It’s not often that I find myself leading a revolution of the oppressed working class. Usually I look at the oppressed working class and think: Meh. I’m not the one oppressing you. Quit whining and make my McNuggets.

But since moving to a nameless eight-plex apartment building in North Portland, I have taken on a leadership role as we strive to subvert the authority of our oppressor. I speak of Landlady Peg.

Landlady Peg seemed like a friendly, neighborly sort when I was first considering renting this apartment, but she turned on me shortly after I moved in. Of course, this is because I got a satellite dish without her approval and subsequently told her she had no legal means of stopping me. But I do not think people should hold grudges simply because someone went against their wishes and used federal law to justify their actions. Forgive and forget, right?

Here’s how I know Landlady Peg is still mad about the satellite thing. When I was about to move in and we were going over the rental agreement, she told me rent was due on the 1st, and it’s considered late on the 5th. (Which really means it’s due on the 4th, but whatever.) “But if there’s a month sometime where there’s a problem, and you need to pay it late, just let me know,” she said. “We’re usually pretty understanding about that, and we’re glad to help you out.” I remembered this last month, when there was indeed a problem, and I sent her an e-mail asking if I could pay half on the 1st and half on the 15th. Her response was that this would be perfectly all right, but there would be a $50 late fee.

I maintain that this is neither understanding nor helpful.

So obviously, the grudge continues, and it brings me to my point. The apartments here are allegedly heated by old-fashioned radiators, which are controlled by a thermostat — one thermostat for all eight apartments. This thermostat is located in my particular apartment. However, I am unable to control it, because it’s protected by a clear plastic box that can only be opened with a key. And who has this key? I’ll give you a hint: She also has $50 of my money.

This arrangement would be fine, except that Landlady Peg 1) pays for our heat and 2) doesn’t live on the premises herself. So when the weather first turned cold, she had the thermostat set at 69 during the day and 65 at night — a bit chilly, really, considering internationally recognized Room Temperature is 72. A temperature of 65 makes for inhospitable conditions when it’s 3 a.m. and you want to scamper into the kitchen for a snack wearing nothing but your dainties.

About a month ago, Landlady Peg called me to ask if the heat had been working. She said another tenant had called her saying it wasn’t. I said, “Well, it’s working, but you have the thermostat set so low that it never actually comes on.”

“Oh, that’s how I have it at my house, too,” she said (which I’m sure is a big fat lie). “That’s how we like it. Besides, heat is expensive….”

Blah blah blah. She went on for a few minutes. She might have actually said “blah blah blah.” But nonetheless, she also said she would come by and turn the heat up a bit. She came by, all right, and when she left, the thermostat was set at … 68 during the day and 64 at night. One degree COLDER than it had been before. I maintain that this is neither understanding nor helpful.

I knew I couldn’t call Landlady Peg and ask her to turn the heat up “some more” or “again” — not because those terms don’t grammatically apply to someone who never turned up the heat in the first place, but because Landlady Peg doesn’t like me, and because she has already made her philosophy on heat very clear (i.e., she doesn’t like it).

So I took matters into my own hands. I thought: The heat comes on when the thermostat thinks the temperature has dropped below 68 (or 64 at night). It doesn’t have to actually BE 68 degrees in here; the thermostat just has to THINK it is. Now, what could I do to make a thermostat think it’s colder than it really is? Can I hypnotize a thermostat? Feed it Altoids? Drop an ice cube down its back?

A-ha! Ice cubes. I filled a plastic bag with ice cubes and put it on top of the clear plastic box that encases the thermostat. Sure enough, within a few minutes, the thermostat was thinking the apartment was 62 degrees, and the radiators were working at full capacity to bring it back up to 68. By the time the thermostat decided it was 68, it was actually a very balmy 74.

That’s now my standard practice. When I get up in the morning, I put the ice bag on, and by the time I’m out of the shower, the apartment is comfortable. When I get home in the evening, the ice goes on again for 15 minutes or so, and maybe again once more before I go to bed. The Man had been telling me how much heat I was allowed to have, and I think you know how I feel about The Man, especially when he’s a woman.

My neighbors, of course, probably just think Landlady Peg is a merciful property owner who has granted them a magnanimous amount of heat for the holiday season. They don’t realize that I am their benefactor, and that we are part of an invisible revolution of tenants.

That is fine with me. I’m content to remain an anonymous revolutionary, a cross between Che Guevara and Santa Claus, fetching snacks in my unmentionables in the middle of the night in comfort.

Do you like making fun of Alabama? Sure, we all do. That’s why we have Alabama. That’s why they kept it intact when they were making America. You know how there’s one person in every group whom the others mock when he’s not around? That’s Alabama. His 49 friends secretly think he’s a moron. (OK, not secretly.)

Our latest example of Alabama’s down-home way of embarrassing itself is in State Rep. Steve Hurst’s filing of a bill that would require all Alabama license plates to bear the phrase “God Bless America.” This would replace Alabama’s current slogan, which is “The South wil Rize Agin!”**

No, I kid. “God Bless America” would actually appear on the license plate IN ADDITION to the things already on there, which include the words “Stars Fell on Alabama” and the phrase “Heart of Dixie,” which is actually required by STATE LAW to appear on all Alabama license plates — as in, if someone tried to have a license plate that didn’t say “Heart of Dixie,” they would be breaking the law. Somewhere in there, I guess there’s also a place for the license plate number.

Rep. Hurst wants to add “God Bless America” to all of this, and on its face, it’s not a completely absurd idea. Where he’s going to lose a lot of people is in the way he talks about it, as quoted in an Associated Press article of Nov. 26.

Having seen a “God Bless America” decal on a specialty prisoner of war license plate, Hurst thought it would be good to put the same thing on all of Alabama’s plates. “That will let all the people in America know that we are a Bible Belt state,” he said.

Now, first of all … I’m pretty sure all the people in America already know that. I don’t think there’s any question about where Alabama stands vis-a-vis the Bible, i.e., they like it.

Second, does Alabama really want to be so closely associated with a book when 25 percent of Alabama’s adults are illiterate? (They’re a Bible Belt state, you see, just not in the sense of actually being able to read it.)

Hurst probably should have gone with “In God We Trust” for his proposal. That phrase already appears on U.S. currency and in other official government places, so he’d be able to make a fairly strong case for putting it on license plates, too. But “God Bless America” is just the name of a song by Irving Berlin (Irving Berlin the JEW — has Alabama considered THAT?). It has the word “God” in it, which means it’s sorta religious, which means it’s going to be problematic getting it on the license plates.

Hurst told the Associated Press, “Here we are in the times of 9/11, times of war and terrorists. It’s a time for the nation to pull together and I think this is something that reflects how the majority of Alabamians feel.”

Again, two points.

1. Did Hurst just wake up from a four-year coma? “The times of 9/11”? “Time for the nation to pull together”? That is so September 2001.

2. Just because something “reflects how the majority of Alabamians feel” doesn’t mean it ought to be put on government-issued paraphernalia. Until recently, most Alabamians didn’t feel black people should be allowed to drink from the same drinking fountains as white people, but you didn’t hear anyone suggesting they put THAT on the license plates.

More to the point, while we live in a democracy, that doesn’t mean just ANYTHING the majority agrees on can be made official. Eighty percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian, but that doesn’t mean a law could be passed making Christianity the official religion of the United States. Why not? Because of the other 20 percent, who don’t constitute a majority but who are still entitled to equal status under the law.

Something like 90 percent of Alabamians are Christians. (By comparison, only around 80 percent of Israelis are Jewish.) The other 10 percent are Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Unitarian, agnostic, atheist or simply “no religion.” I’m guessing it’s more of the latter; somehow I can’t picture a lot of Hindus or atheists living in Alabama. (Actually, I CAN picture it, and it’s really funny.)

I guess the license plate thing just seems unnecessary, and not because a quarter of Alabama’s residents wouldn’t be able to read it anyway. If the vast majority of Alabamians believe in God, and if most of those presumably want God to bless America … well, then why put it on a license plate? Hurst says it’s to unify everyone, but it sounds like most of his constituents already ARE unified. Are they trying to convert the people who don’t believe in God over to their side? Are they trying to frighten the terrorists into thinking they can’t win against a nation that God is blessing? He says it’s to let everyone know what Alabama thinks, but I can assure you, the rest of the country doesn’t care what Alabama thinks. We just like watchin’ ’em.

** Alternate jokes for Alabama’s current slogan:

“Alabama: Who Farted?”
A picture of a pig sitting in a rocking chair
“You Can Call Me Al”
“Death Before Literacy”
A drawing of two dogs doin’ it
“Alabama: We Don’t Need Your Kind ‘Round Here”

In the past, I have been very bad about getting to know my neighbors. It’s not because I’m reclusive or timid, but because there’s seldom any reason to interact with them. We Americans lead pretty independent lives nowadays. It’s not like I need to run next door to ask old Mr. McGillicuddy to help me get the livestock inside when there’s a twister a-comin’, or to get my mule out of a ditch after a carting mishap. Even the proverbial cup of sugar is no longer passed between neighbors, what with the fact that no one bakes anymore, and that “sugar” could be a code word that undercover cops use for drugs.

When I lived in a condo in Orem, Utah, I had neighbors who I never met but whose voices I recognized because I frequently heard them through the wall when they were engaged in marital relations. One time their relations were so clamorous, they woke me up. But I never met these people in person.

Next, when I lived in an apartment building in Salt Lake City, I knew my neighbors across the hall were from Mexico and that they were not afraid to hold very festive fiestas until the wee hours of the morning. I also knew that the people directly above me let their kids stay up really late, and that the woman whose bedroom was above mine communicated mostly by shouting. But again, I never met any of these people.

So now that I’ve moved again, to an apartment in a “quaint” (i.e., dilapidated) eight-plex in Portland, I’m trying to be different and actually get to know my neighbors. I always lived in such big complexes before, but now there are only seven units besides mine. I should be able to manage that.

My first effort came not long after I moved in, when I wanted to make burritos for dinner and found I lacked a can opener with which to free the frijoles from their tin prison. This struck me as odd. Not the bizarre terminology I just used, but the fact that I didn’t have a can opener. I know I had one when I lived in Salt Lake. I specifically recall using it to open cans on a number of occasions. Why hadn’t it made the trip with me to Portland? Had I intentionally left it behind or thrown it out while packing, perhaps in an attempt to lighten my load, perhaps thinking I would never need to open a can again? If that was my reasoning, it was extremely short-sighted, for here I was, not a week into my new location and already in need of a can opener. I suppose next you’ll tell me I shouldn’t have thrown away all my socks, either.

Anyway, I really had a hankering for those burritos, so I went over to apartment No. 5, where there appeared to be someone home. A Hispanic man in his early 20s answered the door. I told him I was the new guy in No. 8 and briefly summarized my plight for him. He retreated straightaway to the kitchen to fetch me a can opener; I used it on the spot, having brought the beans with me. Then we had this conversation:

ME: Thank you very much. So, do you like living here?
HIM: Yeah, it’s OK.
ME: Cool. I’m Eric, by the way.
HIM: I’m [I don’t remember what he said his name was].
ME: Nice to meet you.
HIM: You too.

So you can see that already I am doing better in my attempt to befriend the neighbors.

The people in No. 7, right next to me, made it easy to be friendly. They were a couple in their early 20s, and the woman was a heavy smoker, which meant she was outside a lot, because Landlady Peg won’t let tenants smoke inside (which is unfair, because the way Landlady Peg controls the heat, sometimes lighting a cigarette would be the only way to stay warm). When I’d been here a few days, the woman saw me one afternoon and introduced herself. (Tonia? Tawny? Something like that.) She said she lived there with her boyfriend, J—- (Jason, I think, possibly Jeremy), and that they were from New Jersey. How they managed to be from New Jersey, I don’t know. They were both artist hippie vegetarian Macintosh types who listen to jazz music and don’t own a TV. I was surprised they weren’t born in the actual forests of Oregon, having sprung up from the earth itself with Mother Nature and Father Hemp as their parents.

Anyway, Tammy (?) was very friendly and chatty and said if I ever needed anything I should come over, and if their music was ever too loud I should let them know, and that I should stop by sometime for some cornbread, and that they liked to be good neighbors, and wait a minute, did she just say to stop by for some cornbread? But the conversation had moved on before I could say anything.

Cornbread? Usually you’d say stop by for a drink, or for a snack, or to watch the game, or something. But cornbread? She wasn’t from the South. Do people from New Jersey even MAKE cornbread? Does she always have a pan of it lying around, in case company drops in? Some people have a candy dish or a bowl of fruit. Maybe she has a plate of cornbread.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out what she might have said that I had mis-heard as “cornbread.” But not very many words sound like “cornbread,” or at least not ones that make sense in this context. “Stop by for some corporate” isn’t a complete thought. “Stop by for some cord wood” is even more baffling. “Stop by for some porn; bed” is a logical statement, albeit an indecent one, but there had been no semicolon in her voice, I’m sure of that. I was forced to conclude that she had, in fact, offered me cornbread.

Alas, I was never to take advantage of her hospitality, because she and J. moved out a week later. It was a shame, because I really like cornbread.

Last week there was a special screening here in Portland for “Walk the Line,” the new film that tells the story of country music legend Johnny Cash. Now, when I call Johnny Cash a “legend,” I just mean that he was a big deal, not that he was legendary, like Paul Bunyan or something. I mean, he really existed. (Johnny Cash did, not Paul Bunyan.)

Now that we have our facts straight, we can proceed. This special screening was held in the Whitsell Auditorium at the Portland Art Museum — a swanky locale, as it turns out, which I didn’t know beforehand. I knew the Whitsell Auditorium was somewhere NEAR the museum; I didn’t realize it was actually IN it. I also did not realize that the event itself would be swanky, with swanky invited guests in attendance. So I felt a little out of place when I showed up in my jeans and button-up shirt with everyone else wearing slacks and blazers, especially considering my jeans were the ones with the zipper that keeps unzipping itself. (My weekend jeans, I call them.) If I walk around, or even just stand, down the zipper goes. It can be annoying, trying to focus on other things when every two minutes you have to nonchalantly move a hand past your zipper to make sure it’s still in place.

You may wonder why I even continue to own a pair of pants with a defective zipper. Sometimes I wonder, too. But doesn’t everyone have an article of clothing like that? Something that’s neither comfortable nor flattering but that you make yourself wear anyway simply because it’s fashionable and/or convenient? I see teenage girls wearing belly shirts and low-rise jeans all the time, even when, like 99.8 percent of the population, the girls don’t have bodies that are flattered by such exhibition. My recalcitrant zipper is hardly any different from that.

Anyway, the screening was preceded by a reception for the swanky invited guests, and I was told this reception would have food. In keeping with the Johnny Cash theme, the food was: chips and salsa. Oh, and beer. That’s it. I had forgotten that swanky people don’t eat food. They graze on nutritionless artifacts and stand around looking swanky. Chips and salsa are more of a Southwest thing than a country thing, and they don’t seem like a Johnny Cash thing at all, but maybe the organizers thought grits and a bucket of amphetamines wouldn’t do well in a buffet environment.

At any rate, chips and salsa are what we got. But because it was a swanky affair, you weren’t allowed to just grab a handful of chips and drop them onto your plate. You had to use tongs. Which means you’re picking up about one chip per scoop and breaking the other chips in the bowl in the process. Oh, and the plates themselves were tiny, capable of holding about seven chips maximum. Everything about it suggested they didn’t want us actually eating anything.

I should point out that the table was festooned with four black cowboy hats, too. Cowboy hats, we can afford. Food? Sorry. All we could come up with is chips and salsa.

I mentioned there was beer. (There was also fruit punch, for people like me who don’t drink beer, or who don’t think it’s a good idea to get tipsy before watching a movie in a museum.) It was high-class beer from a local microbrewery, and it was served by a well-dressed bartender who stood behind a table. The bottles were displayed on ice, but you weren’t allowed to just grab one. Instead, you had to tell the server which kind you wanted and he would pull a bottle from the display, wipe the condensation off it, and uncap it for you. This was to reproduce the swanky people’s home settings, where they have domestics to engage in those menial tasks.

When you were done drinking your beer, or when you had finished your miniscule plate of chips and salsa, there were no wastebaskets or garbage cans. Those things are decidedly non-swanky. Instead, there was a woman dressed like the bartender who wandered around the room carrying a tray on which you could set your debris. When you did this, she would smile and say “thank you,” which struck me as odd. I compiled a mental list of things she might be thanking you for:

– For letting her carry your trash around.
– For not just dropping your trash on the floor, because it would have been her job to clean it up.
– For giving the museum a reason to employ her.

At last it was time to mosey into the auditorium to watch the movie. Portland’s museum is a beautiful edifice that houses priceless works of art. But like most museums, its auditorium feels like an afterthought: “Oh yeah. We might have to show a movie sometime. Quick, tack on a large room with uncomfortable chairs and poor sight lines. Anyone watching a film in a museum is probably swanky and therefore accustomed to being uncomfortable.” (If you got lost there, those were the directions to the architect.)

The whole affair made me reflect on swankiness. Most of us like the idea of being financially well-off, but then you see gatherings of such people and you think: This doesn’t look like fun at all. Wearing clothes that are too nice to do anything in, being denied food and drink, being shoehorned into poorly designed rows of torturous chairs to watch a 136-minute movie, after which you are expected to stick around and lavish praise on the screenwriter (a Portland resident who is in attendance) — no thank you. Give me stadium seating, a 32-ounce Dr Pepper and a big bag of Three Musketeers Pop’ables any day. I like regular folks, not high-falutin’ ones. For that matter, I think Johnny Cash liked regular folks, too. Especially regular folks with pills they could give him. But I digress.

It’s that time of the month again! No, not THAT time. The other time! The time when it’s time for “Ask Eric Stuff,” the astoundingly popular worldwide phenomenon of a feature wherein people ask Eric stuff and he answers them. How can you get Eric to answer YOUR question? By going to this page and submitting one, silly face! It couldn’t be easier! Well, in theory Eric could come to your house and you could ask him your question directly; that would be easier. But then he’d probably hang around and want to be fed and entertained. Trust us, this is better.

And now, the questions!

Dear Eric: I’m almost finished with my B.S. in mathematics. What should I study for my M.S.? — Going to Graduate School
Dear Grad: The book “Living a Celibate Life.” You’ll need it.

Dear Eric: What’s the point Eric? Why am I still going from day to day? — Riles in Rochester
Dear Rochy: Funny you should ask, because your friends and family have been wondering the same thing.

Dear Eric: Why do people still think they can drink and drive without it hurting anyone? — Flabbergasted in Fallon
Dear Flabby: People still think forwarding an e-mail to all their friends will result in Microsoft giving them money, too. This is because people are stupid.

Dear Eric: Which do you prefer? Cable or a dish? — TV Hog
Dear Hoggy: Depends on what I’m doing. For installing a stereo system, I prefer cable. For eating dinner, I prefer a dish. For watching TV, I prefer a set of rabbit-ear antennae that sit on top of the set and bring in fuzzy, black-and-white images.

Dear Eric: I hate shaving my legs. How much do guys care that girls shave their legs, anyway? — Hairy
Dear Single: Ha! Quit shaving them and find out.

Dear Eric: Are the wisespread natural disasters, like the December tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes in various countries, the AIDS epidemic and other biological problems, signs that the end of the world is near? — Revelations Reader
Dear Revvy: Yes, and add to the list the fact that Britney Spears’ husband Kevin Federline is about to release his own album. I mean, honestly.

Dear Eric: How come guys never want to go out with chubby girls? — Chubby Chica
Dear Chica: Um, maybe because they’re chubby? Hello?!

Dear Eric: How can I get my dog to come when I call him? — Training in Toledo
Dear Trainy: Every time he responds correctly, give him a treat. Every time he does not respond correctly, take him to the pound. (Don’t go inside; just drive past and let him see the place. He’ll get the picture.)

Dear Eric: I have a friend who has really bad breath. What is the best way to tell him? — Suffering Susan
Dear Suffragette: Skywriting.

Dear Eric: What is the best way to get rid of acne? — Mottled Molly
Dear Motley: Stop being a teenager. Seriously! CUT IT OUT!

Dear Eric: How do I go about teaching my new dog not to pee in my shoes? — Dog Lover
Dear Doggy: Well, for starters, quit wearing the shoes that look like fire hydrants.

Dear Eric: The man who is to be my fiance’s best man at our wedding cut his hair and dyed it on a dare. Our wedding is in two weeks, and this best man will look awful in the pictures! Should I ask my fiance to ask his best man to re-cut and dye his hair before the wedding? — Wedding Woes
Dear Woeful: Well, why not? He needs to get used to you micromanaging every single detail in his life sooner or later.

Dear Eric: I will be looking for my first real job after I graduate from college in June. Do you have any advice on getting a job? — Scared Student
Dear Stud: Yes. Make sure they know you can’t work Sundays, or else they’ll be calling you every week, bein’ like, “Hey! The pizza ain’t gonna deliver itself!” I hate those guys.

When I heard “Jeopardy!” was holding a contestant search in my area, I knew my moment had finally arrived. Why, even ugly people can win big money on “Jeopardy!”! This is not true of other game shows, nor of contest-based reality shows. On those programs, having a dull personality or zero enthusiasm is a death sentence. On “Jeopardy!,” it is a one-way ticket to Ken Jenningsville.

You see, the cruel irony of my life is that while I have always loved game shows, having spent my childhood watching at least 11 hours of them per day, my chances of ever appearing on one are limited by the fact that I do not hoot and cheer every time I do something right.

COMPUTER: You have successfully logged in to your Paypal account.
ME: GOOD ANSWER, GOOD ANSWER! WOOOOOOOOO!!

If I were suddenly awarded a huge cash prize, I would be excited — make no mistake, I would be thrilled. But would I jump up and down? Would I pump my fist in the air? I should say not. And this puts me out of the running for most game shows.

But “Jeopardy!” favors people who are smart, regardless of how chubby, unattractive or foreign they are. It is one of the few institutions in this world that actually reward nerdery. And since I do pretty well when I watch the show at home, I figured I had a decent chance of making it on as a contestant. It was worth a try, right?

Having registered for the contestant search, to be held at a conference center in Seattle, I arrived at 8:30 a.m. to find the lobby filled with a lot of people who looked like “Jeopardy!” contestants. There were two or three smart-looking men wearing dark blazers and sporting graying, close-trimmed beards. Turn on “Jeopardy!” any day of the week and you’ll see a guy who looks like that.

They had told us to dress the way we would if we were appearing on the show, and right away I could tell who belonged and who didn’t. Not to turn the meritocratic “Jeopardy!” into a shallow beauty contest like everything else, but if you’re a fat guy, don’t wear a polo shirt that you have unsuccessfully tucked into your pants, sans belt. In fact, don’t do that at all, no matter who you are. Of course they’re not going to let you on “Jeopardy!” if that’s how you show up to the audition! How do they know you won’t wear the same outfit on taping day? I mean, come on.

Everyone sat around chatting nervously, reading newspapers, drinking coffee. Some people were doing a last-minute review of lists of facts they’d been cramming. Having already mastered my lists of U.S. Presidents, Scandinavian Rivers and Things That Start with “R,” I glanced at the list of World Capitals I’d printed off. Sure, the capital of Djibouti is a city called Djibouti. But that formula doesn’t hold true in every case!

It occurred to me that this was one of the few times in my life that I was actually one of the coolest people in the room.

At 9, a man in a turtleneck shirt that was too tight and accentuated his nipples welcomed us into the conference room. There were 57 of us. The nipply man, whose name was Patrick, said he had been with “Jeopardy!” for 19 years and that he loved doing contestant searches. He had an energetic patter that was friendly and full of well-honed, well-practiced jokes that have been getting laughs from groups of would-be “Jeopardy!” contestants for nearly two decades. I could tell that some people were laughing harder than they ought to, perhaps trying to seem more effervescent and game show-worthy. This isn’t “Wheel of Fortune,” people, I thought. No one ever laughs on “Jeopardy!”

Patrick was accompanied by two men who operated the technical side of the audition. We were each given a sheet of paper on which to write our answers, a cheap “Jeopardy!” pen, and a piece of stiff cardboard to serve as a writing surface. Patrick showed us a DVD in which Alex Trebek and the show’s “Clue Crew” (those dorky men and women who pop up “on location” in some clues) explained how the written portion of the tryout was going to work. And then we began!

It was fast and efficient and, once again, pre-recorded on DVD. There were 50 clues, each appearing on the screen and read aloud by “Jeopardy!” announcer Johnny Gilbert. (Why not have Alex read them? I’m guessing Johnny works cheaper.) You have the time it takes him to read the clue, plus eight seconds after that, to write down your answer (which did not have to be in the form of a question, thank goodness). You can skip one and come back to it if you want, but with no lag between clues, there’s not really any time for that. There’s also no time to cheat by looking at other people’s answer sheets, as I learned when I tried to cheat by looking at other people’s answer sheets.

We were warned that these 50 questions would be a little harder than what’s normally on the show, to make sure they really get the cream of the geek crop. To pass, we had to get a certain number of them right. They wouldn’t tell us what that number was, however, nor would they tell us, when it was all over, what the right answers were. I believe this was just to annoy us.

The questions ran the gamut of typical “Jeopardy!” categories, though I noticed there were no sports questions and only a few science questions. Most of them dealt with history, geography, entertainment and literature. There were a few of the show’s jokey categories, too, like “Before & After”: “Mr. Romano’s TV show that was also the author of the Philip Marlowe stories.” (“Everybody Loves Raymond Chandler,” of course.)

Of the 50 questions, I left five of them blank because I had NO CLUE what the right answer might be, not even a wild guess. Considering how much TV I watch, I was embarrassed that one of these was a TV question: They wanted the name of Noah Wyle’s character on “ER.” Having never watched “ER,” I didn’t know that it was Dr. Carter. I also didn’t know the name of Lebanese-born author Kahlil Gibran’s book of poetry (“The Prophet”), nor the name of the book that brought Norman Mailer to prominence in the 1940s (“The Naked and the Dead”). In my world, Norman Mailer STILL hasn’t been brought to prominence.

Beyond the five that I didn’t know at all, there were maybe 10 where I had an idea but was uncertain, clues I probably would not have rung in on had I been a contestant on the show unless I had a commanding lead and a wrong answer wouldn’t hurt me much, or unless I had been drinking heavily. On the remaining 35 questions, I felt extremely confident, sometimes even positive, that I knew the answer. But still: Would 35 out of 50 be good enough?

When it was over, we handed in our papers, and Patrick and one of the other men exited to grade them. While they were gone, the third guy showed us a DVD of behind-the-scenes “Jeopardy!” shenanigans, but no one watched it. We were all busy asking each other the answers to the ones that had stumped us. (“‘The Prophet’? I’ve never even HEARD of that!” “Who watches ‘ER’ anymore?” “Wait, there are FIFTY states now?!”) And then we were very excited when Kelly, the newest member of the Clue Crew, appeared live and in person to take our questions and to distract us with her supernaturally bubbly persona!

My goodness is Kelly ever perky! She is three liters of perky in a one-gallon container. She told us her background was in customer service for Nordstrom (of course it was), and that she got her “Jeopardy!” job at an open audition. Now she travels the world most of the time, appearing in exotic locations to add a little variety to the show’s clues. For example, a clue like “This river is the longest in Europe” might be boring by itself. But if there’s video of a Clue Crew member standing next to the river in question (the Volga, of course) saying, “This river — THAT I AM STANDING NEXT TO RIGHT NOW — is the longest in Europe,” well, now you’ve got something. It would be the most useless job on TV, except that Vanna White is still alive.

Not 20 minutes after they’d departed, Patrick and the other guy returned with our graded tests. Kelly had the honor of reading the names of those who would be going on to the next level. Anyone whose name was not read had not passed the test and had to leave in shame for being too stupid. They made a big show of telling us that the questions were extra-hard and that we shouldn’t feel bad, but I knew what the subtext was: Get out of here, loser. Go peddle your idiocy to “The Price Is Right.”

Kelly read only eight names out of the 57. There was no maximum number of winners; in theory, all 57 of us could have done well enough on the test to proceed. But only eight of us did.

And I was one of them.

Holy crap is right! I was stunned, especially when I realized I only had seven fellow graduates. Usually when I do something noteworthy, there are hundreds of other people who do it too, like the time I committed suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid in Jonestown in 1978. Yet here I was in a small, elite group!

The other 49 people graciously congratulated us as they filed out the door, where they were issued dunce caps and sent out into the freezing rain, urged never to darken the “Jeopardy!” doorway again. We eight giggled and chatted excitedly amongst ourselves, like we’d all just been chosen prom king or something. There were five men and three women. Two of the men were two of those blazer-wearing bearded guys I’d noticed earlier. One of the women was a portly, friendly gal with fashionable eyeglasses and a hipster look about her. She and the blazer guys will almost certainly appear on the show.

Once we eight were the only ones left in the room, Patrick had us take turns playing a mock version of the game, mainly to see how we did in an actual game setting. Someone might score well on the written test but turn out to be a total retard when you put him behind a podium and start firing questions at him. They also said they want people who will be somewhat interesting to watch on TV. I assumed they were joking about this, because have you SEEN “Jeopardy!”? The woman who’s been winning the past several days, the monotone-voiced Latin teacher named Maria — she has the personality of an extension cord, yet there she is, soaking up money day after day. If she can be on TV, so can I. After all, we both passed the 50-question written test. You expect me to be believe she watches “ER”? Please.

So my name goes into a pool for 12 months, and I might get a call sometime during that period inviting me to be on the show. Until that day arrives, I will continue to watch the show, memorize trivia, and pray to Ken Jennings, the patron saints of nerdy Mormons. Djibouti!

My fellow Americans, it is with great humility that I address you today, Halloween, this holiest of holy holidays. It was almost exactly one year ago that I, Roger Hunsaker, was elected to be America’s first zombie president.

It was a hard-fought victory, as those of you who were alive at the time recall. The political battle was bloody, as was the battle between the groups of zombies who lived on the outskirts of America’s major cities and the U.S. military. But at the end of the day, when the ballots were cast, most of those that were not illegible due to being covered in the blood of the non-zombie voters were for me. And the ones that were not for me — the votes cast by brave, decent, hard-working Americans who favored George Bush or John Kerry for president instead of a zombie — well, those brave, decent, hard-working Americans were systematically hunted down and interrogated by my staff, so that their minds could be changed. Or, if not changed, then at least eaten.

Many did not believe a zombie, one of the walking undead, could adequately serve the needs of this country as its president. Their words were hurtful to me and my fellow Zombie-Americans, and though I personally ate the delicious brains of many humans who said such things, I was unable to eradicate the problem of anti-zombism entirely.

I am pleased to say, however, that anti-zombie bias has decreased since the election. Several Hollywood films depicting us favorably have helped with that, including the excellent documentary “Land of the Dead.” Our public image is changing. Americans no longer view zombies as monsters who devour humans, but as monsters who will devour THEM, personally, if they speak out against us.

It is also encouraging to note how many Republicans and Democrats have switched to the Zombie Party since my election. Actually becoming a zombie helps, of course, but it is not a given that being bitten by the undead, dying, and returning to life as a horrific, flesh-eating zombie means you will automatically switch parties. No, even among zombies, there are Republicans and Democrats, the one side favoring tax cuts for wealthy zombies, the other side favoring increased spending for zombie welfare.

Some non-zombie Americans have accused me of ignoring their needs. During the recent natural disaster in the Southern states, when help was slow to arrive, we heard things like, “Roger Hunsaker doesn’t care about living people!” My friends, this hurt. Of course help was slow to arrive: We’re zombies! You’ve seen the movies; we move slowly. You’d be sluggish, too, if you’d just crawled out from your own grave, newly invigorated with a hellish perversion of “life.”

It is well-documented that the instant I learned of the devastation in the South, I dispatched some of my top zombies to the afflicted region to rescue those stranded on rooftops and in convention centers by biting and/or devouring them.

Now, it is true that some members of my administration have been plagued by scandal, as well as by actual plague, which is always a risk when your body is decomposing. I asked my vice president to resign after he tore the leg off a visiting Chinese diplomat this summer. While I take an actively anti-communist stance, I do not approve of such drastic measures, particularly not when there are news cameras present.

And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t embarrassed when a staff member was indicted last week for leaking sensitive information to the press. The fact that the leak was a literal one, and that the information seeped out of an open sore on the staff member’s neck, made it all the more embarrassing. Even with one of us as president, we zombies are never going to be fully accepted if we behave so indecorously. And I assure you, once that staff member has been dealt with by the law, he will be dealt with by me, and by dealt with I mean devoured.

But in many respects, it has been a good year, too. While zombie marriage was once opposed by a majority of U.S. citizens, that tide has turned, and it is now opposed only by the minority of U.S. citizens who are not zombies themselves. Zombie marriages are now being performed everywhere: in ruined churches, in destroyed synagogues, in demolished mosques, all across this great, scorched land of ours.

All over America, average citizens are speaking out. They are coming out of their bomb shelters, climbing up out of the post-apocalyptic rubble to demand change. They want health-care reform. They want a new Social Security plan. They want to leave their bunkers or caves without fear of being torn asunder by marauding bands of the undead.

My friends, I can’t stand here and tell you that all of these changes will come today or tomorrow. We have a long road ahead of us. There is much work to be done. Many avenues must be explored. Many nutritious brains must be eaten. Many sentences must be written in the passive voice. And all of this will require the joint efforts of all Americans, both living and undead. Together, we can make America great again.

Sometimes we in the media become cynical about celebrities, what with their carefully crafted public images, and their teams of spokespersons, and their refusal to wear supportive undergarments at the Oscars. Sometimes we start to lose sight of the truth, which is that celebrities should be treasured as our most precious natural resource.

I was reminded of that fact this week as I examined some news stories about celebrities and their children. Gone are the days when everyone assumes celebrities make bad parents because of their (the celebrities’) inherent selfishness. Nowadays, we realize there’s no one better to raise a child than a famous person with a limited sense of personal responsibility.

As with most matters of importance, we can look to Madonna for guidance. Newsweek reports that she is strict with her kids, 9-year-old Lourdes and 5-year-old Rocco, going so far as to give them stupid names in order to keep them humble. She also doesn’t let them watch TV or read magazines, or eat ice cream or drink milk.

“When Daddy gets home, they get chocolate,” she says. “I’m the disciplinarian.”

In Madonna’s world, chocolate and milk are in the same category as special fun-time treats. And what kid doesn’t rush home after school and ask Mom for a big ol’ glass of milk — which she’ll gladly give, assuming the child is deserving of such a luxurious reward! Also off-limits at Madonna’s house: carrots, apples and affection.

Madonna has a keen method for ensuring tidiness at home, too. If Lourdes leaves dirty clothes on the floor, “we take all of her clothes and put them in a bag, and she has to earn all of her clothes back by being tidy,” Madonna tells Newsweek. “She wears the same outfit every day to school until she learns her lesson.”

Now, if the years 1983-1991 taught us anything, it’s that Madonna has no idea how to dress in public. But no matter! Her method of disciplining young Lourdes is admirable. Is rounding up all of your child’s clothes and putting them in a bag because she left something on the floor a pretty elaborate, time-consuming punishment for such a minor infraction? Yes! Yes it is! Which is why it’s so effective. Soon little Lourdes will realize what a sadomasochistic dominatrix her mother is, and she will begin taking notes for when she writes her tell-all biography.

But the most important story of the day has to do with a lucky child who hasn’t even been born yet. Of course I’m talking about the fetus currently gestating in the microscopic womb of cult hostage Katie Holmes. She and Tom Cruise are expecting a BABY! A baby what? Why, a baby human, of course! Or so they say. We’ll see. Anyway, despite the obvious obstacles (e.g., being gay and infertile), Tom Cruise has apparently managed to impregnate his zombie girlfriend, first with the doctrines of Scientology, and now with his offspring.

What will a Cruise/Holmes baby be like? Will it have a million-dollar smile and earn Oscar nominations? Will it achieve worldwide fame and stardom? Will it be the worst thing in “Batman Begins”? Only time will tell, and possibly also the tabloids.

One thing we know for sure is that the actual birth will be a mellow event, like going to a funeral for a Quaker mime. Scientologists favor births without the usual screaming and wailing, because they believe all that mayhem first thing out of the womb can psychologically scar the baby. You holler and moan when you push the little parasite out, and later in life he’ll have irrational fears and troubled emotions, or so says Scientology.

This is the sort of reasoning that seems really smart until you actually think about it, whereupon it seems stupid. Nearly everyone currently living was born to a mother who screamed like a banshee during delivery — and yet nearly everyone currently living also manages to function in society despite the trauma of his or her birth. There are a lot of screwed-up people in the world, sure, but if mothers swearing and demanding epidurals during childbirth were the cause, there’d be a lot more of them, that’s all I’m sayin’.

Whether the logic is sound or not, Katie Holmes has pledged to follow the “silent birth” procedure as much as possible, though considering she stands at 4’8″ and weighs 60 pounds, I wonder. It’s possible that delivering a baby will actually tear her in half. And being torn in half would make ANYONE scream! Especially a girl.

So it’s clear Tom and Katie care about their baby, wanting to give him or her a peaceful birthing process. They are also concerned about the child’s reputation, as indicated by their decision to hurry up and get married before the child is born. England’s Daily Mirror quotes a source as saying, “Tom’s old-fashioned. He wants his child to be born in wedlock.” Apparently, knocking her up out of wedlock is no big deal. It’s the wedding that’s the important thing! Take note, theologians, with your crusty old morals!

I hope you can agree, from these examples and from the others that I thought about but didn’t mention, that celebrities are caring, considerate creatures, among the most gentle in all the world. We should not mock them or begrudge them their opportunity to be parents. We should definitely keep our dirty clothes off the floor when we are around them, though, or we’ll get no milk for dessert.

My apartment is one of eight units in a little horseshoe-shaped complex that was built in 1940, which means this year it reached retirement age. Officially, the apartment is “quaint,” in that it is made of brick and has hardwood floors and high ceilings. In practical terms, it is a lot like a 65-year-old person, in that it’s always cold and has a peculiar odor.

Prior to my occupancy, the apartment was inhabited by an elderly couple who lived in it for 40 years before finally moving to a retirement home, or possibly dying. I am not sure what their lives were like. All of the windows in the non-air-conditioned apartment had been painted shut (it’s cold now that it’s fall, but in the summer it would have been unbearable), and despite cable TV having been invented sometime within the 40 years that they lived here, they never took advantage of it. There were no cable jacks anywhere in the unit; the place never became cable-ready.

Not that I needed cable. I’m a satellite man. Which brings me to my story. While Landlady Peg was showing me the place this summer during my apartment hunt, I was making a mental list of its amenities and began to think out loud. I said: “Oh good, this wall faces the south, so I can get a satellite dish….”

Peg, eavesdropping on my out-loud thinking, said, apologetically, “No, no dishes. We don’t want them on the building.”

I accepted this without argument. It seemed reasonable that a property owner could forbid satellite dishes being mounted on the building if he or she wanted to. I figured I could get cable with its accompanying TiVo-like DVR product and it would be a tolerable substitute for my preferred DirecTV/TiVo combination.

So I contacted Comcast. I had never dealt with them for cable TV purposes, though I had enjoyed their cable Internet in my last apartment. I had no reason to believe that hiring their services would be problematic; surely even a company as large as Comcast is always happy to acquire a new customer.

This line of thinking proved to be naive. As it turns out, Comcast is deeply embittered by the prospect of new customers. They resent them at near Microsoftian levels. I learned this first when I went to their Web site, where I discovered that some of their best prices are offered only at the kiosks you find in shopping malls. In other words, there are certain deals that would surely entice people to sign up with Comcast — but they refuse to make it easy for you by just offering you those deals when you call them on the phone or visit them on the Internet. You have to go to the mall and talk to a teenager at a kiosk.

So I did this. I talked to a teenager at a kiosk. He was named Brandon, I guess, probably, since that’s what all teenagers are named. He enthusiastically told me about a particular deal they had on a cable TV and Internet package, and it sounded reasonable, so I decided to set it up. I gave Probably-Brandon the address of the apartment, and he entered it into the computer.

That’s where the trouble began. My apartment was not in Comcast’s database. Since the unit had never had cable before, Comcast did not acknowledge its existence. In Comcast’s view of the world, there are two types of dwellings: those with cable-readiness, and those that are imaginary. This third, mythical kind of place — a place where people live but do not have cable — is beyond the scope of Comcast’s belief system.

I explained to Probably-Brandon-But-Maybe-Tyler that the previous tenants had lived there for 40 years and never acquired cable television, and that yes, I knew that was strange. He said Comcast would need to send someone out to the place to have a look and make sure there wasn’t some reason that cable had never been installed, like maybe the walls were made of adamantium (like Wolverine’s claws), or something. That seemed unnecessary, but reasonable. He said someone would call me in a couple days. This was three months ago, and I still haven’t heard anything.

In the meantime, I mentioned my satellite situation to a friend, who insisted landlords are not legally permitted to deny a tenant access to satellite service if the tenant so desires it. I did some checking and found the FCC’s rules on the matter. (You can read them here.) Basically, you can get a satellite dish whether the landlord likes it or not if the dish is placed somewhere that is exclusively yours — for example, a balcony or patio that only accesses your apartment, that is not shared with other tenants. If you have no such place, and the dish would have to be put on the roof or an exterior wall or some other “common” area, then you’re at the mercy of your landlord, who can say no if he wants to.

Well, guess what. My unit has a private area! (That sentence did not contain double-entendre.) (But that one did.) There’s a back door from the kitchen that leads to a little stoop, or a porch, a couple of steps down before you get to the sidewalk. And it has a railing, which is a fine thing to attach a satellite dish to. I read and re-read the FCC rules to make sure I was in the clear, and ordered up my beloved DirecTV/TiVo.

Now, you’re thinking the same thing I was thinking: What will Peg throw when she sees that I have acquired a dish? A fit? Me out? But it seemed from her brief explication on the matter that her opposition to dishes was having them on the building — i.e., potentially damaging the roof or exterior walls. This is understandable. I wouldn’t want you nailing things to me if I were 65 years old and made of brick, either. So since I had found a way to install the dish that wouldn’t hurt anything — I was even having them bring the wires in through the window, to avoid drilling a hole in the wall — I figured Peg and I would both be happy, or at least one of us would be happy and the other one would be apathetic. And if Peg was upset by the dish, I had the government on my side (for once).

The DirecTV installer came on a Tuesday. That Friday, there was a knock at my door. When I opened it I found Peg standing there, looking peeved and holding a wrench. She was at the complex to fix a plumbing problem (hence the wrench) and had seen my satellite dish (hence the peeve).

“Eric, I couldn’t help but notice you had a satellite dish, after we specifically talked about that!” she said. But I wish you could have heard her tone of voice. I wish this column had audio capabilities, and that I had recorded the conversation. Mostly the latter, I guess, since this column does have audio capabilities and I just never use them. She sounded hurt, like I had personally offended her. Her voice had the tone of one who had established a long, healthy relationship with a person based on a shared disdain for satellite dishes, only to be betrayed when that person violated everything she stood for by obtaining one behind her back.

I said: “Ah, yes, well, I had understood your objection to be to putting a dish on the building, for fear of damaging it, so when I found a way that wouldn’t hurt the building, I was glad….”

“No, no, we don’t want them anywhere, at all,” she said.

Here is where things became awkward. I was going to have to play my “the FCC is on my side” card. But what I had to say, basically, was, “The FCC says I can have a dish if I want to, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, SO THERE.” And there’s no polite way of saying that.

So I summoned all my powers of tact and said, as non-argumentatively as possible, “Well, I looked into it, and the FCC says that a tenant can have a dish without the landlord’s permission if the dish is someplace that is exclusively the tenant’s domain, like a balcony or a patio, like mine is.”

Peg replied: “I would be very surprised if that were true.”

Well, you’d better sit down, then, I thought.

I said, “I can e-mail you the FCC’s Web site where they talk about it.” She said that was a good idea and left, still hurt and confused and wielding a wrench.

I e-mailed her the link and didn’t hear anything back. It made me nervous. I lived day-to-day, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for her to find a loophole in the FCC rules, or to hire contractors to come remove the stoops from all the apartments’ back doors. But I vowed not to give up my satellite or — especially — my TiVo without a fight.

Surely Peg and I could reach some kind of compromise, I thought — some kind of compromise where I do absolutely nothing and she gets over it. Surely that wasn’t asking too much.

After a while, I figured either she had calmed down and realized the dish wasn’t hurting anything, or she had checked the FCC site and accepted that the law was on my side, or she was assembling her team of lawyers. Finally I received a letter in the mail from her team of lawyers, which answered that question.

The letter, however, was not instructing me to remove the satellite dish. Peg and her lawyers seemed to have ceded that point. Instead, the letter dealt with the way the dish’s cable came into my apartment. I told you earlier I had the installer bring it in through the window. Trouble is, sometime before winter, Peg’s handyman will be putting up storm windows on all the units. A storm window doesn’t do much good if it can’t close all the way because there’s a thick wire coming in underneath it. Hence, the lawyers told me, I needed to find a new way of bringing the satellite wire into the apartment.

I was baffled. I considered every one of the apartment’s other orifices and apertures, trying to figure out how else to bring that satellite cable from the dish to my TV. I could think of nothing.

Then I re-read the letter, which had suggested some possible solutions. One of them was: “Through an existing hole in the wall.” I thought: What do they mean, “an existing hole”? Why would there be a hole in the wall? Then I remembered: for cable TV. That’s how cable TV gets into your house, usually, through a small hole drilled in the wall. But as you’ll recall, my apartment had never been brought into the 1980s and the world of cable television, so there was no hole. But wait! I bet the other apartments aren’t occupied by elderly Luddites….

I raced around the building, looking for cables. Sure enough, all of the other units had black cables snaking along the outside before entering through — ta-da! — a hole drilled in the wall, one hole into each apartment.

I called Peg’s lawyer — Peg and I were now communicating strictly through lawyers, not directly — and offered this solution: I will have the satellite installer re-route the wire through a new hole, which he will drill in the wall. Why should this be an acceptable solution? Because if I had decided to get cable TV instead of satellite, the cable installer would have had to do as much, since the apartment had never had cable before. Surely Peg would not try to stop me from watching television altogether. Ergo, it should be acceptable for the satellite guy to make a hole in the wall, provided it is no larger than the one the cable guy would have made.

“Indeed, sir,” said the lawyer, in my imagination. “You have proved it!”

She did see the logic, though, checked with Peg, and let me know a day later that my solution was agreeable. I had the procedure done, and the matter was resolved.

But I think back to that week where I didn’t know what would happen to my TiVo. It’s funny how sometimes it takes a traumatic experience to make you appreciate what you have. I’ve always loved my TiVo, of course … but somehow now, after this ordeal, I love it even more. We spend more time together now, sure. But it’s the quality of the time that’s really important.

I hope my story inspires you to let your TiVo know how much you appreciate it. Clean out its “Now Playing” list more often. Don’t let old sitcoms sit there after you’ve watched them. Don’t tell TiVo to record things you have no intention of viewing. It deserves better than that.

Here’s to you, TiVo. You complete me.

When I graduated from Brigham Young University in 1999, I swore I would never go back to school again, and not just because the university president had personally requested that I hurry up and get out. It’s because I saw no reason to. I had a bachelor’s degree in journalism, and there was no practical purpose in getting a master’s. (Believe me, it wouldn’t have helped.)

So it is with some surprise that I announce that as of two weeks ago, I am once again a college student, this time at Portland State University.

I know what you’re thinking: Portland is not a state. But don’t tell Portland that! Portland got really baked one night, decided it was a state, and started a college. Its friends Eugene and Salem were wasted too, and they thought it was pretty funny. Seattle thinks they’re all morons and is always rolling its jittery, caffeinated eyes at them.

But my point is, I’m a student again! I’m an undergraduate again, too, as PSU doesn’t have a master’s program in film studies, which is what I want to do this time around. I figure if I have a bachelor’s in journalism, followed by a minor in film studies, reviewing movies will be the only job I’m qualified for, and people will stop asking me why I do it. Also, when people e-mail me questions like, “How culd you hate Rob Zombie movies????? What r ur creedentials 2 B a movie critic anyway??????,” I’ll be able to respond with: “This diploma right here, jackface.”

When I first made the decision to go to PSU, my first thought, naturally, was: How can I do this for free? I looked into Pell Grants, and discovered that you are not eligible for them if you already have a bachelor’s degree and are just trying to get a second one. I guess the government wants to help you get an education … but not TOO MUCH of an education. If we got too smart, we might rise up against them, and then whose fault would that be? Their own damn.

I’m only going part-time for now, so I can establish Oregon residency and pay cheaper tuition. (Evidently it is harder to educate an out-of-stater than a native Oregonian, because they charge a dickens of a lot more for it.) I have two classes, both about film history, one of them focusing specifically on the 1970s, and I’m very excited about the course material. So it’s strange how I’ve had to suppress my natural instinct, which is to find ways of doing no work whatsoever.

You have to understand, the happiest day of my academic life at BYU was the day I realized that since I wasn’t going to grad school, it didn’t matter what grades I got (as long as they were above failing). Here The Man had been telling me to strive for A’s and B’s, when in fact there was no reason to. OK, maybe “to learn” or “to become more educated,” but those things did not interest me at that point, at least not in regards to most of my classes. I knew what I was going to do career-wise, and in fact I was already doing it. (Yes, joker, I refer to delivering pizza.)

So after my epiphany, the first thing I’d do when I got the syllabi for my courses at the start of each semester was to go through and calculate which assignments I could simply NOT DO and still get passing grades in the classes. This often required intricate math, which was unfortunate, since one of the classes I had applied this principle to was my math class. Still, I managed. I would do the minimum work, score a D-, and get one step closer to graduation. Anytime I’d get a D, I’d curse myself, as it meant I had done more work than necessary. (“If only I’d studied for five less minutes and missed one more question on that final…!”)

These are hard habits to break, as I have recently learned. I sat there during the first session of my “Hollywood of the 1970s” class and listened to the professor explain that we would watch 17 movies over the course of the term and write a paper at the end. And I thought: Oh, yeah?! We’ll see about that! Then I thought: Wait, what’s the matter with me? I LIKE watching movies, and I like writing about them. But because The Man was dictating it, I automatically wanted to weasel out of it.

It’s weird having to watch movies for homework anyway. I write it on my to-do list: go to the bank; do some laundry; watch “Apocalypse Now”; mail my rent check. It gets hectic, watching all these movies. I have to watch “Shaft” by Tuesday! And later in the term, I have to watch “Star Wars”!

I kid, but looking at it purely in terms of the time commitment, a lot of these movies are 2 1/2 hours long, and I guarantee you, I never spent 2 1/2 hours on homework when I was in school before, not even when I was still trying to get good grades. I should have taken the Hollywood of the 1950s class, because movies were shorter then. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Because I’ve already seen “Star Wars” plenty of times, I probably won’t actually watch it again when it’s assigned. That will be my one concession to my old ways. Take that, The Man!

It is time to indulge in one of our favorite pastimes, “Let’s Make Fun of People Who Whine Too Much.” Up first: a couple of New Mexicans.

I know what you’re thinking: What happened to the OLD Mexicans? (Nothing; they’re fine.) But we’re talking about people from New Mexico. The city of Las Cruces, specifically. Las Cruces is Spanish for “The Crosses,” and so you can imagine what might be on the city’s official seal: some crosses. The city is named The Crosses, after all. What would you expect to find on the official seal? Chickens?

But guess what a lawsuit filed Sept. 16 in Albuquerque’s U.S. District Court is demanding? That the crosses be removed. Yes, the plaintiffs want the crosses removed from the official emblem of the city of The Crosses.

I bet you know where I’m going with this. The city is called The Crosses; why should anyone be surprised, much less offended, that there are crosses on its seal? Now, if the city were called Los Calcetines, then you wouldn’t find crosses on the seal. You’d find socks. In Los Calcetines, a cross on the city’s emblem would indeed be a questionable move, church-and-state-wise. Ditto a cross on all the letterhead and stationery coming out of city hall in the city of Los Pantalones.

Los Pantalones shouldn’t have a cross on its logo! It should have pants!

But Las Cruces has every right, I should think, to have a picture indicative of its name on its logo. Los Gatos, N.M., could have cats, Los Angeles could have angels, Boca Raton could have a rat’s mouth, Baton Rouge could have a red stick (dynamite, maybe?), and Butte, Mont., could have a big, stinky butte.

To get rid of the crosses from Las Cruces, you’d have to change the name of the city. Yes, crosses obviously have religious significance. I suspect that’s why the town was named Las Cruces in the first place. So the beef should be with whoever named the city, not the current administration that is simply living up to the name.

But oh! To hear the plaintiffs whine. According to the Associated Press story of Sept. 24, the lawsuit alleges that “the crosses serve no governmental purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christian citizens.” (That’s right: The city officials did it JUST to annoy people.)

“(The plaintiffs) accuse the city of invading the privacy of their homes with government-sponsored proselytizing,” the article says. Things like city newsletters have the logo and are mailed to residents, after all, thereby “invading the privacy” of the citizens’ homes.

The plaintiffs also say “they have been made to feel excluded from public participation in government activities,” AP reports.

Said one plaintiff: “We want our First Amendment rights back, our full rights as citizens.”

Now, I’ve read the First Amendment, and it says nothing about the right to avoid all religious iconography, so I’m not sure which rights the plaintiff feels he does not have access to. The First Amendment does say the government cannot sponsor a particular religion — but putting crosses on the logo for the city of The Crosses does not constitute sponsoring a religion. The logo doesn’t mean you have to be Christian to live there, or even to “belong” there. All it means is that the people who founded the city were Christians. And sorry! There’s nothing we can do about that!

One place the non-Christian plaintiffs definitely should not move if they want to feel more included is Corpus Christi (“Body of Christ”), Texas. I don’t even want to know what’s on their logo.

But we have frittered away enough time on the people of The Crosses. It is time to move on to the subject of Shmindy Shmeehan, the woman whose son died in Iraq and who hasn’t given President Bush a moment’s peace ever since. I’m not using her real name because her whole reason for existing nowadays is to get attention for herself, and I don’t want to fuel that. I use her name, and there’s one more hit when you Google her.

Is it possible to whine TOO MUCH about the possibly unjustified death of your son? I wouldn’t have thought so either, but here we are. Shmeehan has everyone’s sympathy for being a grieving mother, of course. Where she loses us is in the way she has become single-minded and bizarre over it, stalking President Bush for most of August, trying to pester him into meeting with her (which he had already done once) so she could berate him in person. (And how could he pass up such a tempting invitation, anyway?)

Then, as Hurricane Rita was striking Texas on Sept. 24, she posted a message on the liberal Web site Daily Kos saying, “i am watching cnn and it is 100 percent rita…even though it is a little wind and a little rain…it is bad, but there are other things going on in this country today…and in the world!!!!” Other things like the big anti-war demonstration planned for that day in Washington, D.C., maybe? Afraid ol’ Mother Nature was stealing your thunder, as it were?

Since that stupid hurricane that hardly even killed anyone distracted some of the media from the protest, Shmindy Shmeehan had to get herself arrested in front of the White House two days later, all for the “cause.”

The problem is that her “cause,” which used to be, at least ostensibly, the anti-war effort, has now transparently become herself. She has gone from being anti-war to being pro-Shmindy Shmeehan. In her attempt to put a face on the casualties of war, she has made it TOO personal, becoming a grandstanding, irrational nutjob in the process. Shmindy has become nothing but a shmattention shmwhore.

The thing is, most of the country actually agrees with her on some points. Anywhere from 59 percent to 67 percent of us disapprove of the way Bush is handling the Iraq situation, depending on which poll you read. And we’re about evenly split on whether we ought to bring all the troops home now, or stay there until Iraq becomes stable. If I’m Shmindy Shmeehan, I have to wonder: How can I be despised when so many people agree with me? Of course, I have to wonder the same thing if I’m Shmichael Schmoore.

Last Monday, “The Price is Right” began its 34th season. That is a long time for a game show to run! I’ve just begun my 32nd year, and I’m already exhausted.

Though it was a staple of my TV diet growing up, I hadn’t watched “The Price is Right” for many, many years. But in my ongoing quest for understanding of our world and the way it works, I watched the 34th season premiere, to see what I’d been missing. These are my findings.

We open on a television studio where the audience reacts as though they have each had the blood in their veins replaced with pure, unfiltered crack. They are ecstatic … and nothing has happened yet! The announcer, who was Johnny Olson and Rod Roddy when I was a kid but who is now Rich Fields, reads the names of four audience members, and each of those people responds by increasing his or her level of rabidness by a factor of 10.

First is Zane, who is seated in a cluster of Boy Scouts and who looks no older than one. Next is Dustin, also quite young, though not evidently affiliated with any youth organization. Then there are Bobette and Natalie, both mid-30s mom types. It seems likely that Bobette and Natalie are destined to win, while Zane and Dustin are destined for infamy.

Bob Barker emerges next, not from the doors onstage but from the back of the studio. I assume this is a special treat for the season premiere. The audience responds by leaping to its feet and screaming in abject joy. They are the happiest they have ever been in their lives. Some of them rend their clothing in delirium, while others openly and freely urinate on themselves. Foam and spittle soak the floors.

Bob takes the stage, is handed his microphone by a disembodied arm, and thanks the audience for its loving ovation. The audience responds by continuing to scream fervently, the sound of bursting aneurysms echoing through the studio like the popping of bubble wrap.

Here I note that Bob looks positively ANCIENT. He is over-tanned and white-haired, gaunt and desiccated like a particularly white-toothed corpse. I foresee his death: His sternum is crushed by an enthusiastic contestant, and a rib punctures his heart. He is dead in a matter of moments, and contestants immediately place bids on his corpse.

Anyway, the first item up for bids today is a trip to Cancun. Zane and Dustin both look like they have just seen a beautiful naked woman. Zane responds by hilariously overbidding. Bobette bids closest and plays “Golden Road,” a game with a succession of prizes, culminating in a Dodge Viper valued at more than $85,000.

Holy crap! That’s an expensive car. I wouldn’t own a car like that in my neighborhood, that’s for sure.

Bobette wins all the prizes! A luggage set, a hot tub, and the Viper. The audience, which has not stopped screaming since the show began, greets this development with animalistic wailing and hooting, like starved hyenas being offered a gazelle. I have to say, I’m pretty excited, too, even though Bobette’s win affects me in no way whatsoever.

Called from the audience to replace Bobette is a guy named Brock, who meets the exact same description as Zane and Dustin. Natalie should have no problem winning the his-and-hers tennis equipment against these tools.

But no! Dustin wins. He is as surprised as I am. He plays “1/2 Off,” a game with $10,000 cash as its ultimate prize. Turns out Dustin is married, despite being no more than 16. His wife is in the audience, surely wondering why her husband was chosen instead of her.

The game involves guessing which item’s displayed price is actually one-half of the real price. This is pretty easy to do. Obviously the electric massager costs more than $20. A moron could win this game. Morons probably DO win it, actually, and frequently.

Moron or not, Dustin wins, and again, I am very happy for him. Ten thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at! I’ll allow no sneezing at $10,000.

During the commercial break, there is an ad for the Hoveround motorized chair for old people. The commercial features several old people trading lines on the old song “You Made Me Love You.” It’s hilarious. Also: The inventor of the Hoveround is a man named Tom Kruse. Delightful! I’m not old, but I am lazy. Perhaps I will get a Hoveround.

The next contestant summoned is Isabel, an old lady wearing a straw hat. She is at most five feet tall. A treadmill is displayed and described. Bob asks her, “What do you bid?,” and she replies, “For what?” I’m not making that up.

Isabel bids poorly on the treadmill, as you might expect, and Zane wins. He scrambles up out of contestants’ row like a cat that’s been dropped in a swimming pool. He behaves like the sort of 18-year-old who believes he is being hip and funny, which is altogether the wrong attitude to take on a game show. You come across looking like an idiot.

He plays “Push Over” for a folding trailer, whatever that is. Whatever that is, it’s worth more than $7,000. “Push Over” is one of the very short games they play to balance out the longer ones. You get a sequence of digits like 92709437291, and you choose the four-digit sequence out of there that you think is the right price. Zane does it. He dances around like a fool, clearly thinking he is entertaining. It’s a truly embarrassing display. Bob tells him he’s very funny. Sure, Bob, encourage him.

In the Showcase Showdown, Zane spins 85 cents for himself, which does not bode well. Fortunately, Bobette comes through with a dollar! This gets her $1,000 and a bonus spin, which yields nothing. But still, she won, and we’ll never see Zane again except in our nightmares.

The next contestant is our requisite military personnel, Sean. He’s in the Air Force. He is in uniform, of course, as is custom on this show, because otherwise when you tell Bob you’re in the military, he’ll call you a big fat liar. “Oh yeah?” he’ll sneer. “Then why are you out of uniform, ‘soldier’?”

They’re bidding on a refrigerator/freezer. Isabel bids $1, even though she’s only the second bidder. Predictably, Brock bids $2. They both lose, though, and Natalie wins with a bid of $1,251 (it was really $1,349). I am guessing that a refrigerator/freezer has been offered as a prize on every episode of “The Price is Right” for the past 33 years. When they can’t think of what else to feature they probably say, “Oh, heck, just put a refrigerator/freezer out there.”

Natalie plays “Switch,” in which the prize is TWO cars! As if anybody needs two cars. How will she get them home? But the audience, still in a frenzy over Bobette winning that Viper, is delighted beyond all reason. Some of them start engaging in reproductive congress, right there in the studio, so euphoric are they over the proceedings.

“Switch” is a very simple game: They tell you the two prices ($18,151 and $16,110), and you just have to guess whether the prices match the cars they’re currently affixed to or should be switched with each other. Natalie switches ’em, and she’s right! Four games, four winners.

Next to be called to duty from the audience: Kristen, a pretty blonde in a cowboy hat. Everyone bids on a pair of bicycles. Isabel bids $1 again, though this time it’s strategically smart to do so. She still loses. Brock wins the bikes, and we learn he’s there on his senior class trip. The prize? A Ford Focus! They’re playing “Dice Game,” the first game since “Golden Road” that I recognize. You roll a giant die and, if you don’t roll the next number in the price, you guess whether what you rolled is higher or lower than the right number. When he rolls a three, he guesses the correct number will be higher, but he turns out to be wrong. No Ford Focus for you, Brock. Way to ruin our streak, Brock.

Next: Angela, another pretty blonde. She’s in the chump spot, chosen before the sixth game, where if she doesn’t win, she gets no more chances. They’re bidding on a “wine secretary,” a term I have not heard before. It’s like a cupboard for wine, I guess. What’s wrong with a cardboard box? Or a cupboard?

Sean the Air Force guy wins and plays for a new game room. He must feel like a loser, playing in one of the few games today that doesn’t offer a car for a prize. Heck, Natalie was offered TWO cars. The game is “Pick-a-Pair,” in which we meet six household products and Sean has to choose the two that are the same price. One of them is an individual bag of Chips Ahoy. The other is a candy bar. Sean picks them. He’s right; they’ll both run you 55 cents ($1.30 at 7-Eleven). He wins the game room. He doesn’t seem the least bit excited. I can’t blame him, though I would probably fake it better if I were there.

In the Showcase Showdown, we learn that Brock, the kid who just graduated from high school and didn’t win a car (the only loser of the day), is about to go on a Mormon mission! I thought he had that look about him.

Brock: 40 cents. Sean spins 55, enough to beat Brock, but not a great score. He spins again and goes over. Natalie spins 65 cents and wins. Brock goes home the same way he came in: a loser. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have my son come home from “The Price is Right” in a box than without any prizes.

During the break, there’s a commercial starring Wilford Brimley, the world’s oldest, crankiest man. I pity the people who watch “The Price is Right” every day and see nothing but a succession of commercials geared toward old people. It is probably especially depressing if you ARE an old person.

The first showcase has a “theme,” and it’s Things Featuring the Number 34 (for the start of the 34th season). There’s a copy of “Miracle on 34th Street” … which you can watch on your BRAND-NEW TV/DVD PLAYER! Or you can learn all about our 34th president Dwight D. Eisenhower … on a TRIP TO WASHINGTON, D.C.! Or you’ll get plenty of selenium, which is element No. 34 on the periodic table … when we BURY YOU IN CHEMICAL SOLUTIONS USED FOR THE TONING OF PHOTOGRAPHS!

Just kidding on the last one. The third prize is a pickup truck, which holds 34 gallons of gas. I hope they’re giving out $200 bills to fill it up. Natalie bids $21,000 on the showcase, which seems very low to me. I happen to know the truck alone costs that much, and I don’t even like trucks/the people who drive them.

Bobette’s showcase is $1,000 cash, a trip to Tahiti, and a Cadillac convertible, the sixth automobile to be rolled out today. Bobette bids $60,000. This turns out to be $30,000 less than the actual price. Natalie, meanwhile, was only off by $10,000. So Natalie wins! There is a hug between the two ladies, and Bobette shuffles shamefully off the stage while Natalie’s friends and family join her in celebrating. Bob tells us to have our pets sprayed or murdered. As the credits roll, the audience reaches the zenith of its fervent undulations and some members begin to slit the throats of others in the pagan worship of their god, Bob Barker.

My findings: There is something very satisfying and uplifting in seeing people’s happiness over winning money and prizes. On the other hand, this show is loud and clangy, the equivalent of putting a pot over your head and beating it with a hammer for 60 minutes. On the third hand, I’m thinking of buying a Hoveround.