Across not-so-frozen and not-really-desolate lands they came. Hordes upon hordes of ruthless savages, bent on a single goal, to break down my weekend.

With silent mocking cries, they bust my knees, wrench my back and enslave me to hours of tormenting savagery.

They are weeds, and armed with crabgrass, scratchy burrs and itchy chiggers, they relentlessly assail me. I, clad in long Redwing boots, baggy sweatpants and a tight wife-beater, fight a never-ending battle. Oh, merciful Lord, the barbarians of the yard are at the gates!

I feel like Valens getting my ass handed to me by the Goths. No, not those wispy little depressed losers, the real thing. Those bloodied and oppressed peoples who stuck it to Rome in the fourth century at Adrianople (Turkey).

So, you may be asking, “What's your angle here, fat man?” Well, I'll tell you.

With the devastating effects of the writers' strike still flowing through the land of TV, I have found it more difficult to write about new and fascinating shows. So I turned to antiquity and history. The History Channel, that is .....

What? No good? Come on! You gotta love those bad puns. No not Huns, puns. But Huns would be correct in that I found solace from our TV genocide with the two-volume special “The Barbarians” and “The Barbarians II.”

“When you're looking at your children starve and you've already eaten your dog, I think that most of us are going to rebel.”

With that one phrase, I instantly fell in love with this series. Using wonderfully detailed re-enactments, beautiful locations and sets and insightful historians, these mini-documentaries have saved TV for me.

Every couple of months, The History Channel will dust off these programs and unleash them upon us for a weekend of debauched frivolity. Vikings, Saxons, Mongols and the extremely vicious Lombards are only a few of the peoples chronicled in the series.

I don't see them so much as uncivilized savages bent on destruction as I do travelers wanting to share culture. Unfortunately, what many of them loved to share most was their swords. Because damn, these guys loved to kill and pillage like nobody's business.

After about eight hours of barbarians, my dander was up. I took up the baby and painted our faces blue, stripped us down to our skivvies — or in his case, a diaper — and it was on, fourth-century style. We ran around the house overturning chairs and throwing couch cushions.

Then my wife came home from the store, and that pretty much ended my and my legacy's reign of terror.

I was swiftly banished to the yard to “do something constructive with your craziness, for God's sake!”

At least she let me put clothes back on.