"I know why I'm getting fat." "Why? You're not getting fat."

"I am. A little. It's because I eat when I'm not hungry."

"You mean you get up and get food when you're not hungry?"

"Well, no. I mean, when I'm full and there's still more on the plate and I eat it."

"I do that too, though. I mean, not only is it good, but there are nutrients..."

"No, I mean, if there is chocolate in front of me, and I eat one piece and then I eat two more even though I'm satisfied with just one, because I figure, 'Well, this day's wasted anyway in terms of being moderate, because I just ate that chocolate...'"

"Yeah, but do you enjoy those extra pieces of chocolate?"

"Yes. Well, no. Yes, but the enjoyment does not outweigh how I feel bad about myself for doing it. Ask any girl."

"Let me ask you a question."

"Oh God. Here comes the Justin-analyze-your-life program."

"Would you rather be shocked right now by X voltage of electricity..."

"How many volts?"

"Would you rather be shocked by X voltage of electricity right now, or by half as much in ten minutes?"

"Well, I don't want to go into specifics, because you're not supposed to do that with these...I'd take it right now."

"Right! They did a study, and most people said they'd like to be shocked right then, even if they'd be shocked by less later. Waiting for pain is worse than actual pain."

"I was going to say, 'Would the electricity have any lasting negative affects...?'"

"No, you're getting too into it."

"I know. That's why I said before that I didn't want to get into specifics..."

"Good girl. You answered the same as everybody else."

"I'd be a good person no matter how I answered because I'm an individual, confident person."

"Right."

I like to relax on a Thursday evening every now and then, watching the local NBC affiliate, and this is just what I was doing last night when I heard the telltale overly-dramatic music and realized a commercial for the hospital drama "ER" was on, and asked J if he thought maybe it was going to be the "most dramatic show yet?" Because, after their - what, 600 or so? - years of being on the air, that seems their only plug nowadays. "In the most dramatic episode yet, love blooms in the most unlikely of places. But can this couple make it? Their relationship is tested when a bioterrorism threat shakes the hospital. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse...is the emergency room being taken over by alien forces? Will the patients be asked to serve their county as untrained soldiers in a fight against a deadly group of impoverished tribesmen who'll stop at nothing to kill every last American? A surprise visitor makes tonight's 'ER' the most emotional show you've seen so far, you DON'T want to miss it." Listen, I've been in my fair share of emergency rooms, and even when we had to go to the one in Atlantic City when Vinnie had an awful ear infection, and there were drunks roaming the waiting room with their pants pretty much falling off, I mean, it was nothing like "ER." I'm all for the show's writers upping the action because, you know, it's a TV show and all and we don't want to sit there bored, but they've gone too far. Truthfully, things started sliding when George Clooney left. That's just my opinion, though.

Post-Starbucks drive to the Mary Ellen Jones Building

Is it time to pull the plug on the nation's most interminably long running hospital drama?