You, Too, Can be a Study Buddy
I was inspired by the recent study out of London that suggests men tend to hog the remote. I’m sure you find this discovery shocking, unless you’ve ever actually watched TV with a man, in which case you’ve probably stopped reading and moved on to the crossword puzzle.
Still, the study is a start toward eventually unraveling the myriad mysteries of TV remote usage. Besides, I’m sure this information was released only after teams of scientists spent months sneaking into people’s living rooms, where they observed men affectionately nuzzling their TV remotes while their children crawled into sharp objects.
When I get involved in TV remote study, however, I hope to take the research a step further. For instance, has anyone ever determined how many men, sprawled on the couch after devouring a box of Cheeze-Its, have tried to use The Force to retrieve the remote from across the room, like Luke Skywalker did with his lightsaber in “The Empire Strikes Back”?
It seems to me that researchers studying other areas of male behavior could also use my help in thinking “out of the box.” For instance, take the recent Harvard study that found single men produce more testosterone than married fathers do. This should have been obvious, since married fathers don’t have nearly the energy that single men can devote to testosterone production — we’re far too dazed, like we just got hit in the face with a frying pan.
Similarly, there’s the New York University study that showed that sex is an anti-depressant, which also seems fairly obvious. If they discovered that sex is an antacid, now, that would be interesting.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of valuable studies going on out there. For instance, there’s the one out of the University of Florida that found that coconuts are deadlier than sharks. This information could save the lives of countless swimmers who carelessly approach coconuts and try to pet them.
Wait … In reading further, it seems this study actually says that 150 people are killed by falling coconuts each year, 15 times the number that are killed by sharks. It’s a stunning statistic, one which begs the question: Why not Gilligan, then?
Then there’s the University of Arizona study that suggests office computers are “dirtier than toilets.” Although I hear that with next year’s iMac, Steve Jobs will come to your desk once a week and clean your keyboard with a Handi-Wipe.
But those are topics for another researcher. I’ll be too busy making painstaking studies of TV remote control users, and trying to objectively determine whether they’re all sweaty, power-hungry control freaks, or just misunderstood losers.
I know doing so will involve many solitary hours in front of the TV, but I’m not worried: A recent Indiana University study shows that people who watch a lot of television feel like they have more friends. Now, if we only knew if they had more testosterone …
I better get right on that.