"Yadda-yadda-yadda" this.

Seinfeld's over. All the people who have had entertainment prepackaged for them on Thursday nights for the last nine years are now in a tizzy, because they have to find someone to spoonfeed them a laugh track soaked sitcom.

I have a friend, Lauren, who has this great name for the masses: "Sheeple". Boy, don't that sum it all right up for you.

Let me illuminate this image a little, so you can see why this term holds so much importance for me. Sheeple live in a pen, bound by fences. They are fed regularly. They don't know of anything outside their dim existence. It rains, they get wet. When the time comes, they get sheared or slaughtered by some higher authority. It never occurs to a sheeple to question what life is about. "Just bow your head and eat, and wake up tomorrow, if you're lucky." They don't offend anyone, at least not intentionally, hence they are never truly honest with anyone, least of all themselves. They fear anyone or anything outside that fence.

So the fence protects them, but it also limits them, keeps them penned in, unable to go outside the fence and explore what lies beyond.

And as they chew all day, they have this vague feeling of how unfulfilled they are. Oh, sure, they complain about the job or the wife or the kids or the life, but they never really take things to the level they should to be happy. They never jump the fence.

See, there's a reason sheeple are what they are: safety, no. Commonality. Convention. Homogeneity.

Conformity.

Dreaded word for an artist: conform. Yea, there's safety in conformity (the fence does keep the predators out, after all. The only animal that can leap the fence is a deer.), but there's something far more insidious that sheeple strive for. They don't want to stand out, beyond the superficial markings of makeup or clothing, some fashion-dictated "difference" that a million other sheeple will have bought before the week is out. As long as they stay inside the fence, they won't stand out. They won't be individuals. They'll stand around the water-trough, bleating about "how-w-w-w-w funny Seinfeld wa-a-a-as la-a-a-ast night" or some such nonsense, designed to garner acceptance by the rest. They'll comb their hair in a certain way because someone else said, "gee, that looks good on you." They'll shave their pubes, risking eunichasia ferchrissake, if it means getting laid! They'll buy the right clothes, drive the right car, eat the right foods, and yes, ingest the right entertainment, all so they don't have meander alone in the world.

And for another reason: so they don't have to think.

Consider this: for going on fifty years, now, we've had this implement of "entertainment" that has enraptured us as no other form ever has. Families used to gather around the radio, but people used their imaginations as stories were told, games were played, people spoke. Now, sheeple plop themselves in front of this monstrosity, and soak it all in: images, sound, environment, context. Served up with a nice helping of periconsumables interspaced, so they can see what they are missing. And these are the same images that their opinion-makers are looking at, and damned if that isn't helping them sway them.

I remember reading in an Edwin Newman book about socio-marketing studies, where in small towns, the bartender was considered an "opinion maker". Why? Because he could change the channels on the barroom TV.

Well, sheeple believe that. They believe that he who controls the remote, controls the medium. Why? Because it never occured to them to change the fucking channels themselves, is why.

This was an argument the first ex-Mrs. Salonen and I would go through constantly, until I set her straight: I held the remote, so therefore if I changed the channel, that was what we had to watch. I can't tell you how long it took for me to get her to stand up, get her own friggin' remote and change it right back. She finally got to the point where she would feel OK telling me that she wanted to watch a particular program, which worked infinitely better for her. And me. She was being honest with me.

But notice that the argument grew out of me dictating what she was watching! I was a TV network, a cable channel, and what I put up was what she would feel obliged to consume!

Now expand that infinitely, and utilize some less benevolent, profit-driven media mogul in place of a husband. That's "sheeple".

It's understandable, I suppose. The world's a frightening place moving at a terrifying pace, it's easy to feel far removed from what's really going on, and it's easy to become disillusioned, what with Watergate and Iran-Contra and Whitewater and $1 million dollar book advances from media moguls bent on acquisitions (wouldn't Rupert Murdoch make a great Ferengi, by the way?). Life is so much easier behind the fence. Sheeple are spoon-fed, their needs are met, they don't have to weigh facts, and they get an emotional component to their lives, soap-opera-ish and false though it may be. Hell, as intelligent and aware as I may be, there are times I want to hide behind the fence!

And they carry on, and they never get anywhere, but they never lose anything important either. Except their souls.

So Seinfeld's gone. Sheeple the world over are looking to the networks for something to take its place. Me, I want to be the wolf outside the fence, lone and prowling, fighting for every inch of territory I claim, licking my lips at the prospect that, one day, that fence around the sheeple must come down. How fulfilling will that be for a predator like me? How many will I gobble up before I can't eat anymore? The vast expanse that is the rest of the world outside that fence is mine to explore, to drink from the pools at the bottom of waterfalls, to stand on mountaintops and look over the land that is mine. I want to be that wolf.

Trouble is, I think I'm one of the deer, occasionally jumping back over the fence whenever threatened by the insecurity and inhumanity of the wild.

Not realizing that the real inhumanity is happening inside the fence.

See, when you limit yourself, limit your perceptions and perspectives, you dehumanize yourself. Fences are limits. They control sheeple, keep them massed and looking at things from the same point of view, day in and day out. The sheeple are all the same. Same point of view, usually up the ass of another sheeple. Shared persepctive. It makes it easier to get them to swallow stuff they might not be interested in consuming.

Humans have choice. Humans, more important, exercise that choice to include things outside the scope of the fence: art, culture, foreign foods, philosophies, religions, fantasies. Exploration becomes humanity and humanity strikes out for new territory constantly.

It's in our nature to do so. Genetically, humans are nomadic, wandering, carting their experiences with them along with their possessions. Wonder why SUV's are so popular with sheeple? It's a plaster job, it covers up the ugly truth that sheeple have to stay in place, can never dare to risk an exploration. Goodness knows, it isn't because on some rainy day they might need that four-wheel drive to get up that steep, 3 degree incline at the mall parking lot.

I used to hang out on a BBS devoted to Don Imus. If you've never heard Imus, well, let's just say that Howard Stern owes a major debt of gratitude to Imus for blazing trails for him. So does Rush Limbaugh and a whole host of confrontational talk show hosts. Anyway, I got kicked off the BBS (it's on MSNBC's website, if you want to go check it out), mostly for having the unmitigated gall to speak the truths that no one really wanted to hear, about themselves or about the world around them.

Well, that, and being obscene, which in cyberspace means that I had to rank just slightly above Bianca's Smut Shack on the sleaze scale. Which I did. I just chose my targets badly.

Or maybe not. See, I had my legal advice in hand: First Amendment, due process, warnings be damned because they were insufficient, analogies and precedents up the wazoo, and my friend Chel asked me, "Why bother? It's a bunch of elitist assholes anyway, and so what if a small corner of the universe disagrees with you so vehemently that they felt more comfortable with you out of their sight than betraying their values?"

Sheeple, in other words. She had a point. I had my adviser (can't name names, but he wrote a large check to a certain radio DJ for a ranch he was running for sick children. I work for his father-in-law.) write a strongly worded email, warning that the next time he heard about this sort of treatment, he'd be sure to include it in the MicroSoft monopoly case (oops, dead give away there) and wondering how Bill Gates would like to have that thrown in his face. Me, I stay off the board, even though that tactic worked and I was invited back on. The moral? The fence is working too well there. Sheeple will gather with like-kinds, and flock each other. Obviously, this creates genetic defects, but what the fuck, eh? It'll be easier to spot them.

CARL SALONEN, Carl's life doesn't leave him with much time to contemplate what should go into these bios. Visit his home page at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/de_Valois