Signifying nothing

Sex sells Originally uploaded by Theorris . Happy New Year! I was down in the hub of the S-House today and came across these two juxtaposed against the rather phallic monument to some pioneer. Seems to fit, given how the Victorian Era saw Mormons. Plans are for the Circle Lounge later. Tables are reserved. Saki will be drunk (drank?) What's that in her hand?

Wilhelm Christmas 2005 Originally uploaded by Theorris . Happy Holidays and all that goo. one two three Boy I'm a downer, aren't I? I've always thought I'd make a great Catholic or maybe a Puritan. My heritage, afterall, is rooted in New England Puritanism and austere Scottish Presbyterianism. Does one really need justification for desiring a better world? Should one ignore the world and just celebrate Christmas? Ok , here you go . Certainly gives one pause, eh?

Shampoo saving measures initiated Originally uploaded by Theorris . Well I have officially given up on the Great Bearding of 2005 (not that either Mid-B (shaved out of professional necessity) or Sleepy E (shaved out of wanting to have a kissable chin for all those hoochie mamas he is meeting on rap video sets) were really participating either). I went wild with the hair chopper and went status quo with the razor. It was a rather easy job, really. Just taking the chopper and run it over the head and make sure it clips the hair evenly. Of course all of this makes the bathroom a giant fucking hair ball (particularly when you had the longish fine brown/near-black hair I had) , it gave me a good reason to clean the bathroom too. I need good reasons to clean the bathroom, generally. I've gotten a few compliments, to which I often respond "Oh I was tired of the lice." Some people laugh. I am particularly amused at the uncertainty of those who don't. Call me Abhaya.

Crystaline Originally uploaded by Theorris . Saturday we all went down to Club Sound in good old SLC to see the Dandy Warhols in concert. I've always liked the group (they are called variously the Dandys or the Warhols, depending on who you talk to. I prefer to keep it the Dandy Warhols) and now (thanks to Housemate Friend Jeff (HFJ)) all of their CDs. I didn't have the last one until HFJ purchased it last week. I had shied away from it since the brief clips that appear on the net are rather lackadaisical and seemed to be indicating a crushingly morose release this time. Most of the songs on the album are well over 5 minutes with on a couple dropping down to the normal 3-minute radio play zone. I will report, in all, that the CD is much better than the clips tell. While it does not have instantly catchy tunes like Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia it explores the same big sonic space they've always been exploring: crushing disonance and hard edge lyrics counte...

Four years ago today I was putting things off . Three years ago today I made beautiful Candace a tasty meal . Two years ago today I was bemoaning a Jazz loss to the cursed Lakers (pre Osterblog) and providing snow pictures of good old SLC and the good old Heber to far flung warm-climate folk. (I also apparently had figured out how to get specific links to specific dates to work, and people were actually commenting on my posts.) A year ago today, I apparently wasn't in any mood to post , but I seem to like operating systems . Today I am thinking of the past and thinking about how I am taking a break from all this bloganaciouness until the new year. Did I actually exist Before Blogging (B.B.)? What was going on -1 B.B (2000). How about -10 B.B. (1991)? -20 B.B. (1981)? -31 B.B. (1971)? Well actually I have a good idea of what was going on all those times: 1991: hip early 20's postgrad poverty, surety, and uncertainty 1981: woeful teenage burning desire, sulleness, and f...

Don't expect updates on The Great Beard Race [TM] since I plan on leaving all things blog in a giant cloud of icy dust once December 14 hits. Don't worry, I'll be back some time, but I plan on being highly unreliable over my glorious near-month of pure vacation. I'll take pictures, but I'll be damned if I am going to post them.

May the bearding commence! Let slovenliness rule!

Lis and I were conducting job interviews today for our place of work. We interview together since it is nice to bounce impressions of job candidates off each other and see if those impression are accurate. In between classes we conducted a series of 4 interviews today. By the last interview Lis had slightly recovered from the migraine that came about during a previous interview. The last one was with a young guy who was pretty nervous and it affected his ability to speak coherently initially, but he managed to recover somewhat once we got to the 3 or 4th question. He still, however, seemed quite nervous throughout in that he was blushing and stammering. His answers were ok and he does show some promise. As he stood to leave, I let him know about the hiring process and offered my hand to shake. He grasped my hand weakly, and as I thanked him for the interview he blurted out "love you!" Somewhat stunned by this unexpected statement of affection, I looked towards Me...

Frost Originally uploaded by Theorris . I've come to the conclusion that I do not understand when I am under stress. Is everyone that way? Can we all not see the signs? I'm not talking a full-blown attack of stress caused by a stressful situation. I am talking about suble stress developed over time. I am thinking particulaly of stress that builds up because of situations in our lives such as relationships or the lack thereof or of the jobs we take (even though they might not be particularly stress on the face of it.) Perhaps we can only perceive our stress state when others observe it for us initially. Maybe it is too easy to ignore subtle signs of stress build up. Ultimately it all leads to bad mental and physical health.

First snow Originally uploaded by Theorris . It is snowing today and I am laying in my bed watching it. The light is a subtle grey-brown. I like the meditative nature of snow fall. It makes one less compelled to do anything other than watch it swirl in patterns across the bare bones of the trees outside. But the juxtaposition is there, of course. I am warm and inside and protected from all this. I am enabled to appreciate the beauty of what for others at other times and in other circumstances must have seen/see as nothing but pain and suffering. Still, though, even the most life-battered twelth century Northern European peasant must have looked out of his hovel one fine November morning to see snow twisting down to Earth and felt something akin to the peace I feel now.

Sleepy E . has the web site up for his movie Way of the Puck . A man of many talents, that Sleepy E.

Carter and Tif Originally uploaded by Theorris . Tif dropped by my office today with baby Carter. He was in some fancy Swedish carrier thingamabob. he slept slouched over most of the time, but woke up a few times during the visit. The baby, of course, attracted various folks to come into my office and enjoy his presence. Tif and I talked about the various realities of parenthood. In all she seems to be adjusting well, despite some rather major difficulties her family is facing. That's personal stuff that I am not going to go into here, so nertz to you kind reader.

The Christmas tree lot down the road has inspired another story of waywardness and intrigue. The plot is fairly simple: a twenty-something ne'er-do-well steals a Christmas tree at 3 in the morning from a fenced lot. The action is the actual theft which will be coincidental to the self-exploration/explication of the thief. The thief has a somewhat cliched life (and he knows it) of substance abuse, craptastic jobs, familial responsibilities (child), and debt--lots of debt. He, of course, is stealing the tree because he doesn't have the money to get one. He doesn't delve in justification, however, since he knows what he is doing and justification is just self-deception on his part. I was boring Mid-B on the bus this morning with the overall plot design and the philosophical underpinnings of what I am aiming at. It is a sort of Les Miserables or Crime and Punishment gone terribly wrong, with a criminal who recognizes his crime, won't justify it, and does it any...

I didn't really feel motivated to take any more pictures of Pittsburgh. Don't get me wrong, it is a fine city and all, but something about the cold just made me not want to take pictures--well that and my professional obligations.

I posted a bunch of pictures from Pittsburgh over at Flickr . You know Pittsburgh was named for Pitt the Elder: the British Prime Minister who along with George III pretty much created the American Revolution. (Note I refuse to use the British received term for that war "The American War of Independence." It was a revolution in terms of who gets to be in charge of government. It just took a while for it to be spread out to the people.) I note that because Pittsburgh was the frontier back in the 1700's. I sense a bit of frontiership here still, along with a lot of East Coast issues that, no doubt, permeate the country.

Well the nice thing about not staying at a conventions main hotel is that you get things like free wireless access--well that and about 100 bucks savings in room rates. I am not really sure why they chose Pittsburgh in November to hold a convention. It is cold and windy here. The cab driver on the way in from the airport said, however, that it was in the 70s until just yesterday. It is supposed to snow tomorrow. The cab driver was quite chatty and called me "brother" frequently. He was interested in what all us teacher folk were doing in town and lamented his lack of writing abilities. I encouraged him to enroll in a class, and he said he'd think about it. My hotel is near Pitt, but there is no one out on the streets because it is so cold and windy out, save a few college students getting groceries at the CVS pharmacy down the street. Downtown is somewhere that-a-way and I'll go explroe it tomorrow and register for the convention.

While I'm gone, amuse yourself here or here . Does the savory goodness of the new blog frighten you? It needs comment love or I fear it will die.

I think I mentioned a couple of months ago that I purchased the 1970 version of Robert Lowell's Notebook . There were various editoins of the text (from 1967 to 1970) and with each one Lowell expanded/revised. He published a pair of full edtion in 1969: This text differs from the first edition in May 1969 and the second in July. About a hundred of the old poems have been changed, some noticeably. More than ninety new poems have been added. These have not been placed as a single section or epilogue. They were scattered where they caught, intended to fulflesh my poem, not sprawl into chronicle. I am loath to display a litter of variants, and hold up a still target for the critic who knows that most second thoughts, when visible, are worse thoughts. I am sorry to ask anyone to buy this poem twice. I couldn't stop writing, and have handled my published book as if it were a manuscript." (264) Lowell then goes on to list a sequence of dates stating that "Dates fade...

Dulce Et Decorum Est : "If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori." Wilfred Owen BBC has an interesting production about Owen and Sigfriend Sasson .

Announcing the Land of lost notes . Pretentious? Probably. Most likely. Go to hell. Art? Well it is artifice . I call it text work. Text workers of the world unite! Notes? Lost? But they aren't really note and they aren't lost now are they? Got to hell .

I had some extra train time today so I started a story. Now I haven't seriously written a story in a while now, and when I do I am always surprised what comes out. I think I was challenged a bit by Mid-B this morning who scoffed at the notion of writing a novel (no offense you folks noveling over there at that one site). I too know I don't have anything close to a novel in me, but I think I do have the occasional weird story to wield. With that said, my extra train time was useful as words literally spewed from my fingers. I think I amused lis (she laughed for whatever that means) when I read bits of the story to her while wating for a meeting to start: So I know you're asking me, what's the point of all this Jimmy? What the hell are you getting at? Well I guess I am just trying to explain why the hell I'm sitting here at this bus stop out in the middle of the fuck end of nowhere with 20 bucks to my name and a fucking fat lip and two black eyes. I have this n...

Sometimes you read something and you just can't keep yourself from doing a spit take: The house is filled with poets and short story writers. Jackets are piled on the bed in the bedroom and people are lying on them or on the floor telling stories about losing their virginity. Everybody has an MFA so every story has a small inappropriate observations. "He put his hand between my legs at the movie theater. I was wearing my mother's skirt." "I was fifteen, she was nineteen. It was the day after my best friend committed suicide." ( Stephen Elliott, " My Little Brother Ruined My Life ", Maisonneuve )

"Jazz up by ten." Could it be? 2 and 0 with 2 games in the season! Playoffs here the fuck we come. Yeah right.

Contrasts 2 Originally uploaded by Theorris . As I think I've mentioned before, I get obsessed with songs and sometimes albums and have the tendency to listen to them over and over (and over and over) and over and over and over. And over and over. If I didn't have headphones, you can only imagine how insane this would make anyone around me or how insane it would make me appear. It is lucky for me that our modern age has invented for me several pairs of headphones with which I can indulge in my analytic obsession. Analysis is generally what it boils down to. I hear something that is really appealing to me or baffles me (or whatever) and I generally want to understand why it is so appealing (aside from the initial aesthetic appeal of well-played, well-constructed music). Lately I've been obsessing over The Decemberists ' album Picaresque . I recall hearing it a while ago, but it didn't stick. Yet all of a sudden a few weeks ago Housemate Jeff brought it home and it...

"The Jazz have spruced up their 15-year-old arena, spending $1.8 million on an electronic ring around the upper bowl that, Haslam said, 'restores the wow factor that we haven't had for a while.' " SL Trib They could also install a fan-control Ostertag prod. Now that would be worth 90 bucks.

With radio, there is just too much talking because you have to describe what is going on, so you're restricted on how much analysis you can make. SL Trib So that crap that Bill Walton spews is now called analysis?

Oh Yeah! Originally uploaded by Theorris . Supposed to go to 4 different parties last night. Went to two. The Hulkster was boistrous as only the Hulkster can be. That, of course, is an annoying trait at small parties (the first) but it was mildly entertaining for me at least if not for others. Favorite lines of the night: "You know, Mean Gene...." "Which little Hulkster out there is going to get the Hulk a beer?" "Hulkamania is running wild in the streets of Salt Lake City!" You can only imagine how annoying this would get. I loved it.

Halloween is fun! Originally uploaded by Theorris . My costume represents the best of my manual dexterity and graphic artisty. Man I suck, but the costume will be great. On the whole, Halloween costume making for me is usually a one-off event anyway. I regularly pull decent costumes together in 10 minutes or less. This one is the most planned I've been in years, I think. One of my favorites of all time was going as "beat up." That one just involved some bloody makeup and a stuff to blacken my eyes. Mid-B and Dr. Write kindly gave me a ride home today and I told them of my possible costumes for this year: Dead Hemmingway (too bloody and beardy) Hunter S. Thompson (too obvious and too bloody) Enoch Emory in his gorrilla suit from F.O.'s Wiseblood (too obscure and too hot) or (the winner) 80's Hulk Hogan ! Hulkamania rules! All the little Hulksters out there are helping me out, Mean Gene! Fight for what's right! Fight for your right! And no, I won't...

Mid-B and I got a hoot out of the following that appeared in our College's newspaper: While some students feel safe and educated on how to put on a condom, many do not know what to do after it is on. You can make your own punchline.

1: It is not that Minneapolis is boring, but I think I am just tired of the place. I've been to the various cultural hotspots that one can attend to on any normal day and most of the others are closed on a Sunday. So I used the morning to explore a little bit more and then ended up taking the light rail out to the airport too many hours early to even count. The airport, in fact, seems to be a lot like the Minneapolis I was exploring this morning—the maze-like Skyway. It is what Minnesotans use to navigate the city when it is sub zero, I suppose. Such skyways were quite the thing in the 70s—a way of attracting suburbanites back downtown in a variety of cities since it kept them off the dirty streets and in an environment that pretty much mimicked their prefab stomping grounds. The Minneapolis Skyway is pretty much like that. The funny thing is, however, people don't really seem to use it, favoring the streets and their direct route to the needlessly arcane second level s...

You're going to make it after all Originally uploaded by Theorris . Still in Minneapolis. Yada yada. Lis and I walked around a bit the other day after her battle with her hotel's tredmill. We decided to take on the role of absolute tourist geeks and take pictures by the Mary Tyler Moore statue on the main drag. Then we ventured by light rail to the Mall of America. MOA, by the way, is a heinous ass pit. The one saving grace is that I will never again have to go to a mall since all my future mall devotion has been made up for by one trip to that worthless behemouth. Can you tell I hated the Mall of America?

Homer Originally uploaded by Theorris . The Title says it all.

The View Originally uploaded by Theorris . Yup that's what I look out on here in beautiful downtown Minneapolis. I explored a bit right when I got here (mostly to fight off 2 hours of airplane confinement). It is a titch windy here. I assume that is abnormal, but what the hell do I know. I look down on a church that looks like a combo of the Cathedral of the Madelene and First Pres in Salt Lake. Minneapolis and SLC have a lot in common, I think--scandanavians and what not. The buildings, of course, look bigger here simply because there is nothing to compare them too aside from the mighty Mississippi, which, isn't all that mighty up here. I'll keep an eye out for Paul Bunyon, Laura Ingalls-Wilder and Mary Tyler Moore for you. I'm sure they're around somewhere--probably all hanging out at the convenience store/Asian market/liquor store out behind my fancy-pants hotel. (More on find fun in faux-privelege later.)

Traveling is a theme for me this week. I'll be venturing out of good old SLC to the great Twin City Mecca. Don't ask me what Krazy Kat and Beck have to do with it, however. (Sorry the file is so large--I tried to compress it down to something reasonable, but the quality went right out the window. The MP4 on that page is set to stream, but I don't know if it actually does.)

Pool Originally uploaded by Theorris . Karmaking pooling it up at Brewvies. We went there to see Wedding Crashers --a movie that was far better than I expected. I told King and Friend Dustin who is relocating from Wyoming that it reminded me of the Marx Brothers. King was taken aback by this remark, I think. He is right, of course, there are not usually eggregious hand jobs in Marx Brother's movies. Hand job. Ever notice how many times that phrase is mentioned in Rushmore ?

If WC Fields really said it (and I have my doubts), I find it to be true: don't work with animals (and children). Catnipped . Boonis (the cat) generally gets quite hyper when given catnip performing all sorts of wild behavior such as crazy jumps and across the room flings of his toy mice. The presene of the camera, however, seems to have made him shy.

I put my iPod over there Kind of childish, really, but it does distract me from the work I am finally doing. I hadn't, ofcourse, started the work earlier today or at all this long weekend, but now I'm in the midst of it, taking a procrastinating break by writing about procrastination. All this page fiddling, song list building, and writing about procrastination is a bit like housework for me. I know when I was in college my digs were never cleaner than when I had to write a paper. That's the procrasto-cleaning that many of us are familiar with. So now instead of cleaning I just do stupid things with a web page or make song lists or write about procrastination to feel like I am actually accomplishing something while avoiding the real work I need to be doing that I should have done long ago. Why? Because I can, that's why. No one is forcing me to do the work aside from myself and now my desire to be through with it and my guilt for not having it done already. Procr...

Wasatch from Desolation Trail Originally uploaded by MacClint . The nice thing about my job is that I get random holidays like Fall Break where I can catch up on what's going on in the canyons above SLC. I briefly thought about going out of town, but sometimes it is nice just to be home and take things as they come. After some debate, Karmaking and I decided to go for a hike up Millcreek Canyon. The debate was more about which canyon would be best. I think we chose Millcreek simply because it was closest. We stopped at the Desolation Trail just above the Boy Scout camp and I regailed Karmaking of stories from my work at that camp guiding 11-year-olds as a world-wise 14-year-old camp staff member. I amused K. with tales of a crazy racoon, kids who broke their arms because they didn't listen to me, and how I disposed of the rattle snake we had caught in camp (I took it up the same trail and flung it out in to the woods.) King was intrigued how one would handle a snake, ...

Theme for fall: drifting out of reach .

See .

The Wilhelm Invitational Originally uploaded by MacClint . The Invitational was a success at least for those who showed up. For those who didn't show up it was a complete failure. Update: Dun Dun Dun Dah . (Oh and you can kiss Bowlarama goodbye-- The Bowling Syndicate abides!)

Woot! It looks like the 2005 Wilhelm Invitational Disc Golf Tournament might actually take place tomorrow. What the hell does that mean, you ask? Attentive readers will recall that I have been blogging about various disc golfing excursions all summer. Since tomorrow is the last day for the lifts at Solitude , the housemates and I decided to put together a disc golfing outing with anyone who desires to attend. Since our mansion is called "The Wilhelm" we have deigned to call it "The Wilhelm Invitational." I believe it is still 2005, althought I wrote 2006 not long ago out of a secret desire to get the hell out of this year. So, if you are in the SLC area, come join us tomorrow. I don't know exactly when we'll be up there, but since it is a Saturday, I assume it will be 1 or 2 pm. You can get used discs at Play It Again Sports . I'll be sure to post an updated time if one ever materializes. Otherwise if you have my phone number, try that, althoug...

Hey lis , I stand totally corrected . Ok not totally because I know I saw a woman playing Captain Scotty at some point in Channel 20's history. Anyway folks... the one and only RAYMOND responded to my post about the afore-mentioned Hotel Balderdash. He starred on the show with Cannonball and Harvey for several years. I was just a little kid, but I remember the show quite fondly. Ironically enough, however, I recall hating Raymond even more than I liked the show, but that was pretty much what made the show so appealing, after all. How's that for the Internet for you? (And don't make fun of him or I'll give you such a smack.) ( Stop that, or I am so going to turn this god damned car around!) (I told you to stop it. I'm not going to say it again.) Shit I feel like I just got a call from Bernie Calderwood (RIP). Man, they don't even mention Bernie's stint on Big Money Movie. My sister remebers Captain Scotty. Where the hell are local kid shows these day...

The other day Mid-B was over and he told me about a bowling blog that Sleep E has joined in on or has set up or something. This explains this picture which is in E's Flickr account. Mid-B also menitoned that E was thinking of inviting me to join said blog. Now being the impatient person that I am, I decided to damn the torpedos and just make my own bowling blog: Bowlarama . Current karmaking and I are co-authoring this blog, but if you want to join in, let me know. Only bowling-related posts, however, will be allowed.

I received this email this morning: Hi all, The baby was born last nigt at 9:30. His name is Carter Phillip. Baby and Mother are doing fine. A. The baby referred to is my good friends Tif & Chris child. I really need to get my phone fixed.

only there are no family issues or problems to be resolved by wrecking the house in this one .

During my latest trip to Sam Weller's a harpsichord concerto was being played over the loud speakers. It was an intense harpsichord piece--not Bach but definitely Baroqu--maybe Boccherini or Scarlati. The piece was intense with jabbing keystrokes and staccato violins and continuo. One of the clerks, a stylish woman in a wool skirt and a hot pink top with a cheek piercing called across the bookstore to a colleague sitting at the information desk in a matter-of-fact kind of tone, "This music is going to make me kill someone." I cracked up then like I haven't cracked up in a long time--one of those gut busting laughs that you just can't keep in. "Crazy isn't it?"she said, keeping up her flat tone.

The trio vs. the pirate-ladyman Recently lis opined that no native Utard remembers Lighthouse 20, the kid show that was broadcast on UHF channel 20. Now I have a slight dispute with lis, in that I remember the pirate on the show was played by a woman, and she recalls someone very different (a man, I presume). Now Lighthouse 20 was not by any means my favorite show (hell I think it replaced Gillagan's Island!), but I do remember it--not really fondly but I remember it. The real purpose of my writing is that I made the comparison of Lighthouse 20 to Hotel Balderdash--a show that apparently ran for 10 years on channel four here in SLC. Now this show was the bomb; not only did it start at 6:00 am 6:45 am and show nothing but 30's-late 40's Warner Brothers cartoons (you know, Bugs and Daffy, but not Porky Pig and certainly not that crap WB churned out from the 50s onward.) These cartoons, of course, were made for adults and the humor was mostly sophisticated in a slapstick kind...

I've had a couple months of rather stressful professional commitments, but it doesn't mean I can't offer you up a new cooking movie . Comedy. Some people don't get it, do they? Not that this is very funny. I've come to the conclusion that it is not. Anyway. Anyway the larger file is actually a file with streaming enabled. I don't know, however, if it will actually stream properly. My apologies to those on dial-up connections. I'd write about the complex professional issues that are really getting me down, but this is not the place for it, if any place is. Enjoy the gumbo.

1) Best Grouch Marx sequence ever: Somewhat rotund older socialite lady he is dating to get her money : "Hold me closer! Closer!" Groucho : "If I were any closer I'd be behind you." 2) Ron of Counterintuitive writes of a spate of crank calls and his self-defined not-so-snappy comeback: I was just about to leave to pick up my two older kids from art class; I was already five minutes late and the prank caller had called earlier when I was simultaneously trying to grill peppers, cook corn, cut up a tomatoe, and instruct my daughter in proper table setting. So at this point I was getting a bit irritated with prankster joe. Once I realized it was yet again the prankster, making me even later, I really wanted to scare them off so they wouldn’t call again. And, might you wonder, what did I come up with? Was it something like Moe would say to Bart: "Listen, you lousy bum, if I ever get a hold of you, I swear I'll cut your belly open!" Or "It'...

Over at lis's , lisa b. was commenting on the odd blogger commenting graphic password thing ("uckyovo") that lis had pop up on a recent comment she was making: Also, if you go all Latin-roots, you've got ovo, which is egg or close to it, so you have, even in the nonsense scrambly word, misogyny. On bitter days, I've been saying of late that misogyny is hard-wired into human culture. But in the alphabet? Oh. My. God. I tend to agree with Lisa on her bitter days (and usually on her sweet days--is that the oposite of bitter?), in that I think misogyny is engrained in our culture and our language, and it takes a great deal of effort to over come it. I think, as well, there is a link to the roles that men and women play in society as well as our roles in family. Ron of Counterinutive has recently dealt with that issue in a post entitled " Can I speak with your wife? " With the above biases in mind, I give you my lastest Googlerific poem creating gabob. (I...

I forgot about this one: Karmaking took it back in July on a previously mentioned road trip.

It is 2 am and I am bursting with energy, as the cliche goes. The soundtrack to Trainspotting is going its assertive way as I sit here and think of the stuff that I could be doing besides stringing words together into coherency. There's a lot going through my mind and I know I'm in a manic mode right now. It happens every fall. It happens when I have many tasks to complete and I complete them all in record time. It makes me think of Theodore Roethke for some odd reason. You know he died while swimming in a suburban swimming pool. Perhaps that will be my next anthologized Gooflerific poem: Theodore Roethke, dead He who wrote of the subtle Growth and the heater knock Achtung! He who had the snow slowly Ticking And the headlights Fading He, admiring life but loving Death Who wrote the simple words Of a whiskey's waltz. Dead in a pool A swimming pool At 58 55. Something like that, anyway. Boy, I think I know how Franz Schubert felt.

You didn't ask for it! Internet Archive: Details: Bowling for Clintonbine

You asked for it! Internet Archive: Details: Disc Golf the Wilhelm Way

Mid-B made a cool poem using Google Poetry , so I just had to cobble something together. My search terms were Jimmy Hoffa, Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran , and I heard you paint houses and I told it to give me rhymed couplets. All these phrases are relevant to the murder of Hoffa. Google Poetry then gave out a spew of couplets from which I chose those represented below, arranging them in what I think is a coherent order. I've manipulated the text of the couplets a bit, but not much. I kind of like how it turned out. Jimmy Hoffa Jimmy Hoffa Jimmy Hoffa, in his short Terms, that he'd better start He expected to get whacked right More bravely than anyone thought Sheeran and the inside, it was told Did match Hoffa's DNA it would, Shot Jimmy Hoffa with a pellet gun, Unfound Jimmy Hoffa, Sr., guy to run, And then shot him twice in the head And the final book report--bad History through the eyes: Frank, I heard you paint houses You paint house...

Along with random bits of laundry and bathroom sanitizing, I spent my labor day editing a movie about disc golf, of all things. Like most throwing sports, I have precious-little skill at it, but I rather enjoy tramping around places like Solitude (where the majority of the footage was filmed) which has a spiffy course laid out. I am particularly happy if my shoulder does not become disjointed or when I actually make par a few times. Next week at Solitude they have a tournament. I am not entering it since I suck so mightily, but a friend is considering it. There were a few folks up on the mountain practicing for next week. You can identify them by their unique ability to actually throw the disc uphill, and their complete lack of swearing or oath-taking. It would appear, however, that the week after that is open for our very own Wilhelm Invitational (which means if you are reading this and near enough to SLC, you are invited to participate.) Lift tickets are 6 bucks, but if you a...

Salt Lake Tribune : "Sarah Wilhelm, the organization's director of fiscal analysis, says stereotypes that poor people don't want to work or don't do anything to improve their lives are not true. Roughly 75 percent of poor Utah families have at least one working person in the home, she says. 'It's frustrating that people are working very hard, playing by the rules and still not being able to make ends meet,' says Wilhelm. In 1999-2000, the poverty rate in Utah was 7 percent. It increased to 10 percent in 2003-2004, according to the report. The federal poverty guideline for a family of four people is $18,850 a year. "

I still don't know what I think of Flickr . UPDATE: I added a bunch of pictures to it some live from my cell phone. I'm thinking of abandoning The Eye of Orris, but then again I don't want to pay Flickr.

Kendrakoo has written a poem about being a woman. Sleepy E came close to a fist fight outside of Atlanta. Mid-B remembers Breaking Away . Ron of Counterintuitive is stuck in the looming semester. lisa b contemplates silence and child rearing. Cordelia illustrates a junk house. Snyder got married. lis wants to see hip studies in cultural studies classes. Dr. Write is stuck contemplating running. Charkes is very stuck illustrating dam hoses. Kim wonders about Cher fans. catinlap shares his cell phone pics. Jenny has been busy with her new digs and what not, but gives up the pictures of the afore-mentioned Snyder's nuptuals. the bunny has some knitting to do. D-Lo gives us a poem about beauty. I've given you a blogacious round up.

Here's something for your end-of-summer depression . I am pretty sure that all the people depicted in it are dead.

I sit on the grass on the north side of campus as the Republicans drive by. Some have incredibly expensive cars, others have cars that are worse for wear: minivans and trucks dirty with the high desert summer. The dude who drove by in his forest green Jag knows he is something special. You can tell by the way he has his head thrown back. I wonder what sins he has committed to get that wealth. Excessive wealth, unless you are very lucky, always seems to be linked in some way with immoral or unethical actions. I know no such thing of this anonymous man, however, but have a predilection against him. Something about his need to show off his wealth goads me into thinking ill of him. Somewhere down deep in my psyche hides a judgmental Puritan who suspects all such extravagant wealth as ill-gotten. The Republicans are here for their Fall convention, I assume, and I am here because I left something in my office that I will need this weekend. So I sit and wait for the bus and watch the Republic...