Rumor has it that there is an idea floating around out there for a chain of non-pretentious Mormon-themed restaurants called The Steak Center (Where There's Never a Dry, Boring Meat-ing!).

Each Steak Center will have one enormous dining area with basketball hoops at either end and folding metal chairs and long tables covered in plastic tablecloths. The Steak Centers will not have hostesses, but greeters. Men in their seventies will meet you at the door and talk like they have known you all your life.

The main menu items will be: Porterhouse Rockwell Steak, Primary Rib and the Poor Wayfaring Pan of Beef, garnished with Parsley P. Pratt Funeral Potatoes. They will also have, when it's in season, Eliza R. Snow crab. And let's not forget a whole line of "And It Came to Pasta", including Kraft MacaMoroni and Cheese.

Additionally, they'll have breakfast items, including Pearls of Great Rice and Frosted Minivans, as well as Adam-ondi-Omelettes. Also available, "In Our Lovely Desserts", including fast sundaes, Gadianton cobbler and the sinful Laman Meringue Pie.

The waiters will be 12- and 13-year-old boys wearing white shirts and their fathers' ties. At the end of the night the customers will be asked to help fold up the chairs and tables and vacuum the floor.

Franchises are selling faster than Sunbeams on Skittles! Get yours while they last! — By Eric D. Snider (although there have been a couple of tweaks in this item as it has floated around the internet)

We're trying to rally support for the Y because a group is trying to make the church take it off the mountain, visit SaveYMountain.com for more info!

Article from the student paper at UVSU:

The all seeing Y

Jared Magill
August 20, 2007

On March 8 and 9, 2001 the entire world was outraged when two massive stone statues of Buddha carved into the side of a mountain, were completely demolished by dynamite under the orders of Taliban warlord, Mullah Mohammed Omar in theBamiyan province of Afghanistan.

According to a Feb. 27, 2001 report by the Agence France-Presse, Omar's excuse for the destruction was that only Allah and no other deities or icons should be worshipped. However, the Senior Editor of Discover Archaeology magazine, W.L. Rathje, felt that the statues were caught up in a centuries-old political game for regional domination.

In his March 22, 2001 article, Rathje identified three key reasons why he believed the statues were destroyed. First, Buddhists have always been easy targets for radical Islam because they tend not to fight back. Not always finding it politically prudent to prove Islamic dominion in the region by attacking Christian or Jewish sites, Buddhism has always been the primary scapegoat in the region.

Also, Bamiyan province was the base for the Northern Alliance-the Taliban's strongest opposition in the region and the Taliban had been requesting international humanitarian aid, to no avail for over a year. According to
Rathje's article, the Taliban wanted to discredit the west by demonstrating that
the international community would be willing to donate millions of dollars to save some stone statues but nothing to save the lives of Afghani people.

So, just like every other conflict in history the ideology used to fuel public fervor amounts to nothing more than a political ploy for control.

High on the mountainside overlooking Provo there is another symbol of regional religious influence that has recently come under fire from a group who appears to have a political agenda of their own, although not a very compelling one.

From high atop the mountain a great Y, wreathed in scrub oak, looms over the Utah Valley, preying on the fragile psyches of all non-Mormons. It's lidless gaze, pierces cloud, shadow, earth and flesh, causing fits of anxiety and tension in the minds all non-believers; or at least that's what Mormon911.com would have us believe.

In a letter recently sent to The College Times and also posted verbatim on the front page of their website, the folks at Mormon911.com lay out in detail, their view of how unfair it is for a private organization to be allowed to lease public land for the use of self promotion.

According to statements made in the letter, they feel BYU should relinquish its status as a private institution and make itself a public one if they wish to continue to be allowed to lease public land. It seems the people at Mormon911.com have never heard of ski resorts. Made up of private facilities owned by very large private corporations, ski resorts operate on leased public land for their own personal gain. So, if one private organization can do it, why can't another?

The letter from Mormon911.com concedes the extreme improbability of BYU becoming public and subsequently calls upon them to voluntarily remove the Y from the mountain "in the spirit of fairness and understanding," and start sharing the property with UVSC by putting up "temporary or lit up" symbols on certain celebratory occasions. Because, "in fairness, Utah Valley State University [sic] should be given the opportunity to begin those same traditions."

What's next, lobbying for legislation that forces the LDS church to grant every non-Mormon in the valley 40 acres and a mule? Get real. If anything, UVSC deserves nothing more than the chance to build our own individual traditions.

Clinging to the traditions of some other school would make us poseurs and would permanently solidify the little brother complex that our school so desperately needs to shed.

As a non-Mormon Utah Valley resident I would like to say that the case made by
Mormon911.com is nothing more than shameful and senseless pot stirring.

Understanding, respect, fairness and social awareness are a two-way street. You need to give a little to get a little. Making an issue out of an insignificant letter on a hill will only polarize the differing factions and make each side more deeply entrenched in their disparate views.

Understanding, respect, fairness and social awareness will only come when both sides realize that our similarities outnumber our differences and that our uniqueness is not unique.

PROVO — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has sent 1 million missionaries around the world in its 177-year history, church leaders announced Monday.

The milestone was celebrated during a press conference in front of a statue of the very first LDS missionary, Samuel Smith, at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, the largest of the church's 16 MTCs.

The public announcement came one day after LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke about it during a private conference for new mission presidents at the Provo MTC.

"It is reliably estimated that a million missionaries have served since the organization of the church," President Hinckley said, according to a church press release.

President Hinckley also said LDS Church membership worldwide recently passed 13 million, said Elder M. Russell Ballard of the church's Quorum of the Twelve.

The MTC is hosting orientation meetings for 118 new mission presidents who leave later this week for their new, unpaid, three-year assignments. The church has 347 missions in 145 nations.

The church had 53,868 missionaries as of June 15. About 80 percent are young men, 13 percent are young women and 7 percent are couples, a church spokesman said.

Missionaries pay for their own missions or receive help from families, their congregations or the church's general missionary fund.

Most male missionaries are 19 when they begin their two-year missions. Most women go at 21 and serve 18 months.

Elder Brandon Soelberg, 19, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Elder Samuel Pelaquim, 20, of Curitiba, Brazil, are in the middle of 10 weeks of learning Japanese and teaching strategies at the MTC. They leave for the Japan Nagoya Mission in six weeks.

"I've been so blessed in my life with the gospel of Jesus Christ," Soelberg said. "I want everyone to experience the joy and happiness I have and the love God has for them, that I've felt."