Seeking wisdom from Yoko? Really?

I’ve for better than three months been engaged in a tawdry process that always leaves me feeling small. Yet its pull is irresistible.

Yes, I’m trying to goad Yoko into saying something stupid.

This goes contrary to my every instinct to help and encourage people who are helping and encouraging people.

That’s what Yoko does. In fact, that’s all she does. One of the richest women in the world, she sits in her lavish Manhattan condo and issues ethereal pronouncements that would be New Agey if they hadn’t predated New Age by four decades.

Example: “You are water. I am water. We’re all water in different containers. That’s why it’s so easy to meet. Someday we’ll all evaporate together.”

Or, “You can assemble a painting with a person in the North Pole over the phone, like playing chess.”

It’s the kind of thing that inspired people to say WTF before anyone understood what WTF meant.

I became aware of this about four months ago when I wrote this post about the legacies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with me coming down firmly on Paul’s side.

I used as part of my argument that Paul was superior simply because he didn’t marry Yoko. In fact, like the rest of the world he disdained her. Disdained her art, her poetry, her unlistenable music and the fact that she’s based her entire life on being a martyred widow.

I’ve never had the visceral hatred for Yoko, 79, that others have. I had a friend when I lived in Nashville who hated her the way Rick Santorum hates things like condoms.

I asked him how he could hate someone so non-violent.

“Non-violent? She murdered The Beatles,” he countered.

He started a list the night Lennon was shot and called it, “People they should have shot instead of John Lennon.”

Through the years the list got sillier and sillier and included people no one would have dreamed of shooting like the guy who invented New Coke and a kicker for the Detroit Lions whose feckless right foot cost him a small fortune in wagers.

At the very top of the list was Yoko.

I abhor violence and the promotion of it, but remain friends with that guy because he’s just an awful lot of fun. And the historical what-if of my friend’s list does tantalize.

My fanciful speculation was John would have run straight into the arms of Adrienne Barbeau, The Beatles would have reunited and the scourge of hip hop would have been postponed for 20 years.

Still, I wouldn’t have engaged in my bitter little battle had I not begun plumbing the social media and discovered Yoko has more than 2 million followers on Facebook and Twitter.

Two million! It’s astounding.

Apparently, she’s becoming the Dr. Phil for balloon-headed whack jobs.

They seek her wisdoms and approval every Friday when she solicits questions that read like they could have come straight from the crayon-scrawled walls of the insane asylum.

Here are two examples:

Q: “What is the answer to this question I have asked myself daily: ‘Am I here?’”

Yoko: All of us are here as long as we can question it.

Q: “What do you do when you feel so sad that you just can’t stop tearing?”

Yoko: Tearing is an excellent way of bringing balance and health to your mind and body. Keep tearing!

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was restricted to that sort of silly hippie fluff. But, no, she gives serious advice on things like job searches, marital disputes and health. She advised a woman wrestling with anorexia to take up jogging.

It seemed so ripe for ridicule I felt compelled to engage. I began submitting questions to #askyokoQandA in the hopes she’ll respond and I can expose the fraud.

I submitted, among others, the following:

• “How can I learn to use air as my security blanket?”

• “Will heaven have vending machines and if, yes, what will they dispense?”

• And, “If our bodies are indeed temples, then how come everything that comes out of them is so disgusting?”

Now far be it for me, a rarely-sober slouch who resides in a make-believe world of blogger irrelevance, to admonish anyone about offering free advice to distressed strangers but it just galls me.

Yet, I can’t help myself. And with each petty tweet I feel myself increasingly diminished.

I’m adding soulless negativity to a woman whose very website, www.imaginepeace.com, conveys so much of what I believe.

Are my own personal and professional failings karmic comeuppance for my mean-spirited goading? Rather than taunt, should I embrace the wisdoms of Yoko for spiritual fulfillment?

And what about those heavenly vending machines? Do they require exact change?

Only Yoko knows.

"Death to evil American savages!" a diplomat's take

The diplomat in me discerned a rhetorical breakthrough in the Afghani protests over the wanton slaying of 16 of their innocents.

Less careful observers probably thought it was more of the same revenge-minded rage from a people so adept at revenge and rage it’s surprising the nation’s not populated by smoldering piles of ash.

Of course, in just the past six weeks we have given them plenty about which to be outraged.

Our soldiers have urinated on their dead, we’ve set fire to their holy books and now one of our soldiers has gone and massacred 16 innocent villagers, mostly women and children.

The diplomat in me instinctively scolds tsk-tsk.

It’s important to point out now that these incidents have been inflicted upon our allies, not our enemies. We’re de facto teammates in the larger cause.

It’s a fine point, sure, but diplomacy sometimes entails hair-splitting.

What’s interesting to me is I’ve seen a subtle breakthrough in the sloganeering howls of the mobs who’ve been burning our flag and effigies of President Barack Obama -- and I understand half of you are perfectly cool with the latter.

Reports said the mobs were chanting, “Death to evil American savages!”

Here’s where the Kissinger in me emerges -- and I mention Kissinger because I love a diplomat whose name begins with “kiss.”

“Death to evil American savages!” is a much more nuanced declaration than the evergreen “Death to America!” And, better still, it’s something behind which most of America can unite, at least those of us who are not evil savages.

Yes, death to evil American savages! And death to evil Afghani savages! Death to evil Norwegian savages! Death to evil savages throughout the universe!

I just hope the protesters behind the sentiment can help us differentiate between the truly evil savages from the ones who are merely savage. Perhaps the tip-off has something to do with using the wrong fork during the salad course.

It seems like we’re watching a slow-motion tragedy, a more gruesome version of Brett Favre’s retirement.

We’re there with the best of intentions. We went there to kill the people who were killing us and to keep them from killing each other so they could maybe have a chance at a kill-free breather.

Now, these random and senseless killings -- as opposed to all the sensible ones -- have the Afghanis saying family honor requires deadly revenge for this soldier’s actions, as if a host of eye-for-an-eye killings will teach the rest of us a really good lesson.

Personally, I don’t see what I have to learn from further killing.

All of America is saddened by this massacre. If we could make it right we would. If we can prevent it from ever happening again we will.

I wish we could detect the savages among us and eliminate them before they eliminate us or so other savages might think twice before crossing over to evil.

But there’s no deterrent to evil. We’ve killed it before, many times, and it always re-emerges like spring daffodils.

So I hope my instincts are correct and that the people who are justifiably furious and grieving over our isolated misdeeds put as equivalent moral weight on the good done by so many have as they do on the bad done by one.

Because all this killing is killing me.

None of us want to blindly kill what is good. But even prancing pacifists like me can get behind the cause of killings with good cause.

So, yes, death to evil American savages!

And long live America.

Let Woody be Woody: Harrelson flicks & others

Didn’t see HBO’s “Game Change” because we don’t have HBO. Would have rushed to order it if any of the show promos had hinted it included Woody Harrelson playing a character based on Woody Harrelson.

He’s becoming that entertaining.

I’ve read enough profiles of him recently to understand shows depicting Woody being Woody would be better than most of the movies starring alleged A-list actors who command far more respect than the B-list actor who got his start on “Cheers” playing a guy named Woody.

Better is any role that has Woody playing an exaggerated version of himself.

That’s what happens in “Zombieland,” and “The Messenger,” two of the finest movies we’ve seen in the past two years.

In both, Woody plays over-the-top, more hick and cartoonish versions of himself with out-of-control rage issues.

And when I say a cartoonish version of himself, I’m talking Yosemite Sam.

That’s exactly who he acts like in the peerless zomcom “Zombieland” from 2009. In it Harrelson plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck who slays hordes of blood slobbering zombies for fun and survival.

We recently rented the outstanding Harrelson drama “The Messenger,” also from 2009, about the U.S. Army details obliged to inform parents and spouses of the death of loved ones fighting overseas. In it Harrelson plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck who wrestles with the morality of war and getting drunk.

He was acclaimed, too, for his role in 2007’s “No Country for Old Men,” in which he plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck bounty hunter who fails to persuade a more lethal bounty hunter with a Moe Howard haircut to, please, not shoot him.

It’s been a marvelous career trajectory for an actor from Hanover, Indiana, who played a dim, but sweet redneck bartender from Hanover, Indiana, who wrestles with how to keep guys like Norm and Cliff from getting too drunk for network standards aiming to keep must-see TV family friendly.

He has what seems to be a non-Woody role in the ballyhooed new movie, “The Hunger Games,” so we’ll probably skip that and look forward to the rumored sequel to “Zombieland,” in which he reprises, well, you can figure it out.

We’ve done our share of enriching Hollywood the last couple of months. Here’s my jiffy little critique of what we’ve seen in theaters and at home. I’m ranking them on a scale of how many Woodys they’d need to make them perfect (zero Woodys, perfect; five Woodys unwatchable).

• “Safe House,” starring Denzel Washington -- Another fine performance by the great Denzel, but the movie suffers from obnoxious camera technique favored by directors too lazy to set up real action shots. Yes, it was the Drunken Camera Man School of Filmmaking. Too many of the too many action films are slapped together this haphazardly. Three Woodys.

• “The Lorax” -- We are in the Golden Age of kiddie movies, but the Seuss movies, to me, don’t work. The art is lavish, the stories slim. The perfect Seuss template remains the 24-minute version of “The Grinch that Stole Christmas.” Four Woodys.

• “Arrietty” -- Another one with the kiddos, this one very sweet and tender. It was unhurried, the artwork sumptuous. I thought it might be too slow for my girls, but they loved it. Not a classic, but we’ll watch it again. It’s nice to see movies made that show kids not all stories are spastic. One Woody.

• “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” -- This was fantastic. Great campy fun. And the computer-generated action-sequences of the monkeys run amok is mesmerizing. One Woody.

• “Bridesmaids” -- This was a critically acclaimed box office smash that both Val and I hated, me more than her. It’s from the Judd Apatow school of gross-out comedy. Its success means we’re going to be inundated with more of it in watered down forms. Five Woodys.

• “Breaking Bad” -- Not a movie, per se, but we’ve spent more than 45 hours the past three months catching up on seasons 1-3 of this AMC drama about a high school chemistry teacher who turns to meth cooking to provide for his family after he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Better than “The Sopranos,” this is the most entertaining show we’ve ever watched. 1/2 Woody.

“Breaking Bad” is near perfect, but there’s nothing in the whole wide world that couldn’t be improved with a little Woody.

Daylight Savings Time annoying AND deadly

It may come as a surprise to sophisticated readers, but the inspirational soundtrack for these posts is often the morning farm report.

I rise with the roosters and am on the road by 6 a.m. most mornings, my radio set to Latrobe WCNS-AM.

As the local agriculture reporter drones on about the price of soy, winter wheat and dairy futures, I drive half asleep past about a dozen chickens, four cows and a black and white goat my daughters tell me is named Oreo, famed among the school bus set for once having escaped by chewing a hole in his fence.

The farm report and the bucolic scenery seem to further soften my still-foggy mind so the first lively newspaper story I see jumpstarts my thinking so I can wax euphoric over things like mimes and Earth’s eventual occupation of Kepler 22b.

Today I’d like to issue a little farm report of my own.

The cows look relaxed, the chickens serene and Oreo fit as a fence-chewing fiddle.

And I feel like I was out drinking all night and got all of the headache and none of the fun.

It’s Day II of our great national hangover, Daylight Savings Time.

I’ve had my share of killer hangovers, but those I’ve suffered in solitary.

Turns out Daylight Savings Time is killing us all.

A University of Alabama at Birmingham news release said the Monday and Tuesday after moving the clocks ahead are associated with a 10 percent increase in the risk of heart attack.

It’s a common vanity for men and women to boast they have some time to kill.

Foolish mortals. Time’s killing you!

The exact opposite is true in October when we move the clocks back: Risk decreases by 10 percent.

It’s only logical to conclude if we move the clocks back an hour once a month we could eliminate killer heart attacks all together.

I don’t understand the need to monkey around with time so much.

I have enough trouble sleeping. I lay awake worrying about money, my fathering deficiencies, Sidney Crosby’s return from concussion symptoms, international conflicts and irrational tyrants bent on attaining the WMD that experts say will nudge the world ever-closer to nuclear doom.

And now I have to worry about artificial time manipulations increasing my risk of deadly heart attack.

Then there’s the tedious logistics of it all. My computer and phone both automatically reset, but my three watches, my Bose stereo, car radio and two battery operated clocks require pesky manual adjustments.

Changing clocks takes time. And every second spent tinkering with the hands of time is another second spent dreading the unhealthy consequences.

And, really, big picture, I fret over what DST does to the Doomsday Clock. Artificially operating since 1947, it was intended to herald the threat to humanity from nuclear catastrophe, but has since upped the gloom quotient by adding the threat from climate change.

Could a careless re-setting of the Doomsday Clock render all my cares and worries moot?

I’m too sleep deprived to calculate the possibilities.

I do know this much: I’ve never once heard my morning farm report announce there’s a strange outbreak of bovine insomnia striking the region.

And until you start seeing cows with wristwatches strapped to their left front legs, I doubt you’re going to find a cow that has trouble sleeping.

They go through life untroubled by our vanities regarding time and the pretense of our ability to control it -- right up until the kind-hearted farmer packs them off to the slaughter house.

And now I’m doomed to spend at least part of the day wondering if the Doomsday Clock has a snooze alarm. Holocaust or not, I’m still going to need my beauty sleep.

But that’s a matter to be resolved another day.

Right now I just don’t have the time.

Re-Run Sunday: In praise of profanity

Consider this a mission statement: I enjoy swearing and often tell my daughters there are no bad works, only bad times to say some words. Joe Biden learned this in March 2010 when live mics picked him up saying the f-word to Barack Obama.

Later the next day, I said the same word twice before breakfast:

At least once a week I regret my vow to make this a family-friendly blog. See, I’m pro-profanity. I love to swear and my life is enriched with ample provocations to do so.

Happened just this morning.

For reasons of economy, taste and snobbery, I’ve pretty much kicked the fast food habit.

But sometimes the body simply needs fuel. Today I wanted to accomplish a lot in a little time so I swung by the nearest McDonald’s and ordered a sausage biscuit with cheese. The place is notorious for its inefficiency and I hadn’t been there in probably two years.

I zipped through the drive-thru and made it back to my office in under two minutes.

I was pleased to think that maybe my faith in humanity was being restored in that they’ve evolved and learned to work together more efficiently and, yeah, I gave all the credit to Barack.

That will please conservatives because of what happened next.

I unfolded the paper and inside was just the biscuit with cheese.

I’d been awake barely 20 minutes and I screamed my first profanity of the day.

My entire order was just four words long: “sausage biscuit with cheese.” And only three of the words involved food.

I understand in these busy times that many people are distracted and that many of our attention spans have shortened to jiffy fractions. So if the wrapper had contained just a sausage biscuit, I’d have understood.

But how Person A says or prints “sausage biscuit with cheese,” and Person B omits the sausage is incomprehensible.

It is the very essence of any sausage sandwich. I’d wager in the history of McDonald’s history no one’s ever said, “I’d like a biscuit with cheese.”

So now I’m on a mission. I grab the inedible mistake and dash straight back to the drive-thru determined to keep my cool.

I like situational profanity, but using it at someone always makes me feel small. Plus, the store was clearly staffed with idiots who’d have responded to my barbs with either gunfire or dumbfounded stares.

I politely explained to the girl I needed to see the manager. She said, sure, and asked me to pull up to the second drive thru.

No, I’ll wait here, I said.

It was a small act of civil disobedience, but I have a pet theory about the progression of drive thrus and here was an opportunity to perhaps further its potential.

See, there were no drive thrus when I was a boy. Now each restaurant has two. My theory is that in 20 years it will take four drive thrus to screw up each order.

The manager, a sweet grandmotherly lady, approached and heard my complaint. I said I wanted a new sausage biscuit with cheese and compensation for the inconvenience.

“Well, we don’t have any gift certificates here, but I can give you some pie!”

Pie?

As I said, I’m not a frequent patron so I don’t know what McDonald’s breakfast pie would entail. I’ve had and enjoyed quiche, which is a pie-shaped entree. But I’d already ordered my breakfast entree.

I said no thanks. She took my address and said she’d send some gift certificates. Soon she handed me a sack and said, “Here’s your sausage biscuit with cheese -- I put a free hash brown in for you!”

She said it in a way that led me to believe this gesture led past disgruntled customers to emerge from their vehicles and do handsprings around the parking lot.

I just said, “Thank you for your consideration.”

I get back to the office and opened the sack and unfolded the wrapper. Know what was inside?

Biscuit with cheese, egg and bacon.

I shouted the day’s second profanity with such a reverberating gusto that I imagined flocks of birds simultaneously lifting off from branches all across distant savannahs.

It helped relieve the strain.

That brings me to Joe Biden’s profane gaffe. I was so pleased to see it didn’t inspire the usual holier-than-thou back and forth that’s become so common in our over-heated political climate.

We’re all becoming more comfortable with profanity.

It gives me hope that someday I’ll be able to use all my favorite swear words right here in this family-friendly blog.

And on that day, I’ll tell you exactly what I thought when I bit into that bacon mistake I was too furious to return a second time.

“Hey, this is pretty #@$*-ing good!”

Candidate families play "staring" role in creepy admiration

This primary season has convinced me one of the great disqualifying attributes for normal Americans is that we have no one who’ll stare adoringly at us for hours at a time.

Take the Santorum children.

They stare at Rick the way the apostles must have stared at Jesus after he told a really great joke.

The only way I could get my children to gaze at me with that combination of wonder and awe is if they spied something dangling from my nose.

It seems so unnatural.

I know many great fathers, both Republican and Democrat, and none of their teenage children look at them with even the least bit of regard, if they ever even bother to look at them at all.

If the father says something that requires their attention -- like, “Run for your life! The house is on fire!” -- the offspring’s reflex reaction is to roll their eyes, remove their earbuds, and glare at him with a mixture of contempt and impatience so deadly it’s like they’re trying to cause the beleaguered dad to detonate.

It’s not like that with the Santorum children.

It’s like they’re trying to convey to any mind readers they are thinking thoughts like, “This is a truly great man. I inner weep at my good fortune that he wasn’t engaged in mere recreational sex the night I was conceived. I’m comforted to know he’ll keep me forever safe from public education, Romneycare, its evil spawn, and all the sinful modernities exposed on his @ricksantorum Twitter account on the internet he’s never allowed me to see.”

It’s a bi-partisan phenomenon.

I remember seeing the children of a prominent Democrat casting the same adoring gazes upon their father, looks that conveyed daddy was a man of steadfast family devotion and loving wisdom. That father was ...

John Edwards!

Now he’s got two families who stare at him, but he’d probably rather not know what either of them is thinking.

The creepiest, of course, is Callista Gingrich. She’s always stationed there like she’s Newt’s big defective candle -- all wax, no wick.

Angelina doesn’t look at Brad Pitt the way Callista looks at Newt.

He’s her Adonis, her Rocky to his Adrienne, and it’s just hilarious because the Pillsbury Doughboy has more masculine definition than Newt -- and, yeah, the Doughboy’s probably a better roll model (rim shot!).

Mitt Romney’s wife seems more naturally easygoing, and their children are adult enough that they don’t have to sit and grin like tranquilized chimps whenever their father drones on and on about things like proper tree height.

The Huntsmen daughters were very cool, as was their father. I liked Jon Huntsman and believe it says something regrettable about the current GOP that Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman earned more serious consideration.

And I don’t remember seeing the Bush daughters reverentially staring at the old man like he was some thoughtful genius who’d never do anything rash that might damage America and her global reputation -- and, boy, I’ll bet in hindsight they’re relieved they didn’t.

Of course, they were too busy evading their Secret Service minders long enough to go out and get all gooned up like normal kids and, in fact, their own father did when he was their age.

Strong drink is a curse for many men and women, but I think America during the Bush/Cheney would have been better off if W. had never fully sobered up.

I know I could never have made it through without bourbon.

Some people are so hyper-partisan they reflexively hate without reason, but we have a great first family in the White House right now.

The girls are poised and Michelle Obama’s fantastic. I think it’s healthy they look at Barack when he’s speaking with the same sort of veiled contempt conveyed by Republican congressional leaders.

It’s like they don’t trust him to speak in public and are ready to pounce the second he says something stupid.

My wife and daughters are a lot like that even though I contend I’m a man of true greatness deserving of adoration.

I don’t know what I’ve done to earn such familial scorn.

I mean besides spending so much time writing this blog, of course.

Honked off about Egyptian nose jobs

I’m feeling optimistic about budding Egyptian democracy after reading that a member of parliament resigned in shame after it was revealed he’d gotten a nose job.

I hope you read that carefully.

That’s N-O-S-E job.

And nose job means the same thing in Egypt as nose job means here in America, although I’m sure if you troll the internet you can find adults-only pictures of American nose jobs that don’t involve rhinoplasty.

Anwar al-Balkimy felt forced to resign after his vanity was revealed. He’d initially said the bandages covering up his healing honker were from an attack by thugs.

It’s said in American politics the cover-up is always worse than the scandal. It may be the reverse in ultra-conservative Egypt where Islamists condemn plastic surgery as tampering with God’s creation.

They shun cosmetic surgery and all the oily contrivances of appearance we so value in our American leaders and entertainers. Apparently, it’s not like that in Egypt.

When people in Egypt want to see an ageless face incapable of natural expression, they turn to the ancient Sphinx.

We Americans look to Joan Rivers.

I’m ultra-conservative in my opinion of most plastic surgery, too. I believe there’s way too much of it.

I think we should focus on all our inner beauty, although the undying adolescent in me will always understand the playground appeal to a really great set of cartoon porn hooters.

I was disappointed at being unable to find a before-and-after profile of the now disgraced al-Balkimy.

I was eager to see the nose that was so offensive that he’d risk his career and national scorn to be rid of it. It must have been a real whopper.

We grew up with a kid we called Tommy Hoagie Nose. He had the biggest nose I’ve ever seen. It was so big neighborhood dogs used to congregate beneath it in the summer to enjoy the shade. If he turned his head against the breeze on a gusty day and began nodding, the cavernous nostrils would whistle “Dixie.”

Understand, we didn’t call him Hoagie Nose to be mean. We did it so everyone knew we weren’t talking about Cross-Eyed Tommy or Tommy the Booger Eater.

Looking back, I can see how it might have led to hurt feelings. Of course, none of that would have happened if any of the Tommy parents had been a little more creative in naming their sons.

All this judgmental talk about how people look could lead folks to conclude I’m The Ugly American.

That’s the title of a 1958 bestseller co-written by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer about American arrogance and the failure to understand a foreign culture.

If I’m the Ugly American, I’m likely the last one.

We as a people are becoming far too pretty. Perfection has become homogenized, true beauty cheapened.

So I salute the Egyptian attitude that seems to be placing wisdom and integrity above superficial looks.

But what do I know? Who am I to be making culturally insensitive remarks about a people and a religion of which I have little understanding?

Maybe one day I’ll learn to just keep quiet instead of just shooting my mouth off whenever a thought starts drifting up from the swampy parts of my mind.

I guess that’s what you can expect from a guy all the neighborhood kids used to call Idiot Chris. I heard that throughout my childhood.

“Hey, look, everyone! Here comes Idiot Chris! It’s Idiot Chris! Idiot Chris!”

The nickname always seemed kind of stupid to me.

Why would I have even needed a nickname when I was the only Chris for miles around?