Welcome to another installment of SCHIZOTRICHIA and another new article delivering the most thought provoking insights you'll ever see. Schizotrichia is society's alarm clock, waking everyone and bringing them back to harsh reality! Continue on at your own risk!

THIS WEEK: What do Napster, Anna Nicole Smith and the Spice Girls have in common, besides being mentioned in this week's column? They're all things that just won't GO AWAY! And we aren't helping matters any by doing bits on them every so often, we know. But, if we gotta suffer, we ain't going it alone, chum.

Of course See Spot Run is the #1 Family Comedy right now. We believe it's the only Family Comedy out right now. This is kind of like saying you're the #1 Eskimo Pole-Vaulter.

This is, of course, how kindly movie studios point out stinkeroos for the more astute among us. If it's listed as the "#1 (insert movie genre here) in America" and features many Movie Reviewer Quotes from such famous sources as The Podunk Times-Star, you'll know a better way to get the most out of your movie dollar is for you to fold them into paper boats and have races in your bathtub.

The jury has decided that Anna Nicole "I was his wife. No, adopted daughter. No, WIFE!" Smith gets nothing from the estate of her late, lamented Sugar Daddy. This, of course, has to be good news to any rich guy who can, from personal experience, remember the Civil War, because it means there's a good chance she'll show up on their front porch in the best Penthouse Letters tradition (I am a 98-year-old President of a large Natural Gas Utility. I thought the stuff in Penthouse Letters only happened to other people, until one day..).

The first web-cam, a camera aimed at a coffee pot so that people in the building it was housed in could look at the cam and see if the coffee was ready, is going off-line. One of the excuses is that, with the millions of web-cams out there, no one really looks at it any more. One solution we were gonna suggest is to hint that scantily-clad cheerleaders would be stopping by for a cup, but we can see from other's (*cough*XFL*cough) experience that this doesn't really work.

The SCHIZOTRICHIA Curse strikes again. After we reported that the XFL would be featuring cameras in the cheerleader's locker room, the XFL has decided to do away with that idea. They've also decided to do away with the more wrestling-esque "angles" of the game, and focus more on tradition football. Because, of course, if you have trouble attracting a new audience, it's always a good idea to piss off your existing one.

Incoming Clue Alert: April 1st, otherwise known as April Fool's Day, is coming. You might wanna take any news stories you read between now and then with a grain of salt until you can get them confirmed by other sources.

And, if you've been reading this column for any length of time, you should already be very, very good at looking up confirming sources.

Here's a helpful little hint for your April Fool's Day; Gags involving cheap props can be just as funny as gags involving expensive ones. A layer of Saran Wrap placed between the bowl and seat of a toilet can provide just as much embarrassment and fun as a 20 buck Remote Control Fart Machine. And, it's more economical, because you can just walk away and deny ownership of the Saran Wrap. That gets a bit pricey with electronics-based jokes.

Beware of any sit-com where the Star, according to press releases, is "Playing Himself".

Be doubly wary if the press release says the Star is "Playing Himself, but the rest of the show isn't based on anything from his real life at all".

CRAPWELL PREDICTS: By 2173, every home will be wired to the new, improved Internet, whose rock-solid architecture and almost unlimited bandwidth will allow people to work, shop, interact with each other and be entertained, all without leaving the safety and security of one's home. By an amazing coincidence, this will also be the year when Mankind evolves into a creature that closely resembles Jabba The Hutt, except with a lot more drooling. Surviving members of the Lucas family will file a lawsuit against God for Copyright Infringement, which will fall through when the earthly participants discover they'll have to leave their houses to attend the court hearing.

Actual Video Releases Scheduled For The Coming Weeks; Exercise With The Teletubbies, Latin Boys Go To Hell, and Kindred Spirits: Healing Your Pet Naturally. All just in time for Easter Gift Giving to people you can't stand, or who partake in more than their fair share of mind-altering substances.

Never waste money on a "How to be a Hacker" book or CD. The stuff they're showing you is all ancient stuff that either doesn't work anymore, or is so safe-guarded against that you'll be instantly caught and made the subject of several "Super-Hacker BUSTED" tell-all books.

So, judging from the release schedules of several ex-lifeforms like TuPac and John Lennon, we're to assume that creative people take about half of the stuff they create and stick it in a vault somewhere so that people who'll be whoring them after they're dead won't have to strain themselves looking for "new" stuff to release. Very considerate of them, don't you think?

A portion of the new Planet Of The Apes movie is being filmed on the same locations as Waterworld. No word on whether they'll be using the same cinematographers from Heaven's Gate, borrowing any of the leather-based costumes from Batman and Robin, or using the animal trainers from Ishtar.

A special "Thank You. Oh, God, Thank You" Award goes to Sporty Spice, for driving the final stake through the heart of the Spice Girls by quitting the band and announcing her solo career. Please sign our petition to get the Nobel Prize committee to consider making a special award just for her.

Of course, the other Spice Girls (How many does this leave, 2? 3? 16?) and their agent immediately announced that no such event had occurred, which is of course Standard Operating Procedure in the Entertainment Industry, and was of course met with the same sort of Media Hysteria usually reserved for the discovery of a new species of Body Louse.

The only Bad Thing we see coming out of this is *all* the Spice Girls will now be releasing Solo Projects, meaning the amount of Spice-related product on the stands multiplies. But, God is a kind and merciful God, and he would surely arrange for some sort of accident to occur before Mankind was subject to something like that, right? Right?

"The Menu Items have changed. Please listen to them all before making a selection" :translation: "Please listen to all the options before you pick the wrong one, fail to get what you wanted, and then cry about how much you hate Voice Mail Systems.".

Beware giving any type of compliments to shy, mousy co-workers of the opposite gender. Because, if they're a Girl (you being the Guy), it'll be interpreted as Sexual Harassment. If they're a Guy ( you being the....guess what?), it'll be interpreted as a Marriage Proposal. Either way, you're gonna end up with them around your neck like a millstone for a long, possibly expensive time.

And no, none of these Helpful Hints ever comes from our Personal Experiences. Nope. Not one Frigging bit.

Oh, yes, your News Program is just so Bleeding-Edge because they've done a report on the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" bit. They're especially Bleeding Edge if the reporters take the story seriously, and refrain from looking at each other and saying things like "What the hell is THIS?".

The best stories are the ones that involve the disclaimer "I am not making this up.".

Incoming Clue Alert: A Napster by any other name will still get the pants sued off it as well.

And to all you people who claim Napster is just an experiment in the feasibility of Peer-To-Peer File Sharing; Nice Try.

No one wants to hear how you've already done your taxes, and gotten your refund. Get that? NO ONE.

A Moment Of Silence for Morton Downey, Jr., who passed on Monday Evening at the age of 67. Yeah, he was loud, obnoxious, and responsible for the "Springer"-type Talk Show format. But, at least he was very up-front about being a total asshole and his show being a complete Pile Of Crap, which is a lot more than we can say for 99% of the other folks in the Entertainment Industry.

And shame on you if you scanned over that last bit and thought for a second "That guy from Ally McBeal who keeps getting busted for drugs, he died?" Because we didn't when we first saw the headline. Nope.

The Screen Actor's Guild Awards was held sometime last week or so. And No One Cares. Yet, we felt obligated to mention it. It's called "Filler Material" folks, and has nothing to do with attempting to get cheap page hits from Oscar Whores or anything like that...

Geez, quite a bit of Gossip in this week's column. Why not just finish it off with a bunch of Celebrity Birthday Wishes and just take that final step to the Dark Side...

Balthayzr would like to point out that, even if he did do Celeb Birthdays, he would refrain from giving them *smooos* or kisses or whatever the hell they do nowadays.

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