You Tube = Ulysses

You Tube is dangerous. It can take more of your time than is good for you, for your role as spouse and parent, particularly if said spouse and kids are way more tired of that video where one penguin slaps another penguin right onto his face than you'll ever be.

But the thing is that a You Tube session often turns into a stream-of-consciousness therapy session. For instance, I was looking for a video clip of a Peter Cook/Dudley Moore sketch called "The One-Legged Tarzan.'' I didn't find it, but I did watch some clips of the two of them in the original "Bedazzled'' with some pretty deep theology in them. This led inexorably to clips of bikini-clad women, then onto penguins who slap (because you really can't get enough of that) to old "Laugh-In" outtakes and finally to a six-minute concert clip of Bruce Springsteen and The Seeger Sessions Band performing "This Little Light of Mine.''

I know that eventually a lot of this is all going to go away, what with copyright law and everything, but it really does take you through a tour of your own inner cityscape, just like James Joyce's novel "Ulysses.'' Of course Ulysses didn't have penguins.