Yesterday my wife demanded, "Is that your underwear in the refrigerator?!" To which I sheepishly replied, "Not mine. What's for dinner?" But more to my point, she also tells everyone I'd just as soon lie as breathe. Which is true, but I'm just a product of my environment.

You students can't use the same excuse - as your environment is full of enriching activities designed to mold you into more honest, respectable, constipation-free achievers. Like LACE activities including the highly acclaimed workshops on "Plagiarism" which got toned down to "Academic Honesty" and will soon be called "Fun with Fondue."

Such activities are good, wholesome, and conducted at state penitentiaries. I'd like to think a set of 10 clearly defined guidelines might also help.

Ne quid nimis which is Latin for, "You can kiss my rosy..." Oops, that's the Slavic variation. It typically means, "no thing in excess." My Mom commonly tried to trap me on this one when I'd get home and she'd ask, "Joe, do you have any homework?" I'd quickly say, "Nope."

That worked great and I had bunches of free time for watching TV or going outside and throwing rocks at cars. But eventually my folks would sit me down and ask, "Do you think these grades indicate your full potential?" Thinking quickly, I'd answer, "Miss Flippenstick is possessed by the devil which accounts for my lack of homework and her tendency to levitate off of the floor while spewing vile green stuff. What's for dinner?"

Excess homework is for overachiever students who make you want to puke when the instructor says how "So and so's" research paper on the Pagan Rituals of Drunk Democrats was the best he's seen.

Video games create a false sense of reality. Where else (except New York) can you ram a patrol car at 140 mph, still win the race, and not get arrested?

You dedicated gamers beware (You guys know who you are - playing video games for days without food, water, or changing your Depends.). Living in divergent realities can cause you to ignore important things like attending class and completing homework. Oh, you don't go to class? No, I understand. It's not mentioned anywhere in the directions for "Mutant Frogmen of Zuni Invade the Pagan Rituals of Drunk Republicans."

No, not even when she says an assignment is due today and just the day before she said it was "optional" and only for the classes' gum-chewing blonde cheerleaders.

There's some confusion about whether the Sabbath is on Saturday or Sunday. Who cares?! Honor both days and, what the heck, Friday, too. Doing homework on weekends is only for those snobs constantly breaking the 1st commandment.

Your body requires proper nutrition when going through the rigors of homework. My recommendations would include:

- Caffeinated drinks with enough high fructose corn syrup to freeze-up a 1965 Chevy Pickup engine. Of course Mountain Dew is preferred.

- Processed food containing more than 15 ingredients. Hostess Snowballs come to mind - left on earth by aliens during the Nixon administration.

Known as "time management," it's a skill highly sought after by large corporations like McDonalds (They're hiring - all shifts). My grade school motto was "Ignore your homework and set yourself free." This carefree attitude created some tough decisions for my parents:

Hormonal imbalance can wreak havoc on the neurotransmitters of a homework-taxed brain. Studies with freshman male students, when placed in a cramped study room with scantily clad coeds, points to a high percentage of uncontrollable drooling, brain wave activity of an orangutan, and the math skills of Britney Spears.

You should have to learn by the same time-proven process I did - hand copy out of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Sure it takes longer but don't cheat yourself! Nobody said experiential learning was going to be easy. It takes hard work to get through kick-butt classes like Anthropology.

Carefully weigh variables like instructor's IQ, former student lie-success ratios, planetary positions, and group dynamics of South African pygmies. Executing a good lie is an attainable skill - I've been doing it effectively my whole life.

Back when I was teaching drafting I had two brothers in class - let's call them Dumb and Dumber - who liked to turn in identical drawings. I confronted them one day and Dumb said, "You want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?" They also struggled with the concept of the alphabet.

Like speed limit signs, these commandments are only guidelines. You'll want to judge the benefits based on your own moral standards, GPA, job expectations, and criminal record. I'm pretty sure that's how Moses presented the original 10 commandments after picking them up on Mount Sinai. Except his recommendation was kind of a "Thou shall follow these with all your heart, mind, and spirit or thou shall burn in the fiery pit of Hell." Of course, he was speaking to drunk politicians at a pagan ritual.