Zounds and huzzah! The merrye olde Utah Shakespearean Festival is again upon us. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say: Forsooth! what doth yon bequiddle?

The festival, in Cedar City, draws audiences from around the world, everyone from Shakespeare aficionados to Shakespeare novices. Retired persons wander up from their enclosures in St. George, and parents bring their children down from Salt Lake City in a vain attempt to educate them. It’s a true celebration of theater, right there in the middle of a horrible, horrible desert.

One thing that is nice about the festival is that, as a tourist mecca, the dress is informal. There is no pressure to dress up for the shows, though I hasten to add that just because you’re on vacation doesn’t mean you look good in a crop-top. It is a casual sort of place, though.

Now, just because the atmosphere is relaxed at the festival doesn’t mean you are allowed to talk during the plays, even if what you’re saying is really, really smart, like in “1776” when John Adams kept telling his wife to send saltpeter, and then two unmarked barrels arrived, and the man behind me said, “Saltpeter,” like he was some kind of brilliant master of deduction. Even if your comment is THAT smart, you still aren’t allowed to talk.

Of course, no rules of etiquette, in the theater or elsewhere, apply to you if you are an extremely old person. By virtue of having successfully lived more than six decades without dying, you are entitled to behave however you like. I don’t read magazines like Modern Maturity, but I assume they contain articles outlining the differences between the way normal people and old people are expected to conduct themselves. (“How to Disconnect Your Turn Signal.”)

Anyway, while at the festival, be sure to take part in the Royal Feaste (the extra “e” is for “edible”). This is a thing where you eat old-style food while old-style performers pretend to be serving wenches and stuff like that, in case you’re the sort who likes to be amused while he eats. I think you have to eat with your hands, and that you also have to slaughter the animal yourself, but it’s possible I’m making that up.

After the feast(e), you’ll toddle off to see a show. The Shakespearean plays are performed in the Adams Shakespearean Theatre, named after the founder of the festival, Fred Theatre. It is one of the world’s best replicas of Shakespeare’s own Globe Theatre, with the obvious exceptions of having modern seating and being in Utah.

To make the experience really authentic, they have girls in period costumes and accents of some kind (English, maybe, but it’s hard to be sure) hawking their wares at intermission, shouting, “Chocolates! Caramels!” and so on. Among the things they sell that make me giggle: “tarts” and “horehound.” There is also a concession stand where you may purchase authentic Elizabethan treats such as cappuccino and Dr Pepper.

So eate, drinke and be merrye! Head downe to Cedar Citye and partake of the Utahe Shakespeareane Festivale before the summere passes you by. You’ll be glad you did, and William Shakespeare’s estate will be grateful for the royalties.

Were it not for all the delusional people we have to write about, newspapers would be 80 percent blank every day. (The remaining 20 percent would continue to be reserved for articles about Martha Stewart.) So today we will talk a little about some insane people, especially as they relate to witchcraft.

Let us first speak of Kevin Carlyon, who as you surely know is the high priest of the British Coven of White Witches. (You know this because he has twice appeared on the cover of White Witches Monthly, which you subscribe to.) Two years ago, when Swedish scientist Jan Sundberg was planning to capture the famed and non-existent Loch Ness Monster, Carlyon placed a “blocking spell” on the imaginary creature to protect it. Nessie has appeared very infrequently since then, perhaps because of the spell but perhaps also because she is not real.

So now Carlyon is traveling back to Scotland to remove the spell so that Nessie can, as he told the BBC, “come back again and thrill the public,” because surely nothing excites a crowd more than standing next to a marshy, foggy lake and pretending to see something.

Carlyon said, “I left the protection spell running and now I want to undo it slightly so Nessie can make an appearance.”

It is things like this that make me glad I do not have supernatural powers. I am often worried enough about leaving the door unlocked, or the TV on, or my car windows down. If I had to worry about leaving a spell running, I’d worry myself into a coma (unless, of course, the spell in question was a coma-prevention spell).

Speaking of wizards and delusional people, last week’s release of the fifth Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Huge Pile of Money,” inspired many insane idiots to complain about the “occult” material contained within those books. One of them posted a lengthy diatribe at HarkTheHerald.com, where being an insane idiot is almost a prerequisite for posting, in which he asserted that the current Utah drought is God’s punishment because so many children read the “evil” Harry Potter books.

Now, there’s no need to write in and scold this person (who of course remained anonymous, that being the other prerequisite to post anything on HarkTheHerald.com). Dozens of other people have already done that, including one who observed that such craziness is part of life, adding, “c’est la vie,” spelling it “se la vi.” (Our readers apparently have no problem with spells; it is spell-check they object to.)

The Harry Potter thing is a phenomenon, that’s for sure. The hundreds of people who were with me at the Orem Media Play at midnight last Friday can attest to that. Some of them were even dressed as Potter characters, which was very cute, especially in the sense of “cute” that means “weird.”

But an EVIL phenomenon? Heavens, no. The people who feel that way generally do so on the basis that the book, in dealing with sorcery and magic, is somehow TEACHING sorcery and magic to young readers. And they make a strong argument. I mean, those books are packed with page after page of intricate, detailed instructions on contacting the Dark Lord Satan, learning his will, and doing his bidding.

No, wait. I have confused the Harry Potter books with Hillary Clinton’s “Living History.” The Harry Potter books don’t have any of that stuff. They have passing references to very simple spells, most of which contain Latin-sounding words that indicate what they do. For example, characters say, “Lumos,” and their wand-tips light up. Walk around saying “Lumos” all day, nothing’s going to happen. It’s not an evil word, and saying it a lot won’t grant you access to any supernatural powers. I know, because I have tried, when I was trying to light the pilot on my oven.

So to all the delusional people reading this — and you probably don’t know who you are — get over yourselves. The Loch Ness Monster will begin existing when she’s good and ready, and the only thing evil about the Harry Potter books is how heavy they are. So quit worrying about it. But please, don’t stop being delusional. Your antics provide respite from the nonstop Martha Stewart coverage. And that’s a good thing.

Back in November, “Snide Remarks” reported on the then-current trend of men attempting to kill their wives. They were doing a sloppy job of it, though, as befitting a gender that has many times demonstrated its inability to plan ahead even in simple things like buying anniversary presents on time, let alone planning complex murder scenarios.

Now, however, the pendulum has shifted to the other foot. Women are killing their husbands, and doing it much more efficiently, as befitting a gender that has been known to pick apart a conversation before it even occurs, sometimes even before they’ve met the person it will occur with.

The New York Post (motto: “We Don’t Make up Our News Stories; We Just Do a Poor Job Writing Them”) reported in May that Jackson Thomas of Brooklyn was stabbed to death by his wife, Judy, after he 1) berated her for spending too much time on the computer, and 2) made disparaging remarks about the size of her rear end. His comments led to an argument, during which he pushed her around a bit, leading her to pick up a kitchen knife. He then continued to approach her, saying, “What are you going to do, stab me?,” whereupon she stabbed him.

Judy was charged with second-degree murder and weapons possession, but the whole thing seems pretty cut-and-dried to me, pardon the pun. (Or don’t. Either way.) First of all, weapons possession? It was a kitchen knife. If that constitutes possessing a weapon, then I possess several weapons in my house, and that’s in addition to the stockpile of grenades I keep in the shed for when the United Nations takes over and I have to defend my own God-given liberty.

But more to the point, the jerk made fun of her, then practically dared her to stab him. He only had himself to blame. If you’d have seen it — if you’d have been there — I bet you, you would have done the same.

At any rate, it’s all remarkably similar to the story reported by Reuters in which Pearl Lynne Smith killed her husband during a dispute over who should feed the goats. (Correct answer: No one. You shouldn’t have goats.) The argument became heated, and Pearl pointed a pistol at her husband, ordering him to feed the goats. He refused and further exacerbated the situation by saying — you guessed it — “I dare you to shoot me,” which she did, once, in the chest. This occurred in Oklahoma, which makes it hard for people like me not to go on making jokes about Oklahoma.

Being unmarried, I have no way of knowing firsthand exactly what would drive a woman to mariticide. (I’m going to pretend I already knew what the term was for killing one’s husband, and that I didn’t spend 10 minutes on the Internet looking for it.) I don’t recall ever making a woman angry enough to murder me. The closest would be when I was a Mormon missionary and I enraged my companion so much that he punched a telephone pole and broke his hand. But that was a missionary companion, not a spouse, and he punched the telephone pole, not me.

So I called my mom. She and my dad have an excellent marriage, particularly when measured in terms of not killing one another; so far, the incidence of murder within that partnership has been zero (0). I told her about the Brooklyn woman and the Oklahoma woman and asked her what, if anything, would drive her to kill Dad. She said, “Well, he shouldn’t be daring me to do it, that’s for sure.”

She makes a good point. If you dare someone, that person is more or less obligated to do whatever you’ve dared them to do. The news story did not indicate whether Smith had followed up his dare with a double-dog-dare, but if he did, then I suspect a jury trial will not even be necessary and Pearl will be released on her own recognizance, back into the loving arms of her goats.

Though I often encounter people who make me wonder if there’s any hope for mankind — the pot-bellied man who entered the Daily Herald offices shirtless the other day, for example — my overall feeling is that people are amazing creatures. And what amazes me most is our ability to get over stuff.

Think about it. Dreadful things happen to us regularly, and not just the average daily trauma, like seeing a fat, semi-nude man wander into your workplace to purchase a classified ad. Loved ones pass away, relationships end, people hurt us. Things happen, and we think for a while there’s no way we can possibly go on … and then we go on. Some time, some effort, and we get over it, at least enough to continue living. The human psyche has an astonishing ability to heal itself, if we let it.

I especially thought of mankind’s resilience when I read about the guy who hacked off his own arm to get out from under a rock.

You recall this story, I’m sure, from a month ago. It seems a 27-year-old Colorado hiker became pinned under a boulder in a Utah canyon for three days and, knowing he would die otherwise, used his pocketknife to saw off his arm and get free. His name is Aron Ralston; tragically, he lost an “a” from his first name during the ordeal, too.

All of America was stunned by this story, though we agree it would have been even better if he’d had to gnaw the arm off. Many of us wondered what we would do in that situation. It was difficult for me to imagine, though: What was I doing hiking in the first place? Was I crazy? Was I being forced at gunpoint? No, that doesn’t work, because then the gunman could have gone for help when I became trapped. Unless he wanted me dead. But if he did, why didn’t he just shoot me, rather than forcing me to engage in physical fitness? Perhaps the gunman, whose motives for making me walk through the canyon remain unknown, was killed by the boulder that fell on my arm. This makes the rock a cruel bringer of freedom and captivity simultaneously, which is an interesting literary device if nothing else.

But OK, let’s say somehow I was hiking and that I also somehow let a big rock fall on my arm — what then? I am fairly certain there is nothing that could ever persuade me to break the bones in my wrist and cut my arm off with a pocketknife. I wouldn’t even consider it an option. I would think, “Well, I guess I’m going to die here. I mean, what else am I going to do, CUT OFF MY OWN ARM?!?” And I would laugh at the absurdity of such a notion, placing it up there, in terms of feasibility, with alternatives like developing super strength or the ability to fly. And then I would probably pass out from the laughing. I’ve lost a lot of blood, I imagine.

So Aron Ralston clearly had more fortitude than I would, and his indomitable spirit is impressive. Also somewhat inspiring, in an odd way, is the survivalist attitude of Eric Rudolph, the serial bomber who evaded capture for five years while living in the wilds of the American South. According to USA Today, Rudolph — arrested earlier this month in North Carolina — told officials that to survive while on the lam, he ate acorns, lizards and salamanders. What separates this from the typical North Carolina diet is that he ate them raw, and without cornbread. (But I kid the North Carolinians! I love cornbread!)

Some authorities question the veracity of Rudolph’s claims, especially when he says he also ate scraps from behind a Taco Bell restaurant, which it doesn’t take a scientist to know would kill even the hardiest moose. But however he did it, I’m impressed. Living alone in the forest for five years takes strength and conviction, as does hacking off your own arm. Hearing these stories makes me slightly less apt to simply give up when I am faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, though how you can expect me to go on when scantily clad fat men keep entering my environment is beyond me.

The film industry is in the midst of a crisis. Namely, how can it wedge Vin Diesel into every movie it produces, even when Vin Diesel does not, to the casual observer, seem to fit? Would it be prudent to cram him into a romantic comedy opposite Kate Hudson, or a period piece co-starring Dame Judi Dench? These are the issues with which the film industry is currently grappling.

Hollywood is also concerned about movie pirating — not movies ABOUT pirates, because we know those always suck, but movies that are BEING pirated, as in stolen. Entire films can be downloaded from the Internet. Industrious types armed with video cameras can tape movies at public screenings and sell them the next day. Why, thanks to modern technology, you can walk down any street in New York City and buy a DVD copy of “Star Wars: Episode III,” and it HASN’T EVEN STARTED SHOOTING YET. That’s how far piracy has gone.

The studios are beginning to panic. They don’t know how to stop people from stealing movies, short of producing ones that are worth paying for. And so extreme measures are being taken. At pre-release screenings, audience members’ bags are being checked for recording devices, and security personnel equipped with night-vision goggles are skulking in the aisles to check for copyright-infringing activity. For example, jotting down everything the characters say and drawing pictures to accompany the dialogue would be a no-no.

A word on these advance screenings. They’re usually held in the evening a few days before the film opens, primarily so critics can see it and get their reviews in the paper on opening day, but also to generate word-of-mouth among civilians. Radio stations give away free tickets to the screenings; as a result, the audiences tend to be unruly, being jazzed over seeing a movie 1) for free and 2) before anyone else does, even if the movie is 3) lousy. Often, radio station personnel are on hand to throw out more free stuff, in the form of T-shirts and hats related to the film. It does not matter how unappealing the movie is, nor how shoddy the workmanship of the merchandise; people will go CRAZY to get this free stuff, just because it’s free. They could be throwing out vials of the hanta virus and people would still shriek like trailer trash at the Springer show and knock each other over to get it. (Another thing I’ve noticed: The more eager people are to obtain one of the free T-shirts, the less likely the shirt is to fit them.) (If you get my meaning.) (My meaning is that these people are fat.)

This atmosphere doesn’t seem like it would breed a lot of sophisticated film thieves, does it? But who knows. Maybe one of the large, tank-topped, mullet-headed gentlemen screaming at the top of his lungs for a free “National Security” hat is also well-versed in the craft of video pirating.

It was at a public screening like this that I first encountered the anti-piracy squad. We’d seen them check bags at a few films before, but they usually skipped the movie critics because they figured we were not the source of the pirated movies, not because of our code of ethics, but because we cannot afford video cameras. At “Finding Nemo,” however, the new policy began: Everyone gets checked. Thoroughly. A young fellow, no more than 20 years old but dressed in a suit, asked to check my bag. As he rummaged through it, he asked, “Do you have any cameras or recording devices?”

This struck me as an odd question. Did he think I would tell him if I did? Did he think I had planned on videotaping the movie to sell it on the black market, but only on the condition that it not involve fibbing? Was I bound by some pirate code of ethics where I’ll loot and plunder all the live-long day, but I have to answer any direct questions truthfully? (“Yar, ye caught me.”)

A good deal of time and money is being wasted on these searches. Most pirated movies come from the big cities like New York and L.A., and the best-quality ones come from weasels within the studio — people with access to prints — not from people aiming camcorders at movie screens. (On the DVD copy of “The Matrix Reloaded” I bought in New York the day after the film was released, you can actually see the theater’s exit sign.) Sending goons down to Sandy, Utah, is not going to prevent anything. I don’t object to the searches on grounds of privacy, because in the modern world I am accustomed to not having any. I object to them because the movie studios constantly complain about their profits diminishing, and now here they are wasting millions paying security personnel to administer frivolous, unfocused bag checks. This is in addition to the fortune they’re already wasting on Vin Diesel.

I’m obsessed with tweezers now. I credit my friend Chad for this development, which began, as do so many obsessions, with an emergency trip to New York City, followed by a waxing.

Chad, who lives in Boston, recently suffered an epic and tragic breakup, and no amount of ice cream or television could console him. Seeking to get away from Boston and the situation for a few days, he urged me to meet him in New York for a weekend, during which time we would hate all things relating to love, romance and affection. I happily agreed to his proposal, for I had recently endured some relationship trauma myself, in the form of a restraining order from Bea Arthur. Besides, I will do anything my friends ask of me, especially if what they ask of me is that I go to New York.

Now, despite what you have been led to believe by watching romantic comedies set there, New York is actually the perfect place to go if you hate love. The opposite of love is indifference, and New Yorkers are champions of apathy. Nowhere is this more evident than in restaurants, where servers will bring your food — grudgingly — and then disregard you completely until they feel it is time to bring your check. There is no interaction with servers between receiving the entrees and paying the tab, because the servers no longer acknowledge your existence. You are dead to them. Pressed, they will deny ever knowing you.

It was during our weekend of despising all things related to romance that Chad said my eyebrows needed to be waxed. This alarmed me. I had always studiously avoided developing a uni-brow by occasionally swiping between brows while shaving, and apart from that, they looked fine to me. I never really pay attention to anyone’s eyebrows, unless they are egregious in some way. I always notice Tommy Lee Jones’, for example, because it is a single eyebrow that circumnavigates his skull. And once in St. George my friend Smacky and I saw a woman whose eyebrows had been removed altogether and painted on manually, except she painted them so they were arched, and so no matter what you said to her, she always looked surprised. We imagined her becoming a model for horror-movie posters.

But apart from aberrations like these, I was rarely observant of anyone’s eyebrows, mine included. And now here was Chad telling me he had not only noticed them, but that they needed to be waxed. What confused me most was that when he brought it up, we had not even been discussing eyebrows, nor hair of any kind, nor indeed anything related to grooming. If I recall correctly, our conversation had been on the nature of restaurant service in New York City, the quality of which I believe you already know. Was he suggesting my eyebrows — which I now took to be squirrel-sized and horrific — were the cause of our server’s ignoring us? Or was he just randomly changing topics, as he is wont to do?

It turns out to have been the latter; talking to Chad is like riding the Tilt-a-Whirl. My bewildered, mildly hurt expression at his sudden pronouncement was met with the explanation that while they looked “OK,” they needed to be “cleaned up a little.” At no point did I question how he became an expert in such matters or why he thought HIS eyebrows were all that hot, nor did I express my discomfort in his noticing that I even HAD eyebrows, let alone commenting on them, nor did I ever agree to let him perform work on my face. Yet somehow, later that day, I was sitting very still while he applied drugstore-purchased chemicals to portions of my brow, followed by a piece of latex or something, followed by a quick ripping, followed by a steady flow of bitter tears.

In general principle, I oppose the waxing of any part of the male human body. For some of us, the abundance of hair is the last vestige of masculinity in our emasculating society. But I had to admit: My eyebrows looked better. They were more trim and svelte, more heavy with skepticism when I lifted one of them, more indicative of deep thought when I furrowed both of them. I had finely tuned my eyebrows — a major instrument in the symphony of the face — and could now propel them to greater heights of expression.

The trouble is, you can’t just wax your eyebrows once and forget about it, and not just because the pain lingers for days. Hair grows back. This necessitated my purchasing tweezers and adding two minutes into my daily morning schedule to allow for eyebrow maintenance. Bear in mind I have a French fry-based diet and have not been to the gym since before Christmas and own only two pairs of shoes. Yet here I am, obsessed with a tiny, tiny part of my physical appearance.

I am also, as I mentioned so long ago that it may have been in a different column, obsessed with tweezers in general. Newly fascinated by the efficiency and cleanness of the tweezing process, I soon sought out other areas that might need to be tweezed. My nose hairs were not a concern; I already had a little electric trimmer for that. This left the hairs on my feet, which I twoze only a few of before mentally noting that no greater pain could possibly exist in all the world.

Duly chastened by my foray into non-approved tweezing, I now admire tweezers with caution and respect, using them for their appropriate purposes and nothing more. I’m a changed man. Bea, if you’re reading this, please take me back.

As I lie awake at night trying to determine new things to worry about, one thing I keep coming back to is: Are we embarrassing our animals?

As you might imagine, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Steak) is on the case when it comes to animal humiliation. The group’s recent controversial “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign — comparing the slaughter of millions of animals to the slaughter of millions of people under the Nazis — demonstrates not only its position on the importance of animals, but also its position on being insensitive and short-sighted. (They’re for it.)

Sometimes, PETA issues formal statements on how animals are being abused, often doing so in such an over-stated, insane manner that it overshadows their good intentions and actually causes people to go out and abuse MORE animals, just to spite them. But other times, they are unaware of specific incidents, and so you must e-mail news stories to them and ask what they think so that you can quote PETA spokesperson Kathy Guillermo in your column.

ITEM 1: Cat shoots boy. A 15-year-old boy in Tuscarawas, Ohio, was out back shooting rats with his pellet gun, got tired of it (I guess), set the gun down on the picnic table and walked away — whereupon the gun went off and shot him in the back. The boy told police that his cat had been snooping around the table and must have accidentally pulled the trigger. However, a subsequent sheriff’s investigation led to the conclusion that the cat didn’t weigh enough to put sufficient pressure on the trigger, which means the shooting is still unexplained.

PETA says: “Careless people are always to blame when someone is accidentally shot…. It only makes people look even more foolish to lay the ‘blame’ on animals. But we often find that animals are easy scapegoats because they don’t have a voice…. Instead of asking if the cat is to blame, it might be more useful to examine the many ways people harm animals simply because we are more powerful and they can never speak out or rise up in their own defense. For a sampling of the many ways humans exploit animals and ideas for what we can do to help animals, please see www.PETA.org.”

Issues not addressed: Don’t we all know cats who, given the opportunity, would shoot us in the back in a heartbeat? If an animal is accused of a crime, will PETA provide legal representation — a cattorney, if you will? (Please, please, say you will.) If a cat is found guilty of murder, can it be sentenced to nine consecutive life terms? And isn’t it obvious that in this case, the real culprits are the rats the boy was shooting at?

ITEM 2: Dogs play football. In Germany, an international dog breeders’ fair is setting up dog football matches, though of course by “football” they mean “soccer.” Four canines play on each team, wearing either yellow or blue shirts. Dog trainer Stephanie Klug says, in an Agence France-Presse story, “To tell the truth, they don’t really understand that they’re playing in a team and when they score a goal it’s usually by accident.” (Of course, the same could be said of the Cincinnati Bengals.)

PETA says: “Dogs or other animals should not be forced to do any activity solely for human entertainment. It is healthy for the dogs to get exercise, but they should not be made to wear full uniforms…. Many dogs love to push a soccer ball around and would happily do it for hours. But are these soccer dogs … companions [PETA-speak for ‘pets’] who live in homes with families or are they kept in kennels when they’re not playing? Were they rescued or were they bred for this, thus adding to the severe overpopulation crisis of dogs? PETA is very concerned that breeders keep churning out more and more animals when so many of them are already euthanized in animal shelters because there are not enough good homes for them all. Instead of breeding more animals, we encourage people to adopt companions from the shelter and have animals spayed and neutered. Your readers might wish to visit our Web site at HelpingAnimals.com.”

Issues not addressed: What’s with the Germans, anyway?

ITEM 3: Donkey stands in for Saddam. With Saddam Hussein chilling with Hitler in Argentina, the Iraqis “celebrated” the former despot’s birthday on April 28 by dressing a donkey to look like him and positioning it in a town square. They also presented a birthday cake made of animal feces, which in my opinion takes the joke a bit too far.

PETA says: “While not as obviously cruel as a bullfight or calf-roping in an American rodeo, or even a donkey basketball game at a high school fundraiser, dressing up a donkey and parading him through a loud, taunting crowd doesn’t sound very pleasant for the donkey. He was probably frightened, and it seems a silly reason to scare the daylights out of an animal who doesn’t get the joke.”

Issues not addressed: Is it beneath a donkey’s dignity to be compared to Saddam Hussein? Did the crowd have difficulty believing the donkey in the role because its hygiene surpassed Saddam’s? And maybe playing Saddam wouldn’t be “pleasant” for a donkey — but come on, what would? Dude, you’re a DONKEY. How much fun can that be?

[ Browsing PETA’s Web site usually just makes me laugh, but this time it made me think a bit. There is, in fact, a good deal of unnecessary cruelty and abuse of animals used for food, and I was impressed with how PETA tries to work with fast food places (in particular) not to do away with meat products altogether, but to at least, if they’re going to kill animals and eat them, do it humanely. I can get behind that point of view. This is why I made sure to include in the column the mention of PETA’s good intentions, and how it is their methodology that turns people off. (And, of course, the fundamental disagreement I have with them over animals, which I say WERE put here for our use, and which I say are NOT as important as people. But we can agree to disagree on those points.)

My first inclination was just to write a column about the funny animals stories, but then it occurred to me to check with PETA on a couple points, to see if they’d say anything funny in response. The PETA folks were good enough to reply to my e-mails, and to take me seriously when they probably didn’t need to. In fact, Kathy Guillermo e-mailed me after this column ran and said she enjoyed it, and was glad to help. So that’s cool.

And for the record, since I don’t know anything about football, I had to ask a friend which team ought to be singled out as one that only scores points by accident. ]

So I was reading the paper, and I learned that Brigham Young University running back Fahu Tahi had been accused of punching a man in the face outside Movies 8 because the man’s smart-aleck comments had ruined the movie for him. And I was very alarmed, not because a BYU football player had been arrested, because that happens all the time, but because since when is it against the law to punch a guy for talking during a movie? My understanding was that this is a punchable offense.

Where this becomes a thorny legal issue is that it took place at Movies 8. This is what people call a “dollar theater,” even though tickets stopped costing $1 approximately 10 years ago. In industry terms, it’s a “second-run house,” where films go after they have already played out at normal theaters. It’s the last chance to see them before DVD — or should I say video, since the people who wait for the dollar theater to see movies probably have not yet shelled out for a DVD player. If it were possible, they would probably own VCRs that only played 8-tracks.

As you may have surmised, I am a big snob about movies, and so my esteem for dollar theaters is low. The prints are always in terrible shape, having been run hundreds of times at other theaters, and since people only pay a couple bucks to get in, they haven’t invested enough to really care about the experience. People will talk, or get up a lot, or give birth, or whatever, either because they’ve already seen the film elsewhere, or because they honestly don’t care about movies very much anyway and they just like the experience of leaving the house and sitting in the dark.

And so I’m torn. Part of me says if you talk during a movie, you deserve to be punched, and if you talk REPEATEDLY during a movie, you deserve to be punched by a football player. But part of me says if you’re cheap and/or lazy enough to go to Movies 8, you can’t really expect a normal, satisfactory movie experience. You have to expect the place will be overrun by teenagers and college students on cheap dates, that the film will probably break at some point, and that there’s every chance it will feature Rob Schneider.

Tahi and the punched man were watching “The Ring,” an excellent film that ought to be seen without any interruptions or distractions so that you can be drawn into its creepy world and wet your pants. Every time someone near you talks, it pulls you out of the movie and back into reality, and reality is the last place you want to be when watching a film. The best place to watch “The Ring” would be at home, alone, with a great sound system, except that even then, someone might call or stop by. So really, the best place to watch this movie would be in a place where there are no other people, such as the moon. (Though I am guessing that even on the moon, there will be crying babies.)

My point is, I can see how “The Ring” could be ruined by a loudmouth in the audience, especially if he thought he was funny. Loud people who think they’re funny in movie theaters never are; it is physically impossible. You can be loud OR funny, but not both. Now, when I was watching “Bulletproof Monk” and someone shot and killed one of the non-bulletproof monks, and I said, “That monk had two weeks left till retirement!,” THAT was funny, because I only whispered it to my friend who was sitting right next to me. You, Punched Guy, when you yelled things during “The Ring”: not funny.

But I can also see how, you know, what did Tahi expect when he paid $2, wedged himself into a broken, uncomfortable, non-stadium-seating chair, watched previews for movies that came out three months ago, and commenced viewing a torn, splotchy print of “The Ring”? If you want to see a movie the right way, see it at a real theater, for a reasonable price. I mean, you get what you pay for. For example, this column was free.

What’s in a name? When it comes to people, we know names can be key in determining how a person is perceived. For example, if your name is Reginald, people assume you are stuffy and formal, whereas the name Billy Bob indicates to observers that you are a hillbilly. (I mean, your name’s got “billy” right there in it.)

But what about names of other things, like streets? Do they matter? Not a lot, no. But just because something doesn’t matter doesn’t mean people won’t become very agitated about it. And so we have three separate cases in the news recently of people seeking to change a street name because the current moniker reminds them too much of Satan.

We start in the southwest part of the country, where U.S. Route 666 is about to become U.S. Route Something Else. As you know, 666 is the devil’s lucky number, the one he always guesses when he plays the lottery, and so forth. (It’s his wife’s birthday.) (Yes, June 66th.) (And yes, his wife is Carrot Top.) As a result, some people are urging highway officials to change U.S. 666 to something else. It’s been called U.S. 666 since 1926, but apparently people just barely caught on.

The Denver Post reports a variance of attitudes at a truck stop along the route. One man quoted in the story said, “It just doesn’t make any difference,” but another man, a 49-year-old trucker from Minnesota, said, “I had a credit card sent to me out of Salem, Mass., with 666 in the number, and I cut it right up. It says in the Bible that if you take the number of the beast upon your forehead or forearm, you belong to it forever. A credit card is like an extension of your forearm.”

So obviously we have some very sane, Bible-knowledgeable individuals involved here. But what are the folks like in Escondido, Calif.? Do they want to change the name of Avenida del Diablo (“Avenue of the Devil”) on the grounds that if they don’t, the terrorists have won? Why, yes. Yes, they do.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that back in September, Harry and Marianne Batista embarked on a campaign to change the name, writing letters to everyone from the mayor to President Bush. The Batistas have lived on Avenida del Diablo for 16 years, and moved to that street only “grudgingly,” according to Harry Batista. “But not anymore,” he says. “Not with Middle Eastern terrorists calling us devils. I think now is the time to have it changed.”

The Batistas’ letter to the city of Escondido reads, in part, “I think it is a disgrace to this beautiful city that this street name still exists today, especially with what is going on in the world, and especially with what happened on 9/11 in New York…. These Middle Eastern radical people from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. and their beliefs consider us, the United States, ‘ËœTHE DEVIL.'”

So there you have it. Because some terrorists refer to Americans as devils, el Avenida del Diablo needs to go, pronto. Surely the logic is unmistakable.

But what are the folks like here in Utah? Are they also worried about el diablo? Do you even have to ask?

In West Valley City, Perry Homes wants to call a new cul-de-sac Mount Diablo Court, after a famous peak near San Francisco. It would go along with Mount Montana, Mount Adams and Mount Whitney, all in the same development.

But according to The Salt Lake Tribune, some Latino home-buyers don’t want to live on a street named after the devil. Hispanic culture, I think, is generally more interested in religious symbolism than some other cultures I could name, e.g., mine. When I was young, I had a Mexican friend named Jesus, a name I’m fairly certain my parents never considered giving me. (El Diablo, maybe.)

At any rate, the Planning Commission is supporting a proposed new name for Mount Diablo Court: Kathrine Ann Court. I urge them to reconsider. If you must change the name away from the devil, please don’t change it to a new, misspelled name like “Kathrine.” Enough Utahns are misspelling their own names already, without being encouraged by street signs. Don’t you agree, Cletus?

The last place I ever thought I would find something useful or significant was a shopping mall. Malls are generally good only for maintaining our nation’s teenager-based economy, and for giving high school girls a chance to wear hootchie clothing in a parent-free environment, and for retail clerks to practice making you feel stupid by looking for the CD in the same place YOU just looked for it and it wasn’t there and that’s why you asked them about it in the first place and what do they think you are, an idiot? So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered Provo Towne Centre selling, of all things, my childhood.

Allow me to set the scene: My insane boss had made a demand for Mrs. Field’s cookies, slathered in frosting. (I don’t mean my boss was slathered in frosting when she made the demand, though it’s possible she was. I only mean that she wanted cookies which were slathered.) In fact, what she really wanted was the frosting. If I could obtain a vat of it sans cookies, all the better.

Since I wanted to negotiate some additional vacation time, I agreed to perform this bit of monkey work. And so I found myself at the mall, despite my aversion to malls. And it was while walking through the concourse that I heard a song playing:

“Mister Wind is a mischief,
Mister Wind is a pest.
He blows my papers everywhere.
He never lets me rest.
Oo-OO-oo-OO-oo-OO-ooo.”

Immediately and metaphorically, I was transported back to the early 1980s. My siblings and I are traveling with my parents to my grandparents’ house, about 75 minutes away. In our van we are listening to a tape called “I Have a Song for You,” featuring songs by Janeen Brady. These tunes are about people, families and nature. Themes include being special, snowflakes, brothers, and wiggling. We listen to this tape every time we go anywhere, which means we know the songs better than anything, including our own names. All it takes now, at the mall, is one bar, and I instantly know the entire song, as well as which songs come before and after it.

I determined the source of the music: a cart near the Mrs. Field’s booth. Now, in the hierarchy of mall stories, the cart is at the bottom. First you have your flagship stores, like Nordstrom or Sears. Then you have your basic mall stores, your Gaps and Banana Republics and whatnot. Some of these basic mall stores are based on very simple and/or stupid ideas, like the stores that only sell socks or aprons or paper clips or whatever. And then you have the kiosks, which sit in the middle of the mall and which are apparently based on ideas so lame, they don’t even merit their own stores, which is saying something, considering the aforementioned tie and flyswatter stores.

Below the kiosks, which are semi-permanent, you have the carts, which can be moved around at will. My childhood, in musical form, was emanating from such an ignominious location. A man was selling all manner of Janeen Brady products, including CDs, tapes and songbooks. All my life, I remembered the “I Have a Song for You” tape, but I didn’t know Brady had written other things, too. Heck, I didn’t even think anyone besides me and my siblings would remember the songs. I thought they were obscure. Little did I realize there was a Janeen Brady cottage industry.

Out of nostalgia, I bought the tape from my childhood, except I bought it on CD, because you have to draw the line on nostalgia somewhere. I also purchased the accompanying songbook so that I could play the tunes on the piano, though at what sort of occasion or gathering this would be appropriate, I could not imagine.

The songbook includes tips on helping children enjoy the songs more. For example, the previously quoted “Mister Wind Is a Mischief” suggests you use dancing to “let children express their own interpretations of the mischievous wind.” It then adds: “Brightly colored scarves might enhance their creativity.” I believe this is true in almost all situations.

Hearing these songs again inspired a strange and sudden burst of wistfulness. (I have not even mentioned my other favorite, “Sharing,” which goes, “If I had a penny/And you hadn’t any/I’d buy a candy stick/And let you have a lick.” It always seemed exceptionally cruel to me to offer one lick of a piece of candy and call that “sharing.”) When I visited home and played the CD for my family, I was glad to find they remembered the songs, too, and that since last hearing them 15 years earlier, we’d been imbued with the ability to create vulgar parody lyrics for them.

But back to the mall. As I completed my purchase, I saw three too-cool-for-school teenage boys walk past the cart, hear “Mister Wind Is a Mischief,” and dance around in a spirit of mockery. I was going to be angry with them, but then I realized they were right. In their position, I would have done the same thing. The mall is not a place for introspection.

I’m experiencing an ethical dilemma. It’s a sensation altogether new to me. It sort of tingles.

What happened is, I saw a really funny sign that would be perfect to discuss in this column. It’s at the entrance to a parking lot, where you take your ticket so they know how much to charge you when you leave. On the machine that coughs up the tickets, there’s a handwritten sign that says:

“Tickets are dirty! Do not put in your mouth!!! We don’t want to handle your SPIT!!”

So here’s my dilemma: The parking lot in question is at UVSC. Consequently, it would be easy to make jokes about the sort of people who go to UVSC, who apparently have to be told not to put foreign objects in their mouths. It would be even easier to take the next logical step, which is to assume UVSC also has a class called What Not to Put in Your Mouth 101, and perhaps also one called Don’t Touch That 401 (it’s an upper-division course).

But Utah Valley Special College is an easy target, and one I’ve taken aim at frequently. I would like to think I’m above going for the easy jokes, and that I would use this forum instead to foster intelligent discussion of important issues.

I would LIKE to think that. Unfortunately, the empirical data makes it difficult to convince myself of it.

But how can I resist when, while visiting UVSC recently on official business, I encountered so much entertainment in an edition of the school paper, The College Times? Here is an opinion piece entitled, “What is it to be American?” It begins this way:

“‘I’m proud to be an American…’ Whenever that song comes on the radio, I’ll admit I sing along but a part of my body starts to convulse and dry heave.”

I wonder which part of the body that would be. The stomach, maybe? Later, the author describes his peers’ reaction to his participation in an on-campus peace rally. “They thought it was funny and a little exocentric,” he writes.

Now, I know how sometimes when I’m talking I accidentally combine words. Here, apparently, the author was trying to say both “eccentric” and “exoskeleton” at the same time. I don’t know why he was trying to do that, but apparently he was.

Elsewhere, he observes that there is more to being patriotic than carrying flags and posting bumper stickers. “Is this American? For some yes, but in a non-delusional world, there is more to being American. This is a parodic.”

To say something is “a parodic” is a ridiculous.

And then there’s the reason I was at UVSC in the first place, which was to attend a poetry reading at which a friend was a featured participant. I attended to support him, despite my earnest belief that most poetry is pretentious crap. I also attended despite knowing that after his bit was through, there would be an open mic, meaning anyone who fancied himself a bard could stand up and force his musings upon us, in defiance of the Geneva Convention, which allows for impromptu, unsupervised poetry-reading only against the enemy and during times of war.

Sure enough, the open-mic stuff was awful, just dreadful stuff. Thousands were killed. One of the poets, I’m fairly sure, was just reading a list of random words he had jotted down on a scrap of paper. He definitely had a couplet in which the rhyme was “you” and “poo,” which I’m sure I don’t have to point out is a complete rip-off of Robert Frost. (“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/I was on my way to you/Undecided, a while I stood/And then I saw some badger poo.”)

Again, if I were taking the easy way out, I would lay the blame for the bad poetry at UVSC’s feet. I would say I’m surprised none of the readers plagiarized things they read on Hallmark cards. I would say UVSC offers a course in poetry, but that the textbook is a volume of dirty limericks. I would say the most amazing thing about the poetry reading at UVSC was that it involved reading.

But these are easy jokes. I want to be better than that. You see my dilemma, I’m sure. Now please, if you don’t mind, take this column out of your mouth.

There are two philosophies regarding speed limits. One holds that they are speed LIMITS — that is, the absolute maximum you should drive, and you’re probably better off going a little slower. The other holds that the first group needs to get out of the way.

Utah newspapers often print letters to the editor from people who are from the first camp. These letters usually go like this:

“I have lived everywhere in the world, and have also done some interplanetary travel, and I know that Utah drivers are the worst ANYWHERE! Everyone drives so fast! Why, just the other day, I was out driving, and someone passed me going well over 1,000 mph! People, let’s take time to stop and smell the roses! What’s your hurry? Is getting to your destination two minutes faster worth the risk of killing every person in the world with your deadly vehicle? Let’s slow down, enjoy a leisurely pace, and sit on the porch and sip lemonade until our time runs out.”

Here is what’s clear from reading letters like these:

1. This person is fantastically old.

2. This person drives too slow.

In case you haven’t guessed, I subscribe to the second school of thought, the one that says hurry up, and if you’re not going to hurry up, then at least get out of my way, and if you’re not going to get out of my way, then at least die. And so I am glad to read the recent news that Orem is considering raising the speed limits on some heavily traveled streets throughout the city.

One of the thoroughfares is 1200 West, where the speed limit is currently 25 mph. This road goes past my house, so I drive it every day, except for the days when crippling agoraphobia prevents me from getting out of bed. Since I have frequently seen cops sitting around, waiting for people to speed — because 25 feels way too slow on this street — I have learned not to go more than 30. But closer to 40 would feel a lot more natural, and 50, while not natural, would certainly feel very exciting. I get goose bumps just thinking about 60.

According to the committee appointed by the City Council to study this issue, most people already drive about 35 on the roads in question, hence the recommendation to increase the speed limit. It delights me to no end that the city is actually using the logic I would use: Everyone’s breaking the law, so let’s change the law. If everyone would band together and stop paying income tax — and we’d really have to be united here — maybe the government would do away with that, too. In Los Angeles, common practice has already made it so that shooting a stranger is only a Class C misdemeanor, and not a crime at all if the stranger is Carrot Top.

The Orem Police Department is in favor of the increased speed limits, too. Lt. Doug Edwards, public information office for OPD, said last week that if the speed limit is closer to what people are already actually driving, then that means fewer tickets that have to be written. I’m not sure how writing fewer tickets is a GOOD thing for the police department — what else are they going to do all day in Orem? — but I’m certainly in favor of fewer of them being written to me.

Discussion question: If the speed limit is changed to 35, will people keep driving 35, or will they go even faster?

Answer: I will go faster. I hope they do raise it to 35, because then I can drive 45. I always drive 10 mph above the speed limit. If the speed limit were infinity, I would find a way to drive 10 more than infinity — and yes, I’m aware that would destroy all current mathematical theories. That’s how important speeding is to me.

But according to Orem transportation engineer Chris Tschirki, I am in the minority, not just in my disregard for physics, but in my philosophy toward speeding. He told the Daily Herald that most people drive at speeds they’re comfortable with, regardless of the speed limit. So if they’re currently comfortable with 35, they’ll continue to be once the limit changes. All that will change is that they won’t be speeding anymore.

The city has scheduled an open house for April 24 to discuss the possible speed limit increases. Here residents can voice their opinions in a logical manner and then yell angrily at one another for disagreeing. Religion will probably get dragged into it, too. (“Why is everyone speeding when they purport to believe in obeying the law of the land?” “What about the scripture that says to go about your business ‘quickly and efficiently’?” “Why are you making up scriptures?”) The meeting, unfortunately, is being held at the Orem Senior Friendship Center — you’ll notice the words “senior center” there, which means the deck is stacked against the speed limit being increased, unless lead-foots like me show up and outnumber them. Allow ample travel time, because you never know who you’ll get stuck behind on the way.

Everyone thinks they know everything. Regular people think it matters what celebrities say, celebrities think they know more than President Bush, and President Bush thinks Qatar is a musical instrument.

But I kid the leader of the free world. The truth is, though I don’t believe this is necessarily true in all cases, when it comes to foreign policy, Bush almost certainly knows more than I do. He has access to sensitive information and top-secret debriefings; I can barely even read. It’s his job to know what’s best for this country, and I have no choice but to assume he’s doing his job. If he proves to be incompetent, I can fire him by not voting for him in 2004, the same way I didn’t vote for him in 2000. I can also dock his pay by refusing to pay my taxes. But for the time being, he’s the man who was elected by a substantial chunk of voters — almost 50 percent! — to lead the United States. What makes us think we know better than he does how to lead?

Which is why I don’t get the protesting. Do we think Bush is going to hear about the protests and say, “What? Some people are against the war? Well, heck, we’d better pull out, then.” Is that the reasoning? Do people walk around during their daily lives and think, “I know Bush has advisers, experts and diplomats to help him make informed decisions … but what about MY opinion? Does he know what I think?”?

I understand the principle behind it: In America, we have the right to express our opinions. And I fully support that, but you know what? The expression of your opinion should not block traffic, nor should it end in your arrest. Opinions whose expression requires being fingerprinted afterward are opinions that maybe ought to be reconsidered. Perhaps it would not betray your integrity too much if you came up with a set of opinions that could be expressed from the comfort of your own home, or at least from the sidewalk. I’m just sayin’.

Besides, now that the war has started, the time for protest is past. What is the point now? Do you honestly think the best thing would be for Bush to say, “Whoops, I messed up,” and pull the troops out? Now that we’re in it, right or wrong, we have to finish it. The thing to do now is support the troops and hope for a quick resolution. I have no qualms about saying unequivocally that protesting is a complete waste of time.

As with many issues, there is madness on both sides. First, let’s discuss Michael Moore’s shenanigans at the Oscars last week. Upon winning the prize for best documentary, Moore — who had somehow been crammed into a tuxedo but had still refused to shave, on the grounds that any attempt to render himself presentable is a wasted effort — gave the following speech, transcribed verbatim:

“On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I’d like to thank the Academy for this. I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they’re here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you.”

We will ignore his use of the made-up word “fictition” for approximately one second, and then we will talk about it.

“Fictition”? Come on, Michael. If you have an audience of 1 billion people, and you have something to say that you think is important — something you’ve obviously planned in advance — go ahead and take the time to learn some actual English words with which to express yourself. In fact, I will add that to my previous list: If your opinion is so bizarre that it requires the manufacture of new words just to convey it, then maybe you need to take it down a notch.

What is galling is not that Moore opposes the war, but that he presumes to speak for everyone. His speech was met with many loud boos in the audience, which Moore later insisted were from only five or six people — which is clearly wrong to anyone who witnessed the event — and that they were his friends and family, urged by him to boo in order to create diversity. In other words, even when half an audience vocally expresses its disagreement with him, he refuses to acknowledge that anyone disagrees with him. This is insane behavior.

Our other example of extreme conduct comes from Portland, Ore., which is the most beautiful city in the world, as you know if you have ever spoken to a Portlandian for more than five seconds, which is the maximum length of time a Portlandian can go without telling you how beautiful Portland is. Personally, I think Portland smells too much like hippies.

Anyway, according to The Oregonian, a newspaper whose name always makes me giggle, Portland Fire Bureau officials last week ordered U.S. flags removed from fire engines, “concerned that their presence might provoke dangerous confrontations with antiwar demonstrators.”

In other words, officials decided that since antiwar protesters are upset with America’s current administration, they probably hate America in general, and therefore also the flag. One assumes firefighters were instructed not to carry apple pies, baseballs or their mothers around with them, either.

Now, apparently Portland demonstrators have been burning flags up there, the idiocy of which I’m sure is apparent. But what difference does that make here? Was the fire department really afraid someone was going to try setting a fire truck on fire? And if they did try it, wouldn’t the comedy of the situation make it worthwhile? Fortunately, the fire department changed its mind the next day, and flags are back on the trucks now.

Times like these inspire people to overreact (though, in fairness, people overreact a lot during regular times, too). Let us all take a step back, calm ourselves, and remember that regardless of whether President Bush has done the right thing, regardless of whether he was even legally elected in the first place, one thing is indisputable: “Qatar” is a funny name for a country. I hope we never have to attack them.

People complain that the media never reports “good news,” but you have to admit, when we do cover it, we cover the heck out of it. We cover it until it is in danger of being suffocated and begs us to please stop covering it. And then we cover it some more, because we’re twisted like that.

Hence the non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage of Elizabeth Smart’s sudden reappearance 11 days ago after being missing for nine months. You don’t often see joy within the media as unrestrained as it was those first couple days, as we, with the rest of the state, were astonished and grateful that such a miracle had occurred. We’re human, too, you know, some of us.

As always, TV was people’s first, most immediate news source, doing what TV does best: conveying the least amount of information the greatest number of times. In the absence of actual new facts, TV reporters are forced to repeat themselves frequently during ongoing live coverage. And when the event has them as flabbergasted as this one did — seriously, you could see their flabbers being gasted right there on television — it only adds to the merriment. To me, it makes the reporters seem more like regular people, and less like blow-dried mannequins that have somehow been taught to read.

Newspapers were eager to share the news, too, often in a rush to do so. One newspaper that we’ll call the Shmaily Shmerald ran this headline on a follow-up story: “Investigators Plan to Get Full Story.” Well, it’s good to know they’re going to get the FULL story, and not just stop once they’ve caught the gist of it. (“Hold it right there,” they tell Elizabeth, putting their hands up in protest and chuckling. “That will be quite enough, thank you.”)

And so everyone in the state, and many people throughout the world, rejoiced together. Elizabeth was home, alive and in good physical health. We were, at first, unaware of some of the darker, more despicable things that occurred during the ordeal. There will be problems for her and her family to deal with for a long time. But the important thing was that she was home.

I don’t think anyone imagined this scenario. Most people assumed, sadly, that she was dead. Others wondered if she had run away. No one ever thought she’d been abducted by a delusional hobo suffering from religious hallucinations. In retrospect, it should have been obvious, considering that the most recent census indicates insane zealots make up 12 percent of Utah’s population. And sure enough, it turns out to have been just such a crazy person, Brian David Mitchell, who is accused of taking Elizabeth from her Salt Lake City home last June. Police are still determining the details, but apparently Mitchell is a prophet, known as Emmanuel, whom God told to take seven wives in addition to the one he already had, and Elizabeth was to be the first.

Naturally, since this is Utah, you knew polygamy had to be involved somehow.

I realize Mitchell has yet to stand trial, and far be it from me to criticize someone else’s religious beliefs, but Mitchell is an evil lunatic who deserves slow, lingering death. If he’s a prophet, I’ll eat my hat (or, if it turns out I do not own a hat, the hat of your choosing). I can’t quote chapter and verse, but I’m sure the Bible indicates true prophets don’t kidnap people. God’s ways are mysterious, but he doesn’t generally encourage his followers to terrorize children. And while it’s hard to know what sort of behavior is appropriate for a prophet, I can guarantee shoplifting is not on the list.

It is interesting how the Smart family’s generosity wound up creating problems for them. Mitchell had been hired as a handyman to do a bit of labor on the Smarts’ palatial Salt Lake home a year before the kidnapping; that’s how he had seen Elizabeth. Another itinerant laborer, Richard Ricci, had done similar work and was the chief suspect in the case until he rather inconsiderately died in prison last year. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that prior to Elizabeth turning up, police still had 50 “homeless, transient types” to interview who had worked at the Smart home over the past year.

First of all, what is WRONG with this house that it requires some kind of repair EVERY SINGLE WEEK? Man alive, cut your losses and move to a condo.

But more to the point, while it’s admirable that the Smarts liked to help people by giving them work, 50 bums in a year is a lot of bums to be doing favors for, especially if the favors include inviting them over to your house.

The world is a curious place. The Smarts behave charitably and suffer for it. An evil man without conscience or morals torments a family because he thinks God wants him to. God, for reasons of his own, waits nine months before answering the family’s prayers. None of it makes much sense. But she’s home now. That this is a happy occasion is the one thing, maybe in all of history, that every Utahn can agree on.

There is a television set near my desk at work, and it is often tuned to MTV. This is because, in the features department, we need to keep abreast of the latest trends in music, youth culture and skankiness. Some might say extended viewing of this channel would affect one’s behavior, but I think that’s wack, yo.

Actually, I do think watching MTV all day has skewed my perception of reality, which was fuzzy to begin with. I go home thinking, “Hey, how come I’m always wearing a shirt, like a chump? No one else wears shirts!” It also gives me unhealthy, unnatural shame about the condition of my own body, which I believe was one of the stated goals of the network in the first place.

One of MTV’s original shows is “True Life,” a documentary series in which people who have dramatic problems are paraded around while sensitive songs by Blink-182 and Missy Elliott play in the background. We meet teens with eating disorders, pregnant teens, teens with too many piercings and teens who binge drink. But what made these teens do these things in the first place? Isn’t MTV expressing sympathy for them sort of like Marlboro expressing sympathy for people with lung cancer?

Does MTV, or any media, actually influence people’s behavior? Of course it does. Advertisers wouldn’t produce commercials if they didn’t think sounds and pictures had some power to make people do things. The question is how strong the influence is.

Pretty strong, according to a new study published in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health. (This issue has a GREAT centerfold of Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, by the way.) Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta and the University of Alabama at Birmingham studied the behavior of 522 black females ages 14-18 and found that those who watched 14 hours or more of rap videos a week were far more likely than their peers to engage in violent behavior, be arrested, have multiple sex partners and acquire STDs (though they did not necessarily do all these things at once) (though I would not put it past them, teens being excessive as they are).

“Maybe they see what’s on the rap music videos and think that’s how teenagers act, and that’s how I should act,” said Gina Wingood, co-author of the study and associate professor of behavioral sciences and health education at Emory University. (You can read the study in PDF format here.)

We’re ultimately responsible for our own actions, of course, but should we remove all blame from the things that influence us?

When MTV’s “The Real World” shows gorgeous people cohabitating, fornicating, imbibing and carousing, does that make those activities seem a little more appealing to the youth who watch the channel? Or are those things appealing anyway, without MTV doing P.R. for them?

When someone watches MTV’s “Jackass” and subsequently maims himself re-enacting one of the stunts, perhaps by setting his groin aflame with a bottle rocket, is that MTV’s fault? Or is it the fault of his parents, who bred him, or of the government, who allowed people with such inferior genes to reproduce in the first place?

It would seem that if MTV doesn’t actively promote unhealthy behavior, it certainly doesn’t do much to discourage it. Witness the series “Becoming,” whose premise is to encourage imitative behavior of pop stars. On this show, ordinary teens who are fanatics of a particular singer get to become that person for a day, culminating in re-shooting one of the performer’s videos with the teen in the lead role. As far as I can tell, the teen never actually gets to meet his or her idol, which makes the whole thing pretty cruel, really. But they do get to imitate the person and feel what it’s like to be that person for a day.

Now, there are the obvious problems with this. For example, why is MTV encouraging our youth to be losers? Seriously, kids, get a life.

Furthermore, while there are singers I like, and even love — Juice Newton, I’m looking in your direction — there aren’t any whom I’ve ever wanted to BE. I mean, I like potatoes, too, but I don’t wish to become one.

And what if your particular idol is Mariah Carey? Does that mean you have to spend 24 hours dazedly wandering the streets, asking passersby if they have change for a Grammy?

But the real point is, here is a show whose whole purpose is to encourage teens not to be themselves — the smart, wonderful, passionate people teens can be — but instead to be someone else, some fabricated, made-over person they’ve never met. There is so much potential in our youth — well, your youth; I don’t have any of my own — that it seems a shame to have it mishandled by poor influences. And I know you would take me more seriously if I did, but I am NOT putting my shirt back on.

I try not to get involved in state legislative issues. I agree with the old axiom that watching laws being made is like watching sausages being made: There’s a foul smell, a lot of squealing, and the floor is covered in blood when it’s over.

But recently I’ve been observing the controversy over the hate crimes bill, which very nearly became a law this year. At first I thought it was a hat crimes bill, and I was grateful that at long last, the guys in their 20s who wear hats all the time would be prosecuted for being the dorks they are.

Then I put my eyedrops in, realized it was about hate crimes, and I became even MORE interested. The hate crimes bill would have upgraded a crime’s classification one notch if the crime was motivated by prejudice toward a group. For example, a second-degree felony would become a first-degree felony if you committed it because you don’t like octogenarians and the victim was 85.

The bill defined “groups” as being distinguished by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age. Therefore, beating someone up because he’s Canadian is still just a regular ol’ crime. If it’s because he’s a GAY Canadian, then it’s a hate crime.

I don’t agree with the hate crimes bill. I don’t believe a distinction should be made between shooting a guy because he made unflattering remarks about your girlfriend and shooting a guy because he’s a Quaker. In either case, you’ve shot someone without just cause. In either case, you should go to jail — unless shooting a Quaker is not against the law, in which case I shall have to revise this paragraph altogether.

There are further complications. What if someone belonging to a group I have a pre-existing dislike for — we’ll say Quakers, for argument’s sake — does something that gives me legitimate cause to act out against him? Like he kills my dog, or answers his cellphone during a movie, or something. I will have a devil of a time proving in court that my dislike of Quakers — which, I should stress, is only hypothetical — was irrelevant in this instance.

Now, here’s where it gets sticky. The Utah Eagle Forum, a right-wing coalition of busybodies and fanatics, was also opposed to the hate crimes bill. That I should ever agree with this insane cadre of harridans about ANYTHING makes me want to hide under a pile of blankets.

Fortunately, I still have something to disagree with them about, and that’s the way their leader, Gayle Ruzicka, behaved in her opposition to the bill. Gayle and her coven opposed the bill because they felt it gave protected legal status to gays and lesbians, when of course the proper thing to do with gays and lesbians, according to the Eagle Forum, is to set fire to them and laugh while they burn.

When the bill first came up four years ago, Ruzicka said Utah law should not protect “illegal and immoral” behavior such as homosexuality. And clearly, by saying you are not supposed to beat people up because of their lifestyle, you are encouraging that lifestyle. If we promise we’re not going to pummel druids wantonly in the streets, then there’s going to be an increase in people converting to druidism.

Furthermore, Gayle is one of those people who believe that anything they don’t like is also disliked officially by the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So since Gayle opposed the bill, she assumed the LDS Church did, too, even though a church spokesman had specifically stated the church did NOT oppose the bill, nor was it in favor of the bill, but instead was neutral on the bill. Gayle said the church was merely downplaying its support of the bill so as not to unduly influence the voting, because for sure the LDS Church HATES when it influences the voting.

Immediately, the church responded and said, even more clearly than before, using small words and flow charts, that Gayle was wrong when she said this, and that the LDS Church was not, in fact against the bill, and that Gayle should stop trying to tell people what the LDS Church “really” thinks or else the LDS Church would kick her in the throat. (The last part was implied.)

Unlike the Eagle Forum, my opposition to the bill was because I didn’t feel it was necessary, not because I had paranoid ideas about it actually doing harm. If it had passed, I would have been OK. I didn’t actively protest against it. Not like movie-watching cellphone-answerers, whom I will campaign against until my dying breath, regardless of their race, creed or color.

A few weeks ago, the Daily Herald asked as one of its poll questions what Utah should do about conserving water. One of the responses from a woman named Barb was that we should close our door to immigrants. It seemed like an odd solution to the problem, but I got the impression that’s her solution to every problem.

What should we do about confusing state liquor laws? No more immigrants. How can we maintain peaceful relations between the various religions of Utah? No more immigrants. How can we make “American Idol” less boring? No more immigrants.

A lot of Utahns don’t like foreigners. Well, not dark ones, anyway. The European ones seem to get along fine, especially the ones who settled Utah 150 years ago. Many of those pioneers still live here, reading this newspaper and making angry phone calls on a daily basis.

Foreigners from Mexico, though, have a harder time. They face prejudice, a language barrier and an overwhelming dearth of good Mexican restaurants. They must deal with attitudes like the ones expressed by the anonymous illiterates who populate the HarkTheHerald.com message boards. When the Immigration and Naturalization Service raided a Provo company last week and hauled off 120 suspected illegal aliens — using Gestapo-like tactics in the process, including confiscating witnesses’ photographs of the event — the news story at HarkTheHerald.com was flooded with comments from people applauding the “inforcement” of the laws against those who are here “illegially,” to cite just two examples of the special version of the English language used by these people. (Ironically, many of these people object to Mexican immigrants because they don’t speak English.) One person even questioned whether the “hispanic-speaking” attorney representing the company was legal or not, since he had a Hispanic name.

Then there’s the tragic matter of the Mexican girl who was given a bad heart and lung transplant in North Carolina, resulting in her death. Some people commenting at HarkTheHerald.com — as always, under the cowardly cloak of anonymity — have indicated that since she was an illegal alien, she didn’t deserve the transplants anyway, much less the second round of transplants that wound up not saving her. After all, if you had sneaked into Mexico illegally, you wouldn’t be entitled to medical care! (Nor would you want it. Have you SEEN Mexico?)

It is when I read things like this — not to mention the other standard complaints about immigrants taking hand-outs from the government, stealing our jobs, committing crimes, and so on — that I’m glad there’s a language barrier. If I moved to a foreign country whose citizens were going to do nothing but ridicule me — e.g., France — I would intentionally NOT learn the language, just so I wouldn’t have to know what they were saying.

It’s interesting the way we divide up our foreigners. There has recently been a good deal of French-bashing, due to France’s refusal to join America in the war against Iraq. It’s all very silly, of course. No one should be surprised or offended that snivelly France doesn’t want to fight; furthermore, most Americans AGREE with France on the Iraq thing. So why do we mock the French? Because we enjoy it, and now we have an excuse for it.

What’s interesting is that it’s OK. It’s socially acceptable to make fun of the French for being snobby, foul-smelling and strange, or for anything else you care to attribute to them. But say anything like that about someone from Mexico, and you’re a bigot. Why the difference? I don’t know. Maybe we feel bad for Mexico because it’s a poorer country than France. Maybe it’s because the French are always ripping on us, so they deserve some of it back. Maybe it’s because the Mexican people tend to be warm, loving and hard-working, while the French are insecure, cheese-sniffing alcoholics. Whatever the reason, while I’m entirely in favor of making jokes about people who are different from us, I have to draw the line at actually hating them. I realize I’m taking a strong position here, being anti-hate, but you’ll notice I’m willing to sign my name to it anyway.