Provo, Utah

I recently had the horrific experience of driving through Provo, Utah. Now I've been to other godforsaken places like Tulsa Oklahoma, and the entire state of Kansas. I've even been to New Jersey which I think must be Latin for sewer. And despite all the grotesque things I've seen...trash, homelessness, ignorance, disease, and 4-Square Ultranacles....I do believe Provo was the most painful drive.

There's just so much going on there to bitch about. First there's the fact that it MIGHT have been a beautiful place. It's got giant snow capped mountains. It's got a nice semi-flat valley...and it has a lake. A nice big lake.

Not many places have a City with a Big lake and Big mountains right there all together. Not many places have a whole population of obedient and clean cut youth who are willing to mindlessly obey a distant authority figure who COULD tell them to clean the place up. If you gotta wear white clothes and have little perfect children wouldn't you expect to have a perfect little city to go with it all?

You'd think people would check that out and say to themselves..wow what an opportunity for some good City Planning. Or perhaps, WOW, what natural beauty, let's try and design some architecture that will compliment the surroundings. Or maybe just "hey it could be real nice here, let's not fuck it up".

Apparently that inner dialogue did not occur to anyone living in Provo, Utah.

Where to begin...First we've got a giant and defunct steel plant. Raping the environment doesn't begin to describe the devastation that's there. Giant fields of grossness. Huge black and rust colored buildings and metal graveyards go on for miles. It's expected if you live in...oh...Pittsburgh...but Provo's supposed to be some Western Mecca of clean living...this seems like an obvious thing to do some radical clean up on...but no one appears to have touched it.

Then, if that isn't enough...Provo seems to have modeled half the remaining valley on the Dig up and Destroy development model. Large tracts just torn to shit for no apparent reason. Open Dirt pits, abandoned whatnot's (metal, vehicles, who the hell knows). And then you have the tract housing... Now I understand the need to conform in Provo...BYU must require it to be taken every semester. But this is ridiculous. Blocks and blocks of the worst of 70s building...even if it was built in 2009...all square, cheap, and monotone. Rows and rows of the cheapest, crappiest, most dreadful row houses ever. All apparently dedicated to the idea that you should marry young, breed prolifically, and buy a piece of property that will devalue faster than the Detroit Auto Market.

And then we come to the road signs... It boggles the mind. Really it does. Sign after sign, extolling the virtues of MyLDScommunity.com and LDSsingles.com and BYU this and LDSBrides.that If anyone ever...and I mean EVER wonders what a Church-State looks like, they need only drive through Provo and be flooded with the billboards demanding they bow down and pay homage to the one true Marketing Miracle that is Provo Culture. Walmart must be envious...well it would be if it weren't the most popular place to buy cheap overseas crap in the valley. The greatest irony among ironies down there, however, is the Free Yourself From Polygamy signs that are mixed in. A nice sun flower tells those trapped in a cultish lifestyle that there is support...a different way of life is available.

And I think that's a fine message. So I'm gonna send it out here as well. THERE IS A WAY TO FREE YOURSELF FROM A CULTISH LIFESTYLE. MOVE THE HELL AWAY FROM PROVO, UTAH!

And last, but certainly not least...we have the few truly INTERESTING buildings in Provo...nope, not the temples. Those now look and feel as mass produced as McDonald's...and I don't shop there either. What I'm talking about are the Taj Mahal like buildings that actually catch the eye. The giant, ornate, palatial buildings dedicated to the life's blood of Provo second only do the LDS Church...Multi Level Marketing. Noni-Juice and other vile Am-way spin-offs and wanna bee's that promise that if you only buy, sell, drink their unique and exotic sputum derived from the rare glug glug worm you'll run faster, jump higher, meet god, and sell him on a new franchise! It's nice to see many of these obscenities sitting comfortably next to other insta-fix and immediate gratification icons like Steven's Henniger College, and Provo College, and any other for profit diploma mill that will give you paper and promise amazing career opportunities if you become a para-office-massage-assistant for the low low price of only $10,000 for the 9 month course...and a free laptop gonna be thrown in ta boot! I'm glad that the graduates of those fine academic institutions are able to simply walk next door to get their new exciting opportunity distributing bug juice to each other.

There's more than one reason the pyramid is used on so many old buildings in Utah.

That is all

Diets and Exercises

Yup, I'm sick of it. Sick of the most unhealthy health craze this national engages in. We've become the fattest, stupidest, and most wasteful nation on earth...all the while, glamorizing ridiculously false and unhealthy ideals of beauty...in order to...(Drum roll) SELL YOU SHIT YOU DON"T NEED SO YOU CAN DELUDE YOURSELF INTO THINKING YOUR BODY WILL BECOME SOME UNNATURAL AND UNREALISTIC PARAGON OF BEAUTY.

Well guess what. It's shit. You are a dumb shit for believing it. Marketers who are stupid as hell but still smarter than most of you, know that if they put an anorexic chain smoking supermodel who's been surgically altered, airbrushed, and digitally enhanced onto an elliptical machine while eating nutrivitavegameat mix that all the lemmings will rush out to buy both. And they'll spend top dollar.

A week later the exercise machine will be gathering dust and we'll have discovered that the mix causes cancer, scurvy, and tastes like shit while leaving you with more intense hunger pains than before.

I don't like much. Hell, I don't like anything. But I do believe that a pretty bright guy named Michael Pollan got it right (Just look it up damn it). He basically boiled all dieting down to "Eat, not too much, mostly plants". I think he also suggested we get off our asses now and then and walk around our cubicles.

No special machines. No idiotic grapefruit or protein only claptrap. And especially NO DEHYDRATED OR REFROZEN SPECIAL DELIVERY CHEMICAL BOMBS DISGUISED AS A MOLLY CRAAG DINNER. Just eat a decent meal and move around some.

WOW. What a damn surprise. People who diet gain all the weight back x2. People who exercise also die of heart attacks. In other words...Live your damn lives like NORMAL sane creatures and stop trying to artificially screw with it all.

That also means don't chow down on 4 double fattymacs at every meal. And don't spend all your waking hours in front of the computer or the TV...DUH.

But if you think eating Luna Bars and running 9 miles a day makes you a tolerable person or a better person, or even a healthier person you are wrong. You are an image obsessed freak who's probably developed a Cluster B personality disorder due to your idiotic fixation with your own beauty.

Brush your damn teeth. Take some kinda shower once a day or so...and iron your clothes. Beyond that it should be pretty simple to avoid being a total train wreck. If those things don't fix you...then Darlin...all the exercise and surgery in the world isn't gonna make up for it.

Stick that in your Planet Fitness and smoke it.

TSA, Flying and my Goddamn Shoes!

Ok, time to fly again and what the hell! To my knowledge there has never...in the history of mankind...been a plane brought down by a shoe. Nope...not once.

There is a story ONCE about a crazy bastard who THOUGHT he could light his show on fire or make a bomb out of it...AND HE WAS WRONG. Dumbass got the shit kicked out of him and all his shoes did was stink. And yet...and yet...Every damn American has to take off their shoes for HOW MANY FUCKING YEARS NOW?

This is absurd. We live in a country that is truly brain damaged. Missiles have brought down planes. Guns have brought down planes. Apparently box cutters have brought down planes. But not our damn shoes. And yet...in an absurdist exercise of truly cosmic proportions we live in a country where people actually DO IT... They take their shoes off their stanky feet and put them through a metal detector so that some minimum wage halfwit from the TSA can stare at them.

Meanwhile our shoeless feet are now picking up hell knows what from the pig standing in front of us who also has their shoes off. Not even decent enough to give us some disposable flip flops so that we can avoid gangrene of the toes...nope...THAT is our security.

Amazingly, in Israel where they have actual daily honest to god killers out to get them every friggin moment...THEY GET TO KEEP THEIR SHOES ON.

Then again I frequently watch the bozos at security passing through people who I'm 99% sure are child molester wall street embezzling muggers while yanking out the 89 year old Grandma on a walker to give her the full rub down and cavity search.

Something isn't right here folks. And the sheeple accept it. Any place else they'd either have to have uzi's pointed to make us comply or the peasants would be storming the castle with pitch forks and torches. We'd drive the slimebastard Airline companies that allow and support this crap right out of business. We'd refuse to fly. We'd vote every dickless asshole who votes for this crap immediately out of office.

But nope, not us. We suck up this moronic crap like the cyanide flavored kool-aid it is and we ask for more. We even voted in the new Super Hope Obama fooling ourselves into thinking that it meant WE were committed to change. Well this proves us wrong. We are lemmings who love to obey our overlords. We can't help running off the cliff. We don't question. We don't think. And we can't tell a damn bit of difference between actual security and simple conformist idiocy in a TSA uniform waving an idiotic policy around that is an international embarrassment.

That's who we are. We are what we allow. Until we demand it stop we deserve all the shit they can shovel at us.

Kindles? Kindle 2s?

For those of you who don't know about them yet...these are "electronic" books being pimped all over the place on Amazon.com. Apparently they believe that it's too obnoxious to read a book you can carry around in your back pocket for $5...they'd like to eliminate the day of the paperback book and give us all a new spiffy electric gadget.

Now I'm sure a lot of people think this is spiffy as hell. Me...I think it's an absurd waste of time and money and is very likely to just make us dumber...as if we need that.

First let's describe it. It's essentially a PDA or small flat screen with a hard drive that you lug around. I am quite sure you can't bend it and you aren't supposed to drop it or let it get wet...and the damn thing costs $350...then you can DOWNLOAD your book, stare at the little flat screen and scroll and scroll and flip your pages...as long as your little hard drive keeps working and as long as your batter doesn't wear out gee you can read!

And the downloads aka "books" are almost as expensive as a regular damn book you CAN drop, get wet (they dry, I've tested)...that you can loan to your friends...that you can throw across the room when you're frustrated...that you can easily read in the restroom...and that NEVER run out of battery time.

But hey let's not teach kids to go to libraries or to collect their favorite stories or to respect the feel and history of a signed first edition...nope, let's just fold their novels into a box just like the rest of the crap (video games, reality tv shows, and social network sites) that already controls most of their life (I get the irony of writing about this HERE). Let's reduce everyone's existence to starting at one little electrically dependent glowing screen and then tether them to a power source...OH WAIT I ALREADY SAW THIS IN WALL-E.

I know where this goes...we pay more and get less, and become increasingly stupid for it. If we reduce books to more anonymous electronic scroll kids won't read it and adults will treat it all like a set of instructions for Ikea Furniture (if you don't understand this try and put together one of their book shelves).

So SCREW YOU Amazon. Screw your Kindle. Screw your brain sucking overpriced electronic crap. Screw your attempt to simplify our lives to a series of meaningless expensive downloads. To HELL with your attempts to further degrade the art of writing (I can do that here all by myself). Anyone paying $350 + download costs for this crap deserves what they get...a lower IQ, eye strain, increasing credit card debt, and a confused look on their face when they realize their batteries died 1/2 way through their flight to wherever they think their heading reading their OH SO SPIFFY Kindle 2.

Can't wait for the Kindle 3...I'm sure it'll have a vibrating feature or pick your nose for you or something else to replace some other basic life activity...all for the low low price of your cash, your brain, and your imaginary soul.

It's crap and it needs to go away.

Economists and Shilling Politicians

Ok back from the holidays and the hangover caused by the end of 8 years of Bush idiocy. For good or bad that doesn't mean that the idiocy is over...nope it's been rolling for a good long time and it won't stop in the foreseeable future.

What's really under my skin these days is all the morons comparing today's DEPRESSION with anything that's ever happened before. Here is some news for everyone....the Economists and Politicians are full of shit. Period. They have NO clue what they're doing and all the trillions of dollars they are tossing around isn't going to be much more effective than a monkey throwing its own feces at a wall. Some will stick somewhere but it won't be art and the room is just going to smell worse at the end.

Here are a few things people WONT talk about that underline all this "recession" nonesense. We've just spent 30 years spending money WE NEVER HAD! We have a 30 year credit binge to make up for. That's not something you can just STIMULATE your way past.

We've also ALL lived far beyond our means...each and every stupid one of us. Here's some news for you...if you are a single income earner and make less than $50k a year you DO NOT make enough money to live in a 300K house and drive a new car. Simple. 60 years ago someone would work their ass off to buy a house EQUAL to their yearly income and cars and school and every other damn thing were a MUCH smaller percentage of their total income.

Today we have two people working and they are now spending 3-5X their combined income on a HOUSE, the cost of college is around 450% more than it was in the prior generation, and suddenly everyone needs to drive a NEW and almost universally inefficient car because we are ENTITLED.

And the Economists and Politicians have NO will to tell us the hard truth which is this: You NEVER deserved the fancy toys you had. You NEVER paid for all the crap you had. Most of our standard of living came from DEBT and what didn't come from debt came from the exploitation of 3rd world labor making cheap electronic goods.

And now that exploited 3rd World is stepping up to bite us in the ass. Yep they figured it out. In China and Indenosia and India their people are building MANUFACTURING PLANTS and SAVING money and WORKING HARD and their standard of living is sky rocketing. At the same time WE have become couch bound blobs who are so ignorant of the world around us that we know less about our own country than a grade schooler in Europe does.

We have shipped all our manufacturing base oversease. We've massively overbuilt housing developments (and houses) so we're doomed to have empty rotting husks of giant barnlike structures that no one can afford. We can't compete on service because the new "Global" technology allow someone in Bangladesh to take our McDonald's order. We have fewer Ph.Ds inventing things than Europe or China, and we make nothing except injection molded plastic furniture (I thought Asia was supposed to make all of that for us) while the rest of the world builds our Furniture and TV sets and then loans US the money to buy it from them.

We're screwed people. We may borrow a few trillion dollars and pretend the sky isn't falling but it is. That's the truth. The world will be flat and it will be due to our getting squashed.

And lest we take those comparisons between today and WWII and the post Great Depression too seriously, remember this. AT that point (1930s-1950) we did a couple things we can't currently repeat. First, we shipped a huge number of the working men overseas to fight a war for a few years. That opened up the labor force and suddenly we had women in the work place earning income....we went from single income families to DUAL INCOME families. When the men returned home the women kept working and families experienced increased income...not sure how we can do that again unless we start pimping out our kids to the meat plants and that didn't work out so well a couple centuries ago.

We also began a massive program of industrialization. And, for the life of me, I don't see that happening. We just don't have the space, resources, or corporate will to yank the making of things away from the highly profitable overseas plants in order to build it here. And Corporations have no financial reason to do it. I think that ship set sail years ago.

Finally...we don't have the will. We are fat and lazy and despite all the moaning and groaning...we don't understand the concept of sacrifice. We think we are OWED an easy life. We think this is the land of milk and honey and that we are entitled to new cars and big houses and lots of Reality TV and we can never ever ever forget that AMERICA IS #1...whatever the hell that means.

We never learned from the British empire as it slowly rotted out of it's Empire. We didn't learn from the USSR when it over extended itself in Afghanistan and bankrupted itself with militarism. We just don't learn. And we're going to suck eggs for it. I'd say BANK ON IT...but no one saves anymore.

A little more optimistic

8 years of idiocy and hell is almost over. 2 months left of insane signing statements and uncountable pardons and insider favors to go. But I have a bit of faith that Obama will in fact be a dramatic improvement.

Maybe it'll soon be time to return to complaining about how people drive and the fact that the grocery stores are quietly reducing the size of their canned products while increasing the prices.

November 4th ended up being a very good day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr-nC37ZRYg

Yes we can!

Undecided Idiots

You know who I hate? Well besides Ann Coulter anyway. Undecided Voters on election day.

Here's a basic idea...THINK, USE YOUR DAMN BRAIN, SPEND 5 DAMN MINUTES OVER THE PREVIOUS YEAR TO LOOK SOME SHIT UP!

Seriously. I've talked to half a dozen people in the last week who "weren't sure" who they were going to vote for. And in every case they were unable to articulate one coherent stance or position of either candidate. It is stunning that in this INFORMATION AGE, people can't go to...oh, I don't know...THE CANDIDATE'S WEB SITE maybe? Go to the source and look up their ACTUAL positions?

IT's a thought...which apparently one more than these people are capable of. Let's see...I have an old geezer who's spent the last 30 years feeding at the Republican trough who picks a playboy bunny to be his sidekick after he's had a lifetime of chasing skirts. He's for God, Guns, and against Gays and can't articulate any meaningful economic, educational, or international change that he's going to make. More of the same because HE HAS BEEN PART OF THAT SAME. Ok...if you like the way things are and have been going you go vote for him.

On the other hand we have a young black man who focuses on new social policy, is wildly popular around the world and who doesn't appear to be led around by his pecker. He isn't a psychotic elf screaming to steal your guns, he appears tolerant of diversity and has actual lived and worked outside trying to help single mothers and needy children and...instead of calling for his head and chanting "KILL KILL", the world appears to WANT to talk to him...novel concept there...being loved instead of hated. IF you'd like to see a change in this nation's shameful race history, if you'd like to see us regain some of our international status and popularity (So maybe people will want to stop bombing us?) and so that things like basic social services for the middle class aren't just a vague memory...then you vote for this guy.

Is this an unbiased comparison? HELL NO. I'm liberal (open minded, willing to help others, believing in the constitution and a social contract and responsibilities etc.) and proud of it. But moreover I'm aware enough to see that there is almost NO way you could be confused between these wildly different alternatives...and this is NOT a choice between strawberry and pistachio ice cream. This isn't a decision between rooting for Notre Dame and Michigan...this isn't a damn game. IT IS YOUR LIFE. If you don't have a clue what policies are in YOUR OWN ACTUAL BEST INTEREST then you are either a hopeless idiot or woefully neglecting your basic human curiosity. And to think that 9% of the voting population is sitting around at this point still wondering makes me suspect we do need an IQ test for a voter card.

Then again there might be another, easier explaination. The current way things are going sucks beyond belief and the world hates us because we've been morons living on credit for 30 years, we're reviled around the world because GWB has been a warmongering thief, and we've smashed the middle class and concentrated wealth into a small number of internationally invested creeps who are happily reducing working class America to a community of serfs. THINGS ARE ROTTEN and GETTING WORSE. If you're still attached to that enough to vote Republican then I suspect you are either a racist or a reflexive religious zealot listening to a conservative pastor telling you to vote republican...probably because he's a racist who is also under the confused belief that an R in front of a candidates name means they believe in the same intolerant, non-loving, abortion clinic bombing crap that he does.

Everyone needs to wake the hell up. Realize where their interests really are (Dick Cheney's interests are NOT mine...so we'll naturally vote differently)..and then spend 5 bloody minutes learning something in this almost endless political process...THEN VOTE ACCORDINGLY. Stop playing stupid or playing coy and just open your damn eyes.

Out.