Saw Brokeback Mountain yesterday. I had an expectation that I would be blown away by the beauty of the film. Yada yada yada. I was bored by it. Beautifully acted, beautifully shot. Boring. Like watching two shepherds in a field. Wait...

Anyway, as someone who has spent some time in Wyoming, I feel compelled to defend the state. Brokeback paints a picture of Wyoming as a place where homosexuals are targeted for acts of hatred and violence. Is there some historic record of this I'm not aware of? I mean, other than Matthew Shepherd. (Coincidence with the last name?) I would submit that intolerance is greater in probably every other state. In Wyoming, they value privacy. Wyoming is a state of people who keep to themselves. The expectation is that everyone else should keep to themselves. Wyoming will tolerate anyone as long as they are quiet about what they do. Anyone who makes a spectacle of him or herself and thinks he or she is more important than anyone else is not going to fit in.

Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote. It was also the first state to hang a woman. In Wyoming, everyone is equal. There's a poster you can find up there with a little slogan. A young girl in the 1800s had a diary. In it, the final entry was supposedly: "God bless Wyoming, and keep her free." I can only surmise that the girl was eaten by a bear the next day...