How come my insurance guy can't fly like Flo?

I was watching football on TV last Sunday, and after somebody fumbled or threw an interception or whatever, the game stopped for a couple minutes so the network could play commercials.

Shoot, I don't mind. The fellows need to catch their breath, so I might as well watch informative and often amusing messages about amazing products and services in the interim.

One of my favorites is the Flying Insurance Lady, Flo. She always has some witty or novel way to hawk her company's car insurance.

You wouldn't think car insurance would be so much fun, but sometimes this lady floats right up into the air next to that big sign that lets you compare your rates to those of several other companies.

She's always in a big, gleaming white room with no definite boundaries, suggestive of heaven.

I've covered enough government meetings as a reporter to know it's not always easy to make a dry subject interesting to the general public, but Flo nails it every time. I laugh and laugh.

My car insurance guy, Ralph, is down the street from my office. He also is a pretty amusing guy, but I've never seen him float up in the air. I'm thinking about switching companies.

To be fair, I only stop in at Ralph's once or twice a month to say hello, so I could be missing some floating.

I wonder if car insurance guys cringe when they watch that commercial where the SUV crashes through a stone wall and emerges in slow motion, without a scratch, on the other side. I'm thinking that must work on the same principle used by the karate fellows who can break bricks with a single chop.

When I was in college, a friend of mine was really into Tae Kwon Do. This was long before "Walker: Texas Ranger," so he was a relatively rare specimen. His nickname was "Ninja."

We both attended a speech class in which one assignment was to give a speech that demonstrated how to do something. I chose as my topic "How to Give a Speech Without Any Preparation Whatsoever."

Ninja chose "How to Break Boards With Your Bare Hands."

Ninja hammered those boards for about 10 minutes, then, red-handed and red-faced, sat down. He still got a better grade than my D, and I don't remember which of us got more laughs.

What bothers me about that crashing-through-awall commercial is that there's no disclaimer or warning message. It doesn't say "Professional driver, closed course" or "Don't try this at home."

Now, I am surely not in favor of more government regulations to thwart the success of businesses, but there ought to be a law. I bet there are people on the other side of the Mississippi who are driving into stone walls all over the place because of that commercial.

On the other hand, the Earth has a carrying capacity of about two billion humans once the fossil fuels run out, so we have to get rid of about five billion between now and then. I reckon the people who drive their cars into walls on purpose might as well go first. I hope they're showing that commercial in other countries too.

I own a little SUV, and I reckon I could drive it into a brick wall real fast, but I don't know how to drive in slow motion on the other side, so I haven't tried it.

Well, that's not strictly true. I have one spark plug wire that keeps popping off, and when it does that, I kind of drive in slow motion up the hill out of Twin Bridges, which can frustrate the folks behind me a little bit.

When you hit middle age, you become one of the people who is driving a hair slower than the average anyway. Either that, or people are just in more of a hurry these days.

This is an in-between age in which the older folks in front of you are going too slow and the younger folks behind you think you are.

My wife and I make up little stories about the people driving in front of us on the way to town.

"Looks like Esther and Nathaniel got hold of Trish's keys again," I'll say, and Joyce will come back with something like, "Yep. There ain't a nursing home that can hold 'em."

We keep ourselves entertained and I avoid pounding the steering wheel in frustration.

I do worry about Flo.

She's always so chipper when she's floating around and comparing rates, but if you look close, there's sadness in those eyes.

Seeking sense in underwear patterns

My awesome wife, Joyce, buys my clothes. I haven't purchased as much as a sock for myself in more than a decade. This frees me up for things like worrying about the Cincinnati Bengals, which really requires a good bit of my time during the fall and winter.

If you saw last Monday night's game, you'll understand.

Not too long ago, Joyce noticed that some of my undergarments were in sorry shape, so she bought a new bag of boxers. It had six pairs in it. One of the designs is camouflage.

Now, I am not picky about undergarments. I figure the occasion is pretty rare for them to be revealed to anyone else, or at least it would be if I could remember to wear my belt every day. So the pattern of the underwear isn't very important to me.

But I can't imagine a situation in which, dressed only in my underwear, I will ever need to blend into the surrounding underbrush. Yet I know the end of civilization is nigh, and it's hard to predict what situations might confront us in the post-apocalyptic world to come.

Still, camouflage-patterned underwear makes no sense to me.

I suppose a soldier who is picky about matching clothes - even if they don't show - might like my camouflage underwear. Well, I don't mean he or she would specifically like mine; I imagine he or she would rather have their own.

I don't still have my battle-dress uniforms from my Army days, or I could wear them on the one day a week I wear the camouflage underwear. I might forget my belt on purpose that day just so folks would know how pattern-coordinated I am.

To be truthful, on the day after my release from the Army in 1990, there was an incident involving a cleared area, uniforms, gasoline and a match, followed by hysterical glee and dancing, that eliminated my BDUs for good.

I saved a field jacket, which my dad wore when riding his motorcycle for a couple years. Luckily, we have the same last name.

You wonder what think tank came up with the idea of camouflage-patterned underwear. I reckon every combination of stripes, polka-dots and hearts already had been used. They couldn't just use Homer Simpson's face repeated to make a pattern, because everyone already has a pair like that, unless they're poor.

Maybe it was a specific incident that generated the idea. Some underwear designer probably was camping with his or her family, went to use the bathroom in the great outdoors, and was spotted by something or someone because they did not blend in well enough, leading to red-faced embarrassment or an attack by a bear.

Some day I may encounter a situation in which these underwear save my life. And, luckily, one of the other patterns is also a camouflage design, but in blues, grays and whites instead of greens, browns and blacks. So I'll be covered (pun intended) during the wintertime too.

***

Did you ever notice that when you're going through kind of a rough patch, and the nice people around you are sympathetically asking if there is anything they can do, and you say you'd like a sandwich, they almost never go get you one? In fact, they get a little huffy.

Kind of like Christmas' evil twin

The judge was a tough one, tough but fair, according to the courthouse scuttlebutt. I reckoned I needed to establish right off that I knew what was what. I had been brushing up on my Latin.

"Your Honor, ipso facto, if it please the court, I'm the defendant," I answered when my name was called.

His honor stared at me and I sat down. 

***

I get sued a lot.

It must be my winning personality coupled with my inability to pay all the bills I have. A certain hospital system in Springfield is suing me, annually. Getting sued once a year is like Christmas's evil twin.

I write a lot of articles about court cases, and I've read every John Grisham book at least twice, except for that one about the painted house. All my experience lumped together probably amounts to at least the equivalent of a night school law degree, so I'm representing myself this time around. 

I figure I'll somehow wind up in Witness Protection with millions in a Cayman Island bank account by the time it's all said and done. That's how most of the Grisham books end, unless somebody gets shot.

***

The other fella, the lawyer representing the hospital, started bad-mouthing me right away, whining to His Honor about how I had run up all these medical bills and never paid them.

"I object!" I hollered. "Your Honor, I would like everything that guy just said to be stricken from the record! This ain't nothing but a scandulum magnatum."

The judge seemed a little surprised. I reckoned he never figured he would have a near-expert amateur litigator to contend with. I hadn't spent the 90s watching Matlock five times a week for nothing.

"You know this isn't a trial, right?" he asked me. 

Well, that was true. It was a shame, too, because I had a great opening statement I had practiced all night. I couldn't wait to tell everybody they can't handle the truth. I sat down again.

"Now," His Honor said, shuffling some papers up there on the bench. "Mr. York, are you disputing that you owe this amount to the plaintiff?"

I stood up again. "Your Honor, before I answer that, at this time I would like to request a brief recess to confer with my client," I said.

The judge eyed me. "But you're representing yourself," he said.

"Well, that's so, but I think I should have the same right to a recess everybody else gets," I said reasonably. "You'll remember in Cagney versus Lacey, 1992, it was determined that — "

"Cagney versus Lacey? Now you're just making stuff up," the judge snapped.

Caught. I had figured citing nonexistent precedents would go unnoticed in just a hearing. "Well, maybe it was called something else," I mumbled. "Blame my loco parentis." I sat down.

"Loco something," the judge muttered. It gave me an idea.

"Your Honor," I said, standing up again. "I'm not sure my client is competent to stand trial. I'd like to request a full battery of psychiatric tests before we proceed."

"But you're representing yourself!" the judge said again, sounding a little impatient now.

"Correct, Your Honor," I said. "And if I am found to be mentally incompetent, my client will have grounds for appeal because of ineffective assistance of counsel."

"I'm pretty much ready to rule on that one right now," His Honor said. "Just answer yes or no, OK? Do you owe these guys this money? The truth, now."

He was asking for it. "You can't handle —"

"STOP!" His Honor thundered, glaring. "If I have to hear that one more time —"

"Your Honor, I feel I should take the Fifth at this point," I said. "And I'd like to get it on the record that I have not been properly Mirandized," I added.

"You can't take the Fifth. This isn't a criminal proceeding," the judge said.

"I disagree, Your Honor," I said. "If I had just walked into the hospital and taken as much money as I owe those guys, you'd have my habeas corpus in jail."

"Aha! So you do owe the money. Pay it," the judge ordered.

I was undone by all the legal trickery. I left the courtroom, my mind already racing with my strategy for the appeal.

***

All right, all right, this didn't really happen. Calm down.

Ken York is the assistant/Sunday editor of The Daily Record in Lebanon, Mo. 

Guns, tomatoes and government goons

Let me apologize in advance to the people who read this column every Sunday hoping for a little levity about Bigfoots, aliens and such. I’m afraid my subject this week is no laughing matter.


Once this newspaper is published on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012, I may not be heard from again. I’m hoping that, in appreciation for my alerting you to the horrible danger you are in, someone will remember to ask the musicians to play “Rhymes and Reasons” by John Denver at my tasteful outdoor memorial service, should the government allow one to be held. I would also like bagpipes — no more than seven — to play something rousing and patriotic after the 21-gun salute, if it’s not too much trouble.


I know you are asking why the government would provide soldiers for a 21-gun salute if it’s not inclined to allow the memorial service in the first place. Well, it probably won’t. I imagine a few of my friends and family will volunteer to serve as the honor guard. Just bring whatever guns you happen to have laying around, and please drill somewhat beforehand so as not to disrupt the sombre occasion with clumsiness and inadvertent firing.


Probably it would be a good idea not to invite the relatives with whom my branch of the family is currently feudin’ if there are going to be a lot of guns there, but that’s your call.


I have no particular fancy for flowers, but I understand if you all wish to show your deep and abiding grief by laying garlands of roses — blue, please —  across the base of the white and gray marble monolith which I expect will tower — quite against my wishes, as I am a humble sort — over the assembled grieving mobs. Under the etched words, “Our greatest hero, Ken York, was taken too soon by the goons of Homeland Security who could not allow the truth,” I hope you will find comfort and solace for your loss.


My friend and colleague, Fines Massey, may be delivering a few short remarks, possibly referring at times to the binder which I have provided him. Please do not be put off by his attire should he choose to wear that of a priest; his ordination is legitimate, according to the website from which I procured it for $17.95.


I doubt there will be any remains to dispose of, but if there are, my wife, Joyce, knows my wishes. I would like to be composted, of course. A return to the earth from which man was crafted is my intent.


It’s not a difficult process; just dump the remains on the ground and throw some leaves, sawdust and whatever kitchen scraps you might have on the pile. You’ll have to turn it with a pitchfork once every couple days and liberally apply compost activator. As you know, urine is the best compost activator, plus it adds nitrogen to the mix, which is always good. I can’t imagine there will be any shortage of donors.


I suppose if I could choose, I would ask that the finished compost be used to grow heirloom tomatoes. Brandywines are still my favorite, but I find Arkansas Traveler is also a good tomato. I doubt I’ll be able to dissuade you all from gathering on the anniversary of my demise each year and solemnly consuming a tomato sandwich with lots of mayonnaise on very fresh white bread. It’s pretty good if you slap a fried egg on there, too, and a couple slices of crisp bacon can make you forget you are grieving.


I must be realistic and recognize that my passing may move many in the community to push for a name change for our little Ozarks city at some point. I beg you not to do so, but if you do, please consider that “York City” would be a logical choice, even if at some far flung future date its origin should be so obscured by time’s passage as to cause many to believe it to be the original for which New York City was named. There’s certainly nothing you or I can do to prevent that here in the 21st Century.


But I digress. Now, as the bottom of this column edges ever closer, I come to the dire news which I must impart:


Homeland Security is replacing us, one by one, with robots that will do the bidding of its secret masters. Arm yourselves with squirtguns, for they haven’t yet waterproofed their malefic creations, so they short out easily. Squirt everyone you know, and then run! 


Jumper cables attached to the ears may also destroy the robots, but be careful not to do this to someone who might be human, as they get angry and slap you repeatedly. I also should mention that Joyce wasn’t a robot as of Friday.


Ken York is the assistant editor of The Daily Record. Past columns and other writings may be viewed on his blog at http://ken-york.blogspot.com/.

Monkeys don't try to spare your feelings

I hope when the aliens come they can’t read our minds.

You nice people probably wouldn’t have a problem. Your first reaction to any situation is invariably positive, wholesome and, if need be, sympathetic. I can’t help but compare your positivity and goodness with my own sarcasm and downright uncharitable nature.

If someone tells a nice person that Aunt Jill has passed away, he coos something like, “Poor thing! She’s with the Lord now.”

When I’m told the same thing, my first thought is “How can you tell?” or “Not surprised, since she’s been saying she’s dying for 50 years.”

I don’t say those things aloud — anymore. Instead I mumble something like, “Poor thing. She’s with the Lord now.”

Telepathic aliens would nail me to the wall for the things I don’t say. (Unless they had taken the time to get to know Aunt Jill, that is.)

I have a young friend, Paula, who is so nice that probably her first, unexpressed thought is actually nicer than what she comes out and says. I think she censors herself the other way, probably because people in the past have suspected sarcasm where there was none. She always find the good in people, looks on the bright side, turns the other cheek and blah blah blah. I’ve tried to get her depressed and cynical about the world, but it never takes.

Mind-reading aliens could be a little dangerous. The last thing I need is a little green guy named Skirzuk following me into Walmart and telling everybody what I really think of them.

He’d point at a woman and say, “You’re wearing pajama pants? In a store? What happened, did you accidentally sleep in your dress clothes?” He’d point at a guy and say, “That dude’s balder than I am, and that rug ain’t fooling anybody. Get a hat, you loser.”

That would get me beat up a lot. What’s worse, when the people came to beat me up, Skirzuk would tell them that despite my impressive defensive posture, I don’t really know kung fu.

Eventually, the world might be a better place with Skirzuk and his intergalactic cronies running around. They say honesty is the best policy. We might get to a point where we no longer need Skirzuk’s clan. Folks would just say what was on their minds naturally without considering the consequences, like I assume monkeys must do. I have never had a monkey try to spare my feelings.

I’m guessing a lot of our leaders wouldn’t get re-elected, but the tar and feathers industries might experience a boom, and that means jobs, jobs, jobs!

***

Joyce and I have a new grandson on the way, and we’re coming up with potential names. The last name starts with a “Z,” so we’re all coming up with “Z” first names (I’m not sure why). My submission, “Zebulon,” has been rejected, but that’s no big deal, since the primary role of the step-grandfather is to dub the poor child with a nickname that sticks despite the wishes of the unfortunate parents.

I pointed out to Joyce that the little guy is going to have the initials, “Z.Z.,” which could prove very funny should he ever suffer from narcolepsy.

You have to be careful with the initials when you’re working with a “Z.” You can’t name him “Edward” or “Ethan,” because if he grows up to be a little gullible everyone will call him “EZ.” Likewise, you can’t name him “Ken” or “Keith,” because if he marches to the beat of a different drummer, people will laugh and say he’s “KZ.”

“Ulysses” is out, unless you want Homeland Security watching “Uzi” all his life.

I think anything starting with an “F” or “S” is safe, but I have to think about it some more.

Why is the gov't secretly making beer for Bigfoots?

I like reading on the Outdoors page of our local newspaper every Thursday about the critter of the week, usually one that's rare or endangered. But while the article always gives a lot of info about habitat, lifespan and whatnot, it almost never has a recipe.

I'm not saying I would ever intentionally hunt down a protected species, knock it on the head and throw it in the deep fryer. I'm just saying if I should happen to stumble across a recently deceased Bigfoot, I'd like to know the best way to handle the opportunity.

Nobody on the Internet has a decent Bigfoot recipe. I think that's why our little corner of the Ozarks is overrun.

I can't claim I've seen any around our place myself, but they're there. When your min-pins start barking every 10 minutes for what seems like no reason, you've either got a Bigfoot problem or your little dogs are stupid.

I admit to wondering whether it wasn't the dogs being a little daffy, but there's other evidence. Seems like whenever Joyce and I both have to work, when we get home, some critter has dragged trash all over the place.

Bigfoots are partial to potato chip bags, peanut butter jars and styrofoam cups, and sometimes they play mean tricks. We've found Gizmo, the matriarch of our canine clan, with a peanut butter jar stuck on her head more than once.

The reason I know it must be Bigfoots is that the mess is both inside the house - usually on my side of the bed - and outside. No animal without opposable thumbs would be able to open the door.

I think Bigfoots also terrorize the chickens when we're not home. Thelma, Louise, Lucy and Ethel all show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. No matter what you do around them, they're convinced you're trying to kill them.

Try to fill their water dish outside, and they go flapping and squawking away in a panic. Scatter some feed in their pen and they almost have heart attacks. "Aaaahh! He's trying to kill us! Again!"

I can't imagine that they're idiot chickens. They've all done well on standardized tests, at least the multiple choice parts. Ethel's the only one who's any good at essay questions. We home-school.

Something has those chickens scared, and it's Bigfoots, mark my words.

There's a recipe on the Internet for Bigfoot burgers, but it calls for ground beef. What kind of idiot makes Bigfoot burgers out of dead cow meat? I wrote an angry letter to the website, but I haven't heard back.

Lots of recipes are out there for Bigfoot beer. The only thing that I can think is that those recipes must come from some secret government program.

It only makes sense. A normal person like you and me would take pictures if we captured a Bigfoot long enough for it to taste-test beer. Probably, once the Bigfoot was a little tipsy, we'd put it in a dress and try to teach it to ride a bicycle or something. Or let it loose in the courthouse. Oh man, I would pay to see that.

Come on, you know you would too.

Whatever we did with it would no doubt make the papers, if not CNN. Since that hasn't happened, the Bigfoot beer brewers have to be the only ones in the world humorless enough to get a Bigfoot drunk and not eventually break some kind of law.

That just screams "secret government program" to me.

Heroic columnist sacrifices morning donuts to spread wisdom

Sometimes I'm just walking down the street on the way from the office to the courthouse to see if any of the county office holders have donuts this morning and I'm stopped by a total stranger who recognizes me as the guy who writes that seldom-understandable but totally hilarious column in the local newspaper.

"Hey," the person says. "You're that guy in the hat."

I don't always realize right away that the person is talking about the mug shot in the newspaper which shows me in a hat.

"Yeah," I say. "I'm the guy in the pants and shirt, too. But then, so are you. Have a great day."

Sometimes the person looks down at himself, nods in new understanding, and allows me to continue on. On those occasions, it's likely the person really is just acknowledging that I am wearing a hat when the person sees me on the street. It's helpful on those days during which I have forgotten how I am dressed.

Other times, however, I am detained further. "No, I mean in the newspaper. You're that guy with the hat in the newspaper."

When the person says that, it's difficult to confuse the source of the recognition. Of all the guys whose faces appear in the newspaper, I am the only one in a hat.

Bill O'Reilly, Kirk Pearce, David Sirota, Bob Clark, Fines Massey, Francis Skalicky -- All those guys shamelessly flaunt their full heads of hair in their mug shots in their respective columns. To them, I just want to say, get over yourselves.

So you've got hair. I lived only 26 miles from Cincinnati when the Big Red Machine won the Series back-to-back in '75 and '76. Who would you rather be?

Book reviewer Roberta Page looks pretty good in that sombrero she usually wears when she comes into the office, but she doesn't wear it in her mug shot. So I'm the only hatted head in the newspaper.

When people on the street say I'm the guy in the newspaper with a hat, I know they must have seen my column. I immediately check their hands for weapons.

"Oh," I say nervously. "Well, thanks for reading, or at least for looking at the pictures. And I'm not going to pick on Indi-- I mean, Native Americans any more. I'm unarmed, by the way, and the sheriff's only two blocks that way."

"No, no, no, it's good," the person says sometimes without pulling a knife. "You're really funny. How do you come up with that stuff?"

(Editor's note: We suspect everything up to this point in this column has been a lie, kind of a long-winded introduction to whatever is coming. We apologize, but this columnist works Saturdays, so it's more trouble than it's worth to fire him.)

"How do I come up with this stuff? I'm glad you asked," I say. Motioning, I entice my companion to join me, sitting on the curb with our feet in the gutter, and I explain how humor works.

Jokes are written backwards, I explain. You start with a punch line and build a path to it. The easiest is the venerable knock-knock joke. About anything that ends with an "oo" sound can be made into a knock-knock joke easily.

Take, for example, "shoe." With the "oo" sound, all you have to do is come up with something that ends in the "shuh" sound for the name of the person knocking.

It doesn't have to be funny. The funny part is that you trick the person into saying something like, "Have you see my shoe?"

But don't do it like this: "Knock-knock."

"Who's there?"

"Have you seen my shuh."

This doesn't work because the door-answerer can guess it and doesn't get tricked. But if you substitute "Ahviyah Seenmush" as the knocker's name, the result can be glorious!

"Knock-knock."

"Who's there?"

"Ahviyah Seenmush."

"Ahviyah Seenmush who?"

"Yeah, it's right there on your foot, you stupid moron!"

(c. 1974 Ken York. All rights reserved.)

That one has cracked up generations of third graders throughout the U.S., and several fifth and sixth graders in Arkansas and South Dakota.

(Editor's note: The opinions expressed by columnists absolutely do not reflect the opinions of the newspaper. We love and respect our four Arkansas subscribers. We don't know anyone from South Dakota, but we're sure they're fine people who eventually might become readers if we REFRAIN FROM INSULTING THEM.)

Another standard form is the "What do you call a ..." joke. My best joke of all time is, "What do you call a dandelion climbing up a rope?" The answer is, " A self-rising flower."

Get it? Flower? Like, self-rising flour? Get it?

I came up with that one when I was a teenager, watching Mom bread some unidentifiable pork pieces for frying. The flour is kind of bland-tasting until it's been fried in lard, by the way, and no one knows why. It's weird because lard by itself is also bland-tasting, but when you combine the two and add meat -- magic!

Any word you can change to sound like something else is the nucleus of a joke. "Lunch meat" becomes "launch meat," which is the punch line to every astronaut's sandwich joke I have ever told, and there have been many.

As I explain the science of humor to these people, often I see the light of comprehension dawning in their eyes. Some of those folks have gone on to have brilliant careers, using the tools I gave them.

In their younger days, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Ellen Degeneris, Larry the Cable Guy, Bob Hope, Jeff Dunham and countless others all have sat beside me on that curb to glean what they could and take it out into the world.

I guess I'm kind of like a humor guru, like an aescetic old man in a cave on a mountain who sits, Native-American-style before a blazing fire, waiting for young grasshoppers to make that climb to attain wisdom. Figuratively speaking, I mean, since we're really just sitting on the side of Commercial Street with wet feet if it's been raining.

(Editor's note: We can't prove it, but we're pretty sure Bob Hope never came to Lebanon, God rest him. The rest of it could be true, though.)

Humbly, I don't try to blackmail those guys into giving me a bunch of their money because I taught them everything they know, at least not since Larry stomped on my kidneys and Ellen threatened to marry my sister.

My reward is just feeling good for being able to make the world a little funnier place.

(Editor's note: Funnier? We didn't realize this was supposed to be a humor column. Cancel the assignments for the articles on the aliens and Bigfoots. This guy's full of crap.)