Opinion> Lenore Skenazy

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Don't Touch That Dial (Without Gloves)

Item: "'Monsters Inside Me,' which begins a six-week run on Wednesday night, tells real stories of parasitic infection and detection in a ticking-clock style equally influenced by true-crime shows and 'House.' With its shadowy re-creations of agonizing illness and horror-movie animations of worms invading every part of the human body (including the brain), it reinforces a trend on Animal Planet and its sister channel, Discovery: the depiction of the natural world in terms of violence, threat, warfare and paranoia." — Mike Hale, New York Times, June 30

Gee, what's not to like about a focus like that?

Proposed New Shows for Animal Planet and Discovery Channel:

—"Larvae Lamp": Each week, a small child with sticky hands pokes his finger into a different sac of gestating vermin. Time-lapse photography allows viewers to watch the larvae grow, hatch and wriggle on the child's pillow by the light of his bedside lamp. Week One: bedbugs!

—"Intestines of the Rich and Famous": Are celebrities really different? We check their viscera using everything from MRIs to X-rays to full-bore surgery to see what our favorite celebs (or, at least, the ones hard up for our $10,000 appearance fee) are like on the inside. This week: Who's got the longer upper GI tract, Woody Harrelson or Tila Tequila?

—"Does This Really Hurt?" A collection of the world's pointiest teeth, stingers and claws are amassed for your viewing pleasure, as each week, one lucky contestant/convicted fraudster gets his sentence commuted if he is willing to be punctured by the "Ouchie of the Day." Audience polling determines which bit of his anatomy will be stung, clawed or chewed.

And for how long.

—"Shark Week: Home Edition": Participating families swap their pet goldfish for sharks that will live for a week in their tubs. The catch? Everyone has to take a bath.

—"So You Think You Can Sew Up Your Own Flesh Wound?" In teams of two, flayed contestants try to cauterize or sew shut each other's gashes as artfully (and quickly) as possible. Points lost along with blood. Wounds are inflicted by spear-wielding warriors from the Serengeti, many of whom never have been on a plane before, much less a nationally syndicated reality show.

—"Escape to Spider Cave": Join your host, Pamela Anderson, on a trip to a cave filled only with giant spiders and too-hot-to-keep-your-clothes-on camera lights.

—"Help, I'm a Thelebrity's Tongue — Get Me Outta Here!" Join host Sanjaya Malakar and friends as they stick their tongues into a daring array of mix masters, sockets and four-color fax/printers!

—"Ding-Dung — Come on In": Deep in the heart of every steaming pile of dung lives a colony of heterotrophic bacteria most of us never bothered to get to know. Till now.

—"The Deadliest Batch": What happens when you bake chocolate chip cookies with a tribe of cannibals in the jungles of New Guinea? We don't want to spoil anything, but ... have you seen Mrs. Fields lately?

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at Advertising Age. She is the founder of FreeRangeKids.com and the author of the book "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.