POSTED // Dec 21,2011 - A few years ago, the Ghost of Christmas Present paid my family a surprise visit, just as it did to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ famous 19th-century novel.

POSTED // Dec 13,2011 - Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Those old enough to have taken a typing class remember that drill. Rocky Anderson knows the drill, too.

POSTED // Dec 7,2011 - My wife has long disapproved of the hillside gallery at the Red Butte Garden concerts. Her years as an elementary school teacher have left her with an unwavering respect for rules. To her way of thinking, a rule is as inviolate as the multiplication tables her students struggled to memorize.

POSTED // Nov 16,2011 - The lockout is, like nearly all things, about money. The owners are demanding that NBA players give back hundreds of millions of dollars each year, among other concessions.

POSTED // Nov 9,2011 - Marian (not her real name) will get her flu shot next week—not that she wanted one. But without one, she’d be suspended from her job.

POSTED // Oct 26,2011 - Saturday. Midnight. A cannonade of thunder from Point of the Mountain. The “party car” is 1 of 13 police cars patrolling the city.

POSTED // Sep 28,2011 - Last summer, my friend Chad and I went fly-fishing on the Strawberry River two hours east of Salt Lake City.

POSTED // Aug 31,2011 - Not long ago, I endured an anal probe. I have ass-cam photos to prove it. It was not administered by a green-skinned alien in a spaceship. Rather, a white physician in an unremarkable room in Sandy snaked the high-tech hardware to its destination.

POSTED // Aug 17,2011 - Have you noticed that urban chickens are all the rage nowadays? Having a few hens scratching around the yard conveys a certain social status. Chickens are cool.

POSTED // Aug 3,2011 - Being a journalist and exercising objectivity while writing about something on which I hold strong views is tough to do satisfactorily … especially to myself. I’ll try, anyway.