Ching ching

Karen's watching Law and Order. Again. If I confront her on this, I know what she'll say. "There's nothing else on." But I know the truth. We all know the truth, the unspeakable, shameful truth: Karen is a Law and Order addict. A moment ago, desperate for some shred of hope, I googled support group for Law and Order addicts, and found this page. Here are some excerpts: "but there i was, again, glued to the TV for what seems like an endless parade of episodes of Law & Order. i'm beginning to realize that you can see this wonderful, wonderful show (or one of it's spinoffs) at almost any time during the day or night on one channel or another." "I wish there were something like a methadone clinic for us addicts." "When I found out that TNT and USA were playing different episodes at the same time, I couldn't handle it. I cracked. I sold my baby girl into white slavery and used the money to buy a second TV." Okay, I made that last one up, but can we at least begin to talk about Chronic Ohrbachitis and the dreaded Waterston Ache? (Yes, it's true: Law and Order addiction is no innocent dependency; it's a disease.) Even CNN.com acknowledges the seriousness of this problem. Are you an addict? Take this simple test. Read the first the first five words of the next paragraph, and then close your eyes. If you can finish the paragraph without peeking, you're an addict. “In the criminal justice system, [OKAY, CLOSE 'EM!] the people are represented by two separate, yet equally-important groups — the police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” And who, Mr. Know-it-all Unseen Voice, Mr. "I hyphenate adverb-adjective pairings," who represents the spouses of Law and Order addicts? Then, a few years ago, the cancer metastasized. Law and Order begat CI, CSI, SVU, SUV, FBI, IOU, and ESP. With each of these spinoffs ripping their stories fresh from the headlines, what will we do when there are no headlines left to rip? D.