clearing out cobwebs

and it struck me that he was approaching it all wrong. perhaps what sisyphus needed was someone walking upto him, tapping him on the shoulder ...

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lace up

running. knees flex, straighten. calves tighten, impact. legs move in a smooth blur. nostrils flared, head up. just the beating of my heart, tightness in my chest. arms move like a metronome. no time to think. no introspection. no mulling over choices. no confusion. everything's easier to understand, everything's more fluid.


hard choices resolve themselves at the end of a run. but damn, some things in life are hard.

a persistant little cloud of cynicism

i'm an opinionated, tenaciously argumentative pain in the ass. i have an opinion about everything and i'm usually quite loud. i have opinions about every tv show and every sitcom. i watch the episodes back to back laughing louder than the soundtrack. i then proceed to dissect the show and make snootish remarks about the peurile nature of the comedy or lack of comedy thereof. but somehow i don't have much to say about the grooviest comedy of them all - the bush presidency.


i've always thought of myself as being socially aware. and given my penchant for launching into diatribes, i often find myself arguing with people about the state of affairs. except now. except in the face of a farce calling itself a presidential election. all through the "incident" in iraq i watched cnn with disbelief on my face, waiting for the penny to drop. i refuse to call it a war. a war is when one country sends it's army in to attack another country's army. what we saw on live television was a mockery of independence and a nation's sovereignty.

each time this was discussed i cynically dismissed it as just another corporate takeover, definitiley hostile. each time the presidential elections were discussed i'd dismiss it with "you know who'll win - the guy who makes the loudest noise". i didn't bother to analyze the issues, i didn't bother to rationalize or condemn any of the behavior. i didn't question any of the violations of human rights or the freedom of a country. i didn't wear a t-shirt that said "the nation's on orange alert but the government's a lemon" (tm) - that's mine and so i better not see that on a t-shirt. in short, i did nothing. i sat by watching the circus.


until i was in a meeting with a senior developer from a team i work with. he'd always struck me as quiet and laid back. someone who kept his opinions to himself. and then i saw the sticker on his laptop. huge bold red letters shouted out "bush must be defeated". that jolted me. was i not even capable of expressing an opinion? is the cynicism in me stronger than hope? i hope not.


here's a well written analysis of some of the issues. i've been reading up at instapundit (the link's on the left) trying to assimilate current and past thinking. perhaps in a few weeks i'll actually have an opinion?


in other news i bought a camera. i promise to flood this blog with pictures in a few days, especially of those stubborn trees who refuse to wake up and smell the fall.


so long superman, now we'll never know why you wore your underwear outside your tights. more power to you.

the weekend that was

and seattle is full of surprises. it's fall and the trees lining the avenues are studiously ignoring the fact. really. the trees are part of a giant conspiracy to mess with the seasons.fade away slowly to a scene in the executive offices of hallmark cards


it's a long corridor with small narrow doors on each side spaced about a foot apart from each other. every few minutes a vice president dashes out of her office and runs screaming down the hall

"the trees aren't changing colors ... stop the presses, for god's sake, stop the goddamn presses. we can't sell the millions of congrats on the trees in your front yard changing colors cards we just printed".

yes gentlepeople, they do have those cards in your local hallmark store. hallmark has an average of 2.47 cards for each day of the year. and these 'special days' are all thought up by women. yes, it's true - hallmark has 365x2.47 vice presidents, all of them women. to become vp at hallmark you need to create a new day. and they all really _are_ women.

you disagree? do you really think a man could have come up with take care of your goldfish day? i think not!


now, i'm sure a few of you are sitting out there seething about the chauvinistic overtones in the previous paragraph. if you're feeling bad, let me know and i'll send you a too bad you feel this way and i'm sorry i trampled all over women's lib card from hallmark. and while we're still on that subject, i wish hallmark would create a happy women's lib day and we could all gather around, sing a few songs, cut a cake, get over women's lib and get on with life.


coming back to where i left off - the seasons are seriously whacked in seattle. it didn't rain over summer. they keep telling me it's fall but the trees are all clothed in mostly green leaves. it must be the influx of canadians. canada mostly has just one season - ice hockey.


the weekend was great though. hiked up mt.si on saturday. the weather was amazing and the views of mt.rainier from the top were spectacular. i wish, i wish, i wish i had a digital camera. i can't make up my mind on the camera. i lurked in the aisles of fry's, best buy, good guys and circuit city. mostly junk there. the cameras on display were mostly the rejects from dpreview.com. headed out to greenlake on sunday and met up with a few friends. i tried running again (after the trip to india) and managed to run a lap of the lake without killing myself. it took a while to roll my tongue back into my mouth though. a cyclist had a narrow escape on account of my trailing tongue. sunday evening saw me sitting in front of a paper on spyware and trying to muster the enthusiasm to start working. after a while i succumbed to the lure of the cable box.


my new thing to watch - curb your enthusiasm featuring larry david (the guy who made seinfeld). it's drop dead funny without all the pretentious crap seinfeld is loaded with, isn't stupid-funny like friends, doesn't provoke homicidal tendencies like raymond and has as much innuendo as coupling.


curently reading - the unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera. i rarely find a book that makes me go back and re-read a passage over and over again because it's so loaded with interpretations and this is definitely one of those. the last time i savored a book as much was when i read nausea.


come friday evening and the week leaves a dominant emotion like a post-it in my head. and most mondays i have a feel for what the week is going to be like. not today though - it's wierd.



the gods had condemned sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. they had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. as for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. at the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. then sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. he goes back down to the plain.

it is during that return, that pause, that sisyphus interests me. a face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! i see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. that hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. at each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. he is stronger than his rock.

- from the myth of sisyphus by albert camus


reading that essay got me started writing a science fiction story titled sisyphus reborn that i never did get around to completing. someday i'll get around to finishing it.


have you seen my spigot? the blue midget was seen running down the corner with it. he was being chased by the leprechaun.

thar she blows

ho hum we have a few dormant volcanoes in the backyard. st.helens and rainier. st.helens blew her top yesterday but it was a lame affair. some huffing and puffing and some smoke and ash. i was quite disappointed. i was expecting streams of molten lava flowing down 40th st and a host of chickens running just in front of the lava trying to save themselves. ever so often a few feathers going up in a puff of smoke with a little 'poof' sound. i either watch too much tv or it's really late in the night and i'm still working off the alcohol from last week.


now this site is compulsory reading : auburn family homepage. ever so often when you're riding the subway late at night you should wonder, is this guy in the same compartment?


and in current affairs, i've decided to take the plunge and buy a digital camera later today. i've researched quite a few based on features/price/reviews etc. the moment i walk in there all of that will fly off the window and i'll pick the one i stop next to and go "this is cool s***".

so stay tuned in for some cool pics (by my definition of cool which has often been used as a synonym for "deviant").


yo.

and since it's been awhile

methinks it's time for another blog entry. for those of you who think that 'methinks' is slang, it ain't. it's old english, much used by the bard.


while i think up some more witty things to say here're a quick review:

movies

what time is it there [mandarin, french and english with english subtitles] : i liked the movie. it's a bit offbeat and doesn't have much in the way of sounds. there's no music and the dialogues are sparse. however, the film struck a strange chord of disquiet. there's a mood of bleak desperation waiting to engulf every character behind each frame. but they go on doing their own thing mechanically, without passion waiting for the day to end. but somehow in the middle of all of this, there's the element of hope. this movie is much better watched alone so you don't have to put up with "let's watch die hard instead" comments.

shower [korean with english subtitles] : this was about average. i suspect i've just become a bit cynical about the "son returns to father's small town existence and brings a bunch of changes with him". it's a little about re-discovering family and understanding the responsibilities you escaped when you left home. it was a bit maudlin in places and the narrative wasn't uniformly interesting. recommended if you have space on your netflix account and can't think of anything else to watch

and i now have digital cable. i have no clue how i survied this long without it. it's amazing - i could make love to my cable box. hbo on demand is a complete substitute for a social life. first there was halo and now there's hbo. soon there'll be halo2 and then my life will be complete.


in other news, i started guitar lessons today. since g was super mean to me and didn't allow me to borrow her #$*&#$ precious guitar i had to go with s to the guitar store and plonk down muchos money for a guitar. he was like a kid in a candy store.

the store had something called a "drums face-off" in progress. it was classic 8mile style. gangsta-style white boys with bandanas and living dead t-shirts banging away at the drums without a shred of musical ability between the lot of them. how do they all get to look this way? the girls were all, i repeat, all dressed in low-slung jeans that had to send tentacles upwards to touch hips and pink/red t-shirts. the other outfit of choice was a combination of a sweatshirt with sweatpants that had variants of the word booty on the seat of the pants. the objective being, i suppose, to get guys to look there and stay long enough to read what's there.

now ladies, here's a word of advice you can pass around from the ladkas against very decorated asses (lavda). if it's good enough to stare at, the words just get in the way. if not, someday we'll get round to suing for misleading advertising.


it's been a long week but the weekend's almost here. there's nothing a weekend of wild partying, smoking crack, chasing tail, hunting whale and cow-tipping won't cure.


moo?