MARK MY WORD: AMERICANS LOVE TO ZAP THROUGH TV CHANNELS

Americans love to race through television land, jumping from channel to channel with the touch of a remote control button.

That's particularly the case with the American male, as my wife constantly points out.

I am addicted to channel surfing. It is hard for me to watch television without clutching the remote control, my trigger finger at the ready like some modern-day gunslinger.

Instead of reading the television guide, I use the remote control to search through the video jungle to see what is on.

The problem with all this channel changing is that I seldom watch anything from start to finish, jumping back and forth from one program to another.

If I read a newspaper the way I watch television, nothing would make much sense, which maybe explains why many Americans have only a bumper-sticker knowledge of national or even local affairs.

Zipping through the front page of Sunday's Southeast Missourian as if it were television land would leave me with nothing but a bunch of confusing phrases.

As many as 15,000 people marched through -- zap -- emergency telephone system -- zap -- Little Havana -- zap -- the history of tobacco -- zap -- boosts training -- Christopher Columbus -- zap -- 41 mock coffins -- zap -- Amendment 4.

Surfing through television is less confusing, particularly if you are watching a sporting event.

Unfortunately, the baseball strike has wreaked havoc with channel surfers.

Before the strike, I could watch any number of baseball games, bouncing from game to game and catching glimpses of TV sitcoms, the news and movies.

The batter steps up to the plate...switch to another ballpark, the batter grounds into a double play...back to the first channel, strike one...switch to the USA movie, a killer chases a woman through a parking garage...switch to the first ball game again, strike two...back to the movie, the woman is running for her life through a high-rise office building...switch to the Cardinal ball game, Todd Zeile strikes out.

Baseball is a great sport for channel surfers because you can spend a lot of time jumping from channel to channel without missing any real action.

Much of a baseball game consists of the pitcher warming up between innings, the catcher throwing the ball back to the pitcher and the umpire dusting off the plate. Players also spend a lot of time spitting and scratching.

With channel surfing, you can skip right over the seated-in-the-dugout-doing-nothing views and the aerial shots from the blimp.

Of course, there is a drawback to all this zipping and zapping. You don't always know the final score.

But then that is why there is Sportscenter. At the end of the day, the sports junkie can tune into ESPN and catch up on all those games and scores he missed while channel surfing.

For sports junkie, channel surfers there is only one thing worse than a baseball strike: A dead remote control.

Zap.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer at the Southeast Missourian.