11:23 p.m. My piece for the World Year project tonight is on the topic of languages, and as is usual with any international subject that I tackle, I'll be writing about what I don't know, where I don't go, what I don't eat or import or pack.

I stay close to home -- a lot. I'm lucky enough to live in a resort town, and on Sundays I don't even leave the house if I don't have to. If I so much as walk out my front or back door, cars slow down and trail me down the street. Drivers whistle and wave at me.

Yeah -- I'm a foxy enough chicklet, but that's not the reason. The drivers are hoping I'm only walking to my car and that I will, in fact, be pulling said car out of a most precious parking space. "Coming or going?" they shout and gesticulate, in every spoken and sign language known on this planet.

So, in spite of what I'm planning to write in just a few minutes, I actually *can* understand a few words in a few languages. Which brings up today's great idea for your edification and enjoyment. Universal words.

Why can't we all agree on a few universal words (or clicks or finger snaps) for certain undeniable, important concepts? For instance: "Help!" As in, "I need help!" Why can't we come up with the spoken equivalent of one of those signs with circles and grade-school graphics that everyone can understand?

Many important situations call for universal understanding, and pronto: "Where's the nearest toilet?" for instance. Or, "I'm lost and I don't speak a word of your lovely language and I'm tired and cranky and I really, really would love a nice cold TAB." That sort of thing. Keys to the Tower of Babel in which we all find ourselves, wandering aimlessly, permanently locked in.

Just a thought. Un reve. Or maybe une reve. Hard to say which.

I probably won't hammer away on the universal word concept any time soon. I also haven't pursued the initiative to stop changing the clocks around twice a year, which is actually more important to our universal mental health. Maybe I'm maturing. Hard to know; hard to tell.

I do know that I could get behind a program to eliminate TV, now that the Soprano's have finished up their season. The rest of the dial seems wasted and flat and meaningless ... and in fact, invasive and troublesome. Could it be the cause of all our modern evils, as Joseph Chilton Pearce posits in Evolution's End?

Or, is the tube and the pictures it produces the salvation of our race, as Leonard Schlain suggests in The Alphabet versus the Goddess? He says that the constant rush of images is forcing an upsurge of activity in the right hemisphere of the brain -- which in turn has kept us from marching forward in our suits and ties, calculating profits and losses, and blowing ourselves up with the bomb.

Schlain says that that image of the mushroom cloud was all we ever needed. No words were necessary after that. Someone should have told poor George Clooney this before he attempted to redo Fail Safe with Duddy Kravitz playing the president.

We need a universal word for dreck.