Sorry, couldn’t resist that headline. Of course, it will probably lead porn spammers and spanking fetishists here in droves, but still… It will be worth it.

Regular Trapped readers will remember a while back when I wrote about Kanab’s mayor and city council endorsing the Natural Family Resolution, an utterly useless, hate-filled, impotent piece of garbage that did nothing more than show their own bigotry, ignorance, and lack of functioning brain cells. The resolution labels marriage between men and women as ‘’ordained of God,'’ conceives homes as ‘’open to a full quiver of children'’ and promotes young women ripening into ‘’wives, homemakers and mothers'’ and young men becoming ‘’husbands, home builders and fathers.'’

Mayor Kim Lawson didn’t care. He appears to have a little bit of a God complex, and seems to believe that his membership and stature in his church, The Mormon Church, sets him just a step higher than the rest of us mere mortals.

But most Kanabians don’t seem to agree. And one in particular, a young teenage Mormon who writes a column for the Southern Utah News, called Lawson out, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Said young Matthew Livingston in his column, Cowboy Currents:

‘’Mayor, I’m callin’ you out, along with your ‘Family Vision for the City of Kanab.’ . . . As a fellow LDS member, I would expect a more Christlike countenance on your part; your actions are in the spotlight, and you have let down your religion, community and nation.'’

Go Matthew! Of course, Kim Lewis was not amused. In fact, he was so irate that that very day he fired off a letter to both the superintendent of the school district and the boy’s stake president, encouraging them to take action in censoring young Matthew.

From the Trib, here is some of what the letters said.

“Is his tone and verbiage consistent and in concert with the principles embodied within his church?” Lawson asked Livingston’s LDS stake president in his Feb. 17 letter. ‘’I view Matt as [a] representative of the future for his church and nation. We need intelligent, principled men and women to lead and guide us. Oft-times ‘mid-course’ guidance is needed to ensure the target is reached.'’

In his same-day epistle to school officials, the mayor took issue with the tone and title of Livingston’s “Cowboy Currents” column. Since Kanab High’s nickname is the cowboys, the mayor asked if the teen’s views represented the school and district and “who, if anyone, has oversight responsibility for the content.”

Waaaaaaah, Mayor Lawson. Want a little cheese with that whine? Give me a fucking break. Can you get any more arrogant and self-righteous? Lawson’s actions amount to little more than religious bullying, couched as “guidance” for a misguided LDS youth. He might as well have said, “I’m going to tell Mom on you, and you are gonna get in so much trouble.”

Livingston, not even of legal age, is a whole lot more mature.

For his part, Livingston is angry about what he perceives as an abuse of power. He notes Lawson never contacted him to express his concern or give him copies of the letters he sent to the stake president and school superintendent.

‘’The mayor’s a coward,'’ Livingston said. ‘’He’s a grown man and mayor of a city doing this behind the back of someone who is not even 18.'’

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Now Matthew’s part in this story does my heart good. After reading about the Ruzicka clones (Eagle Forum Youth. The story just chills my heart. I might have nightmares for months. Hundreds of little Ruzickas wandering around worrying about what other people are doing in THEIR bedrooms, not noticing what is going on in their own boudoirs.) during our last legislative session, I didn’t hold out much hope for Mormon youth changing the way things have always been done, but with Mormons like young Matthew, the future looks a lot brighter.

Even Frommer, the travel guide, has taken to boycotting Kanab until they figure out that the only business they need to be meddling in is their own. The unfortunate part about this is all the detriment being served Kanab residents who do NOT agree with endorsing a stupid resolution that cannot even be enforced, because it basically violates the civil rights of a great many people.

In effect, all the resolution states is, “My God can beat up your God, especially if your God isn’t a rightwing, ultra-conservative (enter your favorite right-wing, ultra-conservative group here).”

I hope Lawson has learned something from all of this, but given his actions, I sincerely doubt he has. Lawson, I call you a coward. When confronted by a teenage boy about your ridiculous stance, you resorted to backbiting and bullying, and trying to shut him up through the Mormon network. Guess what? It backfired.

There are days, and then there are DAYS. Yesterday was a DAY. Possibly a NIGHT AND WEEKEND, too, all rolled into one. I’m sort of burning the candle at both ends, trying to promote WIVES AND SISTERS, just out in paperback (gotcher copy yet?), trying to put the school yearbook to bed (how DID I get roped into this?) and trying to finish my new book for Berkley.

I start my days at about 6 a.m. and they don’t stop until midnight or later. Some are longer than others, and yesterday was one of those. I went out to get the mail at 9 p.m., letting Stormy the Wonder Dog follow along, since peeing on the mail post is one of his most favorite things to do in life. Glorious, glorious post peeing. Somewhere between the trek back to the house and inside is where things get sketchy.

The kids were antsy, the husband was whiny, and I had work to do. After finally calming everything down, getting kids into bed, husband into bed, things straightened up, I spent a few hours on the computer. Then it hit me. Where was Stormy? He was not snoring under my computer chair. He was not crying to go in and out, in and out, in and out. He was, in fact, gone. NOT. HERE.

I had forgotten to commandeer him when we returned from getting the mail, and he took advantage of it and ran off.

So, I put on a coat, and my shoes, and began to trek my neighborhood at 11:30 calling for Stormy. Pumpkin the cat came up and followed me, meowing behind me, and so it must have looked mighty strange. A 43-year-old pajama-clad woman traipsing the burbs at night, followed by a yellow cat. It looked like I was walking my cat. Or he was walking me. When I reached one road, the cat darted ahead of me and veered up another lane, so I decided to follow him, since he seemed to know what he was doing, and I quite obviously had NO idea. Sure enough, there in the middle of the road, halfway up the block, was StWD, surrounded by about three other dogs.

I suspect they had been egging houses, and knocking over mailboxes, and terrorizing the cats of the neighborhood.

Stormy came when I called, but then stopped short, about five feet away and looked at me with that, “Damn, I’m in trouble and you’re taking me home” look. I pretended it was not so, until he got close enough so I could grab him.

I scolded him all the way home, and then had to wash his muddy little butt. Needless to say, he is in DEEP doggy doo doo.

Can’t you just SEE the bad influences oozing off him? Next we might try an exorcism.

W&S SIGHTING CONTEST:
On another note, the W&S Sighting contest is going well, and the book has been spotted all over the United States and in Canada. Apparently, a few copies have also been purchased. Remember you have until the end of April to enter your sighting information. Check out my site for more info.

RADIO INTERVIEW:
I was recently interviewed on Momwriters Talk Radio by the lovely Alana Morales and Paula Schmitt, and you can listen to that interview here. It was great fun, and I hope I didn’t come off sounding TOOO much like an idiot.

http://www.momwriterstalkradio.com/

Cindy Cruciger is here to visit Trapped, and incidentally she has also supplied signed books for my W&S Sighting contest, so we’re really happy she is here today!

Cindy was kind enough to answer our Trapped questions, so here we go.

If you had to be “Trapped” somewhere, where would it be?
St. Croix

If you could pick your “Trapped” companions, what three people would you want with you, and why?
My husband, daughter and son. Dave and Jon are survivalists and both of them cook, Lauren is always entertaining — even when she is miserable.

If you could only pick five books to be “Trapped” with, what would they be?
I can’t choose!

What ONE famous person would you absolutely NOT want to be “Trapped” with?
MaryJanice Davidson

You can bring three things from your “former” life to “Trapped.” What would those three things be? Ray Bans, my favorite bathing suit and Drambuie.

Where is one place you absolutely would NOT want to be “Trapped.”
Disney World

Hey all,

Author J. Carson Black needs a title, and so she’s running a contest to find one.

Here’s a little bit of the story: a young man from the Arizona town of Patagonia is found dead alongside a state road. He was shot at the base of the skull with a .22, execution-style, but Laura Cardinal can find no reason he would attract the attention of a hit man. His car is found fifty miles away, out in the boonies off the I-10 exit.

There’s also a ghost town, Paradox, based on the real ghost town of Ruby. A group of people have bought the ghost town and closed it off to hikers, hunters, etc. The townspeople aren’t too happy about that.

Plenty of border issues in this story, too.

Make sure you visit her blog, tomorrow before 5 p.m. EST, and make a suggestion.

In Utah, we’ve had to tolerate a lot of strange people, most operating under the illusion they are members of God’s Elite Army. Not all Mormons are this way, of course, but I believe I’ve mentioned before that in SOME minds, Mormonism is just downright dangerous. Take the Lafferty Brothers, for instance, the two polygamist fundamentalists who butchered their sister-in-law and her baby daughter–their niece. And there’s Brian David Mitchell, who decided that Elizabeth Smart was going to be his next wife. And then there’s Super Dell Schanze.

Schanze is the owner–at least for this minute–of the now defunct Totally Awesome Computers, and he has been bombarding Utahns with his Totally Obnoxious commercials for years now. He’s somewhat of a nerd, but when someone gave him money (namely, Utahns buying his “totally awesome” computers) he turned into a pyschopath.

He bought a few guns, and some really fancy cars, and started acting like God was talking to him on a daily basis, and that he was really cool–despite the fact he was nothing more than a closet nerd–and that everyone really LIKED his commercials.

Of course, as is the case when people come down with that particular type of superiority complex, he started messing up. He had more than a few brushes with the law, including one where he threatened some concerned homeowners with a pretty big gun. And then he was pretty pissed off when his BRANDISHING of the gun resulted in HIM getting into trouble with the law.

Frankly, if someone drives through MY neighborhood doing 80 mph, I don’t care if he’s Gordon B. Hinckley, he’s gonna hear about it.

But Super-Nerd thinks he’s above all that.

And when the media reported about his doings, guess what he did then?

When asked for another interview, Schanze was apprehensive, but blithe. “All newspeople are scumbag rat bastards,” he said.

As usually happens when people are insane, things come apart, and the center cannot hold, and frankly, things are unraveling fast for Super-Nerd.

His stores are closed down. And an extremely offensive rant on gays, that he allegedly cut while making a commercial, is now making the media rounds. You can hear the rant at the Salt Lake City Weekly site.

Super Dell is getting his comeuppance.

I leave you with this quote from Super Dell from the SLC Weekly story. When asked about a gender discrimination claim filed against his company by an ex-employee, he said:

“Once again, she’s a total freaking liar,” said Schanze. “She defrauded the unemployment office, stole thousands of dollars from us, was a complete liar. … And not to mention, she’s got to be the freaking ugliest chick you could possibly imagine,” Schanze said, confusing the gender discrimination claim with one of sexual harassment. “Oh my hideousness.”