If you didn't notice, the Utes are good again. Back in the 40's my uncle played for Utah before he joined the Marines and ended up dead on Iwo Jima. My other uncle still gets choked up when he talks about him, saying that he was the best football player Utah had ever seen. Family pride would have me agree with that, but that is family pride for you. You can't ignore this year's team, however, even if the college football ranking system is fucked up and won't rate them higher than 5. But that's college sports for you. It is about the money and probably always was, even if back in my uncle's day that money was a nickel admission to the week's game.

The Utes play BYU today. You just have to hate BYU, you know; it is necessary; it is vital. Hate them. Hate them with a passion. Grow a beard, smoke a cigarette, and drink beer to show your hate.

Utah by 5. (Don't ask me to explain that one; you have to be from Utah to get it.)

Oh you can also show your hate by having lots and lots of sex, kind of like BYU Football players. Well not really, since that's rape.

I found this gem of a news story about folks in good old SLC trying to bridge the "religious divide" in our good old community by having a good old bitch fest. Since I don't regularly look at the D-News anymore, I found the story over at the newly discovered Tibbets Report (which is one of the few "blogs" in the good old sense of the newfangled word, as a commentary & link site to other good old stuff on the good old web. Note that I am not disparaging more diary or journal based "blogs" since that's basically what I do here myself--being that this little good old shop of good old horrors/foolishness is a journal/diary that kind of blog.)

Ok, I really must stop writing those kinds of sentences. Who the hell do I think I am? Getrude Stein? Ah good old Getrude Stein. You know she actually scared good old Hemingway? That takes a lot, you know.

The Tibbets Report found Bart, the guy who likes "real beer" and wants to see it more readily available than the 5 or so liquor stores in SLC to be amusing if not completely ludicrous: "Congrats, Bart, on what was surely an inarticulate summation of the obvious" (3)

While I agree that he is amusing, I am not sure if it is more amusing or more sad that his call for beer to be more readily available to the unbelieving masses drew the most support from the crowd:

The biggest applause of the evening went to a man named Bart, who said he wants to be able to buy full-strength beer in places other than state-run liquor stores and doesn't want to line up for an arm band to get a brew at sporting events. (Moore, 13)

Of course I am suspect of this story since it appears in the D-News, a paper that has a long history of wanting to paint any non-Mormon in Utah as a beer-swilling chain smoker and therefore unworthy of holding discourse with, but Bart did bring the subject up and seems to have been buoyed by the crowd (even if it wasn't the "biggest applause" of the night.)

My real interest in this story, however, is not from the simple Bart but from one Wesley Smith, a recent re-immigrant to Park City (and why is a Citite down here in the valley of smoke and mirrors bitching about Mormons anyway):

Wesley Smith said he recently returned to live in Park City after 20 years outside Utah and realized "this state is in trouble," even in his mountain community. He urged residents to choose their language carefully, noting that as a conservative, he is turned off by talk of "tolerance" as a buzz word for liberal ideas rather than a term of social acceptance. (Moore, 11)

Oy, vey.

Note to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter: please join Mr. Smith here in Utah and see what your conservative ideals have wrought.

OK enough of this bullshit. Back to musing about leaves and other crap like that.

I was raking leaves this morning. They played Francis of Assisi's Canticle to Brother Sun. As you may recall, I grew up on a farm and hated all the farm stuff as much as anyone could, but somehow this morning I felt nicely organic, if that is the right term. I kept having various Shakespearean elegies (for want of better terms) come to mind, like Gertrude's speech in Hamlet concerning the death of Ophelia.

Its good to rake leaves, so here's some ferener talk fer ya: