A few passing thoughts:

 

Go see the Simpsons Movie.  It is nothing more than an extended episode, but since it is a movie they got to get away with a little more.  Marge swearing.  Bart naked (and showing just like the Never Mind album cover parody).  Homer flipping the bird (looking even funnier with a three fingered hand).  As usual, it is the little things the writers slip in that makes the show so entertaining.  That said, don’t go at night and pay full price to see it.  As Homer states at the beginning of the movie “Why pay for something you can get free on TV?”

 

 

The fires have calmed down because we’ve gotten a little bit of rain.  We’ll get more next month I’m sure.

 

I’ve had my new car for less than a month and I already have four rock chips in the windshield.  I’m going to start carrying fist-sized rocks in my car so I can throw them at the cars and trucks that keep kicking up rocks at my windshield. 

I’ve been traveling this week so I haven’t had much time to put anything up here.  Not much special going on around Utah that can’t wait.  Professional sports have been taking a beating this week.  Steroids (Bonds) in baseball.  Doping in cycling.  Cheating referees in basketball.  Then there is football.  Michael Vick just pleaded not guilty a few hours ago to sponsoring a dog-fighting operation.  These are federal charges.  The Fed does not bring down charges on someone until they have a decent paper trail and some witnesses (or squealers).  This isn’t like the Duke Lacrosse mess – this is serious business.  We live in America, and according to our system a person is innocent until proven guilty.  But here is the rub – whether Vick is innocent or guilty at this point doesn’t matter.  He owned the property that some of dog fighting took place on.  It does not matter if he knew about it or not.  He knew the people on the property (family members).  He owned it and should have checked on it.  By just being associated with what was happening, whether he actively participated or knew nothing about it, he is attached to it.  His career is ruined regardless of the outcome. 

 

The trial in November will be a circus.  He could come out of it innocent, either by proving without a doubt that he is innocent or slip out via the O.J. Simpson route.  Doesn’t matter, he won’t play in the NFL again.  Maybe I’m different than most people, but if I had a multi-million dollar contract, and all I had to do was play a game, I’m thinking that I would do everything to make sure I don’t screw that up.  But obviously some people think that entitles them to be able to do whatever they like.  I just don’t get it.  Maybe it is time to start pulling back what professional athletes are paid, since a number of them don’t seem to be able to handle it.

 

 

A little something by Drew Litton from the Rocky Mountain News.

 

A different form of dog-fighting:

 

Well, after getting back from Colorado on Monday, and being swamped at work, I’ve finally found a little time to put something up.  First of all, the state is still on fire.  No, really, the whole freaking state seems to be on fire.  New wildfires sprang up during the week.  A new one just started yesterday and is already to roughly 12,700 acres burned.  The larger Milford Flat fire was stopped around 370,000 acres.  The state has had close to 600,000 acres burned so far.  The weather is still hot (flirting with the 100’s each day), dry, and windy.  Oh, and next week is Pioneer Day, a local celebration of when the Mormons came to the Salt Lake valley.  What does this have to do with fires?  Well, people usually set off as many fireworks during Pioneer Day week as they do around the 4^th of July.  The governor has requested that cities ban fireworks.  Well, gov, you are a month late on that request.  The cities are not really playing ball either, arguing that they have already issued licenses to fireworks sellers.  So what?  If it is an issue of safety, the cities can just give the sellers their money back for the licenses and tell them to go elsewhere.  I love fireworks – that video feed to the right should prove that.  But when the conditions are primed for massive fires, forget it. 

 

Oh, fire season “officially” started last weekend.  That is what the Interagency Fire Center says as far as when the country usually hits fire season.  Well, the season started over a month ago. 

 

Here is why I like this country we live in, even with all its faults and crappy politicians.  According to the New York Times, China has finally revoked the licenses of three companies that have supplied mislabeled drug ingredients and tainted food that have caused massive recalls and deaths.  The Chinese government is talking out of both sides of their mouth.  On the one hand they blame us for being reactionary and that their products mean quality measures 99 percent of the time.  On the other hand they have been turning up corruption and bad practices all over the place and are handing down swift sentences and closing plants.  Not only that, according to the Washington Post, China executed the head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, for taking bribes to approve products.  Oh, and the government is clamping down on whistleblowers and throwing them in jail using clams that they are either sabotaging business or extorting employers.  Why?  They do not want the outside world to know how bad it is.  China wants to be a world power and a first world nation.  Well, they may be there based on pure economic output, but they have a long way to go to get there on all the other responsibilities that come with being a first world country.  Sure, the U.S. has plenty of problems, but most of those problems just annoy, they don’t kill.

Evidently, I can’t figure out how to embed a video…

 

Two things to cover today:

 

The biggest wildfire in the country is currently in Utah and has burned 311,000 acres.  That is about 469 square miles that is pretty much charred.  The fire is only 10% contained, and there are storms moving in.  Probably not the good kind of storms either.  These storms will bring wind and lightning without a lot of rain, which will just make things worse.  There are 300 firefighters on this fire.  That really is not enough considering this fire is about 55 miles in length from north-to-south.  Even though it has a high priority by the Federal firefighting group, there are too many fires burning right now to throw the amount of manpower and equipment this fire needs.  In general, I don’t mind if they let some fires just burn to get overgrown areas under control, but this fire isn’t exactly helping the area because it is so hot and fast moving.  It is probably burning up all the roots and seeds that would normally allow for new vegetation to crop up after a normal wildfire.  This fire may hit 400,000 acres before it is contained.

 

Second thing – I was not aware that there were official Summer Redneck Games.  Why is this not on ESPN or the Wide World of Sports?  They even have a mascot – a man they call “Freight Train”.  Tell me this doesn’t scream redneck.  I may have to head down to East Dublin, Georgia next summer to watch.

 

 

I've been saying I would do this for some time, but I've been lazy.  So here it is, the fireworks blowout from 2005. 

 

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Or you can go to YouTube and see it.

 

I could say that I predicted this, but it did not take any great insight to see this coming.  One of Utah’s biggest wildfires closed down both Interstate 15 and 70 yesterday as a brush fire went from 2,000 acres Friday night to 160,000 last night.  The fire jumped highway 15 and clouded the area with smoke.  Luckily, only two people died in a fire related crash, but none of the cars that were driving on the highway at the time the fire came through got stuck.  On truck did catch on fire, but the driver made it out okay.  This fire is pretty much in grass and brush, so the 40 mph winds and heat the state had yesterday allowed this thing to spread as fast as it did.  To top it off, there were only 100 firefighters available yesterday due to all the other fires in and around the state.  Most of the firefighters in the state are finishing up the fire that killed three people the other week and has burned about 43,000 acres.  The smoke from this fire is still in the air here.  It looks like we have 80% humidity outside, but the humidity is actually near single digits.  It probably isn’t healthy to be doing any physical labor outside today.

 

This is on top of all the other fires going on in the West right now.  Nevada has a number of fires burning, as does California.  Smaller fires are burning in South Dakota, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, and Oregon.  It is not uncommon for the West to see a number of wildfires during the summer, but there are more and larger fires burning earlier in the season this year.  Southern California and Arizona are in a severe drought alert which means that if you look at a twig the wrong way it might spontaneously combust.  Utah is currently under a Moderate drought alert.  The way the weather has been lately, I’m sure this state will move into a severe drought condition by the end of the month. 

 

I know why so many people are moving out to the West, but the problem is that the environment here can’t sustain so many people.  Too many drought cycles, not enough water, and not enough good farmland. 

So I saw Transformers the other day.  It was okay – about what I expected.  I won’t rush right out to see it again.  I may rent it on video just to see some of the action scenes again.  In typical Michael Bay fashion, things had a tendency to move too fast at times.  The acting was actually okay.  Shia LaBeouf did a pretty good job, and Jon Voight had the perfect opportunity to pull off a stinker of a job, but wasn’t too bad.  The special effects and computer graphics were great.  Again, typical Michael Bay work there.  There were also the few scenes of comedy that kept things moving along.

 

What started rubbing me the wrong way is that Optimus Prime had a mouth – that just did not look right.  The Decepticons were mostly guys that were not part of the early toys or the cartoon.  And while I knew the GM product placement would be all over this movie, I didn’t know that it would be to such a great extent.  There were also other areas of blatant branding throughout the movie.  I one point I thought I was watching a Mountain Dew commercial.  Like I said, I may rent this movie just to catch some things I missed the first time around, but I won’t buy it.

 

What I am really waiting for now is the Simpsons Movie.  It looks like they will get the chance to do the things Fox won’t let them do on TV, but they won’t go the South Park Movie route and get really vulgar (not that it didn’t work for South Park).  To push this Movie, so 7-Elevens turned into Kwik-E-Marts last week.  They even sold Krusty O’s, Squishees, and Buzz Cola.  Tell me that Matt Groening doesn’t know how to sell his stuff at any time and in any form.  He is almost as bad as Krusty the Klown…

 

 

 

 

If you live in an area that is not under heavy fireworks restrictions, then please go blow something up in remembrance of the founding of our great country.  If, like me, you live in a place that is so dry that paper spontaneously combusts in your hand, then just watch the fireworks displays put on by your local municipality. 

 

 

 

I got a new car yesterday.  Well, a new used car.  It only has 6,000 miles on it, but that is enough to classify it as a used car.  I like to think of it as getting a new car that already has the just driven off the lot depreciation taken off the sticker price.  It is a Saturn Aura.  I know – why the hell did I get a Saturn?  Well, these new Auras a pretty nice, I got the top model with all the bells and whistles (another reason to get it used), and I realized that the more I looked at brands like Saab and Acura, I just didn’t feel the need to pay extra for something that I won’t drive a lot anyway.  I’ve actually been averaging less than 10,000 miles a year on the car I just got rid of, so it became obvious that I do not spend a lot of time in my car.  That and a certain someone pleaded with me not to get a BMW or Audi, which I was also looking at.  She must not like Germans, which would make this relationship a little difficult since I have mostly Arian blood running through these veins.  Interestingly, I’m not tall or blonde, but I’ve got blue eyes. 

 

 

And this has nothing to do with anything.  I’ve never watched the movie Finding Nemo all the way through, and it is probably because it does not end like this:

 

It is summer and Utah is hot and dry.  This has become the norm here, but people don’t seem to realize it.  Believe what you will about global warming, but reality tells us that the Intermountain West is in a drought cycle and wildfires of massive size are going to be common.  Add to that the fact that for the last 100 years the U.S. policy has been to suppress wildfires so there has been a slow, steady build up of dry fuel on the ground.  A normal wildfire turns into a raging threat when it has very try tinder everywhere in which to spread through.

 

That is pretty much what is going on now in eastern Utah and around Lake Tahoe.  Three people died in Utah over the weekend because a massive wildfire was moving so fast.  These three should have just left when they saw (and heard – they sound like freight trains coming) the fire, but they stayed and tried to save a man’s farm.  Deaths usually don’t happen in these things to non-firefighters, but when conditions are right a fire can move amazingly fast.  Dry, hot, and windy is what it is going to be like here for the rest of the week.  Temperatures topping out at over 100ºF will not help the 400+ firefighters that are now working the fire. 

 

We have at least 3 more months for these kinds of fires to pop up.  Unless the weather cools down or we start getting some rain, I predict that we’ll have close to 200,000 acres burn in this state alone.  These are not the types of fire that helps the area like normal wildfires can.  They will be big and hot enough to burn everything, making natural re-vegetation difficult after the fact.  The only nice thing about these fires is that when I walk outside sometimes it smells like I’m out camping and there is a campfire close by.  No, the fire is 100 miles away and the smoke is still filling the air.  Wheeee!!!

 

National Geographic Wildfires