Here’s my thought for the day about writing. Once underway, the basic process resembles a giant boulder rolling down a steep hill. In other words, one page leads to two, two leads to three and so on. The longer the ball races down the hill, the faster it travels, the easier it is to write a coherent page on the first try. After all, objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Now when the writing is going like that, the best approach is just to work with it. Trying to wrestle a rolling boulder back up a hill is well, rather like arguing with a skydiver in the midst of a free fall. Inertia justs wants to bring them back in for a landing.

But there’s a trade off, because there are precious few hills of infinite height, which means and some point the boulder must be “reloaded” and pushed back up the next hill for another trip down.

Thus the journey begins and ends, and begins again. And sometimes rolling with momentum is just as hard as trying to create it.

Tech guy had a busy day. Besides packing a bunch of Buddhapuss shirts, he installed the mailing list program. Some open source program called Dada.

For those who signed up for the mailing list, yes a periodic ( and hopefully relevant ) mail is coming your way sometime soon.

Tech guy: OK, so all you do is type up the message and click the button and away you go.
sam: It just fires off to everyone on the list?
Tech guy: Everyone gets it.
sam: Even me?
Tech guy: Even you.
sam: And this is all free?
Tech guy: Free.

Yep, sending mass emails is remarkably easy to do.

Yesterday my crew assaulted the Lehigh River in real time and without stunt doubles. OK, so they weren’t exactly my crew. They were weekend warriors in search of a good time with a combined total of 22 minutes of rafting instructions among us.

Regardless of our seaworthiness, we rocked that raft from one end of the 15 mile course to the other. I learned one very important lesson: never argue with a rock in the Lehigh River particularly when approaching at high speeds. The rock will win.

Between runs on the rapids, the tour guides gave us tips on how to negotiate the next stretches of raging water and avoid the pitfalls. At the last break I saw a chance to talk to one of the guides for a minute. I asked all the important questions.

sam: Anyone die out here?
Guide: Roughly one dozen people die on this course a year.
sam: How about on this tour? Will we make it?
Guide: Probably. We’ve never lost someone due to drowning or head trauma.
sam: So people have died?
Guide: A couple heart attacks.
sam: Do you get a refund for that?
Guide: No.

If all goes well, in less than 24 hours, Master Buddhapuss shirts shall be here. Here’s the long and very winding tale on the shirt delay.

Spike designed them, cut the screens, then printed them to my specs. That’s where things turned crazy. His distributor mailed the shirts to me, but the shipment bounced back to the distributor somewhere along the chain. No big deal, but this happened twice.

Frustrated but vigilant, Spike is delivering the package to my place today. How’s that for dedication, huh? How many graphic artists provide freight services?

So, you want to be cool? What better way than an Ask Buddhapuss t-shirt?

Every so often an opportunity comes along that cannot be passed up. Saturday is such an opportunity. The wife, some relatives and I are going white water rafting. Needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to this excursion for some time.

No movies this weekend, thank you. Just the raging fury that is Mother nature. But wait! There’s more. Saturday is dam release day! That’s right! That means even more water!

Check Sunday’s post for a blow by blow account and find out if we surrvived the rapids.

Recently, I chose Target as my shopping destination. It was a rush job, driven by a dire need. For each of the previous 12 days I’d promised to take one for the team and stock up on cat litter. That particular morning Buddhapuss threatened to leave me a present.

Not since the age of 7 had I braved Target during the middle of the day. Back then, when not clinging to my mother’s arm, I’d hide inside an empty stall in the women’s dressing room. Just for the record, I did vacate the stall when paged over the public address system.

Anyway, that habit was left behind at age 7. I changed, but Target has not; the place is still loaded with moms. Only now the moms are different because well…because they’re attractive.

Apparently it’s a requirement for moms shopping at Target to do Pilates, Tai Bo and elliptical.

Next time we need cat litter, I’ll be at Target at opening time. After all, when Buddhapuss has to go, the cat means business. It is for him that I suffer.

While there were lots of comedies this year, very few have been much more than a long running play to make the audience laugh at all costs. Dodgeball is guilty as charged.

The premise; the owner of a second rate gym needs money to save his gym and his league of misfits from foreclosure. His competitor across the street door runs a gym that is everything Average Joe’s is not, clean, well equipped and solvent.

In their quest for cash, the members of Average Joe’s stumble upon the idea of playing Dodgeball in a tournament in Las Vegas. The prize as it happens is the exact amount needed to escape foreclosure.

Here’s what works about this movie

1) Characters. There’s a decent motley crew of misfits. Take special note of Rip Torn as their mentor/coach.

2) A real life on screen couple that works. I really believed that Christine Taylor found Ben Stiller’s character repugnant. Obviously they are married in real life.

3) Vince Vaughan. It took Vince a few years before he found his niche in Hollywood and it’s the type of role he plays in Dodgeball and Old School. Tall, slightly goofy with Chevy Chase styled delivery.

4) Premise. The premise is so ridiculous, it’s funny.

This comedy does the trick and it’s almost safe enough for the whole family. There’s a coda after the credits which some may find pushing the boundaries of taste, but by that point most of the audience are stuck in traffic.