I feel as though I’ve been sleeping for 20 years. It’s TiVo Time!! One of the benefits of sleeping for days on end is the catching up process. It’s much more efficient than living day to day.

Of course, I’m not advocating this as a lifestyle. It’s a byproduct of too much medicine, too many treatments, and doctors with a single diagnosis that plays like a broken record (or, for a younger generation, a CD that skips and repeats).

Catching up has benefits. You miss all the daily cruft that doesn’t amount to much and get just the highlights, the special events. And TiVo.

During periods of consciousness I would record a whole series of different TV shows that I knew would run while I was asleep (I prefer not to use the word “unconscious”).

One of those on my list was a series that began a year or two ago. The medical show House, which stars Hugh Laurie. Think of it as Chicago Hope and CSI New Jersey rolled into one.

I’m sure I recorded a few dozen House episodes on TiVo, and when I’m awake for hours at a time I watch what I’ve recorded on TiVo for hours at a time.

My connection to Hugh Laurie is simple. You gotta love those overly saturated baby blue eyes. Even Paul Newman couldn’t pull off color like that.

We also share the same independent, sarcastic, somewhat negative (we call it “realistic”) view of humankind, and the same birth date, though Laurie was actually born in England, half a world away, and hours ahead of me.

House is a surly, sarcastic, caustic, nearly irascible character and a world class medical diagnostician.

What I’ve learned from firsthand medical experience is that doctors, even high paid, experienced doctors, simply guess a lot. Of course, they’re educated guesses, but guesses nonetheless.

House and his team seem to guess often and they’re wrong often, though right often enough not to kill too many patients each week.

The advantage of a TiVo stream of TV shows is the opportunity to see the characters unfold and develop in rapid order; not once a week, but every hour, at least every hour I can remain conscious.

Gregory House is a great character gone bad, a maverick, a Samurai mercenary whose only delight is being right. That should have bothered me early on but it didn’t.

Now it does. Episode after episode House lies, antagonizes, distorts the truth, cajoles, intimidates, and squeezes the truth of a situation out of patients, doctors, administrators, and next of kin.

If there’s a straw that can actually break a camel’s back, then watching House too often and too soon has the same effect as the straw.

Having a passion to heal is one thing, having an over burdened passion always to be right is something else. I began to detect that the character House wanted to be right more than he cared about the patient being healed.

Healing was merely a byproduct of being right.

House is not without moral problems as in his desire to break up the marriage of former love Sela Ward (an attorney in the same hospital).

In one episode, one of his staff doctors tries out a patient’s drugs, gets high, and has sex with another staff doctor. Granted, House is always proven right about the appropriate diagnosis, but not without ruffling every feather in the hospital.

In early episodes, such behavior was endearing; after all, the patients, at least most, lived. Now it’s annoying. Why?

At this stage of my life I want to see a few more heroes leading by example, and a few less selfish, self-gratifying, egotistical leaders who become an example.

Of course, it’s just TV. But it’s my TV and my time and I get to make some choices with the time remaining in my life.

House isn’t on the list.

It’s not a Latin dance by Benton Harbor, but it is a favorite. I wonder what Jessica Simpson thinks of Chicken Salsa? Is it a Spanish Fowl? Or, a latin inspired dance of a barnyard animal? Remember, she had trouble understanding Chicken of the Sea.

Food is a necessity for life, though well prepared food goes beyond the daily needs to sustain life. True life is sustained by Chicken Salsa. Seriously. Well, that and salmon.

As you know, I don’t sing or dance (at least, to a level I’ll admit, or in mixed company), but I have good taste, despite Charlie Tuna’s need to know the difference between good taste and tasting good.

If Jessica were here today I’d sit her down, explain the facts of chicken life. I’d start with a little history regarding crime fighter Benton Harbor, and finish off the lesson with my version of Chicken Salsa.

Simple. Elegant. Quick. Tasty. Good for you. Mostly.

This will get you about four servings of chicken unless you’re like me, then it serves only three. Two for me, one each for two friends or family members.

It’s a quick meal and better than Hot Pockets in a microwave. As best I can determine there’s about 200 calories per breast, and seven grams of fat. It’s low carb, too, but it doesn’t matter.

If you have to die young, die eating something you like.

OK, so who’s Benton Harbor, Tera?

It’s a brave new world with strange new bedfellows. Literally. What do Pink and Willie Nelson have in common? Hit songs and controversial themes. What? Pink, yes, but say it ain’t so, Willie. Gimme a ballad and throw stink on the pink.

It’s a new century, Tera. Get used to the changes. Willie still looks like Willie. Only more so.

Neil Diamond has hair. Again. Music videos are still tough to understand (I don’t want symbolism, I want singing and sex!).

My case in point for the week is Pink. I’m not a fan, though anyone who can poke at Jessica Simpson, Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton (all in the same album) can’t be all bad.

Mostly. But not all.

Whether you’re in to Pink or not, view the music video and tell me what you think of the generation Pink.

Click Here and view at your own risk.

What’s the message?

In the shadow of this year’s hit movie “Brokeback Mountain,” Willie Nelson grabs the theme of forbidden love on the high plains with both horns; so to speak.

Ned Sublette’s 1980s country tune “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly (Fond of Each Other)” gets Willie at his best, tongue in cheek; so to speak.

My generation was rock ‘n roll; singing and sex. These days the music is country but the theme is the same. Only the partners have changed.

Not bathing for a week may do the same thing; repel people. It’s the side effects that make it less than desirable. Do people bother you? Do you find youself in a situation where you’d just like to get rid of someone; make them go away? Try people repellent. It works.

OK, it doesn’t work on everyone but it does work. From what I can tell, getting rid of people is an art. Or a lack of hygiene. Perhaps a little of both.

The former is socially acceptable though left to those with the talent to dispatch others to do their bidding (or, just to be dispatched).

The latter is less socially acceptable, though highly effective. The side effects may have something to do with why it hasn’t caught on.

The News & Telegraph in the UK reports on a product that does just what we’ve wanted one to do for as long as I can remember wanting to repell people.

It’s repels people. Specifically, The Sonic Teenager Deterrent (also named, the Mosquito) only works on teenagers. It’s just a matter of time before the gadget can be fine tuned to a repel a person of your choice.

A Romulan Disrupter would do much the same, though they’re outlawed. Or, rather, will be outlawed in a few hundred years.

The Mosquito is a serious tool; a simple electronic gadget which sends out an ultra high frequency noise. Guess what? Only those 20 years old and under can hear it.

If the next version can be dialed and tuned to rid your home of pests (relatives who eat too much, friends who talk too much; you get the idea), then I’m a buyer.The sound is so distressing to teenagers that they reportedly clutch their ears in discomfort, further jamming their Apple iPod ear buds into their heads, causing even more discomfort.

Within just a moment or two the sound (soundless to those of us who are more mature, or who listened to too much rock ‘n roll in our own youth) becomes excrutiating and the teenagers leave the area.

It’s the perfect people repellent.

The News & Telegraph says the device is so successful that it has been endorsed by police and local authorities. Already teenagers hate it.

It can only be a matter of time before the gadget ends up as standard fare above every 7-11 store in the US. When crowds of unruly youth begin to congregate, talk dirty, make obscene gestures, and spill their Slurpees, on comes the Mosquito.

The sound won’t bother other 7-11 customers, but the disruptive teenagers will be repelled to another locale.

I’ve read of similar devices which repel insects, spiders, and rodents in and around a home. Teenagers are worse, hence the Mosquito represents a more viable solution.

Isn’t it just a matter of time before the device is available with a fine grain tuner which can be set to repel anyone from anywhere, regardless of age, sex, or hygiene?

Why can the device be heard by teenagers and not adults? Besides rock ‘n roll and the damage caused by iPods, cells within the inner ear die or are damaged as we age.

The ones that go first are the ones that hear the higher frequencies. At certain frequencies, adults are deaf, teenagers are not. It’s simply a matter of knowing which frequencies work on which part of the population, and blasting them with soundless sound accordingly.

If the next version can be dialed and tuned to rid your home of pests (relatives who eat too much, friends who talk too much; you get the idea), then I’m a buyer.

I’m not a blonde, though I’ve been one a few times. Some of my best friends are blonde. I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that television news is being infiltrated by blonde bombshells (contrasted in flavor by an occasional Asian female). Journalism degree or Clairol?

The 21st century is likely to go down as the ‘Blonde and Busty Anchorwoman’ generation. LIke pharmaceutical TV ads on prime time news, blondes are everywhere.

MSNBC promotes a pnueumatic Rita Cosby, who appears more adept at rushing through buffet lines than my close friend, Bambi Hambi.

Is Rita a great broadcast journalist? Her on air credentials appear to a full cup and photogenic smile.

An early entry to blonde-dom and TV news is the authoritative CNN franchise, Paula Zahn. Apparently blondes on TV news can only smile if they’re under 30.

I watch Fox for comic relief or to gain hourly lessons in administrative spin control. There’s a Fox blonde who goes to extraordinary trouble to darken her roots and is named after President Carter’s daughter and a box of cereal.

ABC’s Diane Sawyer displays grace, elegance, charm, and a delightful ability to get the cameraman to forget how to focus a lens. If I were a guy I’d be a stalker for Fox’s Laurie Dhue, who wins my ‘Blonde Bombshell’ award for TV News 2006.

The most blonde non-blonde award would go to Katie Couric of The Today Show. Nothing shows the road to 50 faster than a brunette who used to be.

The meanest blonde award needs to be sent UPS to CNN’s Nancy Grace. I’d be afraid to piss her off in person.

The tough blonde award would go to Fox’s Greta Van Susteren. Tough because she’s a lawyer. Tougher because she can spell plastic surgery.

ABC’s Diane Sawyer displays grace, elegance, charm, and a delightful ability to get the cameraman to forget how to focus a lens.

Leaving the bombshell category, but ranking high atop the male blonde list is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, and CNN’s Lou Dobbs. Chris appears regularly on Saturday Night Live.

Fully 60-percent of the Top Female Anchors listed on TV Heads are blonde, blondish. Only 5 percent of the US population is considered blonde.

So, you want a career in broadcast journalism? Go blonde. It’s the fast track.

Just what we need. Another way to use up the little time we have left on planet earth. Pencil and paper, or Mac or PC, Sudoku is the latest rage whose time has come to take more of your time. My question of the day is: ‘Do we need to spend time on Sudoku?

Sudoku is a logic-based puzzle game that’s akin to a numerical crossword puzzle. Without the words.

Pencil and paper are the tools of trade for Sudoku, though there are plenty of Sudoku applications for Mac and PC. Too many? Yes.

Why? As with any good puzzle or game, Sudoku can be addicting. Addictions take time and energy. There’s no warning of that in Sudoku for Dummies (yes, I bought the book).

Sudoku, as the story goes, was actually started in the US back in the 1970s, caught on big in Japan less than a decade later, and has gone world wide in the past couple of years.

If you’re a Mac user, there’s about a dozen Sudoku applications available; even more for Windows. Mac users will find all the Sudoku utilities you need when you Click Here.

After a whole day of head scratching, keyboard clanking, and listening to the sound of gray matter falling to the floor, I figured out Sudoku What is Sudoku? It’s a puzzle in which you bleed time for no apparent reason. Crossword puzzles stimulate the brain and help with your vocabulary.

Sudoku stimulates that part of your brain which controls frustration. The same part that golfers use.

The idea of Sudoku is to enter a number from 1 to 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid. The grid is made up of 3×3 subgrids, called regions. Each row, column, and region can contain only one instance of each of the numbers, 1 through 9.

What tools do you need? A pencil. Patience. Logic. And time (seems to work best with patience). Or, get the book, ‘Sudoku for Dummies,’ now in 3 volumes.

How much of a ‘dummy’ does a person have to be to have all three volumes?

Sudoku on your Mac or Windows PC works the same way, except you don’t need the Sudoku magazines and books. Each puzzle is provided by the computer application.

Surprisingly, there’s actually a strategy for solving a Sudoku puzzle.

First, you scan. Scanning is the typical starting strategy, though it’s not limited to the beginning of a Sudoku session. You can waste time scanning at any point during the puzzle chase.

Next, it’s Marking up. If you can’t find any more numbers, then you need to mark specific numbers in the blank cells using what’s called subscripts and dots. Now you’re wasting time using the utility of a #2 pencil.

Then it gets complicated. What’s great for Mac and PC users is that Sudoku lets you waste time and gray matter simultaneously while using a $2,000 electronic device instead of a cheap paperback booklet.

Don’t you love the progress we’ve made in the past 100 years?

I’ve been walking more in the past month and came upon a middle school girl playing Sudoku at park near my parent’s home in LA. Without ever taking her eyes from the Sudoku booklet, she described the action of scanning, marking, and difficulties inherent with that particular puzzle.

She was 12 and had been there for two hours. No swings. No monkey bars. No merry-go-round. No soccer. Just a Sudoku book and a pencil and more intensity than any 12 year old should display in public.

I bought a Sudoku for Dummies book (volume 1), then downloaded a few Sudoku puzzle applications to try on my Mac. My favorite was Sudoku Companion, though it wasn’t a lasting relationship. I found myself cheating with Sudoku Susser. Neither relationship was satisfying.

After a whole day of head scratching, keyboard clanking, and listening to the sound of gray matter falling to the floor, I figured out Sudoku.

It’s a Satanically inspired puzzle designed purely to keep mankind, womankind, and the smaller versions of each from utilizing our time in an efficient and effective manner.

No more Sudoku. I just don’t have the time. I closed my laptop and headed to the park for a swing and a whirl on the merry-go-round.