Salt City Sinner

OK - first off, I *hate* the militia movement : On Monday, nine members of a Christian terrorist militant group were arraigned and charged by a grand jury with conspiring to attack and kill police officers including those attending a funeral in an attempt to expand their war against the group’s enemy, namely the United States... The group, Hutaree, consists of several members in several states, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. The members were planning to kill a police officer, and then when other officers attended the funeral, they planned to detonate IED devices to kill police officers in attendance of the service. FBI officials stated that the attacks were being planned by the group to occur some time in April. Hey, assholes! My cousin just got back from Afghanistan where he led a counter-IED team. Way to give him a warm welcome home by trying to encourage a second "War of Yankee Aggression," you illiterate, rancid bastards. You can join Fred Phelps and enjoy a special place i...

From Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian : It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he'd made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd beginning to mill and the riflebarrel so hot the wiping patches sizzled in the bore and the animals by the thousands and tens of thousands and the hides pegged out over actual square miles of ground and the teams of skinners spelling one another around the clock and the shooting and shooting weeks and months till the bore shot slick and the stock shot loose at the tang and their shoulders were yellow and blue to the elbow and the tandem wagons groaned away over the prairie twenty and twenty-two ox teams and the flint hides by the ton and hundred ton and the meat rotting on the ground and the air whining with flies and the buzzards and ravens and the night a horror of snarling and feeding with the wolves half crazed ...

With my obligatory "health care, meh" post out of the way, time to geek out a bit. There's been a lot of scuttlebutt in the dorkus malorkus community about which actor will play Captain America in the upcoming movie adaptation. I, myself, think that DC has a better track record than Marvel when it comes to films (then again, I'm a DC partisan in general), but Marvel has improved their record lately with the impressively non-awful Iron Man and Spider Man franchises. Well, scratch that last, actually, as they canned Sam Raimi recently , along with the entire Spider Man cast, in the interests of a truly poorly though-out 3-D reboot. Now I get this news : Chris Evans will play Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. Sources tell us the actor has not only accepted Marvel's offer, first detailed on Friday, but that the dealmaking moved so fast it's now all about dotting the i's and crossing the t's. Evans, if you recall, played Johnny Flame in the shitf...

So, (some semblance of) health care reform passed, and I suppose that's a good thing, generally speaking. I'm not stoked that it passed without a public option, and I think that Sadly, No! nailed it , as they so often do, when they wrote: That even this crappy version of HCR — which is better than nothing and is worth fighting for — passed at all was because of Nancy Pelosi. I’m sure this will make D.A. cry, but Hopey Changey, who has managed his own political capital with the same skill neocons managed the occupation of Iraq, deserves negative credit for its passing. When elected, he had a mandate to kick Republicans in the teeth; he wouldn’t have lost a single supporter had he immediately demonized and demagogued the shit out of insurance companies and Wall Street, two of the most hated groups in American history. But he didn’t; he sucked-up, he kissed-up, he fucked-up. And it almost ruined everything. I'll give Obama one thing: it's a start (of course, whether I shou...

Jon Voight , who I'm almost willing to forgive for his sins considering how hot his daughter is, speaks out against health reform in a Snuggie : This is no way should encourage you to think that the Tea Party thing has a particular flavor to it that might be described as a blend of "old" or "white" or "wingnut."

Does anyone else think that what distinguishes a "Blue Dog" from a regular Democrat is the fact that they've been neutered? Yes, obviously. That said, it's time for Jim-Bob Matheson to find a new line of work. This is inexcusable: In a statement, Matheson said the [current health care] legislation "is too expensive, contains too many special deals, does not contain health care costs and will result in increases in health insurance premiums." Matheson said improving health care and providing affordable coverage in Utah will remain "critical" to him, but said he believes supporting the "wrong kind of reform" which will "increase health care costs" will hurt the nation more than it will help. Hey, fellow citizens of the Fighting Second: let's get this pandering, horrible, ridiculous excuse for an elected official OUT OF OFFICE . Or do we lack the sand that the proud wingnuts at RedState have? After all, they're driving ha...

NERD ALERT: Okay, the Halloween and Friday the 13th reboots have been interesting because, as horror films, their antitagonists were of a particularly dumb slasher variety. Rob Zombie's take on Meyers has been interesting and worthwhile in my humble opinion, but I've always had a poorly defended soft spot for Zombie's movies (I think, at root, I just basically like what he likes as much as he likes it). "Nightmare on Elm Street" was always going to be an insanely difficult reboot, because A.) Freddy had more personality than any of the slasher greats, and B.) Robert Englund was so closely tied to the character (all the way up to appearing as himself in Craven's weird meta self-parody, New Nightmare ). That said: Englund has so thoroughly sullied his career * post-Freddie that he is out of the game for good in my opinion. Jackie Earl Haley is a brilliant choice for his replacement. In short, I'm keeping an open mind for this reboot - cross your fingers,...

Yesterday, I caught the following off of my Twitter feed: fruhwirth: BREAKING: Download a proposed ballot initiative that seeks forced relocation--"final solution"--of homosexual Utahns http://bit.ly/awx8Iv What followed was a day of bizarre accusations and counter-accusations in the Salt Lake LGTB/activist community. To clear things up in advance: the group proposing this “initiative,” Patriots for a Moral Utah , is a Yes-Men-esque send up of, in the words of one of their leaders , “Chris Buttars, Gayle Ruzika, [the] Sutherland Institute and of course the Mormon Church.” PMU’s modest proposal is as follows: under their “initiative,” gay Utahns would be required by law to either 1.) voluntarily leave the state, 2.) leave the state via public transit free of charge, or 3.) report to a rehabilitation center where their homosexuality will be “cured.” It was an intentionally *way* over the top exercise in button-mashing (they actually used the phrase “final solution” in the draf...

Comrade Obolshevik's Centre for the Prevention of Disease (thought) Control has a message for your kids, and I don't think you're going to like it: HOW DARE "THE ONE" CO-OPT A SONG AS INNOCENT AS "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU?!?!"* * - actually this was done by the CDC to get kids to wash their hands. Try to tell this post from something a wingnut might post in response to a speech to school kids or an appearance on Sesame Street, though: is it live, or is it Wingnut?

Today marked the triumphant return of Salt City Dogs , home of the most delicious vegetarian hot dogs / brats / cart food in all of SLC (or Utah, as far as I can tell). They had a ridiculous deal today: two veggie dogs with all the fixings, a beverage and a bag of chips for five dollars. Who says that vegetarians like myself don't get to pay a periodic visit to hot dog heaven?

Via KSL : FARR WEST -- A fire official says medical emergencies at an Internal Revenue Service building in Ogden were coincidental to the discovery of the suspicious substance there Monday. The crews arrived sometime after 11 a.m. at 1973 N. Rulon White Blvd. Shades of Austin? It's probably too soon to tell, but it will be interesting to see what the full story is. Kids: pay your taxes. Flying an airplane into / using chemical agents against the IRS doesn't make you a True Patriot, it makes you a homicidal jackass.