I feel I pay a lot into The System, but seem to get little in return.

I might sound a little annoyed -- actually I'm a lot annoyed -- but I would say all is forgiven if the federal government would pony up some dough to conduct research on a serious problem that has been plaguing our country and annoying me personally for years.

Glazed Donut Melt.

Surely, you've witnessed this phenomenon or as it is sometimes called, GDM. When you buy glazed donuts, the icing is always picture-perfect, but after you get them home and they've sat for a while the delicious sugary-coating always seems to start melting away like Vincent Price's face at the end of "House of Wax."

Why is that?

And if you don't catch the melt in time, all you're left with is a semi-sweet and a little chewy donut.

And I don't like it.

GDM has perplexed me for most of my adult life. You go to the grocery store in the evening. You pick up a box of tasty looking donuts to have with your coffee the next morning. You leave them nestled snug in their little white box with its little cellophane window and you go to bed.

But then 8 hours later, you wake up ready for donuts and most of the glaze has puddled up in the bottom of the box.

Who wants to eat a bunch of incontinent donuts? I, for one, don't. I buy glazed donuts, because I like the sweet taste of the glaze. If I wanted a naked donut, I'll have a bagel.

And since everybody else seems to be getting a handout from Good Ol' Uncle Sam, I feel my time is due. I want some of my hard earned tax dollars to be spent determining what is causing GDM and how to fix it.

Of course, since I'm so easily fixated by whatever apocalyptic prediction is the current darling of the media, I immediately thought that GDM could be YET ANOTHER sign of global warming.

And if GDM is being caused by global warning should we alert Al Gore so he can look into it?

Oh wait. Scratch that. I just saw a photo of Al.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's already been doing extensive field research on this critical issue.