Really?!!!

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_10056440?source=rss Read it. Just read it. Gag. "A wedding is just another beginning." Deep, Stephenie. Crazy DEEEEEEP.

Bubble Wrap

Driving home the other day, I whipped around a bend on the old I-215 near 6200 South and the East Side Foothills when what to my wondering eyes should appear.... BUT A HUGE INDUSTRIAL-SIZED ROLL OF BUBBLE WRAP LYING IN THE LEFT SHOULDER OF THE ROAD. JUST LYING THERE. BEGGING TO BE BUBBLE POPPED. DID I MENTION IT WAS A HUGE ROLL OF BUBBLE WRAP? LYING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD?! A MAJESTIC ROLL OF PLASTIC AND AIR, THREE FEET IN DIAMETER AND PERFECTLY LINED UP FOR A GOOD GRILL PLATE SHELLACKING. SO MANY GOOD MEMORIES FLOODED MY MIND... IT WAS ALL I COULD DO TO KEEP FROM SWERVING CRAZILY ONTO THE SHOULDER, A MANIACAL LAUGH ON MY LIPS AND UNFETTERED JOY IN MY HEART. EVEN MY GENERALLY SUBDUED BRAIN SCREAMED: YES! YOU HAVE WAITED YOUR ENTIRE LIFE FOR THIS! YOU WERE BORN TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN! THIS WILL ONLY COME AROUND ONCE IN A LIFETIME! YOU WERE DESTINED FOR BUBBLE WRAP GREATNESS! YOU MUST DO THIS! CAN'T YOU JUST IMAGINE THE SATISFYING POP THAT THING WILL MAKE WHEN YOU PLASTER IT WITH YOUR COROLLA?! (I'm sure there were other sports-related and otherwise motivational cliches. That's how my brain works in the car) BUT SOME COOLER PART OF ME PREVAILED, AND I REFRAINED. PROBABLY THINKING MY COROLLA MIGHT JUST AS EASILY POP AS THE BUBBLE WRAP. damn that cooler part. I REGRET THAT DECISIVE INACTION TO THIS DAY. I WILL REGRET IT TO THE END OF MY LIFE. HOW OFTEN DO YOU GET THE CHANCE TO EXPLODE AN INDUSTRIAL SIZED ROLL OF BUBBLE WRAP WITH YOUR CAR? I have a feeling I might have to stage this situation again later in life in order to move on. Only then, I'll have a Cadillac. And expensive, loud popping Bubble Wrap. Still. WHAT WAS I THINKING?! :'(

Five Things I've Learned From Mommy Bloggers

1. Smiling is an inconceivably cute miracle of life; passing gas is even cuter; pooping is the cutest. 2. If you tell people your life is fun enough, it will truly be fun. Serious fun. Great fun. Happy fun. Funny fun. Fun fun. If you're not happy or not having fun, there is something seriously wrong with you, because you should always be having fun. Serious. 3. Young Adult Romance Novels (Twilight, DUH!) Are The Epitome Of High Quality Fiction And Should Be Required Reading For Every Self-Respecting Woman Ever Because Edward Is So Hot And Every Guy Should Be Like That Even Though We Know That No Guy Should REALLY Be Like That But Oh My Gosh He Just Gives Me Tingles Even Though He Simultaneously Scares Me, But I Like That He Simultaneously Scares Me, So I'm Going To Keep Reading About It Even Though I Know It's Trashy, But I Try To Convince Myself And Everyone Around Me That It REALLY TRULY IS Quality Fiction, Because If Enough People Believe In It And Scream About It, It MUST Be Good And If It's Good According To Everyone Else, Well Then I'm Justified And Actually To Be Celebrated For My Choice In High Literature. *Breathe* 4. No one's babies are cuter than Mommy Blogger babies. Don't even try, or they will come after you with a wicked sharp comment on your own blog. Be ready, less cute Mommy Blogger baby! You're next... 5. Perfect Husbands are a dime a dozen. Every single Mommy Blogger has found herself one. They cook, they clean, they work hard, they crochet, they massage their wives' feet, they sculpt full body statues of their wives (who have perfect bodies), they even take out the garbage with a certain panache that drives Mommy Bloggers wild. These guys are so perfect, they must be cute when they pass gas, too.

Political Cartoons

A small smattering of political cartoons I've enjoyed in the past few weeks. Enjoy! Alright, so this last one is not technically a cartoon. But it's so...so full of...I don't know. But it's full.

WALL*E

Alright, so today's letter is not technically from today. It's from July 14--Monday. But a letter in today's paper alluded to it, so I had to check out this doozy from one of our faithful Bountiful residents. Looks like that damnable left-wing media is at it again! This time, it's in the guise of a cute robot and a human race gone...obese. Read on below: Again, black is the letter, blue is my response. This letter is in response to Michael Gearson's starry-eyed review of the movie "WALL*E" in the July 12 Comment section. I took my 9-year-old son to see this movie the day it came out. As I bought our tickets the clerk handed my son a small package. After the movie, he opened it to find a plastic WALL*E watch that wouldn't work, along with three trading cards for another soon-to-be-released movie. Alright. So far I'm with you. I went to go see WALL*E the day it came out too. With Erin. However, we didn't get anything cool like a watch! Where did you go, and do you think they have any more left?! Trading cards, too?! LUCKY!!!

The irony of my child receiving junk related to the "WALL*E" movie did not escape me. Nor did the hypocrisy. It's acceptable to pick on fat people. But try portraying any other cross-section of our society in such a negative light. Make a kids' movie showing where the ills of selecting a child's gender might take us in 700 years. I doubt you'd get such a dreamy review.

WHOA, Whoa, whoa. How did we get from irony of junk (which I agree with) to the hypocrisy of picking on fat people?! That's quite the presumptive jump there. Do you really think someone would enjoy this movie simple because of one of the messages it portrays? Let's think very carefully about what movies don't carry messages. Can't think of any? Good. That's because there are none. Literature, movies, tv, media...they all are stories, and stories tend to have messages in them. Now, please don't ruin a good movie by stripping it down to it's bare-bones message. If we did that to every story, here's what we'd get:

Snow White: Girls are only good for looking pretty, whistling while they work at home, taking care of the guys, and being wicked when they're jealous.

Pinocchio: The quest to become a real person requires you to never lie, listen to the voices/crickets in your head, and to be eaten by a gigantic whale at some point in your life.

Cinderella: You're only going to break out of the middle class and into the fairy tale life of the upper burgeouise by MAGIC. Education? Skill? Personality? NO. Talking mice, a fairy godmother, and a pumpkin.

It's a Wonderful Life: A life is only worth living if it influences everybody and makes your local town not only a better place, but an actual 50s Utopia. Sounds like Communism to me! Oh, Jimmy Stewart, you red dog.

Beauty and the Beast: At the end of the day, she'll dance with you, laugh with you, teach you manners, play with you, and even give a peck here and there, but you have to look good to get the Beauty.

Liberals cannot foretell the future any better than conservatives. I personally give the human race more credit than the "WALL*E" movie does. The cute robot held my son's attention. The blatant political agenda was, thankfully, way over his head.

Ellen Hindman

Bountiful

Oh, apparently this is a VAST, LEFT WING LIBERAL MEDIA PROPAGANDA PIECE!!! WALL*E must stand for We're All Loosey Liberals * Everybody! Below, you can see WALL*E trying to hold up what must be a red flag with a hammer and sickle on it. Some good American must have photo shopped that out.

I couldn't have known. How AWFUL that these pesky liberals then hijack OUR American, Apple Pie Pixar Movie! Then these pinkos go so far as to propose taking care of the earth, taking responsibility for our actions, and working hard to establish community and build up the human race.

And later, they have the GAUL to adopt the traditionally conservative power of emotion: holding hands, dancing, sharing moments with each other, and then go on to destroy the whole film with a simple, electronic kiss. How dare the obviously liberal Pixar pawns try to show emotion in a future populated by robots, pollution, and obese people wrapped up in materialism?!

Huh. If you ask me, we're already there. But I guess that would mark me as a horrible, left-leaning, liberal scum bag.

Sorry, Ellen, but if all you saw in WALL*E was a Left-Wing Prediction of the world, then you missed one of the most touching, heartfelt, sweet, funny movies to come around in a long time.

Project Update

In an effort to be a more consistent/gratifying/sniveling/appeasing/attention grabbing poster (and to hopefully boost my readership to the 6 billion hits a day level I'm looking for), I'm going to take one of my favorite daily routines and publish a small portion of it regularly. If not daily, at least regularly. Each morning I wake up, stretch, yawn, shower, yawn, stretch, and eat breakfast. While eating Breakfast I read the morning paper(s). One of my guilty pleasures is to read the Deseret News' Letters to the Editor and have an inner dialogue with the letter writers. Some are hilarious, some are tongue-in-cheek, some are diabolical, and others are wish-they-were-tongue-in-cheek-but-wouldn't-you-believe-it-this-person-is-totally-serious-don'-cha-know! Below is an example from one of today's most choice Letters: Letter is in black, my comments in blue. Semitrailer trucks should be banned from I-80 between 1300 East and State Street until the construction is nearly complete. As it is now, the Utah Highway Patrol only "recommends" that semis detour around the city by staying on I-15 and I-215. This route would avoid truck-car collisions like the one on July 9 that stalled traffic for hours and left a white Cadillac literally hanging over an overpass. Good eye for detail, Carolyn. And a sense of the dramatic! Just picture the scene: a white Cadillac, hanging precipitously over a Utah Highway overpass. Now we just need some embellishments: there's an elderly woman at the wheel. No, no...a baby at the wheel! Hmmm....scratch that. Have an elderly woman driving with lots of babies in the car. Have it tipping over the overpass, barely balancing, with the woman trying desperately to keep the kids in the back seat from crawling forward to tip the precarious balance of the cream white Cadillac Seville. Enter: Super Hero. I-80 in this area is now a white-knuckle drive. The highway patrol's weak "recommendation" should become enforced law, with officers ready to ticket offenders. Way to get your dig in at the "recommendation" by "putting it" in "quotation marks." I can just taste the sarcasm. Ooooohhh...and more white imagery! I love it!!! White cars, white nuckles, white patrolmen... Wait. Scratch that, too. We don't need patroling highway officers. We need roving Terminator-style highway patrol soldiers to actually run down the semi-trucks, jump into the respective cabs and force the truck drivers from their vehicles, killing them if need be. We'll all love the new highway when it's finished — if we survive until then. Cue dramatic music. Enter Hollywood Movie Voice: "I-80. A little freeway in a little town in a little piece of America. Quiet and quaint until....the road fought back. Death. Destruction. Tragedy. Traffic. See it all in: "CONSTRUCTION DAY" Carolyn B. Nelson Salt Lake City May we all survive the impending construction, Carolyn. May we all survive.

Politics as Usual up on the Hill

I'll let you guys determine for yourselves. No matter who's at fault in this one, politics is getting dirty in Utah's Capital... http://www.sltrib.com/ci_9807783?source=rss For the full text of Walker's resignation letter, click here. This whole thing just smacks of too much power vested in too few people who themselves want to keep that power to themselves. Can someone please explain to me why the Treasurer is an elected position? Let it be appointed by the governor (reflecting the Federal model) and poof, you suddenly take politics out of the position. I guess we wouldn't have much to talk about if we took the politik out of politics, though. And think of the tens of thousands of Political Science majors who would be out of a degree...

Disappointment

Well, my grand experiment with Hot Words and World Tagging so far has been a failure. An utter, complete failure.

To my loyal readers, bless you. Continue the good fight and keep spreading the news.

We'll get the EBV onto every computer in this tiny world of ours soon!


In other news, Happy Birthday America! 221 years since the signing of the Constitution! Yaaaay! To put that into perspective, England recently celebrated its 10,000th anniversary. Congrats, England! You're OLD!

May we continue to celebrate our independence from a nation who didn't really mind losing us all that much by: blowing things up, setting our backyards on fire, and playing Straussian, stirring brass band music at really loud decibles!

*On a very serious note, I LOVE the 4th of July. And I adore Fireworks. Especially the ones that explode and cascade down like some fiery willow tree.

**On an even more very serious note, got my Stimulus check today. 300.00 of Patriotic Capitalistic Economic Theory! I'm going to track exactly how I use this money over the next little while to see just what kind of fun I can have while stimulating the economy.

Only in America can they make it your duty to go spend money.