I don't think I really have 89 'friends'

Originally published May 29, 2011, in the Lebanon Daily Record in Lebanon, Mo. I'm on Facebook, but I don't really know why. The only thing I like about it is the ability to "poke" people.

In case you're not an initiate, I'll explain. When you sign up for this thing on the Internet called "Facebook," you'll get a bunch of "friends." I don't know why this is so, but it is. I can't remember how it happened to me, but as of now I have 89 "friends," and I'm a Facebook lightweight. Some of my "friends" have hundreds of friends.

I can't remember the names of 20 people in real life, much less 89.

Looking through the list, however, I can't find anyone I don't know to some degree. The funny thing is, if we met on the street, many of us might not recognize each other.

But I know what many of them had for breakfast every day last week. I know what their plans are for the weekend and whether they're feeling down in the dumps.

It's crazy.

Facebook gives me faith that America still is the land of the indolent, jam-packed with people who have way too much time on their hands. For all the talk of our fast-paced, modern society, people still get on the computer and "LOL" at each other all day and all night.

Some of my "friends" are very busy people, but they still have time for Facebook. What do they do there? They relate every casual little detail of their lives ad nauseum.

For example, some guy got on Facebook last week and was ecstatic about the great hot dog he had for lunch.

Then the next day, the guy reported he had gone and got the same hot dog again for lunch. Did anyone care? Not likely.

(Well, all right, I'll admit it: That was me. But it was really a great hot dog. I walked down the street from the office and ordered a Mexican Dog. It has guacamole, cilantro, onions, tomatoes, cheese sauce and jalapenos.)

Facebook gets on my nerves because people who will hide their troubles beneath a veneer of cheeriness in real life will expose every little ache, pain and whine on Facebook.

I'm still in favor of putting up a strong front, suffering in silence, that sort of thing. I rarely offer sympathy, and I don't offer to pray for people who have a sprained finger. I'm a terrible Facebooker.

There are perks to Facebook, however. One of my "friends" is a state representative, for example. I didn't ask this state rep to be my "friend" because I need to get some legislation passed. I know him, but we've never watched baseball together or even had lunch, so it wasn't because of a close personal relationship.

I asked him to be my "friend" because I wanted to have the ability to "poke" him.

Poking is not real. There is neither a finger nor a stick involved.

Facebook just tells you that you have been "poked" and gives you the option to "poke back."

When he accepted my "friend" request, I LOL'd, because now I have the ability to "poke" a person who is important and get the somber Facebook message: "You have poked Darrell Pollock. He will be informed of this on his home page."

I would never poke Darrell Pollock in real life. I haven't poked him on Facebook either, but it's fun to know I could if I wanted.

Speaking of pokers, there is a guy who used to be a city political figure who didn't run for re-election in April.

He said he wanted to spend more time with his wife and family and concentrate on his career - but that was just a smokescreen.

Now instead of helping to run Lebanon, he has more time to poke people on Facebook.

Ken York is the assistant editor of The Daily Record. Past columns and other writings may be viewed at www.ken-york.blogspot.com. He can be reached at kyork@lebanondailyrecord.com.

The road to becoming Terrorist Cupid

I'm one of the stupid people in the world who never are able to resist a dare. I think that's what contributed to the current condition of my head.

A month or so ago, I accidentally got a very short haircut. Well, the barber did exactly what I asked, and if I was a little shocked by the results, there really is no one else to blame. I admit to having fun during the course of the next few days, going up to the folks who work in my building and asking them if they wanted to see something really scary, then removing my hat.

It's amazing I get any work done at all, truthfully.

Now, it should be understood that the reason for that short haircut was the economy. I can't stand the idea of forking over ten bucks a month for personal grooming.

Sometimes I grab the orange-handled scissors and go hack at it myself out in the yard. Once it's sufficiently trashed, I ask Joyce if she'll "even up the back." Probably it would make more sense if she just did the whole job, but unless she's confronted with a disaster and must take action, she's not overly eager to cut my hair.

When I do get a pro to do it, I want to get my money's worth and not have to come back for three months.

Dire predictions from my boss and coworkers followed me home the day of the ultra-haircut. Joyce was going to make me sleep outside with the chickens until it grew back some, they said. I tried not to let that hurt my feelings.

Of course Joyce was fine with it. I suspect it's not the outside of my head that retains its ability to frighten her. "You might as well go ahead and shave it," she said.

So we're back to the dare. Did I have the guts?

The amount of courage involved would be considerable, despite the fact that I constantly wear a baseball cap in public. Occasions exist in which I must remove my cap, however, like during the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem and prayers.

If you are a reporter who covers local government meetings in the Ozarks, you get to remove your hat a lot. You Easterners and Yankees may be offended, but that's how we roll.

Artist's representation only.
No one really knows what Cupid looks like.

Saturday I shaved my head totally bald. Joyce talked me into keeping the eyebrows.


It's not as easy as it sounds. It took about 30 minutes and 10 disposable razors. Halfway through, I thought we had run out of razors. Wild stubs of soapy hair stuck in odd patches all over my head. Joyce, in horror, offered to go to the store and get more razors. Then we found some old ones in a drawer.

"I like it," Joyce said after the job was done. I took one look in a mirror and saw Terrorist Cupid. I haven't looked again.

It's a long weekend, and as I type this Sunday, there are about 44 hours remaining for it to grow back before I go to work Tuesday. Already there is prickly stubble to be felt when I run my hand over it, which I can't stop doing. My head is developing a five-o'clock shadow.

Tuesday morning, there is a county commission meeting. If I go in a little late, I'll miss the Pledge and the prayer, so I can keep the cap on.

Ken York is the assistant editor of The Daily Record in Lebanon, Mo. He and his wife, Joyce, live in the Ozark woods as far away from other people as they can get.

Chicken pushers and the racism of Thelma and Louise

Originally published May 22, 2011, in The Daily Record of Lebanon, Mo.

Well, if you would have told me this a week ago, I would have argued with you, but now I’ve got to face the truth. My chickens are racists.

I always thought they swung a little toward the liberal, which by tradition would have made them accepting and loving of everyone and everything, even axe-murderers and the like. (Whoops, that was a serious faux pas. You try not to mention axes to chickens. They get agitated.)

Joyce and I thought Thelma and Louise must be kind of liberal because they seem to be, shall we say, differently oriented. Well, what would you think if you saw two lady chickens living together in a house with no fellas ever around?

Hey, I’m not judging. I bang on the chicken house before I go in to feed every morning, not necessarily because I am afraid to see something that might be better left private. It just makes sense to avoid things you really don’t want to know.

It’s the same reason you don’t look under rocks if you don’t like bugs and you don’t give the serial number of your rototiller to the manufacturer if you’re not really sure where it came from.

All right, all right, I know I am stereotyping horribly when I suggest that differently oriented chickens are probably liberal. I’m sure there are some Lesbians for Limbaugh out there who probably will take issue with this column. If I’m not here next week, you’ll know they rode into town on Harleys in their Dittohead leather jackets and got me.

We got Thelma and Louise, our two Rhode Island Reds, last year from our friends who are chicken pushers. The police won’t let them within 300 feet of a playground if they are wearing raincoats that seem to be leaking feathers.

They got us hooked with a “taste.”

They had more hens than they needed, so they offered us a couple, free of charge. The first ones are always free, you know.

Neither Joyce nor I had managed a poultry operation for several decades, but I proceeded with my usual planning and preparation. Before going to get our chickens, I constructed a state-of-the-art henhouse with passive solar heat, exemplary cross-ventilation and luxurious nests with an automated egg-gathering robot. We purchased feed and installed an automatic watering system. Security would be provided by a private contractor that specializes in defense against hawk and neighbor dog attacks.

Well, all right, we really didn’t do any of that stuff. We just went and got the chickens. Our friends lent us a pet carrier to take them home in because we hadn’t even thought that far ahead.

On the way home, we agreed several times that the chickens were cute and funny, but we avoided the subject of where they would live and what they might eat.

For a couple days they lived in the pet carrier on the freezer in the house. The dogs, who are used to us packing in odd creatures, just rolled their eyes in resignation and went back to chewing up dead things on my side of the bed.

We got a box built onto the side of the shed, stapled a tarp roof onto the plywood and fenced in a little area for them to peck around in. Turned ‘em loose. They seemed happy.

Unfortunately, they keep laying eggs. As I write this, there are four dozen sitting in the fridge. We don’t eat that many eggs, and Thelma and Louise were depressingly productive even during the winter.

That said, it may come as a surprise that we couldn’t wait to get more chickens. We’ve become addicted.

Our chicken source approached me one day when nobody else was around and whispered that she and her husband had gotten their hands on six Barred Rock chicks. “Primo stock,” she said in a low voice, looking around nervously to make sure no one else could hear. “This is good stuff.”

If I had been wearing a wire for the Chicken Enforcement Agency, she would have been busted right there.

Joyce went and picked up the new hens last Saturday. Sunday morning, we released them into the pen to watch Thelma and Louise welcome their new friends, Lucy and Ethel.

The welcome wasn’t warm.

The little black and white hens stick together. The big red hens stick together. The big red hens terrorize the little black and white hens, driving them away from the feed and water. Several times a day, Joyce or I quote Rodney King at them: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

At night, Thelma and Louise crouch, clucking furiously, together on the south side of the roost in the chicken house. Lucy and Ethel, quivering in terror, huddle on the nests or wedged between the water container and the wall.

It bothers us to see them all so unhappy. I’ve tried playing my old Al Franken Air America tapes for them to teach them some good old-fashioned liberal tolerance. They just squawk and squabble more. The only difference I’ve seen is that they seem more in favor of taxing and spending.

The poultry experts we’ve consulted assure us they’ll settle down after a while and get along better. Until then, I reckon we’ll just have a henhouse divided by racial hatred and oppression.

Ken York's column appears in The Daily Record in Lebanon, Mo. It is reprinted here with permission.

'Can you hear me now?'

Originally published May 15, 2011, in The Daily Record of Lebanon, Mo.

I don’t have a cell phone. Joyce has three.

One we use for an alarm clock and flashlight. One we haven’t used in three years. One we can talk on. It takes pictures and sends text messages too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I don’t like phones that don't plug into anything. For one thing, it makes less credible the threat, “I'm going to come through this phone line and ...”

There's no obvious conduit for the fulillment, cartoon-style, of such an intention.

Another thing about plug-less phones is you can take them anywhere. Whose brilliant idea was that?

All the great excuses we used to have to avoid talking to people are gone. “I couldn’t get to the phone in time” was the best, and it was always true, even if the reason you couldn’t get to the phone in time was that you were running in the other direction, screaming.

My mom hated talking on the phone as bad as I do, but if we were just getting home from somewhere and heard the phone ringing from the driveway, shed launch a fleet-footed kid to dive through a window, preferably an open one, and go answer it before it stopped ringing. It was good exercise.

If we were sitting at home watching TV and the phone rang, we mostly ignored it, however. Logic didn’t enter into it.

We had “The Signal.” Two rings, hang up, call back. It was designed to avoid prank calls, sales people, bill collectors, people from the church, and my aunts and grandparents.

Years after the institution of The Signal as a screening device, somebody must have let it slip to Grandma.

The phone rang twice one afternoon, paused, then rang again.

“Hello?”

“Hi!”

“Grandma! Holy ..!”

A quiet chuckle. “Put your mom on the phone.” At that point, I don't think they had spoken in years.

Woe to the child who couldn't think fast enough and got Mom stuck on the phone. There was always the backup plan: “She’s in the bathroom.”

Anybody who consistently was able to get someone to answer our phone probably thought Mom spent most of her time in there. Since our house had only the one lavatory for the seven of us, I assume we children were the objects of pity.

Grandma always rang twice after that, which was how we knew it was her. The Signal became three rings, hang up, call back. We were threatened with death if the secret were ever released again.

Why did we even have a phone? Beats me. We weren’t allowed to call anybody because almost everything was long-distance.

Back then long-distance calling was right up there on the morality chart with drinking whiskey and looking at dirty pictures.

Probably we had a phone just for emergencies. To me, that only makes sense if you’re a fireman or a paramedic.

If somebody calls at 3 a.m. and tells me someone has been in an accident, it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it. Why not get a good night’s sleep — or several — before hearing the bad news? It’s not going to be more painful if the bad news comes in the form of a letter a few days later.

In the new century, the days of blissful, peaceful detachment from the people who want to talk to you are long gone. The only halfway credible excuse these days is to say you forgot to charge your phone — again. Even the ever-reliable “couldn’t get a signal” has gone by the wayside since the coming of the “Can you hear me now?” guy.

The best thing about cell phones is that owning one is a good excuse not to have a house phone. If you can get your wife to carry the cell phone, it’s almost like the good old days.

Ken York is the assistant editor of The Daily Record of Lebanon, Mo. He can be reached at kyork@lebanondailyrecord.com.

Glory days and the insult to Todd's nose

Not to brag or anything, but I was the second best right fielder on my Little League team back in 1974. We were the Giants. We came very close to not losing a game too badly once, and I played in that game and got a hit, which caused my fans (Mom and my sisters) to erupt into stunned, wild applause, thinking my previous season-long slump was finally over.

My talents as a right fielder were still developing as the season ended, but Vegas odds were down to 3-1 that I would catch a ball in the air at some point.

(Hint to kids: If you're afraid the ball is going to hit you in the head, back way, way up in the outfield. Then, when the ball is hit, you're sure to be able to field it on the bounce or -- better -- as it rolls to a stop, which is much less potentially disfiguring.)

What I contributed most to my team in my one-year Little League career was attitude. The incredulous stare at the umpire after a called third strike -- I patented that. I could stare for long minutes at a time, eyes glittering with hostility from beneath the scarred batting helmet, until the next batter had to shove me out of the way so the torturous struggle with futility could proceed.

Of course, I had one near-sighted eye and one far-sighted eye, so I never really saw the third strike, but the odds were that all three of them couldn't have been in the strike zone. It was Little League.

After the inevitable loss, I could hurl a bat in frustration and pound my glove furiously with the best of them. I'd sit in morose silence in the back of the truck on the way home, pretending to replay the game in my head (what I could remember, anyway -- I never paid a whole lot of attention).

I still think we would have won a couple of those games if the coach had let me pitch. While it's true that I couldn't throw a baseball very fast or far, 90 percent of a pitcher's game is mental. I still can imagine the batter shuddering at my steely-eyed gaze as I shake off the sign again and again.

The coach's son, Todd, was our star pitcher. Todd and I didn't get along. He was kind of a loudmouth who made fun of the kids who didn't play to his level. He didn't bother to hide his contempt for me, but I think he must have sensed that I had incredible baseball talent just waiting to spring forth and steal his limelight. How he jeered when I was shuffled off with the 7-year-olds for soft batting practice with a bored assistant coach. I could hit pretty good when the ball was thrown from 15 feet away, underhand.

Midway through the season, just as our lousiness was beginning to become legend around the league, Todd was playing pepper at practice one day and didn't get his glove up in time. There goes the nose. I managed to hide my glee.

As a grownup, I have compassion and sympathy that I didn't have when I was 8. I don't think I inherited that from Mom, however, because on the way home from practice, she was heard to mutter, "Couldn't have happened to a nicer kid."

Late in the season when I finally got a hit, it didn't propel me to respectability with my teammates, because by that point, we were all striking out on purpose (except the jerk, Todd) just to get the thing over with.

Back then, losing teams didn't get pizza or ice cream. We got to go home and pull weeds in the garden.

The night after the last, futile game, I lay in bed, thinking about all the missed opportunities, the things I might have done differently. Finally, I got up and went into the living room where Mom and Dad were watching TV. Bravely, I announced I wanted to play next year.

They nodded soberly.

None of us ever mentioned it again.

Ken York writes a weekly column for The Daily Record of Lebanon, Mo. He can be reached at kyork@lebanondailyrecord.com.

Athletes weigh in, figuratively speaking, on Bin Laden's demise

Originally published on May 8, 2011

Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall raised the ire of some last week as he posted controversial comments on Twitter, which I gather is some Internet thing, after the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick quickly refuted Mendenhall’s comments on the issue. Former Chiefs quarterback Joe Montana could not be reached for comment before press time today.

Now, I have all the respect in the world for my brothers and sisters in the Major Media, of course. It seems like almost daily I learn more about how journalism is supposed to be done by paying attention to the experts in my field.

Their lesson for me this week: Pay no attention to the experts in the field. Ask athletes instead.

All these years I have kind of figured that you ought to ask questions of, seek comments from and report the opinions of people who have some kind of clue about the issues involved.

Nobody ever told me to do it that way. It was just a bad habit I fell into, I reckon.

As it turns out, instead you're supposed to go find the most deviant opinions out there and report those, no matter who they belong to.

It could be Mendenhall and Vick know a heckuva lot more about our Middle East situation than the average person. Maybe there is some international studies course requirement that college athletes must take before they are eligible for the draft.

I’m certainly not criticizing athletes who dip their big toes into the icy waters of political discourse. Why, just last year our own St. Louis Cardinals manager, Tony LaRussa, spoke out in favor of Proposition B, a ballot measure either to protect cute little puppies or to pave the way for government interference in every farm in Missouri that raises animals.

At the time, some questioned whether a fellow who might call a squeeze play on a 1-2 count with nobody out really knew enough about the issue to comment intelligently.

I knew better, of course. I imagined a team of analysts studying the issue at length, diligently researching both sides before presenting their findings to Tony. After poring over the thousands of pages of data, LaRussa arrived at his position, which he then made public.

I’d rather believe that than believe somebody shoved a microphone in his face and asked him if he were in favor of or opposed to puppies.

Well, now that I know how real journalism is supposed to be done, I’ll get right on it.

I have a call in to Cards slugger Albert Pujols to see if he’s willing to make any predictions about how the Missouri Attorney General’s lawsuit against Lebanon is going to turn out. I’ll let you know what he says.

But I’m taking this new technique beyond seeking only the expertise of athletes.

I finally got hold of Jennifer Lopez Friday, and she said the mayoral recall effort in Lebanon sounded "mean," contradicting the position of Charlie Sheen, who believes the people of Lebanon ought to smear themselves in tiger blood or something like that.

It was kind of hard to understand what he was saying.

Ken York's column appears in The Daily Record of Lebanon, Mo.. He can be reached at kyork@lebanondailyrecord.com.

We will waste no part of the potato

They sat around the board room table in expensive suits, sipping lattes, waiting for the CEO's presentation. Their fake hair was made from the pelts of deceased animals, as were their shoes. It bothered few of them that their teeth-whitening procedures cost more than average families spend on food in a year.

Finally, the CEO arrived and touched the panel at the end of the long, mahogany table. A section of the wall containing comfortable, dark-bound books slid aside to reveal a screen, and the powerpoint presentation began.

"You all probably recognize this," he said without preamble. "It's a potato."

True to his words, a potato had appeared on the screen, revolving slowly, seemingly suspended in mid-air against a brilliant white background. A few irregular recessed areas were on its surface.

For a moment, the potato revolved and no one spoke. The only sound was the quiet "tch tch" of a guy at the end who was typing on his Blackberry.

"To this point, our efforts to maximize the efficiency of the potato have been hampered by its outer covering, commonly called the 'skin,'" said the CEO. "Every potato ever processed in our facilities has gone through a de-skinning operation, which some call 'peeling.'"

A hand shot up at the back of the room. The CEO nodded irritably at the questioner.

"What do we use the potatoes for?" asked the board member. "Are they a meat substitute of some sort?"

"No," the CEO said shortly. "We peel them, cut them up into pieces and fry them. This simple potato --" He stabbed at the image on the screen with a laser pointer. "This vegetable is the source of our french fries -- which actually are not French at all, or so our production executives tell me."

The board member nodded, comprehension dawning. A few grunts around the polished table indicated satisfaction that the source of the fries was not European.

"Watch," the CEO ordered and tapped a key. Suddenly, on the screen, the outer covering of the potato fell away, revealing its white, naked, inner core. "We lose 8.4 percent, on average, of every potato we process. Why? Because we peel them."

Shocked gasps sounded around the table. A new graphic, a chart, appeared on the screen. A figure at the bottom was flashing in red. Cries of despair rang out.

"That's right," the CEO said grimly. "Over the years, our company has lost $27.6 billion in potato peels."

A man at the far end fainted dead away. The CEO nodded to attendants who lined the walls, well away from the table, and two of them sprang forward and gently carried the unconscious board member out through the expansive, carved double doors. Other servants took advantage of the break to refresh the lattes of those who remained.

"What can we do?" a woman with an alligator-skin purse cried. "Can't we use something besides these potatoes?"

The CEO shook his head. "We've field-tested products using other sources that do not have to have their outer coverings removed. The french-fried celery sticks were the worst, even though we provided small packets of artificial peanut butter to make them edible," he said. "I'm afraid we are stuck with the potato."

Another board member, the vice-chairman, spoke up. "I'm sure these potatoes can be genetically modified not to produce these skins," she said. "Glenn, get Monsanto for me." An assistant pulled out a cell phone and tapped on its face.

"We already called them," said the CEO grimly. "They were already working on it. But not for us. For McDonalds."


The cell phone snapped shut. Dead silence reigned at the name of the most hated competitor.

"We have another solution," the CEO said. "Production says it can easily modify its processing facilities to cut the potatoes with the peels intact. There will be a small capital outlay, several hundred million, for reprogramming, but it can be done."

The vice chairman nodded. "That makes sense," she said. "Why did we ever start peeling them in the first place?"

The CEO shook his head. "That, I can't tell you," he said. "It was the 60s. It was a crazy time in the industry. McDonalds was peeling, Burger Chef was peeling, so we peeled. We did have the sense to save slicing costs by making our french fries bigger than those of the competition. Not to toot my own horn too much, but that was my idea, back when I was a regional vice president."

Sighs and murmurs of appreciation came from one and all.

The CEO continued. "Our problem is that the outer covering has a bitter taste. No one likes it except health nuts who believe the peel has more nutritional value than the core."

Even this short comment about nutritional value proved to be intensely boring. Four board member immediately fell asleep and were carried out, two of them snoring loudly. The rest drank furiously from their mugs, fighting drowsiness with caffeine.

"Marketing believes there may be a way to create demand for these unpeeled fried potatoes," the CEO said, hurrying on to recapture the interest of the board members. "They want to call it 'natural' or 'organic.' The genius of it is that the peel actually is part of the vegetable, not something we added chemically. We have our legal department talking to the FDA about whether we can use 'organic,' but 'natural' is a lock."

"Won't it still taste bad?" asked a man halfway down the table. Those around him frowned at him. He blushed.

"We've thought of that, too," said the CEO, smiling indulgently. "Research and Development has found that if you add enough salt, the bitterness is virtually undetectable. We're going to make that part of the marketing campaign by explaining the saltiness away, saying we're using sea salt."

Confused looks greeted this. "How is that better?" asked a board member tentatively.

The chief executive's smile grew. "It's not. It doesn't really matter, but it sounds exotic."

One woman started it, but the clapping was contagious, and soon all the board members were standing, pushing away the leather covered boardroom chairs. Some shook their fists in the air, whooping, while others pulled out their portable devices and issued orders to buy more of their stock.

The meeting ended in a unanimous, enthusiastic vote to proceed with the "natural" french fries salted from the sea. A few of the board members, as they were leaving, followed the tradition of leaping to touch the portrait of Dave that hung above the boardroom doors.

Ken York's column appears weekly in The Daily Record of Lebanon, Mo.