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....