Signifying nothing

John and Kendra , originally uploaded by Theorris .

Solomon's Seal? , originally uploaded by Theorris . I'm not sure if this really is solomon's seal or not. In any case the flower heads are great.

Sugarloaf and Pine Grove , originally uploaded by Theorris . You can see the meadow between the pines, looking up towards Sugarloaf mountain.

Uncertain , originally uploaded by Theorris . I can't remember this plant's name. It is something like jackass flower (I'm not kidding.) My old girlfriend Mary told me what it was.

Lupins , originally uploaded by Theorris . The lupins were in full bloom.

Lupins and unknown , originally uploaded by Theorris . I was sitting on this cool outcropping of granite.

Indian Paintbrush , originally uploaded by Theorris . I went up to Albion Basin and trekked around yesterday. The light was not the greatest, but the wildflowers were.

Go hug a geek today.

This goes into the "never again" file , originally uploaded by Theorris . And Jeff didn't get any of his art featured. That really sucks. The FHM calendar didn't even make it. What a waste. Update: (7/29/06) I sound bitter. Actually it was a good experience and Kim did a great job with the article.

Salt Lake Tribune - Tour de France winner flunks drug test : "LONDON - Tour de France champion Floyd Landis tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race, his Phonak team said Thursday on its Web site. The statement came a day after the UCI, cycling's world governing body, said an unidentified rider had failed a drug test during the Tour. And the statement came just four days after Landis stood on the victory podium on the Champs-Elysees, succeeding seven-time winner Lance Armstrong as an American winner in Paris. " Oy. He just needs to go on tour with Barry Bonds and Hulk Hogan now. They can call themselves Champions of the Roid Rage. Something like that. Where are the good old days when athlete's were just heavy drinking , hard gambling , prostitute chasing , good old all American sonsuhbitches?

Ack Originally uploaded by Theorris . I think we might have been seeing things this way after the road trip/Pieneer [sic] Day weekend.

Considering glue Originally uploaded by Theorris .

In Utah This Week. It doesn't look like all the pictures are showing up online. Oh well. I suppose it is not all that embarassing. At least I got a clean bedroom out of it. Jeff's bedroom is always clean so I guess he got free publicity for his art. I'm glad she mentioned Derek Mellus's cool box , even if it doesn't show up online (click on the link to see it, however) . By the way, does the combination of high brow and low brow mean that I'm middle brow? Middlebrow, what do you think?

Hey, I didn't get the chance to reject Santa as a fraud. When I was 9 my dad Took me shopping to Big V at X-mas He bought the sweetest air hockey table, And I glared at it in its cardboard box. When I asked him what that was for he said "It is from Santa Claus to your brother." I tell you I've had many moments in My life of utter disappointment and Disillusionment, but nothing matches The feelings of emptiness, rejection And fear that I felt on that ride home one Snowy December afternoon in my Dad's fifty three Ford Power King pickup.

"Leave me alone. It is too damn hot." Originally uploaded by Theorris . To keep up the blog-theme of heat started by me last week and spread to Lisa b earlier this week, I give you Boonis: one hot cat. He has been letting me know all morning that it is too hot. How does he do that? Continual catterwauling interlaced with flopping around the table.

Hot cat Originally uploaded by Theorris . I don't know why he just doesn't go downstairs if he is hot.

I imagine all my Utah bloggity friends are hanging out in their respective basements on our last global warming proof 9 days of over 100 degree heat. I think the only one of us who doesn't have a basement is Lis. Sorry Lis. Basements rule. *By the way, I have no idea where my mother would come by such a pagan expression, being a Daughter of the Utah Pioneers that she was, but she would regularly express it when things were opressive.

Portable Disc Golf Originally uploaded by Theorris . LateJC aka Catinlap purchased a portable disc golf basket which we put to good use yesterday evening in the East end of Sugarhouse Park. Go to Discarama and see more adrenaline-filled pictures! The park, as you can see, is terribly over-watered. I believe that the water they use, however, is pretty much only designated for Sugarhouse Park and when it runs out the park gets no more water. I am not 100% certain of this. If you wander through any part of Sugarhouse Park, however, you will note that the grass is pretty much soggy a lot of the time. This differs markedly from the park just down the way (Fairmont) which is not over-watered (or even moderately-watered). SLC Salt Lake County Parks Department has some weird fetish for Sugarhouse Park and its grass.

I received this in the morning mail from Candace : Run with the Goddesses A sprinkle of goose feathers, a dash of creek, roll in a coat of dirt, kick a little trail running butt, and you have a divine race. XTERRA Utah Scramble presents a trail run to benefit Avalon Isle, Women’s Theatre Group. Who: From beginning runners to elite athletes, all ages What: 10k and 5k races – Dress up like your favorite God or Goddess! Prizes will be awarded for best costume. When: Saturday, July 29th, 9:00 a.m. Where: Wheeler Historic Farm, 6351 South 900 East Register: http://www.active.com/event_detail.cfm?event_id=1304366 Don’t like to run but still want to donate; you may donate to Avalon Isle at the above website. Questions about Avalon Isle, contact Candace at avalonisleslc@yahoo.com For more information about the race see www.utahscramble.com or email clark@utahscramble.com Avalon Isle is dedicated to creating feminist theatre. Our purpose is to offer feminists an opportunity to express their ...

The Marvelous Crooning Child by Eugene Mirman. Mirman is going to be at Burt's Tiki Lounge tonight. Speaking of gooftatic flash animations, I had to take Miss Manners off yesterday as she is taking up too much of my meagre Comcast-endowed space. She had lost her appeal, however, as her second episode crashed and burned in the Nielsons.

Kendrakoo and Chak Come to The Big City Originally uploaded by Theorris .

Found Fairmont Park, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Epidemic Originally uploaded by Theorris . My friends John and Kendra (see Kendrakoo and Chak over there Side-yard parties to be expected. 75% chance of seeing cobalt hour. I'll keep you posted.

A brush with Death Metal Fame A while ago, I related to you a brush with alt-rock fame when my buddy Jeff and I ran into the lead singer of The Eagles of Death Metal out in front of the Depot in SLC. Jeff caught this on his cell phone during the show and I put it together as a sort of memento. Dumb, I know, but I needed to put something on the Youtube thinger.

15 minutes of fame Originally uploaded by Theorris . Well my reporter friend Kim came visited today for the article, and here are my reflexive, post-modern pictures of her taking pictures of the place. Her eye spotted Skeletor's year book picture above the stove. More post-modernism: skeleton lights framing skeleton painting.

Reporter in action Originally uploaded by Theorris . Kim was great and took lots of pictures of the Wilhelm's oddities.

Scoop & Boonis Originally uploaded by Theorris . Boonis likes lounging on my bed when the room is clean, quite a rare occurrence. As you can see, he quite enjoyed being the object of photographic attention.

Sweet Jebus it is hot! Originally uploaded by Theorris .

Melon Grab has some pictures and thoughts on last night Built to Spill show. Once again BtS put on a great show.

Pete Ashdown's Campaign Journal : With your help I have gone from last to third place in Barbara Boxer's PAC for a Change contest. On Tuesday I dropped to fourth place due to a feisty Claire McCaskill going to number one. We can win this contest. It takes less than 30 seconds for you to register your vote. Please DO IT NOW ! You really should go vote for Pete. Go to his page and take a look at the funds he has on hand and then think about what that means. Note that he has taken no PAC money. Note that all his funds are raised on his own. Don't think for a minute that smug Hollywood Hatch is not beatable. Moss had very much the same smug attitude when Hatch beat him back in the 70s. Arn is beatble and he is definitely the wrong person for the job. Pete is the guy that is going to put him out of a job. Now go make sure he gets more support to do that .

In Utah This Week | Welcome : "We bought this house because we thought it had potential," Rousculp said. So my journalist friend is coming by tomorrow early evening to conduct the house tour she completed last week with my friend Tif (of the article quoted above.) It was interesting seeing Tif and Chris's stuff splayed out in the tabloid. My old girlfriend had a hand in painting the mural they are standing in front of in one of the pictures. I've tripped over that Tijuana phallic sculputre. I remember exactly when Tif stripped those stairs. I'm glad she decided to leave them like they are. See that's the problem: Tif is cool. She has great taste. I, however, don't have much to show for myself other than a few pieces of art I've picked up over the years; odd hats, action figures, funky computer equipment going back to the 80's that would make Terry Gilliam jealous, and books--oh so many, many books. I was telling Middlebrow today that I h...

Catinlap has a field day with his camera phone, his new Mac, remixes, iMovie, and YouTube: Disc-a-rama "Taking it to the 'Tude". I wish I really could shake my booty like that.

Straight out of the UK Originally uploaded by Theorris . The Book of Dave I ordered from amazon.uk arrived the other day. I'm already a good deal into it. Despite his misogyny, Dave is a fairly complex character beset with a variety of problems most of which seem to stem from his inability to accept who he is and that he has problems which he must rely on others to help him out with. The book is divided between Dave's desperate life in modern-day London and a distant future where the natives of flooded-out London speak a taxi-driver/ l337 dialect and live their lives (or so I've gathered) based on the rants of Dave. The men and the women, for example, live separately simply because Dave and his wife are acrimoniously divorced. Dave, as well, is said to be watching from his "rearview" or "mirra" where he sees everything that the "fares" do. So far the novel is just as interesting and inventive as I expected. I'm puzzling out, however, wh...

According to my last-fm account it seems I've listened to a lot of Badly Drawn Boy this week. 50 cuts. The player was on shuffle and it hit " I Was Wrong " from Have You Fed the Fish? and of course I had to hear " You Were Right " which follows on the heels of " I Was Wrong ." The songs on that CD are integrated so well that you don't really want to hear one without the other. Then of course this lead to listening to one the other albums The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast and One Plus One Is One . In all I like Gough's experimentation with structure, melody, and lyrics--although I think all three tend to diminish some of the songs occasionally. In any case lyrically the songs explore the same territory that his sound does; they seem to be mundane but build up to a complexity that is quite compelling: And I Was rushing round in circles For a reason to belive Wipe the slime from off your sleeve You could follow me for weeks And I'm not going...

Behold the mightiness of disc golf . No trunkless legs here...well at least not yet.

Jalapeno up close Originally uploaded by Theorris . I grabbed a four pack of jalapenos at the store a couple of months ago. All four seem to be doing ok in their pot and have set fruit. Rock it. I'm a pretty bad gardener (now that's a bad pun, I'll admit), over all, but this year I seem to be paying more attention to little things like watering plants before the collapse into straw-colored dust. I'm looking forward to putting these peppers in the most freakishly hot curry that you can imagine. Home grown peppers by far outrank the over-watered (and therefore mellowed out) supermarket variety.

The East forty Originally uploaded by Theorris . This and another 2 pots are my garden. Funky for a kid who grew up on a farm.

Fruit on the vine Originally uploaded by Theorris . My tomato is doing pretty good despite its small pot. It has twelve fruits.

Ms. Productive Originally uploaded by Theorris . Or should that be Mrs. productive? I shudder to think that my tomato is procreating without a license.

"A sprig of parsley can provide much more than a decoration on your plate. Parsley contains two types of unusual components that provide unique health benefits. The first type is volatile oil components - including myristicin, limonene, eugenol, and alpha-thujene. The second type is flavonoids - including apiin, apigenin, crisoeriol, and luteolin." ( The World's Healthiest Foods: Parsley ) Sprig is a great word even when not connected to the estimable parsley.

Juniors Originally uploaded by Theorris .

To quote Steve over at Orbiter Dicta : Life is tough when you have tens of thousands of dollars sitting around or when you're confronting a behemoth incumbent like Senator Orrin Hatch. Those are the predicaments that Senator Barbara Boxer (her PAC for a Change, that is) and Pete Ashdown find themselves respectively in. Here's how you can help them: Go to candidate voting page of Senator Boxer's PAC and vote for Pete Ashdown. If he wins, Senator Boxer can unload her excess money on Ashdown's campaign. It's a win-win situation. SLCSpin and Utah Democrats have already done their part to help these two politicians. ( Orbiter Dicta , Pete Ashdown and Senator Barbara Boxer need you help) I voted for Pete to get the money. Update: Steve has an important correction on Orbiter Dicta (q.v.) The money from Boxer's campaign apparently doesn't go directly to the candidate who wins, but he or she will gain free publicity from it.

Fancypants Miss Manners returns with more lessons in propriety.

Michael Ferante and Spearhead Originally uploaded by Theorris . At the Gallivan Twilight Concert Series. Update: Dan Nailen has a review complete with links and shit.

Why does this story just seem to be typical of Utah--the state that proclaims ultra-competence in everything but in the long run is completely incompetent in most things: Salt Lake Tribune - Confusion clouds Utah vote recount.

Well looky here, someone I know actually has a film listed in IMDB : Way of the Puck (2006) . I'm sure Sleepy E was there before, but it is good the film finally has its own entry. I occasionally search for all the creative folks I know in IMDB just for the hell of it--an odd hobby, I know, but no worse than facial hair experiments:

Burn out Originally uploaded by Theorris . Enjoy your independence, folks. I am quite pleased that I did not hear the term "4th of July Eve" yesterday. JUST BECAUSE IT IS THE DAY BEFORE A HOLIDAY DOES NOT MAKE IT AN "EVE." Oy! Rant off. Go overthrow some tyrant today.

If I wasn't doing what I want to do as a career, I always thought I'd like to give photography a go. While I think I can catch a scene occasionally, I don't think I'm that particularly talented for it nor do I have the technical expertise (and I'm too impatient to take a class to learn it.) I do consider myself an avid hobbyist, however, and keep the Flickr site for that reason. My hobby seems to be paying off in attention, however, as my stuff has been picked 3 times for various things over the last 6 months. Now one of them is kind of an inside job in that Lis over at Assertively Unhip used some of my photos for a writing contest/whatever at the SLCC Community Writing Center . I see that the contest deadline is 1 August 2006. The second honor was completely out of the blue. A French publisher contacted me about using this spiral jetty/Great Salt Lake picture for some new atlas they are making. Supposedly it comes out in the fall. The third honor is som...

Pine grove Originally uploaded by Theorris . Being in a pine forest in the mountains of Utah causes one to go hyperbolic: I was contemplating writing an extreme statement such as "there is nothing comparable to being in a pine forest in the mountains of Utah on a hot summer day." While the experience is quite nice, I bet there is something to compare to it. In any case: eat your heart out flatlanders!

Hopefully this movie will catch as much attention as Gore's with less of the political ranting against it: Who Killed the Electric Car? The problem with Gore's movie is, of course, that by featuring himself so prominently in the narrative role the movie has necessarily become a target for political windbags to carp on. Gore should have stayed behind the scenes. Sadly, I will be unable to see Who Killed the Electric Car in good old car-obsessed Utah. Oh well. I'll just drive down to the WalMart and get myself some cheap crap at low low prices. Fuck that shit. Update: I just wrote the following to Tori Baker of the Salt Lake Film Society (they run the Tower and the Broadway theaters in SLC.) Hi, I wonder if there is anyway of bringing Who Killed the Electric Car to SLC? (http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/) The movie was featured on NPR's Science Friday yesterday. Sadly I noted that it is not playing anywhere in Utah. Keep up the great work...

The Penguin Podcast this week has been featuring a reading/question-and-answer-period by Britsh novelist Will Self. Self is reading from his new novel The Book of Dave . The book is a satire on religion and man's religious impulse. It tells the story of a group of London civilization 700 years in the future. Civilization has collapsed when (I assume) the polar icecaps melt and everything is flooded. The people living on the Island of Ham have created religion based on the rantings of a London cab dirver Dave Roth. In the question and answer portion of the podcast (episode 4 on the web site), Self discusses how he believe religion develops and how religions are often used to make people do things they aren't inherently inclined to do. He also discusses his writing process and making it as a writer. The books isn't available in bookstores outside of Britain yet (as far as I can see--I looked it up: it isn't going to be in US bookstores until November). I'...