How did they put it in the Chocolate Factory? Oh, yea, “Blaming the kid is a lie and a shame. You know exactly who’s to blame!” Anyway, the subject of our story was fairly used to getting his way as a lad. His silver spoon had never known the indignity of a mere polishing cloth. And now, he’s conceived a notion so audacious, so utterly of the moment, that even his boss, a man whose portfolio resembles a rogue’s gallery of ethically dubious ventures, blanched. Our hero, you see, desired to transcend the limitations of mere flesh. He yearned to become a cyborg – a gleaming amalgam of man and machine, jacked directly into the internet’s pulsating cloud, a veritable god amongst mortals.
His father, a man whose fortune stemmed from ethically questionable resource mining, turbo-charged the lad’s personality with the weary resignation of a parent who’d long ago given up on shaping a soul. And so, dropped the youth amongst the lords of flies, forcing our hero to find his way in a world of bullies. Then later, all grown up, after amassing a vast fortune, assembled a team of “bio-enhancement specialists” (read: guys who’d watched too many sci-fi movies), and after a series of excruciatingly painful and undoubtedly illegal procedures, he was…transformed.
Now, if you believe in the multiverse, you know it’s possible our hero awoke not in the world where a climate-controlled sensory deprivation tank eased him back into the waking state of normal existence, but in a place that looks like it was decorated by a deranged picnic enthusiast. Giant lollipops sprouting from the ground, the sky an unsettling shade of cerulean, and the inhabitants… well, not exactly the golf-club socialites to which our hero was accustomed. One fellow, rather short and stout, wore a hat that appeared to be trying to mate with his head.
And in this strange absurd dreamlike world, it slowly dawned on our hero that his transformation hadn’t quite gone as planned. He was, for lack of a better explanation, more machine than man. And then, insult to injury, he discovered, he was without a heart. Apparently, the “bio-enhancement specialists” had skimmed over that particular organ in their rush to install the Wi-Fi card.
Anyway, a road paved with what appeared to be gold bricks stretched before him. “Well,” he thought, with the optimism of a man whose only real problem had ever been deciding between the cocaine or ketamine, “at least there’s a road. And it’s shiny.” So he set off, determined to find his heart, perhaps encountering some ready guides along the way.
Alas, fate, that fickle mistress, had one last jest to play. A gentle rain began to fall. Our hero, whose exterior was apparently more susceptible to the elements than a cheap garden gnome, began to…rust. He froze, mid-stride, a gleaming monument to misplaced ambition and the perils of cut-rate cyborg surgery. His last thought, before the CPU seized entirely, was a profound regret that he hadn’t opted for the platinum plating. At least that wouldn’t have rusted.
REMINDER: This isn’t a typical state travelogue, loopers. This is a kaleidoscopic nightmare funhouse of experience, brought to you almost live from the Pike’s Peak Library’s flickering Wi-Fi. Remember Steinbeck in “Travels with Charlie”? Similar deal. We’re all peering at the world through our own warped lenses. We might bend facts from time to time, maybe even invent a story or two, just to get a point across or, hell, maybe just for a laugh.
Our mission: all 48 contiguous states in a year, a whirlwind tour fueled by hot springs and busking (the jury’s still out on the busking, frankly). This is entry number ten, and truth be told, we’re about hot-springed out. But hey, maybe when the snow flies and the world chills out, those pools of scalding water will look more appealing.
Speaking of the fickle finger of fate, this Utah entry is coming to you courtesy of a rogue trucker and a windshield that looks like it went fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson. First crack? We figured we could live with it, a battle scar from the road. Second crack? Sounded like a goddamn gunshot, leaving a gaping maw in Rocinante’s once-pristine view of the world. Check, and mate. We limped into Vernal, Utah, a dusty outpost seemingly populated entirely by paleontologists. Turns out, the magic replacement glass for our noble mount was not in stock. Combined with the fact that we had another technical problem waiting in the wings. Specifically, Rocinante’s power station link to the motor’s alternator is subject to a factory recall. That problem had a roughly 3-week lead time. So, the options? A: Become one with the Utah outback until the all the tech. planets align. B: Hightail it back to Hays, regroup, knock out a few repairs, catch up on snail mail from the PO box, and maybe, just maybe, have a beer (or three) with some friends. Option B, it was, and a good time was had by all… 😉
Now, back to Utah. Ronnie Hays, our intrepid (and slightly befuddled) explorer, first encountered the Beehive State back in the halcyon days of y2k. A freshly-minted network administrator for a Denver architecture/engineering firm, he found himself wrangling computers for their new Salt Lake City satellite office. Governor Mitt Romney was at the helm then, prepping for the 2002 Winter Olympics, a future success story veiled in construction dust and post-9/11 security paranoia. Ronnie, meanwhile, was juggling the network buildout and a blossoming romance with a lovely darling from Spokane with roots in the Church of Latter-day Saints (LDS).
Fast forward to a potentially career-ending decision. Ronnie, bless his naive soul, packed a yellow Ryder truck – yeah, the same kind that delivered fiery doom to Oklahoma City – with office equipment. Remember those angry militia types? Yeah, not a good look. After unloading the gear in the SLC office, Ronnie decided to grab a Godiva treat for his Spokane sweetheart. Parking spot of choice? Right next to the main LDS temple. Picture this: Ronnie, shaved head and all, looking like a skinhead with a bomb plot, abandoning a Ryder truck in temple proximity. Post-9/11, loopers! Here’s the kicker: No interrogation. No raised eyebrows. Just Ronnie, oblivious to his near brush with disaster, feeling strangely confident about the competence of the Olympic planners, particularly Mr. Romney. Measured and calm, that’s how Ronnie saw it.
Over the next decade, working with the loopers in SLC, Ronnie solidified his impression. These were some of the nicest, most genuine people he’d ever met, rivaled only by the deeply Mennonite denizens of Hillsboro, Kansas. Religious communities, Ronnie learned, are a mixed bag. Some, like the Mormons and the Mennonites, seem to genuinely strive for those good old-fashioned moral values and decency. This coming from a card-carrying secular humanist, mind you.
For the homegrown loopers, Utah’s a paradise sculpted by a celestial stonemason. Think towering crimson cliffs spilling out like a kaleidoscope on fire, and enough outdoor activities to make a grizzly bear envious. Hot springs bubble up like nature’s Jacuzzi, with Monroe Hot Springs a favorite amongst the locals (though let’s be honest, loopers, a quick Google search reveals a whole smorgasbord of options).
Outsiders, those poor bastards lost in a Greyhound bus-induced fugue state, stumble into Utah for the same reasons: the scenery’s a knockout, a visual uppercut that’ll leave you breathless. The “Mighty Five” National Parks – Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands – are a crown jewel collection fit for a psychedelic king. And hey, those hot springs add a touch of surreal serenity after a day of dodging rattlesnakes and “Mormon Crickets” (more on that later).
Now, about them institutions of higher learnin’. Utah’s got a decent spread of small-to-medium colleges like Weber State and Utah Valley slinging affordable educations. As for famous literary landmarks? Well, that’s about as scarce as a decent mojito in Salt Lake City. Though Robert Frost’s little stint at Brigham Young does add a curious footnote, like a stray haiku scribbled on a napkin in a Denny’s.
But hey, who needs Dostoevsky when you’ve got a community spirit stronger than moonshine and a work ethic that’d put a Puritan to shame? Utahns are a hardy bunch, the kind who’d build a log cabin with their bare hands and a smile (probably because they can’t drink a decent cup of joe in this state, but hey, more for the rest of us, right?). Sure, there’s a whiff of social conservatism clinging to the air, thicker than hairspray at a Miss Utah pageant. But Ronnie here, your fearless guide through this geological wonderland, can tell you this: it ain’t the in-your-face Bible-thumping you get down South. More like a politely phrased pamphlet tucked under your windshield wiper.
Speaking of windshields, let’s talk about the real star of the show: Utah’s natural majesty. Picking a single “best” spot is like picking a favorite flavor of crazy – you just can’t. But Zion National Park, with its towering red cliffs and slot canyons that look like they were carved by a deranged sculptor on peyote, is a definite contender.
Regarding Utah’s general vibe, their motto is “Industry”…? Now, this seems a bit too generalized to draw any meaning, but when you juxtapose the motto with their famous “beehive” iconography, it makes wagon-train loads of sense. In order for the early settlers to carve out a niche of civilization from the Great Salt desert, it would require singularity of purpose and cooperative action to get ‘er done. Very much like the machinations of bees all working for the interests of their hive in real time.
And the famous loopers? Utah’s got a surprising number of them. There’s Robert Redford, the man with a face that launched a thousand swoons, the Osmond family with their wholesome brand of earworms, Philo T. Farnsworth, the goddamn inventor of television (thankfully, he’s not around to see the logical Kardashian conclusion), and the whole Sundance Film Festival bringing current and future celebrities to Park City every January.
Now, the state’s bread and butter? Tourism, obviously, but mining, tech, and the government sector all play a role in keeping the gears of Utah turning. And for the average Joe (or Jane) punching a clock? The cost of living is reasonable, and jobs are plentiful, making it a prime stomping ground for young professionals still reaching for that “American Dream”.
Finally, a word about Vernal, a desert oasis that popped up like a mirage after we took a rock half the size of a golf ball to the windshield (thanks, Utah!). The desolation was epic, man. On the way there, we saw what looked like a stampede of miniature bison migrating across the highway – turns out, those weren’t tiny bison at all, but Mormon Crickets, these hoppy little buggers that look like something out of Gulliver’s Travels gone bad. Not exactly a threat to humans, but a surefire way to make any halfway curious road tripper slam on the brakes.
So there you have it, loopers. A taste of Utah, the state that’ll leave you with sun-bleached memories, a renewed appreciation for wide-open spaces, and maybe, just maybe, a hankering for a good cup of coffee (because seriously, Utah, what’s the deal?). Until next time, we’re hitting the road again, hoping to appease the windshield-exploding rock gods and delve deeper into the fibrillating heart of our divided nation.
Onward through the fog… R.H.
And now… more with ongoing apologies to Mr. Guthrie.
I saw a stampede… Cross a Utah Highway… I felt a calm vibe… From a Beehive family… But don’t you worry… You’ll get your coffee… Utah peeps can bee and let it be.
“What we know is a drop… What we don’t know is the ocean.” ~ Isaac Newton
I tried… i really tried. Or maybe i’m adjusting to life’s inevitable curveballs scrambling the perfect symmetry of my best laid plan. You know, the one where i, knight-errant in a rolling studio apartment christened Rocinante, traversing the 48 contiguous states. The noble quest? To get my arms around the “fibrillating heart of our divided nation“. To get these insights from whomever in these sleepy college towns might be willing to spend five minutes with a weirdo packing a guitar and a head full of questions.
But fate, that fickle wench, had other plans. First, it was the librarians. Pale, overworked automatons shuffling through Dewey decimals, with nary a moment to spare for philosophical pontificating on state mottos. Was it time constraints, or a gut-wrenching fear of my “political agenda”? And don’t get me started on the chilling possibility that the modern anti-intellectualism plague has seeped its tendrils into the heartland’s libraries! The horror! I quickly concluded my approach was to blame. I mean, c’mon, what the hell is this all about?
Then came the body blows: Rocinante’s innards failing like a politician’s promise, and a Utah road pebble punching a hole in our windshield. The Hot Springs or Busk mission – a symphony of soaking in geothermal glory and serenading the masses for petty cash – lay in tatters. Sure, the Dakotas and Wyoming soothed my travel-weary soul with their natural mineral baths, but that dream’s on hold till the autumn chill sets in. And busking? That one never even sprouted wings. Turns out, maintaining personal hygiene on the road, wrestling with writer’s block, acquiring provisions, and figuring out where to sleep takes up most of a day.
But here’s the kicker, loopers. The world’s gone batty, and burying my head in the sand just ain’t gonna cut it anymore. “Project 2025” leaked like a sieve, painting a dystopian portrait of a second Trumpian reign that’d make Orwell blush. And don’t even get me started on the assassination attempt – the twisted pandora’s box exposing an unholy alliance of theocratic nutjobs, techie snake-oil salesmen, and white-bread racists all marching in lockstep toward MAGA-land.
This, loopers, is where Rocinante and i draw a line in the sand. It’s time to stand up, or at least yell obscenities at the oncoming storm, in defense of the freaking democratic republic our forefathers sweat blood to build. This ain’t some pre-packaged travelogue anymore, folks. This is a gonzo odyssey hurtling towards a cliffhanger ending November, 2024, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Let me establish some bona fides, loopers. It was 1993, the Jurassic period of the internet, when i, a late-blooming recently reformed rock-n-roll wannabe made his way to the meticulously landscaped limestone campus of Fort Hays State University. At this frontier outpost, i stumbled upon a great tech-fueled human awakening. The era, mind you, when dial-up modems whined their mating calls, and the internet itself resided in a fluorescent-lit dungeon called the “computing center” – a place that would make a Kafka setting look like some cheerful dentist’s waiting room.
There, on a terminal that resembled a torture device from a B-movie, i logged onto a primordial internet, a MUD (multi-user dungeon) teeming with virtual spelunkers from across the globe. It was like falling into a rabbit hole populated by Aussies, Brits, and basement-dwelling samurai – a world where geography dissolved like a bad acid trip.
Intrigued (and maybe a little scared), i embarked on a quest to understand this beast. I traded my dog-eared textbooks for a master’s degree in the field of “communication studies,” focusing on the particular learning styles of these early internet adopters. As the web blossomed (or maybe more accurately, sprouted like a particularly virulent fungus), so did my career. I landed in academia, a Don Quixote tilting at windmills of ignorance, determined to share this newfound curiosity.
Ah, but this paradise wasn’t built for everyone. Back then, computing power was the exclusive domain of pocket-protected engineers and those with the social graces of an abacus. The average digital apprentice, like myself, had two options: learn the arcane language of coding, a feat akin to deciphering ancient Sumerian, or grovel before the high priests of computer science. And for what reward? The dubious honor of navigating a buggy wasteland of productivity tools resembling a drunken Rube Goldberg contraption. The “graphical user interface” revolution, if you can call it that, was just another layer of lipstick on this technological pig.
Before the internet, navigating the marketplace of ideas meant a pilgrimage to the library, that mausoleum of knowledge and arcanery. You either wrestled with the Dewey Decimal System, a logic puzzle designed by Satan himself, or relied on the benevolence of the librarians, those gatekeepers of the pulp-n-ink media. The contrast between the Dark Ages of ’78 and the digital supernova of 2024 is enough to make your head spin.
Now, we drown in a tsunami of technological pronouncements – quantum computing, designer DNA, the ever-present threat of Skynet. But fear not, loopers, for even as we stand on the precipice of a technological singularity, nearly half the population still believes the Earth is flat and six thousand years old. We are a nation of flickering attention spans, perpetually distracted by the digital fireflies flitting across our screens – a society of shuffling zombies, hypnotized by the glow of our handheld gods, and there will be a reckoning… oh yea.
Look, i’m no Luddite. Here i am, hunched over a keyboard in the merciful silence of the library, instead of downing near-beer and swapping healthcare stories at the Bingo Hall. The digital siren song is hard to resist. But where’s the master plan in all this? Who’s steering this chrome chariot hurtling towards who-knows-where? It feels like a rigged game, doesn’t it? The puppet masters, these billionaire Übermenschen, dangle their techno-baubles in front of us, content to keep the masses hypnotized. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just economics, not some grand conspiracy. After all, we don’t wanna give spoiled, marginally-competent “self-made” trust-fund babies too much credit, right?
Anyway, we stand at a crossroads, teetering on the edge of a technological revolution. The chaos around us is a symptom of our collective unpreparedness. Let’s arm ourselves with knowledge, not just the latest gadgets. The future is ours to shape, but only if we wrest control from the digital puppeteers and use this power wisely. After all, wouldn’t you rather be the architect than another brick in the wall?
Either way, we’re in a heap of trouble. The gap between the haves and have-nots is wider than the Grand Canyon on a bad acid trip. We’re hurtling towards a technological future with all the grace of a drunken walrus on roller skates. What’s the answer? Jeezus! Who knows…? If i had the answers my dispatches wouldn’t live in an obscure blog no more discernable than a needle in the galaxy of obscurity. I’d be one of the puppet masters, right? There would be publicists, and media tours, and wardrobe people, personal trainers, financial advisors, domestic services staff, etc..
So, assuming my guess is as good as anyone with comparable bona fides, consider this: What if we were to pump our educational systems full of digital steroids, create a generation of media-savvy citizens who can think critically, not just parrot the latest pronouncements from Silicon Valley snake-oil salesmen? Also… maybe leave the religious dogma to Sunday schools.
Whatever we decide to do, it’s time to stop worshipping false idols (as seen in the 10 Commandments) and reclaim our rightful place as that shining pluralistic city on the hill. Let’s stop vilifying intelligence, but celebrate it. From there, maybe we really CAN … Make Humanity Great Again.
Ok… enough for now. Stay tuned for a reverse “red-pill” treatment… we’ll flip the whole “Cathedral” of the neo-liberal “deep-state” on it’s head. We’ll restate The Who’s pithy observation from their anthem, Won’t Get Fooled Again…
I see you wear your lifestyle on your sleeve like a bloodstain from the war. And you don’t see just what you’ve got till the good things are out your door. And in classic style… you brave the miles and the fire within your soul… on a promise that the other side will find you to have grown.
But there’s a solitary man who spent a lifetime in the weeds… a passé sort of fate he’ll live to see. And if only just another round could keep his hopes alive… waitin’ for his big break to arrive.
So you work… you slave… you watch your days go slowly tickin’ by. You watch your YouTube playlist and wonder why you didn’t try… and the morning sun is up and starin’ right into your eyes. As you drive to work you squint and curse the years a flyin’ by.
But there’s a solitary man who’d give his left nut to succeed… a passé sort of fate he’ll live to see. And all the tea in China could not help him change his mind.. he’s waitin’ for his big break to arrive.
<==>
There’s a chance you oughta take it’s waitin’ right outside your door. But sometimes you fight with schemers and hustlers and end up on the floor. In a broken kind of gait you stumble closer to your cave… in a flash of sight… you find you might be better off a slave.
But there’s a solitary soul who’s got the right stuff… he believes. A passé sort of fate he’ll live to see. It’s a shame to think of all the happiness he’s passed by… waitin’ for that big break to arrive.
Solitary man things are never what they seem… and in time you might see what love really means. But the solitary answer to the question that you bring… lay between the path you’ve chosen and your dreams.
It’s between the path you’ve chosen and your dreams.
Loopcircus 