I love television. And not in that drill-a-hole-in-the-side-of-it kind of way. It's just that my life would be worse if I did not have TV.

My freshman year of college, I went without TV for a year. By May, I felt I had gained a lot from not wasting my time in front of a television. Sophomore year, my roommate brought his own TV. By May, I realized how stupid I was for feeling that I had gained a lot from not wasting my time in front of a television.

I'm not one of those people who will schedule his life around a TV show, especially since Seinfeld is only on in syndication. But if I'm around and not doing anything that requires a ton of concentration, I'll turn it on and my life will be better for it.

I like watching Sportscenter as I wake up in the morning, and as I fall asleep at night. The only thing better than new movies on HBO are old ones on Comedy Central, which also shows stand-up comedy for hours at a time. And it's scientifically proven - old episodes of Cheers make food taste better. It's kind of like Adobo that way.

Adobo commercials totally miss their mark. I first heard of Goya (Oh Boya!) when I was seven, but never tasted Adobo until I was in college and someone forcefully put it on my food. I have used it on everything since. Maybe Goya could just drop the commercials and use the money to pay people to knock on your door and sprinkle some Adobo on your dinner.

Some people call television the idiot box, and I think that's true, to a degree. Televsion, like most good products, trusts the consumer to make the right decisions with how to use it. Ice cream is a wonderful product, but I imagine it's not a good paperweight. Similarly, you will fail if you try to use TV as a way to baby-sit your kids or to educate your idiot husband that you only married because you got knocked up in the back of his truck. That was redundant. If you use the phrase "knocked up,"� it obviously happened in the back of a truck.

Along with marathons of Twilight Zone and Bill Murray movies, there comes a certain price we have to pay. Like Lifetime, television for people who don't like television. The one good thing Lifetime has going for it is The Golden Girls, which is less a show about four old ladies and more a show about making fun of everyone you don't like.

TV can be the idiot box if you are an idiot, and like to watch other idiots interview more idiots about how their idiot wives cheated on their idiot selves with their idiot brothers (or idiot sisters). But to an educated consumer, television offers bite-sized entertainment, and I do not feel uncultured for enjoying it. Just because a TV set is smaller than a movie screen doesn't make what's on it any less worthwhile. Oooh, maybe I could get a TV set the size of a movie screen. That'd be hot.

I know that I've lost a lot of time watching TV. A kid I went to high school with grew up with no TV and he won the Westinghouse science talent search. But that is him, and I am me. I know that if I didn't have a TV, I would just play more ping pong. Which is what I did all of freshman year.

One of the best shows on TV was Dream On, which was about a guy who thought in old TV clips. That's perfectly accurate for so many of us because TV was our first look at the outside world. "How sad,"� you might think. Only if your parents had that look be the wrong shows. My first look at the world was through a hundred little blue men who always triumphed over evil, followed by a bunch of robotic lions that united to destroy a common enemy who was always the same size as all five of them put together. If your kid's first look at the world is two suburban teenagers who like fire, he's going to burn down your house. But if you show him the right stuff first, he'll probably remember the episode where the Smurfs told him not to play with matches.

And perhaps the best thing about TV is that it eliminates poor conversation. If you have something to say, you can shut off the TV and say it. But if you ever need to fill dead air, a little half-hour happiness is much better than prattling on about something useless. If you'd ever like to not talk to me, I'd be glad to come to your place and watch.

Unless your TV has a hole in the side of it. Then I think I'll stay home and play ping pong.

I am putting off other work in order to write this column. You are probably doing the same in order to read it.

It's amazing to live in a world with so much progress, yet we pretty much get the same amount of work done that we always have. We just spend more time on the web.

I can't picture my father when he was my age, sitting at his desk, trying to play mini golf. Of course, he probably had a typewriter when he was my age. Maybe he played real minigolf instead. With a styrofoam cup from the break room for a target, a rolled up piece of paper for a ball, and a yardstick for a putter. That's a little easier to picture, but it's still a stretch. I should ask him.

(Insert noises denoting me dialing a phone.)

"Dad, when you were my age, you had a job, right?"

"Yes, of course."

"Did you ever play minigolf at your desk with a styrofoam cup from the break room for a target, a rolled up piece of paper for a ball, and a yardstick for a putter?"

"No. What are you talking about?"

"Thanks, dad. I have to get back to work."

My dad didn't play minigolf. But even if he procrastinated in other ways, my early-20s dad couldn't match me for the tiny amount of time I spend doing actual work in a day. See, I can get the same amount done in two hours that anyone thirty years ago could in eight, so there's no point in trying to pack even more in there.

I've got access to a lot of devices that make my job easier. I don't waste time walking to the office library to look up facts for stories when I can just look them up on the web. I don't waste time dialing people's phone numbers because I have everyone already programmed into my phone. And I don't even waste time dialing their name anymore, because I IM them instead. Which leaves me a billion hours free every day that I can use to get frustrated at on-line jeopardy when it doesn't load all the way. The tease.

My desk is near a meeting table, so sometimes I spend my time listening to the meetings that go on there. This one group of people has had the same meeting every day at noon for the last two weeks. They haven't come to any kind of resolution yet, but they've come up with reasons for all of the reasons why they haven't come to a resolution. I don't even know who these people are or what resolution they're supposed to come to, but every one of them has "executive" in their title.

I just took a break from writing this column to toss a football with my editor. Working in sports is good that way. My editor nailed the screen with the ball and I was afraid that I'd lost the whole column. Tossing a football with your editor is bad that way.

Even when I'm doing the work that I get paid for, I can still find time to chat with my friends, or send e-mails to people telling them that I am too busy to get lunch. That's why I could never be a cabby. Not the lunch thing, the IM and e-mail thing. Cabbies have tons of down time and nothing to do with it. I see a lot of cabbies on cell phones lately, and I wonder how high their phone bills must be. I bet the late-shift cabbies totally screw with that free nights and weekends thing. They're like the really fat guy at a Sizzler that no one planned for.

I saw a homeless guy on a cell phone a few days ago, begging for change. I wondered who he was talking to, and how come they didn't send him some food. Then I wondered why he bought a cell phone instead of eating. "Don't give him your money! He's just going to spend it on minutes!"

You can IM people on their phones now, or send them phone messages from the web. That makes sense if you're somewhere that you can't talk, but sometimes my friends sit in a cab and IM people. Maybe they're being quiet because they don't want to interrupt the cabbie's phone conversation. Or maybe they're talking to the cabbie. Or that homeless guy. They're probably IMing, "Sorry, I don't have any change," but it comes out as "SOrry I dont hav NE changem."

There's that commercial where everyone sits in a meeting and IMs each other about how much their motivational speaker sucks. And while he did suck, the people IMing on their phones aren't much better. I'd much rather be at my desk, playing minigolf. Also, their motivational speaker is in a Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears and Austin Powers.

I wonder if there are any cups left in the break room.

Most of you are probably expecting five short observations on things in the world around me. I hope you are used to disappointment, because you are in for it.

Much like the disappointment that comes with being in an airport while forgetting both my cell phone charger and my headphones. The first lapse in memory will force me to spend a weekend not speaking to those I am trying to reach. The second one will force me to spend a flight speaking to those I am trying to avoid. I didn't even plan on plugging my headphones in to anything. I was just going to wear them. If my neighbor notices the dangling headphone cord, so be it. It's what they get for arriving late enough to have a middle seat.

I wrote a column for two and a half years about looking at stuff around me and reporting what I saw. Kind of the little brother urging you to look out his side of the car. But after graduating college, things have slowly begun to change. But not in the airport. I'm still sitting here avoiding people, just like I was a half hour ago.

Observational Humor used to be about college, but I felt a bit sheepish writing about something I was no longer part of. So I started writing about working life, but that's no fun at all. When you tell someone that you write college humor, they say, "Parties, rock!"� When you tell someone that you write office humor, they say, "Excuse me, Irving, may I borrow your stapler? I seem to have used up the last of my staples while putting together my painfully boring life."�

When I started to write this column, I was left at a crossroads. And not the kind that has Britney Spears trying to act (whew). My crossroads involved me making a decision. So I finally made one: I bought a new pair of headphones from the airport's Overpriced Random Things Depot. Actually, I bought two. I wanted mini headphones, and you could only get those "free"� with a twelve-dollar pair of big headphones. The Depot also carries the big headphones without the mini headphones, priced at six dollars.

Equipped with headphones, I started thinking about what to write this week. I could give you a riveting expose on white out or the dress code or the gradual change from water coolers to soda machines or something else that your parents might enjoy reading. Or I could write about whatever I felt like, on a week-to-week basis, and just try to be as entertaining as possible. The decision was much easier than whether or not to blow twelve bucks on headphones.

The problem that decision creates is if interesting things happen around me often enough to write about. Interesting things that I can write about here, anyway. There's all sorts of interesting stuff that goes on between people I know that you wouldn't really care about. Like when John asked Patricia out, and she turned him down because she wanted to date Patrick, and then everyone made fun of her because her name was Patricia and so she shouldn't date someone named Patrick. This is an example of something that would not make a good column.

Living in New York and having a keen sense of perception helps. Which is much healthier than living in New York with a keen sense of smell, since that would prevent you from ever leaving your apartment. I enjoy looking at the things around me, thinning them out into bite size pieces, and serving them to my readers like the tiny bag of pretzels and the 5 ounce cup of Sprite that will keep me full all the way to Los Angeles.

Little things like this should provide me with both hunger pains and countless weeks of column material; the world is full of things that make for funny anecdotes. Like the guy who just sat down next to me and is letting his kid run around touching people.

A lot of people have written to me asking if I could make my columns longer, and I have traditionally told them to go pound. So it is possible that none of them are reading this, since they are all busy pounding. But if they have not yet begun to pound, or perhaps they finished their pounding early, they might be reading this after all. I hope that my new format did not disappoint any of them.

Unless they are the guy with the weird kid who keeps touching me. I hope he gets dissapointed constantly.

My friends have started slowly getting married. When I meet a girl, is she thinking about whether or not I'm marriage material? I can't even settle on what I'm gonna eat for lunch - what makes anyone think I can settle on something a little more lasting than grilled cheese?

Why are women only sure they don't want to date you two days after you pay for dinner?

I don't understand work dating etiquette yet. Not picking up girls in your office, okay - that's like not dating someone in one of your seminars. And Not picking up girls you live with is just like not dating anyone on your hall. But where are all of the fraternity parties to make up for it?

When I meet a new girl, I find myself asking them where they went to school. Which is okay when they're my age. But when they're older, it gets a little weird. "Where did you go for undergrad...ten years ago?"

Some guys who just made it to the work place think they're cool because they can finally afford to buy drinks for every woman they meet. It only takes a few weeks of this to realize it's cheaper to cut out the middleman and just buy a woman.