Signifying nothing

I was thinking, just now as I was noticing that all the snow has disappeared from the yard, why twitter has become so appealing not just to me, but to the masses. I believe with twitter there is a strong correlation to the solitary spoken utterance. Tweeting is much like making any statement in normal conversation. You say something, usually less than the 140 character limit of twitter, but sometimes up to the limit, but rarely over it and then you may or may not wait for a suitable response from your interlocutor. The difference, of course, is that it is not a normal conversation. There is no interlocutor built in. You are making proclamations in twitter--choosing willy nilly who you want to respond to or not. Ultimately you are saying "I am here. This is what I say. Screw you." Now with twitter, of course, as with normal conversations, sometimes your statements go unnoticed, so you either repeat them or move on with the flow. Sometimes you completely ignore any ...

122/365: lunch @ Whole Paycheck! Originally uploaded by Theorris The best part about going for lunch at Whole Foods yesterday was that I ran into Megastore! I recommended she buy a fancy cake for her Oscar party tonight. She demurred. Why can't I run into my cool friends all the time? Instead I usually run into ex-girlfriends or people who annoy me. Something tells me I should stop this post before I insult someone. For once I am taking my own council.

Brandon Loomis is a rank amateur when it comes to living without a car: Seven Days Without: No car? No sweat? No way - Salt Lake Tribune . It does take time to get used to doing with out and to realize that you are going to have to take more time in order to get to where you want to go. I will say, however, that the premise that Loomis is working under is not mine: I'm not car-less because of economic reasons. I am car-less because of stubbornness and environmental reasons. I am stubborn because I can't see the use in having a car only as a luxury (and not as my main means of transportation) and my environmental reasons are pretty obvious. While Loomis may be saving money trundling about town in his own car because everything is so close, he is not helping the environment by re-joining the legion of single-drivers. He, in fact, is compounding it.

February Originally uploaded by Theorris The snow fell gently yesterday. It had none of the bluster of a January storm. Even those who hate winter could surely have liked that kind of winter day.

Suddenly I read again that poem she wrote for me That's been sitting framed on my shelf Gathering dust It was years ago, has it been years ago now? Now? I was left feeling the lie that is all that it was The lie that makes you want to rip the world Apart But still makes sense She thought she knew me, and she did, in so many Ways. She caught me in that framed bit of truth She knew the snorts or my sleep The desperate grabs at affection The coughing desire fulfilled The unpolished me She knew. And I was angry when I read the poem That at the time I embraced, as I embraced Her I was angry reading it. I was me. I was not That But she was right I am That I am Even God put on the spot Proclaims I am That

I recall reading some time ago that human behavior is motivated more by perceptions of what other human beings are doing rather than on any particular reality that one is facing. We humans are very intuitive creatures, who interpret situations not just intellectually, but also by environmental and social influences. For example, in a psychology experiment designed to determine how unconscious factors influence people, experimenters had test subjects handed either a warm cup of coffee or a cold cup of coffeed to a test subject before they went into an interview. On the whole the people who held the hot cup of coffee perceived the experience of the interview more positively and also performed better. What I am getting at is that if something so simple as warmth can have an impact on us, imagine the impact of our fellow human being's behavior--subtle or not. The economic down turn has really only started hitting the middle class right now, what with the massive layoffs in January (...

My obsession with twitter and crap at work have made me a bad blogger, I fear. If it can't be said in 140 characters is it worth saying? Well, yeah, but as I treated twitter so badly for a year and a half or so, I figure I might as well be nice to it and post around 800 tweets in the last couple of weeks. I suppose i have something more discursive to write at some point, but it sure as hell ain't now. Lord Jeebus get me through the winter. Shit just in writing this I thought of three really good tweets.