Signifying nothing

I despise this.

blogger bowlarama Originally uploaded by Theorris . Sleepy E is in town visiting the Middlebrows/Dr.Writes. Bowling quickly ensued. Beer was consumed.

Meow Originally uploaded by Theorris . Nothing to write today. Just a picture that says something to me. I laughed aloud when I first spotted the scrap of paper. It relieves the sadness of seeing the toothless prostitute who was scamming cigarettes in front of the 4th South 7-Eleven in return for sexual favors. She got a pack of Old Golds from a very seedy looking guy who bought them instead of Marlboros after the attendant told him the price difference. "Thanks for saving me some money, ma'am!" He said joyfully as he left the store to return to the prostitute with the goods. They then took off around the corner of the building, no doubt to some litter strewn alley for the pay off. "You're welcome," the attendant said and motioned for me to step forward to the counter.

Lord almighty I love Presidents Day!* What a great idea: the third Monday in February where you can take the day off and really have no obligations other than sitting around wondering why the hell you have this day off. I have friends who hate the month of February. If I made a top ten list of months, February would be right up there, I think. Not just because of the wonderful Presidents Day holiday, but also because I sort of consider it my month, as my birthday falls right before it and pretty much the whole month is devoted to my astrological sign: Aquarius. Oh, so what are my top ten months, you ask? Well here you go: 1) July because it is summer and you have to respect that kind of heat and the fun that it can entail. 2) February because it is the shortest month of the year and it is winter and you get pointless days off where you can clean your kitchen and do laundry without having to rush off to work. 3) September because september just makes me think of how good it is to ...

Someone's got to do it Originally uploaded by Theorris . UTA loves its riders so much that they put this poor guy out with a small broom to clear the snow off the platforms so that it wouldn't cause more delays: The SL Turb* Exaggerates Delays . Nevertheless, I was right on time on Thursday. How about you? Let's see. I heard stories of 3 hour commutes and battling slide offs. My mass transit commute that everyone scoffs at as taking too long? RIGHT FREAKING ON TIME and I contributed only a teensy amount to pollution and consumption of natural resources. Sorry, I'll stop gloating now. *And yes I do mean to spell it "Turb" as they seem intent on causing needless turbulence about mass transit here in Utah.

2 Facts About Ethiopia Originally uploaded by Theorris . 1) It is 1998 or 1999 in Ethiopia. The Ethiopians never accepted the modern Gregorian calendar and stuck with the previous Julian calendar, including its calculation of the beginning of the common era. 2) Noon in Ethiopia is actually six o'clock. The Ethiopian day is always pretty much 12 hours long and dawn is considered 12 and the hour after dawn is 1 et cetera. Sunset is, therefore 12:00 again. Learn these and more interesting facts on the Lonely Planet podcast downloaded directly to your new spiffy & black (it is black, man--it is black!) iPod Nano. (Go on, say it. I know what you are thinking: "Tech slut!") Hey, just doing my part to make sure Steve Jobs can buy that solid gold bidet to wash his already gold-plated ass.

Arrived Originally uploaded by Theorris . It has been snowing since yesterday with little break. It is the first appreciable snow we've had for two years. Last year, and even earlier this year, all it seemed to do in the valley was rain. That's mostly annoying if you like snow as I do, but wonderful if you are like lis who hates the snow and the cold. For a moment I thought it would have been a snow day for school since we haven't had snow like this for so long and folks here tend to get jealous of places that completely shut down in even the slightest amount of snow or ice. But no--the True West has taken over and most folks head out into the storm to get to their jobs or school or whatever. People leave early and drive slow (mostly). Snow plows are out all night, cutting their way through the streets. Despite its inconvenience and cause for caution most people seem to be in a good mood this morning. Folks wave to each other as they shovel off their cars....

Yada yada .

How rock bands break up Originally uploaded by Theorris . I came into the Creative Arts Emporium & Sunny Lounging Room this afternoon and discovered that there has been dissention between Wook and a member of the Family Stone. Barely a week after the band formed, Billy Sandcreature took it upon himself to set Wook straight on a few points with a stolen Wookie fire staff. Wook put up a good fight, but as you can see, suffered injuries that rendered him unconcious. Fortunately for Signifying nothing fans, both have suffered no lasting ill-effects. Wook has been quoted as saying about the incident "Wah wah wahhhhhhhh!" while Billy Sandcreature retorted "Arrr arrr arrrrrrrrrrrr!" There has been no word on the status of the rest of the Family Stone.

Turin Aims to Host Greener Games : "'For once the Games were not set in some far-off mountain resort or medium-scale Alpine town,' Savoia said. 'Turin is a real city, and this has made it easier to accommodate people and infrastructure without impacting pristine areas or fragile Alpine habitats.'" So is Salt Lake a far-off mountain resort and not a real city? Ah busting poor SLC's chops again are we world? Can't you just leave her alone? Isn't it bad enough she has to put up with hyper-obsessed, demanding, self-serving people who are hell-bent on destroying her natural beauty? Ah well, I'm sure this little passage from the National Geographic will spur some interest in the media here in Salt Lake and that defensive "we're really ok--see we have a 7-11 on the corner which we drive our SUVs to!" reaction will get played out again, just as it always does. Oy. What the hell is up with the self-conciousness of this place, anyway...

Lost Originally uploaded by Theorris . lis of the famed Asertively Unhip recently discoursed on the film Grizzly Man directed by Werner Herzog . While some (see comments at AU ) find the protagonist annoying or bothersome because of his behavior, I found myself not so much deep disturbed by the subject matter an the person portrayed, but disturbed by Herzog's technique. Now disturbed is probably not the right word because it has negative connotations. I was distrubed in a good way; kind of like one is disturbed in Act III of Much Ado About Nothing when Shakespeare refuses to show the scene that most other characters witness in the play that supposedly proves that Hero is faithless and carrying on an illicit affair with Borrachio, a character who is in league with the play's bad guy, Don John. In Grizzly Man Herzog, taking mostly footage that Timothy Treadwell, the aforementioned annoying protagonist, shot and spun it together in such a way that you get a far better ...

I sent this email to a colleague today Aren't those [Utah] legislators doing a bang-up job! Whew, now I won't have to worry about being descended from a monkey and I can put a giant billboard in my backyard and my neighbors can just fuck off! Snipe. Snipe. Snipe. Aren't you glad I don't rant about politics more often? In any case it looks like the monkey bill will probably fail and the zoning one is being retooled since even its sponsor admited that it went too far. Oh well, cheap shots are just as good as expensive ones, I suppose.

For about a week now I've been having dreams that feature my childhood. I am a child in them. They are not really memories as I am fairly confident that the events did not really occur in my childhood. They are more like an impression of what my adult self thinks my childhood was. Nevertheless it takes me a moment to decide when I think back on them whether the dreams are real memories or are just a dream. I suppose, after a while, if I kept having the same dream I could be convinced that it really was a memory. That is kind of like how some people who repeat a lie to themselves begin to believe the lie has basis in reality. The human mind is so malleable and fallible, and states of awareness of "reality" is just one tiny aspect of the difficulties the mind presents. Among others there is perception problems, sensory confusion, chemical imbalance, schizophrenia--hell just break out the DSM-IV to see all the myriad ways the human brain/mind can be fucked up. We real...

In honor of the new Multipurpose Room (christened Da Bone Yard in honor of its former occupant), I am teaching myself to play guitar. Somewhere along the way we picked up an electric guitar that I discovered in the closet of the Jones Memorial Shit Pile (the former creative arts now guest suite). Its origin is uncertain and its owner is unknown, so I've decided to torture it a bit by learning on it. The instruciton manual that I picked up is trying to be funny and trying to keep the process of learning the world's most frustrating musical instrument (well aside from the violin which must be a bitch and a half to learn) light and entertaining. The book is quite enthusiatic at times, and seems to have a rather musically obsessed teen with self-esteem issues in mind: "Take a break," it suggest on page 15. "Get some sleep, maybe some breakfast." It is also well-aware that its simple songs are not going to be well-received by the average teen: "WARNIN...

Utah's Own - Life At Its Best... : "Currently food delivered through the national chain stores uses 17 times more fossil fuel and releases as much as 20 times the emissions to deliver us the very same items that may be available nearby. If just 10% of our food came from sources within Utah, we would save hundreds of thousands of gallons of fossil fuel and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by millions of pounds. “Cheap” imported food has a very large price tag beside its purchase price. It places a hidden tax on your food." Having grown up on a farm right here in the good old SL Valley, I am stunned at how much farm land we have lost over the last 20 years and how unsustainable our community currently is. Basically we do not have the food production here in Utah to support our population. A good deal of our arable and, more importantly here in dry Utah, our irrigable farm land has been sucked up into cheaply-made, built-in-obsolesence-ready subdivisions where the chief pro...

Wook and the Family Stone Originally uploaded by Theorris . When we lose a housemate, the other ones and I seem to take over their previous space to make a creative arts room. Wook and his crew found a space in the former Bone Yard. I turned the old music room study into the new guest room. It is an exciting adventure to be a guest at the Wilhelm. You should give it a try some time. We even have a climbing wall nub, a broken snowboard, a Chinese hat and plenty of shelf space and a furnce in your guest suite. My academic garb has been transfered, and I sit here typing away in my full regalia* listening to posh music and using words like posh while Wook and the Family Stone cheer me on with my view to the south--the same direction that the on again mostly off again camera that I don't remember the link to (but you can find it in the archive) looks out on (Never mind here is the link to the Wilhelm Cam with lashings of great joy .) Ah the joys of domesticity. Fuck that shit, I...