As loyal, red-blooded Americans, it's our civic duty to be preoccupied with money. How to get it, how to save it, how to keep the federal government from taking all of it, and how to justify our spending so much of it on lame Hollywood sequels. Or more correctly, on the buckets of popcorn we eat while watching them, a product which, incidentally, has the highest profit margin this side of an Iraqi reconstruction contract.

That's why it's important to know that the Treasury Department (motto: "Spend as many as you like, we'll print more.") is messing with the look of our money again. They're starting with the $20 note, taking Andrew Jackson out of his oval border and making him larger so people realize it's not country singer Alan Jackson, adding a flock of yellow number 20s flying around the White House on the back like so many jaundiced seagulls, and changing the background color of the front so it fades from pastel green to peach to blue. Martha Stewart's going to love it. Not that there was any doubt she loved money before.

The last changes they made to our money were major. Starting in 1996 they redesigned the paper money, transforming its 67-year-old staid look into something that wouldn't be out of place in a Monopoly set. Apparently the problem was technology -- the old bills were getting too easy to counterfeit. One day someone in the Treasury Department woke up and realized that anyone who had watched Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and had a broken spatula, a piece from a Lego set, some kite string, and a friend who was a government engraver could duplicate one in minutes. This had to be stopped.

They incorporated a number of security changes, all of which they're keeping in the new bills. First, there's the microprinting, which means there are be lots of teeny-tiny words buried in Jackson's shirt collar and the border like a cheap Hirschfeld imitation. What Nina has to do with Andrew Jackson is beyond me, but at least it will give us something fun to do -- "Find the hidden words on the new $20 bill and win big prizes!" -- while standing in line at the bank waiting to be charged for not using the ATM.

Then there's the thread which is embedded in the paper to the right of the portrait. When you hold the bill up to a bright light the words "USA TWENTY" and a flag appear on the thread; when held under an ultraviolet light the thread glows green. This is how you can tell the denomination of the bill -- the thread on the hundred glows red. Well, that and those big numbers printed in the corners.

This is part of the government's plan to not only help the struggling black light industry, a group which still has warehouses full of old Jimi Hendrix posters they want to get rid of, but also to take kids off the street and into their bedroom where they can check out the new bills under a black light while saying "Awesome!" and "Phat!" and "I can't remember, did I lift this fifty from Mom or Dad?" In case that's not enough to keep them so busy they won't have time to wonder whether SpongeBob SquarePants' name is a malapropism or a spoonerism, there's the color-shifting ink on the number in the lower right-hand corner which looks copper when you see it straight on, but from an angle appears green. How fun! Mood money.

The new $20 notes will start circulating in November, followed by similar changes in the other bills. All except the $1 and $2 notes. They won't be changing, partly because they're not worth counterfeiting, but mostly because the government is talking about eliminating the dollar bill completely and replacing it with a coin. They say this simple move would save $100 million over the first five years. That's because it costs 3.7 cents to print a $1 bill that lasts for 18 months, while a coin, on the other hand, would cost 8 cents and last 30 years.

The problem is, 85 percent of people polled say they prefer paper. But in these days of tight federal budgets, does it make sense to keep it? Sure, as long as they get sponsorship. Think about it. Companies already pay to have their name plastered on everything from race cars to sports arenas to the Olympics, so why not put ads on money? You don't think the public would go for it? Think again. Another poll found that 35 percent of Americans favor placing ads on the dollar bill if it will help cut the deficit or lower taxes. Hey, even I couldn't make that one up.

So don't be surprised if one day you'll be able to walk into your favorite store and pay for your purchase with Coke ones, FedEx fives, and a Got Milk? ten. Of course you could also whip out your broken spatula, that piece from a Lego set, and some kite string and print your own. Just don't forget that's Andrew, not Alan, on the twenty.

More Mad Dog can be found online at: MadDogProductions.com. His compilation of humorous travel columns, "If It's Such a Small World Then Why Have I Been Sitting on This Airplane For Twelve Hours?" is available from Xlibris Corporation.

Raising money is never easy. School groups hold bake sales. Girl Scouts peddle cookies. Heck, even President Bush has to go to Congress and beg for money, much as you and I when we go to the boss and stammer our way through what we hope is a convincing argument about why we're worth more money, why it's the company's moral obligation to make sure our wardrobe is refreshed quarterly, and why deficit spending works for the government but not for us. Hey, at least we don't have to talk anyone into giving us a $74 billion raise so we can afford a new war.

Churches have it much easier. Passing the collection plate is a time-honored tradition, which is a good thing since it's much classier than having someone stand in the center of the aisle with a cardboard sign that says: "Will pray for food." There are teachings to back up this practice. The Bible, Torah, and Quran all encourage tithing, which means you're supposed to give between two and ten percent of what you earn to the church, the exact amount depending on who you ask, how religious you want them to think you are, and whether you base your calculations on your actual income or the amount you report to the IRS.

They're trying to bring this practice into the 21st century. For several years now a company called ParishPay has been setting up automatic tithing withdrawals for churches around the country. Now there's a new wrinkle -- they're accepting credit card payments. For a small fee -- hey, you didn't think they were doing this out of the goodness of their heart, did you? -- they transfer a preset amount of money each week. This is a great way to eliminate the guilt you feel when you don't wake up on time to make it to church, do make it but -- whoops! -- forgot your wallet, or go on vacation and manage to cram six bathing suits, your Best of Danielle Steel boxed set, and those sandals that embarrass everyone who gets within twenty feet of you in your bags but just don't have room for that self-addressed stamped envelope with your house of worship's name on it.

Meanwhile, a church in Norrfjaerden, Sweden (motto: "Don't worry, we can't pronounce it either.") has installed a credit card reader so worshippers can easily and conveniently Swipe-n-Pray®. Or is that Swipe-n-Pay? Smart parishioners are whipping out their cards and racking up frequent flier miles for their donations. Hey, why not upgrade your seat while you upgrade your soul?

Church officials say they installed it because many of the young church-goers don't carry cash, which is a distinct problem since this small village doesn't have an automatic teller machine, meaning people can't stop on the way to church and get cash even if they want to. A temple in southern India had a similar problem yet took a different approach to solving it -- they had an ATM installed. That's right, the Sri Venkateswara temple now accepts donations at an on-site automatic teller machine. It's too soon to know how popular this will be, but considering that as many as 50,000 worshippers a day leave cash and gold at the temple, it will definitely help lighten their pilgrimage load. Now they can leave their cash at home and bring their gold card to the temple. This arrangement with the bank also allows the temple to accept donations online at their web site. One-click karma boosts are long overdue.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, nuns at St. Michael's Elementary School have taken a different approach to raising money -- they've started going to the race track. After eliminating bingo, bake sales, and a Sister Mary Margaret kissing booth at the St. Patrick's Day Fair as old news fundraisers, they convinced 100 supporters to kick in $25 each so the nuns could bet on the horses. It's true. The nuns took the money to the race track and bought a Pick Six ticket, selecting the horses they thought would win in each of six races. They went back to the school and spent the morning praying that Sister Mary Margaret wouldn't be insulted because they didn't like her kissing booth idea. Just kidding. Actually she was relieved. What they really did was pray, and they must have done a bang-up job because they ended up winning nearly $200,000 which they promptly blew in Las Vegas. Just kidding again. Actually they're splitting the winnings, with $85,000 going to the school so students can have new desks and the same amount going to those foresighted people who supported the donation drive. The remainder of the money, of course, went to the government for taxes. You can't say the school isn't doing its part to help lower the federal deficit.

This raises an interesting possibility. If every taxpayer in the United States kicked in $25 and we gave it all to the nuns at St. Michael's Elementary School so they could go to the racetrack, if their luck (and divine guidance) held out we'd each get $850 back on our investment. And we could give the government the other $108 billion. Plus its tax share of our winnings, of course. That would go a long way towards balancing the federal budget. And face it, it's a lot easier than holding bake sales and selling Girl Scout cookies.

More Mad Dog can be found online at: MadDogProductions.com. His compilation of humorous travel columns, "If It's Such a Small World Then Why Have I Been Sitting on This Airplane For Twelve Hours?" is available from Xlibris Corporation.

It's easy to tell that it's back to school time -- everything's shorter. The days are shorter, parents' tempers are shorter, and the line at the movie theater to see all those lame recycled sequels is so short you can sit in any seat you want and have plenty of room to stash that Tub-O-Popcorn, 55-gallon drum of Coke, and seven-pound box of Milk Duds you just shelled out $24.95 for.

This means it's time to sit down and have a talk with the kids about the importance of an education, be they your kids, your sibling's, or the ones that live next door who spent most of the summer tied up and gagged in your tool shed so you could have some peace and quiet.

Kids, you see, need guidance. They need advice. Actually they need it like a hole in the head, but since they're smaller than we are, they're going to get it. After all, we heard it, and since we were taught that it's better to give than to receive, we're going to give it to them whether they like it or not. And there's no question which category it falls in.

In case you don't feel comfortable having this discussion, or just can't find a slot between Weakest Link, Fear Factor, and Blind Date to do it, cut out the rest of this column and hand it to your target kid. After they stop looking at you with a blank stare because they forgot what they're supposed to do with paper that has words printed on it, they'll ask you to email it to their cell phone. Whatever you do, don't ask them how that's done. You're supposed to be the one in charge here. It's bad enough they have to reset the clock on the VCR every time the power goes out, don't remind them that you can't remember how to turn on the computer.

OKAY KIDS, START PRETENDING TO READ HERE!

School is important. One day you'll look back on it fondly as having been the best years of your life, though chances are that epiphany will occur during group therapy while you're buzzed on Prozac. Even though the thought will pass, you should still make the most of these years.

First, get plenty of sleep and eat a good breakfast so you're alert and can pay attention in class. After all, you never know when it will pay off. California eighth-grader Daniel Barnes memorized a telephone number that was on his state-required reading comprehension test and dialed it when he got home, discovering that it was an offer for phone sex. Now that's an education.

Next, study hard and stay in school. Remember, the alternative is working, and trust me, that's no fun. If you do well in school you can go to college, then graduate school, postponing your having to get a job for a long, long time.

Whatever you do, don't let yourself be channeled into a career just because your parents think it's a good idea. Do what's right for you. Parents naturally steer their kids towards careers like law, medicine, and investment banking. That's because they like the idea of getting free legal advice, free medical care, and a new house because you plundered yet another company by buying it and dismantling it in the name of progress. And who can blame them? Of course they don't want to hear that your goal in life is to be a Doritos taste tester, the winner of next year's Nathan's hot dog eating contest, or the unofficial sixth member of 'N Sync, so lie if you have to. Remember, it's for their own good. And yours.

Set your sights high. Think outside the box. And no, that doesn't mean using your brain when the TV's turned off. Remember that innovation is good. The Japanese are growing square watermelons because they fit better in a refrigerator, which is a great idea. So why don't you consider creating thin, flat tomatoes which don't need to be sliced before being put on a sandwich?

Then there's the company in Syracuse, NY, Transgenic Pets, which is developing a non-allergenic cat. This could lead you to work on creating a dog that doesn't have to be walked. They could be disposable--once they fill up you just toss 'em away and get another.

Paint-by-numbers is another good inspiration. They're the paintings from the '50s which allowed anyone to create ugly art by not coloring neatly between the lines, something we supposedly get past by second grade. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History (motto: "Boy, are we desperate for exhibits") is displaying the paintings in the name of culture. This is pretty cool. And you would be too if you came up with variants like movies-by-number, TV-by-number, and pop music-by-number. Okay, maybe this is a bad example, plenty of people are already doing this.

Like it or not, your career is an important consideration since as an American you'll be working longer hours than anyone else in the world. That's right, we edged out the Japanese by putting in an average of 1,966 hours per year. To put this in perspective, that's 37.8 hours per week, 7.6 hours per day, and an awful lot of Web surfing on company time.

Be careful though. Remember that your career isn't the most important thing in life. According to a survey by Columbia University and the National Institutes of Health, most Americans say sexual satisfaction is more important than job satisfaction. Thus, you might want to sit down and think about which is more important to you so you know where to focus your energies.

Either way, remember that practice makes perfect, doing your best is the goal, and homework is more fun if you decide sex is the most important thing. But whatever you do, don't tell your parents you heard this from me. I need to keep my job. There are still a lot of Web sites I haven't checked out yet.

More Mad Dog can be found online at: www.maddogproductions.com. His compilation of humorous travel columns, "If It's Such a Small World Then Why Have I Been Sitting on This Airplane For Twelve Hours?" is available from Xlibris Corporation. Email: md@maddogproductions.com.

Now that Steven Spielberg's movie A.I. is out, people everywhere are asking themselves, "Don't we have better things to do with eight bucks than buy a movie ticket, then blow another twelve on popcorn, soda, and NoDoz so we can stay awake and enjoy ourselves?" They're also asking about the possibility of artificial intelligence, which is what A.I. stands for. Yes, in the great tradition of E.T., ER, and SeaQuest DSV, Spielberg has once again opted for initials. You'd think with his budget he could afford to buy a few more vowels from Pat Sajak.

The movie is about a robot that's so intelligent it can feel emotions. And no, it's not the Al Gore story. This robot is a boy model, one that luckily doesn't speak with an Austrian accent as other movie robots have been known to do. He lives, learns, and has his heart broken when he realizes he can never fit in because no one else uses WD-40 as deodorant. Just kidding. Actually Al Gore does.

The very idea that a machine could think and feel is fascinating. Imagine an elevator smart enough to not just tell you what's on the floor you're about to stop at, but to ask, "Are you sure you want to go through with this divorce? You seem a bit conflicted about it. Do you still have issues? Maybe you should see Dr. Shaken in suite 422 instead of that second-rate lawyer you have an appointment with. Hey, don't look at me like that. My cousin keeps that shyster's schedule and tells me everything."

Or how about a computer that can sense when you're about to boil over because Windows is crashing for the 47th time today so it immediately launches an anger management program, reminding you that every time you lose your temper it costs money because you have to buy a new monitor. Or golf club. Or both if you used the golf club on the monitor. Hey, a machine with a sense of self-preservation would be a wonderful thing. For the machine, anyway.

The concept of artificial intelligence is nothing new. HAL, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, had lots of it. The robot on Lost in Space had A.I. too, though not nearly as much. Actually he was about a half-step above Lassie. While Lassie would run and get help when Jeff found himself stuck in the bottom of an abandoned well because he thought it would be a cool place to hide and look up the little girl's skirts as they walked by, that was completely reactive. The robot, being an enlightened model, was pro-active. He could spot trouble before it happened, shouting out, "The door is ajar, Will Robinson! The door is ajar!" Yes, unlike the child actors he worked with, the robot went on to have a career after the show was cancelled, landing a lucrative contract making voice recordings for GM cars.

Of course neither of them felt emotion, as is obvious if you listen to HAL, who if he had half the brains the movie wants you to think he does would sue Ben Stein for stealing both his voice and personality. But before a machine can have emotion it needs intelligence, yet how can they have intelligence when people can't even agree on what that is?

Basically, there are three types of intelligence: the kind measured by an IQ test, emotional intelligence, and that which you demonstrate by not getting into discussions about this in the first place. Albert Einstein was definitely intelligent. Bill Clinton was intelligent. Not smart, but intelligent. Marilyn vos Savant on the other hand, who claims to have the world's highest IQ, isn't as intelligent as she'd like you to believe, otherwise she'd be doing something a little more constructive than solving goofy brain teasers in Parade every Sunday.

Then there's artificial intelligence. While it doesn't yet exist in machines, it does in humans. Take President Bush. His intelligence is definitely artificial. After all, it comes from an outside source -- Dick Cheney. And how about the brain trust at the Greater North Dakota Association (motto: "Greater than what?") which wants to change the state's name to Dakota. They figure that if Cher, Britney, Madonna, and Barbie's boyfriend Ken can all go by one name then their state should too. If they get their way and the trend continues, before you know it South Dakota will be known as South, Wyoming will become Why?, and New Mexico will change its name to Mexico, which will really confuse the ten percent of high school students who don't already think it's a foreign country.

You know artificial intelligence is a bona fide trend when dictionaries recognize it. The new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (motto: "So many words; so few times to use most of them without sounding like you have a stick up your butt.") went ahead and added A.I.'s secret password. That's right, "doh!" is now a real word. (NOTE TO SELF: Remember this for the next Scrabble game.) They define it as "expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned or that one has just said or done something foolish." You know, like making a movie about a boy robot with emotions that sells fewer tickets in its second week of release than one about talking cats and dogs. Now that sounds like artificial intelligence.

More from Mad Dog can be found at www.maddogproductions.com.

Philadelphia has a new claim to fame -- it's been crowned the flabbiest city in the United States. So instead of conjuring up images of the Liberty Bell, American Bandstand, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and Rocky Balboa beating the crap out of a side of beef, from now on when we think of Philadelphia we're going to picture people waddling down the street stuffing cheesesteaks in their mouths and chasing it with a side order of scrapple. It's official, the City of Brotherly Love is now the City of Brotherly Love Handles.I'm not making this up, Men's Fitness magazine did. Having already run through the obvious article ideas, like "Buns of Titanium -- You Can Have The Body of the New Millennium!!" and "Pilates, Greek Philosopher or Today' s Torture?" they decided it was time to rate the 50 largest cities in the United States in categories like exercise habits, the number of junk food restaurants, smoking, and how many people can see their feet while standing up. Philadelphia won. Or lost, depending on how you look at it. I'd make a toast to their being Number One but I'm afraid some Philadelphian would grab it out of my hands and eat it.Some of the reasons behind this honor is that the city ranks number one in pizza parlors, only 16 percent of the people exercise on a given day, and it turns out a whopping 30 percent of them are overweight. On the other end of the tipped-over scale are San Diego, Minneapolis, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, which are the most fit cities in the country. People there eat better, work out more, smoke less, drink less, and hence are more miserable for more years of their longer life. Nice choice, huh?Obviously food consumption, or should I say overconsumption, plays a big part in Philadelphia's being Blimp City. This isn't surprising since it's the home of the cheesesteak, a huge pile of thinly sliced steak which is fried in oil, piled on a sub roll, smothered in cheese and onions, and often slathered with mayonnaise. Tofu and sprouts this isn't. These suckers have 1,320 calories (half a man's recommended daily intake), 85 grams of fat (more than you should consume in a day), 76 grams of protein (the equivalent of a cow or two), and taste great. I was in Philadelphia a few days ago and I have to admit I made a special trip to Jim's on South Street so I could get one. But this was before Men's Fitness released their Rotund Report. When it did, which was the next day, I went on a very strict diet of rice cakes and bulimia. Just kidding. Actually I'm not bulimic. I threw up because the rice cakes tasted like, well, rice cakes.Another thing that contributes to Philly Phatness is that they serve monumental food portions everywhere. Go into any diner and order a sandwich and you'll get enough food for four. Get a blue plate special and you'll go through more courses than a 5th year undergrad. And the Cokes? A small one comes in a 55-gallon drum. If they're not careful they're going to have to change the state motto to "Pennsylvania, what a waist!"This would be an improvement, especially if they'd use it on their license plates. For years they've been using the motto "The Keystone State" because they enjoy the baffled look on our faces when we try to figure out what the hell they're talking about. They're certainly not the only ones with esoteric license plate slogans. Utah is "The Beehive State" and I've never seen a bee, better yet a hive, there. Idaho is "The Gem State" and they're known for potatoes, not diamonds. And what to make of South Dakota, which claims to have "Great faces, great places" at the same time South Carolina has "Smiling faces, beautiful places"? Maybe Pennsylvania needs to join this license plate competition and go for "Who cares about faces when our butts are so damned big?"But they didn't. No, in their infinite wisdom they scrapped "The Keystone State" and started issuing license plates with their web site address: WWW.STATE.PA.US. I guess WWW.DUMB_SLOGAN.COM was already taken. Why they did this is a mystery, much like who makes the crop circles and how it is Jon Stewart keeps getting new television shows. Gone are the days of driving down the highway wondering what Pennsylvania's web site address is. Of course, on the plus side it will give new life to Spot-The-License-Plate games, meaning children will have more to do on long car trips than puke, kick each other, scream every five minutes because they have to go to the bathroom, and generally be an 8-hour testimonial for birth control.If Philadelphia was smart they'd capitalize on their new title and use it as a tourist draw. They could make a fortune selling wide angle lenses to visitors who want to take their photographs. They could sponsor the Cheesesteak Bowl for the college football teams with the biggest defensive lines. And they could convince Jose Manuel Barros or Porrino, Spain, who was named the fattest mayor in the world by the Guinness Book of Records, to move there and run for office. Besides, don't you think it would be a nice touch to be driving along I-95 and see a sign welcoming me to the city that says: "Philadelphia. It's worth the weight"? I do.

The debate over the Mozart Effect is in full blast. For those of you who have been too busy calling Ticketmaster to see when seats for Allie McBeal On Ice go on sale to be paying attention, the Mozart Effect isn't the deep slumber you fall into at a classical concert, it's the idea that young children can grow smarter by listening to Amadeus' symphonies.It all started a couple of years ago when a group of scientists, realizing that one day I'd need something to write about, decided to see if they could find a correlation between listening to Mozart and the ability to keep government grant money flowing into their personal bank accounts. They took a bunch of college students and subjected them -- I mean, had them listen -- to classical music. When they woke up, the students were subjected to a battery of tests. It turned out that the students' performance improved on spatial imagery tasks -- which sounds suspiciously like daydreaming to me -- for an impressive "few minutes."This being the Age of Unchecked Extrapolation, that was all parents across the country needed to hear. They immediately sat their children down and made them listen to symphonies. The kids, wanting to know why they were being punished, had to be fooled, so they were told they were listening to a new form of Wolfgangsta rap by DJ I'm A Deuce Most-Art. Word!Pregnant mothers, being the impatient things they are, didn't want to wait until the kids were born so they put speakers against their stomachs in the hopes that the unborn fetuses would grow smart at the same time they were growing fingers. Fathers, not wanting to be left out, strapped headphones to their testicles so they could boost their sperm's IQ. Yes, the passengers on the Titanic were right when they said: "It's never too soon to go overboard."The idea of keeping kids quiet while making them smarter sounded so good that the states of Georgia and Tennessee gave newborn parents a copy of the CD "Hooked on Subsidies". In Florida they passed a law that toddlers in state-run schools have to listen to classical music every day. We're determined to raise a generation of smart, cultured kids if it kills us.The problem is there may not be a Mozart Effect after all. So far no one has been able to prove that it works. And no scientist has been able to reproduce the original results, which were, you remember, with college students not children.The idea that music has an effect on us is nothing new. Ancient civilizations knew it. Parents who tried to ban early rock n' roll knew it. Hell, Muzak has known about it for years, which is why they keep filling our heads with melodies designed to calm, soothe, and numb. And it works. Face it, there's nothing like sitting in the dentist's chair listening to 101 Strings do their version of White Zombie's "More Human Than Human" to make the pain from a root canal seem trivial.Convenience stores have played Beethoven in the parking lot to keep gangs from hanging out. In Minneapolis they broadcast classical music to keep kids off the streets at night. Even the U.S. Army used music as a weapon when they tried to drive Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican Embassy in Panama City by blasting "Beat It", "You're No Good", "Nowhere to Run", and "I Fought the Law" 24-hours a day. True, it didn't work, but that's only because they played the wrong music. They should have been playing Tina Turner.This worked like a charm at an airport in Gloucestershire (pronounced: Worchestershire), England. For years they broadcast recordings of avian distress calls trying to keep the birds off the runways. Birds, you see, are a big problem at airports because they get sucked into jet engines during takeoff and landing. Sure they're spit out the back where they become your in-flight meal, but face it, not everyone wants to eat poultry when they fly.Usually birds stay away when they hear distress calls, but like those people in horror movies who venture into the dark basement even though a booming, ominous voice tells them to "GET OUT!" (not to mention everyone in the theater), sometimes birds do the opposite of what you'd expect. As proof, when airport officials started playing Tina Turner over the P.A. -- voila! -- the birds flew off and stayed away.I don't know why the birds dislike Tina Turner so much -- or who even thought of using her when Michael Bolton, Hansen, and Yoko Ono CDs are available -- but someone should tell the authorities in Merced, California about this. They've been desperately trying to get rid of 200 turkey vultures which took up residence there. Contrary to what you're thinking, turkey vultures aren't the local slang for lawyers. That would not only be a cheap shot but redundant.Instead of music or distress calls, officials in Merced have been using machines which make loud noises, causing the birds to fly off and throw up. It's true. Apparently turkey vultures are chickens and puke when they're scared. This makes for a real mess which could be avoided if they'd start playing Tina Turner records.If this works for birds maybe it will work for mice too. In Orange County, Florida mice have recently invaded some 10,000 homes. It's gotten so bad that Governor Jeb "I'm the smart brother" Bush pledged $200,000 in state funds to help battle the rodents. That should do the trick since it's more than enough to buy a copy of Tina Turner's Greatest Hits CD for every infested homeowner. In fact, if Florida officials are smart shoppers they'll wait for the CDs to go on sale and have enough left over to pick up some Mozart for the kids.But let's hope no one makes a mistake and plays the wrong CD for the wrong crowd. The last thing we need in this world is more kids flying the coop and smarter mice running around the house.

The new fall TV season has begun and I couldn't be much more excited. Okay, maybe a little. But that's only because it promises to be a pleasant change from the stupor brought on by summer reruns, the same four episodes of Seinfeld rotating in a continuous loop 24-hours a day on three channels, and my new nightly ritual of turning the sound down during "Change of Heart" so I can pretend to be Chris Jagger and say "Will they stay together? Or will they have a change of heart?" along with him. Now, thanks to Must See TV -- hell, if it's that imperative it has to be good! -- there's a glimmer of hope on the network horizon.Yeah, right.First, an admission: I haven't seen any of the new shows yet. Of course I'm not sure I saw more than one or two of last year's crop either. It's not as if the networks send me advance copies to screen, which is really a shame since I could use the free videocassettes to tape something I'd really like to see, like the Spice Network's gay S&M miniseries, "Star Whores: The Fan Dom Men's Ass."At this point I don't even feel a need to see the new shows. Not after being bombarded with newspapers and magazines featuring articles about the new fall TV season, each one written by a writer who was wined, dined, and entertained by the very people he or she would be writing about. It's hard to imagine anything much sadder than working hard to get a degree in journalism and winding up a TV critic. Except maybe to be the head of network programming when this year's ratings come in.It got so bad this past week that the new television lineup got more column inches of print than the presidential campaign, hurricane Floyd, or the rampage in East Timor. And as usual, most of it has been trumpeting how the networks are stretching the boundaries and creating groundbreaking, iconoclastic TV. The San Francisco Chronicle, for one, calls it a season that "veers audaciously from the old 'honey, I'm home' conventions." If you believe that you'll believe there will be a Ru Paul, Jr.This year's crop of new shows is so groundbreaking that three of them are spin-offs of existing series, two are rip-offs of long-running English TV programs, and one is based on a comic book. Now that's original thinking. Four of the new shows brag that they "break the fourth wall", which is when the characters speak directly into the camera. Pretty revolutionary stuff here. At least it was when George Burns did it in 1950.Probably the closest thing they have to boundary-stretching involves sex, as in "How nasty can we get and still keep our advertisers?" As you may have figured out, advertisers are more important to the networks than viewers since they're the ones who pay the bills. Viewers are but a major inconvenience; the only reason they consider us at all is because the more of us they get the more they can charge the advertisers. If they could figure out a way to get the advertisers to pay up without having any viewers, trust me, they would.So what do we have to look forward to this season? Let's see, there's a show about a single father, which is pretty groundbreaking stuff. There's also one about a single father with a daughter, one about a father who becomes single because he's gay, another where the teenagers are aliens, one with a dog that talks in subtitles and, if all that's not groundbreaking enough for you, there's "Now and Again", in which an insurance agent is patched up after falling under a subway train so he can become a scientifically engineered government agent. Think of it as the "Six Million Dollar Man" adjusted for inflation.There are at least six shows about high school kids coping with adolescence, four about post-high school kids coping with post-adolescence, two about dead people coming back to life (not including "Stark Raving Mad", in which Patrick "Doogie Howser" Harris tries to bring his career back to life), and one about Hollywood's favorite subject: itself. But all is not lost. At least we'll have "WWF Smackdown", a two-hour weekly primetime World Wrestling Federation show on UPN, which means we still have a fighting chance of seeing some real acting this season. The question begs: Do we really need two new shows about a guy who's surrounded by a household full of women? Is anyone really interested in watching a second show about vampires? And is it absolutely necessary that they re-edit old "Ally McBeal" episodes down to 30 minutes so Fox can claim a tax credit for recycling? (Tell you what. If they put the recycled symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the screen instead of the Fox logo I'll take all this back and actually watch it. After all, with luck half the length means half the obnoxious, whiney, nattering neuroses.)Okay, so maybe I'm not real excited by the new TV season, I'm sure there are plenty of people who are. For one, the network executives whose jobs are on the line care a lot. So do the companies that spend gobs of money advertising in the hopes that someone's bored enough to tune in. But most of all, there are those who really stand to profit from the new TV season: cable channels like TVLand which feature good old reruns, spouses who may see their mate turn off the TV and pay more attention to them, and of course, book stores.Oh yeah, and me too. After all, if there was a good batch of fall shows to watch I would have had to spend a lot more time thinking of something to write this week and might have missed the previews for "Shasta McNasty", a show about white rappers rooming together in Venice Beach. Excuse me while go to the bookstore.

It's not easy eating a healthy diet. We spend our lives on the go, work long hours, try to cram in a semblance of a social life, and one day wake up to realize we're so busy we have to schedule time to write things in our dayplanner. So when dinnertime rolls around, is it any wonder we don't have the energy to make sure we eat properly? Especially after we just spent 45 minutes trying to decide whether to order in Chinese, pizza, or just reheat that half a burrito we found under the front seat of the car. So if we, as role models for the youth of this country -- a thought even scarier than Dan Qualye running for president -- can't eat well, how can we expect kids to? That's why it should come as no shock to hear that teenagers are getting over 30 percent of their vegetable intake from potato chips and french fries. This bright bit of nutritional information came to light in a report given at a conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, which is a federally funded group of doctors and researchers who sit around all day dreaming up ridiculous surveys, hoping one will be good enough to make it on the Fox network's new show, "America's Funniest Waste of Money."So who's to blame for the future of our country thinking three servings of Pringles and Ore-Ida are a minimum daily requirement? I think we can safely say it's a failure of our educational system, as is everything that isn't the fault of parents, Sadaam Hussein, Ken Starr, Hollywood, the gun manufacturers, the phase of the moon, or El Nino. After all, the schools are supposed to be teaching children about the food pyramid, aren't they?The food pyramid, for those of you who were too busy sucking the creme out of the middle of your Twinkies to pay attention in class, is the Four Food Groups of the New Millennium. Someone, probably the same people who decided it would be a brilliant idea to remake the Avengers, Leave It To Beaver and Lost in Space, decided to update the original four food groups and turn it into a New Age Food Pyramid. Thus, it turns out we're now supposed to be eating daily portions of meat, poultry, and fish; fats and sweets; bread, cereal, and pasta; milk and cheese; yin and yang; and crystal vibrations (which incidentally is no relation to the stripper of the same name).The problem becomes one of definition. Even the USDA, a branch of the federal government, considers potato chips and french fries to be vegetables, and who are we to argue with the United States government? Even better, it turns out it's legit to count them as parts of two (count �em, 2!) food groups: vegetables and fat. All in all, that sounds like pretty efficient eating to me, especially in the case of the fries because, if you're like me (and god help you if you are), you dump a half bottle of ketchup on them, meaning -- hold onto your spuds, Mable -- you've just added a serving of the fruit and vegetable food group too!This announcement comes on the heels of a trend to serve healthier school lunches, something which is sorely needed since even the USDA is at a loss to classify -- or even identify -- most of the dishes served in school cafeterias. In Berkeley, California they're taking this to the extreme, which isn't surprising for a city which a couple of years ago had a temporary crisis because so many vendors were barred from selling to the city due to having dealings with countries on Berkeley's no-no list that it looked like the city would be unable to buy gas for the police cars.What they've done is to offer organic vegetarian lunches. This is a good thing, because apparently there are a lot of students in Berkeley whose nutritional beliefs and convictions are strong -- strong enough to withstand being taunted, ridiculed, and beat up daily in the cafeteria. And that's just by the young girls. Wait until the upperclass boys get a hold of them.I'm not real convinced this trend will spread far. Remember a few years ago when sports stadiums started selling tofu dogs and sushi along with the hot dogs and Cracker Jacks? That healthy food kick didn't last long. There's something about finding prizes in the middle of a California roll that's just a little too disconcerting.Obviously we like our food unhealthy. And why shouldn't we? It tastes better, it makes us feel good, and face it, it's easier. If food was supposed to be good for us Frito-Lay would be selling bags of broccoli chips and McDonald's would be super-sizing orders of turnip fries.I think it's high time junk food got the legitimacy it deserves. That's why I'm starting a campaign to get the USDA to recognize that Cheet-os are cheese, corn chips are a vegetable, and Slim Jims are meat. Think of how much easier it would be to eat a well balanced diet! But don't worry, even I wouldn't consider petitioning them to declare Wonder Bread as bread. I know my limits.

It's hard to feel really safe these days, what with crime on the streets, kids shooting up schools, and "It's Like, You Know.." getting renewed for yet another season. What's a concerned citizen to do?For one, you might be thankful you're in the United States. We have safeguards to protect us here, like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a Congress that thinks posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms will turn bad kids good, and a legal system that lets any person sue any other person for any reason they can think of no matter how trivial, silly, or whether we've already seen it on Judge Judy and even she threw it out of court.What with states suing tobacco companies, cities suing the gun manufacturers, and kids suing their parents for things they did while still a fetus (the kids, not the parents), we're about "this" close to someone suing him or herself. Probably for defamation of character over something they said while talking to themselves, which if you ask me is none of their business anyway.But at least we're safe from burning toilets, which is more than people in Japan can say. Even those who speak English. In their never-ending quest to unseat Singapore as the Place Most Sanitized For Your Convenience (1985-1998), the Japanese have adopted personal sanitation aids like germ-free pencils, ATMs that sanitize and press money before spitting it out, and the most high-tech toilets in the world.In most countries the toilet is a basic, simple bathroom fixture. You use it, you flush it, you leave. They're reliable, accomplish what they're supposed to do, and you rarely have to intervene any more than maybe a quick jiggle of the handle.They're pretty much the same thing all around the world, though each country has its own variation on the porcelain theme. Usually the difference is confined to the flusher, or what we call the handle. That's why when you're traveling you should always budget a few extra hours in your day -- boosting it to a suggested 25.2 hours in Europe and more in the less overdeveloped continents -- so you have time to examine the toilet in detail.You'll need it. After all, you could be looking for a button to push, an identical button to pull, a push handle built into the side, a chain hanging from the ceiling, or just about anything else that might be lurking around the bathroom. More often than not you'll end up flicking the lights off and on several times, running the water in the sink, cutting power to the kitchen, setting off the air raid test siren, and starting that worthless hot air hand dryer before you manage to finally get the toilet flushed. If you do.The king of the low-tech toilet still exists in many restaurants in France. The so-called "Arab" toilets (uh, oh, here come the letters) are nothing more than a tiled room with a hole in the floor. The tricky part isn't going to the bathroom -- that's odd, but easy. What is difficult is remembering to grab the pipes on the ceiling so you can do chin-ups when you flush because the water sprays across the tile floor which, coincidentally, is where your feet happen to be.The Japanese must find this absolutely barbaric. After all, for the past twenty years they've been relieving themselves in Washlets, the most sophisticated, high-tech, complicated toilets in the world. There are a lot of different models available, from the fanciest to the Travel Washlet, which is a battery-powered, refillable, portable bidet the size of a paperback book. "Is that a novel you're reading or are you just obsessive-compulsive?" is a common greeting in Japan.But the coolest toilets are in the home, fastened to the floor. They have heated seats, warm-water bidets, and other features so advanced that it will be at least another five years before anyone figures out what all the buttons do. And another ten until they find someone who really cares. These toilets, which cost between $600 and $3,500, are so popular that 40 percent of the households in Japan have at least one. The problem is that, like any technology, sometimes it acts a little too much like HAL in "2001 - A Space Odyssey." Or maybe that's Hal Linden in "Barney Miller." I get confused. Either way, it turns out that the wiring in some of the older model Washlets can get worn and, well, catch fire, giving new meaning to being in the hot seat. Before you decide that this is toilet humor, it's not. Toilet humor is Jim Carrey, Married with Children, South Park, and George W. Bush raising over $36 million for an election that's -- what? -- 16 months off. Now that's a load of crap. This, on the other hand, is a lawyer's wet dream. Well, as long as they can refrain from standing in front of the judge saying, "Butt your honor" and "I'm behind you all the way." Come to think of it, this could make a pretty funny TV show. Something like "Japan's Funniest Home Toilet Fires". Or "When Good Toilets Go Bad." It certainly couldn't be any worse than the prospect of watching "It's Like, You Know.." for yet another season.

Perspective is a wonderful thing. After all, if it wasn't for having a few years as a buffer we wouldn't be coveting a car patterned after the rattletrap VW Beetle, consider the Brady Bunch to be high comedy worthy of innumerable sequels, or have forgiven Richard Nixon his sins when he died, though the truth is that might have been done purely out of regret that we wouldn't have him to kick around anymore.This human trait is good. It means that a lot of things going on these days will look better somewhere down the road. The Viagra craze, Kosovo, and Adam Sandler come to mind. Not to mention the Y2K problem, which will look a whole lot better sometime after the first of January. That is if anything's left standing. On the other hand, there are things which all the perspective in the world won't help, like airline food, Waterworld, or caffeinated water. Hey, even perspective has it's limitations.So how long do we need to wait before we gain the proper perspective on an event? In the case of something like, say, the Bill and Monica Show, a number of factors come into play, from how soon the media finds another Big Story Worth Going Nuts Over to whether President Clinton can manage to keep his executive zipper in the closed and upright position. On the other hand, there's the plan being hatched by David Hasselhoff and a group of investors to open a chain of Baywatch restaurants, an idea which needs about as long as it takes to finish this sentence to receive unanimous agreement that it's the last thing in the world we need. Well, other than the Jerry Springer School of Etiquette and Self-Restraint.Being the end of the decade, century, and millennium all rolled into one is bringing the perspectivists out in full force. If you thought the end of the year wrap-ups get obnoxious, you ain't seen nothing yet. The Newseum, a museum of news gathering in Virginia that tried to find a cuter, more sickening name but couldn't, decided to get the jump on things by releasing their list of the Top 100 news events of the past 100 years. Voted on by a panel of journalists and scholars who were selected because, well, they answered the phone and you didn't, the list begins with the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Japan and ends with the surgeon general warning that smoking cigarettes may stunt your growth, make your clothes smell bad, and end up illegal in restaurants in California, but you'll still look cool to your friends.In between those events are such things as Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, the transistor being invented, and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. You can argue the order -- as well as what's included and what's not -- until you're blue in the face (which is #27 on the list), but why Pee Wee Herman being caught masturbating in a movie theater, the release of Skittles, and Menudo aren't on there is beyond me. Hell, Clinton being impeached made #53, which is pretty good since it was still going on while the voting was taking place. Someone should tell these scholars that perspective and instant gratification shouldn't go hand in hand.If you're pouting because they didn't invite you to rank the top stories, the United States Postal Service (motto: "We go postal so you don't have to") is giving you a chance to join in the fun. For a couple of years now they've been putting out a series of stamps honoring different periods in American history as a part of their We've Run Out of Ideas series. Just kidding, actually it's called Celebrate the Century!, and you know they're serious because they put a ! after it.Since they've already done the '60s and the '70s, it's time to dig all the way back to the '80s. They distributed ballots at post offices and, to prove they're techno-hip even though they missed the whole email thing, posted a web site so we, the American people, could choose what we think are the most unforgettable aspects of the '80s. Among the choices for stamps were the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Space Shuttle program, and the 1987 Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But if for some reason you didn't think these were worthy of being honored, they also included E.T., beach volleyball, the Cabbage Patch Kids, and the musical play that gave T.S. Eliot a bad case of postmortem embarrassment, Cats. Don't like those either? How about the Cosby Show stamp, the minivan stamp, or the aerobics stamp? And before you accuse me of making these up, they were actual choices. Hey, even I couldn't have thought of any ideas dumber than those.At the rate things are going, we should have enough perspective on the '90s to vote on the stamps for that series, which will be good, since the post office will be needing some new stamps to make up for the losses they'll incur when they issue the Talk Shows of the '80s stamp they suggested. You know, it seems like just yesterday people claimed nostalgia wasn't what it used to be. Now it turns out it may not be as long ago as it used to be either.

I used to think I knew the value of money. And well I should, since my parents spent many long, hard hours trying to drum the concept into my head, right alongside the joy of a clean bedroom, the redeeming social value of washing behind my ears, and the fact that feeding mothballs to the goldfish was a bad idea. Luckily, most of the lessons took. Okay, so I still tend to forget I have two ears. No one's perfect, you know.According to my parents it came down to three simple rules:Money doesn't grow on trees.The harder you work the more money you'll make.And no, you can't have a bigger allowance.As it turns out they were right about two out of three, which is pretty good. Actually what's good about it is that I actually admit to my parents having such a good record. It could get me ostracized from the League of Ungrateful Children if word gets around.The first rule is true -- money doesn't grow on trees. This was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I finally figured it out after planting innumerable dollar bills in the backyard, only to find them missing just about the same time my older brother was in the corner store buying huge bags of candy using dirt-covered money.The next one, "The harder you work, the more money you'll make", is definitely false. Personally, all I get more of when I work harder is tired and cranky. To look at the other side of this very thin coin, think about Bill Gates. I dare say he isn't working any harder to earn his current net worth of $100 billion than he was when he was worth a measly $30 billion, so if the richest man in the world has scant motivation for getting out of bed in the morning, how can I?As for my allowance, well, let's just say my parents are currently in arrears for $34,782.98 including accrued interest.While I managed to pick up a pretty decent feel for the value of money, apparently some people didn't. Recently, Jerry Hall filed for divorce from Mick Jagger and is asking for $40 million. Ron Perelman, the head of Revlon, is being taken to court by his ex-wife, who's demanding that he raise the child support for their 4-year-old daughter to $100,000 a month. And not long ago a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco sold for a whopping $15 million, and I'm not even sure that included off-street parking.Now I understand I'm not in their league when it comes to making money. After all, I include the two figures to the right of the decimal point whenever I tell people I earn a 6-figure salary. But either they need to learn what a buck's really worth or I just need to figure out a way to make more of it.Which brings us to the burning question of the day: How do we, the average person who wants lots of money but doesn't want to risk having to work while TV shows like "When Good Networks Turn Bad" are on, manage to get enough money to feed a spoiled child or pay off a gorgeous model-wife? Or buy one, for that matter.The first thing you need to do is stock up on old paper money. You know, like twenties that don't have a picture of Andrew Jackson so big Stevie Wonder can see it. Even though shopkeepers accept those new funny looking bills, most vending machines don't, thinking they're as bogus as America's Funniest Home Videos and spitting them out faster than Monica on a good day. Since it won't be long before the old ones will be pulled out of circulation, it's a sure bet people will soon be paying top dollar for them so they can go to a machine and buy candy and soda and little plastic Scotty dogs filled with magnets that repel each other. And since you'll have a big supply, you'll reap the big bucks!Next, take that money and invest it wisely. Stock in Internet companies is hot right now. Mutual funds are too. But face it, they're no fun. So think about collectibles, like stamps, coins, or Beanie Babies, The Baseball Cards of the New Millennium. The problem is everyone's collecting Beanie Babies these days, so you might want to consider filling the knick-knack shelves in the guest room with something different, like Tinky Winky Teletubbies.That's right, the Tinky Winky Teletubby. Jerry Falwell, in his never ending quest to keep his foot in his mouth, has come out and declared that he's gay. Not Falwell, silly, the Teletubby. If Falwell has his way, Tinky Winky will be out faster than Nathan Lane at a cha-cha party. He claims the tell-tale signs are all there: Tinky Winky carries a purse, is "gay-pride purple", has a triangular antenna like the gay pride symbol, and -- hold onto your bar of soap -- has the number "666" tattooed on his Teletubby butt. Okay, just kidding about the tattoo. Actually it's on his left breast. But I'm sure if I hadn't cut off the bottom part of the article when I clipped that coupon for a half-price garnish-making tool I would have read that Falwell connects Tinky Winky to the Kennedy Assassination, the crash of Swissair Flight 111, and the conspiracy to hide the fact that Paul is indeed dead, something anyone who's listened to his last half dozen albums already knows is true.Just do me one favor, though. When you follow these instructions and make lots of money and find yourself agreeing to hand over mega-bucks to an ex, the kid your spouse is taking care of, or a real estate agent, think of me and my guest room full of Waterworld action figures. If only I'd listen to my own advice once in a while.

It doesn't take much more than a glance at the 78-year-old Pope to get the idea that religion is stuck in the Dark Ages, which is generally defined as the years before Entertainment Tonight. I know, it's difficult to imagine such a time existed, but it did. And trust me, it wasn't pretty.The Catholic church, more than most religions, catches a lot of grief for not changing with the times. It's true you don't need to eat fish on Friday, say the Mass in Latin, or confess to anything less than a venial -- or is that a penile? -- sin anymore. But old habits die hard. Just ask any nun who still has to wear one. While some things have changed, they still expect you to give up something other than going to church for Lent, not to confuse Jesus with Santa Claus (HINT: Santa's beard is white), and at least try not to have impure thoughts about your girlfriend or wife wearing her old Catholic school uniform.Good luck.While some religions are being dragged kicking and screaming into the new millennium, others are embracing it. There was a photograph in the newspaper recently of an ultra-Orthodox Jew holding his cell phone to the Western Wall -- one of the religion's holiest sites -- so a family member could recite a prayer, which should do wonders to promote Cellular One's new "100 Prayer Minutes a Month Free For Life!" cell phone plan.For some reason Jews seem to be at the forefront of combining technology with religion. There are companies near the wall which are set up so people can send faxed prayers which are then placed in cracks in the wall according to tradition. This is an excellent use of technology as long as people aren't sitting by their fax machines waiting for a reply from God. Face it, he's probably too busy deleting his spam email, like the one offering him a chance to get in on the ground floor of a multi-level marketing porn site program. Right, like he's not automatically on the highest level of everything.Then there are the Lubavitch Jews, another ultra-religious group who have taken to wearing pagers so they can be notified immediately when the Messiah shows up. Can you imagine all those pagers going off to the tune of "It's the End of the World As We Know It" by REM?Okay, I'm just kidding about the song, but it's probably a smart move about using the pagers. After all, if the Messiah shows up during the day the networks won't cut into the soap operas lest they get swamped with complaints. And if it happens at night it would be relegated to CNN Headline News, the 5-Day Forecast on the Weather Channel, and those little news teasers which you faintly hear coming from the next room as you hurriedly scoop more ice cream on the stack of Oreo cookies so you can make it to the next commercial break without starving."And in tonight's breaking news, don't bother doing the dishes or taking out the trash, the Messiah is back and we all have the rest of our life off. Details at eleven."The coming of the millennium and the much hyped Y2K problem -- so called because everyone will get so fed up with hearing about potential computer crashes on January 1, 2000 that we'll press Congress to pass legislation and skip the year entirely -- has spawned a number of religious cults. One of these, the Concerned Christians, is a Denver-based group which believes the Broncos will win the Super Bowl in the year 2000. Just kidding. No one really believes that.The truth is, members of this group reportedly abandoned their homes and jobs, moving to Jerusalem where they await the Apocalypse. But before that momentous event could occur, the Israeli police picked them up claiming the group's intent is not just to be cheering from the sidelines ("Go, Christ, go!"), but rather to kick-start it by using violence, fomenting unrest, and appearing on the Jerry Springer show in a segment called, "My Parents Gave Everything They Had to a Silly Religious Cult and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt."They, and others like them, need to wise up and stay home. After all, this is almost the 21st century, so there's no reason to leave the comfort of your computer desk. That's why we should all be grateful to the people who started the Web site www.Jesus2000.com, the "Virtual Pilgrim [sic] to the Holy Land."Now these are people understand the mood of the decade, which is why they have what they call "The Holy Land's Largest Shopping Mall on the Internet." Think of it as the Blessed Galleria, a place where you can buy olive wood crosses, mother-of-pearl rosaries, water from the River Jordan, and Jerusalem Cross clocks, all without leaving the comfort of your ergonomically correct kneeling bench. They're so certain this venture will be profitable (and soul cleansing) that they're planning to offer an IPO in the spring. IPO, in this case, still means initial public offering, not innocently pure offering as you might expect.With all these modern changes, don't be surprised if there's an animated version of the Book of Revelation released next year with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse renamed as Email, Pager, Cell Phone, and Fax. And after all this, if you need still need something to pray for, pray that I'm wrong.

It's hard not to categorize people. I'm sure you've heard the stereotypes, if not uttered them yourself: Italians are gangsters, Mexicans are lazy, Arabs are terrorists, feminists are men-haters, loners in Montana are militiamen, yuppies are scum, presidents lie, politicians only care about re-election, and TV programmers live to insult our intelligence. But as rational human beings we know that not all the people in a given group fit the stereotype. Well, except for presidents, politicians, and TV programmers.While we know it's not good to stereotype people, we do it anyway, largely because it makes us feel superior, since as a rule stereotypes aren't flattering. Sure, there are exceptions to this, like Brazilian women are beautiful and Asians are exceptional in math and science, but how many more can you think of?We also stereotype people because, well, sometimes it's true. The French, for example, are generally regarded as being rude, arrogant, and smelling bad. It turns out they are.Before you get your pate in an uproar, the proof comes from the highly regarded French newspaper Le Figaro (Motto: "Sure we're named after an Italian opera written by an Austrian composer, but we're so arrogant and rude we can get away with it"), and if they don't know, who would? Among a batch of recently published surveys, the newspaper revealed that fewer than half of the French take a bath or shower every day, 40 percent of the men and 25 percent of the women don't change their underwear daily, and only half of the French bother to use deodorant.Besides demonstrating that their national cleanliness is nowhere near anyone's sense of godliness, this lack of basic personal hygiene also proves that the French are indeed rude and arrogant, since they obviously don't care what the rest of the world thinks. They figure that if we'd stay away from their country and leave them alone we wouldn't have to smell them, so that makes it our fault.Their neighbors in Germany, on the other hand, have a different set of stereotypes to battle. Like being neat-freaks. This also turns out to be true, as borne out by those same surveys which found that the Germans use twice as much soap in a year as the French. They're so obsessed with being neat, in fact, that some of them have banded together to form (True Fact Alert!) Messies Anonymous, a zwelf-step program designed to help the 10 percent of the population who are in danger of being ostracized because they're vacuum cleaner-challenged, miss appointments, misplace their belongings, have a messy house, or inadvertently smile in public, especially to a foreigner.Here in the United States we have out own stereotype problems. People around the world think we have a poor work ethic, we eat lots of junk food, and we're all rich. Well, it should come as no surprise then that they're pretty close to the truth, since unscheduled employee absenteeism is at a 7-year high, breakfast cereal turns out to be the main source of vitamins and minerals for children, and Bill Gates just bought the rest of the world, which will teach them to laugh at us again.Luckily, there are still stereotypes that we can believe in, like the sanctity of Mom, apple pie, and the Mouseketeers. Well, two out of three ain't bad. Yes, I'm sorry to have to break the news, but the image of Mouseketeer as Purity is dead.I'm sure you remember the Mouseketeers. They were those happy, bubbly, impossibly clean-cut kids who starred in the "Mickey Mouse Club". The first batch started in 1955, followed years later by some impostors -- I mean new members -- in 1977. The original shows can still be seen on the Disney Channel. The New Mickey Mouse Club can only be seen in your worst acid flashbacks.Now it turns out that original Mouseketeer Darlene Gillespie, who broke as many hearts -- though not as many box office records -- as Annette Funicello, has single-handedly blown the Mouseketeer stereotype by being convicted of stock fraud, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy. And she wasn't even an elected official! She'll be sentenced in March, but it's a safe bet they'll strip her of her ears, digitally erase her from the tapes of the show, and make her stand guard over Walt's frozen body until she learns to behave.By now your head is probably spinning as fast as a Whirling Dervish, since all this makes it very difficult to know whether to believe a stereotype or not. So the safest thing you can do is what you were taught growing up: don't stereotype people. Well, except for presidents, politicians, and TV programmers. Everyone knows they lie, only care about re-election, and live to insult our intelligence.

It's November, the time of year when a person's thoughts turn to "Oh my God it's almost Christmas and I haven't bought the first present yet!" Relax, I've got everything under control.While you were busy decking the halls, nogging your egg, and trimming the tree (then cleaning up the branches you trimmed off), I was scouring the four corners of the earth looking for gift ideas, not an easy task when you realize that the world is round and, if I remember my geometry half as well as I wish I did, that means it can only have one corner. The left one. What I'm getting at is that even though I missed three corners of the earth I've managed to uncover gifts that, should you choose to give them, will make you the belle of the Christmas ball.Food is a good all-purpose gift, which is why Hickory Farms is so popular this time of year. That and the fact that they stand in the mall giving out free microscopic slivers of petrified Beef Sticks, which are really nothing more than Paleolithic Slim Jims. But face it, everyone gives Hickory Farms gift boxes and you want something a little different.How about giving a loved one a butter sculpture reproduction of Grant Wood's painting of the happy-go-lucky farmer and his wife, "American Gothic"? Norma "Duffy" Lyon, who's known as the Butter Lady, made this very sculpture for the Iowa State Fair a few years back and while I don't think Dean and DeLuca carries it, I'm sure if it hasn't melted or been spread on the world's biggest English Muffin she'll be glad to sell it to you.Do you have someone on your gift list that you'd like to give food to but they're on a low-fat diet and the doctor has made them swear off butter sculptures? Then get them a bag of Vegetable McNuggets with McMasala sauce. Sure you'll have to go to a McDonald's in New Delhi, India, to buy them, but it will be worth it when you see the look in Aunt Gertie's eyes!Wine. Now there's a gift that's perfect when you don't have a clue what to get someone. But if you're going to buy wine let me give you a tip: Buy something old. Unless, of course, it comes in a plastic bag with a pour spout, in which case I'd recommend buying the bag with the most recent open dating.It's a known fact that, with the exception of Beaujolais Nouveaux, which is best drunk before its even made, the older the wine is the better. So if you really want to impress someone, I'd suggest taking a trip to the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia and stealing -- I mean, buying -- the clay jar they found in the mountains of Iran which contains the oldest traces of wine -- over 7,000 years old. This is sure to impress anyone, especially if you can nab the first screw top cap which was discovered nearby.Now let's say you have a very special someone to shop for, the type of person who isn't impressed by things like 7,000 year old chardonnay. Someone who would be a lot happier if you got them something bigger. Like say, a car. Obviously you're not going to buy them the car because, well, you're cheap. Besides, cars aren't much fun. You climb in, you drive somewhere, you get out. Gee, where's the excitement there?That's why you might want to look into getting them a Taiwanese Exploding Taxi. In order to save money on gasoline, enterprising Taiwanese cab drivers have taken to converting their cabs to run on liquefied natural gas. Imagine their surprise when they discovered that not only do the taxis cost about half as much to run as ordinary cabs, but they often explode when least expected. Like before getting their tip. While finding these cabs is easy, especially after the fact, importing them may be tricky.Maybe the Taiwanese cabbies should forget their dangerous gas conversion and head to India where Ramar Pillai claims he figured out a way to run a car on 23 cents a gallon fuel he cooks up at home out of water, leaves, lemon juice, salt, a few drops of gasoline, and a couple of secret chemicals. While not as cheap as getting gas from Vegetable McNuggets with McMasala Sauce, a couple gallons of this would make a great little present for the teenager of the house.And speaking of houses, why not give your spouse and/or loved one a straw house for Christmas? I know what you're thinking: In the Three Little Pigs the straw house was the first one to go, having been huffed and puffed and blown down by that Big Bad Wolf guy. Well, this is the 20th century. For a little while longer anyway. Now they're making houses out of stacked bales of straw covered with something called a slurry mix -- which is chemically related to Slurpy mix, but without all the added sugar -- and then covering it up with stucco and plaster. These houses are energy efficient, safe for the environment, and are guaranteed to make you the laughing stock of the neighborhood.And last but not least, there's one item that I'm sure will be finding its way into Christmas stockings everywhere: the Travel Washlet portable bidet. Manufactured by Toto Ltd in Japan [insert your favorite Wizard of Oz joke here], the company says the paperback novel-sized bidet helps guard against stray bacteria in public bathrooms. Lest you think this is a joke, I dare you to find the punch line. The battery-powered bidets sell for about $180 a crack. I mean, apiece.So there you have it. Now you've got absolutely no excuse why this can't be the best Christmas ever. Providing, of course, your taxi doesn't explode near your brand new straw house while you're using your portable bidet, melting your butter sculpture of American Gothic which you can then use as a dipping sauce for your Vegetable McNuggets. Quit crying, at least you still have the Hickory Farms Beef Stick your cousin Archie gave you.

People have uttered some very interesting last words. Right before he died, Douglas Fairbanks declared, "I've never felt better." H.G. Wells said, "Go away...I'm all right." Obviously they were both wrong.They might have been delirious. Then again, they might have been optimistic. Chances are they were really just trying to make their family and friends feel better, much like Bill Clinton when he said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" or Bill Gates when he claims not to remember any of the emails he wrote threatening to take over the world unless everyone started using his web browser. Apparently honesty on the deathbed is no more important than it is during life.There's little question that we'd all like to say something truly memorable before we go, but few of us get the opportunity. Even if we did utter something wonderful, what are the chances anyone other than the dog who looked at us like we were nuts when we told him to "Go get help, Lassie!" would ever hear it?One way to make sure people hear what you say is to become a condemned murderer since they always get the opportunity to speak some last words. And there's invariably at least one reporter on hand to write them down. This, along with the obligatory movie of the week deal, marriage proposals that come in the mail, and free last meal of your choice, makes it a career choice worth considering for those who aren't ready for community college or have flunked out of nail technician's school.Right before being executed, Gary Gilmore simply said, "Let's do it." James Rodges, when asked if he wanted anything as he was facing a firing squad replied, "Why yes�a bulletproof vest." And George Appel had the right attitude as he was about to get strapped in the electric chair when he declared, "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel." Last words are like comedy: timing is everything.There are a number of considerations to make when formulating your last words. For one, ultimatums aren't a good idea. Oscar Wilde tried this when he said, "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do" and since there wasn't a Home Depot in Paris at the time, well, Oscar went.You should try not to sound bitter when you utter your last words. Neither should you be a smart aleck. Remember, this is your final stab at immortality and that old saying is true: You never get a second chance to speak your last words. Another about-to-be-executed killer, Thomas J. Grasso, followed both of these rules when he matter-of-factly set the record straight about his last meal by saying, "I did not get my Spaghetti-O's, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this."There's another type of famous last words�those which we wish we hadn't said. These are especially problematic because we continue to live, meaning we're saddled with them forever. In 1927 Harry Warner, one of the famous Warner Brothers, asked "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?". That's something every Senate subcommittee chairman asks to this day when Hollywood stars parade in front of them pretending to be experts on foreign affairs because they slept with the French co-star of their last movie or claiming to know everything about atomic energy because they auditioned for a part in China Syndrome.People utter these foot-in-mouth last words all the time. I suspect Minnesota's Hubert "Skip" Humphrey said something like, "But the guy's a wrestler, fer Christ's sake", when he heard that Jess "The Body" Ventura was going to run against him in the recent governor's race. Of course Ventura is a wrestler. He's also going to be the state's new governor, proving once again that a good nickname is important if you want to win an election.Then there's Dr. Laura Schlessinger, whose ratings and obnoxiousness has unseated Rush Limbaugh in the syndicated radio circuit. I can envision her years ago saying, "Sure you can take some photographs of me naked. Who would want to see them anyway?". How fateful those words would have been now that a judge ruled that Internet Entertainment, the same people who posted Tommy and Pamela Anderson Lee's honeymoon video online, can put Dr. Laura's photos there too. Of course this still doesn't answer her question: Who does want to see her naked?What these people's last words will be on their deathbed remains to be heard. Hopefully they'll think of something beforehand to make sure they're prepared. This is the last rule of famous last words, one which Pancho Villa forgot about when he was clutching onto a comrade and said, "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." Isn't that the same thing Harpo Marx said?

It's a normal, healthy thing for human beings to have fantasies. Unless, that is, your fantasies include Rosie O'Donnell naked, AK-47 assault rifles, or group sex using Jell-O, Spam, Chee-tos, or any other food product that's made from things we'd rather not think about and is a color not normally found in nature. Men, of course, always fantasize about sex. Or so we've been led to believe. Sex with movie stars, sex with two women, or in the case of some of us, just having sex. Now, in a revelation so startling it belongs on the front page of the Weekly World News right next to the headline that screams "The World Will End in 20 Minutes (So Buy This Newspaper Now)!", it turns out this long held belief just isn't true.According to a survey by Playboy magazine (motto: "You mean we do print articles?"), more men fantasize about money than sex. Right. And President Clinton took a vow of chastity before entering...well, before entering the White House. But before we completely disregard this finding, let's not forget that it appeared in Playboy, the magazine that not only has its finger on the pulse of men everywhere but tries its best to get that pulse racing.I can't help but wonder whether the people taking the survey misunderstood what the men said. This happens, you know. Perhaps what the men actually said was that they have fantasies about having sex while laying on piles of money. Or maybe that they dream about having sex without paying money. But fantasizing about just having money?Is this the state of affairs of the American male? Have we become so materialistic that we've completely abandoned our basic primal urges in favor of mutual funds, leveraged buyouts, and stock options? Exactly when did IPO come to mean Initial Public Offering instead of I Pursue Openly? Of course, before we swallow the results of this survey hook, line, and sinking fund, there were other suspicious findings in this poll. For one thing, 61 percent of the respondents said that having a family was the most important thing in their life. That can only mean that eating a whole extra-large triple pepperoni pizza in one sitting, owning a remote control that can turn everything on and off within a three-mile radius including their mother-in-law, and winning the Annual Alumni Belch-fest and One-handed Stomach Scratch weren't survey choices.It's very likely that men fantasize about money because they think it will help them attract women. Of course women will deny this. Well, at least until they want another drink. So the question arises: If money was no object, who would these men go out with?When asked who their fantasy date would be, the men surveyed split by age. Those in their 20s chose Pamela Anderson Lee. Men in their 30s thought Sandra Bullock would be the perfect dream date. And the majority of respondents over 40 said they didn't care just as long as they wouldn't have to take Viagra to enjoy it.All of this points up some very big differences between men and women. Well, other than the fact that women are caring, sensitive, thoughtful, loving, and don't mind asking for directions. Men and women, you see, have a completely different idea of a fantasy sex life.To a man, the perfect sex life would be that of a sea hare, which is a slug-like creature that is both male and female at the same time. They have group sex in chain-like clusters, being female in the front and male in the back. This helps to answer why men will actually sit for hours watching movies like "Debbie Does the Paramecium Farm" and never wonder why there's no plot, characterization, or polysyllabic dialogue.Women, on the other hand, fantasize about having sex with a trusting, dedicated man who shaves daily, voluntarily does the dishes, and actually has an answer to the question, "What are you thinking?" Obviously women have much more ambitious fantasies than men.Luckily, fantasies are meant to be exactly that. This is a good thing for us men or we'd never find a woman who would stick around past the early bird special at El Gato Taco. "But what about the men and women who say they've found their dream mate?" you're asking, oblivious to everyone moving away from you because they're wondering why you're talking to yourself out loud instead of quietly like they are.It's simple. When a woman says she's found her dream man, what she means is for once her relationship isn't a nightmare. And when a man says he's found his dream woman, he means he's grateful he can put Sheila the Anatomically Almost Reasonable Inflatable Love Doll away in her box. And if those two people happened to have met each other, well, they'll probably live happily ever after.

Life is dangerous. Face it, we put ourselves at risk every time we cross the street, light up a cigarette, take a drink, eat anything not made of tofu or rice cakes, allow our skin to see sunlight, or watch a movie that's based on an old TV show. But cartoons? They're supposed to be simple, harmless fun.That's why it was especially upsetting when 700 youngsters in Japan suffered seizures while watching a popular cartoon show called "Pokemon." Pokemon, for those who haven't been spending time in Tokyo watching children's TV lately, is an animated show based on a Nintendo video game with a title that translates as "little monsters." It's unclear whether that refers to the characters on the show or the kids who are watching it.One Tuesday night in December, children were huddled around their TV sets watching the top-rated show when the screen erupted in a vividly colored explosion while a character's eyes started flashing like a strobe light. Sure this sounds a lot like how you looked after seeing the 2,786th Christmas special of the season ("Barbra Streisand's Dentist's 'Christmas on Novocain'") but there was a major difference. While you changed the channel to the Home Shopping Network so you could buy your last minute Christmas presents ("Don't you think Aunt Rhonda would like a Hummel figure of Ted Kaczynski?" "But didn't we get her that last year?") these poor Japanese children were stuck staring at the TV having convulsions, blackouts, and nausea, which, coincidentally, is the same thing that happened to Aunt Rhonda after she opened her present.Scientists aren't sure what caused this attack, but they suspect it was the children's desire to stay home from school the next day because they had a big haiku exam that they hadn't studied for since they'd rather watch cartoons than think about seventeen syllables in search of meaning. And who can blame them? Actually, they say the rapid-fire flashing might have short circuited the children's natural pattern of brain activity, causing epileptic-like seizures. Remarkably, this is very similar to the look you see in the eyes of the thirteen people who actually watch C-SPAN, except of course the children were better the next day.TV Tokyo immediately pulled the show off the air. Video stores stopped renting or selling copies of the program when reports came in that kids were having seizures from watching them too. This was exactly what a company named 4 Kids Entertainment needed to hear. In the true spirit of American entrepreneurism, they recently announced that they're trying to syndicate the show in this country because, well, why should Japanese children have all the fun? Look for it next fall on the Fox Network under the title "America's Funniest Childhood Seizures."Actually, they say there won't be a problem because they're going to edit out the visual bursts that supposedly caused the wave of seizures, giving us the good old American lo-fat version of the show. If they really wanted to give it an impact they could go the Jolt Cola route and get Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight to narrate the cartoon. You might remember a few years back when the sound of her voice sent a woman into seizures. Luckily this was an isolated incident, unlike the incredible number of men who had fits over Hart's legs.Injuries caused by leisure pastimes are nothing new. Tennis elbow has been around for years. And newlyweds have been known to walk funny for weeks after returning from their honeymoon. Back in the days when home video games first came out -- remember Pacman? -- doctors diagnosed a condition they called Nintendo Finger, which was caused by having so little to do that you spent hours playing Nintendo, which caused an inflammation of the finger, bloodshot eyes, and a loss of friends. Is it me or is there a Nintendo theme here?Even something as universal as dancing isn't exempt. Recently there's been a warning about "Clubber's Nipples," which is an inflammation caused by long stretches of strenuous night club dancing. Apparently your clothing rubs against your bare breast which causes tenderness, pain, and a look of agony very much like the one caused by having to sit through a Yanni concert.So now you know to add all these activities to your list of things you like but which are dangerous to your health and well-being. You know, basically anything you might enjoy. Then by avoiding everything on the list you can pretty much be guaranteed that you will live a longer life. Or maybe it will just feel longer. Hell, they say length is overrated anyway, don't they?