What could you buy for six million bucks?

Let's see. You could treat yourself to about 4,724,409 Super Big Gulps; or roughly 300,000 copies of the new Rage Against the Machine CD (give or take fifty grand, depending on how hard you shop around); or, if you fancy, you could rent Caligula every night for 16,000 years and watch the scene where you get a toilet's-eye-view of a Roman emperor blowing his chow - but only if you spring for the cost of mail-ordering the saucy European version from world-reknowned Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, and frankly, even if I had six big ones, I wouldn't bother.

Or you could pay the repair bill for the Bionic Man himself, Col. Steve Austin, which includes the installation fee for a pair of new bionic legs, a bionic arm, and a bionic eye to replace his substandard factory-equipped ones. You may have instantly sunk your sizeable wad in one go, it is true, but look at the incredible results of your generous investment.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-sshh. You have made him better. . . stronger. . . faster. He can punch a hole in the U.S.S. New Jersey. He can run like Eric Metcalf with your thumb on the fast-forward button. He can use his bionic orb to zoom in on babes on topless beaches from the safety of his hotel balcony. He can also now go on to star in an increasingly cheesy 1970s action/adventure TV series in which he will do bionic battle with killer robots, aliens, and even a bionic Sasquatch. Man, what a show. I loved how his boss would whip off his glasses and look amazed at all that bionic hogwash. Later, Colonel Austin will find gainful employment as a bounty-hunting stuntman and show off his golden throat by crooning one of the coolest TV themes in human history ("I never spent much time in school, but I've taught ladies plenty.")

But wait! There appears to be a few little problems with our cyborg hero. For one thing, if he attempted to lift anything superhumanly heavy with his nuclear-powered arm, it would be ripped clean out of the socket. That's because, if I'm not mistaken, "bionic shoulder reinforcement" does not appear anywhere on his parts invoice. On top of that, the macho colonel happens to be a former stud test pilot and ex-astronaut - meaning that any challenge to fight with one arm tied behind his back is unlikely to be refused lest the boys back at the base hear about it. I, of course, get to pick which arm is tied and have first choice of busted pool cues.

Ahh, but all of this is academic. The biggest problem today is that a million bucks just doesn't buy what it used to. For instance, back in 1972, which is around when The Six Million Dollar Man show premiered, you could pick yourself up a prime rib roast for a mere $1.29 a pound, whereas today that same roast would set you back a whopping $5.30 a pound - thanks to roughly 410 percent of cumulative inflation since then.

Using these figures and some grade 10 math, I estimate that a bionic man who cost $6 million to build 25 years ago would now ding you for about $24,600,000 or (in beef industry terms) about $98,400 a pound. Of course, this figure does not take into account other factors like cost overruns and government corruption, and I admit my entire calculation was based on an old Safeway flyer, but otherwise I stand by my work.

Obviously, the original check just isn't going to cover this mother of a tab. So what are they going to call Steve Austin in the new bionic movie that has been floating around in Hollywood limbo for the past few years? The Twenty-Four-Point-Six Million Dollar Man?

Bit of a bionic mouthful if you ask me.