DESERVING OF BEATING WITH SHOES: The makers of "Fringe"; Authors of Homeland Security memo on "psychogenic illness"

The next two are linked by coincidence. Last night, your host wasted about an hour on "Fringe," a new sci-fi series not remotely believable.

One of the lead characters, Dr. Walter Bishop, is a nutcase rescued from an insane asylum. That's so he can rescue the rest of us from crazy weapons he thought up while at Harvard, weapons later minted by his labmate, the CEO of the biggest weapons developing corporation in the world, Massive Dynamics.

Bishop's purpose is to be the idiosyncratic savant and deus ex machina, producing magical solutions in the nick of time. As played, he's annoying, babbling about wanting an 850-lb. cow and a glass of ginger ale while he scrapes skin powder off a government agent turning to crystal on an operating table.

Bishop's first weapon was something called a "leprotic" flesh-eating disease caused by mixing industrial chemicals. Made for the Vietnam war, it's been stowed away at Massive Dynamics until their one of apparently many Bruce Ivinses, in this episode someone named Steig, gets it onto an airplane where it turns everyone into those transparent preserved bodies that have been the hot fad at "science" exhibitions for stupid people (and their stupid children) who despise science.

Near the end of the show, Bishop cures the crystallizing special agent with what might just as well have been an intravenous bag of catsup, a shot of anti-freeze and some vitamins. Five minutes later the show's writers kill the man off in a car crash, anyway.

Sadly, the show telegraphs a promise that this is one of those operations where even if someone dies, there's a plot device waiting to bring them back as needed.

When I realized that was the SOP for "Fringe" I stopped hoping everyone would die, including the bossy (and also really annoying) woman who plays the lead. Only bad ratings will drive a stake through "Fringe's" characters.

"Fringe" is "co-created" by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, two big nuisances we bagged on over the weekend here.

Orci and Kurtzman were rattled -- so rattled by what they read daily in the news their stomachs need manicures. No such luck for DD.

Tied in with "Fringe" is "Fear of Terrorist Attack Could Trigger Mass Psychogenic Illness," a document labelled "For Official Use Only" by the Dept of Homeland Security.

A pointer to the memo here was forwarded by the redoubtable Steve. (Thanks and a tip o' the hat!)

Psychogenic illness is when you think you're sick because something threatening is going on -- or just maybe going on, but not really. It's the clammy feeling when you're scared for no apparent reason. Take me down to the hospital, I've been exposed to a leprotic flesh-eating disease and it's making my skin crawl!

In olden days -- like the Seventies -- this was called hysteria. In really ancient times -- WWII -- it was fearing fear itself and listening to old wives' tales.

DD has a book on his shelf called "Invasion 1940" -- a personal account from Britain on the darkest days of the war. In it, it was said some people actually believed the Wehrmacht to be employing death rays, the German military winning so fast and what not.

Now, according to Homeland Security, this is all called psychogenic illness.

Psychogenic illness occurred in California in 2003, writes Homeland Security.

"In October 2003, a man entered a bank and sprayed an aerosol can into the air before departing," inform our anti-terror minders. "Bank employees and customers soon became ill ... although subsequent investigation determined that no chemical or biological agents were present..."

"An outbreak of mass psychogenic illness in the Homeland related to terrorism or the threat of terrorism is possible, and should be taken into account when planning and executing incident response."

It does no good at all to say the great government of the United States of America has worked overtime in the past eight years spreading fear of terror attack. In other words, it has prepped the homeland battle space for "psychogenic illness."

Now why did I ever write that stuff? Forgive me, I was out of my mind.