OK. Let’s move on.

I plan on ignoring any further ttstark posts, unless they get so over the top as to cause me a migraine (a malady I’m not given to, so I don’t expect he’ll be much of a future problem). Thanks for all your comments on the topic.

Snarky dweebs like ttstark however, are on my mind of late. City Weekly staff writer Stephen Dark is finishing up a cover story about a cyber-squatter-conman who has a criminal record as long as my arm. The guy has a record as a sex offender (a late 1990s federal conviction for on-line possession of kiddie porn). This little transgression landed the guy on the Utah sex offenders database, so he finds it a challenge to find and keep a regular job. He’s limited to where he can live (restrictions on proximity to schools, child care centers, etc.) so he he resides in his sister’s basement in Utah County. He fills his days with harassing people via the Internet and extorting them by demanding money to clear their names (once he’s tried to destroy them). It’s like the guy has a virtual pen and mucho time on his hands to scrawl insults and threats all over one big bathroom wall.

That’s all I can reveal right now. The story is scheduled to run next issue (May 23). It’s sort of a cautionary tale for people who might not know how closely these creeps operate among us.

If you’re one of the many who read this blog and can’t get a paper copy of CW, you can always bookmark our site: http://www.slweekly.com

If you haven’t read my weekly column in this week’s CW, it’s here. We had a good laugh on Tuesday of this week — the day we run around like crazy chickens to get the paper out. This issue reads like the “All Mitt, All the Time” edition. My main point was to get away from the dominant theme among Utahns these days: that poor Mitt is being persecuted for his LDS membership. I’ll give him that, to a small degree. But as a journalist and something of a social/cultural/political critic, I’m not about to give him a hall pass on his waffling and lukewarm positions.

As I point out in the piece, Americans appreciate flexibility in their president AFTER the election, not BEFORE. A presidential campaign is all about drama. What we want from our candidates during the campaign is guarantee of a spine. And Romney shows nearly every day that he’s in search of his. If he’s found his backbone yet, he really ought to let the voters know.

… That is the way I’ve come to think of “ttstark,” the person who posts flames on this blog that have zero to do with either the topic under consideration or the general tone of mullentown.

I’m probably insulting wolves by saying that. Wolves are known for their strict social order and for being good parents to their young. “ttstark” simply comes across as a boor with a poor upbringing. Also, I have the distinct feeling he’s drunk when he writes these posts. And a bitter drunk at that.

I hadn’t even checked in this weekend, mostly because I took a dream bicycle ride halfway to Big Mountain (at the Salt Lake/Morgan County line) on Saturday and truly enjoyed Mother’s Day on Sunday. My family gave me time — the best gift of all. I planted my tomatoes and then sat on the porch drinking pinot grigio from a box while reading Barbara Kingsolver’s new book. I’ve always been a fan of Kingsolver, and this new non-fiction work is a cross between her fabulous essays and a journalistic foray into how we get the food we eat.

So, I called up mullentown this a.m. and found yet another flame by this character (See “Girl and Fire,” May 9 post). I saw all your kind efforts to defend me. I’ve also received a couple of e-mails from readers encouraging me to somehow shut off his access to the site. I guess that decision is partially up to all of you. What do you think?

I’m naturally anti-censorship. But as my brilliant Webmaster Joey pointed out to me a few minutes ago, I’m paying for this site and I should have some power over who uses it. He compares it to owning a restaurant. My blog is open to the public and it benefits from varied opinions. But I wouldn’t sit by and allow someone to come into the restaurant, throw trash all over and scream insults at me, the proprietor, or at the patrons. Joey suggests if ttstark has a problem with me kicking him off the blog, maybe he should pay to keep the domain name — and all the others costs associated with the site.

Of course, shunning him the way many of you already have might work. I tried ignoring him, but that didn’t work. If you would like to take up this topic on mullentown, go ahead. Right now, I’m inclined to kick him off, but I can be swayed the other way with a good argument.

Peace out.

The phone rang last night at 10:40. Too early for a drunk calling with a nasty proposition (that actually happened not long ago) but too late even for my mother, a notorious night owl who is known to call at my bedtime.

It was almost-19-year-old Kit, our freshman, calling from Occidental College in Eagle Rock, California. My regular CA. readers know where that is — for those of you who don’t, Eagle Rock is a little hamlet tucked into a nook between Los Angeles and Pasadena.

Due to the wonder of cell phones, we talk at least once each day. But this did not bode well.

Kit: “Hi Mom.”

Me: “Hi. What’s wrong? Are you OK?”

Kit: “The fire is about two miles away from campus right now. They told us we might get evacuated during the night. But it would have to keep moving down the hills and jump at least one big freeway to get to us. So don’t worry.”

Me: (Very calm-sounding, of course) “Oh, I’m not worried. Well, I’m a little worried. Fire can move fast, you know. If they come to evacuate you, don’t ask questions. Don’t stop for anything. Just go.”

The truth is, I had been busy on deadline at work all day and somehow hadn’t heard or read anything about the fire in L.A.’s Griffith Park, which was spreading like, well, like wildfire into the Hollywood Hills. During our phone conversation I quickly turned on CNN, where I watched flames leapining skyward and heard the reporter talking ominously about the possibility the fire would reach the Griffith Observatory and the landmark “HOLLYWOOD” sign. (I flipped through The Salt Lake Tribune this morning looking for even a single-paragraph blurb about the fire — not one word. Not even deep inside the national section. That Calfiornia fire story–it’s just so not local.)

Back in October 1991, one of Ted’s best friends was killed while desperately trying to escape the wind-whipped flames of the infamous Oakland Hills Firestorm. It was world-class mountain climber and author Leigh Ortenburger, one of 25 killed in the fire, which spread through several cities before firefighters got it under control. Ted and Leigh became close friends when the two worked summers as Exum guides in the Tetons, and also as rescue rangers. Bonds of friendship form easily when you’re working as a team, levering injured people off the Grand Teton and neighboring peaks.

The story of Leigh’s death is chilling. He was lunching with two friends in the Oakland Hills when an evacuation order came. Winds up to 65 mph were spreading the flames phenomenally fast. One of the friends survived; Leigh and another did not. It was a great loss. In 1996, A Climber’s Guide to the Teton Range by Leigh and fellow climber and Teton Park ranger Reynold (Rennie) G. Jackson was published. The book is considered the most comprehensive guide to Teton climbing and includes all kinds of information related to the area’s climate, geology and mountaineering history.

I raise all that in part to convince myself how serious fire is. I’ve never had to fight one, or escape one or witness its damage to anything I own or any person I love. I slept fitfully last night. No further word from Kit, either. A good sign. And I fell asleep whispering a prayer: “please keep her safe, please keep her safe.”

Kit did tell me last night that she felt remarkably calm compared to some of her dormmates who were nearly hysterical. She thinks she knows why. We lived in Fort Worth, Texas when she was very young. From the time Kit was age three to age 10, we regularly took cover in our home from tornadoes — or at least predicted tornadoes. She and her younger brother, Sam, remember the time we all huddled in the main hall of our classic Texas rambler (no basement) because it had no exterior windows. Their dad and I made them put on their bike helmets. The twister did, indeed, sound like a freight train. We heard a crash, but stayed put till the wind and noise stopped and it was eerily quiet.

When we walked into the kitchen, a hailstone the size of a toaster was on the floor, surrounded by shattered glass. The thing had crashed right through the skylight. Outside, aging pin oak trees were uprooted like toys. Our roof shingles had been torn off like paper. Thankfully, no one in the area had been injured.

“I think all that practice during tornadoes is helping me now, Mom,” Kit said.

No, I can’t take credit for that headline. It’s the work of Bill Frost, a City Weekly staff writer whose writing always makes me laugh out loud. He gets all the credit.

Go here for Bill’s blog post on the silly, overhyped debate between Hannity and Anderson. It’s the best review I’ve read anywhere of last Friday’s event, and believe me, I read more criticism than than my gut could take.

A lot of you have posted on my previous blog entry about the Hannity-Anderson thing. I’m all but finished with writing/talking/thinking about it now, as the story is going on four days old and has just about grown fur at this point. I did, however, hear an amusing take on the whole drama while listening to KSL radio’s Doug Wright on the car radio this morning.

(My husband always asks why I listen to Wright’s talk show, and I always tell him it’s my best yardstick for measuring the way our garden-variety Utahn who marches in lockstep with authority thinks. For me, the show is a cultural magnifying glass. Today’s show did not disappoint.)

You’ll recall that KSL has been blowing every gasket since it learned the debate was a go. They went all wacky with promotion, including billing it as a “smackdown.” Those who watched it either live or on TV know it was anything but. Anyway, this morning Wright was doing his usual “woe unto us” hangdog analysis of our wretched, values-crossed society. The horribly insensitive audience, he said, was the real loser.

Wright simply couldn’t believe how rude, uncouth, how positively barbaric the crowd was. What with their heckling, interruptions and catcalls, why, the two narcissists on stage could barely get a word in edgewise. How, he asked, does an audience get off on behaving this way? What possible excuse could those people have?

Naturally it never dawned on Doug that his very own Sean Hannity has built a whole industry on interrupting callers he disagrees with, on name-calling and heckling and on pushing public discourse lower than an earthworm’s abdomen. You reap what you sow, Doug, and KSL has cultivated quite a garden of idiocy and social intolerance by choosing to syndicate Hannity year after year. Even though many of the outbursts came from pro-Rocky forces, we have a whole society that feels it’s perfectly fine to belittle others and cut them to their quick in a disagreement. I’d have to say both sides have learned the technique from the master: Hannity.

Hey, it’s always worked for him. So why not a crowd of heckling hayseeds at Kingsbury Hall as well?

It’s getting crazy as all getout in this town, leading up to the big Rocky Anderson/Sean Hannity debate tomorrow night at the University of Utah. Smart U. students, who got tickets for $5 a pop, are selling them on eBay for more than $75 a piece. Now that’s free enterprise.

Anyway, at City Weekly we have this thing in perspective. Resident funny man Bill Frost has made it easy for people intent on keeping score between our mayor for life and Hannity the showman. If you missed Bill’s take on the frenzy, check it out here.

Speaking of promoting my newspaper, I’m regularly pimping each week’s issue on FOX-13 here in Salt Lake City. For the next nine weeks, I’m on live with “Good Day Utah” anchors Kerri Cronk and Dan Evans each Thursday at approximately 8:50 a.m. We talk, we laugh, we act vapid just like the best morning show people do everywhere. Check it out.

Besides a fabulous office that overlooks Salt Lake’s gritty and largely abandoned Main Street at the Gallivan Plaza TRAX stop, I get other goodies. It amounts to some pretty impressive swag, all right.

Today my mail slot yielded two small boxes of “compressed tobacco lozenges” — trade names Stonewall and Ariva. Manufactured by a firm with an absolutely perfect “Thank You for Smoking” sort of name — Star Scientific Inc. — the little white nuggets are nothing more than dissolvable chewing tobacco. Kind of like pillows of Pepto-Bismol, only addicting and cancer-causing.

I gave them to Brandon, the smoker who sits closest to my office. “Will they help me quit smoking?” he asked.

Well, the press kits says no. Neither one is a “smoking cessation product.” The packaging and brochures do point out in giant typeface, which if it could talk would be SCREAMING RIGHT OUT LOUD: PRODUCT IS SPIT-FREE!

Yum. And, as the company’s website points out, their spitless property should make Ariva and Stonewall attractive to “both genders.”

I gotta say, it’s one big cheer for our government-subsidized tobacco industry. Like any good business model, Star Scientific isn’t content to rest on old technology and is eagerly seeking out new users and promising demographic groups. Also noted: Star has hired a new addition to its product development team, Richard Milam, formerly of tobacco leviathan Brown & Williamson. He has a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Auburn University.

Now that’s assuring.

Besides, this company has big goals. It emphasizes that “smokeless tobacco sales have been a minimal part of the company’s revenue stream, by the end of the second quarter Star expects to increase its national distribution to include all three of the largest U.S. drug store chains.”

Where there’s a will there’s a way, by golly. High-minded marketing goals and merchant of death all at once. And isn’t this all that’s right about America?

Did anyone watch the first two-hour episode of “The Mormons” on PBS last night? Your thoughts?

In brief…The production values and interviews were excellent and well-edited. I did find myself dozing a bit on the couch during some scenes, including the early history of the LDS Church (Smith’s first vision, his death and martyrdom, etc.). This may have more to do with the fact that we first watched the Utah-Houston playoff game (hey, priorities!) and then “The Mormons” on a Tevo recording.

But growing up in Mormondom as I did, most of the background was familiar.

One small question: Why, in the visuals for the Saints’ trek into the Salt Lake Valley, did we see countless scenes of Monument Valley, Goblin Valley and other spectacular red rock formations of Southern Utah? A shot of the mouth of dry and scrubby Emigration Canyon would have done nicely.

Perhaps the “Life Elevated” team from Utah’s tourism office got hold of the early cut? Ha.

Tonight’s installment will feature more of the call of culture on Mormons, the political influence and business holdings of the church and the push-pull its doctrine and demand for strict obedience has on its members. Look for our friend, Jim Clayton, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Utah. He’s interviewed about the church’s mix of theology, politics and revisionist history that leads many faithful but questioning members to drop out of the fold.

I’m looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, any thoughts?