And I'm A Mormon

School Spirit, Anyone?

Come on, you don't need ALL the rights, do you?

It's A Hate Crime.

Every so often a subject pops up on my radar that makes me divert from my usual silly self; trust me when I say I don’t like being serious.

However, I do have to stop and address something as horrendous as a hate crime. Now statewide Utah law may not classify this as a hate crime just yet, but these crimes were still done out of hate. There’s no denying that.

Salt Lake City resident Dane Hall was leaving a night club on Aug. 26 when he was attacked by a group of people who shouted slurs at him, stole his identification and eventually curb-checked him. You can find the details in a Sept. 10 article by Rosemary Winters in the Salt Lake Tribune.

I’ll leave you to look up the term. This column is already too serious.

American Fork resident Cameron Nelson was taking out some trash at his place of employment on Sept. 8 when he too was attacked by a group of people who beat him up and stole money from him. You can find out more on this in the same article referenced above.

It’s not up to me to speculate whether or not these crimes were done by the same people, if one was inspired by the other, or if there’s just two eerily similar attacks within about as many weeks.

All I can theorize is these two men were targeted because they were gay.

Yes, there's also been allegations that drugs were involved in the first attack, but it's total speculation. A Sept. 21 article in the Salt Lake Tribune by Sheena McFarland outlines those accusations and Hall's response.

I don’t want to go too far into the logistics of a hate crime because part of me wants to cry “foul" while the other half of me wants to shout “equality.” Should we punish people more severely if they target a person because she or he is black or Jewish or gay? Or should we make the punishment equal for all aggravated assaults? I’ll leave that up to you to decide since I’m constantly being torn in both directions.

For those who actually commit hate crimes, whether they be motivated because of race or simply motivated by an unchecked dislike for a person, I have a simple review for you: "Freaky Friday" style life switch. That’s right. You get one week of living in the shoes of the person (or people) you despise the most.

Cut to me making millions off the movie rights.

If you read the news, then maybe you’ve heard that these are two attacks out of three, but I can’t confirm that third attack. As far as I can find out, a gay couple was attacked in their northern Utah home. I can’t find names, so if anyone has that information, please share it.

While the thought of a group running around attacking gay people makes me sick, the thought that these are two completely separate groups of people makes me want to vomit. That would make me a liar because I was getting to a good point of defending Utahns as being pretty open-minded.

I guess a part of me is afraid that evil begets evil. I think I might be paranoid because I just saw “Contagion,” but sometimes these kinds of things are seriously contagious. I mean, look at the London riots! Who's to say the seedy underbelly of Salt Lake City isn’t going to rise up in one giant wave of uneducated mass and start murdering people left and right for being fabulous?

I know. It’s a stretch.

I do have a review for this group or groups of people committing these crimes: You get 11 months out of the next year as 12-year-old girls—in Colorado City, Ariz.

I’m not delusional enough to think the pigs who committed these crimes are actually going to read my column, let alone glean anything from it. But I will hope that my super power of action loathing will permeate the atmosphere and reach the simpletons. You know, the idiots who think we live in a society where being gay is considered worse than being an elementary school drop-out who’s more than likely addicted to drugs.

I just hope when that feeling of loathing hits those people, they don’t think it’s God telling them to beat up someone smarter than they are.

Because if that’s what happens, then they’ll have a good majority of the population to beat up.

Yes, I’m calling the fools who committed these crimes a bunch of mute donkeys. Think about that one for a minute.

Hopefully we as Utahns can find it in our hearts to look above and beyond our own personal biases and simply do what the church and every third grade teacher tells you: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I would absolutely love to hear from those of you who agree with me, but I would love it even more if those who disagree with me would put me in my place. Follow @SkewedReview on Twitter or “like” on Facebook at facebook.com/theskewedreview. Tell me, and others, what you think of all this nonsense, and tell us how we might stop this issue dead in its tracks.

This is Utah!

Is this St. George, or Bomont?

Who REALLY Cares About Your Blog?

There's always that one closet or room in everyone's house where you'll find a massive collection of junk—it's all sentimental keepsakes, trash that's been mistaken for treasure, or simply a mixture of both.

Sorry, I won't really be addressing that TLC Network show where people save newspapers and mayonnaise jars until someone has to step in and intercede. People in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks, and since I'm a Halloween buff then I'm guilty of hoarding wigs and costumes.

Don't judge me. It's a hobby.

No, the hoarder I'm writing about today is the cruel and loving Internet and her ever-growing collection of sometimes helpful, often intriguing, but mostly time-wasting possessions: blogs.

Blogs get a nine out of 10 rating of USA Todays for their usefulness, an eight out of 10 rating of New York Times for their biases, and a 10 out of 10 rating of Perez Hiltons for their ridiculousness. Each review is respective to each individual blog, of course.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what blogs are. The definition is very widespread. Are they personal journals? Are they news websites? Are they supposed to inform you of the latest gossip, entertain with something you've never seen before, or just completely waste your time when you should be doing something constructive?

I think the jury is still out on all those definitions.

When I first grasped the idea of blogging, I simply figured a mother, who belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, created it. After all, isn't blogging basically just scrapbooking online?
Go ahead and hate me for that one. But I dare you to go online right now and see how many personal blogs are created by mothers and are filled to the brim with family photos.

So the history of blogging piqued my interest. I decided to find out more.

A Feb. 20, 2006 article by Clive Thompson in New York Magazine chronicled the blog timeline from the very beginning. According to that article, a Swarthmore student named Justin Hall is credited with the creation of the world's first blog in 1994.

And yes, it's still up and running today at links.net.

Of course I had to check it out. I mean, it was the very first blog ever, right? It has to rock.
But after looking at his website, I had to wonder how anyone would have thought: "Hey, that's a great idea! I think I'll try that out myself!"

You'd think almost two decades of blogging would have made Hall a blog perfectionist. I clicked over fully expecting the most extravagant, detailed and professional blog in history. What I got instead looked to be like an amateur HTML experimentalist who has no idea which direction to take his blog in.
At first I thought it was a collection of peculiar but entertaining thoughts.

"Come let us cross the street together!" he writes. "I will go first where there is no light or crosswalk. Hurry up behind. We might not all make it."

For the sake of clarity, I added punctuation. At first I thought it was a Haiku, but it doesn't follow Haiku rules. But it's OK. I guess if you're a truly deep philosopher, this little paragraph could have endless meaning.

So you'd generally expect his blog to focus on these little transient blurbs. Nope. His next post is a pretty graphic poem about sex and, to put it gently, the end of it.

His blog is also peppered with news from his private life and photos of him doing, well, nothing.
His review is one more decade at Swarthmore. If I were any student looking for a college, I would eliminate Swarthmore based entirely on this man's lack of education.

So I decided to at least click on a blog that had a sense of direction (even if it was a ridiculous sense of direction). That's right: PerezHilton.com.

Spelling, grammatical and factual errors don't stop this boy from gossiping about the Hollywood A, B, C and D-listers!

At first I liked this blog because it was so kitschy. I just assumed Perez Hilton, a.k.a. Mario Lavandeira Jr., knew how campy and ridiculous he actually was. But over time I think he actually sees himself as a viable news source on Hollywood matters.

He literally plucks news from websites like TMZ.com and then adds a short opinion. He tosses up a photo that he draws on in what looks to be Microsoft Paint and, voila! He's got a blog.

I can't think of a review for Lavandeira that would put him in his place. To be so ludicrous that you're a joke and not even realize it is almost a Skewed Review in and of itself. I just don't understand how he justifies the laughter everywhere he goes.

Lastly I had to check up on one of the most linked-to blogs in the world: Arianna Huffington's.
Although I've never considered Ms. Huffington an expert on anything, I must admit her website is at least credible. But it's really not that different from, say, FoxNews.com or MSNCBC.com. They're all basically news websites. So what makes hers a blog?

I know. She has a blog on it. But so do all the other news websites out there.

I suppose I'll review The Huffington Post with zero out of 10 Justin Halls, and yes, that is a good review.
So now we need to know what you think. What's your blog? What website do you develop it through? What's your favorite blog on the Internet, and which one do you absolutely despise? Get on Facebook/TheSkewedReview or Twitter @SkewedReview to start sharing your blog do's and to-don'ts!