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In This Issue

• The Issue of Suicide
• Potential Hobo Camp or Wussy Veldt?
• Choose Your Own Fed-venture
• Letters To and From The Editor
• Thumb-Addled Troglodytes
• Ed-in-Chief Joins Staff Diaspora
• Jesus is a Crappy Dermatologist
• Action Jacksons
• News Briefs
• On Action and the Philosophy of Inaction
• Wacky Fun Whitey Meets a Bum
• Fed Bash a Spanking Success
• Point / Counterpoint: Actions and Words
• Horoscopes Will Keep You Regular
• Revenge for Your Shitty Housing Lottery Number
• Columbia Needs Real Affirmative Action
• News Quiz
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 16.9

Don't move! I mean it, don't move a muscle. Repent for your athletic sins and let your muscles fall to rot and atrophy. Accept the loving embrace of inertia. It will calm you and soothe you in its milky-white bosom. Ignore what those hep Nickelodeon teens told you when you were younger. DO just sit there. For the world of the sublime is truly open to those who unlock the mystery that is Inaction.

Confused? Think about this: how many times have you been lying in bed, making a mental inventory of the day's obligations, and thought, "Gee, Self, wouldn't it be peachy if I could just stay here in bed all day, safe and warm and rested under my Thundercats comforter?" Fear not, little Cheeba, we've all been there.

During an informal study of men and women aged 17-23 at a recent Phish concert in the Berkshires, I found that a whopping 98.6% of those surveyed prefer a life of Inaction. There were a few Mormon missionaries who had wandered in and threw off my numbers. What are you gonna do?

Regardless of our saintly friends, the research points undeniably to a general nationwide desire for Inaction. This leaning reaches into every area of life. For instance, take career: 100% of those questioned by me last Thursday (Frank, Bill, you guys rock) answered that they "strongly agree" that a job where they got paid to do nothing would be preferable to a job that paid the same amount to do something.

And how about life in the bedroom? Well, 68.9% of Americans secretly prefer to simply lie on their back.and have their partner do all the work for them (Mendel, 1983). This is called being sexually passive, not to be confused with being sexually submissive. Coincidentally, 97% of the people who had sex with me in high school actually did just lie there, not out of desire for Inaction, but instead because the act had rendered them unconscious (Ehrbar 1997). Yeah, I know. I suck.

Moving on. Let us also examine the socio-philosophical ramifications of Inaction. Every action, movement, or attempt causes an unending chain of reactions, all with the potential for negative effect. If that butterfly in the Amazon can cause Aunt Barb's house in Wichita to flood, then just imagine what your back-handed lay-up could do. Millions of starving orphan children could be close to death because of you. Of course, they could also be close to death because they are starving orphans, but you still might have something to do with it. Do you really want to live with that kind guilt on your shoulders?

Face it, doing nothing over doing something is the safer choice. No one gets hurt. Well, maybe not no one, but the potential for global catastrophe is significantly reduced. So the next time you're sitting on your couch, and the thought occurs to you to go out and get some exercise, heed the advice of Oscar Wilde, and lie down until the feeling goes away. When it does, you'll find yourself still on your couch, mental well-being intact, relaxed and refreshed, ready for another episode of Facts of Life. Your so-fat-you-can't-leave-your-house- without-a-gallon-of-Crisco ass will thank me.