"Hey! Who’s he calling lazy?" you’re muttering to yourself, then calling out, "Honey, would you get me a pen and paper so I can write this guy a nasty letter? And while you’re at it, can you grab me a beer, push this button on the remote, and pull my shirt down over my stomach?"

     Admit it: we’re humans, therefore we’re lazy. Why do you think one-third of adult American women are overweight, 14 percent of children are obese, and you can’t fit into those pants you bought three months ago? You can tell me I’m crazy, that you work 14-hour days six days a week, but in your heart you know the only reason you’re doing that is you’re too lazy to find a job where they treat you decently.

     Then there’s the government. Congress is too lazy to tackle real solutions so they pass legislation allowing the Ten Commandments to be posted in schools. The President is so lazy he can’t be bothered walking upstairs to find Hillary, so he has interns make office visits. And the CIA! They’re so lazy they didn’t even bother to find out where the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was located. Though I must say they certainly got motivated afterwards. Once they whoopsed the embassy into oblivion, they sent letters to 31 other embassies asking them to confirm their location. It’s not their fault if fourteen came back marked, "Moved, left no forwarding address."

     A lot of our laziness is done in the name of saving time. I have news for you, time can’t be saved. I’ve done plenty of things to save time. I’ve consolidated errands into one trip. I’ve checked my email while the printer’s spitting out a letter. I’ve even worn my clothes in the shower so I could wash them and myself at the same time. But then when I tried to cash in all that time I saved it didn’t do me any good. There were still only 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in the day. So when do I get to use all that time I saved?

     Gas stations are in the forefront of trying to help us be lazy, or as they call it in self-help groups from AA to ZZ, enabling. First they switched to self-service (except in New Jersey and Oregon where it’s still illegal to pump your own gas). True, self-serve is cheaper, but does it save any time or effort? We work harder, pumping our own gas while the attendant doesn’t work at all. Then they installed pay-at-the-pump systems which should be Time’s Invention of the Millennium since they save us from having to walk 20 whole feet to a booth to pay someone.

     Now, in their quest to make us all look like giant pears, Shell, Mobil, and BP Amoco are testing robots that find the gas tank, remove the special gas cap, fill the tank, screw the cap back on, and rub oil-stained rags on your windshield, all in two minutes and without your having to leave the comfort of your car. Does it get any lazier than this?

     In Pakistan it does. They’re so lazy in the Khost province they don’t even bother thinking up names anymore. Osama is now the number one name for baby boys. But since they can’t get enough of a good thing they’re also naming drug stores, clothing stores, and even a public school Osama. This might not be so bad except Osama is Osama bin Laden, the suspected terrorist who’s on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. Face it, if they were just a little less lazy they’d go out and find a decent role model.

     We have to break this cycle of laziness, but how? We could muster all our will power, but that would be a lot of work. We could buy self-help books, but only if we can order them from Amazon.com and have UPS deliver them to our door. We might consider joining a 12-step program like Laziness Anonymous but that would mean taking a shower, changing our clothes, driving our car, walking from the parking lot to the meeting place, and worse yet, having to make that long trek home afterwards. True, we could host the meetings at our house, but then we’d have to vacuum, buy refreshments, and even get up to answer the door god-knows-how-many times.