Do we abbreviate ADD because it's too long to say?

Why does "middle of the night" come after "end of the night"?

In fairness to other nations, maybe it's time to wrap the Washington Monument in a 600-foot condom.

When you think you know what the writer means but aren't really sure and don't care anyway ... that's poetry.

If there's one really good argument for staying married, it is this: dating. On my own priority scale, dating falls somewhere between doing taxes and chewing glass.

You've got to get dressed up and bring your résumé...

"Yes, I was with Cynthia from May to August. My main duties were to pay for dinner and hold the door ... Why did we separate? I'm afraid she was downsizing. Since then I've just been a temp."

Older singles tend to process you in terms of market value. With a Robocop scan, they determine your age and weight, then match you with a car in the parking lot.

"Are those real diamonds? Mind if I use my jeweler's loop?"

I'm not cut out for dating anyway. I was married so long that now I'm like an animal raised in captivity -- unfit for the wild. Do you still show up with a corsage?

When I first started out, I was looking for a certain type. She'd be 5'6" and have blonde hair, cute dimples. She'd be a Capricorn.

As time went on, I adjusted. "Okay, she doesn't have to be Capricorn so long as she's friendly ... She doesn't have to be friendly, per se, but I'd rather she not drag her knuckles ... So long as she wears pink. So long as he or she wears pink."

Now all I notice is whether or not they're wearing a ring, and that's my type: available.

The ring finger tells people you're married. At times so does the middle finger. Some women fear that men won't notice their barren ring finger, so they hedge with low-cut blouses. I've dated women who can swipe credit cards with their cleavage. You get a migraine just trying to maintain eye contact.

What we need are cleavage blinders: They'd work like horse blinders, only the flaps go beneath your eyes.

I tried speed-dating, where you get five minutes per woman, and that might not seem like a long time ... but it is. How long does it take to know that someone is psycho? One minute? Two? That leaves a lot of time to sit there thinking, Yeah, I could be celibate. I've got an X-Box.

Even if you do find a match while speed-dating, where do you go from there? Can you see that relationship in two years?

Her: "Every time we make love anymore, it's only a quickie."

Him: "You knew I was in a hurry from the beginning!"

I'm not saying that all the good ones are taken, but the smart ones seem to be scarce. It was so refreshing to finally meet a woman who reads.

"That's a nice collection of books you have. Which are your favorite?"

"Oh, I like the blue ones."

So it goes.

I wish that friends would save me before I leave the bar: "No! Jason! It's a booby trap!"

On the Web I get steamy with women in chat rooms, but then we meet for dinner and have nothing to say. We might as well pass notes back and forth across the table.

Men fantasize about dating younger women, but it takes a lot of Bengay. One girl walked into my home, kicked off her shoes, and started stretching. I felt like Roy Scheider when he first saw the shark in Jaws: "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

My real fear is catching STDs. My buddy Dave goes to bed with women from whom I wouldn't be caught downwind. I'm afraid that one day he's going to get lucky and die.

It's not necessarily sex that I'm after; sometimes I just want to sleep with a woman. Can you see the hookers down on Sunset and Vine...

"You just want to hug?! All right, sicko, but that'll cost extra."

Of course, it's illegal for women to charge a man for sex. Unless it's pornography, but then you have to film it and make it available to everyone.

I don't ask for perfection; like Bob Dylan, I'm just "lookin' for a girl with hair messed up like mine." She's out there somewhere. I only hope she's not swiping credit cards with her cleavage.

My mom has always been creative. A long time ago -- back when "Saturday Night Live" was funny -- she'd decorate cakes to look like soccer fields, pyramids, women endowed with Hostess Sno-Balls.

You lost your innocence early in my home.

Mom works for the bank -- THE bank -- so her creative urges surface through cracks in the sidewalk. She mostly takes it out on the holidays.

At Christmas her tree is so burdened with ornaments that it leans to one side like Joe Cocker and children place the star on top without even stretching.

"Remember that star?" says Mom in her blinking Santa hat. "It's solid lead."

In the living room Mom keeps a perennial tree, decorated, beside the TV. My step-dad Mark, who comes from the south side of Chicago (motto: "Whadda YOU looking at?), lives with her condition full-time.

"I've lost all love for Christmas," he says.

This woman, Linda Baker, my dear mother, has Christmas flamingos, which all through December stand in her yard. The front yard. The one other people see.

On Thanksgiving we sit down to pumpkin-shaped name cards and a brick of homemade fudge. When Mom says it's from scratch, she means growing the flour, churning the butter, personally laying the eggs...

Thanksgiving dishes are laid on chargers -- plates that hold other plates. And why do we call them chargers when they don't go anywhere? Next to coasters designed not to slide? On strips of cloth that WE CALL RUNNERS.

The Super Bowl is a bonus holiday to fill the void between New Year's and Valentine's. Mom serves football-shaped cookies and provides foam bricks to throw at the referees.

During the game she walks in every ten minutes wearing her commemorative Super Bowl T-shirt to say, "What a buncha friggen bums." Then she storms out. The score doesn't matter; she's just cursing to be festive. So it goes.

Mom sends out greeting cards for every occasion, including Groundhog Day (which the bank probably takes off).

"A groundhog's not so scary, except once every February. Then his little shadow holds an early spring or lots more cold!"

Normally you associate wreaths with Christmas (keyword: normally), but Mom has wreaths for Easter, Valentine's, St. Patty's. On her door now is a garland of cinnamon-scented pine cones. I fear that one day she'll bump into Martha Stewart and there will be a World Extreme Cage Fight, only the cage will be decorated with velvet bows ... by live blue jays.

Last Sunday I brought laundry, because that's the kind of son I am. When they say to use protection -- I'm what you're protecting against. Mom washed the clothes, folded them into their manufacture-original squares, and placed them in plastic bags to keep the cold off. Then she sent me away with a fruit roll-up.

Later I found her in the garden "giving her babies their nutrients." She wouldn't stop about the poppies.

"I can't believe how the poppies came in. Can you believe it? It's unbelievable."

Mom also makes jewelry. Her business card, "Bling-Bling by Linda," is covered in glitter. Maybe it's pixie dust, which would explain her fascination with Tinkerbell. She has Tink figurines, magnets, throw pillows, diary-with-lock. She also has a Tinkerbell tattoo, but you have to believe that it's there.

I'm starting to fixate on Tinkerbell myself, and just when I had beaten my addiction to Sno-Balls.

Seriously, Mom has done a noble job controlling her craftilepsy. There's only one thing left to concern me: August. A month with no holidays, no birthdays, no national championships. I'm afraid that her urges will pressurize until she finally explodes in a puff of pixie dust. She's only five feet tall, so we spend a lot of time looking for her anyway.

Don't get me wrong: I'm lucky to have a mom who stashes Downey sheets in my glove compartment; it's just that there's something not quite right about the woman, and that's what I love most about her.

Had a bad dream.

It started with a call from Peter the Re-fi Guy: "Did you know that we can refinance your home or car or many sparkly objects?"

At which point a dump truck delivered through my window an avalanche of mail: bribes to switch phone plans, pre-rejection from MasterCard, charities sending address labels with my name on them (like street people who wash your windshield like it or not).

The radio played a jingle for the once-in-a-lifetime, buy-this-or-die Toyotathon. I hummed along against my will.

On TV a man shouted at me to buy his ab machine now, now, now. On another channel the Dodgers' centerfielder made a catch between signs for IBM and Target.

"Great play!" said the announcer. "This next pitch is brought to you by Blockbuster."

The fax rang. It was Peter the Re-fi Guy. He had figures.

My computer dinged: another offer to enlarge my reproductive tackle (is my secret that widespread?). The Ambassador to Ishmuntuku also needed me, or current resident, to "urgently manage his ten million dollars."

These emails wouldn't exist if someone, somewhere, hadn't fallen for it. Where is this person, and can we get him a hotline?

"Thank you for calling the I've-Been-Scammed Hotline. The cost of this call is ten dollars a minute. A specialist will be with you in a while."

Spam gave way to pop-ups, but every time I closed one, two more emerged. Software installed itself, furniture was rearranged, radio presets changed...

"Well, you won't get a lemon((from Toyota of Orange."

I ran outside, where the clouds had formed a giant McDonald's arch. An airplane circled overhead with a banner for Doan's: "Got Back Pain?" Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that board meeting.

"I know! What if we take the old 'got milk' slogan, but instead of using the word 'milk,' we'll insert the name of our own product!" (The team beams with approval.)

My neighbor, checking his junk mail, asked if I was all right.

"Yeah," I said. "Just a little dizzy."

"That's good," he said. "Hey, I've been meaning talk to you about Amway."

I pointed my car to the interstate. An electronic sign warned about some leaflet storm, a message brought to me by Verizon High-Speed Internet, which delivers spam twice as fast as that old dial-up.

A boy in the next lane was watching commercials INSIDE A CAR! The car TV tided him over between the supermarket TV, his handheld TV, the hotel bathroom TV, and the doctor's office TV that no one, not even a hammer, can turn down. So it goes.

At the gas station, a tabloid reporter brought me up to date on Oprah Winfrey's weight, and Gillette reminded me to change blades often because "a fresh blade means a closer shave." In related news, Wal-Mart wants us to buy more crap.

Fleeing on foot, I collided with the "Shell" sign. The "s" fell off.

I found in church a pastor addressing his congregation from under a Nike hat: "And then God saith unto Moses, 'Do it, son. Just do it."

I ran past the billboards and rent-a-benches screaming, "Sell me a car! Change my plan! Give me the warranty!"

My whole life flashed above a little CNN ticker. Jimmy Bitzer, third grade bully, was punching my head, then paused to say, "Beating up your classmates can be a lot of work. That's why I drink Gatorade."

I floated to the sky, from where I could see my own tombstone. It was sponsored by Summer's Eve (when you have that not-so-fresh feeling).

Finally I awoke to a knock at the door. My real door.

I answered slowly, fearing Peter the Re-fi Guy. It was my neighbor come to return a garden hose. He chuckled at my nightmare and invited me to their barbecue. I gladly accepted, but there was something ominous about how he walked away humming the Toyotathon jingle.

This column was brought to you by MasterCard, Toyota, IBM, Target, Amway, McDonald's, Shell, Gillette, Verizon, Nike, The Dodgers, Doan's, CNN, Gatorade, Summer's Eve, Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, and the Ambassador of Ishmuntuku.

My dear friend Yahaira is learning baseball. She didn't take to football or hockey, but for some reason she's into the MLB. It may have something to do with the skin-tight pants. She doesn't read the sports page, but she does look at the pictures.

Having a coed baseball buddy is like watching a movie with someone who always wants to know what's going on.

"Why is the batter turned sideways?"

"It's called a bunt."

"Like in football?"

"No, that's a punt."

"How come there's an American League AND a National League? Isn't that the same thing? ... Why is the pitcher talking into his glove? Does he have bad breath? ..."

There aren't enough answers in the day.

Yahaira isn't a total Barbie. In sixth grade, she even joined a girls' basketball team. Before the first game she got so nervous, she regurgitated. So it goes.

[Note: Yahaira insists that I mention how, for her season of basketball, she earned a second-place trophy. As far as I know, she didn't throw up on it.]

The other day my team -- baseball, TV, we're back now -- was hitting in the bottom of the ninth, when I had to run cross-legged to the bathroom. Yahaira gave me the play-by-play from yonder.

"OK, they are two to zero [two balls, no strikes]. The bat man tipped while trying to punt [batter fouled a bunt attempt]. He swiped at a ground ball [swung at a pitch in the dirt]..."

Then she squealed and said, "The punter hit it! And the ball, the ball, is rolling ... and it's on the grass ... It's a DOUBLE!"

I hurried back half-dressed to find my team leaving the field, game over. Huh?

"That's close, love. It's called a double play."

Yahaira questions the rules of baseball as might, say, Nietzsche. She feels, for instance, that nine innings is entirely too long and that anything after seven should be "over innings."

"Then you wouldn't have to stop and stretch."

One day Yahaira asked what ESPN stands for.

"I think it means International Sports somethin'."

"Then why does it start with an E?"

"ESPN is when you guess the scores in advance -- I DON'T KNOW!"

So yes, co-ed baseball has more talking. That's why there are no female umpires: They'd not only call balls and strikes but have to discuss their reasons afterward.

Could you imagine a pair of women announcing baseball...

"Up to bat is Murray, and did you hear what he said to his wife last week? He should be placed on the mentally disabled list."

"Amen, sister. While you were talking, Rodriquez hit a ground ball, and my goodness, his thighs are huge."

"A cutie patootie indeed. He must be fattening. The next batter is a six-foot-two Capricorn, but the pinstripes make him look taller..."

Still, it's kind of nice having women in the room. Without their interruptions, baseball is mostly a bunch of bored men waiting for the pitcher to THROW THE DAMN BALL. Yahaira hates it when they "talk on the mountain."

"They may as well pull up a chair."

We plan to see a game in person someday. It won't matter who's playing; we'll be talking grass stains, cup sizes, why they call it a "strike" when a batter misses the ball...

We may even get to the bottom of ESPN.

It's cute how the universe ticks.

Last rain I got so excited that I went mud-wampin'. That's when you stomp through floodwater with the long-term goal of catching pneumonia. Some people mud-wamp in their cars, searching the gutters for that log-ride effect.

I write you now with pneumonia. In all my years of wampin', I had never actually caught it, but this time I already had a cold and wouldn't you know. It's a wonder they don't issue me a helmet.

The infection moved in like a fussy houseguest, and though we bickered at first, pneumonia is starting to grow on me. Or in me. It's mostly a whooping cough along with that stuffy feeling you get when you cry nonstop for three years.

Ahem. Whoop. Cough.

People spend so much time fighting colds. If we're not bouncing back, we're trying to "feel ourselves" again. I was raised to not feel myself, but the point is that once you lean into it, sickness can be your friend.

Yesterday, for instance, I accidentally changed lanes on the freeway and didn't even notice the honking. Or the finger for "you're number one." Then I stored the milk in the cupboard and drank it anyway. If you tilt your head just right, pneumonia is like nirvana.

Ahem. Whoop. Cough.

I don't usually visit the doctor on account of my HMO: All it covers is an apple a day. Instead of anesthesia, they just punch you in the face. So it goes.

Today the nurse asked if I had been taking my prescription.

"Off and on," I said.

"Well, you may as well not take it at all."

Normally I'd counterattack -- have at you! -- but in my sweet syrup of indifference, I just swayed to the clocking of the tick (you know what I mean).

"Yes," I said. "It is like that -- like not taking the pills at all. Maybe the pharmacy will refund me."

The nurse gave an extra pump to my blood-pressure cuff and said, "Yes, maybe they will." It was the politest tension you'll find outside the British Parliament. And I didn't even point out how they had asked for my birth date and my age. I thought these people were educated. Could you see them in surgery...

"Oh, here's the problem: He's got a doohickey on his thingamabob."

The doctor walked in to relieve Nurse Ratched, who lingered at the door with the stink eye, dot dot dot. And these are Days of Our Lives. Or in this case, General Hospital.

Doctor P. listened to my lungs and asked if I'd been playing in the rain. I told him that I had. He shook his head and recommended a shrink. Doctors smile more because of the golf.

Ahem. Whoop. Golf.

The doc recommended bed rest, as opposed to the rest I was getting on the freeway. He prefers Sealy to my Spinalpedic -- oh, we were talking about mattresses. Fact is, I can't remember what we talked about, and that's the way I like it.

Pneumonia reminds me of that getting-old poem by Jenny Joseph: "When I am old I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn't suit me ... And I'll run my stick along public railings and go out in my slippers in the rain and pick the flowers in other people's gardens ... "

And put milk in the cupboard and shun my prescription!

Doctor P. says that my condition will get worse without antibiotics; and while I may take his drugs, I have to admit that I'm tempted to explore pleurisy.

Ahem. Whoop. Cough.

As someone who lives near the beach, I feel qualified to make the following scientific observation: Seagulls are evil.

Not seagulls, you say. Yes. Seagulls. They feed on carcass, they have no friends, they crap on everything -- they're the lawyers of marine vertebrates.

A seagull's opinion of you is based largely on whether you're holding food, which includes bread, items that look like bread, and small, bread-like pets. Seagulls are timid individually, but in numbers they get in your face like hammered Irishman until, worst case, they go Alfred Hitchcock.

"He's got the size, men, but we've got the numbers."

One day I left a trash bag outside and later opened the door to a stream of coffee grinds and egg yolk leading to the street, where four seagulls were fighting over a wine cork.

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

Last Sunday I went to Ana Cappa Island -- or for all the guano, Ana Crappa Island -- which is the Cancun of seagull social life. Males fly in from all over to get drunk, have wild orgies, and flee like nothing happened.

"Dude, what happens in Ana Crappa stays in Ana Crappa."

Including their offspring, which females stay behind to hatch. By the time we tourists get there, the ladies are completely hormonal and lash out as you pass. Seriously, one of the little haters bit my leg when I wandered off to pee. (Good thing I'm quick with a zipper.)

Seagulls relieve themselves ten times more often than necessary, something known to ornithologists as recreational discharge. They bomb your windshield, your swimming pool, your children... Father seagulls hover above car washes teaching the ropes to their children.

"The trick to hitting a mobile target, son, is to release early like this..."

And let's not forget the seagull that dropped a turtle on that Florida highway, causing a four-car collision. Coincidence? Don't be naive.

Now, I don't believe in killing animals. As a boy, I spent two months' allowance freeing the lobsters from a local Ralphs. I crusaded for restaurants where people had to meet their food beforehand, a Meet-Your-Meat Café.

That said, I propose that we eat seagulls. Believe me: They would do the same to you. They'd kill you and beat with your own corpse. Dieticians are always promoting fish and fowl, fish and fowl. Well, with seagulls you get both.

Imagine the possibilities: seagull piccata, seagull noodle soup, Thanksgiving seagull. I'll bet if we ask nicely, Ted Nugent would try the seagull tartare.

How did seagulls make the white list anyway? Chickens and ducks get the knife, but seagulls are free to wander the skies excreting on our children. I thought the rule was that we eat animals so long as they're not smart or cuddly. Seagulls aren't bright enough to avoid large buildings and so unattractive that when they mate, they think of pelicans. So it goes.

Even as we speak -- no kidding -- there's a seagull outside my window, squawking like a madman at life, the universe, and everything. He won't look me in the eye; seagulls never do. They're like felons with dark stories.

And I'll just bet he's waiting for a target to relieve himself, painful as it is to hold the runs from a burrito he swallowed whole while the others screeched in their little lawyer voices, Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

Hi, boys and girls. Did you know that I recently teamed up with the VC Star's one and only Gretchen Macchiarella for a weekly video feature called "Canned"? Well, I did. And you can find it by clicking on the magic genie below. That genie will become an animated Flash ad once the Flash fairies finally -- mercifully -- finish their project. Do you sense tension in the air, boys and girls? Well, here in magic genie land there is no tension, so don't make me go Willy Wonka.