If you've noticed that new ZUG material has been pretty sparse over the past few months, it's because we've been wasting our time trying to get a TV show.

About a year ago, Ziff-Davis announced that they'd be launching a 24-hour cable channel called ZDTV: Your Computer Channel. Since I work for Ziff-Davis and make them a lot of money, I thought they'd be dying to give us a show. See, I thought getting a TV show was as easy as going over to Warren Littlefield's house and asking politely. (If that's not the case, then how the hell does Delta Burke do it? Tell me that!)

The rub, of course, was that I had already alienated every possible friend with a little audition I did for "The Site," a Ziff-Davis produced show that ran on MSNBC for a few months, until it was cancelled. The audition, which I wrote about in The Money Prank, involved me climbing on top of expensive studio equipment and throwing away perfectly good money into a sea of nerds. The crew thought this was a brilliant stunt, but the executive producers did not, and I was banned from ever appearing on the show. But I figured no one would remember that.

Boy, was I wrong.