I started bright and early at 10:00, checking my email. Nope, my boss hadn't changed his mind. But 18 friends sent me links to a very funny video involving a cat and a grizzly bear. I also found weekly newsletters for four organizations, including the People Opposed to Persons Outputting Pretentious and Overlong Palindromes. I signed a number of political petitions--I think I even agreed with a couple.

At 11:30, I was forced by a lack of new e-mail to Google "doughnut sales stats." Not much help. Then I tried it without the quotes and period. I got thousands of hits. I skipped the one about women with "doughnut-shaped breasts" and checked out the plot description for episode two of that hit reality show, "Who Wants to be a Greedy, Brown-Nosing Jerk." It seems that Jerry had worked in sales at the Pentagon, while David told Betty that she had "great stats." There were no doughnuts on the page.

It was good reaing, but I had work to do. I checked my e-mail. There I found a fascinating 8000-word essay by a friend of my cousin's husband's butcher on his four-week vacation in Iceland.

I was writing my reply--1400 words on an afternoon at the mall--when inspiration hit. Perhaps more doughnut units sell because they cost less than large-screen TVs. But I needed to check prices and be sure.

I surfed to the site of a popular donut retailer, Krusty Kreme. But I soon hit a snag: Krusty Kreme doesn't sell large-screen televisions. It sells tee-shirts, though; some large enough for their regular customers. I bought four.

Nutritional Doughnuts

If doughnuts' market advantage is related to lower cost, I reasoned, that could be counteracted by large-screen televisions' fewer calories. But how many calories were in a doughnut. Oddly enough, I couldn't find nutritional information on the Krusty Kreme site. So I Googled the words "nutritional doughnuts."

Who would have guessed that Nutritional Doughnuts was the name of a goth punk techno alternative rap band? I just had to click that link. Lots of photos, lyrics, some MP3s--one of which actually contained an entire song.

I knew then and there that I had to buy some of their music. I have accounts for several online music stores, including Trapster and iLoons, but Nutritional Doughnuts only sells downloads through MusicSlasht. So I signed up.

By 4:45, I had downloaded the MusicSlasht software, installed it onto my PC, and rebuilt all of my playlists in the MusicSlasht Player (the installation had removed every other media player on my PC). MusicSlasht has a unique digital rights management scheme, by the way. You can listen to their music on alternate Wednesdays.

After rating the songs, I figured I'd better get back to work. So I checked my e-mail. There wasn't much, but a friend sent a link to a fascinating article on the effects of bird migrations on 18th century Dutch painters, which linked to another on why 18th century Dutch painters had so little effect on bird migrations.

Watching Screens About Watching Screens

By 6:25, I knew I needed to approach the problem from the other end. No, not the other end of migrating birds or Dutch painters. I needed to learn more about large-screen televisions. Another search provided a link to an introduction to large-screen video technologies. It also provided a link to a discussion on the benefits of watching movies at home versus theaters with really large screens. I had to a look at that one.

By 9:30, I was beginning to worry that there might not be any relevant information out there. Desperate to find something, I Googled "large-screen television doughnuts."

You know, I really should stop putting quotation marks around those searches. Without them, I got more than 22,000 hits. Surely, I figured, one of them will have what I'm looking for.

The one about Great Danes came close. You're not supposed to feed them doughnuts or let them get too close to your TV. And you need a large screen door. And it was nice to discover where I could buy a doughnut screen.

I had just clicked on hit number 11,631 when I found the motherload: A discussion of TV viewers' eating habits. It turns out that a lot of people each doughnuts while watching large-screen TVs.

I began to see a connection, here. If they eat the doughnut while watching the TV, the doughnut is the product with the greater replacement cycle. Unless, of course, they spend a lot of time watching TV without eating doughnuts. And what do they eat when they're watching a small-screen TV?

I tried to examine the page for clues to these questions, but I was having a hard time concentrating. My eyelids were getting heavy and my mind confused. In fact, I was feeling downright....

I woke up with my head on the keyboard. It was 2:38 Sunday morning. I made myself some coffee while telling myself that I really need to buckle down and get to work.

But first, I checked my e-mail.

© Copyright 2006 by Lincoln Spector