Signifying nothing

Apparently I was traveling then, and concerned about web design. Go figure. ¡Feliz diez! Funny thing is, I'm still rabies: Which Horrible Affliction are you? A Rum and Monkey disease.

You've all forgotten the Bowling Syndicate , haven't you?

I've accrued many blog side-projects over the years, most of which I've started and abandoned with little fanfare.  Because I am probably going to merge my "professional"  online identity with whatever the hell everything else I do online is, I've decided to merge several of my side projects directly into signifyingnothing.com.  These projects include (right now) "The Silence Project" (that did have submissions from friend Snyder and are suitably noted), my unplugged experiment, "Signifying nothing Uplugged," and "The land of lost notes."  I am leaving " disc-a-rama " as a side-project, since I have hopes that other disc golfers may decide to join in the fun of it.  " eye or orris " will also survive as an independent blog, since it is a useful reference blog for me to find pictures I've found interesting over the years. I haven't made a decision as to when I will leave signifyingnothing.com in the dust ...

Ghostland Observatory Originally uploaded by Theorris I witnessed Ghostland Observatory at At the Venue in SLC (sorry At the Venue is the place's name). The Templar cape was well-chosen. The crowd went chaotic at the end and joined the pair on stage. Great show. I have no idea how in the hell the singer sings the way he does , night after night and is still spot on. You have to listen to him to understand the energy he puts into it. It is like a super-amped falsetto with range. They certainly engaged the crowd. Boom--boom--boom. Grind. I haven't been writing enough about my musical adventures lately. Perhaps a sea-change is in order for this old blog. The Justice thema has been quite effective, but now that summer is in the offing, I feel the need to be hedonistic: now maybe it is bump-and-groove time. Six months might be the length that one (meaning I) can extend a blog thema, anyway. Don't want to get stale now, do we? (Meaning me.)

Come to think of it, all the things I've posted recently I love. Even the DMV. You should consider all my posts around this as things I love. How's that for an easy way out?

Since moving SigNo to blogger.com, I've been able to avail myself of the advanced template features which allow a simple-minded blogger like myself to easily add layout components to her or his blog. Such components are things like blogrolls or image slide shows. (You can seem them to the right.) There is also a RSS feed discombobulator, that allows you to put a feed on your web page from another blog source. I've decided to make use of these handy feature to link to a "Commenter of the week." Such a commenter is someone who caught my attention usually by making me laugh out loud. And our first featured commenter is......Dr. Write for her wry comment on my post about the extremely weird MP3 player/Tazer[TM] combo . My response, I fear, might not have been taken as comedy. I wrote several mocking moral outrage, but none seemed as good as the deadpan response I gave. Who will be our next winner?

This is not the most fancy template I've produced, but it will do in a pinch (q.v. the pre-Blogger archives). I got a bug up my ass today and decided to move good old SigNo to blogger.com enitre, rather than having it hanging out at the old Comcastic! site (trust me, it was not a comcastic experience over there.) I can now take advantage of all the buttery goodness that Blogger offers to folks who use its servers, such as dynamic templates, consistent page elements, and--w00t!--a slide show. This meant that I had to say adios to the old template "Simple living" that served for a solid year, but moving the furniture around has alleviated the malaise I mentioned a couple of posts ago. I'm sure when I get up enough gumption, I'll gahdunk out a nice new graphically pleasing template. Until then, hold the presses!

I can't say I learned much from not accessing the Internet for 20 days other than that email stresses me out far more than I knew. After day 2 I had totally forgotten about it and, in fact, t hat I have a job. Accomplishments while being unplugged: Books read: 5 Movies watched: 10 (!) Songs listened to: over 1,000 Podcasts listened to: 0 I'm sure there's more to report, but I can't be bothered to think about it nor do am I compelled to Google anything. Ah, vacation: now it is done. I have over 200 in work emails alone. Joy. I'll probably keep the Unplugged website and post things to it on the off chance. I never really got into the swing of it.

The day and the hour is here (well almost here.) As of 5:00 pm MST today I will not be consulting the Internet for anything. That's right: no email, no last minute looking up stupid facts to impress people, no nothing. I will, however, be posting at Signifying nothing Unplugged by scanning in notebook pages: I've already started, just to get the hang of it. (And yes I know a standard blogger.com template is not the most elegant way to do this, but I don't have the time or the inclination to make something fancy. See you in 20 days!

I've noticed three things about the NaBloPoMo experiment: blog writing gets much more concise blogger's don't comment on other blogs as much a favorite topic of blogging is that one has to blog The cause of each of these outcomes is the very pressure to blog. Blogging is concise, because one feels pushed to post something. Bloggers who are consequently pushed to write something, do not take the time to read other blogs and post comments. Given that the pressure of such blogging is higher than for folks who blog a few times a week, it becomes a topic in and of itself simply because it is a noticeable change in a blogger's life. For whatever reason, I tend to blog a great deal more than my more discursive and more thoughtful blogging colleagues. No doubt this is because of my general fidgety nature. The upshot of this, however, is that the blog every day thing has not really been that big of a hassle for me. I am glad it is over, however, in that I won't feel co...

So a few entries ago I wrote about the plan of not accessing the Internet's tubes starting December 13. While in New York, I came up with a better plan: I will still blog, but it won't be in the conventional sense. While there I purchased this a Black n' Red notebook imported from Ye Olde England. I shall be writing in this text, scanning the pages, and then uploading them to this old blog. While uploading I will refrain from checking the Internet for anything else (like email or comments). The temptation, of course, will be great, but I shall resist by shouting, with my arm to the square, "Get thee behind me Satan!" (Bet you didn't know I knew that much about LDS practice, did you?) I might, too, put on a hair shirt while doing this. (Bet you didn't know I knew that much about Catholic practice, did you?) I suppose the inspiration for this came from a couple of different sources, most notably Jeff Bridges , who has had a handwritten website/blo...

The interaction below with lisa b. of Hightouch Megastore has inspired me to go on a 20-day Internet hiatus starting on December 13 and ending January 1, 2008. And to make it an interesting project, I will document my efforts in a real-to-goodness journal I shall purchase for that very purpose. Why? I hear you ask. "Why not?" is my non-reply. Actually I do like to take breaks from all things electronic once in a while, but I've never documented it. Further more, you might do better to ask me something like "why don't you own a car you freak?" which seems like a perfectly more justifiable question. Well I was going to, but it seems a bit too pushy to ask. Why the hell don't you have a car? What are you some kind of hippy? I guess I should have, but haven't, documented my self-chosen carlessness. There could have been some good money in that, after all. I mean, my heck, Barbara Kingsolver wrote a book about buying local for a year, and the...

Lisa b of Hightouchmegastore has ordered that everyone blog every day for the month of November in honor of NaBlogPoMo or the National Blog Posting Month. Given my reputation for complete compliance to requests and peer pressure, I at first was tempted to take the entire month of November off from any sort of writing with the final post being "screw that" in regards to NaBlogPoMo. I don't mind being an asshole like that, generally, but I thought better of it as it would not be nice to Hightouch who has been a faithful reader and commenter for several years now, and I pretty much write the most inane crap everyday anyway, so it really isn't going to be that different now, is it? So here I am, just doing my part. Small children in India will no longer have to go without blog posts about ex-kid show stars who stalk bloggers to read! "Good night, and good luck" or is that "Courage"?

So I'm standing across from my abode waiting for the bus to go downtown to the Depot to see Apples in Stereo and a car suddenly pulls up. I'm thinking that it is someone visiting the grandma who lives by the bus stop, but no. Out of the car pops a regular looking joe who asks "are you a blogger?" "Uh, yes," I reply flicking my cigarette, feeling slightly self conscious about smoking, feeling that this fine upstanding citizen does not need to see me smoking. "Theorris?" "Yes." "I'm Capital Carnage . I recognized you from your picture." The wookie picture? Oh wait, I've posted various pictures of my fine visage over the years, I guess. How odd, I think, wondering about the logistics of this chance happening. A car. A person waiting for a bus. A person driving a car. Said person notices a fellow blogger. Said person pulls over. It doesn't necessarily add up, but I'll go with the flow, particularly since I'...