Queens College closed down at noon, thanks to the anticipated arrival of Hurricane Floyd. So far as I remember, this is the first time they've cancelled classes due to bad weather in the six semesters I've been here. As a result, my poetry workshop has once again avoided getting underway.

Perhaps it's just as well. After putting up yesterday's entry, I added another four sections to the poem I mentioned in that entry, which, while not especially good, weren't as awful as the first part. I would've ended up handing in that version if I'd had class today. As it stands, I've now yanked out the first part, and am revising the rest of it.

Mind you, I'm wondering if the college will find a way of making up the lost day, or if we're simply stuck with one less period of class instruction. The former seems impractical -- close to impossible, even -- but the latter isn't particularly appealing. We'll see, I guess.

• When did television get invaded by watermarks in the lower-right corner of the screen? Why does every station feel compelled to continuously remind us of what channel we're watching? And can we sue whomever came up with the idea?

• Whatever happened to letting the credits scroll across the screen by themselves? Are the networks so starved for time that they simply must shrink them down to part of the screen while they promote some other show on the rest?

• When did PBS start showing commercials? Okay, even when I was growing up, I knew that my daily dose of children's programming was sponsored in part by a grant from the Helena Rubenstein Foundation -- whoever they were -- but that's a far cry from the 15-second video clips they're showing for McDonald's now.

• This doesn't really belong with the other items, but what is with contestants constantly applauding on game shows? I've seen one episode apiece of The New Hollywood Squares and Supermarket Sweep, and they were clapping so much, I was surprised their hands didn't fall off by the end of the show. They'd clap when they got an answer right, they'd clap when an opponent got an answer right, they'd clap when they won, they'd clap when they lost, and they'd probably clap if the whole set got trampled by a herd of charging elephants, just because clapping is what they do. I just don't get it.

On a more positive note, WBGH has started producing Zoom again, and it seems to have made the jump from the '70s to the '90s pretty well. So pleased and contented have I been with the show that even the show's insistence on claiming that www.pbs.org is its e-mail address has failed to put a damper on my mood.

The problem is that Jeopardy! is on ABC, and I love Jeopardy! Or, at least, I always used to, and I assume that hasn't changed.

See, part of the fun in watching game shows is that they feature real people up there, and, potentially, you could be one of them. So, in a way, the contestants are stand-ins for, or rivals to, the viewer. In the case of quiz shows, one gets to try to answer the questions oneself, seeing how well sie'd have done if sie were on the show.

Jeopardy! is my game. I've wanted to be on the thing for ages. I wouldn't stand a chance, of course -- charisma and television presence are factored into the qualification process -- but I can still play along in the privacy of my room. My Achilles' heel is geography categories; on the other hand, I rule on anything involving wordplay.

Then again, I also used to be a huge fan of Double Dare.

With that having been said, I'm probably gonna renew, for the simple reason that, for all its flaws, it does cover some territory not currently covered by anything else out there. And my local library doesn't carry it, and if I'll be buying the occasional issue anyway, it's much more cost-effective to subscribe.

That doesn't mean I'm thrilled about it, though.

I'll probably subscribe to Talk, too, for similar reasons. (The library doesn't carry it, it's got some decent articles, and a subscription costs much less than getting it on the newsstand.) And while I've also been tempted to sign up for Esquire, I have avoided that for two reasons: I can -- and do -- get that at the library, and I'm afraid of What The Landlords Will Think, as our mail is delivered together.