If you can get past the dinosaur, you’re better than me (or just have more time on your hands…)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s true.  Our elected government officials (yes, the ones we voted for) believe we’re a bunch of mindless drones, incapable of independent thought or any cognitive decision-making ability.  Evidence supporting their views: we elected them.  How utterly short-sighted and stupid of us all.  I mean, the fact is, we’re little more than lemmings, and must be protected from ourselves. Were it not for our kindly bureaucratic overlord/caretakers, we’d probably all be standing around with trousers full of our own excrement and blank bovine stares on our faces, drooling and incessantly muttering incomprehensible drivel.

Maybe I’m going a little over the top here, but really? Are signs like this really necessary? Is there anyone over the age of accountability (that’s 8 years old to my readers outside of Utah) that doesn’t know beer has alcohol? Our alcohol laws in this state are beyond ridiculous, and completely ineffective at their stated goals.

Let’s review some of the absurdities from a logical and reasonable standpoint, shall we?

First, the only alcohol you can buy anywhere but a state-run outlet (more on thast later), is regular old beer. And not even all of that. You see, beer is a malt bevergae made from hops and barley, primarily. Just recently, some malt beverages containing alcohol  - bitch beer to you and I, “alcopops” to Chris Buttars and the other morons on the hill – were relegated to a special place in the aforementioned state-run outlet.

Statistically, beer is the third-most popular beverage on the planet, right behind water and tea, and it’s been around almost as long.

But back to the bitch-beers. They’ve been essentially outlawed, presumably because if they were available in supermarkets (like everywhere else in the country), teens might mistake them for something they’re not and inadvertently let alcohol pass their lips, thereby relegating their immortal soul to eternal damnation for drinking Satan’s Kool-Aid.

My problem with this is two-fold. First, the teens KNOW what they are, even if they’ve lived under a rock for the last 16 years.  Second, you must show valid ID proving you are of legal age to purchase them, just like beer.  Oh, and not to mention that when you get it at the state-run agency outlet, it’s room temperature and $2-a-frickin’-bottle. You can buy prescription pain killers for less, and this is supposed to somehow protect us from ourselves?

Moving on, did you know that restaurants that serve liquor (the Devil’s Joy Juice), are required to hide it behind a 10-foot wall, lest it fall under the gaze of an uneducated and hapless minor who may be whipped into a berserker-like frenzy of alcohol-denial-fueled rage and be forever lost to Lucifer? Yes, really.  OK, the part about the frenzy and Lucifer I made up, but it’s actually pretty close to some of the arguments used by our bureacratic overlords to get the bill passed. But yeah, a 10′ wall in a restaurant hiding the bar from the eyes of minors. Seriously.

And now, on to the state-run alcohol outlets. I’ve actually been outside of Utah several times, and managed to sneak back in (a few times I’ve even been able to smuggle in some illegal fireworks, alcohol and/or tobacco products with me). Did you know that pretty much anywhere outside of Utah you can buy liquor at the grocery store? Yeah, in other states, they must actually have to talk to their kids about alcohol, being as how it’s so readily available and right next to the Doritos and Bean Dip (I can only imagine how difficult and uncomfortable  it must be to talk to a teen about Doritos and Beand Dip!).

OK, I’m winding down now. It’s just irritating when laws are passed tthat assume that the general public are pretty much retarded and need to be protected from themselves. It’s what people call a “Nanny State”, and we live in one. I don’t imagine things will get much better with Lt. Governor Gary R. Herbert poised to take the reins…

I ran across several blog-worthy videos today, and rather than make several different posts, they’re all in this one.

STOP! Hammertime…

How come nothing this cool ever happens when I go shopping?

Clearly she’s got A LOT to say!

Yeah, it’s amusing as hell the way she just keeps going… and going… and going…
(opens in new window)

Top 60 Ghetto names

Even the ones that are clearly made up are pretty funny

And finally…

Facebook Status-off

This year was the first year Megan and I have gone to the Pride Festival – weird, huh? You’d think we woulda gone sooner. Turns out we picked a perfect year for the parade, which started at 10:00 AM. We decided the night before at Liv’s party that we were going to be there around 9:00-9:30. Megan said she wanted coffee, so I told her we’d need to leave home at 8:30 or so (knowing full well this meant that we wouldn’t leave until almost 9:00). The plan was set.

The next morning, I woke Megan up at 8:15. Sure enough, she had my hangover. I still don’t understand how that works. Maybe it’s like gravity. I don’t really need to know how or why, so much as just accept the fact that it does work. Anyway… We left pretty close to on time. It looked a little gray outside, so we packed umbrellas, but I was still in a t-shirt, shorts, and flops – a choice I would very soon regret.

See that picture up at the top there? Yeah, that ain’t this year’s festival. It’s last years and it looks like it was gorgeous.

By the time we parked and found a perfect spot to watch the parade, around 280 South and 300 East, it had started to sprinkle. Y’know, like Utah rain does – trying to decide if it’s actually gonna rain.  I’m sure my insolence angered the Utah Weather Gods (Pope & Eubank, as they’re affectionately known), ’cause it pretty much dumped on us during the whole parade. All three of us were drenched (in spite of our umbrellas).  And pretty much as soon as the parade was over, it stopped raining. Oh, it drizzled here and there for a few minutes, and it was still very overcast, but nothing like what it was during the parade.

After the parade, we went inside the festival and found some of our friends that had booths. We ran into Mary Olsen, who we didn’t know had a booth, and Darin Jones, who we knew before hand did have a booth. I bought a t-shirt from Darin that’s super-awesome, mostly because I own a print of the piece that insopired it (also his).

Speaking of which, one of the highlights was the t-shirts – in the parade, mostly, but just on people walking around the festival, too. Some of the highlights from the parade t-shirts were the “Legalize Gay” done by American Apparel, the “I Give Oral” from the HIV/Aids testing group, and this one below. It’s a bit hard to read, but it says “Buttars Likes Boys – he had a ranch full of  them!”

One of the most interesting things I found was a booth sponsored by Gays and the Gospel. The banner outside their booth read “12 Scriptural reasons Latter-Day Saints should support marriage and equality” I only spoke to the young man inside the booth for a moment, but he was friendly and kind – nothing confrontational about him at all. He had a very loving and accepting tone when he spoke of the LDS Church, and how passionate he was about marriage equality. There was no anger or disdain for the LDS Church, just a desire to have his voice heard. From a doctrinal background, his stuff’s pretty solid and makes sense. The scriptures cited are contextual and relevant, and make some very good points. You can read more about it at www.GaysandTheGospel.org.

But I think the part of the festival that I enjoyed the most was the openess and freedom with which everyone expressed themselves. Some of it was as simple as a couple feeling free to simply hold hands while they walked, or affectionately embrace or kiss each other, when outside the festival in ordinary walks of life they may not dare to do so. And some of it was just the pure energy of a group of people celebrating their own and each others diversity. Truth is, for most of the festival I walked around with a silly/stupid grin on my face just because I felt like smiling – I was just happy for no particular reason at all.

I can tell you this – I’ll be back next year in celebration and support.

A few weeks back, Jeffery Ross was on Dancing with the Stars’ season finale and he ‘roasted’ all of the celebrity dancers. He wasn’t funny, and in most cases he hit way below the belt. I’m sure he thought he was funny, but as far as I can tell, nobody else did.

If you want to see how a roast ought to be done, look no further than Carrie Fisher. Her roast of George Lucas is classy, funny, entertaining, and most of all, endearing. She actually pays tribute to him will having a bit of fun at his expense.