It's TV-Turnoff Week: Survival tips below

The television lights up the average U.S. home for 7 hours 40 minutes a day. Participation in the annual TV-Turnoff Week (April 19-25) is expected to top 7.6 million people this year. Below are some tips on passing the time without turning on the tube:

Work on the TV Guide crossword puzzle.

Film the baby kicking someone in the groin for "America's Funniest Home Videos."

Go see "Starsky & Hutch" at the theater.

Gather the family around the table for some Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Draw a picture of Bill O'Reilly shouting at a liberal.

Send a note urging the FCC not to cut back too much on sex and violence.

Make origami Muppets.

Play computer solitaire until you lose track of time.

Go window shopping for a 64-inch high-definition TV.

Write a letter to a TV icon like Geraldo Rivera.

Play the home version of Wheel of Fortune.

Bake a pan of "SpongeBob SquarePants" marshmallow treats.

Get some lighter fluid and re-enact some stunts from "Jackass."

Send a pledge to Pat Robertson at the 700 Club.

Talk with Grammy about the time she saw the Beatles on "Ed Sullivan."

Write a humorous skit for your Simpsons action figures.

Suppress the inner voices telling you to flick on the tube.

Ponder the existential question: Why does everybody love Raymond?

Call for free tickets to "The Daily Show."

Think up an idea for a new reality show involving sex, humiliation and deception.

Construct a "Meet the Press" diorama.

Compile your own list of 100 Most Outrageous Celebrity Moments.

Dust off your Soloflex and get six-pack abs.

Scan the night sky for that thing you saw on "Nova."

Listen to NASCAR on the radio.

Sizzle up some burgers for the gang on a George Foreman grill.

Write haiku poetry about "The Sopranos."

Speak to your doctor about new prescription Cialis.

* Additional TV-Turnoff Week programming (To Be Announced)

President tells nation, 'I'm sure something
will pop into my head'

By John Breneman

Make no mistake. Gathering threat. Must not waver. Stay the course.

His Tuesday night press conference was going along just fine. The president had successfully ducked one question about whether he'd made any "errors in judgment" and dodged another about "personal responsibility for September 11th."

He in-your-faced the nation by playing the dunce, twice, when asked clearly and directly why he and the vice president insist on appearing before the 9/11 Commission together instead of individually.

George W. Bush had wisely chosen to field questions from the East Room of the White House instead of from the deck of an aircraft carrier in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. And when Uncle Dick picked out the evening's attire, the famous military flightsuit was tucked deep in the White House play closet.

President Bush did not waver from his message while he stayed the course. There was no talk of outsourcing the fighting to India if the violence does not abate.

He even answered a question on the minds of many. "Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?"

BUSH (actual words): "We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over."

See, Brahimi is on it. He's gonna let us know. No truth to the rumor Cheney plans to sell the strife-torn nation to Halliburton for an undisclosed sum and some quid pro quo to be named later.

Once the entity is identified and order restored it will be safe to implement the president's time-tested economic development strategy -- distribute generous tax breaks to the rich and open the region to exploitation by corporate friends with addresses in the Bahamas.

Some of the questions were kind of tough but stuff kept coming out of his mouth. "Now is the time and Iraq is the place." And the smirk stayed tucked away, at least until it leaked out when he said the oil revenue stream there is "pretty darn significant."

But trouble loomed ahead, a grave and gathering question. Mr. President: "After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be … and what lessons have learned from it?"

BUSH (actual words): "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet. …"

"I hope -- I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

And don't get him started on those weapons of mass destruction. "They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm," some of Col. Gadhafi's leftovers found in Libya.

Stay the course. Hypothetical linguistic analysis reveals that President Bush favors the word "course" because it subconsciously reminds him of country club living and shooting golf with his dad and that he favors the term "stay the course" because it's stuck in his head from hearing Dana Carvey poke fun at his pop.

"Stay the course" means never having to say you're sorry, never having to answer any question you don't want to.

Stay the course, and you'll probably find those weapons after all. You may even get that parade for the American liberators you promised yourself way back when.

Make no mistake. Gathering threat. Dangerous man. Stay the course?

Easter Bunny held for questioning

By John Breneman

U.S. counter-terrorism officials would neither confirm nor deny that the Easter Bunny is being held for questioning about a clandestine overnight operation that exposed the nation's children to countless tons of teeth-rotting weapons of mass confection on Sunday.

But sources close to the floppy-eared holiday icon claim he is being interrogated in a cramped mesh-bottom cage in Guantanamo Bay. The charges: periodontal terrorism and 52 million counts of contributing to the obesity of a minor.

The alleged incarceration of the Easter Bunny (aka Peter Cotton-Tail) has already become politicized. Critics charge that the Bush administration was slow to guard against the threat that gut-busting quantities of chocolate might be deployed, on a sacred religious holiday no less, despite a March 6 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) entitled "Easter Bunny determined to strike in U.S."

"We should have been on pastel alert," said White House heckler Adolf W. Bush. "The president should have been more vigilant about the national obesity epidemic that makes our soft underbelly particularly vulnerable to, say, a giant milk chocolate rabbit, fistfuls of jelly beans or a gaggle of glistening marshmallow peeps."

But National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared on Oprah, Regis and Saturday Night Live to defend the president, saying, "No one could have imagined terrorists using candy as a weapon."

Rice admitted there was some heightened chatter in the months leading up to Easter, but most of it non-specific fragments like "Hippity hop bunny trail," "dye, eggs, dye" and "mother of all chocolate Jesuses."

Santa eyed for Cabinet post
Jesus Christ, box-office superstar

By John Breneman

With a comic touch as deft as a Baghdad bombing raid, President Bush reduced the side-splitting Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco to a punchline.

The Commander-in-Cheek laughed off the world's concern about non-existent WMDs at the 60th annual Radio & Television Correspondents' Association dinner Wednesday night.

War on Iraq
U.S. death toll: hundreds
Cost: untold billions
Bush's standup routine: priceless.

Too bad the families of soldiers killed in Iraq don't get the joke.

If you missed it, President Bush was showing funny pictures and cracking jokes about them when up popped a photo of him looking under a desk. "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere," quipped the White House wagster. "Nope, no weapons over there … Maybe under here."

The bit unwittingly lampooned Bush's cluelessness that his phony weapons bluster for a war that has now claimed hundreds of U.S. lives might not be the best fodder for cornball humor from a leader regarded in much of the world as a malevolent moron.

Sources say Bush is planning followup jokes about some of his other wacky stunts, like tagging the U.S. Constitution with anti-gay grafitti, giving phony $4 billion cost estimates for the $5.5 billion Medicare bill and sporting a flightsuit for his side-splitting "Mission Accomplished" caper.

"Sheer comic genius," raved the respected comedian Carrot Top, who is helping the president build an arsenal of one-liners and witticisms of mass destruction.

John Kerry, after consulting with political humorist Al Franken, issued a statement calling Bush "a big fat idiot."

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