Go ahead, use me.

Hone in on the weakness; use it to your advantage. I'm an unworthy adversary for your highly-advanced cathode ray tube.

I have had it up to here with the manipulation. I can take it from my mom over cold au gratin at Christmas dinner, but the onslaught of "feel good" shows has left me maxed out emotionally.

I know Katie and Slade can relate to the Extreme Home Makeover Phenomenon (currently being researched at the CDC alongside Ebola and the Avian Flu). The show should come with an inhaler and a box of Kleenex.

And here we have Bobby Lou. And everything would be okay for Bobby Lou, 'cept for the fact that he goes to second grade with no head. And his mother has seven arms without fingers; his father is a donkey.

And his sister is made of Jello.

A logical response? Well, that's just craptastic. I wish them well. I have $LMNOP,000 in student loans on a useless undergrad degree, and a skin tag I'd really like to have removed before my next sexual encounter.

But as we all know, that's not what happens. You weep openly, you indulge in your guilty dairy pleasure of choice, and you watch it again on Tivo the next evening. But not before you watch Nightly News.

Now why do you think Brian Williams exists?

No, young ones. He wasn't created to broadcast live in a nice cable knit about the fleecing of America or to keep New York City's spray-on tanning beds in service. He's there to make us feel.

He's part of Their plan. The plan to make me weep even though Katie Holmes chose to have a mute birth. To make us bawl at Katrina victims and that woman with an axe in her head and our collective futures given the eenie-meenie-minie-mo of the Supreme Court, all before his 22 minutes are up.

And finally (bear in mind I never thought it would come to this, TLC), I offer up A Baby Story/Wedding Story/Makeover Story/Perfect Proposal. Why don't we take the abadoned Iraqi-soldier wife without bicuspids, the 20 something unable to conceive without baboon eggs, and the Extreme-Home-Makeover reject with only a stump for a ring finger, and transform their visually awkward lives? Ugh.

And don't even get me started on Rudy.

This, my friends, is why 20-, 30- and 40-something women - and yes, even Rene Russo - are watching Laguna Beach. It's television without the baggage.