actual work being demonstrated. Shoveling and weeding and mowing and lawn-sprinkler repair, all done before your very eyes.

But wait, you say, could it really be that interesting to watch somebody mow a lawn? Won't YW be boring?

To which we say: Haven't you ever seen the Nielsens for golf on TV? Haha, a little cable humor there. But seriously, you'll quickly find that you love our programs. Watching YW, you get the vicarious thrill of home improvement without actually getting up off the couch.

At the Yardwork Channel, we don't talk about recipes or redecorating or hoity-toity crafts projects accomplished with a hot-glue gun. We feature the most difficult home-improvement jobs of all -- the ones out in the yard.

We found these programs were particularly satisfying among our test audiences. Test results show that male viewers will spend hours in front of yardwork programs, particularly if power tools or heavy machinery present an element of danger. Many viewers find it more thrilling to watch an amateur operate a backhoe, for instance, than to view more established programming, such as professional wrestling.

Most of all, our research shows, viewers prefer yardwork programs that show lots of grueling physical labor. And we give you that at YW, around the clock.

Take a look at a sampling of our outstanding programs:

"This Old Yard"

Our flagship show, in which celebrity do-it-yourselfer Bob Vila branches out by going outdoors. Each week, Bob and his crew help some lawn-hungry family redo an entire property. Bob performs this feat of landscape makeover without ever losing the crease in his khakis. 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"Ditch"

Each week, Mortimer Haskins and his imported team of highly skilled laborers dig a trench across some willing homeowner's property. Close-up camera work keeps this entry exciting; you can practically smell the sweat. 7:30 p.m. Mondays.

"A Man, a Woman, a Yard"

This reality program takes us inside the Beequish household as newlyweds Melvin and Hannah Beequish of Hardpack, Ill., decide to landscape the yard of their new home. The young lovers encounter numerous obstacles -- bank snafus, lazy contractors, dandelions. In the exciting climax, their marriage is pushed to the brink by an argument over a privet hedge. 9 p.m. Fridays.

"The Scourge of Spurge"

Host Elwood Hammermacherschaefer takes us inside the dark, steamy world of those insidious villains -- weeds -- and gives us the latest updates in the war on this vile enemy. 11 p.m. nightly.

"Property Line Court"

Tough-as-nails judge Winifred Shucker wields her gavel with the full weight of the law as feuding neighbors bring her their disputes over overhanging tree branches and cracked patios. Daily at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

"Bay Leaf"

Voluptuous, sweaty, scantily clad lifeguards grow their own herbs. Daily at 10 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m., 10 p.m. and midnight.

And that's just a sampling. The Yardwork Channel also offers such exciting shows as: "Raking Techniques," "The Doug Gilstrap Story: I Dug My Own Swimming Pool by Hand," "Lawn Vs. Dog," "Bug Zapper II: Return of the Blue Light," "Post Holes," and "Blood Work: Beer and Flagstones."

Call your local cable provider today and tell them you want the Yardwork Channel! Soon, you'll be in front of the set with a beer, tuned to YW, watching some poor slob breaking up concrete with a pickaxe.

Remember our motto here at YW: The only thing more personally rewarding than grueling physical labor is watching somebody else do it.