Signifying nothing

Hie ye to Kolob! Yes, it is the Image of an Exoplanet (ESO Press Release 12/05)

Why does this seem like an scene excised from Napoleon Dynamite ?

So I stopped by Orion Music after work to see if there is anything new or interesting. I finally bought the Iron & Wine CD (Woman King). I went to see them at Kilby Court a while back, and wasn't that impressed, but that was probably because I was blocked out of the room where they play at Kilby by the crowd of folks and had to sit outside to hear them. I keep hearing them on KRCL Drivetime and rather like them each time I hear them, so I will chalk-up my bad reaction to them to the venue. I also found a surprise: A version of The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots that includes a DVD. I think I have all the various permutations that they produced of that album, so it made sense to get this one as well. They've had some pretty cool side projects in the past, such as their 4 (or was it 3?) disc set that to be properly listened to had to be played on 4 separate stereos simultaneously. They also fancy themselves fimmakers,and based on their over-the-top l...

During the unfortunate hiatus of his Star Wars appearances, we witnessed the Wookie's unfortunate venture into commercial television. Wookie Cop was an abject failure, while the 1980 " What You Talkin' 'bout Wookie " was slightly before its time and subject to the whims of those coquettish writers, our favorite hairy almost ape-like but oh so human Wookie slipped into a deep depression of too much Jagermeister and gin. Luckilly, someone saw the lucrative value of the Star Wars venture and made The Empire Strikes Back , probably the best of the whole series and devoid of absolute control from certain parties that will go unnamed. Wookie rode high on his renegotiated salary for the next two Star Wars films. Like his co-stars Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher he avoided any real work and enjoyed the massive Star Wars payout. But payouts only last so long, especially for 20 minute at best side characters who's best line is "uh ohhhhhh ahhh eehhh" lea...

After his failure in prime-time cop drama, the Wookie next turned his talents to the all American sitcom. He plays a fun-loving but highly strung Wookie adopted by an average white family living above a porn shop. Wookie added a new catch phrase to the sitcom pantheon of catch phrases. Unfortunately, the writer's strike of 1980 stopped production of "What you talkin' 'bout, Wookie?" and only the pilot was made. Unable to re-sign Wookie because of his other contractual obligations, the producers retooled the comedy and turned it into the laugh-a-minute fun-fest we grew to love: Alf ! Update: 1) you probably need to get QuickTime to watch these movies. 2) On the internet archive page that comes up after you click on the movie link above, select the MPEG4 file to the right. The stream thing doesn't work, so don't click on that.

After his success on the Star Wars Holiday Special , our Wookie went on to make several ill-fated television series. One such series, Wookie Cop , lasted only 5 episodes before it was yanked by the network.

There are only 25 days left until the world as we know it ends and will never be the same. Oh what will we do without the wonderful Space Wars saga!? I guess we'll just have to wait for the postquel. In the mean time we'll always have WOOKIE RAGE !

BoingBoing has recently been posting links to odd answering machine/voice mail messages (not greetings, but messages people leave). One in particular caught my ear because it had a wicked sort of beat to it. So using Garage Band (GB) I whipped up a little remix of her complaint entitled "What the hell is the matter with people nowadays?" . I have uploaded it to the Internet Archive for posting, but it has not been approved as of 12:00 noon April 24. If it doesn't receive approval, I figure out some other place to put it. I didn't modify the woman's voice at all save for adding reverb. The beats/drums are stock in Garage Band. I would have made it longer including more of her word music (particularly where she imitates a touch-tone phone), but I did something wrong in GB and it won't let me add the whole of her track any more. It is an AIFF file (sorry I can't figure out how to get GB or iTunes to change that format.

I think my PowerBook is depressed. The many many many CD's that I've downloaded to it are, ultimately, quite depressing music (with some notable exceptions.) Please suggest some songs to cheer my PowerBook up. In other related news, for some reason I want to name my PowerBook "Wendy." What the hell?

I thought I was enabled to cross off "saddle bags" from the needs list that is sufficing for my blogger description right now ( Three things I need: 1) Haircut 2) Saddle bags 3) Coffee ) but the thing I purchased the other day doesn't want to work. You see I want to get some "panniers" for my bike--saddlebags for my less-Frenchified parliance) for toting things on my bicycle. The item I purchased, however, is incompatible with itself. It is a basket that locks into place on a back rack of the bicycle. Both the rack and the basket are made by the same company, but they refuse to play nice with one another. Apparantly the company likes to change its rack size regularly in order to force customers to buying whole systems rather than just replacing componants. I would look for alternative from the same company, but I have no desire to do business with them since they treat their customers and the environment so poorly.

Salt Lake Tribune - Salt Lake Tribune Home Page : "But Winterton says the mix-up demonstrates a culture of disrespect for physicians. 'In their eyes, we're providers, not physicians.' " I think the word Winterton was looking for is "vendor."

Thanks again, Republicans for raising my taxes for nothing . I guess such action is to keep people from knowing which way the wind blows, eh?

I was talking to Lisa B. of High Touch Megastore and she indicated that she has heard that Hot Rod will not be retiring completely, but will continue to calling the radio games for the Jazz. That is some how fitting, since that is how I best remember Hot Rod as a kid since the Jazz were not on TV much in those days. They were a new team, didn't have a very wealthy owner, and were losing constantly. They couldn't even swing a constant local TV gig. (Does any one but me remember when they tried a few seasons playing some games in Las Vegas trying not to die as a franchise?) Now, of course, they have their own TV station and you can pretty much see all the games there. I recall those games on the farm by the radio while I did my homework looking out my window to moon lit fields when Dantley scored his umpteenth point weedling his way inside the paint with his snake-like move, or the Golden Griff actually hit a three pointer, or Frank Layden got thrown out of the game. It was all ...

Despite my rather bitchy last post, the Jazz lead the entire game and won and as Harpring said in the post-game interview "We're on a two game winning streak!" At least they're keeping it in perspective. Anyway the Jazz have a lot going for them next year: McCloud, Humphreys, Giricek, Okur, and a healthy Kirilenko. (My apologies for any misspellings of their names.) Along with any veterans like Harpring and Eisley that stick around, they have a decent shot. I'll be back on this whole Jazz thing on Wednesday, the last game of the season , and Hotrod Hundley's last game announcing for the Jazz. (Unless he decided to not retire afterall. I haven't paid much attention to that.) If I get the gumption, I'll write a tribute to Hotrod. 26 wins. 55 losses. Ah well.

It is half time of the Jazz's last home game for this pretty sad season. Overall the Jazz are playing pretty much like they have all season: sketchy. I don't want to be too hard on them since they have had an injury- and conflict-plagued season. Right before the game started Larry Miller gave an impassioned enough speech for him, thanking the fans for sticking around through such a craptastic season. He stated, in effect, that the fans have stuck through the thin. Hopefully next year we'll start getting some thick again. Ball play has been pretty sloppy for both teams, but Sacramento has left the lane open when Oster(thank the basketball gods he is no longer sucking away at the Jazz's salary cap)tag is not in. The Jazz still suck at outside defense, and that is leaving them vulnerable to Sacramento's strength. One note of patheticness so far is that fans cheered Ostertag (a.k.a Goo) when her came in. I'm not one for fans booing former players, but this piqued me...

To follow this weekend's nice spring sunny days, we're having a rainy Monday, which as I've mentioned before never bothers me since rain here is such a rare thing that you quite appreciate it when it happens. Now it is not so rainy that one couldn't go out and do thing in it, but it makes for a handy excuse to be inside and listen to music (if there is any need for excuses for such an activity). The community CD player has been in a bit of a rut for the last week; new things might be put in, but it always seems to go back to the same five CDs after a bit. Granted they are all new CDs, but they have all reached their half-life with me, and I prefer to give them a little more space. We'll see how the rest of the Wilhelm crew react to my complete remake of the CD changer. I wanted to go for things that seemed appreciate for a rainy day: the two Radiohead selections ( Kid A and OK Computer take care of that with their sonorous dreariness (that's not a bad t...

Iron Monkey : "Not the ugly virgin again!" I was amused. Not quite Kung Fu Hamlet , but it would do in a pinch especially since it has a conflicted co-hero and a bad guy that puts Claudius to shame. Lessons are learned, and fake religious zealots are put in their place.

Right now I'm lost between the third movement and before the people start singing in Beethoven's ninth. My god. Paradise.

One of the tutors at work does tarot. She was sorting through a new pack of cards that she had bought because she is going to give a reading to her sister. While she was shuffling through them, I haphazzardly picked out two cards: the 2 of cups and a card I didn't really look at to remember but it marked the start of something new. Those two cards pointed to success in a new venture. I was reminded me of my friend Charlotte from the old days who could read palms like nothing and her mother who could read your fortune from regulation playing cards.

Since I’m in a a Fray/Middlebrow/Dr.Write/High Touch Megastore mood today, I’ve decided to offer up a bit of interactive blogittiness. A while ago (I don’t recall when) a friend and I were talking about a lyrics and lyricism. I don’t recall the exact context but it got us onto a discussion of the poetic merits of lyrics, and why lyrics are ill-received in poetic circles. (You know those poetic circles, always with their exclamations of “that’s not poetry!” while they chain smoke cigarettes and drink espresso in dark bistros.) The whole conversation lead me to realize that there are many lyrics that I couldn’t do with out and they sometimes run in my head as songs should. Since I r ecently mis-treated some lyrics , I thought I would make amends and celebrate them. Your task, oh reader, is to quote some lyrics that have some merit for you—whether poetic, philosophic, pathetic (in the rhetorical use of the world, not the disparaging) or whatever reason something might have merit. In...

Today's business-taking trip downtown (yes I am a big financial wizard who must visit downtown on a regular basis--actually my bank is down town and it is easier to go there on the train than it is to find one of the suburbanite branches in their carvenient locations), was chock full of kids who think they are in Lord of the Rings . (I'll wait while you catch up after that last parenthetically damned sentence.) The phenomenon is kind of an outgrowth of the D & D geeks I remember so fondly from my highschool days, Goths, and kids who hung out in coffee shops and played way too much Magic the Gathering . LOTR defined their lives for these kids, and they clung to it: brown pants they pretent are really leather; green or black shirts they pretend are woven by some elf; and talismans--many many silver talismans. On the train there were a passel of them wearing their talismans and talking about magey kinds of things. It wasn't as if they plannned to be there, since they wou...

I made a rule for myself very early on in writing in this thing that I wasn't going to write about the actual creation/management of it. It seems extraordinarly tedious and boring to write about how one is going to write about something or the look and feel (design) of the very thing that you are designing. I suppose I wanted to avoid a weird sort of meta-blog since I am annoyed by such things. It is like talking to some one who only discusses some new feature of his or her appearance simply to get you to comment on how cool it is: LOOK AT MY HAIR! LOOK AT MY TATTOO! LOOK AT MY LIP RING! Bleh. That's too much unquiet desperation for me. With that in mind, I must ask you to bear with me here, becase I do have some necessary explaining to do on the sudden change of appearence of good old SigNo. I've been mouthing off lately that a blog or an online journal (that's how I prefer to think of this thing) is like a pet: you get used to it being around and need to feed it and ...