JENNIFER BLUE's PLANETARY MADNESS looks at YOUR influences! In this week's TRIO, ROD AMIS says the Unthinkable: "Turn Off Your Computer!" HOT LINKS(Not from Louisiana) has a new Silver Surf Award site for you, and the Link Partners program. PREMIERE: G21 COMIX: Bix the Snowboarder - The Legend Continues! Du-ude, Bad News: This feature is best viewed via frames. But guess what? There's a non-framed version so you can enjoy this totally rad feature of the magazine. So you know what to, like, do right? JENNIFER BLUE takes our TREND BENDS in a very different direction. Media Meta-Critique, G21 style. G21 TALK! Bust a move! We KNOW you have something to say about your time here. And the Message Board is the only place you can put your Official Contest Entry. What are you waiting for, Surfer? In G21 WORDS: The next installment of CHUCK NYREN's GRAND PLANS. FLISS USSHER's LONDON CALLING! gives you a new view from the UK. AND at the end of this month: FLISS REPORTS FROM BERLIN!! JEFF WINBUSH looks at the Texas execution of Ms. Tucker! You need to use The Message Board HOUSE OF CARDS!"

All right, already!

As usual, the best jokes are the ones with more than a smattering of truth included.

I haven't yet described a woman as reminding me of Ro Laren, but the last person I dated for an extended period did bear an uncanny resemblance to Counselor Troi... Do I spend to much time on my computer? No doubt about it.

E-mail takes me a minimum of an hour a day to handle.

Administration of the Message Board on this site averages from 5 - 15 minutes. (Maybe I should live up to my commitment to Free Speech and change its settings to "Unmoderated"?) I spend at least five minutes reviewing our daily site logs, going over the arcane numerata of your visits as though they were tea leaves from which I might divine which or what kind of features to promote next.

I surf to other sites I enjoy. This is good for anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours.

Editing, designing, working with graphics in Photoshop(tm), coding, can run from two to five hours on average.

If I don't do anything unusual, a software download for example, at minimum I'm at this Memory Machine 4 hours a day. Once a week, usually when we put out the weekly edition, I'm at it for twelve hours. That's a minimum of 36 hours a week.

Let's go over the math, shall we?

A week contains 168 hours. That's our absolute.

My Day Job requires 40 of those hours. So I have 128 hours remaining.

Traveling to and from work requires approximately 10 hours.

Eating requires approximately 14 hours.

Sleep is allocated approx. 56 hours. So I have 48 hours remaining, 36 of which --- minimally, recall --- are given over to this computer.

Which means in the best of all possible weeks, I might have twelve hours(1.7 hours per day) in which I could squeeze a social life.

Imagine how easily that 1.7 can be swallowed by a cool site, working on a thorny coding or graphics problem, computer crashes and defragging the hard drive(thanks, Photoshop & Netscape!)

And if that remaining twelve hours does not pick up the slack in a given week.... I like eating and sleeping. But, hey, life's too short and I do have a daily to put out.

I do notice the larger context of the world around me. I look up and around and see that there are joys to be afforded by the fellowship of the rest of humanity, the company of the opposite sex. Some days, in fact, the world seem to be inhabited exclusively by beautiful and exciting women to whom I could devote my attention and energies untiringly.

But then there is the software I keep promising myself to load and test, the daily river of e-mail, the nightly deadline.

We are all familiar with the Faustian Bargain.