Unable to force myself to dissect meaningless, excruciating baseball, I'm left with little to do but perform a bullet-pointed purge of my mind in the form of "Things I Learned This Week," an idea that I've not only been beaten to many times over, but which I promise to despoil in various, albeit unintentional, ways. On with the show!

• Were I in the midst of receiving an unanesthetized root canal in full view of a live broadcast of a Cub game, I would be forced to close my eyes and concentrate on the chaos in my mouth in order to block out the pain of seeing that team play baseball.

• After the root canal was over, I would go home and watch the game on TiVo, just in case I missed something good.

• That I can admit point two would follow point one is a positive declaration of my self-awareness. However, that point two follows point one in the first place is a sign of mental illness severe enough to make Charles Manson cower in the corner.

• What Mark Prior will "bring" once he joins the team is unknowable until it's actually brought, but last night's rehab start may have given us a glimpse of what to expect. Prior threw five innings, and over his final four frames he only gave up one hit and two walks while striking out four. However, in the first, he gave up three straight hits with two out, the final knock being a three-run homer that accounted for the only runs he gave up on the night.

  My point, if there is one at all, is this: there was a pattern to the games Prior threw after returning from his elbow injury last year, and they exactly mirrored what he did last night - rough first inning, followed by X innings of solid work. I don't know why they were that way, but they were, and with last night's outing along the same lines, it's worth keeping an eye on.

• Carbon Monoxide detectors are extremely loud. Particularly when you're asleep. Concurrently, two-year old girls who refuse to take their fingers out of their ears are both adorable and heart-breaking.

• Kerry Wood is staying put. I just can't see a way for him to raise his value enough in the next month and a half to make the organization willing to bite the bullet and send him on his way. My bet is that the Cubs feel the embarrassment of buying out his contract at year's end and allowing him to ply his trade as a free agent would be far less than the shame of having to secure Wood's assent to a deal that would likely amount to "Former Face of Team" in exchange for the minor league equivalent of Jerry Hairston. Goodness knows, those deals only get made after a full-throttle PR campaign to turn the fans against the player in question.

• Apparently, according to what Lily Tomlin said last night on the Daily Show, one of my favorite movie exchanges of all time (excerpt: "Put Edwina back in bowl!") was improvised. Having an acting background, and seeing this sort of thing all the time, I think Jon has a hell of a point.

That's all for now. Goodness, there aren't even ten. Just goes to show how these boys can sap one's energy, eh? Have a good weekend, folks.