I don't vomit often when I fly. But I do fly a lot, and so I imagine that I have puked on planes more than most people. I'm not bragging, but I've even been puked on by other people on airplanes -- and not simply because a seatmate was reading something I'd written and felt the need to weigh in with an opinion.

One time when I desperately needed an air-sickness bag there wasn't one in the seat pocket before me, and so I had to roll a few glossy pages from the in-flight magazine into a snow cone and hope for the best.

Why, any reasonable person might ask, am I telling you this? Because earlier this month U.S. Airways -- an airline I like a lot -- announced plans to sell advertising space on its air-sickness bags. Speaking as a frequent flier on many carriers, I am not surprised.

This is, after all, merely the confluence of two trends. First, there has been the tendency by marketers to promote their products anyplace they can. Just for the record, air-sickness bags are from the lowest venue. To wit: urinal advertising. Yup, even there men can multitask.

Second, the airline industry, once known for dignity, elegance and panache -- just think of those classic black-and-white photographs of a young Elizabeth Taylor descending the rolling stairway on the runway as she disembarks -- has become a largely low-frills business in which there is almost no corner that cannot be cut to save money, and no area or service that cannot be viewed as a profit center.

As ridiculous as the idea of advertising on barf bags might sound, I'm neither appalled nor disgusted, (though, it's painfully evident, these days it takes a lot to disgust me). The presence of the ads will increase the likelihood that there will be a bag in the seat pocket because the airline will be accountable to its advertisers. Moreover, reading the ads -- and then commenting on them to the person in steerage beside us -- will take up another minute of the flight, thereby decreasing the time we will spend shopping for pre-lit palm trees from the Sky Mall catalog ($259.99 for the 8-foot royal palm), or contemplating the reality that we are five miles above the Earth in a metal tube that even I know weighs more than air.

The reality is that marketing communications surround us wherever we go. Earlier this summer, a company called Gas Station TV began testing TV advertising on 20-inch monitors at gas stations in Dallas. Why? Because we have to look at something when we pump gas, and it might as well be television. Let's face it: Even reruns of "Three's Company" would be more appealing than staring at the pump as the digits for the dollars move at the speed of light, while the digits for the gallons creep along at a pace that could only be called glacial.

Consequently, it was just a matter of time before someone would try to sell us something when we are about as captive an audience as possible: on airplanes. Some folks might wonder if the best moment to try to convince people to sample new products is when they're about to regurgitate the tuna grinder that already looked a little rancid on the way to gate C-16. Probably not. But most of us won't be reading the bag when we need it. Most of us will be scanning it when we're bored beyond belief on the runway, wondering whether that person beside us sharpens the points on his elbows.

I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now the cabins of passenger jets resemble the insides of subway cars, with ads for Club Med, chiropractors and hemorrhoid cremes running the length of the tube.

I won't even be shocked if someday after an emergency landing a passenger is opening the exit that surrounds a window mid-cabin, and discovers instructions that read, "Lift handle. Pull door inside. Just do it!"

Perhaps when that day comes, I'll need the air-sickness bags on a regular basis.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 30, 2006.)

For years, young scholars have failed to turn in their assignments at school by insisting that the dog ate their homework. With classes resuming later this month, I thought it would be helpful for students to know if this was indeed a plausible excuse. The answer? It is. I heard from a dozen dog owners, and there is just nothing that man's best friend won't eat. It doesn't even have to resemble food.

Seven months ago, 14-year-old Sam Hutchins' young dog ate a loaded pincushion, causing Sam's father, Fred, to observe, "It's remarkable what adolescent males will eat. Come to think of it, I'm not sure there is a difference between humans and dogs in that regard." Fred and Sam knew how many pins were in the dog as a result of an X-ray, and spent the next few days pulling pins from the dog's poop to make sure each and every one was accounted for.

Earlier this spring, Tammy Bourdeau, a sales representative at Gardener's Supply Co., worried when her cocker spaniel fell ill. The dog was rushed into surgery when an ultrasound revealed a mass in her intestines. The culprit? Not cancer, fortunately. Instead it was a plastic bread clip that was acting now as an intestinal valve, letting some things pass ... but not others.

In June, Kit Howe, a human resources generalist at Gardener's Supply, realized that her greater Swiss mountain dog was under the weather. The animal stopped eating. The problem, Kit discovered, was that the creature had consumed a sizable part of the sleeping bag on which it slept. How did she ascertain this? Eventually the dog regurgitated the zipper and (here again is that great euphemism) passed the rest.

Syndi Zook, the executive director of the Lyric Theatre Company, has a little terrier named Titus. When Titus was a puppy, he spent five hours devouring the floor in her kitchen and swallowing nearly his weight in vinyl. Years later, Titus would also eat a sizable chunk of the rotting seal carcass he came across in Maine. "It looked like a scene from a bad zombie movie, where even the dogs go berserk," Zook remembers. Later that night the pooch would cough up a part of the seal's jawbone.

Arguably, rotting seal carcass is food. Not appetizing food -- but still food.

Underwear is not. Nor are bathing suits.

Which brings me to Brodie, the panty- and bikini-bottom-mad flat-coated retriever, who belongs to Serena Magnan O'Connell. Magnan O'Connell, a physical therapist, discovered Brodie's obsession with bathing suit bottoms and panties (not the edible kind) eight years ago, on a gorgeous summer day when she was playing fetch with her dog along the Burlington waterfront. Brodie was barely beyond puppy-hood then, and Magnan O'Connell was wearing jean shorts and her favorite neon bikini top, while savoring the sun, the lake, and her proximity to handsome male college students.

Abruptly Brodie decided that nature was calling, and so her owner raced over with her plastic bag and waited. And waited some more. It was obvious by the way the poor animal was straining that there was a blockage. Brodie was squatting and spinning and doing the classic dog doodie dance -- minus the dog doodie. A worried crowd gathered, surrounding the dignified mistress and her retriever.

And then it happened: A tendril of fabric emerged from Brodie's bottom that matched precisely the top of Magnan O'Connell's bikini, and subsequently stalled. It was half inside and half outside the dog, and it clearly wasn't going to go anywhere else unless the physical therapist jumped in. "With many good-looking eyes on me, I had to help my neon bikini come out of my dog," she recalls. Worse, the audience recognized that the bottom appearing from the dog's bottom matched precisely the top on the woman's chest.

In the end, Brodie was fine, but Magnan O'Connell learned a valuable lesson: "I always locate my bikini bottom before taking Brodie for a walk."

Students, of course, may take heart from this tale. Short of that automobile you were supposed to build for tech ed, there is probably no homework you can't claim your dog ate.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on August 20, 2006.)