EZ Not

[Taxes] Is anyone out there old enough to remember the federal 1040EZ tax form?

Not the one your kid (or anyone else with no deductions) completed or is completing this year. I'm talking about the one I filled out in the good ol' days, all the way through college. It was so simple you really could use a big black crayon to fill in the blanks--just like the IRS told you:

Make your figures like this: 1234

Well, I just tried to show my teenage son how to complete a 1040EZ form. Note use of the word "tried." I couldn't do it. Because I had to go online and look up some bullshit tax bulletin, which led to another table and another after that. And I finally gave up, wadded up the tax sheet and stuck Sam's W-2 forms in the envelope with our taxes and shipped it off to the CPA.

The accountant backed me up on this. Ditch your black crayon--the days of the old EZ form are gone. But couldn't the feds come up with a more accurate name? I'm thinking 1040FU. (Holly Mullen)

Dead Zephyr: Week 230

(Bill Frost)

Audio Democracy

[Senate Hearings] Here is one reason that radio is still a viable medium:

A very boisterous protester just interrupted for the second time in an hour the Senate Armed Forces Committee hearings on the success of George W. Bush's surge in Iraq. I can't see him, only hear him. Two minutes ago, he yelled out "BRING THEM HOME!" "BRING THEM HOME!" until committee chairman Carl Levin called security to escort him from the room. Good drama, made ever so much better by simply imagining what the video might look like.

KSL morning show co-hosts Grant Nielsen and Amanda Dickson, nevertheless, quickly turned off the audio and moved to a more suitable--read, frothy--topic.

Also, John McCain is delighting in using this as one big free campaign ad. Could the guy ask any more puffball questions?

America has so given up on this war and all the trappings surrounding it. Two anti-war outbursts in one brief morning. Is anyone listening? Knock Knock. Anyone home? (Holly Mullen)

Feature Creature

[Pulitzer Prizes] About 19 years ago, Gene Weingarten came to the newspaper I worked for at the time, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, in Minnesota. He was editor of the Miami Herald's "Tropic" magazine. He led a day long writing workshop. He offered practical tips on writing feature stories, but I mostly remember him as riotously funny--in word and in print.

Today it was announced that Weingarten, a staff writer with the Washington Post, won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The Post picked up six Pulitzers in all. But the best thing, in my mind, is that Weingarten won for a humorous feature, which hardly ever happens. The Prize committee is usually won over by poignant tear jerkers. Features chronicling the lives of babies without bones and the like.

Anyway, his story--"Pearls Before Breakfast"-- is about a world-class violinist, whom Weingarten placed in the Washington D.C. subway system. The premise of the story was to see what busy, hard-bitten commuters would do when they heard the guy playing. Ignore him? Throw him some coin? Shake their heads at the shame of it all and move on? Read it.
(Holly Mullen)

Best of Utah 2008 Party Pix

Give Me Freedom or Give Me Spam 2

[Media] Again, how does this help keep anything "free"? And why didn't the Salt Lake Tribune version ask you to be 16 or older? (Bill Frost)

All's Well

[Update] The Rachel Guyon saga chronicled in our late February cover story, Just Stop, ended not with a thunderous judicial bang but rather a negotiated whimper on March 31.

Guyon, who was charged with conducting a lengthy e-mail harrassment campaign against Utah's Attorney General and members of his staff, took four pleas in abeyance for class B misdemeanors of electronic communication harrassment.

Her co-attorney Kris Rogers said part of the deal that had been brokered with Salt Lake County's District Attorney Greg Ferbrache involved Guyon not contacting any of the alleged victims.

So ends a tale that had everything a salacious conspiracist might crave -- sexual innuendo and a call girl past, apparent abuses of power by the AG's office in the quest to silence whoever was taunting them, and finally, most intriguingly of all, the astonishing sight of one person and the most powerful legal governmental institution in the state reduced to a level playing field by the anonymity provided by the Internet. (Stephen Dark)

Subliminal Skullduggery

[Dirty GOP Tricks] Utah Republicans have started to eat their own young.

I don't know how else to explain a flyer the Utah Republican Party sent out promoting a supposed "fund raiser" to "benefit" legislators Ken Sumsion, Keith Grover, Carl Wimmer, Chris Herrod and Steve Sandstrom.

Oh, sure, the flyer pretends to praise the men for "standing tall with strong conservative principals" but its true message is clear. By dubbing them "The Fabulous Five," what else could the GOP be implying but that they're gay?

The real Fab Five, of course, are the aesthetes on that awful Queer Eye show people were talking about back in ought-three. In the 80s, it applied to the five members of Duran Duran. Also, if you're a 10-year-old girl, you might recognize them as Jana, Christie, Melanie, Katie and Beth, the five most popular girls at Wakeman Junior High in Betsy Hanes' YA book series.

Each of those Fabulous Fives is as gay as a goose (especially the Simon Le Bon reference). And, in a party obsessed with regulating sexual orientation, even the barest whisper of taffeta spells certain death. Who knows what these guys did to anger the party bigwigs so much?

It's all very subtle, so one wonders whom the Republicans hired to design it. For instance, even if your eye is not as queer as mine, it's revealing to study the above silhouettes and visualize the location of each legislator's hands. (Brandon Burt)

Finger Lickin' Good!

Unless one of our marketing gurus is yanking my chain, rumor has it that actor Vincent D'Onofrio will make an appearance at Friday's Best of Utah party. His sister Toni runs a rib joint out in Sandy and it won one of our coveted awards. Apparently Vincent wants to share in Rib City's victory by living it up at Port O' Call. I'm pretty excited. But which Vincent will show up? The creepy dude from The Cell? The slick young man from Newton Boys? Or the oddly attractive though often bloated detective from Law & Order? My money's on the last one.

By the way, there are a LOT of women with a LOT of time on their hands making all sorts of crazy video tributes to Vince. Here's a taste of crazy town:



(Jamie Gadette)

5 Decades Later and Still Politickin'

This Friday April 4th, Dan Jones, a local legend of polling and politics in our fair state will be honored as the Hinckley Institute of Politics Fellow for this semester. He will be talking about his half a century's worth experience in following government politics at a forum at the Hinckley Center that morning at 10:45.

From being the preeminent maestro of local polls and stats through his company Dan Jones and Associates, or through the generations (plural) of leaders and activists he has been a mentor to throughout his teaching career, Dan Jones has very much been at the heart of Utah politics and issues. After the morning forum there will also be a fundraising luncheon at 12 for a scholarship Jones is putting together called the Future Leaders of America.

That event will cost ya, but the mornings forum is free and open to the public, so stop by to hear from, and, celebrate Utah's household-name (in a good way!) when it comes to politics. (Eric S. Peterson)

Get that Hser Nay Moo Story

[Media Clusterf**k] And so it begins.

In the 36 hours since South Salt Lake police arrested 21-year-old Esar Met on suspicion of murdering little Hser Nay Moo (right), the mainstream media have gone ape shit for even the tiniest shred of drama to tell this story.

It's no surprise, especially given the cultural complexities involved in covering the story. There's a language barrier, and the families involved are recent refugees from a distant and tumultuous country (Burma, now known as Myanmar). It's clear the members of both the victim's and the suspect's families know nothing about the U.S. legal system, so it's suddenly open season on these people beset by tragedy. Nobody is about to "lawyer up," that's for sure.

To wit, this latest piece of crap: Today's Deseret Morning News, KSL radio and Salt Lake Tribune all have sketchy comments from the murder suspect's mother, Ra He Mar. Having fled from Myanmar, then having finally gotten out of a Thai refugee camp where she lived for 18 years, the woman has been in the United States for two weeks. (Though the Trib is reporting one month.) Whatever. She's scarcely had time to get over jet lag. Ra He Mar can barely utter a word in English, was interviewed through a interpretor and has no grasp of the American legal system. And surprise: she says her son is a good boy. [Esar Met] "had never run afoul of the law before or displayed any behavior indicating he was capable of killing," according to the Tribune's account from his mother.

Well, it's all done because by damn, some editor at a desk decided you need to know. Does this kind of media scramble strike anyone else as fairly cannibalistic? (Holly Mullen)

Best Entertainment Website April Fool's Gag EVER

Longtime aficionados of Web-based movie writing may already be familiar with Vern, the pseudonymous cinema critic and commentator who has created a unique (and thoroughly fictional) persona. Well, his skill at creating convincing fictions has reached its apex with one of the most savagely brilliant parodies of entertainment bloggery ever in an April Fools' Day prank on which he must have spent months. You want pointless box-office predictions? He's got it. Random rumors about upcoming movies? He's got it. Breathless "first looks" at promotional materials? He's got it.

And whatever you do, don't stop until you get all the way to the bottom, particularly the banner ads and "Categories" on the right. The rest of the movie blogosphere might as well just throw in the towel right now. (Scott Renshaw)

Gay Panic Hits Utah (Again)

[Media] It was the tongue-clucking heard round the world. Or at least throughout the state.

The story about a feisty little PTA president in American Fork has legs, apparently. All Belinda Jensen wanted to do was provide a platform for a group spreading the hoary old myth that gays "recruit" schoolchildren.

School administrators were understandably hesitant to give the appearance that the school endorses such views--which made Jensen realize that the PTA had been infiltrated by the Homosexual Agenda. (The idea that the American Fork PTA is a hotbed of homos seems plausible only to those with a screw loose.)

How could she, a plucky little bigot, thwart the evil forces silencing her? Why, by holding her little cross-burning at the library—at least the gays haven't infiltrated that public institution. (Or have they? The Pride Center will hold its own Q&A there next Wednesday.)

As usual with such events, more heat than light was generated. The dailies' comments boards filled up with venomous anti-gay ravings and offended reactions from people who actually know someone gay well enough to see through the smokescreen.

Four things:

Jensen's cohorts, who describe themselves as an LDS-oriented corporation, say gays have to actively "recruit" new members into "the homosexual lifestyle," and contribute to the spread of disease.

1. I have never heard of gay people going door-to-door looking for new converts. If anybody's recruiting, it's people like Jensen, who twist the tenets of Christianity to generate hatred against whomever they're trying to persecute at the time.

2. The last epidemic I heard of that could be attributed to some group was last summer's cryptosporidium outbreak--was it caused the gays? No. It was caused by the kinds of irresponsible parents who believe that the entire world has been created for the benefit of their children. (They're even talking about "swim diapers" now. How sick is that? I'd feel a hell of a lot safer in a gay swimming pool than one frequented by the American Fork PTA.)

3. If Jensen's actions and those of her propaganda-spewing pals result in just one attack against some poor gay kid in American Fork, she should be held responsible for spreading the lies that make anti-gay brutality a fact of life for many young people growing up.

4. If her goal was to make gays angry and to steel our resolve to achieve equal protection under the law in our lifetimes, she's succeeded. (Brandon Burt)

Doomsday Update

City Weekly reported last December about an interesting contingent of Mormon faithful who also believe in the prophecies of a rural, farmer, bishop and miner John Hyrum Koyle who had numerous visions of the future. The story mostly focused on modern day believers who now have an email discussion group where they talk about Bishop Koyle's prophecies and predictions for the future. (Koyle was said to have built a mine which would produce riches for a chosen few to help sustain them in the moments before the apocalypse.)

The article itself perhaps poked a little fun at some of the group members theories about the end of the world, but recent postings on the "Dream Mine Discussion Group" have given me at least a few chills, that's because a few prophecies are starting to sound pretty similar to some things going on in the news.

That's because emails are really starting to buzz about whether or not the end is nigh.
Apparently one prophecy warned that a Republican administration would make efforts to save the economy, which was described as though it "were put up on stilts." Couple that with a prophecy about a long winter after many dry ones, and it makes you wonder.

In speaking to Dream Mine historian Doc Hansen, he imagined the "stilts" prophecy that presages a great financial collapse may have had something to do with inflating prices. But another way to interpret "stilts" may be as something meant to prop something up in which case if one looks at all the desperate measures being proposed to solve our financial systems in the wake of Bear Stearn's near-collapse it's enough to give pause. Of course it's probably nothing and I wouldn't worry too much...of course my family has stock in the mine too, so, I'm cool either way. (Eric S. Peterson)

Bikes Are People, Too

[Mutual Commitments] Dave Iltis, editor of Cycling Utah, wrote and sent this e-mail yesterday. Note the date, please. (Holly Mullen)

Becker Proposes Commitment Registry

April 1, 2008, Salt Lake City--After months of controversy and heated battles with the Utah Legislature, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker has worked out a compromise in what he believes to be one of the most important issues of his new administration. "Cyclists should have a choice of how they spend their time," Becker said. "And more importantly, who or what they spend their time with."

Becker was reacting to the previous administration's withdrawal of a proposed helmet ordinance that was then replaced with a loyalty oath--a vague attempt at getting cyclists to conform to societal norms. Former Mayor Rocky Anderson was determined that cyclists fall in line with Utah Values.

"We wanted family oriented cyclists--riders who wouldn't challenge authority and who would fall in step with what Utah families consider important," Anderson said. "Bikes that look the same, were well-tuned, and had brakes and derailleurs. The problem we had was with a subversive clan of individuals who were determined to buck our hometown trends.

"These extremists, these fundamentalist riders had no respect for convention, nor for proper gearing. All we were trying to do was to get them to sign a pledge to be D2 citizens [the D stands for Derailleur]. We wanted them to sign a paper acknowledging the importance of their bike to them and vice versa. This Domestic Partnership would have given credence to what most cyclists already know--their bike is the most important person in the world to them. While we obviously couldn't get the bikes to cooperate, the sad truth was that the cyclists wouldn't cooperate, either. So, in the end, the bikes suffered without proper maintenance, and the cyclists suffered without proper miles."

The Utah Legislature played its part, too, in killing this progressive policy--one that would have made Salt Lake City a trend setter in establishing the first-of-its kind registry to protect cyclists and bike rights. While in this year's session, legislators didn't shy away from controversy or stupid statements, they couldn't avoid playing the message card and passed HB217a,which allowed Salt Lake's registry to stay in place, but only if Salt Lake discarded the moniker "Domestic Partnership."

Becker, whose years on Capitol Hill have left him with skills to finesse his way through difficult straights, came up with the Commitment Registry. "We have been working on this for some time, until it was recently pointed out to us that cyclists and bikes may have been excluded. We want to make sure cyclists and bikes know that they will be afforded the same benefits as everyone else and have added an explicit mention of cyclists and bikes in the new ordinance.

"With the new name, cyclists and their bikes will have the same rights in the marketplace as others with their relationships. Cyclists can care for their bikes and their bikes will care for them.
Bicycle Commitment. It's that simple. Laminated certificates of the bike/cyclist relationship can be obtained from the business office on the second floor of City Hall and must be placed in the front spokes."

Harlan Hector, a longtime Salt Lake cyclist, was relieved. "I've grown tired of living in fear and worrying about what would happen if my bike was taken to the shop and I couldn't be with it while it was overhauled. I mean, what if they misadjusted the bottom bracket? Or misplaced a bearing? The shop wouldn't recognize my rights before, but they will have to now." His bike, a fixed-gear Raleigh, looked equally pleased, but didn't say anything.

Gitane (formerly Mark Smith) of PETB (People for the Ethical Treatment of Bicycles) ,was ecstatic. Said Gitane: "Bikes are people, too."

Sen. Chris Buttard, (R-West Jordan), was outraged and along with Layle Bazooka of the Cyclists With Family Values (formerly the Eagle Forum), vowed to teach Salt Lake a lesson next January with a new bill.

"They can have bikes loving cyclists and cyclists loving bikes, but where are they going to ride after we pass new legislation that will tear up all of the roads in Salt Lake and replace them with slick Teflon surfaces covered in bacon fat." Bazooka added, before disappearing down a dark alley: "Yeah, see if they can ride on Teflon! Bacon Fat is a family value!"

Hser Nay Moo, 2000-2008

[Rest in Peace] Today, words seem to mean very little. Goodbye, little Hser Nay Moo.

(Holly Mullen)

KRCL Update: Meet the Daily 3

[Radio] Remember the uproar over the January City Weekly story about changes going on at KRCL 90.9, specifically the hiring (as in, paid) of three weekday DJs to replace the 30-odd volunteer mash-up at the beloved community radio station? We finally have an update--not from the station, but from current Thursday Breakfast Jam host David Morrissey (no relation).

Morrissey runs the KRCL Facebook group; he sent out this bulletin to its 72 members today:

"So, here's the word ... The paid DJs you've all heard much about will take the studio beginning Monday, May 5. So you have about a month left with your (remaining) favorite volunteer daytime hosts.

The three DJs who have been selected are all current volunteers and talented programmers. So, that's encouraging. They'll certainly have a tough road to hoe, however. There's a lot of people who are still rightfully bitter. I wish them good luck.

Specifically, they are:

Ebay [Jamil], host of Rhythm Kitchen

Bad Brad [Wheeler], host of Wednesday & Thursday Roots 'n Blues

David [P], host of Friday & Saturday Breakfast Jams

If you have any other thoughts you'd like to share with the KRCL staff or boardmembers, I believe the email address is changes@krcl.org.

As I'll be losing my show in about a month and am not sure what my relationship will be with KRCL other than as a listener, I'll be bowing out as group 'officer' here on Facebook. Thanks for your support for all of the daytime programming and volunteer programming in general."

These are three excellent choices; disgruntled listeners should give them a chance. If not, there's always the new online-radio startup at UtahFM.org, headed up by former KRCL daytime volunteers. (Bill Frost)

Dead Zephyr: Week 229

(Bill Frost)

Beware the Statue of Tyranny!

Good ol' Chico Alex Saguras has been keeping busy lately with his own self-styled patriot-citizens with jingoistic fever lobby group called the Immigration Delegation. Recently he's been keeping busy circulating emails to concerned patriots like one sent today warning "Supremes to allow Statue of Tyranny?" The head suggests that somehow every other news media outlet had missed the scoop of a lifetime in that a group was about win over the supreme courts and allow them to erect a 'statue of tyranny' adjacent to the Statue of Liberty. The ominous photo in the article (here to the right) suggests the statue would be Adolph Hitler.

Turns out that after you sacrifice 11 seconds of your life reading the article further, you find out that no one is planning on erecting a statue of the fuhrer next to old lady lib, instead this is just the snarky interpretation taken by legal representatives in the recent ten commandments case going on in Pleasant Grove. The article cites legal briefs saying:

"Under the flawed private speech jurisprudence of the panel in this case – there exists no principled basis upon which the government could turn down for permanent display on Liberty Island a donation of a 'Statue of Tyranny,' or, perhaps, a new copper colossus bearing the message 'Pay No Attention to the Lady With the Torch – the Golden Door is Now Closed,'" the legal briefs argued.

The current case is an interesting one as far constitutional free speech issues go, one where the Summum church of Salt Lake City is making an interesting case for them being allowed to erect a monument to what they describe as the Seven Aphorisms, or laws given to Moses that he only allowed a select few to learn about. Very nuanced case indeed, and one probably not best introduced to the public with a headline suggesting that a giant statue of history's most evil bastard was in the works to be put up next to the Statue of Liberty. Nice one Alex, thanks for keeping us in the loopdy loop. (Eric S. Peterson)

Happy Birthday Buttars!

[Bigot Birthday] Hey gang, it's state Sen. Chris Buttars' birthday!

No foolin.'

E-mail your favorite homophobe, racist (and fool) lawmaker a b-day salutation:

dcbuttars@utahsenate.org

(Holly Mullen)