Brown Motion

We took a trip on a Boeing and then a car to help us get around, this past week to the Pacific Northwest and encountered not only stunning vistas, great food and the usual high of traveling to some of the most scenic locales on the planet... But we also encountered things we normally would not. I got to tour the largest manufacturing facility in the world where some of  the planet's largest man made creations are put together... Boeing Wide Body Aircraft. Everett Field, WA The weird green color craft is awaiting a paint job depending on which customer wants it. While driving around in Portland OR we went through (and yes we did not stick around with a name like that) the town of BORING.. Exit Sign on the Highway - if you dare (I am not sure if it is advertising a Boring Oregon City or two diff cities)   Otherwise and weatherwise it was not a bad week at all.. Nat Geo recommends a road trip we decided to follow - as one of the most scenic in the worl...

Complex.  Unavoidable.  Omnipresent.  Our ultimate shortcoming? That was one of the themes in the movie we recently watched titled 'her'.  It is a not so far off science (hence not fi)  story of a somewhat depressed story teller (yes it is his job or more accurately a letter writer - an extension of hallmark cards) who finds companionship of a more than technical and cerebral kind with his computer's operating system. It is both ironic and logical that he is shown in an almost non operating state - somewhat devoid of interest in life following his separation and impending divorce of the girl he had loved.  Then he finds his operating system.  It is a software based incarnation that is capable of learning moods of its owner.  Through some parallel storyline we find that the people all around him are all coping with life's challenges and ultimately a defining event or episode called 'marriage'. Human want for things tangible and not is root of...

Revisited this movie because there was nothing else in the library to rent.  Sometimes the decision is made for us.  This was a good one.  The movie I mean. It came back to me - the last time I saw it was probably when both the cast and myself were much younger - 10 years younger but the story still resonated. It revolves around an out of work architect who is dying of cancer and decides to fulfill a wish to build his own house (that it overlooks a bluff facing the Pacific makes for some nice scenery - I could not have watched his punk kid with paint and metal on his face without that addition). The parallels or metaphors of building his house and his once married life back from the crumbled state it is in are played out well with Kevin Kline and Kristen Scott in lead roles.  Other typical Americanisms of A sleeps with B and B sleeps with C then A finds out she really wants to sleep with C are added for extra entertainment. Protagonist is a stoic man in ...

During Gandhi's days in India there was a slogan called - Be Indian, Buy Indian.  This was a direct message to British occupation to quit India and starve them of the economic benefits derived by domestics purchasing international aka British goods sold at premium. These days America is realizing that the language that is considered their official, is spelled better by kids that have sprung from natives of India.  So the slogan now for non Indian Americans could well be - Bee Indian, By Indians. As in Indian parents are producing large quantities of offspring that can spell better than any other ethnicity in the USA. There is some mild furor over the outcome of this event what with the last decade of the National Spelling Bee being dominated by these geeky, glassy eyed spellers who prove that while brains are quite useful to memorize vast quantity of data the Indian gene pool might also occasionally produce a beautiful creature worthy of winning some pagent that s...

A very American concept.  We Americans have so much stuff that we sometimes need many garages to keep the stuff in.  When I first heard of this event and had not Americanized myself i.e. did not have too much stuff, I thought that the Garage itself was on sale.  Although it begged the question how someone could partake of someone's garage if it was sort of attached to the garager's property. That the garagee would have to somehow carry off the garage if it indeed were sold.  Then I learned of the concept of OPEN HOUSE.  Which then begged the question about open to what?  As soon as my naive brain realized that the house was open to prospective buyers to come and visit I realized that the garage sale might go hand in hand or yard to yard with it.  Much later I got it all sorted out.  Garage sales and House for Sale are entirely different animals - run by entirely different animals.  The former is really the bailiwick of the homeowne...

Watched an interesting movie called 'State of Play'.  I may have blogged about this few years ago when I first saw it.  But since I forget what I saw and what I remember this may be a repeat title /topic - except that it might be a bit different take on the same story. So this story with a wonderful cast (Ben Affleck, Russell Crowe,  Robin Penn and Helen Mirren) is about a truth seeking journalist (Crowe) who is friends with a now Congressman (Affleck) from Pennsylvania.  At the heart of the story is two unrelated incidents or so it seems.  A couple of guys get shot in a Washington alley and a lady staffer on the congressman's research team dies in a mysterious train accident.  The journalist smells it and gets on it because he is only trying to earn his living. The story was originally written as a BBC series and Hollywood made a movie of it.  Who says the left coast does not copy a good story?  I have not seen the origina...