She's sold on QVC, the Quirky Viewing Channel

What's all this hoo-ha about online gambling? Who needs it? You want to sit on your butt, stare at a screen, burn up your savings account and call it entertainment?

I've got your fix right here, baby — it's called home-shopping TV. And it's just as maddeningly addictive as dopeyslots.com or even your neighborhood tribal casino — plus, less emphysema.

My personal favorite is QVC (Quirky Velvet Clothing), the 20-year-old shop-from-home stalwart. I love their homey Pennsylvania sets, their color-coordinated graphics, their silly celebrity guests (Carson Kressley! Marie Osmond!) and, most of all, their goofily likable hosts.

Topping my list: Mary Beth Roe, a 16-year veteran, who is so sweetly sincere, you believe it is her pleasure to talk to caller Henrietta from Harrisburg. And the guys! You've got metrosexually studly Rick Domeier, whose manly, shiny manicure puts my stumps to shame, and chatty David Venable — even if he doesn't sell you on those gourmet chocolate apples, you can amuse yourself for hours just by tracking his theatrical taste-testing faces. Yum!

These hosts are pros — they can ad-lib their way through three minutes of candle facts, make you think you do need a $200 stuffed bear and manage a never-ending lineup of guests (speaking of which, I defy you to turn the channel when that Quacker Factory headband lady is on).

Just looking, thanks!

The scary part is that I know all this, yet I have never in my life bought a single QVC item. (My husband, however, ordered me a Bob Ross painting kit when I was pregnant, thinking I could neonatally channel Ross' soothing voice, but hopefully not his 'do. And I did, for about three seconds, until I realized high-octane paint fumes probably weren't what tiny Mr. Fetus needed.)

But if I were to actually order, I would feel like a traitor dialing in to any other channel. It's like when you like one soap opera and catch a snippet of another, you can't believe how cheesy and amateurish it is. Example A: The Jewelry Network. The good news: This channel fills me with hysterical awe. The bad news: Not in a good way. One day, the only thing filling the screen was a rare, orange Nigerian gemstone, twirling and shining and sparkling, all pretty-like, until — WHAM! — the mighty, disembodied Tweezer of Death slid in to whack it out of the way and drop in the next stone. No gem for you!

All the while, Colonel Sanders was twanging, unseen, in the background, "We've got just 30 of these left, 29, 28, 27 ... " like it was some life-or-death shuttle launch. Apparently, it was a little too much — the next day, there were no gemstones, no hosts, no voices, even — just a twirling tray of numbered stumps wearing "diamond semi mounts," plus a number to "call for details."

And then, the skin game

The other big kids on the shopping block, Home Shopping Network and ShopNBC, follow more in QVC's vaunted footsteps — congenial hosts, professional sets, well-produced in-house "commercials" and oodles of items — except that they also venture into the touchy realm of dead-animal skins.

At ShopNBC a while back, shiny-forehead host Brian Kessler and Cedric the tuxedoed designer were oohing over a raccoon trimmed coat, a fox bomber jacket and a "female" mink coat that cost only $2,999. Yikes. On many levels. (Now that it's spring, most of their real-fur furnishings have disappeared from the Web site.)

I wasn't so sure about HSN. For a while there, it seemed like its only product was the Esteban guitar set — there he was at night, and the next afternoon, over and over, strumming and strumming and strumming. But Esteban must have snapped a string, because all of a sudden they were hawking a "genuine stingray leather watch," in black or pink. Yes, pink stingray leather does sound slightly less than "genuine." (Even more entertaining: On their Web site, you are advised to dry clean the Rabbit Fur Pom Pom Scarf ($22.14, on sale from $36.90) "by fur method," which must involve an awful lot of licking.)

To be fair, QVC does stock leather stuff, and when we searched its Web site for "fur," we got hits, all right — more than 200 of them. But they all said "faux." No wonder we like these guys — and we're betting Mrs. Mink does, too.

Sandy Dunham is a Seattle Times desk editor who works only part-time — because she has her TV priorities, you know. sdunham@seattletimes.com.