SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO SHAKE YOUR HEAD

When engaged in a perusal of the various news outlets real and virtual, some odd items come to your attention, compelling you to shake your head and turn the page, or the channel or the URL address, as the case may be. Even an event so mind-numbingly dull as The Winter Olympics brings its share of Duh moments. Take the TV commentators who were poking fun at Johnny Weir, a member of the America figure skating squad, for his downright pretty appearance and effeminate demeanor. Isn't it a drop odd that people who are experts on figure skating have anything to say about anyone's sexual druthers? Hellooo!!

Pot calling the kettle black or catty behavior? Either way, it is pretty amusing, which is more than can be said about the rest of this ordeal. Outside of a guy dying on a poorly-designed luge run before the Games even opened, a lady curler crying and the loser in the men's individual figure skating awarding himself a "platinum" medal in a fury for having lost the gold to an American skater, these Winter Olympics provided about the same amount of thrills that they usually do, damned few.

Even those "lucky" enough to attend the games in person got to witness only about a third of a second of any given race, with a blur and a "woosh" substituting for actually watching anything unfold. No wonder they love to watch the figure skaters and ice dancers, who at least don't leap out of the arena in the blink of an eye. Absently wondering how any of these things wound up the sports section of all places, you shake your head and turn the page.

Unfortunately, you're now perusing political news, always an adventure when you're not feeing very adventurous. You can't help but notice how politicians of all persuasions are touting a "bipartisan approach," their definition of bipartisan being that the opposition just shuts up and agrees with them. Republicans want Democrats to agree that our government is an instrument of malicious evil in every respect except in their use of military force and (!) torture, which are just fine, while Democrats want Republicans to pay some taxes one of these years, if it's not too much trouble.

What both fail to realize is that no one voted for compromise, they voted overwhelmingly Democratic and expect the Democrats to implement their agenda, and to hell with the Republicans, who had 8 years to figure something out other than torture, warfare, incompetence and bankruptcy, but couldn't. Why our president would seek a consensus with such people is a mystery to many of us wondering why there are still so many unindicted co-conspitrators pulling inside jobs, looting our banking system for billions instead of shopping for defense attorneys.

No one recalls the last administration courting the Democrats while they did pretty much what the hell they felt like doing, legal or not. So once again, being able able to make neither heads nor tails of our current political climate, you shake your head and turn the page. Then you encounter further difficulties, since you are now inspecting something called "Entertainment News." Once upon a time, there was no such thing as Entertainment News, the public being pretty much okay with the entertainment that the entertainers provided. Few felt any kind of personal stake in the personal lives of strangers.

Those seeking more would read the gossip columns or buy the trade dailies like Variety and the rest of us were off the hook when it comes to knowing who had a bizarre childhood (who didn't?), who married a transvestite dwarf in Vegas with an Elvis clone preacher presiding (and who hasn't done that at least once?) and which starlet can consume a cereal bowl full of tranquilizers washed down by a fifth of tequila. That sort of thing never came up and one could enjoy a good performance by an actor, a singer or a comic without the distraction of knowing some weird stuff you'd rather you didn't. Is dignity too much to expect? Seems so, mostly.

These days, it's getting harder watch your favorite performer without a mental image of farm animals in rubber lingerie, so you shake your head and turn the page quick before you find out anything else too peculiar to fully register. Now you're in the International News section, and you're wondering what to make of it all. Can it really be true that witch doctors in Tanzania hunt and kill albino humans for good luck charms? That's a pretty bold statement. Then you wonder who made up all those crazy things about Saudi Arabia, how they enslave half their population, their females, and how they chop off heads and hands in stadiums and charge admission like it was the damned Super Bowl!

That can't be right, can it? No way! They are, after all, our ally, and America would never ally itself with such baaaric butchers, no matter how much oil they have, right? Right? And so you turn the page again, searching, scanning, surfing, desperate for something, anything that makes sense in any medium. Your mouth is dry, your head is spinning and your hungry eyes finally find it. There it is!

Today's funny pages. The good news portion of the day. Finally, something you can relate to, and your head does not shake wearily back and forth, you do not turn the page with a sigh of cynical disenchantment. For a few minutes every day there are talking pigs, blue people, wise ass cats and a lot of crazy impossible fun stuff happening. Then you're done with the funnies and once again there's none of those things, which, all in all, seems a glaring oversight on Nature's part. Might as well laugh it up whenever we can.