Utahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Yep. For 766 miles, this is pretty much Utah. Notice the buttes in the distance, which is a lot more fun if you pronounce them “butts.”

So we left Arizona (License plate motto: The Blister State) on our way to Utah, and as we always do, hubby and I anxiously anticipated the signs that say good-bye from one state and hello from the next. We were treated to an exit sign as we cruised on out of AZ that said, “Thank you for visiting Arizona, Home of the Heat Stroke!” Bless their baked, little hearts for embracing the ovenness.

Oddly, there was never a “Welcome to Utah” sign. It’s like the state doesn’t really want anyone to know it’s there. I suppose that’s okay since Utah’s resident majority consistently shoots out enough offspring that there is no need for any incoming.

Gosh. What is there to say about Utah, which is Mormon for “All you other religions are going to hell, which is conveniently one state below us”? Utah has three well-known items in significant quantities: Salt, Mormons and Osmonds. When I was a kid, there were five famous Osmond brothers—plus two older ones, but they didn’t count because they just happened to be deaf and were, therefore, of no entertainment value—and then Marie and the ugly little brother, Jimmy, came along. While Marie and the little, round, troll brother were being groomed for future musical and/or QVC greatness, the Osmonds were my reason for living.

Every day after school, my best friends and I pretended to be the Osmonds. I was always Merrill, the middle brother and owner of the lushest, dreamiest, creamiest voice on vinyl. Sure, Donny was adorable—and would still be if he didn’t have that damned increasingly looming forehead—but Merrill was the man. I had our entire wedding planned, so imagine my heartache when in 1973, I saw his marriage announcement in The Daily Sun. I cried my nine-year-old heart out. I still don’t understand why he couldn’t wait for me.

And THAT brings us to Mormonism. Merrill would never have taken me for one of his sister-wives because I would rather stick my head in a bag of hungry rats that convert to his religion. (No offense.) Mormons are just one letter off from morons though, so yeah. (SPECIAL NOTE: Two of the kindest and most angelic people I’ve ever had the pleasure to call my friends are members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Boy, are they going to be surprised when they die and find out they missed out on McDonald’s sweet tea and Starbucks for fucking nothing.)

Everywhere we went in Salt Lake, there were hordes of Mormons milling about like ants, doing good, using their secret Mormon antennae to ferret out any interlopers. They all wore professional name tags with their country of origin just to let you to know that they are ALL OVER. One super helpful Mormonette slinked up to us in the lobby of what used to be the Hotel Utah. (It is one of the many downtown buildings that have been refurbished with Mormon Bucks.) I felt the woman’s evil…I mean, spiritual presence before she got within smelling range. “Have you seen our wonderful movie?” she purred. “Not yet,” my clever friend, Sharon, replied, hurrying us away. She’s an expert at LDS-cape.

I know how that Mormon movie shit works. It starts with as innocuous Osmond musical number and then segues into a story about a gentle mother of twelve who dies young from cancer. But her children aren’t sad! Hell, no! They are all going to see her again real soon in one of the astral planes where people shit gold bullion and pee liquid silver. For eternity.

Before you know it, an hour-and-a-half of movie has passed, your brain has been washed, you’ve been full-body-baptized by Elders Smith and Young, and your uterus has been measured for output capacity. Ladies, if you value your control over your bladder, do NOT go see a Mormon movie. After your seventh child, you will never again sneeze, cough, stand up, laugh, cook, garden, clean house or lie awake another sleepless night wondering if it’s your turn on the screwing schedule without peeing in your panties. Sexy!

Speaking of sex, do you know that on top of the Hotel Utah, a famous pair of falcons live in a nest in which the Mormons have installed video cameras to capture the birds’ 24/7 activities? So be warned. Your viewing choices in Salt Lake City are either a LDS indoctrination film or a live stream of falcons fucking. And you thought they only had that in Atlanta.

Arizona = HELL

The thermometer doesn't lie, bitches.

So I’m on the road again, posting Blu hoo from the passenger seat of a rented Volkswagen Jetta, which isn’t a bad car at all other than the fact that the entire interior is black plastic, which absorbs heat the way a Tena Twist ® takes on lady-pee. And if you look at the photo above, you can see PROOF that the temperature outside the Jetta today was 110 fucking hell-degrees. That means that if my calculations are right based on the relative size of the skin grafts I’m going to need on the backs of my thighs, the INSIDE of the four-wheeled-furnace was mother-fucking HOTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

I am just baffled that there are so many people in Arizona. Armadillos and tarantulas and scorpions and rattle snakes and other evil things that would naturally populate hell, I can understand. But what in God’s name possesses humans to want to live in this inferno? There are just miles and miles and miles of desolate terrain that look mostly like either elephant skin caked in clay or my heels in the summer months. I cannot conceive of the notion that someone looked out over the parched landscape of bakedom and thought, Now, THIS would be a terrific place to settle and raise a family!

It says a lot about a place when every, single Arizonian who found out that we are from Indiana looked at us gravely and asked, “Oh, my God. How are you handling the heat?” NOT. That’s how. I feel bad that mostly everybody looks like one of those witch heads we used to make out of shriveled apples at Halloween when we were kids. I kept wanting to stick cloves in everyone.

And all of the plants just look angry. I mean, there are 10-foot cacti with needles the size of, like, butcher knives, which means that they are almost as big as the one needle that asshole doctor stuck in my knee last year.

This plant will kill you in the night and like it.

There was a kid’s birthday party going on in a neighborhood we passed. All the torpid children were dragging uninflated balloons on strings because what’s the point of blowing them up when the trees in the yard have built-in weapons? I totally made that shit up, but it isn’t hard to imagine. I also imagine this exchange happens frequently:            

“Mommy, can I go outside and climb the tree in our backyard?”

“Sure, Billy! Don’t forget to take your phone so that you can call 911 when the bleeding gets too heavy.”

No wonder all the children look sad. They are probably going to die if they go out to play.

Even the hotel pool wasn’t much relief from the scorchage. It was so tepid that either no one knows how to make cool water in Arizona, or there was a whole lotta peeing going on in there. From the taste of the water that went all up in my nose and down my throat when I stepped off a sudden, un-marked drop into the deep part, I’m going to have to go with that second choice. The only upside is that my sinuses are now sterile.  

So even though I love my dear friend whose wedding occasioned my journey to sunny, Arizona (which is Navajo for “Fuck you, white people for forcing us to live on this God-forsaken reservation; We curse you to drink your own pee and die.”), I probably won’t go back any time soon. You know what they say: “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the Arizona.”