Howie Mandel is America's most famous sufferer of OQD, or Obsessive Question Disorder, which is why he's always asking, "Deal or No Deal?"

Is it better to know, or not to know?

If you can’t—or won’t–answer that question until you know exactly why I’m asking, then I’m sorry to say that you, like me, may suffer from Obsessive Question Disorder, or OQD for short.

OQD is not a new disease. It dates to the dawn of recorded history, when God warned Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and they bit into the apple anyway because they just couldn’t go on living in Eden—paradise on Earth, for God’s sake!–without knowing what was up with the tree and the fruit and the knowledge and the good and the evil. As a result of their transgression, which seems really stupid with hindsight, the book of Genesis says God cursed humankind by forcing us to get up every day and go to work, where we’re bombarded with lots of annoying questions, such as, “Did you finish that report yet?” and, “Just what do you do for us besides collect a paycheck?” and, “Are you asleep?”

But questions like those have more to do with corporate greed and the man holding me us down than they do with OQD. OQD is a disease similar to alcoholism, binge eating or watching American Idol. In other words, you don’t control OQD, it controls you, and it’s just as potentially devastating to the body, mind and soul as any addiction.

I’ve suffered from OQD all of my life. It was OQD that compelled me to disobey my parents and look at the sun with binoculars when I was about 5 years old, probably ruining my eyesight for life. It was OQD that inevitably steered me into a career in journalism, where publishers routinely get away with paying reporters less than the average Wal-Mart greeter. How? Because publishers know most reporters have OQD and that it will drive them beyond reason to find out why the good senator from the great state of Colorado took out a mortgage for his suburban home under one name and a separate mortgage for a condominium in the city under a completely different name. Or why two of the Road Runner Chemical Company’s delivery trucks don’t have corporate logos on their doors, and always make their trips after hours, driving into the deep woods 50 miles from the nearest city.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that OQD is childlike curiosity on Red Bull. Although there’s a link between normal inquisitiveness and OQD, most of its sufferers don’t particularly care why the sky is blue or where the sun goes after dark. These are obvious questions for ordinary people.

Who is Patrick Jane, and why did he ask you about Miles Thorsen? These are the types of questions that plague sufferers of OQD.

OQD is much more like the compulsive sort of curiosity that kills cats. It’s curiosity on crystal meth. Its sufferers desperately want to know information other people appear to be trying to keep secret: Where their neighbor goes when he leaves the house at 9 p.m. and returns at 2:30 a.m.; or why he’s buying 40 feet of chain and 20 ceiling hooks at Home Depot; or what he buried in that deep hole in his garden in the middle of the night. Questions like these tap on OQD sufferer’s brains like itches we can’t scratch, driving us mad at times.

This will make sense to anybody who has OQD, whether or not their disorder’s been formally diagnosed by a licensed OQD professional therapist, or LOQDT for short. But it’s damnably difficult to explain to the millions of ordinary, hard-working Americans who happily accept what happens around them without giving it much serious thought, like infants or Republicans.

Perhaps a realistic example would be helpful.

Let’s say you’re approached by a good-looking, somewhat glib stranger named Patrick Jane who asks if you know somebody named Miles Thorsen. If your brain’s normal and you’ve never heard of Thorsen, you say no and move on unfazed. But if you have OQD, you spend the rest of the day wondering who Thorsen is and why Jane was hiding an Australian accent.

The question vexes you, and before you know it, you can’t sleep. Now you spend 90 minutes on Google trying to find out more about these Jane and Thorsen fellows. Maybe you even log onto Intelius.com and pay $30 to do a background check on Jane and Thorsen, to see if—or more likely, how–they’re linked and what possible connection they might have to your life. Maybe you call a friend in the Denver Police Department the next morning and ask him to run Jane’s license plate and give you his home or business address. And perhaps you even drive by his office a few times, or call and talk to his secretary to collect more information.

Explorer Percy Fawcett's unhealthy fascination with The Lost City of Z could be explained by OQD.

But OQD isn’t always creepy and stalker-like.

It takes many other forms.

Sometimes it’s merely annoying, like when Howie Mandel, who famously suffers from OQD, repeatedly asks “Deal or No Deal?” Other times it’s funny, like when your college OQD roommate asks you for the phone number of the cute girl you met at the party, and you keep refusing to give it to him until his face turns red and he chokes on his own spit until he passes out. That’s hilarious!

OQD can be dangerous, though.

Victorian explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, for example, and was so obsessed with finding the Lost City of Z that he dragged his teenage son and another boy deep into the hostile Amazon jungle, where they soon vanished without a trace. Although OQD hadn’t been identified as a disease at the time because the straight-laced Victorians practically made an art form out of being secretive, as anybody who’s familiar with Victoria’s Secret lingerie now knows, Fawcett almost certainly suffered from it. Why else would a grown man take two young boys into the jungle alone?

I can’t answer that question anymore than I can tell you whether it’s better to know certain things, or not to know certain things. But I’ll bet some of you know, and I won’t rest until I figure it out.

Zombies come out at night to eat the living.

By Dylanz Thomaz

Do not go gentle into that Zombie night,
Where torchz burn and the Undead rave at close of day;
Raging, raging against the livingz sight.

Wise men at their end fear darkest night,
Because their wordz cannot stop flesh eaterz they
Do not go gentle into that Zombie night.

Good men, wave goodbye, crying at the sight
Of frail Zombie demonz dancing for blood and bonez,
Raging, raging against the orange firelight.

Wild Zombiez catch slow soulz in frightened flight,
And dine—yum, thatz greatz—on grief and spleenz,
Which scream not gently into that good night.

Grave men, past death, who see with blinded sight
Blind eyez blazing like meteorz and bloody mouthz a-foam,
Raging, raging at the livingz rapid flight.

And you, my father, there on that gangrenouz height,
Curse the Zombiez now with your fierce eyeballz tears, I prayz.
You are not going gently into that good night.
You are raging, raging against the eating of your brainz.

This Zombie adaptation of the classic Dylan Thomas poem, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, is dedicated to the fabulous Quirkyloon, who loves Zombie lore and has a horribly misshapen head, but is very funny nonetheless and has become a daily must-read for me and many, many others.

Ancient Druids lived at the Stonehenge apartment complex and it's impressively large. But it didn't have a roof, windows, plumbing or cable television, which are essential to surviving England's harsh climate. As a result, the Druids vanished, either dying of pnuemonia or moving to the sunny French Riviera.

Do you remember exactly what you were doing at 9:18 p.m. yesterday?

Me, either.

But I’m positive I wasn’t celebrating the official kickoff of the Autumnal Equinox. I completely missed it again this year, as I have every year since our solar system was formed.

I always seem to be too busy watching the premieres of my favorite television programs to give the equinox its proper due. I loves my House and I loves my CSI: Miami, for example, and, like many network shows, they started this week, ruining me for all other fall activities. Hugh Laurie’s acerbic character reminds me of my inner me—the outspoken me who often gets me in trouble at family reunions and office parties. And no actor dead or alive slips on a pair of sunglasses with more dramatic flair than David Caruso, who may be dead judging by the flattened quality of his average performance, sunglasses notwithstanding.

Whether or not his heart’s actually beating, I’m sure Caruso understands as well as anybody that sunglasses are useful during the equinoxes, which take place once in spring and again in fall. Equinox is Latin for “equal noxes,” and these astronomical events mark the exact moment when the Earth’s equator lies perpendicular to the sun and the day is evenly split between light and dark, like a giant yin and yang symbol or a really good bucket of fried chicken. Sunlight always seems to be especially strong right around the time of the equinox, and a good pair of polarized Ray-Bans can make the drive home from work a lot more tolerable.

Although the equinoxes are largely ignored today, they were very important historically, and not only to sunglass salesmen.

The ancient Druids, for example, had the gall to celebrate the fall equinox and the final harvests of the year by burning wicker-work figures representing the vegetation spirit. The Druids are gone today, and we know very little about them except that they were obsessed with the sun and were lousy builders, much like modern homebuilders in Phoenix, Ariz. As a result, one of the Druids’ only surviving projects is a prehistoric circular arrangement of about 30 bus-sized stones in southern England called Stonehenge.

Many people think the English actor Hugh Laurie, who play Dr. Gregory House on the TV show House, looks like an ancient Druid.

Scientists believe the Druids used Stonehenge to predict the equinoxes, as well as their close companions, the summer and winter solstices, which mark the longest day of the year and the shortest day of the year, respectively. Researchers don’t really know why they cared, but I’ve been there, and the reason’s obvious to me. Stonehenge, though impressively large, has no roof, windows, plumbing or electricity, and it’s made out of cold, hard rock. Given England’s notoriously chilly, damp climate, the Druids must have spent most of the year wretchedly huddled inside their poorly constructed shelter praying for the arrival of summer and the invention of television. And I’m sure they all but vanished from history after succumbing to hypothermia, or because they wisely refused to return home while vacationing in the sunny French Riviera, which has long been a favorite winter retreat for shivering British citizens.

Still, the Druids’ mystical equinox ceremony survives in America as a festival called the Burning Man Project. Started in 1986, it’s a week-long party that takes place in Nevada’s delightfully warm Black Rock Desert . It now attracts about 50,000 people from around the world, most of them naked or scantily clad, and most of them as eager as freezing Druids to burn vegetation, although their favorite plant matter seems much more pungent than wicker and comes conveniently packaged in plastic baggies.

No matter how popular the Burning Man Project becomes, however, I seriously doubt Autumnal Equinox celebrations will ever catch on in mainstream America.

Part of the problem is that most Burning Man participants are curiously unmotivated to do the sort of serious marketing it takes to impart meaning to a pointless pseudo-holiday, as the experts at Hallmark greeting cards successfully did with Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day. All the Burning Man attendees ever seem to want to do is burn vegetation, dance to loud reggae music and munch on snack foods.

But another reason the Autumnal Equinox will never catch on here is that Americans are much more drawn to the warm glow of their television sets and the premier episodes of their favorite shows than they are to the sun, which is as predictable and as dull as, well, the rising of the sun.

And who can blame them?

Television is free and fun.

The Druids would have loved it.

And Maybe You Did, Too! (Find Out Below.)

So I won an award.

Not an Emmy or a Pulitzer or anything quite that grand, but a small token of appreciation from a marvelous writer and Internet blogging buddy, NoNameDufus.

It’s called the Superior Scribbler award, and I’m very proud of it. I have been proud of it since about three weeks ago, which is when NoName gave it to me. I kept meaning to acknowledge his acknowledgement, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it until now, and I don’t really know why.

I’ve won more than a handful of writing awards over the years, but I’ve always had a strange relationship with them. Like an expensive pair of cotton socks, they make me feel good about myself for a little while, then I lose them, and then I forget about them. It’s not that I’m ashamed of these awards, or embarrassed by them. I’m very proud of them, actually, and I want them badly; so much so, that I’m often filled with a disturbing mix of jealously, resentment and self-pity when other writers win awards–even relatively insignificant Internet awards such as this one–and I don’t. But, strangely, once I receive one, I soon forget about it. In fact, I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about any of my awards except these four:

1. One year, the Colorado Press Association, which is mostly a group of cheerless writers and editors who get together and drink gin until the world seems downright rosy, apparently drew my number from a hat and named a story I’d written about several naughty politicians who were taking bribes the “Best News Story of the Year.” They decided to emphasize the point by giving me a showy, oversized walnut plaque with a brass plate screwed to it. The plate was engraved with my name and the name of my publisher and the name of the newspaper I worked for at the time. It was very impressive looking indeed, and also very heavy, and I never hung it up, mostly because I can be shockingly lazy when it comes to hammering a nail into a wall. Then, one afternoon, while packing for a move, I whipped out a screwdriver, removed the brass plate and tucked it into a scrapbook, throwing the rest of the plaque into the garbage. And then I forgot about it until about a year ago, when I decided to update my resume.

2. On another occasion, the very lofty-sounding William Randolph Hearst Foundation gave me an investigative journalism award for uncovering years of bad planning and wasteful spending at an area university. In fact, it’s the very same university that trained me to be a reporter, which shows what kind of ungrateful, conniving bastard I can be if I think there’s an award to be won. It’s a lovely stamped and gilded certificate with my very unimportant name right next to Mr. Hearst’s very important name and a few words indicating how professional I am, although, to be honest, they never caught me sleeping under my desk with a half-empty bottle of gin tightly clasped in one hand. But, again, rather than expend energy by framing and hanging the award, I conserved resources and tucked it into a scrapbook, where it laid totally forgotten until about a year ago.

3. Some time ago, I was also thrilled to be recognized by the national Special Olympics committee and the founder of that august organization, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who recently died. I’d written a series of largely flattering articles about the Special Olympics, an organization which I greatly admire because most special Olympians are much better athletes than I’ll ever be, even though I’m technically not handicapped. To be honest, though, sometimes I really wonder about myself, especially when I get up off the couch, walk all the way to the refrigerator and then stand there with the door open wondering what it I was looking for. I lovingly looked at the award for a long time, then slipped it into my scrapbook with the other two, and promptly forgot about it like all the others.

4. And, of course, even though three weeks have passed and I’ve forgotten or lost many things in that time, including my car keys, cell phone, several passwords and, one day, my lunch, I still have warm memories of NoName’s Superior Scribbler award.

Unlike every other award I’ve received, however, the Superior Scribbler award came with conditions, some of them even more bothersome than hammering a nail into the wall. They are:

* Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass the award to five most-deserving blog friends.

* Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received the award.

* Each Superior Scribbler must display the award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains the award.

* Each blogger who wins the Superior Scribbler award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List at the bottom of the post explaining the origins of the award. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives this prestigious honor. That’s more than 1,000 bloggers at the time of this writing, which seems like a big number until you realize Technorati says there are more than 118 million bloggers, tens of millions more if you include China.

So, with no further ado, whatever that means, I’d like to sincerely thank NoName for this pesky award and then pass it to the following fellow writers:

1. Lorena at Lorena Rose. Lorena is a terrific writer who doesn’t consider herself a writer, and she’s a blogger who gleefully breaks the rules of blogging, to her credit. Most of her posts are funny and thought-provoking–even inspiring–but don’t adhere to a consistent theme, style or subject from post to post, for example. They’re just about whatever’s on her mind at the moment, whether it’s happy, sad, goofy, or politically and emotionally sensitive. Some of her posts are wonderfully ambiguous–clarity’s so overrated, I think–and she doesn’t post daily, or even weekly. She posts only when she feels like it, without much regard for the reader. Once, she posted a rather serious column asking for feedback about managing depression. Then she let days and days go by without posting, and even though I didn’t know whether she was asking out of self concern or concern for a friend or family member, I became sincerely worried. I couldn’t help but think perhaps she’d found a three-legged chair to balance on until she got the rope around her neck and did herself in. Fortunately for us, she hadn’t.

2. Janna at The Jannaverse. Janna has a brilliant comedic mind and can say a lot in 100 words or less, a skill that I’ve yet to master, obviously. Her word plays and lists are extremely well crafted, almost always playful and hilarious, and yet oddly thought-provoking, which is a quality I admire greatly. She posts very regularly, sometimes more than once a day, and I can’t wait to see what she’s come up with for our entertainment. Amazingly, I’ve yet to be disappointed by anything she’s written, including a recent week-long series on temporary, self-imposed vegetarianism that had me in stitches. Her responses to readers’ comments are often as funny as her original posts, too, which makes it unusually fun to follow her comments. I’d like to have her quirky mind, if not for breakfast, then certainly for dinner. Someday, I expect to see a book by Janna in Barnes & Noble, and not in the bargain bin, either.

3. DK at Knucklehead! DK has a knack for humorous story telling that’s almost unrivaled on the Internet, which is to say that he’s the rare sort of blogger who actually understands there’s an art to writing. Many of his posts are personal reminiscences, and most of them evoke fond memories and broad smiles, occasionally bursts of laughter. Understandably, he’s very popular with a lot of readers. What makes it all the more curious is that he’s the principal of an elementary school. I wish any of my principals had been this cool, because maybe I would’ve paid more attention in school. Why DK gives it away for free on a blog amazes me. Find a publisher and leave that stinky germ factory behind, buddy! (Note: DK recently had to delete all of his old posts, so you can’t read them anymore. But I’m sure his news ones will be good, too.)

4. Leeuna at My Mind Wandered…And It Never Came Back! To get you to laugh, most humor writers resort to using dirty jokes and the f-word in combination with the s-word, h-word, i-word, t-word and as many other letters of the alphabet they need to get the trick done. Not Leeuna. Leeuna reminds me of the great comics Will Rogers and Garrison Keillor, who aren’t comedians at all, but humorists who rely on gentle observations about the vagaries of everyday life to get you to smile. Most of her posts are kind reminders that you don’t have to shout to get attention or appeal to base instincts to get a laugh. And she’s a syndicated writer, which means she makes money being funny. I’m very jealous, of course, but I’m a big enough man to give her the award anyway.

5. Frank Lee MeiDere at I Probably Don’t Like You. Frank is, in my humble and utterly biased estimation, one of the very best bloggers there is. Screw bloggers. He’s just a very good professional writer, editor and, unfortunately for him, English teacher who likes to pretend he doesn’t give a damn when it’s damn clear that he cares very much indeed. Everything he writes is well crafted, well thought out, filled with varying levels of meaning, and connected to a larger body of literary work that perhaps only another professional writer can truly appreciate. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either, because Frank already got this Superior Scribbler award from NoName. I just didn’t want to let him go unmentioned here on my blog, because if there’s one blogger I admire, one guy whose critique I care about when I post a column, it’s him.

NoName, thank you again for this award. I hope you and anybody’s else who’s still reading this God-awful-long post understands it’s the first time anybody’s openly acknowledged my blog as being blog-worthy. And that’s why I appreciate it so much, even if it is an embarassing pain in the ass and doesn’t come with a cash award. And that’s why I bothered to get my metaphorical hammer out of the drawer and drive a metaphorical nail in the metaphorical wall so that I could metaphorically hang it up. That’s a first for me, and a reflection of how honored I am to be recognized by you, a fellow writer I admire at least as much as these other writers and read daily.

Yes, this is Samuel Morse. And, yes, incredibly, this is the guy who revolutionized modern communications with his fancy-dancy telegraphy thingy.

Three gargoyles are menacingly perched above my desk at work: a griffin, a dragon and a fierce-looking man-dog that reminds me of Cerberus, the multi-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades in Greek mythology.

Most people probably think gargoyles are hideous, even frightening. But I’ve always liked the ancient protective symbolism of gargoyles—they’re said to ward off evil—and I put this particular trio there a couple of weeks ago to help prevent me from getting laid off. I’m a writer and editor, and publishing, you might have read (or, more likely, seen and heard) is a rapidly dying profession, all but slain by the rapid rise of the Internet and even swifter fall of the economy. Advertising has steadily declined throughout the industry for years, including here in Colorado, where hundreds of highly experienced journalists—some of them old colleagues and friends—are already out of work and unable to find new jobs matching their skills. I don’t know whether my job is next, but sales are down markedly and I’m sure it could be.

I have mixed feelings about the death of print journalism.

On the one hand, I love words and the craft (occasionally art) of writing. Although words, like spouses, are often taken for granted, language is one of the first skills we acquire as children, and I believe our ability to organize words in written form is the engine that powers the forward progress of civilization. One idea leads to another, but without some way to preserve those ideas over long periods of time—in books, for example—societies would change very slowly, or worse, forever be hitting the reset button and starting over.

I also believe journalists fill an important role in society. We inform the public about politics, and help keep politicians honest. We keep tabs on important trends in law, health and religion. We help people decide what they ought to wear to work tomorrow if they don’t want to be too hot, cold, wet or windblown. We report the minutia and trivialities that give meaning and fun to our lives, from sports and cooking to fashion and gardening. We bring you Calvin & Hobbs, Dilbert and Zippy the Pinhead, not to mention the Jumble, Sudoku and the New York Times crossword puzzle. And I’m convinced that without well-paid professional journalists on the beat, much that goes on in our society would be misreported or missed altogether, despite the relentless, chattering presence of Facebook, Twitter and approximately 118 million blogs, most of which seem to rely heavily on so-called traditional media for their content, anyway.

Russell Crowe portrayed a reporter convincingly in the recent movie State of Play, right down to the frumpy sport coat, bad hair, questionable hygiene, poor diet and heightened sense of injustice.

On a much more personal level, the apparent death of print journalism leaves me feeling a little sad, and more than a little worried.

Writing stories for newspapers and magazines has provided me with a decent living and creative outlet for most of the last three decades. It hasn’t made me rich, unfortunately, but it has allowed me to hang out with some wonderfully intelligent, eccentric people who also love writing and the pursuit of a good story. I’ll never forget “Two-Phone” Stan, who seemed to like conducting simultaneous interviews–often shouting, and often standing on top of his desk. Or Dean, a brilliant, hyperactive, chain-smoking, hard-drinking editor who was usually  hopped up on caffeine and anything else he get his hands on, legally or not. Or Patrick, an Irish cartoonist/writer/cyclist/renaissance man who was probably the toughest, best editor I ever worked with, and not only introduced me to the music of the genius Tom Waits, but also encouraged me to take up cycling even though I’m not very athletic because it’s rewarding. Or Jane, who was patient and thoughtful enough to mentor me when I became an editor. She went on to work for The Rocky Mountain News, which is now gone, like so many of our great dailies, and I’ve lost contact with her. Or Rick, the best friend I’ve ever had. He’s one of the wisest, most loving, most sensitive, kindest people I know, and his knowledge of the world is almost encyclopedic. How could I ever forget him? I couldn’t, and there are so many others like him that I could go on and on and on; Journalists believe they’re members of an exclusive club and, like cops, are a tight-knit, clannish lot.

Being a journalist has also allowed me to learn a little bit about a lot of subjects, ranging from everyday topics like politics and business to more arcane subject matter like ancient Native American rug weaving, global warming and how nutrients affect health. I have interviewed governors and capitalists, members of the mob and thieving politicians, brave soldiers and police officers, artists and musicians–in short, people from every walk of life, including scores of ordinary people who often lead very interesting, meaningful lives that go unnoticed unless a reporter looking for a human-interest story happens upon them.

In a word, writing has been fun. Not everyday, of course, but overall. Very few professions pay you to be a generalist and explore the world like journalism does, and I’d hate to be forced to become a specialist—an accountant or construction worker, for example—just to pay my mortgage. Other professions might be more profitable, perhaps even more honorable, but I wouldn’t enjoy them as much as I enjoy writing.

But that’s only what’s on the one hand.

Magazines like The Atlantic Monthly are still relevant, but how much longer can they hold out against the Internet?

On the other hand, I understand that neither time nor history give a damn about print journalism, let alone me and my desire to do what I like. We don’t like to admit it because it makes us feel small and irrelevant, but ultimately, everything under the sun is insignificant, except in a particular time and place, and even then usually only to specific individuals. That’s as true for print journalism as it is for everything else. And everything, including communication, is constantly changing, whether or not we want it to. When paper was invented, for instance, it suddenly didn’t seem quite so necessary to pick up our hammers and chisels to carve symbols and words into stone. Or, when workers stretched telegraph lines from one end of this nation to the other during the 1800s, the Pony Express soon rode into the sunset, taking with it a way of life that now survives only in romantic memory.

In fact, it was Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph a mere 165 years ago that revolutionized modern communication in the same way that Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the mechanical printing press in 1439 forever changed ancient communication. Morse must have sensed what he was doing, too. When he publicly tested his new device in 1844 under the watchful eye of the U.S. Congress, the first message that pulsed across the 40-mile-long copper wire strung between Baltimore, M.D., and Washington, D.C., was lifted from a passage in the Old Testament’s Book of Numbers, chapter 23, verse 23: “What hath God wrought?” It was an illuminating question because while everybody suspected the telegraph represented a quantum leap forward in human communications, nobody but God could have possibly foreseen how quickly the new technology, and a host of technologies that soon followed it, would change the ways in which we share ideas.

In the blink of an eye on the relative timeline of history, that first telegraph message—a series of simple dots and dashes known as Morse Code—heralded a multitude of technologies that sped by, merged with, and leapfrogged over one another in an orgy of scientific advancement that continues to radically make over human communication even now. Ballpoint pens replaced quills. Typewriters replaced pens. Personal computers killed the typewriter. The telephone took over the telegraph. Radio superceded telephones. Television outperformed radio. Cell phones gobbled up pagers and now they’re gobbling up landlines and are even nipping at the heels of the personal computer. Apple’s new iPhone, for example, is the eighth wonder of the world, able to provide its users with Internet access and e-mail, as well as a GPS satellite locater, portable sound system, electronic Rolodex, calendar, high-resolution camera, video player, gaming device and photo album. With the right applications installed, it also functions as a carpenter’s level, weather forecaster, spreadsheet, restaurant guide and a way to find potential mates in a crowded bar. Oh, and it’s also a mobile phone.

Apple's new iPhone instantly puts a world of information at our fingertips. If you've $99 and about $50 a month to pay for one. I'm a journalist, and therefore can't afford one.

But as a journalist, what really grabs my attention about the iPhone is that it’s also able to download newspapers, magazines and books, just like Amazon’s $300 Kindle, but in a device that fits into the palm of your hand and costs as little as $99. To me, that implies a lot about the Internet’s potential ultimate impact on print journalism—and my future.

Although it’s probably still a little too early to make pronouncements about the Internet’s role in history, I suspect time will prove it is to print media what the personal computer was to the typewriter. Traditional print journalists abhor the thought, and like most people they will instinctively resist change, but resistance, though frequently noble, is probably futile.

Print journalism and writing won’t vanish, of course. There will always be a market for books and magazines, just as there’s still a market for vinyl albums and even 8-track tapes. But I believe there will be fewer books and magazines, and they’ll look very different—less wordy, more visual.

It’s already happening, in fact.

Magazines once regularly ran news stories that were 2,000 to 10,000 words long, often with nary an illustration, subhead or quote to break up the text. Some magazines published entire short stories, even novels, although usually bit-by-bit over successive issues, like Charles Dickens’ famous book, Bleak House. Magazines from the golden age of publishing, such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, were beloved precisely because they were dense, grey and ponderous in an intellectually heady way that garnered admiration because they represented the finest of all things wordy. In a way, they were (and in many ways still are) all things to all writers: newsy, fictional, opinionated, poetic and humorous.

Gargoyle's sit atop some of the world's most beautiful churches, guarding them against evil. Will they do the same for my career? I doubt it, but I love the symbolism.

Today, of course, publishing is dramatically different thanks largely to the ubiquitous influence of the Internet. Most readers won’t (or perhaps can’t) attend to stories longer than 200 to 1,500 words. And who can blame them? We’re all inundated with information, from shopping cart advertisements and television shows to satellite radio and e-mails. As a result, newspaper and magazine stories have gotten shorter and shorter, dropping in some cases to aggrandized photo captions that are just 100 words long. Ideas are less complex, less well thought out. Pictures and graphics now rule the pages of most modern magazines, which increasingly try to link themselves to the virtual world of the Internet even it makes them look like senior citizens at a Green Day concert.

I don’t mean to sound critical, because I have to admit that I’m also a product of the times.

Last December, I was given a copy of David Wroblewski’s critically acclaimed book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, for Christmas. I actually interviewed the author and wrote a short, 300-word story (that’s rich!) about him for one of the magazines I work for. He took 10 years to write his book, and his perseverance, intellect and wit is impressive. His book sounds terrific, too. But I haven’t read it. It’s 608 pages long, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to focus on it long enough to appreciate it, let alone finish it. In fact, I haven’t read a single book in nearly a year now, not even one of those irresistibly compelling page-turners that writers like John Grisham and Scott Turow turn out. I still read newspapers and magazines, but I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m neglecting a growing stack of periodicals featuring longer articles that I want to read but probably never will. I like to blame my new-found illiteracy on work, the demands of raising kids and trying to maintain my home. But lately I wonder if the Internet—which I affectionately refer to as the Short Attention Span Theater—hasn’t warped my brain, rendering it incapable of staying focused for more than 2 minutes at a time.

What’s really silly is that by not reading newspapers, magazines and books, or by not reading them as much, I am, in effect, contributing to the very problem that’s killing my industry. I am putting myself out of work.

If print journalism dies, nobody will be left to write about the bread lines in the next Great Depression because all of us journalists will be standing there hungry. Oh well, times change.

So could I jump to the Internet instead?

Maybe, but I doubt it.

There are writers—a few bloggers, editors and experts in search engine optimization—who are earning living wages working on the Internet. But millions of very good writers don’t make a dime. They give it away for free every day, because they love to write, or hobnob with other Internet writers, or perhaps because they’re hoping to be discovered. And millions more barely make more than a dime, generating a few bucks a month with Google ads or low-paying freelance gigs. Being nervous about my career in print journalism, I recently inquired about three separate job postings for Internet writers. The ads insisted these electronic publications needed flawless, 100 percent original content, and I assumed they’d pay accordingly. But I was appalled and, to be honest, somewhat offended to learn that these publishers—more like robber barons, if you ask me—pay just 1 to 3 cents a word. The magazines I work for pay 20 to 30 cents a word, and that’s considered the bottom of the barrel for freelance work. At 3 cents a word, a writer would earn $15 for an average Internet article, and if it were truly original and not just lifted from other sources such as, say, the Internet, it’d probably take at least 1 to 2 hours to research and write. I could do better pumping grape Slurpees at 7-Eleven.

So where does that leave me at this point in my 30-year career?

Frankly, I don’t know.

Unless my gargoyles work—and I don’t really believe in stone talismans, I just like the way they look and what they symbolize—I may be forced out of work soon with little or no hope of finding a new job in my field because my chosen profession is disappearing. And that’s scarier and more discouraging than almost anything I’ve ever faced.