Last Saturday I, like ten million other people in Utah, went uptown to Salt Lake City to ride the new Frontrunner train that runs from Salt Lake up to Ogden, with stops in the various suburbs along the way. Unlike the other ten million people though, I took one look at the line and said “forget it”, and went back home.

However, come Monday, I decided that the line should have died down enough for me to have the opportunity to get on, so I took another chance and went back up again. This time, I walked right on with no wait whatsoever, and experienced first-hand what Salt Lake has been talking about all weekend.

Let me say right off the bat: Frontrunner is a good idea. There are still quite a few kinks to be worked out, but for the most part, the idea is solid and the execution is excellent. Anybody that’s ever driven to Ogden from Salt lake, or vice-versa, knows what a frustrating and horrible experience it is to fight all the traffic and road destruction and scenery-gawkers along the way. That’s not even to mention the winter when I-15 becomes a demolition derby somewhere around the Bountiful area. Having a way for commuters to get from one city to the other without clogging up the interstate is good thinking, and UTA has come through with this one.

I can’t speak for Ogden or any of the other cities, but getting to Frontrunner for me in Salt Lake was a simple as jumping on TRAX here in Midvale and riding up. The new TRAX line takes you right up to the Frontrunner station, so for the first time since I moved here, I was able to go from my apartment to Ogden without even getting in my car. Nice. Depending on where you live, your experience will vary. TRAX also made two new stops from the Delta Center What’s its Name Arena to the train station, so the real winner in this will be the Gateway shopping extravaganza slash parking nightmare. I expect an onslaught of 15 year-old girls from Ogden and parts thereabouts, who previously had to rely on parents to drive them, to descend on the Gateway in massive droves the likes which have never been seen, because they can get there now on their own, without bumming a ride.

So what is it like? Well, let me share my experience. I’ll start with the good:

• There’s lots of room. Each Frontrunner engine has three cars connected to it, and each car is a double-decker, so there ought not to be any space issues once the initial excitement wears off. The seats are relatively comfortable, and many of them have tables in the center to rest a laptop or a drink or just lie your head down and sleep. A nice touch, I think.
• The ride is smooth. Seriously, it’s not even like riding in a car or a bus. It’s very smooth and non-jarring. You can’t even feel the tracks or detect any bumps of any kind. In a way, it’s almost surreal until you get used to it.
• The ride is fast. It’s deceptive at first, because it doesn’t feel like you’re going the advertised 79 miles per hour. That is, it’s deceptive until you get near the highway, when you realize you’re actually moving faster than most of the traffic.

The trip from Salt Lake to Ogden, even with the stops on the cities between, only took about 45-50 minutes on the way up. The trip home was longer however, because the lady driving the return train refused to go faster than 35-40 miles per hour. I never found out why.

• The schedules are well-planned for the most part. Trains are arriving and leaving on fairly regular schedules, so there’s not too much waiting around. I suspect this to be a non-issue entirely after the excitement dies down.

There are however, some bad points to this. Some of them are just kinks to be worked out of the system, but others are likely permanent things to settle for if you ride Frontrunner.

• Scenery. Or I should say, lack thereof. You would think in a beautiful place like Utah, that a train ride should involve some pretty scenery. Well, if you consider the drug-infested slum behind the Gateway, or oil refineries (the train literally runs right through the center of both of them) or poor trailer park neighborhoods along the tracks to be scenic, then you might be OK. Personally, I thought it sucked.
• People. OK, this will subside after the initial excitement is over, but holy God what a nightmare the return trip was. Hundreds of people at each stop lined up outside to fill already overflowing train cars. The stench and noise was sometimes almost unbearable.
• Kids. This is a personal one for me obviously, but screaming children who are screaming for no reason need to have a gag of some kind. I’m sorry, but there it is. I can’t stand parents that refuse to control their children, especially in such a confined area.

Beyond this, I can’t say too much in the negative. There are issues to be sure, but time will fix most of them. When the newness wears off, the train will become an important part of travel in northern Utah. I think it’s spectacular.

For anyone that’s interested, here’s the entire 7 minute and 45 second leg from Ogden down to Roy. WARNING: This video is extremely boring. Watch at your own risk.

Go and ride Frontrunner. You’ll be impressed.

This post started out innocently as nothing more than a comment on a fellow blogger’s post, but the subject enrages me so that I just had to create my own blog about it.

Here’s what I wrote in the comment:

I have to comment on this, because it’s been rattling around in my brain today and I need an outlet. First of all, I respect Annie Liebowitz like no other. She’s as good as it gets when it comes to what she does, and I’m quite certain… even without seeing them, that that pictures she took of little Hannah Montana are artistic and beautiful. Second, there are a lot of haters out there bashing Annie and the magazine about this. Let me remind them:

1. Miley is 15, so her parents/guardian (in this case, Billy Ray) HAD to be present AND APPROVE any poses or wardrobe used.
2. Said pictures HAD to have been not only viewed, but signed off on by Miley and Billy Ray (as her guardian) before they could be published.
3. Miley, Billy Ray, and Annie all knew EXACTLY what they were doing.

This whole thing smacks of nothing more than propaganda designed solely to increase readership. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was all set up in advance.

Since writing that post, I looked up this picture (it was in the very first Google hit on the page) and checked it out. People, come one. You have to be kidding me.

Now, I’m not a big perv. I don’t look a child porn and I think it’s rather odd that someone would be in any way aroused by sexual pictures of little kids. I find it distasteful. However, the picture in question of little Miss Cyrus is NOT EVEN REMOTELY erotic, scandalous, or even particularly all that noteworthy. It just shows her wrapped in a sheet glancing over her shoulder at the camera. You can see her bare back, but that’s it. She’s not topless (she’s covered by a sheet), and nothing about the picture suggests anything sexual at all. Actually, if I have to describe it, she looks more like she just woke up and someone caught her with a camera sitting up in bed.

The real problem here is not Miley or Billy Ray or Annie Liebowitz. The problem is people’s misunderstanding of what is dirty or shameful. People label this as child porn without having any idea what pornography really is. Just for the record, naked women or men is not pornography. Porn involved acts of a sexual or erotic nature that may or even may not involve nudity. These pictures have NONE of those qualities. I’ll tell you though, you know what’s offensive to me? How many pictures of naked babies do you see? Lots, I’d be willing to bet. You might argue, “Naked babies aren’t erotic or provocative. They aren’t being used to sell things.” Bullshit. True, naked babies aren’t erotic or provocative, but then neither is that picture of Miley Cyrus. And I see naked babies in advertising all the time. Don’t tell me they’re not used for selling things. You aren’t offended by seeing a 1 year-old bare-assed in a diaper ad, but a pretty 16 year-old who is fully covered bothers you?  Just so you know, naked babies are not cute.  At all.

I’ll go back a little bit on what I’m saying. Miley Cyrus is a phenomenon and the most popular thing going right now in the pop music biz. Doing a photo shoot for Vanity Fair is a way to bolster that popularity, and showing a somewhat risque-ish shot guarantees publicity. I’ll reiterate what I said in the above comment though. The whole lot of them knew exactly what they were doing when they did this. They knew exactly the kind of controversy this would stir up and I’d be willing to bet they planned it all along. Take picture, publish article, stir up debate, have subject apologize saying she’s all “embarrassed”, even though she knew full well what the picture looked like and what people would think, and then sit back and rake in the cash.

It was planned I tell you. Oh, and as far as Miley being “embarrassed” by the picture? Yeah… whatever. Miley and Billy Ray are laughing and probably looking forward to the mountains of money on top of the mountains they already have.

Oh, and here’s something to chew on. What you see in this picture depends completely on your own mindset. If you see some pedophilia-inducing trash, then you might want to stop and think about your perception of the world and exactly what it means to have even thought that, you perv. Personally, I see a tasteful picture of a girl.

I drive a silver Ford Taurus. It is exactly like the other 29,574,282 silver Ford Tauruses that Ford made in the year 2001. So much so, that it’s quite common to see silver Ford Taurus owners milling about parking lots, trying to enter several cars thinking that it’s their own. I’m guilty of this myself, in fact. All I can say in my defense is that the car was a choice of practicality over expense.

At the time of the purchase, I was looking to buy the new Mazda 6. It had just come out, in 2003 I believe, and I saw one and liked it, so I zoom zoomed over to the local dealer for a test drive. Loved the car, hated the price. At the same time, I made a few parking lot drive-bys of a local Ford dealership looking for a deal. In the end, it came down to a brand new $30,000 car, or a two year-old $10,000 car. I opted for the practical route, and although having the new flashy car would have been cool, the Taurus is now completely paid off and still runs great. I made the right decision. Maybe…

The car is affectionately referred to as the Oldmanmobile, a reference to the fact that a giant family sedan with significant body roll and very conservative appearance is not really the chick magnet car that a 30-something single guy flaunts. It’s also not very descriptive of my personality, at least not that I think. It is, however, very dependable. It gets OKish gas mileage and has no major mechanical defects, despite the fact that it will likely turn over 100K this year. It’s easy and cheap to insure and has enough power to motor up and down the mountains without too much effort. And it’s big enough to score big pedestrian points without suffering too much damage should I go road-rage postal and decide that those missionaries and that old lady are SO not crossing in front of me today. Ha HA! Not that I would ever actually do that. Of course.

Even so, why is it that others don’t respect my property? I know my car isn’t a shiny new pearl, but it’s not a haggard old beast either. The disrespect and common stupidity that people demonstrate is abhorrent. Case in point:

This wonderful scrape mark, which is actually quite large and not really depicted well in the picture, was courtesy of my old neighbor Steve. Steve was a huge, fat, disgusting 400lb piece of shit dumbass who did nothing useful with himself except drink beer and cavort loudly on his balcony at all times of the year. Did I mention he lived directly above me? Do you know what it’s like to have a 400lb man live on the floor above you? Even in the deadest of winter, you could find fat Steve sitting outside on his balcony at 3 in the morning, belching along to his hee haw country station, stopping only to take a quick jaunt over to the 7-11 nearby to pick up another case of Milwaukee’s Beast. Fat Steve was kind enough that when he finally got evicted, he managed to hit my car (in the next stall over) with his U-Haul trailer as he pulled out, making the scrape you see here. I only noticed it later in the day as I prepared to leave for work. Had I caught fat Steve in this little deal, I’d have broken his legs and shoved that U-Haul trailer up his ass. I’m sure it would have fit with room to spare.

This second dent is only a couple days old. I came out of a Home Depot to find this lovely bit of wanton destruction waiting for me. Obviously, some careless person or their evil spawn opened a car door into my passenger side. This sort of thing happens sometimes, but what struck me was the effort that must have been put into it. This is no ordinary door ding. This is a massive dent right in the reinforced part of the door. Someone really had to take a good back swing and put some force into this one. Again, had I caught the perpetrator, violence could quite possibly have ensued.

Of course, it’s not their car that got smashed. Had it been their car, they’d have been pissed off. Probably wanted to have a chat with the guilty party, or at the VERY LEAST, a small note with an apology. “Dear person: I’m sorry that I’m a huge waste of perfectly good breathable oxygen and a burden to the intelligent people of the world, but I unfortunately let little Timmy open the door to my 2008 Cadillac Escalade too swiftly and he’s put a small scratch on the door of your… um, silver car old thingy. Please accept my humble apologies, and rest assured that Timmy will get a stern look from his father someday.”

If only that were reality. Alas, it is not.  No respect for other people’s property.

…And I quote:

NEW YORK – Oil prices rose sharply Friday on news that a ship under contract to the U.S. Defense Department fired warning shots at two boats in the Persian Gulf. Retail gas prices as expected rose further into record territory, nearing $3.60 a gallon.

Crude prices rose on initial reports that a U.S. ship had fired on two Iranian boats; the news raised concerns that a conflict between U.S. and Iranian forces could cut oil supplies from the region. A Navy spokeswoman said the origin of the boats was unclear.

Now, let me ask: WHAT THE HELL DOES THE PRICE OF GAS HAVE TO DO WITH NOT SHOOTING IRANIANS?

Any excuse… ANY EXCUSE they can make to raise oil prices is being used. “Oh, I’m sorry your great aunt Martha died… let’s raise the oil prices!” Or, “It’s Tuesday on Mars and Jupiter is in line with Pluto, but Pluto isn’t a planet anymore so let’s raise the oil prices!” I swear to God someone will burn in the eternal fires of whatever hell they believe in for all this shit. Firing a warning shot as some Iranian boat is not a reason to raise oil prices. This is gotten out of hand.

Here’s my plan to fix this:

• Step one: Go to Alaska/Colorado/Wyoming… wherever there is a ton of untapped oil.

• Step two: Arrest, shoot, or somehow detain any Tree Hugger or politician or actor that even so much as peeps some stupid environmental bullshit.

• Step three: Drill out some oil. By the way, this can be done with almost ZERO environmental impact. This is the 21st century, and we’re not primitive monkeys with coat hangers and wooden oil derricks. We have the technology. I will let Daniel Plainview explain how this works:

• Step four: Turn that oil into gasoline and sell it for a decent price. A price that is fair and just. This also may involve shooting oil company executives.

• Step five: Tell Saudi Arabia and Iran and whoever the hell else we buy oil from to kiss our pasty white ass. We have our own oil, thank you.

Step six: Keep working on alternative fuel sources. Our own meager supply will only last us about another 2,000 years.

I’m sick of paying out the ass for gasoline. Especially when it’s not necessary to do so. We, the American people, are being raped. And we didn’t even get a kiss first.