One of Utah’s best-known and best-loved public figures, the businessman Larry H. Miller, died yesterday afternoon at the age of 64. He’d been in poor health for some time and had recently had both legs amputated at the knees due to complications from his Type II diabetes.
I imagine by now you’ve probably heard about the latest outrageous remarks spewing from the pie-hole of Utah state senator Chris Buttars, and you may be thinking to yourself, “what the hell is with that place anyhow?” Well, I live in this place, and I don’t get it either.
As far as I’m concerned, Senator Buttars is an ignorant, hateful old son-of-a-bitch who oozes contempt for anyone who isn’t just like him, i.e., white, male, heterosexual, Republican, Mormon,* and dressed by Mr. Mac. I have no doubt that in another time and another place, he would’ve been proud to stand alongside Governor Wallace on the steps of that elementary school. He is an embarrassment to this state and he ought to be an embarrassment to his church, as well, although I know there are quite a few people in both who agree with his opinions but are too polite to phrase them in terms as inflammatory as he likes to use. There’s got to be or else he wouldn’t keep getting elected.
When you’ve spent your entire life in Utah, as I have, nearly 40 years now, it is impossible — or at least highly dishonest — to deny that there’s a deep, ugly wellspring of bigotry flowing beneath this state. It’s directed at many types of people for all kinds of reasons, all of which basically boil down to someone being “different.” But not everyone who calls Utah home drinks from that spring. Not everyone here is afraid of people who don’t look like they were pressed out of some kind of biological cookie-cutter, or who don’t believe the things we do or behave and think in exactly the way we do. It disgusts me that this big-mouthed, belligerent, obstinate asshole keeps drawing national attention to himself and making it look as if his bad attitude is representative of what Utah is all about, even as he tries to portray himself as a misunderstood victim of a liberal press and “mean” special-interest groups. Mean, Buttars? Seems to me that’s a classic case of the pot talking to the proverbial kettle.
This isn’t about the political football issue he’s discussing in the interview that started this brouhaha, gay rights, not really. It’s about a nasty-spirited, awful man who likes to try and hurt people he doesn’t like. You can see it in the video excerpts of that interview, the glitter in his eye when he starts throwing around nasty terms like “pig sex” — a term I’ve never heard before the righteous Mr. Buttars introduced it to me, by the way, and I fancy myself a reasonably worldly guy — he’s itching for a fight, and he’s being deliberately provocative in hopes of getting it. He’s a bully and an ass, as bigots usually are.
Buttars makes me ashamed of my home state, ashamed that this is a place where enough people agree with his thinking to keep voting him into office. But I have to say again, and keep saying it as loudly as I can, that not everyone from Utah is like him.
* Disclaimer: I’ve got nothing against Mormons. As I’ve said before, most of my friends and family are Mormon and they’re good people whom I love, even when I occasionally disagree with them. But a lot of Buttars’ bile is fueled by, or at least informed by, his religious beliefs. I don’t suggest he’s a bigot because he’s Mormon — you can find fearful, close-minded bastards in any particular group — but Mormonism gives shape to his bigotry, and membership in the church is very obviously one of the criteria he uses to judge others, so I consider it fair to mention it here.
Nothing to say, really, I just thought this was a cool picture. You can find more mermaids and other interesting stuff at the photographer’s blog.
I kinda hate to admit this, but a while back I finally bowed to the inevitable and allowed myself to assimilated into the Facebook collective — feel free to look me up over there if you’re into that scene.
If you’ve never played there, Facebook has its own version of the memes that drift around the blogosphere, and over the past few weeks I’ve been tagged approximately 432,000 times for one called “25 Random Things About Me.” I’m cross-posting the list I came up with here, for anyone who may be interested. (Long-time readers may already know some of this stuff; it’s not easy to come up with entirely original material all the time…)
Anyhow, meme-age below the fold:
And now for the cinematic/video portion of tonight’s program:
Vimeo Tribute: Star Wars from Casey D on Vimeo.
Seriously, would you feel comfortable geeking around in the office with toy machine guns and a video camera these days? As fun as this looks, I’d be terrified of ending up on the lay-off list. These guys obviously don’t have enough work to do…
Incidentally, may I just mention that I hate all the gleepity sounds that were laid over the insert shots of the Falcon‘s targeting computers in the Not-So-Special Editions? I’ve read that F-4 Phantom pilots in Vietnam started turning off the alarms and various audio systems in their cockpits because they got to be too distracting; I can’t help but think that’d be Han Solo’s philosophy as well. A former fighter pilot and motorhead like him would be listening to every little murmur in the engines, every creak and groan of the ship’s skeleton, and you can’t do that with electronic felgercarb going gleepity-gloop all the time.
Continuing on with my literary ramblings, for those who may be interested…
I felt like I had a pretty good reading year in ’08, even though I actually completed two fewer books than in 2007 (only 22 versus 24 last year). I blame the discrepancy on the length of a couple of them, more than anything; I never have a moment when I’m not in the middle of something. Anyhow, the book lists are below the fold.
We’ll start with what my fifth-grade teacher used to call the “true” stuff:
I don’t know if 2008 was actually more eventful than other recent years, but ’08 certainly felt more… I don’t know… frenetic? That’s not quite the right word, but it’s in the neighborhood. Certainly ’08 was more exhausting than other twelve-month blocks of time. I recall experiencing more moments of feeling utterly drained and used up in the last year than in the entire decade preceding it. Of course, that could be simply of my inexorable trudge toward middle age. I am 39 years old now, and I’m finding, to my horror, that I just don’t absorb the hits as well as I used to. Or it could be that the hits lately have been more intense…
more animals
What does it say about me that I could go with either interpretation?
(Actually what it says is simply that I am part of the unfortunate demographic group labeled Generation X. Neither Boomer nor Millennial, we enjoyed a brief but superficial flirtation with the marketers and journalists back in the early ’90s, but we soon lost our sparkle when those damn all-digital kids who are going to inherit the 21st Century started doing… whatever it is that they do. The folks my age are trapped between The Summer of Love and Hannah Montana, doomed to see our influence limited by dint of the overwhelming numbers of those who preceded us and those who follow.
But maybe I’m just feeling testy at the news that yet another classic film from my younger days, Predator, has been added to the remake/reboot/reimagine/screw-you-Gen-X-kids-because-your-stuff-wasn’t-as-cool-as-you-always-thought list. Bastards.)