In Utah Valley, the Mecca of Secret Backbiting, where the pricks kick against the pricks, where phonies multiply like rabbits, you’re bound to meet a lot of interesting people.

But, in other news, lets go to the weekly SEO blooper reel:

Ever known of anyone with an agenda or grudge to SEO their opponent’s name for ill? It happens all the time. Usually its pretty hard to; you have to find some damning terms somewhere parsed in their content, and optimize it (usually out of context) using some basic SEO techniques. But, even more rare, have you ever known anyone to SEO their own name for ill on purpose?

Nate Bagley has spent the last several years accumulating inbound links from friends with the anchor text: Life is a joke (You’re most certainly welcome, Nate). The result of course is that he will definitely own the first two results for the term: Nate Bagley’s life is a joke. What a freakin pimp.

Now its fair to say that it is likely anyone’s personal blog will rank somewhat high on this term since it is what we would call a “tail term”. For instance if you google the same thing but replace his name with my name, you get my post-modern high scale art project ranking #2: the goyin blog, that happens to be a money making machine (If you would like to know more, you know where to contact me).

Anyway, Nate, you have easily reached escobar status.

A blog that hates on Utah Valley wouldn’t be complete without a portrait of Utah Valley’s Higher Education system. I’ve been working mostly for the past 5-6 years and am coming back to school finally. Since UVSC has moved up in the world and is now UVU, they say as many as 15% more students will be attending. Below is a representation of what I thought class was going to be like, and what it turned out being like:

What I thought class would look like:

What Class Ended Up Being Like:

Yes, it almost seemed this empty in my “full” class. Apparently you don’t have to go to class to pass. Yes, the facilities really were this neat and clean, and the utilitarian architecture really did provide a stainless steel toilet within a convenient distance. And yes, no minorities.

Unfortunately, the architecture at UVU is uninspired and not functional or utilitarian at all. It’s also ugly, so I don’t get it yet. Whoever designed the place obviously wanted to copy Wright’s negative spaces, only superfluously, times a hundred. The building materials really give off a 3rd World impression, and the intentional unfinished look really nails the Brazilian Public School look; you know, all of those schools built during the height of the cold war when Brazil was Socialist more than ever, and they moved the capital to Brazilia. Bare essentials: concrete and brick, but distastefully executed.

Its kind of like how Utahns make up names for their children that have never been used because they think they are being clever, when in fact they look like hick clowns that got gored at the rodeo in Kanab Utah. Stupid hicks.

Anyway, no inspiring spaces, no balance, arbitrary entrances and exits here and there with narrow stair cases, low ceilings, wastes of space everywhere. As if to make up for all of this, all of the pipes are visible and painted with all primary and complimentary colors in rainbow order running along the ceilings. It was at that time I’d realized I forgot to bring something for show and tell.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about that campus is the waste of Horizontal Space. Instead of building up, they decided to build across, and everything requires a carefully planned hike with dehydrated foods and water purification tablets. It’s like one of my favorite books when I was a kid: Sideways Stories at Wayside School. Its about a school that was supposed to be built sideways but they screwed up and built it tall. Only UVU would be the mutant bastard version of the sideways school if they screwed up, and screwed up yet again, building the school flat, but still with no rhyme or reason.

My other impression of UVU came from my esteemed counselor. I won’t say who she is or what I’m studying, but she is a fat dyke bitch. I’ll let you know who she is once I graduate.

I come on time for a 9 am appointment and she is busy talking to someone so I wait. She sees me and comes and closes the door. About 20 minutes later (of listening to nonstop laughter come from the room) the person leaves, and it turns out to be another one of the counselors that works there. I come in trying to be friendly and affable (I’ve seen this lady before and she was nice when another female was in the room) telling her I wasn’t good at figuring out classes/prereqs, etc and she jumps down my throat telling me that that was the reason why she put asterisks on my worksheet (a worksheet with lines, scribbles, notes, and… asterisks). She asks for my UV ID number and then assures me I’ve got it wrong (with her irritated condescending voice) because its ‘missing a number.’ She then writes out her own number on a sheet and counts the numbers. After realizing her folly she doesn’t even apologize.

Yeah, I’ve been busy in the real world where us grown ups have to face the anarchic and risky throes of capitalism. I didn’t have time to grow my ass big and fat while studying UVU’s arbitrary administration policies and other bits of “valuable world knowledge” on other people’s tuition bill. I don’t get to sit in a cute little office that other people’s tax dollars and donations built, and stick stupid posters and ironic messages all over it.

When you’re a male dealing with a female supremacist, you can’t make any mistakes. Without a female by my side, I must have looked like such a Neanderthal. If this chick were born with a penis, Rush Limbaugh would have some serious competition.

As far as I’m concerned, writing this was cathartic enough, and she can just rot her fat ass off (which I wouldn’t hold my breath for) in the ugliest campus I’ve ever seen in this Country, advising retards such as myself.

Some upcoming events of note in the Mother Land (Salt Lake City):

September 15, Tilly and The Wall at In The Venue

October 9, Deerhoof at the Urban Lounge

October 30, Girl Talk, at In The Venue

November 17, of Montreal at The Murray Theater

You could have gone to see Architecture in Helsinki for free at the Gallivan Center, but you missed it.  It was a couple weeks ago.

What better way to celebrate distaste for the town I live in than to celebrate what I did out of town. A week or so ago Jenna and I rolled down thunder mountain to see Devendra Banhart and Beck play at the Grand Sierra in Reno, Nevada. If you’ve never been to Reno, it’s a lot like Las Vegas if Las Vegas were a giant whore with a ton of make-up that looked OK at night but like shit in the morning, only without the make-up if you know what I mean. Going any further into it would be superfluous like a ribbon cutting for a porta-potty. If you’ve never been to the Grand Sierra (a Hilton Hotel) in Reno Nevada to see a show, listen up.

Playing Ball at the Grand Sierra in Reno Nevada

If you got tickets with seat numbers, don’t be fooled, you probably don’t have a saved seat. It’s first come first serve and seating is mainly booths with tables. We got in first thanks to some kids we met and managed to get a booth right in front and center. Booths at the venue are raised above the general standing area, so you won’t have too much trouble seeing over heads. This was the most comfortable seat with a super close view I’ve been to.

So anyway, we checked into the hotel and bumped right into Beck who was heading to the venue, but i didn’t really want to disturb, he looked busy. And very short.

The show was off the hizzook. Beck announced that his son forces him to sing Mama Wolf before he goes to bed, and then invited Devendra and his posse to do the song with him.

After the show Jenna got a late dinner and who do we see standing around the casino, Devendra:

That’s me in a t-shirt with the drawing Devendra Banhart drew with Jenna, and Devendra Banhart.

It is still surreal in my mind that this Devendra fellow, someone that I have built up in my mind over the last couple years as a mysterious mystical psychedelic figure that happens to date Natalie Portman was standing next to me. He’s organized in my mind with the dead mystics of the sixties in my mind, with the Lennons, the Garcias, Morrisons, Mingi (the plural of Mingus?).

The trip was cathartic, mainly for being outside of Provo.

There are very few promotional emails I actually enjoy getting, although I get about a dozen a day (these are subscription emails, not spam. I get nearly 1000 spam emails a day to my work email). The one from Geeks is one of my favorites. I don’t think I’ve actually bought anything from them yet but I love seeing what deals I could have. Their latest email finally had me pulling plastic out of my wallet until I was almost done checking out.

According to the subject of the email, I would expect to be “Seeing Double for Half the Price @ Geeks.com.” Doesn’t this speak to the bargain hunting region of your brain, the one connected directly to that nerve center also known as the magnetic strip of your credit card? It makes me think that there’s a promo where I get double for half the price of one.

In the email, the following promotion follows:

This ad confirms my prior inclination that I will in fact be receiving two of something for the price of one-half, saying “Buy one get one free just 34.99 each.”

A new-customer-registration sub plot thickens

Of course in order to purchase from Geeks you have to create a user account. I attempted to use my email address but that one was already taken, obviously, because that’s how I got the email promo in the first place. I try to log in using that email but I’ve never bought from Geeks, so the taken email address doesn’t work. So I give them one of my gmail addresses. When I’m getting ready to check out, it appears that there are too many units of the product in my shopping cart and no way to edit that on that page. So I have to start all over, but of course, now my gmail email is already registered but I haven’t registered an actual account to buy anything because I guess it creates your purchasing account after you’re done with the purchase because I try logging in with the gmail address and still nothing.

So now I have Geeks emails going to two of my addresses but still no account is created. So far so awesome.

So anyway, I finally get to where I’m about to pay and notice that I’m paying twice as much as I thought. I go back to the email promotion and sure enough in small print in between promos on the email it says that the deal is really just two for one:

Even the star next to the price in the email isn’t directly next to the bad news, it’s just next to the promo code. The bad news is in the fine print below: that you’re really paying 69.99 for two units, not 34.99. It does read ‘price with code: 34.99 each’ under the price, but that to me sounded like one unit was 34.99 and then you get a second one free. Wouldn’t any logically thinking person think this after all the things that had been previously read?

I work for an internet retailer and we’d never put that kind of price trickery knowingly into an email. I can’t really chalk it up as an honest mistake on their part because when we send out promo emails half a dozen pairs of eye balls goes through the email carefully before it gets sent out, and I’m sure we’re much smaller than Geeks.

Obviously there is no truth to the title simply because Utah already has a lot of deer and only Chris Cohen, former member of Deerhoof, is coming with Nedelle and their band ‘Cryptacize.’  I am pretty excited about the show this coming Saturday and hopefully I’ll finally have something interesting to talk about happening in this particular place.

The above  picture was snapped on my crappy camera phone while Jenna and I were cruising by a clearing right on Center St. in Provo near Seven Peaks.  They all looked like less than a year old.  I guess I’m glad that Provo has at least evolved passed the collective civility stage of driving around with the posse in the back of a big loud diesel pick up shooting anything alive and furry.  It is telling, however, that of all the things happening on Center Street these days, a bunch of deer in a clearing wins the blog entry.

Coming up: A review of the other Amenities Provo Center St. has to offer.

We are going to Kilby Court to see Cryptacize on May 31st. Deerhoof’s incredible ex-bass-ex-guitar player Chris Cohen backs up Nedelle, who’s also toured with Jens Lekman. Jessica (who’s played with Nedelle back in the day) says that Nedelle is the real star of Cryptacize and that Chris keeps a steady back ground role. I’ve never been to Kilby, of course Jenna is much more hip than I ever was and she has been. Ghetto would be where she rates it.

Lakers and San Antonio — now tied at 81s. Incredible.

Any warm blooded creature who has spent an hour or more under a Southern Californian Palm tree has felt the essences of Styrofoam and plastic emanating through the pores of his/her skin, contaminating him/her immediately. Yet still, I’d rather deal with that than Utah Valley. Yet I do feel embarrassed to appear so hateful towards the place I am forced to call home. In fact I just moved into my own place right in short walking distance to the corner of Center and University where there are some diversions and restaurants there that are pleasant Salad Day material establishments.

Jazz Funeral

To the astonishment of all my imaginary readers I was sad for the Jazz downfall early in the playoffs. Salt Lake still ranks pretty high in my list of highly inhabitable cities. But being from South Pasadena, I must furl my brow at the television in some pro Lakers pretense, which has so far duped even Jenna, my closest observer. She of course is an individual of independent perspective and wishes the Lakers to lose asap no matter how.

We did just barely watch LA come from 20 points behind to 71 to 77.

Utah Valley is pretty much the only place I can think of where something this stupid could actually happen and be quasi controversial. Apparently there’s some magoo named Nathan Langford from River Falls, Wisconsin who gets a kick out of standing around in the rain in some creepy cloak and singing aloud to himself around BYU campus. This in itself is about as annoying as hell and typical of the Brian Regan/Jack Johnson worshiping BYU crowd, but it gets even better. Some other kid apparently told the police on this kid. Cloak Boy was told to stop or he would be cited for “disturbing the peace.”

It’s amusing how these two traits (being as annoying as hell and also being a bureaucracy/authority loving tattle taler) accurately describe a lot of people that attend BYU. Its kind of like seeing a dog chase its own tail. But wait, it gets better.

There are now a couple of support groups on facebook defending this guy. I’m guessing these people are also probably die-hard Kirby Heyborne fans, secretly wish EFY was for college students too, and have gone on at least one group date where they raced lawn mowers.

Seriously, choose a cause with some meaning, like maybe the organization to sew Madonna’s lips together. They seriously are trying to organize protests and make t-shirts. It reminds me several years back when a bunch of kids were outside the Museum of Art protesting the arrival of some Rodin sculptures, including the famous “The Kiss,” perhaps Rodin’s most important work, because of how titillating they found it. Many BYU students will do anything in their power to chase culture away from Provo, one of the most culturally deprived college towns I know of.

Anyway, my views always side with the Libertarians, and so jerk boy or whatever his name is should have the liberty to stand out there and sing, and whoever went to the police should be drug out into a parking lot and beat, and the BYU Clown Patrol (aka Police) should grow a backbone and not let tattle talers push them around.