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.