At present we are thirteen days into 2014. The year-end wrapups are over for the most part and there were several stories that qualified as the dumbest in the 13th year of the new millennium but one rose to the top.
You should be prepared because this story has nothing to do with the government, or the fact that I have spent the entire year unemployed or any of the other annoyances that graced the annals of this blog over the past 12 months. It shocked your narrator also, because since this country has become one great collective panty bunch and it should be all about that.
Instead, it's a story about a rock.
Yes, a rock. A "Goblin" rock, to be exact.
In October of 2013, three men tipped over a rock formation in Goblin Valley State Park. The rock was one of many unique geologic formations in the park that are basically big rocks that are balanced on other rocks.
In reality, the formations were caused by eons of erosion by the wind whipping the desert sands, not to turn this blog entry into a geology lesson. Anyway, the three men, later identified as Boy Scout leaders tipped the rock off of it's perch, got it on video, and posted it on YouTube. Since this country is engaged in the Great American Panty Bunch the airwaves erupted with outrage about what these men had done.
Call me unfriendly to mother Earth and whatever, but the whole incident reminds me of a riff the late comedian Sam Kinison did in 1986 when he was describing the famine in Ethiopia. He was riffing on how the people there should move out of the desert because nothing grows in sand.
The exact quote: "You see what this is? This is SAND...you know what it will be in a million @#$!-ing years? IT'S GONNA BE SAND! Why, BECAUSE YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!"
Which was my point when this story broke. They tipped over a rock. It was a rock before it got tipped over, it was a rock AFTER it got tipped over. After after we die, it will still be a rock. All that changed was it's location. In that case, it will be a rock in it's new location. That's all. Nevertheless, it grabbed the headlines because of the YouTube video which went viral, helped in part by lazy news directors locally and nationally, and of course criminal charges were discussed because it was a state park in Utah and the rock formations were protected.
The Boy Scouts stripped the men of their leadership and that was all that happened.
To me it was a useless waste of time. Many will argue that I should have changed the channel, sucking my teeth. In my opinion, however, the fact that this story had so much traction shows how far we've fallen as a nation when we get all wrapped up in something like this. I realize this will offend people at one with nature but folks, we're just talking about a rock. They fall. Judging by pictures I've seen of this park, it wasn't the first time a rock fell off of another rock. These guys just helped it happen.
So that's my dumb story of 2013. See you next year when there will doubtlessly be another. Some have already occurred less than a month in. We'll see if any of them rise to the top.
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