The twentieth century had more than it's share of dubious "innovations"; atomic weapons, the wonder bra and (of course) new Coke. The worst of the bunch, though, has to be twenty-four-seven wall-to-wall news coverage.

In the early days of television -- when most of the sets were still pedal-powered -- there were only three networks and respectable men like Walter Cronkite stared into the camera with sincere expressions and read the day's news to us like a patient teacher reading to a class of dim-witted students. Walt stuck to the facts and gave us the stories in one quick dose; sort of the way you give nasty-tasting cough syrup to a child.

Somewhere along the line the TV networks decided that we were too dense or busy or distractable to absorb ... um ... what was I talking about?

Oh. Right. As a result of years of exposure to fast-paced TV shows, we no longer had the attention span necessary to ... hey, is that a butterfly?

Sorry. I meant to say that we could no longer focus on the news the way Walt delivered it. We still needed quick doses, but we needed them over and over and over. The motto of the modern television news industry is "It's not done until it's overdone!".......

The origins of defense contracting are shrouded in the mists of history -- or at least cloaked by the Official Secrets Act. I'll bet, though, that the original defense contractors were the guys who came up with the Swiss Army knife.

Really.

The Swiss Army knife inconveniently combines unrelated tools in a package which is simultaneously too small to be useful and too big to comfortably fit in your pocket. Only an experienced, dedicated design committee could have created a device which promises so much and delivers so little. Then they made a fortune by selling it to the Army. I'm sure these guys were the ancestors of the people who created the Osprey Vertical-Take-Off-and-Landing aircraft. Not all of these guys work for Defense, though. A fair number of these "jam it together and see what sticks" designers work in cell phone manufacturing.......

For on-going, ever-changing, cheap home entertainment, nothing beats having children. Well, not cheap exactly. If you're planning to have a child, you'd best be prepared to pay medical costs, daycare, the cover prices for a vast array of comprehensive parenting manuals which contain mutually-contradictory advice, pre-school testing fees, school enrollment fees, school picture fees, school picture retake fees because the first set of pictures make your child look like a member of the marsupial family, fashionably-ripped clothes, new fashionably-ripped clothes because the old ones aren't fashionably-ripped enough, driving lessons, a new car to replace the one which was tragically lost at sea during the driving lessons, car insurance against the next unforeseen disaster, orthodontia, eye wear, personal technology, SAT study guides, ACT study guides, study guides for re-taking the SAT and the ACT, professional tutoring for the SAT and ACT, bribes to get college admissions officers to look the other way when they see the SAT and ACT scores, college tuition, college graduation costs, and a parental subsidy for the first post-college year as your offspring try to establish themselves. All things considered, the cost of raising a child to productive adulthood is comparable to the cost of the average space shuttle mission, but with far less chance of being featured on the national news. (Although, in an interesting coincidence, if you do have children it's a good bet that just like the astronauts, they will lose one-hundred-thousand dollars worth of tools before they move out.)......

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and I blame Mother Nature. She's decided that she doesn't want anyone living in my part of the country any more, so she's taken a page from the Slum Lord play book and is trying to run us all out by making the area uninhabitable. Slum Lords generally try underhanded tactics like turning off the heat or electricity so the building is cold and dark. Mother Nature has pummeled us with several thousand tons of snow so the state is cold and dark.

Less hardy souls might be tempted to move, but not me. I've decided to stay and fight. If you'd like to simulate my experience of living in a winter wonderland, try this simple experiment.

Go to the store and buy the biggest box of instant mashed potato flakes you can find. Dump the entire box into a tea cup. Clean up the mess using a sugar spoon while somebody periodically pours crushed ice down the back of your shirt. When you're almost done, send your friend to the store for two or three more big boxes of potato flakes.

Really......

When it comes to selecting a tough and dangerous occupation, there are plenty to choose from; snow plow driver in Alaska, nuclear plant safety inspector, and the salesclerk in charge of convincing size twenty-four women that a size eight dress won’t stretch that much no matter how long they hold their breath. There’s one risky job that tops them all, though ... Reality TV Cameraman.

I’m not talking about the folks who work on competition-based shows like Project Runway, Top Chef, or Judge Judy. Those kinds of programs are rough, but at least they take place in controlled environments like a fake loft, fake restaurant, or fake court room. The really dangerous shows are in the genre of wow-you-actually-do-that-for-a-living and include programs like Storm Chasers, The Deadliest Catch and (most frighteningly of all) Bridezillas.

The creation of reality television is a relatively recent broadcasting innovation. Young people will probably think I’m making this up, but in the early days of television, producers believed that they actually had to have a script and actors if they wanted to make a show. By today’s standards, that’s as quaint an idea as the buggy whip, the A.M. Radio, or only giving mortgages to people who might conceivably be able to pay them back.....

In terms of sheer tonnage, the United States it the world’s leading producer of weapons-grade bureaucracy. Nothing officially happens in this country until it’s been recorded on a complicated and mysteriously-named form, approved, counter-signed, and carried to its final resting place in a dusty filing cabinet. It"s not our fault, though. After all, the country was founded on a written document that was born in a committee, crafted by a series of votes, and signed by one guy who then turned it over to fifty-five of his friends so they could countersign it.

Building on that humble beginning, the United States has elevated bureaucracy to a art form. If bureaucracy were an Olympic event, the United States would be the hands-down winner in every competition. (Of course, given the difficulty involved in filling out the necessary "Permission to Train", "Permission to Apply for Permission to Travel to the Site of Competition", "Travel Pre-Authorization", "Approval for Travel", "Permission to Compete", and "Permission for a Discrete Moment of Celebration Upon Achieving Victory" forms, we'd probably never have a competitor who actually made it to the games.)....

My wife met me at the door when I came home and said, "Guess what came in the mail today?" After more than two decades of marriage I know better than to give her a straight answer to a question like that.

So I said, "I don’t know. My commitment papers?"

"No. I keep those in the fire safe for when I really need them. What came today was a coupon to the home improvement store. If we spend fifty dollars, we get ten dollars off! It’s to get us started on a project."

By us she meant me and by project she meant some-ill-conceived-poorly-executed-attempt-at-home-improvement-that-will-result-in-thousands-of-dollars-of-unplanned-repairs-and-marital-therapy.

I answered the only way I could, the way guys have answered for years, the one-size-fits-all of evasive answers; "I’m too busy right now."

This might have been more convincing if I hadn’t been pushing past her to get the to TV remote when I said it....

I like to think of myself as an easy-going guy; relaxed, laid-back, and fun to be around. I'd actually be like that if I just didn’t have to deal with other people. Some people have bad joints that flare up in rainy weather. Others have sciatica that troubles them when it's damp. Me? I have a streak of crankiness that comes on strong when people annoy me.

Like all of the blind people who have driver's licenses.

Really.

I'll be tooling along, rocking-out to some lost hit from my youth like Peter Schilling's Coming Home (and hoping that nobody in the other cars can lip read) when some moron will try to change into my lane WHILE I'M STILL USING IT!...

There was a time in this country when having an MBA meant something. It was the symbol of an accomplished business leader, a mark of distinction, a sign that said, "this person was willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and hours in pursuit of a piece of parchment." Everybody wanted one and universities responded with a huge variety of mutant MBA programs -- the Executive MBA, the MBA for Working Persons, the MBA for persons who don't work, but would if they had an MBA, the MBA for NBA, the NASCAR MBA, and the MBA for the Criminally Insane. MBAs are now so common that some Universities are giving away one MBA with every regular graduation or cafeteria meal.

The American Businesses Leaders (at least those who are still employed) are saying, "Enough! If you – Mr. University President – want to distinguish your MBA program from the rest you're going to have to shift to a new paradigm, think outside the box, and re-energize your core competencies."

(Aside: Remember that the current world financial system was created and is maintained by people who talk just like this.)

What this really means is that MBA programs that want to survive are going to have to teach more than just buzzwords, they'll have to focus on actual, useful, real-world business skills.

December 1 -- It snowed today; first flakes of the season. Everything is blanketed in white and the whole world is magical. Even the simple act of shoveling brought a smile to my face and reminded me that Christmas is just around the corner. I think a quiet dinner party with friends would be just the thing. Must remember to talk to my wife about that.

Should probably also get her going on the shopping and whatnot. After all, it is Christmas.

December 5 -- I’m looking forward to the party even if my wife is less than enthusiastic. When I mentioned it to her she started to interrogate me about petty details like how many people I planned to invite and when I intended to hold this "little soiree". Scrooge! I told her she needed to lighten up, Christmas is to be savored and experienced and not rushed through like a hundred-yard marathon!

I still need to talk to her about the cards and stuff, but today didn't seem like the right time.

Being good with technology is like being the guy who owns a pickup truck; everybody wants to be your best friend when there’s heavy lifting to be done. Face it, the question "Can you help me move?" is substantially the same as "Can you get my internet working?" The only real difference is that when you help somebody move, they're more likely to provide pizza and pop at some point during the experience.

As the tech-guy, I've been called upon to rebuild computers, hook-up satellite television systems, and program VCR clocks so they stop flashing twelve. Once word of my mad skillz gets out in the neighborhood, it's open season on my free time. If I lived next door to CERN, I would have been asked to help debug the Large Hadron Collider.

After all these years of being drafted to solve other people's problems, it feels good to finally speak the truth and say ... I don't mind.

Really.

As far as my cars are concerned, my primary function is to take them in for maintenance as often as possible. My mechanic shares their viewpoint, except he also sees me as the guy who pays for that maintenance. If I could figure out some way to extract myself from the middle of this arrangement, we'd all be a lot happier.

Except then I'd have no cars to drive, the cars wouldn't have anyone to take them to the mechanic and the mechanic wouldn't have all of my money. Actually, giving up those last two wouldn't be bad. It's the transportation thing that I can't get past. Like most people in challenging relationships, I've decided to take the bad with the good.

My relationships with new cars are always full of hope and promise.

Maybe it's a bad case of nostalgia; or maybe it's the fact that my kids are getting older; or maybe it's because I can’t afford the gas to drive to the edge of town. Whatever the reason, I've been thinking a lot about road trips lately.

A road trip is an express ticket out of your rut. Back home you may be bored with the routine. You know every local McDonald's and Walmart and Radio Shack inside and out. A trip to a new town will expose you to new and exciting venues. Like early Presidential Primary Season, a road trip is positively stuffed with promises. Of course, when you arrive, you'll find the new McDonald's is pretty much like the old one; a "nice" Walmart is still a Walmart; and the inside of one Radio Shack is much like another.

A road trip isn't about the destination, it's about the journey.

Really....

In case you missed it, the world didn't end when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider on September 10, 2008. It would be understandable if you missed this. The so-called major news outlets barely gave it a mention. They also routinely fail to report that the sun has risen or that no asteroids have hit the Earth today. They're too busy reporting on trivial things like the the latest Hollywood gossip, the weather, and who won the Presidential Election.

Of course, as my correspondent called Mainframe points out, all of the news stories about the world's biggest science fair project ignored the real question; is it a collider designed to work with large hadrons or is it a large collider designed to work with hadrons. This is the kind of ambiguity that makes the public suspicious of scientists. After all, if they can't tell us what they're actually building, why should we trust them?...

I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about the serious issue of the fiscal crisis in the United States. I'd like to, but I'm easily distracted so before I really got going I'd probably wind up talking about something entirely ... hey! Do I smell pizza?

You see what I mean?

Years of excessive mental stimulation have left my attention span so withered it can't hold any one idea for more than fifteen seconds. Even if I suffered from the illusion that I was qualified to write about the fiscal crisis, I'd have to start by doing research which would probably mean using the internet which would mean in about twenty-minutes you'd find me watching YouTube and singing along with the video of 99 Red Balloons...

Scientists tell us that the make-believe games of small children are vital for normal psychological development. When children pretend to be something they're not, it prepares them to be grown-ups who pretend to be something they’re not; like the guy who has a chrome-plated skull-and-cross-bones and airbrushed flames on his scooter.

Does he really believe that a biker gang will take him seriously on a 250cc Vespa? No matter how many times he watches Easy Rider on DVD the chrome on his scooter won’t make him a biker any more than a pair of scrubs makes someone a doctor. The chrome is just a grown-up version of playing pretend.

He’s like the rest of us; we all think we can fool most of the people most of the time.

Once you realize that everybody is playing make-believe all the time, it’s easy to spot the pretenders..

My sons are both skilled sleepers and I envy them. When they snooze -- which is often -- they throw themselves into the embrace of slumber with the same abandon that Billy Bob Thornton throws himself into marriage. Except they tend to sleep longer than Billy Bob stays married.

They are the only people I know that sleep intensely. Their enthusiasm for unconsciousness makes them easy marks for sleep, which is happy to reach out and drag them down.

For me, sleep is a timid little critter which must be enticed and snared and which is likely to turn and run at the slightest provocation.

Really.......

The pioneers had a hard life. They had to deal with floods, fires, famines, and even the occasional wild animal. On the other hand, they didn't have to worry about "Modern Conveniences."

I spend about three hours a day dealing with the problems created by my convenient, high-tech appliances. It starts the minute I get up and put breakfast in the microwave. In the good old, pre-microwave days, I wouldn't have even dared attempt a hot breakfast. I can only make eggs two ways--black or blacker. (Black is my favorite, it matches my toast.)

The microwave seduces me, though. It says, "I know you can cook in me. Any idiot can cook with a microwave. Just open the freezer and take out a package of 'Bright and Chipper' low-cholesterol, imitation eggs with strips of real-meat bacon. Two minutes and you're done."

Even though I know better, I'm convinced that this time I'll get it right. I peel off the plastic wrap, put the cardboard tray in the microwave, press the buttons and read the headlines while I wait. The microwave beeps politely to tell me it's done. I take out the tray and discover that my food has become one with the tray. In fact, except for a couple of vaguely bacon-shaped lumps, the tray looks completely empty......

The subject of today's essay is ... ummm ... bear with me ... I have some notes here somewhere ... just let me ... no, not there ... maybe over here? Nope, that's a recipe for Haggis; must remember to try that someday. I need to add sheep's stomach to my shopping list which is right here under this library book ... I wonder what the fine comes to after two decades?

I'm not disorganized. That would imply that at some point I was organized and things had just gotten away from me. You know, like when a politician or celebrity appears tearfully on television to explain that their latest DUI/affair/physical-assault-on-a-press-photographer was completely out of character and came as the result of stress.

No. I'm completely, chaotically, consistently organizationally challenged. When I'm installing new software and the computer has a blank for "Organization" I enter "Who, me?".....

We certainly have it better than our ancestors of just two or three millenia ago.

Really.

They lived under governments which were poorly organized and given to inconsistent policies and illogical action. We have ... wait a minute. Let me start again.

They lived at the mercy of the elements, risking disaster and death as a result of uncaring nature. We ... um ... let me try this one more time.

When they were ill and needed a cure, they had to consult with an oracle. We have have doctors. You see, I was right. Things really are better.....

The U.S government has announced the date for doomsday. It's February 17, 2009. That's the day that your old TV -- bringer of entertainment and enlightenment -- switches from planned programming to endless static. No more talk shows where the on-stage guests have IQs resembling shoe sizes; no more shows with three-letter acronyms like CSI, SVU, PSI, or QVC; no more product commercials in which people discuss their disgusting personal problems over lunch with friends; no more political commercials in which candidates discuss their opponent’s disgusting personal problems over a microphone with America; no more ... well, anything. Just static.

Which, might not be so bad. Except that the point of this essay is that it will be bad, so let me return to my point....

People don't like to change. They don't want to change their religion, political party, or (in the case of adolescent males) their T-shirts. They'll cling to their beliefs (or their ratty, stained eighties-vintage T-shirts) until their dying day.

Much of human history is really about the struggle to get people to change; whether it was the Conquistadors trying to get the natives of the Americas to change from being gold hoarders to being dead people, the American Revolutionaries trying to get the British to change from being soldiers to being dead people, or the owners of the Titanic trying to get people to change from being passengers to being dead people. With survival at stake so often, it's no surprise people resist change.

Which is why I reacted so strongly when I had to pick a new breakfast cereal....

Pop quiz, hotshot. Gas costs a little more than four dollars a gallon. Kevin's rattletrap minivan gets a little less than twenty miles to the gallon. The drive to work is exactly nine-point-nine miles each way. What do you do?

That’s the question I've been wrestling with. I pay four dollars a day for the round-trip to my place of semi-involuntary-servitude. The most tempting response is to quit work, but my wife has a violent emotional reaction every time I broach the subject of an income-free lifestyle. The less tempting responses include public transit or bicycling.

I'm in favor of public transit in theory, but opposed to it in practice. Like most people, I believe that public transit is a good idea for the public which is a term applied to anyone who isn't me.

No car? No bus? That leaves bicycling.........

I wish I were an evil genius. My wife says I don't qualify ... on either count. Which is exactly the kind of snippy comment I wouldn’t have to tolerate if I were an evil genius.

Take a look at a really good, top-level evil genius like Goldfinger or Dr. Drakken or that guy who invented the shrink-wrap on CDs. With their success in the art of evil, they have entire staffs of thugs and minions and henchmen to keep their various other thugs, minions and henchmen in line. As a middle-manager I'm not allowed to have a single minion, let alone a henchman or thug. (It turns out that HR has all of these fussy rules against job descriptions which include the words "kill", "maim" or "at the whim of your supervisor".)

Still, it's kind of fun to daydream what it would be like to be the head of an evil organization........

If there’s a better way to spend a Saturday morning than hiking halfway up a mountain and crawling into a hole in the ground, I don’t know what it is.

Honestly.

Don’t you think if I’d have had a better idea I would have been doing it? Instead, one recent Saturday found me standing halfway between heaven and earth getting ready to crawl into...well, into a really dark place.

The dark place in question is a popular Utah tourist destination called Timpanogos Cave. It is conveniently located a dozen or so miles up a winding canyon road. Tourists who are brave enough to drive to the Visitor’s Center are rewarded with the opportunity for a mile-and-a-half hike up the mountainside to the cave entrance. You would think that a tourist destination would have been better planned; like Stonehenge which the druids thoughtfully constructed right beside a major highway.......

Last week I realized that I can spend an entire day on the telephone and never have to speak to an actual human being.

Really.

After I'd returned a half-dozen voice-mail messages with tag-you’re-it-style replies, I tried calling to check on an order I'd placed and got to play Phone Menu Cryptography. It's the game where the computer on the telephone gives you a menu of mysterious and useless choices and you have to puzzle out which one will get you closer to your goal of talking to an actual human being. Indiana Jones, Robert Langdon and Benjamin Franklin Gates combined couldn't have worked their way through the process in anything less than a week. I gave up in a mere four hours reasoning that I'd feel foolish if I was still waiting on the phone when the package arrived.

This whole phenomenon of replacing unsatisfactory person-to-person interactions with unsatisfactory person-to-machine interactions started with the phone company. They used to have real people to talk to you. They were sometimes rude and insensitive, but at least they were real people......

It's gotten so that I'm afraid to turn on the TV. Every time I do, they're waiting for me; enticing me with promises of new and interesting relationships, exotic locations, and complicated plots. I'm speaking, of course, of the new Fall TV line-up and I just can't get involved in another series right now.

When I was younger, television was just for fun. I could pick up a new show mid-season, have a good time with it for an episode or two, and then drop it in favor of a new show.

Comedies – shows like All in the Family, Three's Company or C-SPAN – always had the same basic plot even though the cast changed over time except for cartoon characters like Fred Flinstone and Tip O’Neil. You could count on TV to be as solid and stable as the dollar.....

When a couple makes the sad decision to get divorced, a nice judge helps them divide up their property. If they choose to stay married, they get no such help and have to settle ownership on their own.

You would think that dividing up property with your significant other would be simple; stack all of your worldly possessions out on the lawn and take turns claiming them the way you chose-up sides in kickball.

"I choose ... DVD player!"

Of course, your beloved couldn't let a choice like that go unanswered and would immediately say, "I choose fifty-two inch plasma TV with HDMI, 1080p, 1040EZ, and EIEIO for enhanced color..." Before you could protest, she'd add, "...and all of the cables."

Sure, after that you'd get to claim your video-game console, but it just wouldn't be the same without the big screen to play it on. Maybe the answer is a pre-nuptial agreement which specifies how the property will be divided during the marriage....

When I realized I was indisputably sick, I recognized the perfect opportunity to gain sympathy points from my wife.

"It hurts," I said. "A lot. I think it’s pretty serious." "It’s an ear ache," she said.

With the sympathy meter reading dangerously close to empty, I sought the advice of a qualified medical professional. She confirmed that it was "just" an ear ache and that I was a good candidate for a full recovery.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yeah. It’s just a mild case of otitis externa."

Otitis externa? Wasn’t that the "ear curse" in Harry Potter and the Maintenance of Health Organization?...

Big brother is watching you. And so is big sister. Uncle Henry's in on the act, too. It's getting hard to go anywhere without running into a nut with a video camera of some sort.

A typical daycare music recital looks more like a press conference than a kid’s program. The presidential candidates would give up half of their remaining brain cells for the kind of video coverage those toddlers get. Maybe the Constitution should be changed to limit nominees to candidates who can belt out I'm A Little Teapot off key.

Most of the camcorders are run by men. This goes back to the traditional male role which was established in the distant past when human beings lived in caves instead of suburbs. Prehistoric women stayed at the cave and cared for the children while their mates wandered the plains tracking and video taping animals...

When I got a note in the mail saying I needed to renew my driver's license, I wasn't worried. After all, I've been driving since I was sixteen. All I had to do was take a quick written exam, get a bad picture taken, and I'd be done. Right?

When I got to the DMV, my immediate thought was, "WOW! Lookit all the people...they must be giving away thousand dollar bills inside."

I was wrong. Inside, I found twenty-two service windows, two employees and a line which appeared to contain the entire population of Ogallala, Nebraska. I took my place at the end.

Grimly, like Soviets waiting five hours for the chance to buy half a roll of industrial-grade toilet paper, we stood in line. Unlike the Russians, we weren't relieved when we got to the front of the queue.......

It's June and I think we all know what that means ... endless summer reruns of cop shows we didn’t watch, comedies we didn’t watch, and (or course) the interminable political debates that we’re still not watching.

Fortunately, the annual glut of June weddings gives an amusing diversion from the relentless, wall-to-wall election coverage. Like all newlyweds these poor folks are probably getting that that most common of wedding gifts; unsolicited advice.

I, myself, was given at least two metric tons worth of advice that I didn’t ask for. The trouble with advice is that -- unlike an extra Salad Shooter or spare blender -- you can’t exchange it for something more useful. You just have to take it or toss it aside. (Hint: People who give you advice really want to see you use it. So, when you toss it aside, do so quietly and in a dark alley where they won’t be able to see you.)......

Eight years ago my wife and I took leave of our senses and began to shovel great piles of money directly into the trash. Actually, we bought a boat, but saying that just makes us sound stupid.

Our reasons for joining the ranks of amateur sailors were simple and logical. My wife grew up in a family that sailed recreationally; a family that could turn a weather-eye to the clouds and chart the best course to avoid a coming storm; a family that felt utterly at home on the water. For my part, I thought sailing looked really cool.

The boat was our fifteenth anniversary gift to one another. In my wife’s family, it was tradition for the grateful husband to gift his long-suffering spouse with a one-carat diamond ring on the occasion of fifteen years of wedded bliss. My wife teasingly reminded me of this every three days starting just after our fourteenth wedding anniversary. Like most guys facing a costly obligation, I responded by changing the subject.

Until the day she said, 'I don’t want a diamond, I want a boat.'

Did I marry well or what?.....

Last week an acquaintance of mine had to endure two days of medically necessary bed rest. The official diagnosis was a badly-strained back. However, given that the injury occurred when he jumped out of a perfectly functional airplane to celebrate his forty-fifth birthday, I think a more accurate diagnosis would have been 'Testosterone poisoning'.

For those of you who didn't enjoy the benefit of taking Mr. Tovey's eleventh-grade biology class, let me explain Testosterone. Testosterone is a 'hormone' which is a type of chemical that acts in the body the same way a bicycle messenger acts on the streets of Manhattan. Hormones race around with great urgency delivering messages that generally cause chaos and confusion. Testosterone is the king of causing confusion. It is the chemical antidote to intelligence......

If I held a press conference right now, it would sound like this.

Thank-you all for coming. I will keep my remarks brief and I will not be taking questions. I'd like to being by apologizing to my wife for any pain my actions may have caused. It was never my intention to hurt or embarrass her in any way. I admit it was all my fault. I was the one who signed us up for the Ballroom Dancing class.

I should have known better. My gift for dancing is on a par with Britney Spears' talent for parenting. When I attended high school dances, people who saw me in action rushed to help me in the mistaken belief that I was suffering a massive seizure. The wild way I flailed my arms reinforced their belief, but also kept them from getting close enough to render any actual aid.

Once I was safely past the age of compulsory public dancing, I hung up my shoes and settled in for more sedentary pursuits like unsynchronized channel surfing and free form snacking. These were areas in which I could demonstrate some measure of competence, areas where I could hold my own, areas which wouldn't make me look like an electrician trying to jerk a screwdriver out of a live electrical socket.

Yet, not long ago, I myself enrolled us in a Ballroom Dance class.....

From the moment the alarm clock interrupts my inadequate night’s sleep to the moment I drift off in front of the TV while the frowny-faced anchorperson tries to scare me to death with actual news, I am at the mercy of the clock. My high-tech computer-based day planner assigns different colors to different appointments. It looks like someone gave a toddler a paint ball gun and pointed him at my screen. The occasional, tiny sliver of white shows a few precious, unbooked moments.

And it’s not just work.

My 'free time' -- which is only free in the sense that I don’t get paid for what I do during those hours -- is filled with engagements and obligations and errands ... all of which absorb my life the way the blob absorbed most of Steve McQueen’s hometown.

The only way to keep up is to do everything with the feverish intensity of an espresso-fueled chipmunk....

My house rings with the rockin’ sound-track of Guitar Hero III ... except when I’m playing. Then it sort of grinds along like a snail on a cheese grater.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Guitar Hero video game franchise -- both of you -- let me fill you in. Guitar Hero is a game in which you can rock out just like Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix or Peter Tork ... if any of them had played a plastic guitar with brightly-colored buttons and no strings. Clever players are rewarded with simulated applause from the simulated crowd in the simulated rock club. Bad players...well, until I played, my family didn’t know that the simulated crowd could boo you off-stage in a very real way.

My performance was so bad the game refused to let me finish. I had to hand the little plastic guitar to another (better) player.

I found this a little odd because in High School I was an absolutely awesome air guitar player. At the drop of a hat, I could crank out a rendition of the Immigrant Song that would bring tears to people’s eyes...

According to the excessively capitalized and exclamation-point-laden e-mail I received last week, I! CAN EARN A DEGREE! RIGHT NOW! FOR WORK EXPERIENCE I'VE! ALREADY! HAD! Unlike your traditional university which requires students to waste time studying and learning, the people who sent me the e-mail recognize the value of my forced participation in the School of Hard Knocks. Over the years I've messed up assignments, missed deadlines, made bad decisions and (on occasion) backed the wrong horse, candidate, political party, or fashion choice. I'd always assumed those were moments of shame, but now I can see them for what they really were...learning experiences; experiences that entitle me to a Ph.D. in Individual Life Management. All I have to do is submit a one-time processing fee of three-hundred fifty dollars.

I'm a little skeptical. I'm not sure I've had a doctoral-degree's-worth of life experiences. What if they decide not to give me the degree after I send them the check?

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that my wife -- and, in fact, all moms -- qualify easily. In the eighteen-plus years she's been a mom my wife has had extensive, on-the-job training in arts, psychology, chemistry, mathematics, literature, English, emergency medicine, small animal veterinary care, fashion design, and counseling...

Americans have a lot to worry about right now.

There's the mortgage industry which must have switched to an all alcohol diet and decided that it made perfect sense to loan people more money than they would actually earn in their lifetimes. Foreclosure is now the only growth industry in the financial sector and the fastest selling homes feature the words 'Kenmore', 'Whirlpool', and 'Refrigerator' prominently on their cardboard sides.

There's the price of gas which is rising so quickly the entire Theoretical Mathematics Department at Harvard has been hired for the sole task of keeping track of oil company profits. One more increase in the cost of sweet crude and it will be cheaper to power our cars with Chanel Number Five.

Combined, these problems are giving rise to a recession which will stop the U.S. economy the way a concrete barrier stops a speeding car.

There is one bright spot, though. America leads the world in caffeine delivery technology as measured by the total amount of square footage devoted to Starbucks stores. If all of the stores were put right next to each other – I mean even more than they are now – they would cover an area approximately the size of Dallas, only with a faint coffee odor and a Norah Jones soundtrack....

I pity the Presidential candidates. It's not easy being them.

For starters, they live on the road twenty-four-seven. A life of travel sounds exciting until you realize that most of the time they are ending up in desolate, barely civilized places like East Armpit, New Jersey, Rattlesnake Acres, Nevada, and Kansas City. (Special note to readers in Kansas City: Not your Kansas City ... the other one.)

When they arrive they have to pretend to enjoy the local cuisine. Again, sounds interesting until you find out the local cuisine includes Auntie May's special rutabaga bouillabaisse, pig snout sandwiches or haggis. (Special note to readers in Scotland: Not your haggis ... the other kind.)

No matter where they go, the candidates have to pose for photo ops wearing fixed smiles so rigidly indestructible that they can only be removed by specially trained teams of plastic surgeons. The other folks in these photos are always minor local celebrities like the Kumquat Queen, City Mayor or the Vice President of the United States. (Special note to readers who are Dick Cheney: Not you ... the other Vice President of the United States.)...

The Olympic Games represent the best in human endeavor. The spirit of friendly competition, the years of training, and the satisfaction of seeing our athletes overcome competitors who live in countries where indoor plumbing is a luxury item. It's a time of special pride for Americans and I'm sure you share my sentiment when I say, "Just how many commercials can they put in one hour?"

Every company in America (and a few from beyond our shores) is planning to cash in on the games. There's an official car, an official swim suit, an official shoe, and an official soft-drink. I'll bet there's even an official nasal spray and an official liquid drain cleaner.

Of course that's not what the Olympics is about. The Olympics is about competition. That means yet another "Dream Team." As Americans it is our duty to watch the U.S.A. basketball team play. It doesn't matter that the results sound more like blood-pressure readings than basketball scores. ("122 over 36--Your systolic is good, but your diastolic is a little low.") It doesn't matter that it's like watching the L.A. Lakers play the Richard M. Nixon Middle School team. What matters is that you get to watch a team whose total annual income is larger than the gross national product of most of the countries they play...

I help my wife with the grocery shopping approximately every eight or nine months. That's about how long it takes her to forget what happened the last time I helped her.

When it comes to the weekly run to the Giganto-Mart, we have very different approaches. My wife likes to make a menu, prepare a list, and then stick to it. I, on the other hand, like to make a menu, prepare a list, and then buy whatever catches my eye.

Her approach has the benefit of letting her feel virtuous; she's planning and shopping methodically. My approach has the benefit of letting me feel virtuous (I'm planning methodically) and spontaneous (I'm buying whatever I want!) Sadly, there's no easy way to reconcile our two different approaches. The best my wife can do is hope to contain me.

She usually does this by sending me off in search of a specific item – canned beans, vinegar, boiled snipe – whatever she thinks will keep me occupied for the longest amount of time. The more intense the quest, the less likely I am to be distracted by ... oooh! Look at the new flavors of soda!...

There was a time when I didn't fear food. I ate with gusto and abandon (and occasionally a knife, fork, and napkin) without worrying about the consequences. That was before I understood calories.

Like many of the unpleasant facts of modern living – nuclear weapons, greenhouse gases, reality television, etc. – calories were discovered by scientists who meddled in things man was not meant to know. Or, at least, things this man didn't want to know.

Indulging in a fast-food burger and fries became a lot less fun when I realized I was consuming two day's worth of calories and a week's worth of fat and salt.

If the universe was fair, the size of food items would have some correlation to the number of calories they contained; carrot sticks would be toothpick-sized, baked-potatoes would resemble small beach balls, and burgers would have to be borne about on litters carried by six strong men. When you dared to order one of the frothy, creamy, sugary drinks at your local coffee house it would be delivered in a convenient fifty-five gallon drum.

If the universe was fair...

I have it on good authority that the furnace repairman will be at my house sometime between the hours of five a.m. and midnight today.

Whether you're dealing with a willful teen or a reluctant machine, the approach is the same – repeatedly flick the reset switch. Except that teens don't have reset switches and the ones on machines appear to be mostly decorative.

Having exhausted my entire repertoire of furnace repair techniques, I broke down and decided I had to call the furnace repairman...

My children and I live in different time zones. They live in Teenage Standard Time and I live in the real world.

In the real world, deadlines have mass and momentum and cannot be ignored. Whenever I get a new deadline it starts making a sound like the music from the documentary film Jaws in which unsuspecting swimmers were viciously attacked by a great white cello player.

Take the annual United States Tax Day deadline. Every year on April fifteenth, I'm required to file a an extensive set of documents and a distressingly large check with the Internal Revenue Service. (Historical aside: The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 and I think it's fitting that America commemorates this tragic event by soaking the rich...)

I'm worried about my wife's memory. Just last week she forgot a key ingredient for dinner.

I found her standing in the kitchen, staring into the pantry with a look of intense concentration; the kind of look you associate with a sage pondering the nature of the universe or someone trying to figure out how best to ask a favor.

"Bother," she muttered.

Seeing no reasonable escape, I took the bait asked what was wrong.

"I thought we had some spaghetti sauce," she said.

You see what I mean about her memory? Taking pity, I offered to go to the store.

"So long as you're going anyway..." she said. "Could you pick up a French Loaf and some of those ... whatdyacallits for salad ... crunchy-bready things."

"Croutons?"

"Yeah. Here I'll write you a list."

I refused. It's her memory that's a problem, not mine...

Next week I have to take a personality test at work and I'm a little worried. What if it comes up negative?

Will I be summoned to the HR office where I will be forcibly enrolled in some flashy, pricey character-building exercise like a Dale Carnegie seminar, a ropes course, or graduate school? I kind of like the personality I have, it's everyone else who needs to change.

Especially the machines around me.

Really.

The gee-whiz-won't-the-world-of-tomorrow-be-great crowd can't wait for machines that have human-like personalities all their own. From what I can see, my machines already have too much personality.

Take my cars, for example. I drive a a piece of Detroit iron, American-made with a personality to match. It's loud, abrasive, and completely in-your-face. If I leave the headlights on, it rewards me with a sharp, sustained buzzzzzz; the automotive equivalent of "Hey mac, what do you think you're doing?"...

This past Christmas my wife gave me a supremely "guy" toy. She did this because, after twenty-two years of marriage, she's given up any hope of ever curing me of my essential guyness.

Early in our relationship she thought she had an outside chance of knocking the rough edges off me. She thought this because I wasn't exactly a fan of organized sports; football had more rules than any one game needed, baseball was less interesting than its scandals, and basketball and soccer seemed like too much work.

Despite my lack of the sports-appreciation gene, my wife found she couldn't really civilize me.

Her one attempt to help me get in touch with my feminine side resulted in a restraining order which requires me to stay at least fifty yards away from my feminine side at all times.

So I'm a guy and to honor that fact my wife gave me a guy toy for Christmas; a self-taught course in miniature helicopter repair.

There comes a time in every dad's life when he realizes he's no longer the competitor he used to be. Somewhere along the line he's lost the skills and reflexes of his youth and his kids can beat him. It's the day when he passes the video game crown to the next generation.

I grew up in the late seventies and early eighties; the golden age of arcades. No ghost was safe from me in Pac Man. If Ms. Pac Man had been willing to trade round and yellow for skinny and adolescent, I'd have gone out with her. Figuring out how to get that last Space Invader seemed far more important to me than the national debt, the state of Soviet/U.S. relations, or personal hygiene.

If you squinted a lot and used your imagination, the graphics vaguely resembled real figures the way Jackson Pollock's paintings vaguely resemble actual art. The in-game sound consisted of annoyingly simplistic bouncy music (long before boy-bands made such tunes popular). The games were eight-bit, darn it, and I loved them.

If I'm the master of my household pets, why was I the one standing in line at the pet supply superstore shepherding two carts through the check-out line? The answer is simple; I'm a pawn of the pet-tech-industrial complex.

In case you missed it, pet supplies have become big business in this country. The mom-and-pop pet shop of yesteryear is gone, crushed under the weight of warehouse-sized megastores which, if they weren't full of pet supplies, could be used to store a spare fleet of 747s, the Astrodome, or one month's worth of redundant and contradictory government memos.

These stores require this much space because they must contain the thousands of mutant varieties of pet food available now. This is food which has been carefully produced in controlled laboratory conditions to appeal to even the most finicky pet owner.

The real problem with television isn’t violence, or inappropriate content, or news stories which appear to have been invented just before the cameras rolled. The real problem is that kids are imitating the stuff they see between the commercials.

Kids grow up watching ER (now airing its fifty-first “episode that changes everything�) and they’re just dying to become nurses and doctors. By the time they discover the practice of medicine isn’t all trauma and drama, they’re so buried in education loans they’ll be healthcare wage-slaves for the rest of their lives. The only steamy romance they’ll see is if they get off shift in time to catch the newest ER (which will be the two-hundred-and-twenty-third “episode that changes everything.�)

Sometimes I feel like my life is really a movie; you know the kind where there's some kind of cipher and everyone else is in on the secret but me ... The DUH-Vinci Code. It'd probably be a lot easier if people stopped trying to communicate and just talked.

Part of the problem is that words aren't generally reliable in the picking-a-meaning-and-sticking-to-it department. Take the good-old standby “love�. This little tramp of a word never met a meaning it didn't like. You'll find it promiscuously applied to everything from the intertwining of two lives (“I love my new puppy�) to devotion to a favored sports team (“I love the Jazz when they win�) to favored foods (“I love a good mutton sandwich, especially when the crusts are trimmed off�.) Next thing you know it'll be snuggled up against a government policy description -- “Ooh! I love the penalty-free deferment of survivor benefits for capital gains in designated enterprise zones.� How can you trust a word like that?

In my experience, the difference between "Oh look it's snowing" and "Oh no it's snowing" is about thirty-six inches or three days; whichever comes first. Individual flakes are harmless; in small groups they're adorable; in large quantities they are dangerous and uncontrollable ... sort of like toddlers.

Except you never have to use a special shovel to clear the toddlers off your driveway.

Much of human history is concerned with the way that people get from one place to another. Our earliest ancestors traveled on foot, braving the elements, avoiding attack by wild animals and suffering really nasty blisters. Some forgotten genius came up with the idea of riding on animals and things improved. Somebody else (the Phoenicians, I think, but I sorta slept through history class) invented carts and things improved again. Carts gave way to trains and cars and trucks and things improved again. Then human beings invented air travel and things ... fell apart.

Really.

Airplane trips generally begin early in the morning with a drive to the airport through rush hour traffic. Sitting gridlocked on the freeway is actually a good thing because it gives you a chance to prepare for the lines you'll be waiting in the rest of the day.

On the great feedlot of life, I'm just another barbecue-on-the-hoof, passing time mooing and waiting for the day they award me a gold watch and shoo me into the stunning pen. In terms of domestication, I'm at a ninety-two on a ten-point scale.

I realized the full extent of my tractability at the local Super-Ultra-Mega-Mart last week. I urgently had to purchase a few things including bread, Bandaids, Bactine and a new toaster. At the checkout, I swiped my credit card and scrawled something on the electronic pad that might have been my signature or a quick sketch of two worms wrestling.

The computer beeped and flashed a message. “Signature exceeds space available.�

I squinted. Sure enough. I'd drawn outside the lines. “Sorry,� I said and signed again, more carefully this time.

It didn't strike me until I was out of the store. I'd just apologized to a computer. A MACHINE! A hunk of junk hardware no smarter than a fifth-grader had called me out and I just stood there and took it.

My life is a blur these days.

Really.

I've traded my reliable (but stodgy) glasses for less reliable (but far more exciting) contacts. Like a lot of guys who try to trade up, I think I may have simply swapped one set of problems for another.

I slipped solidly into geekdom at the age of ten when I was fitted with a pair of black-rimmed glasses that had all of the aesthetic appeal and elegance of a spork at formal dinner party. Years passed and my eyes stabilized until I landed on the big square labeled '40' and I couldn't read any more. The nice eye doctor wrote me a prescription for progressives.

Through a miracle of modern manufacturing, progressives have two different kinds of lenses forcibly melded into one ineffectual whole; sort of like a compass with a whistle in it, a tent trailer, or low-fat, sugar-free ice-cream.

When it comes to mathematical ability, nine out of ten experts agree that Americans can easily outperform most single-celled organisms from other cultures. When it comes to competing with actual human beings -- or trained chimps or even well-bred horses -- Americans don't do nearly as well. In fact, they lose six out of seven times which equates to a mere forty-eight percent win/loss ratio.

Like all problems in America, our collective lack of mathematical skills can be blamed on the educational system. This may or may not be true, but it's easy to blame the educational system. In the coming election, look for Presidential candidates to blame schools for poor public health, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, hurricanes, tidal waves, South American deforestation, and the popularity of Brittany Spears. Politicians like to blame the schools because ninety-eight percent of the public (three voters in twelve) will buy it without question.

In the case of Math skills, the problem can be traced back to the one thing everyone hated in Math class – the teacher, Mrs. MacGruder. Not really. What everyone hated was story problems.

For over a century, the Nobel Prize committee has been giving an award for literature. The Pulitzer Prize committee has been recognizing outstanding journalistic writing for ninety years. The Christopher Award is a mere slip of a thing at half that age. Other writing awards include the Hugo, the Nebula, the Newbery, the Booker Prize, the Blooker Prize, and the National Book Award.

Yet not a one of those prize committees has ever recognized someone for writing an outstanding Holiday Letter.

This is probably because in the entire history of literature no one has ever written a Holiday Letter worthy of an award.

Summing up the last twelve months of your life in a few dozen words is no easy trick. You've got to hit the high points and give just enough detail to make your friends and relations insanely jealous of how well you're doing. Except, your relations probably know enough of the truth to see through your tissue of lies and if your friends don't, just how close are they really?

Psychologists have long known about holiday meltdown. Among the probable causes they cite unrealistically high expectations (maybe Santa will bring me that pony this year), pressure to be perfect (maybe my in-laws will compliment my cranberry-garlic loaf this year), and sheer, simple stress (maybe I'll crack and finally have that breakdown this year). They don't talk about the rash of psychoses that come from the anguish of people who are faced with giving and receiving gifts.

Most of these syndromes don't even have names. In the interest of advancing science, I'd like to suggest a few new diagnoses.

If you lived through the eighties, you probably remember the highly instructive Mad Max film series in which Mel Gibson played an enigmatic loner who traveled a post-apocalyptic wasteland trying to find a parking space. Just kidding. He was traveling the post-apocalyptic wasteland looking for gas so he could drive his car long enough to find a place to park.

Even at the end of the world, parking spaces will be in short supply.

Which is why I'm deeply disappointed that my son's state-approved driver's education course didn't spend more time on parking. They pretty much stopped at “park between the lines�. Comparatively, this is about as useful as stopping sky-diving lessons after Step One, Jump out of the airplane. There's got to be more to it if you intend to arrive safely.

T.V. used to be just for fun. We watched light fiction like Lucy, or Newhart or the CBS Evening News. We could flip on the T.V. knowing that we wouldn't be troubled by thought. Then PBS came along. All of a sudden, thought was a requirement for watching television. You had to think if you were going to watch intellectual fare like Masterpiece Theatre, Jeeves and Wooster, or Sesame Street.

Home video briefly helped to stem the tide of intelligent programming. A trip to the video store allowed you to rent shows starring comic geniuses like Harold Lloyd, Mel Brooks and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While rentals were growing more popular, the Federal Government gently encouraged PBS to find ways to survive on its own by thoughtfully reducing its funding each year. The entire annual PBS budget wouldn’t cover the catering at Brittany Spears’ next wedding.

Looking to get its share of the video pie, PBS starting selling boxed set. You can buy Ken Burns’ The War for a mere $130 -- which works out to approximately fifteen cents per thoughtful hour of entertainment.

In my teens and twenties my body and I saw things in exactly the same way; we were virtually inseparable. We had an understanding. I fed it all the junk I wanted, never took it out for any kind of formal exercise and it maintained its trim, teenage shape. Somewhere (I think around my thirtieth birthday) it quietly abandoned our agreement and started to change.

My waist must have been in on the secret because it ballooned up until my belt got too tight. Thinking this was a temporary situation, I switched to a new, larger belt and (just for good measure) a new larger wardrobe. Sure my body was expanding, but I knew it would come to its senses sooner or later.

You see them on TV all the time; houses which are nicer, cleaner, and more attractive than yours the same way a runway model is more appealing than any member of the 1972 East German Women's Swim Team. The camera lovingly pans around showing scenes of impossible beauty like an elegant kitchen filled with matching dish ware, a living room in which the furniture does not appear to have been purchased at a trailer-park tag sale, and (most incredibly of all) a bathroom in which the towels not only coordinate but are hung neatly on gleaming towel bars instead of being heaped on the floor. When you see a house like that you've just to ask yourself, What do those homeowners have that I don't have?

The answer is simple.

A small army of production personnel including three professional designers and an uptight director known in the television industry as 'Hansel the Fussy'. Before the cameras are even permitted on the property, the house is completely remade from top to bottom.

For three years I had an arch-nemesis who taxed my patience, cunning and intelligence. This would be a whole lot cooler if she stood more than two feet tall and weighed more than more than fifteen pounds. I'm talking, of course, about actress Linda Hunt.

Not really.

I wish it was as impressive as that. My arch-nemesis was a black cat who decided our backyard bird feeder also made a dandy feline feeder.

So, why was I in Barnes and Nobel at 9:55 p.m. frantically searching for a copy of The Crucible by Arthur Miller (the special Dover edition with the deleted scene)? If you don't know the answer, you're obviously not a parent.

My sixteen-year-old son is a tragic victim of the Educational-Industrial Complex. Without regard for his personal feelings, his instructors expect him to learn. In his Humanities and English classes this involves telling him to acquire and assimilate certain great works of literature; The Crucible, Atlas Shrugged, and Dick and Jane Austen. In order to give him time to appreciate the subtleties of these great works, the instructors assign them weeks before he has to read them. Sadly his busy schedule of vital activities like texting, video games, television, and internet surfing makes it impossible for him to remember that he needs the book until the night before it's due.

Tuesday, 6:15 p.m.

I'm so excited. We're going to repaint the bathroom and I want to blog the whole experience so that I won't forget a single wonderful moment.

We need to repaint because the original color – the color we've lived with for the last fourteen years – is the exact same shade of yellow as a fading bruise. In the mirror, our reflections have the jaundiced look of recent face-lift patients; all we lack is a row of stitches in front of each ear.

Fortunately, the inadequate illumination over the vanity keeps us from getting a good view of ourselves. Even with four 100 watt bulbs, the mid-seventies industrial grade frosted-glass fixture slows the rushing flow of light to a barely visible trickle and filters out all of best colors. What remains shrouds our faces, casting dark shadows under our eyes and adding to the post-Beverly-Hills-doctor's-visit ambiance.

So long as we're going to repaint, it makes sense to re-grout the tub as well. Disturbing patches of black mildew blotch the formerly white grout. Against the yellow bath tile, they give the whole tub area the appearance of a crime scene surrounded by striped police tape. When I step from the bath, I always expect to leave a chalk outline instead of a bathtub ring.

It's not easy being honest. Especially when you honestly want to dismember the person ahead of you in the checkout line.

My wife and I dashed out to the new local Gigant-o-mart (recently built approximately 2.6 miles from the old local Gigant-o-mart) for a few vital grocery items; Cheetos, Poptarts, and two skeins of fuzzy purple yarn. Like sprinters approaching the finish line, we dashed to the “10 Items or Less� express lane and found ourselves cut off by a pair of women who were not intellectual giants in the area of being able to distinguish between ten and two hundred items. Between its bowed-out wheels and ballooned-out sides, their cart looked like a fat lady with weak ankles wearing a plastic fishnet skirt.

Stuffed inside they had several hundred individual silk flowers; more than the store carried. I suspect they actually brought flowers into the store just so they could take them through the check-out line ahead of us. I pitied the single vase quivering nervously at the front of the cart. The flowers-to-vase ratio was similar to the entrants-to-winners ratio in the average magazine sweepstakes.

As the cashier pulled out the first flower, fumbled to find the bar code and swiped it across the scanner, my wife and I did the most logical thing we could think of. We crossed our arms and stared at the women in the meanest way possible while muttering under our breath about how rude they were.

Really.

Your mission – and you don't have any choice about accepting it – is to go under deep cover and penetrate one of the most ruthless, politically charged environments in the world today ... a typical American Business Office. Should you succeed in infiltrating this complex and frequently chaotic organization, your objective is to accomplish actual work. Be aware that many other agents have attempted this mission and failed.

As part of your cover, we will arrange a vocabulary coach to teach you important business terms such as debenture, venture capital, monetization, potential actualization, actualized potential, next-level thinking, thinking outside of the box, and proactive, forward-thinking, next-level, bleeding-edge actualization strategic productization.

Stephen King has made himself a wealthy man by writing books that play on people's deepest fears; scary dogs (Cujo), scary prom dates (Carrie), and the scary consequences of meddling with dark forces to resurrect the dead (Harry Potter and the Semetary of Pets). In real life there aren't that many demon dogs, telekinetic adolescents, or cursed burial grounds – even in New Jersey. I respectfully suggest that Mr. King expand his repertoire to include the things that really scare people like mortgages, dental appointments and household clutter.

A lot of my personal clutter starts out in its larval form -- mail.

When my son was born nineteen years ago, coupons for disposable diapers appeared in my mailbox within the week. The Pampers Network of Spies and Informants was on to me. The military should have used those people for intelligence gathering in Iraq. Not only would they have found the Weapons of Mass Destruction, but they could have sent them Pampers coupons as well.

Realizing that my son’s bottom was a virtual gold mine, other diaper companies got in on the act. Since I wouldn’t need diapers unless I fed my son, those companies passed my address on to formula and baby food companies. Those companies were quick to recognize that my son would be hungrier if he played a lot, so they gave my address to toy companies.

I could chart my son’s development by the letters I received.

For the first time in fifteen years, we bought a new car. It's a good car ... a well-built car ... and, with proper care and maintenance, it might last until we're emotionally ready to face another shopping trip to the dealership.

It's not that the dealer treated us badly. We were greeted as honored guests; welcomed with chilled bottled water and open arms. The salesman acted as though we were the only customers in the world, despite the fact that there was a gaggle of bored-looking people hanging out by the service window. He treated us like Kings.

Which is to say that we had to make important decisions approximately every fifteen seconds.

Nothing gets my heart beating like new technology. Well, that's not quite true – a sweeping vista, a beautiful woman, and an unexpected fall from a great height all rate right up there on the edging-into-coronary-territory scale. Still, seductive new gadgets do about the same for my heart rate as a four-hour cardio session or five minutes of hip-hop videos.

Which is why my new favorite device is my Chumby.

A Chumby is a tiny electronic wonder, a miracle of the modern age, a steroid-fueled, internet-connected alarm-clock-slash-info-center. It is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of bedside electronics; The Awakenator.

My oldest son is going to the University to study theater. I blame his second grade teacher.

That was his first ever exposure to drama, as a performer not an audience member. Miss Edelstein’s class delighted a classroom full of restless parents with their interpretation of Stop, Look and Listen: A Lesson in Crosswalk Safety. For those of you unfamiliar with this production, it’s a timeless tale which artfully weaves the motif of pedestrian safety with that of imminent, gruesome vehicular death. We were all truly moved to yawn.

Really.

Superheroes are big in America right now. Larger-than-life characters including Spiderman, Mr. Fantastic and Al Gore all use their special skills to try to save the world. Spiderman slings webs, Mr. Fantastic stretches himself, and Al Gore writes books. Every one of them is fighting some kind of super-villain from mutants and aliens to corrupt politicians.

The trouble is that the real world is a little short on actual super-villains. When was the last time you were driving down the street and some lunatic in a Goblin costume buzzed you on a hoverboard? That sort of thing happens about as often as lottery winners who actually do stay at their jobs. What I really need from the tights-and-capes brigade are heroes who actually take on the things that cause difficulties in my own personal, day-to-day life.

Consider road construction, for example.

I want to take a moment and talk about a serious scourge which is sweeping this great nation of ours. No matter where you go, you’re likely to run into someone who “crafts�. These poor souls are likely to be caught illicitly using stoneware or strung out on multicolored yarn.

Back in the nineteenth century crafting was a necessity. Hardy pioneer souls who wanted to give their rough hewn log cabins a makeover (“American primitive is sooo last century�) couldn’t just pop into the nearest Sam Walton’s General Store for all new furnishings and decorations. They had to make it themselves, dagnabit! Lack of skill was not an obstacle. Nor was a lack of materials. They worked in whatever they could find; weathered wood, dried apples, or pony poop. Pioneers routinely crafted actual decorations made from the hair of deceased relatives.

Really.

Here are a few handy phrases to keep in mind while training your young person to drive:

Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear. So are objects in the windshield.

Before you set out, do a walk-around inspection of the car with your young person to look for any potential hazards such as flat tires and also so you'll be able to remember the car as it was.

No matter how hard you push on the imaginary brake pedal on the passenger's side of the vehicle, the car will not stop...until you scream 'STOP' loudly enough to be heard over a hurricane and clutch dashboard in the classic 'I’m about to die' position.

Remember, your young person will never be as good at driving as you would like.

Nor are they as bad as you think.

My eldest son graduated from High School this year and I couldn’t be more pleased. Not that there was ever any question, it’s just that sometimes graduation seemed a long way off like a dream of a distant beautiful land or the hope of a fast-food restaurant getting your order right on the first try.

He’ll be moving out this summer to study at the university. My heart will go with him ... as will some of my money.

Not that his education hasn’t already cost me a bundle.

DISCLAIMER: This article may contain material which is not deemed funny by certain individuals. Author not responsible for your reaction to this article. Do not read this article if you have had any of the following; recent surgery or illness, fainting spells, nausea, or a history of mental illness in your family. Article is packed by word count, not by volume--some settling may have occurred during shipping. Sanitized for your protection. Close cover before striking.

(I want to apologize for that rather obnoxious legal paragraph, but my lawyer assures me it is necessary.)

Take a new job at any company in America -- from stock boy at a 'Mom and Pop' grocery store to janitor for the CIA's Division of Double Secret Incarceration -- and I guarantee that within a day you'll hear two things from your employer.

First, someone will say you've joined "a fast-paced team environment." Then they'll say, "We're like a family here."

Yeah, that special kind of family which includes annual performance reviews, termination for cause, and the ever-present threat of layoffs if the economy goes south. The only real families like that are heavily involved in illicit activities. Does your employer really want you to think you work for the Sopranos?

On the other hand, maybe it's a hint that we should run our families more like businesses. With the proper application of management theory we should be able to get our families turned around and profitable in no time. In that spirit, I'm happy to present the Cummings Family Annual Report for Fiscal '07.

The line between civilization and savagery is frighteningly thin; in my case, as thin as a wire.

I came home from a tough week at work and my wife said those words that no modern man wants to hear.

"The internet is down."

Internet? Down?

I contemplated an evening with no access to the multitude of on-line resources; no visiting the NPR website for insightful commentary on the day’s events; no researching the positions of presidential candidates on MySpace; no watching YouTube videos of people hurting themselves in amusing ways with skateboards. In short, I had no way to entertain myself.

Except, of course, cable television with its two-hundred-plus channels of programming. Finding comical injury videos was still an option, even if insightful news commentary was unlikely.

It was just a bad dream, but it scared me. I don't know that anyone's ever been acquitted of murder because their mate was a bed hog, but it wouldn't surprise me.

When my wife and I were first married, we had an iron-framed, sway-backed, double bed that my parents had given me when I went away to college. It didn't have box springs and the mattress sagged in the middle. All night long we rolled toward the center like twin avalanches tumbling down a mountain. By mutual agreement, we moved to the edges of the bed. As each of us rolled to the outside, we pulled the covers with us. It wasn't uncommon for the sheet to be suspended eight inches above the bed and to be taut enough to serve as a trampoline. In a matter of days, the fabric was showing signs of stress in the middle. We were in serious danger of being shot through opposite walls of our bedroom if the sheet ever gave way.

My wife said we had to get a new bed or one of us would have to sleep on the floor. I said if she wanted to sleep on the floor that was fine by me. She said if anyone slept on the floor it would be me. I said we had to get a new bed.

For sheer, unadulterated, adrenaline-fueled pleasure, nothing beats changing a tire on a dark road at midnight ... except maybe memorizing the U.S. Tax Code, or bathing an angry cat, or even working as the assistant to a knife-thrower nicked-named "Fred the Fumbler".

Really.

At least that's what I kept telling myself when I had a jack handle in my fist and a flashlight clenched between my teeth. "Isn't this fun?" I growled in the cheerfully manic fashion usually associated with individuals whose hobbies include repossessing cars and scaring small children.

It was spring again and my once disciplined lawn had forgotten all of the lessons I taught it last summer and had fallen into disarray. My orderly sea of green had become an unruly mess with tufts large enough to hide zebra-stalking lions.

So I mowed.

While the mower's snout growled and chewed its way through the grass, I pondered the eternal mysteries. Why are we born? Why do we die? Why weren't my teenage sons mowing?

Well, to be honest, the answer to that last one is pretty simple. Yard work isn't cool. Teens who voluntarily engage in household chores are about as common as Frat Boys campaigning for temperance.

All of the clocks in my life have turned against me. I'm sure of it. Some of them run fast, some run slow, and some are just plain weird. I'm pretty sure that they talk to each other at night -- trading messages encoded in ticks, tocks and the occasional bong -- finding new ways to drive me mad. Or maybe it's the change in Daylight Savings Time.

I first noticed this with the digital clock in my mini-van. Some of the little LED segments don't light up anymore. Instead of showing a proper time like 3:26, it reads 3cL. How am I supposed to interpret that? Am I going to be late for my three-thirty appointment? Or early?

The worst clock in the house is the one on the microwave. Like its cousin in the car, its display has missing segments; only these render it unreadable. Instead of nuking my popcorn for 2:35 seconds, I end up with something that looks like Klingon. When I hit the buttons, I'm no longer certain if I'm setting the power to reheat or the phasers to stun.

Imagine you're having a casual dinner with friends -- a beach picnic, a backyard barbecue, a formal meal during an international trade summit -- and suddenly one of your companions starts talking about an embarrassing personal condition starting with the letter 'H'. I'm talking, of course, about halitosis.

"Yep," they say, "I thought I just had bad breath, but my doctor told me I'm suffering from a condition called 'hal-i-tosis'. He said it could be treated with a medicine called breath-tosterone."

While you're busy moving all of the sharp objects safely out of reach, your friend goes on about the benefits of this new wonder drug.

Before I get started on this essay, I need to pause for a moment and surrender my special laminated 'Manly Guy' ID card and secret decoder ring. It's a shame about the card. The front has my name, age, height and weight listed accurately to within forty-three percent. The back lists handy guy phrases and useful profanities in eight languages including Swahili, Polish and Esperanto. But, since I'm about to admit that I sort of ... sometimes ... when the mood takes me ... enjoy shopping, I can't be a card-carrying guy any more.

Not for clothes. Let me be clear on that. In general I'd prefer an audit by an IRS Agent named Vinnie 'The Actuary' Gambone to clothes shopping. Something that looks good on anyone else -- a good-looking guy, a store mannequin, the floor -- is rejected by my body the way a transplant patient rejects a mismatched liver. You can actually see the attractiveness of the clothing fleeing from my proximity and leaving me standing in a wrinkled heap of cloth that might be an expensive suit or a dust rag with delusions of grandeur. On me, ten-thousand dollars worth of Armani looks like ten cents worth of Rayon.

I confine my shopping to 'guy' things like technology and entertainment products.

I have remote control children.

This hope-giving fact came to light before my oldest reached his first birthday. Ten months of near-constant parenting had left me with the energy of a week-old corpse, only not as pretty and definitely more putrid. I was lying on the couch -- held down by unusually thick strands of gravity -- watching my son play in the middle of the living room carpet. He found something interesting and lifted it towards his lips. From my vantage point I couldn't tell if it was a discarded raisin, a lost chocolate chip, or a deceased insect. Too tired to move, I called out, "Stop!"

A miracle! My son's hand paused in mid-air and he turned to look at me and then he ate whatever it was. Okay, so the technique needed work, but the basic principle was sound.

When the phone rings it's like an alert that you're about to receive an unexpected gift. You drop whatever you're doing -- cleaning house, watching television, rescuing a cat from a tree -- and run to grab the phone. Too often, instead of a present you get a booby prize and find yourself talking to a telemarketer.

"Hello?" you answer. The babble of voices in the background gives you a clue that this isn't a pleasant social call from a long forgotten friend.

"Hello sir," a voice says, "first let me assure you that we aren't trying to sell you anything." Second clue; except during Girl Scout Cookie Season your friends never tell you they aren't trying to sell you something.

Earlier this year Microsoft Corporation (tm) released Windows Vista (registered trademark). The Computer Users Community greeted it with an enthusiastic yawn despite the fact that retailers pushed Vista as if it was an invention on a par with the wheel, the electric light, and that bathroom cleaner with scrubbing bubbles.

By contrast, when Apple announced the iPhone the geek world went nuts so fast you'd think that every one sold was going to include a free date with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. This excitement came despite the fact that the iPhone costs more than other phones, doesn't really do anything they don't and locks you into a single provider.

In the tech world Steve Jobs is a rock star of Jaggeresque proportions. Bill Gates is more like an American Idol contestant who makes it on the show, but gets eliminated before you really get to know him.

Fortunately, he has billions and billions of dollars with which to console himself.

Guys, face it, we're notorious for missing the subtle cues that a woman is angry; the slight flush in her cheeks, a widening of her eyes, and the unnecessarily vigorous chopping of vegetables like carrots and celery (especially when she's not actually cooking). These are the feminine equivalents of a snake's rattle or an IRS letter which makes liberal use of the words "irregularities" and "audit". A smart fellow would know that a serious storm was a-comin' and it's time to batten down the hatches for a good emotional soaking.

A smart fellow, though, wouldn't be in this kind of situation. He would have picked up on the earlier (and far more subtle) verbal cues. Women speak in subtext, but sadly they don't come with subtitles.

When people say that the romance has gone out of their marriage, they generally mean they've had children. Parenthood is a major toll booth on the expressway of romance.

Before children married life was one long date with art-house films, concerts and exotic restaurants. After delivery it turned into Disney movies, recitals and restaurants with play areas and meals which featured a free toy. Our married friends tried to warn us, by telling frightening stories whenever we ran into them in public.

"You won't believe what happened last week," they'd say. "We were picking up burgers on the way home from ... excuse me ... Jeffrey, we don't eat gum we found on the floor. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the burger palace and anyway ... sorry ... Cindy Mr. Bear does NOT want a bath in the fountain. No he doesn't want to dive for coins either. Give him here this minute. If you can't take care of ... JEFFREY! Put your pants back on!"

I just finished reading Stephen King's horror novel Cell. It's a frightening tale of the near future in which a mysterious pulse turns cell phone users into mindless zombies. At the terrifying climax the zombies herd the heroes into an abandoned building and then ...

WARNING: The following description contains concepts and images dangerous to anyone with a heart condition, a weak stomach, an aversion to mathematics, is pregnant or may become pregnant or anyone who is related to someone who might possibly suffer from these ailments.

At the terrifying climax, the zombies herd the heroes into an abandoned building and force them to make sense of a cell phone bill! Shared minutes? Are those the times someone felt particularly close to their phone? Rollover minutes? Something for cell-owning dogs, perhaps? In network? Out of network? Regular? Roaming?

I didn't play with many fashion dolls as a little girl. I had the mandatory Barbie as specified in the Federal Mattel Act of 1959, but the way she dressed she really didn't count as a fashion doll.

My Barbie lived in a little blue steamer trunk along with her collection of clothes. No lace and frills for her, my Barbie's clothes were handmade by my Granny. The selection was more crochet than couture. Instead of a ball gown, my doll was decked out in a granny-square dress -- Homespun Barbie.

"Why is my curfew nine o'clock?" my eighteen-year-old son asked. "On a weekend. In the summer."

"Because I need my sleep," I answered.

When my kids are out at night, I'm restless and sleepless until they come home. By this point in my life I had expected I'd be sleeping like a baby.

Of course, anyone who has ever had their own personal infant recognizes that in terms of accuracy, this phrase ranks right up there with your call is very important to us, we appreciate your honest feedback, and my goal as mayor is to listen to the people.

On the other hand, if the phrase "sleep like a baby" was intended to mean briefly and infrequently, it might be more accurate. Babies are born with no consideration for normal human schedules. In this regard, they're a lot like telemarketers.

I always believed in long engagements. Until I had an actual, living, breathing fiancee of my own. At that point if it had been possible, the wedding would have taken place before the proposal. I wanted to seal the deal before she discovered my failings and inadequacies.

You guys know exactly which deficiency I'm talking about. That's right, I can't keep track of anything.

Our first apartment as newlyweds was so small our phone number only had five digits. We had to buy our furniture from the Mattel Barbie Dreamhouse (tm) collection. The oven (a masterpiece of industrial miniaturization) couldn't actually accommodate a regular sized cookie sheet or cake pan. All of our desserts looked like petit-fours and we had Cornish Game Hens instead of roast chickens.

We inhabited something with less actual living space than most recreational vehicles. It should have been impossible for me to lose track of anything, let alone an entire pair of pants.

I've been thrust back into the world of dating. So has my wife. Being happily married we didn't expect to have to deal with the pressures of institutionalized romance again. What we hadn't counted on was being involved in our children's dates.

It turns out that "dating" has gotten a lot more complicated in the more than two decades since we were actively in the game. What used to be a fairly simple and straight-forward transaction -- the exchange of dinner and the cost of a movie ticket for some pleasant company and the possibility of a goodnight kiss -- has become a negotiation as complex as any brokered by Donald Trump. Unwritten rules abound and whenever our sons talk about it my wife and I glaze over like octogenarians forced to watch Hip Hop videos.

My children have always believed in magic. When they were little they were big fans of the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Now it's the Toilet Paper Fairy, the Laundry Bunny and ... well ... Santa still makes the top three so long as he comes through with the goods.

If you've avoided a reproductive dip in the gene pool, you've probably never heard of the Toilet Paper Fairy. Late at night, when the house is quiet and dark, the Toilet Paper Fairy emerges from under the stairs and checks the thickness of each installed roll. Deficient rolls are replaced from the Strategic Toilet Paper Reserves which are stashed in an undisclosed location known only to the Toilet Paper Fairy and Vice President Cheney.

At least that's what my children think.

My son was involved in an accident last week. Yes, he was driving. No, he doesn't have a license. Yes, he was on a cell phone at the time. No, he's not in trouble. The other driver was on a cell phone, too. The only damage was a couple of broken eggs. They were both driving shopping carts at the time.

When people get behind the handle of a shopping cart, they forget anything they know about the rules of the road. The aisles of your local MegaFood store resemble rush hour on the LA freeway system during a major earthquake.

When my wife said it was time to clean the fridge, I considered running away to join the circus as the new assistant for Lefty the Lion Tamer, or maybe the French Foreign Legion, or something really extreme like the Boy Scouts.

It's not the contents of the fridge which terrify me. Sure, the fuzz on the cheese may be old enough to vote in some states and has achieved the low level of sentience normally associated with Political Strategists and the guy who designed the shrink-wrap packing on CDs. There's also the vast array of unidentifiable foodstuffs which have been carefully preserved in individual containers. The margarine tub is particularly problematic because we're no longer certain if it contains non-dairy spread or applesauce.

None of that is as terrifying as the thought of cleaning the outside of the fridge.

Like a lot of small towns in America, my little village of Nowell-by-the-Sea was a poorly planned accident. The only difference is that the buildings average about eight inches in height.

The accident started when my wife sent me to a department store in November and I happened to find that they had their Christmas decorations marked half off. (They wanted to clear the stuff out to make room for the Valentine's candy.)

On the display of tiny ceramic buildings, electric bulbs glowed warmly through plastic windows, casting light across the cotton-wool snow. Miniature plaster people stood in their winter best admiring a spiky Christmas tree festooned with over-sized gold garland. My breath caught in my throat and the guy part of my brain said, "This is just like being mayor of your very own town."

That was completely untrue, of course, but when I got home I showed my wife the beginnings of a brand new holiday tradition.

Modern man has trouble keeping up with technology. Then again, modern man gets lost easily. For that matter ancient man, medieval man, renaissance man, industrial man -- and pretty men throughout all of history -- got lost easily.

Getting lost is a guy's right -- a privilege of manhood. Of course, no guy will ever actually admit to being lost. Let's say that some guy sets out for a drive from New York to Boston and winds up in Hawaii. If anyone challenges him, he'll say, "It was faster this way. We avoided the traffic on the 405."

Marriage is about passion. Loving passionately, living passionately, arguing passionately ... about the most trivial matters imaginable.

Really.

Anybody whose marriage has outlasted the honeymoon can tell you that no lawyers pleading a case before the supreme court ever argued more energetically than a couple trying to settle the question of who controls the TV remote.

I realized the other day that I'm nuts. This revelation hit me just after I pulled the fifth dead pen from the cup on my desk, scratched futilely at the page with it, and then returned it to the cup. Did I expect it to heal? Was the passing of this ballpoint so traumatic that I had to go into denial? Was I so phenomenally lazy that I couldn't even get up to toss the thing into the trash?

Lazy or crazy? Given the options, I'll plead insanity.

My beloved and I recently celebrated our twenty-first wedding anniversary. After putting up with me for more than two decades I figured she deserved something special. I checked with the Nobel people to see if they had a category for endurance in a marriage. No luck.

So an award was out. I checked the web to find the traditional gifts for people whose marriage is of legal drinking age. Any guesses? Elegant dinnerware? Fine fabrics? Sweet foods? Nope. Nickel, brass and iolite.

Which raises an important question; what the heck is iolite?

Turns out it's a shiny purple rock that's part iron, part aluminum and all cheap. It is officially described as resembling quartz with "a greasy or vitreous luster". Makes you want to run right out and get a big ol' iolite necklace for your sweetheart, right?

I still wonder from time to time; what if I had become an international super-spy?

Well, for one thing, it's a good bet I'd drive something other than a mini-van. Spies get cool sports cars with exciting gadgets, leather upholstery and an exotic blond in the passenger seat. Dads get mini-vans with cup-holders, ground-up cheerios in the upholstery and ... well, it's best if we stop this comparison before getting to the passenger seat.

That's not to say that the modern dad lacks for automotive high-tech. Instead of knock-out gas to keep the passengers quiet, Dads get in-car DVD players that perform much the same function.

Ejector seats? No. Car seats which perform the opposite function. If James Bond had ever strapped Odd Job into a car seat, Odd Job would be there to this day. For escape-proof, nothing beats the good-old BabyCo SnugglyKins Twelve-Point Passive Restraint System (tm).

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If you like this small sample and want to hear the rest of the essay (or others like it),please visit the Short Cummings Audio website at www.shortcummingsaudio.com.