euthanasia in the blog-o-sphere

City Weekly is a local publication originating north of the UC (that's Utah County for those not familiar with geography in the jello belt) that recently revealed it's list of "Utah's Best," jointly selected by writers AND readers. All I really learned from this list is that people in Utah love FOX 13 news. They love it, love it, love it.

In other words, people in Utah are dumb.

I'm not bagging on the Beehive State, there are dumb people everywhere.

The one category that blew my mind was for "best blogger" and of course Utah's best blogger was Dooce who has a huge following, lots of cute and funny little stories, has won "bloggies" and everything else you would expect.

I hold no ill will toward Dooce, she is a fine blogger. What made my brain pop were the blogs that City Weekly chose as their second and third best. Second is a blog that recaps what happens every day on the X96 morning show. The third was something that kept readers apprised of various happenings and sales in the state, I honestly didn't look at it too closely after I realized it wasn't interesting.

It smells of a cop out of massive proportions. And no, I am not feeling snubbed or anything silly like that. I am simply flabbergasted that this was the best they could come up with.

Luckily, Google's blogger has given me the tools to look into the matter personally. In the last hour I have sifted through all of the blogs (on blogger) from Provo and Springville and have decidedly discovered 3,196 solid candidates for Utah's worst blog. Maybe City Weekly was right after all. If there is something better out there, I will find it. At least I'm starting to narrow it down a bit through the process of elimination.

The search goes on, I'll let you know what I find.

YouTube Saturday

Last year my wife got tickets to Muse for my birthday. I had heard they were amazing live but nothing could have prepared me for a show that was ultimately one of the coolest things I have ever witnessed that did not feature Bruce Campbell. This is one of those rare bands who seem to write music for the specific purpose of playing it live. Some bands don't sound quite right live compared to the over-produced tracks they put on the airwaves but not these guys. This will sound like bragging, but I really believe that if you haven't heard them live then you haven't heard Muse. The night was a little surreal considering that the lead singer for the band that opened was Juliet Lewis. That's right, she has a band. That part if the evening was a little odd...

But I digress.

The last song Muse played was a little ditty called "Stockholm Syndrome." As far as I'm concerned, this six or seven minutes alone was worth the price of admission.

Why do I even bring any of this up at all?

I haven't really had more than an hour of sleep over the last two and a half days (and I mean one hour total) and today is the second time I've taken a sleeping pill to get some rest but for whatever reason, the little blue friend of mine (in pill-shaped form) that has never let me down is failing me the second day in a row.

And I digress even farther.

The bottom line is that I've tried to take my mind off things by watching some YouTube and after poking around a bit, I hit on this performance from 2004. I can only warn you that it doesn't do much justice to the live experience but I really wanted to post something that was not only upbeat, but kicks ass.

I'm sure I'll be back soon enough to my ranting and raving about life, the universe, and cheese fries quicker than something that happens really fast. But for the time being... for this morning, I give you Muse playing one of the finest entries in their kick-ass repertoire.