J.P. Lanham writes essays on human beings being human, theater based on a similar theme and humor aimed at keeping it all in balance. His blog can be found at http://smellingsalts-jpl.blogspot.com/

In another life he co-founded technology start-ups and helped bring groundbreaking products to market including award winning interactive educational software, the internet’s first virtual customer service representatives and DNA testing services.

Mr. Lanham lives in Los Angeles, or as he likes to call it, “The land where nothing is as nature intended”.

CNN admitted today that Larry King has been dead since 1997 and that the network has been using a hologram developed at Industrial Light and Magic to keep the show running for the past 12 years. In a prepared statement, CNN executives said they are truly sorry if anyone is offended by the idea company has been using a computer generated simulation of Mr. King but given it’s so obvious the show has nothing to do with hard news or even pretends to ask tough questions, viewers were getting a consistently entertaining product that might have suffered greatly had Mr. King continued to live and suffer the effects of old age including memory loss, incontinence and sudden outbursts for a Nate and Al’s menu.  Immediately after the broadcast a  Guatemalan taxi driver in New York ran over what he mistook to be Lou Dobbs in digital form.

With the 2000′s now kaput, I’d like to suggest the first great technology innovation for the new decade: a button on the TV remote that kills the crawl at the bottom screen.  How many times in a five minute span do I need to know Tiger Woods has his head up his golf bag, a truck load of three legged goats has taken flight off a cliff in Afghanistan or Suck State has beaten the College of Cretins 33-22? The crawl should be an option not unlike closed captioning. You want it, you get it. You don’t want it, you kill it.  Write your Senator or Representative. Tell them the crawl causes autism. Lie. They’ll understand.