samuraiemily

To nobody in particular

2010-01-27T16:53:00.000-08:00

If words could manufacture a person and I craft an algorithm to create you, what would you be like? I think you would have very long toes. There is just something about long toes and clean toenails that pushes some primal buttons in me. Preferably on a Sunday morning in white pyjamas and those toes peeping out. Long toes, sure feet. Do sure feet come with long toes? No, one cannot predict the other.

Moving on, a capacity for syntax is a plus. The point is that if I can tell a string of uncreative grammatical transgressions, you are probably very bad. It also means that if I compliment you on your language, you are probably the best. Meanwhile, I am aware that it makes me sound shallow, but language does mirror something about the plane, if nothing else, of your existence as well as your intellectual capacity. O- it only applies if English is your first language.
If English is not your first language, we’d better both learn Esperanto very soon, because I don’t want to be missing out on anything while we learn to communicate. So, if my words created you, you would probably speak in a very neutral and unpretentious way. To balance me, you ask? Whatever!

Just saying

2010-01-27T16:49:00.000-08:00

An unhurried sunset washed away layers of my reasoning until I learned to be with the ocean and not try to understand it.

Explaining men to women

2009-10-27T00:07:00.000-07:00

In this unusually social summer, I repeatedly had cause to consider the mating non-rituals of our day. I have many male and female friends who have revealed their dating wounds to me, their objective friend, who is not listing herself in the dating world any time soon. This is my take on what I see as a way to explain men to women:

We women often discover that our skin just glows with a new face product, be it a cleanser or a moisturizer or a ‘system’ that some good advertising had us try. When this happens, there comes a day when we get yet another compliment on our looks and realize that we have not been giving our skin much thought. That is how it comes to be that there are so many women at the local drugstore, reading labels with a quizzitude that would have served them better in all other aspects of their lives. Soon, we invest in one product or more that promises to be more sloughing, peeling or inert (my favourite) than the others. And then we go home and enjoy them until they are part of our ablutions to such a degree that we forget about them.

In my case, any reference to my face leads me to an endless loop of insecurities. I can very scientific and illogical at the same time. I find myself worried that the products I have may be from last generation facial science and I scourge the internet for signs of new over-the-counter (sigh) technology for the maintenance of skin quality. Or, I may just buy sample sizes of expensive brands on Ebay and tell myself that will keep me from using a large bottle of product I can ill afford, that begins to degenerate before I have used half.

A few weeks, months or years later, I remember something perfectly satisfactory, harmless and low-maintenance that I used in the past and rush to the drugstore to buy it. A few weeks, days or months of using this product preserves me for a while until the day when I am afraid I am not doing anything to reverse my aging. Soon,I am helplessly sucked back into the experimenting loop.

Simply put, a man thinks about women the way a woman thinks about moisturizers. He is just not that intelligent.

2009-08-14T01:52:00.001-07:00

I write
I write for years
And I can never write it away
And I write
I write for years
And say it all
in a word
If I took out all the lines in my words
and laid them in a single line to the moon
They would at least go somewhere.

Tick tock

2009-06-30T02:19:00.000-07:00

The alarm ticks a reminder that I am of the earth. I will always be enmeshed in the warp and weft of this ticking and beeping. The summer solstice is controlled by time; if I chose to reject the time I report at work, I can have my summer. Till then, I have prostituted my summer and my soul for a roof and two square meals.
“Emily, prostituting her soul for two square meals and a roof,” would be a good status message for Facebook in the morning. My friends would “SMS” and “Comment” and “Email” me to make sure I was functional. Conversations would brink on depth, but the ticking of their clocks would suck them back into their own conformity. For the next few weeks they will invite me to events that I would love to attend if I could afford them or if I did not have to work each rare and gorgeous Bay area summer evening at this “job”.
Said “Job” involves a computer with a clock. It is to this clock that I must pay timely respects at the start of my “day”. I have tempted fate by “logging’ in late, just making sure managers are alert. They are salaried, not hourly workers, who work extra hours and days and evenings and nights and weekends for the sole privilege of being managers. Their job is to make sure that there are enough (a calculated number) of people on the (counted) number of phone lines answering a (predicted) number of phone calls for the (arbitrarily created) 24 hours of the day.
So, O great civilizations, how foolishly you enumerated time into one dimension, ignoring Mozart and God and oceans and the Milky way! All this enumeration and all we do is enumerate after all these centuries? We enumerate our brothers killed in war as if we did not die with them. We enumerate the enemies we kill as if we will not meet them on the other, un-enumerated side.
Last week we enumerated Michael Jackson’s greatness in number of albums sold. Today we enumerated Bernie Madoff’s sentence to 150 years for cheating an enumerated number of people who enumerated their future life needs and entrusted Bernie to magically super-enumerate the enumerated tokens of their toil- but wait- his capacity was not enumerated correctly- and now we say, let his (un-enumerable) self rot in jail for 150 years, although we all know his years on the earth are already enumerated quite stuntedly.

Obama Plug

2008-07-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of lamenting the lack of ridiculeability in a candidate who is our favourite because he lacks hateability in equal measure, here's a look-see at Obama's "war" strategy, which he hopes you will equatify with the Marshall plan with no subtle framing on his part. Unlike the Marshall plan, Obama's plan will actually go further when the very people we are warring will put down their grenades/rocks/potential WMD and acquiesce, facing the very simplicity of the Obama plan here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newstrategy
My personal campaign experience:
An African American gentleman harrassed me one hot afternoon when I was an obvious member of the Obama "Vote for Change Visibility" campaign at the Fillmore Jazz fest. "Who is that?", he croaked in drunken breath. "Barack Obama, a presidential candidate," I crisped back.
"Of what country, AMERICA (ROAR)..? That is not even an American NAME!"
I assume Obama is flexible and generous during this campaign and so offered," Why, you can call him Great Eagle if you like." A few glasses of beer garden joy drained from the concerned citizen's face before he burst into laughter....

Sex and The City - symptom of malaise

2008-06-12T22:18:00.001-07:00

Of course I watched Sex and The City- I wouldn't miss it for the world. Years ago, I started watching SATC when I read in a newspaper that single American women looked up to it for role models. While I am myself incorrigible by the tutelage of any character who can be defined by a book or a movie, one of my biggest fears is that I am not the best Emily I can be. Luckily for you, for you can now read this rambling rouse, I was coaxed into watching my first ever SATC episode and it was Samantha-centric:P Like millions of seers (viewers is such a tired word), I thought SATC would befit the modern woman of substance, if she had time to watch TV. Fresh off the boat, I preferred to observe the natives without the frame of television.

I was selling products B2B, meaning there was no observation of the normal hunting-gathering rituals of White, Black and hyphenated American urban tribals. I had the big dilemna of anthropologists- do I objectively gather my information or do I plunge into subjective data gathering? I chose! Soon, I would gather my data subjectively, be just like the natives and watch TV to understand the world I now lived in. This became quite an occupation and kept me away from drugs, deep relationships and carcinogenic multiplying of brain cells. However, there was an ever deepening chasm between my life and that of the SATC girls. I detested Carrie, though I Adore Sarah Jessica Simpson and I aspired to be as earthily emancipated as Samantha. I watched the show, the reruns, the interviews and the make-up tips associated with SATC for a clue and it was probably hidden away in the ½ minute of the 7th episode that I missed. Harrumph!

While I was watching TV and at more than a good clip, the years transported SATC’s crew, fans, critics and those annoying feminists to 2008. By now, Footballers Wives, Desperate Housewives, (I cannot name more- it would Totally make me digress) had the natives demanding an orgasm and a murder in every half hour. I was OMG! excited to receive an Evite to cocktails and an SATC Movie showing! I anguished over which shoes would look so Manolo Blahnik and which would be so last season. My forte is not accessorizing, and decided to expose some yet-delectable midriff, which, when you have it at my age, seems a sin to cover on what may be the last day before my prosperity finally swells. If there is one SATC lesson, it is that an emancipated woman would never allow a man to objectify her- any thing he can do, she can do better! I blended in, knowing secretly that I dressed to please myself.

There we were at the movies, in a long line of people who looked attractive. People I cannot name smuggled in enough plastic cocktail glasses and pretty pink sangria for two rows of friends. I stood out, successfully bringing the only man in our two rows. He cursed the day I was born, while loving the attention and at least one phone number he found that evening. He said the movie was not bad, a glowing tribute that would surely have him beaten up at the gym. The girls sitting next to me selfishly drank champagne, but I am sure sangria and champagne would not live happily together in my stomach.

The movie itself? What can I say- it was insipid? No, it jerked one tear. Was it stupid? Er-- Did it have a message? Yes, and I am pretty sure the message I came away with was not the cool one, but I think that may have been the original idea of someone- it is there to see- that men do not carry the onus of being strong and a pliant character is a valiant character. Was there an attempt to make reading cool? Nah- no celeb reads, do they? Did you see that on Entertainment Now?

The cool message was that designer bags are rentable, SATC is So equal-opportunity, current politics are ignorable, know your designers, be daring in the choices you make for your wedding trousseau and don’t have close friends who may trigger the carcinogenic multiplying of your brain cells. I should have watched ‘Fascination’ to add some lustre to my romantic dreams and some more TV to capture the ethos of the peoples of America. I would lie if I said I did not want to see a Kim Cattrall interview, so excuse me while I channel surf:P

Words to live by

2008-04-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

So this is the Randy Pausch's last lecture after he learned of his pancreatic cancer.
There is something compelling about the context itself, so I am posting this without hearing it- I will, when I get to my home computer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Time

2008-03-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

We mutually agree daily to scorn the spirit that allows the freedom of life to flow into the gates of 9 a.m. Whenever we smile because one of us says they overslept- I have said I was on the phone, chatting with my mother- whenever we smile with embarrassment, refusing to acknowledge the wantonness of truth, whenever we admit and worship the falseness of the weekday and insult the abandon of our real life, we admire having paltrified ourselves,daily,at 9 a.m.

2007 - in a word

2007-12-19T16:54:00.000-08:00

http://dictionary.reference.com/features/words_of_2007.html

NEW! THIS CHRISTMAS!!

2007-12-13T22:48:00.001-08:00

The Hans Christensen Anderson award for the Little Match Girl goes to..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/africa_rural_hardship_in_zimbabwe/html/1.stm

Here is a cute playlist. Use the < button on left to skip songs

2007-11-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

This girl's so phat...

2007-08-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monique_atherton/

The Happiness Project

2007-06-18T13:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/

Why not India?

2006-08-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

<span style=>I'll tell you why not India:

People are drinking seawater, with tonnes of sewage and rubbish, because they believe the sweet taste of the water is proof of a saint's blessing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5266092.stm

Politicians and holymen glorify a woman who jumps to her death on her husband's pyre:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5278898.stm

People are allowed to name their restaurants 'Hitler's cross'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5275866.stm

People can carry out witchhunts:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5277198.stm

People kill female babies enmasse
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5264174.stm

Nobody gives a damn
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4050739.stm

Yes, India is great. She has great potential. I hope to read about it someday.

Freefalling...

2006-08-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

Freefalling for 7 years now in America...

Like Dilbert?

2006-05-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/

Do you live in a failed state?

2006-05-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.fundforpeace.org/programs/fsi/fsindex2006.php?column=rank&#

Sunny clime

2006-04-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

If I open my mouth and speak a letter of my truth

I shatter your sunny skies into infinite brilliant shards

That impale your being

Make you haemorrhage your reality

all over your broken narcissism

Just like you shatter my blue skies

Nanotechnology- Heck yeah!

2006-03-14T19:08:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4801728.stm

World hungers while we whine

2006-02-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4724282.stm

Wonders never cease

2005-12-29T15:34:00.000-08:00

Animal.discovery.com/news

expand

Evidence of an Epic Battle

Pythons, Alligators Battle in the Everglades

AFP

Oct. 6, 2005 — The tail of an alligator protruding from the ruptured gut of a python, which had swallowed its foe alive, bore witness to a fierce and unusual battle between two of the deadliest predators in Florida's swamps. Park rangers, who photographed the remains of the two huge reptiles in the Everglades National Park, say the clash demonstrates the threat to the fragile swamplands posed by a growing population of non-native Burmese pythons. Pythons thought to have been abandoned by pet owners have been multiplying in the large swath of swampland, and environmentalists fear the exotic intruders may overrun the national park, preying on native species.

What does the Little Match Girl really look like???

2005-12-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

Christmas took a vacation from Seattle this year. It is the record year in my (very) long life, for being farthest from a commemoration of the wonder of the birth of a Godchild in a stable...

All my friends called and gave gifts to each other and were nice and cheerful to a fault. Many people were very well organised and generous and creative and organised and also organised.

I would go to church on Christmas, but that would bring pangs of missing my parents. So I took a walk and a drive around Seattle when I had a coupla hours to myself. Note that this was a purely anthropological exercise in observation.. What I saw was eerie- there were no shoppers, of course and downtown Seattle looked like curfewtown...Shocking to somebody from Calcutta even on an average day.

In Calcutta, we went to church in the morning to enjoy the collective chorus of fathers snoring in the men's pews after fun X'mas eves, mothers comparing new saris after mass and children beaming the fragile message of Christmas through their eyes...And I mean children that live on the streets.

In Seattle, the number of revellers on the street could not even outnumber the number of coloured Justices of the Supreme Court. Actually - there were a few people out by Chinatown- and they were catatonic. Hmmm. People! On Christmas! Alone! And high! And sad! And shirtless! And crying! And hungry! and homeless!

Why is this worth recording? Good question. Next question?

Stop Smoking or Quickly Quit Quitting?

2005-12-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

Ya- that's what I did. I quit quitting smoking. I may take up quitting again... And I read so much about the dangers of smoking that I quit reading... There- that's how I wimp and wiggle out of difficult situations and seek easy battles - like getting into Law School and solving world prejudice... hmmmm.

Cloud in the silver lining

2005-12-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

Seattle banned smoking indoors, outdoors and in private. Good, we will all save money in public health costs and pollution expenses even though we will lose the 100% tax that Washington residents have been paying on each pack of cigarettes almost everywhere. Did we lose anything special at all? I think we lost an irreplaceable, invaluable and beneficial environ that allowed anti-intellectual "common" men and literati to bond and exchange ideas. Smoking areas on ferry boats, restaurants, airports and coffee shops permitted me to talk to strangers. There was an understanding that, although I look as Caucasian as a National Geographic pin-up, I was in the company of fellow members of an international club. Look outside a downtown building (not in Washington state anymore...) and you will see a coupla hard hats standing under the same shingle as the Armani suits, and that's the only little spot, this side of prison, where twain like these can meet.

As for cafe culture- smoking has always been an excuse to hang in a cafe, rather than a squeaky cleane brande name coffee shoppe. Is there another place that people can frequent, to read newspapers, discuss politics, make friends with the grungy, the age- challenged, the fashion victim? Is the coffee culture dependant on the cigarette culture? Here's what I am afraid will happen…. People will probably go from oppressive, claustrophobic work environments to the body shop for humans- gyms, to their small-minded spouses at home. Many will go to the non-smoking flesh-market bars where clean, physically and financially fit people prey on the socially and financially challenged. We may not get cancer from smoking, but many of us will develop physical malaises to represent the angst of living lonely lives in an antiseptic world.

Later in the day Citizenship interview

2005-12-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

Citizenship interview today. Also the day I quit smoking... hmmm. I think this is something you could call craving- but is there anything I miss about smoking? No. Can I put this craving on a table? What does it look like? This 'craving' does not hurt me. I feel no pain.. I am not out of breath. What, then , am I really lacking? Good question.

WHYSIWYG

2005-12-08T00:36:00.000-08:00

Smoked lungs- Any buyers? What you see is what you get when you smoke...

China for freedom? Hmmm.

2005-12-08T00:18:00.000-08:00

China- for freedom- was my first reaction to the anti-smoking law in Seattle. Then I found out serendipituously- that I have a mind - and a spine- and decided that I would use the ban to quit smoking. Hopefully the spine does not melt each morning when I wake up. I don't know about the rest of you- but I am my parents' investment- too good to waste on $1000,000 that the tobacco industry makes every six minutes and too precious to be counted among the 50 that die from smoking every 6 minutes...

Went around Broadway tonight and every bar stank of people smoking as if to kill their soul... Quitting is progress and I am smart enough to believe it. Please- if you are an intellectual and a persuader, keep your support of tobacco to yourself. If we smokers want to quit, leave us alone... We are stupid and sheep-like- and we want to quit..

I feel good and I know why...

2005-11-16T13:59:00.000-08:00

Applying to Law School now and it is the most exhilarating time of my life. I am using almost all my faculties and focusing towards being accepted at at least one of the 6 schools I am applying to. This rigamarole promises to continue forever; once I am accepted, I will be in Law School, slogging for three years and then my nose will be set to the grindstone till my dying day. You see, lawyers do not retire, because they are always practising..

A surprising result of the application process is that it shows my writing skills to be non-existent. It has been years since I wrote for pleasure and now I am no good… What this means to you is that I will be writing more often on this blog till my entries qualify for the New York Times Opinion/Editorials page. If you have not read it ever, just do it. .. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/

Also, even though I have always been a driven person, I have not ever wanted something so badly or spent every waking moment focused on my outcome. Read recently in a study cited by Times magazine, that the difference between a person who achieves what they promised (think Mother Teresa or Arnold Schwazzneggar), and the rest of us, regardless of our politics, is that they focus, follow through and just do it.

Since I completed the LSAT, the Universe has been throwing complete strangers in my way who are lawyers or related to the practice in some way. They all seem to push me and encourage me. Also, people who were not real friends, have started revealing their true colours, almost daily. It is as if I am deliberately sculpting my life! I can actually see Jesus Christ, my future attorney for judgment day, lean down and tell me…." When the student is ready, the teacher will appear!"

Phantom Happiness

2005-10-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

People in pursuit of happiness- read this. http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-1373.html
If you enjoy the idea of happiness you can generate on your own, try any of WAYNE DYER'' books- "Power of Intention" is a good one and so is "Your Erroneous Zones."

Good movie to watch

2005-09-20T16:18:00.000-07:00

I recently watched 'Sancharam', a movie made by a Chicago -based, ex-trial lawyer Malayalee named Ligy Pullapally. It is about 2 girls in love in Kerala and how their story unfolds. I actually got to hang with Ligy for a little bit after the screening- Lucky me! Once a successul playright and now no longer a practising attorney, Ligi is articulate, intelligent, sensitive and pretty to boot. She was provoked into making this movie when she heard of the dreaded subject of lesbian suicides in Kerala. Hopefully the movie comes to your town and you will see what the phenomenon called Kerala is. Here's a link if you are curious...
http://www.thejourney-themovie.com/

It is always great to meet people who do difficult things for a cause. Shooting that movie in Kerala without being tarred and feathered is a special achievement in my book. After Sancharam, I met about 10 girls from India who were 'differently oriented' and straight, but who were all without a drop of affectation. That is really different from any gathering of more than 2 Indian girls I have ever been in.

That being said, please do not spam my email box with any hate jokes targeting anybody. Send them to your mother. Note: Punjabi jokes are not hate jokes. They are jokes of affection and familiarity. Keep those coming.

How was your weekend?

2005-09-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

Labor day weekend creeped up on me and I was caught unprepared. All the boys and girls I like had to be with their better half for the holiday. Meanwhile I have no other half... Relative depravity- AAAWWWFFUUUULLL feeling. However, by Monday, I had talked to and met some of my not-so-close friends- so I feel like a normal functioning person. I prayed for wisdom to understand that these were just days like any other- and I could enjoy the quiet time normally have to steal from the day. I wonder what percentage of my age group (33) is in a relationship. To me it seems like they all are. And they are all in good relationship shape. I am really not normal... Good thing. There is somebody I am seeing- but he is virtually a figment of my imagination and is available for plenty of fun - but on his schedule. Not healthy? I think it is ok. For now. I have a mental deadline by which I should either get rid of this person or have solid relationships plans.. Its a mental deadline- and will probably be forgotten... In times of famine...

Phantom Aid

2005-08-31T15:48:00.000-07:00

Read this link for a quick picture of how AID money gets spent. We deny ourselves things in order to pay taxes and some of us spend on charity. We will not discuss tax money now- O no- my citizenship application is underway- but- here is a glimpse into the world of charity....http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4188382.stm

A picture from my youth...

2005-08-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

Picture from my youth...

The nerve!!!!

2005-08-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

Will everybody please read the kind note left by the gentleman to my blog of19.5.05?
I think we all owe him a big thank you and we should all respond to him for his consideration. And that would probably be what he is dreaming of anyway. Even elephants have better things to do!!!!
Go to www.novica.com to buy paintings by elephants..

Wierd and excellent

2005-05-19T16:12:00.000-07:00

http://conceptlab.com/control
Check it out.

YESSSS!!! Capitalism !!!!

2005-03-16T00:12:00.000-08:00

I know everybody thinks Capitalism is the enemy- but - hey! whazzizhairyface from Worldcom was convicted today. Capitalism always meant accountability to me, among other things and here is vindication. Of course, I would like a couple of other sacrificial lambs to go down from Tyco, Enron..Heck- maybe Qwest! Sacrificial lambs to salvage any dignity for capitalism.

Think about it. What was Capitalism meant to be? It was sold to us as a ladder available for all to climb. Do you remember how many Americans tried to get into China, hidden in shipping containers? I don't either and the reason that it did not is that Capitalism is the hope for the un-complacent; it reeks of 'survival of the fittest' to some of you, but that's not what happened today...If accountability makes Capitalism look good, it makes Democracy look like Marilyn Monroe! Please, lets pause and send a grateful look heavenwards for today in America. One small step for man...

What is the Tower of Babel?

2005-03-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

Since 911, we have all been sad, angry, opinionated and divided like never before. We take stances on things that do not matter to us and we fight over gay people, whales' rights, Democracy, religion and everything in between. We are invading each other's lives, with a vision to 'help' each other see our own absolute truth, with no compassion at all.

I lost a good friend "G", because I attacked his personal belief that God thinks homosexuality is a sin.. I am not even gay... Something is going on. Something that is preventing us from learning from the Tsunami. Something that is making us suspicious. Something that is making us fight poisons with poisons and make a second wrong to right the first. It is a phenomena that has not happened at this ratio between knowledge and blind conviction, except when human beings were very proud and tried to build a tower to touch the sky> the Tower of Babel. Here is that story from an old book called The Bible. Is this where we are now?

Genesis 11
The Tower of Babel 1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c] -because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Ides of March yet?

2005-03-11T15:20:00.000-08:00

So- its yet another Friday on The Rock. Here's a link to amaze y'all this weekend
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hhgttf/ (will take longa to lingah- Its the man Douglas Adams himself..)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4184627.stm (very very nice and creepy)

The weather in Seattle is amazing and happy and all the wimps are thrilled. Can we have some rain so that we do not have to subsidise our farmers anymore? And can we have some rain so that we do not have to cut trees to keep forests froom burning? And can we have an Alleluijah for Oil prices finally going up?

Danny Godinez band? What is that?

2005-02-26T02:25:00.000-08:00

I spent tonight with Danny's girlfriend Michelle at the Danny band show at the Village pub in Magnolia. Full moon night in Seattle with a lot of expectations in the air ( Even Coby, the drummer was expecting a baby tout suite!). The music was flowing, as was the beer, and the helmets on the bar ceiling proved that the Cougars are more influential than cheesecake. Try a Spanish Coffee sometime, people! It will burn a liquid ravine down your Friday souls and find that sweet spot called TGIF. So Seattle is fun and we talked about how alienated all the newcomers are in Seattle. Know that there are no such entities as born Seattleites.... They are all in Hawaii.. Lets change the world and be more social.. Blah blah. My aura is dissipated and I have a driving test tomorrow and I hope I don't get Godzilla in Bambi clothing for a test-giver like I did last weekend. Smoooooth...remember that while reversing around the corner. . If the cops turned off their nervous sirens, we could maybe have less throats slashed on Capitol Hill... Because the crazies cannot sleeeep, morons! I mean there is no such thing as perfect silence in Seattle. Folks- that is 6 years of non-cosmic audio feed... Macduff?

Too many pens

2005-02-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

Recently I changed handbags and found that I had over 20 pens that would not fit in my new bag. So I put them away and kept a handful in my new purse. On day two I realized my new purse was not closing because I had still too many pens in there. This was a big moment of shame for me because I realised I had been buying pens everytime I saw my favourite kind at the Japanese store- not because my old pens had run dry, but because I was afraid they would...

This became said moment of shame for me 'coz I realised I had been hoarding and buying these pens without any thought. I am from Calcutta - and in Calcutta you give your parents some notice before they buy you a new pen or even a new bottle of ink to refill old pens. I have been proud of my frugal ways upto now- but I realized to an acute feeling of regret, that the pens would have been shoes or SUV's if I had enough money.... I am no longer a contributor to our beautiful world- just an exploiter...

Mindfulness is my new word and I am trying to savour what I have. Have you ever been to the grocery store and back- and set down your groceries on the table or fridge, too tired to sort them out? And then 2 days later you realize you have not used a single thing in those bags? That is what I am trying to avoid.

Spend money on new books or on eating out or on friends- but avoid buying to hoard or buying to impress.. Do you see the distinction I am trying to make here? I think I am trying to say we need to be more aware of what we do... Its not good or bad...Using the things I already possess till I am clearly aware of the measure to which it met my expectations ... makes me feel abundance abounds... And then there is no boredom or sorrow or waste..

One still night

2005-02-21T19:56:00.000-08:00

Seattle is a small town on the west coast of America. We have ONE buildings in the downtown street and there are many exciting things that go on. None of this may be true, but its my take on Seattle tonight.

For example, during war, many bridge and tunnel people like to visit the old city of Seattle to shop for things made in other countries. We are friendly with folks from Bellevue and Tacoma and Canada because when they come to our bars- and we have the best (Try Cowgirls), they wear more make-up than fabric. Shhh..we have a mafia - made up of 17 year olds from Tacoma. The police walk in two's in Seattle because these boys strike fear in the hearts of downtown shoppers and they need to be arrested only at peak time with 251 cars and buses and all 50 Seattleites watching.

Don't be scared. There are many cute boys in Seattle. They are very very cute and when they wear lipstick and nailpolish - they just refuse to flirt with girls like me.... Snobs! The variety of men here will boggle your mind. Luckily for a girl, they all wear baseball caps and are progressive and they all know that terrorists are from Asia and they want to free Tibet from China because Tibet was a kingdom and China imposes equality on the Tibetans..

Seattleites do the impossible marrying of ideas in their heads. They are vegan but pro- choice, anti-war but pro SUV, tree huggers who don't want oil prices to go up. ..and so on.

I believe there are other types of people. People that eat meat and are still progressive. Let me know if you know how they fill up the White Pages in Seattle.. Maybe all the interesting people are visiting San Francisco in the weekend. None of this may be true, but its my take on Seattle tonight