look in utah you stupid idiot
Provo, Utah, explorer Steve Currey is organizing a July 2005 expedition to the North Pole (cost: $21,000 per person) to find the so-called polar "opening" to the hollow center of the Earth, supposedly the kingdom of God where the biblical 10 Lost Tribes reside. [National Geographic News, 10-23-03] [BYU Newsnet (Brigham Young Univ.),

well,
The Dollywood amusement park in Tennessee announced the end of free passes for the blind and the crippled after someone complained of discrimination against people with other disabilities, who still had to pay (October).

you rock
In August, residents learned that the county librarian in Concrete, Wash., offered her spare-time services as the S&M dominatrix Lady Jane Grey in nearby Bellingham. Despite her credentials and passion as a librarian, her contract was not renewed in November.

And in August, Shannon Williams, 37, a teacher for the Berkeley (Calif.) Unified School District, was arrested for misdemeanor prostitution. Williams, who was previously scheduled to be on a leave of absence this school year, said in September she would challenge the prostitution law as unconstitutional.

utah again?
Just as the towns of Kennesaw, Ga., and Virgin, Utah, had done, the 50-home village of Geuda Springs, Kan., through its town council, voted in November to require every household to own a working firearm, for "emergency management." (Later, the mayor vetoed the ordinance, but it will be reconsidered in February.)

ka ka ka innerbreeding
As part of a hazing ritual for a new Ku Klux Klan member near Johnson City, Tenn., in November, several Klansmen would shoot the man with paintball guns while another simultaneously rapid-fired a 9mm pistol overhead to make the pledge believe he was being shot with a real gun. According to police, one of the bullets, fired straight up in the air by Klansman Gregory Allen Freeman, 45, came down through the skull of Klansman Jeffery S. Murr, 24, who was hospitalized in critical condition. Freeman was arrested.