This article about the sexiness of books versus Kindles reminds me of something I saw today, an image that has for some reason persisted all day even through a torrent of other chaotic images in what I must count as a busy and crazy day.  I was crammed in along the edges of a very crowded gymnasium for a volleyball tournament, folding chairs and blankets strewn everywhere, people marking off their little areas with collections of waterbottles, duffel bags, and books, to show the spots were occupied.  I’m always looking to see what people around me are reading, but at one point as I threaded my way through the crowd during a lull, I noticed a sequence of books:  First, a person reading a kindle; just beyond that, a very tattered copy of Twilight with the pages rolled back; sitting in a chair, a slightly dogeared copy of Cryptonomicon, and on the floor near that chair, a really old paperback copy of an Ian Fleming/James Bond novel.  It was the Fleming that instantly drew me–I almost picked it up to see which one it was.  It was an interesting cross-sectional screenshot of what random people at a junior girl’s volleyball game in the Puget Sound area are reading.  I notice that nobody ever leaves their Kindle lying around, and it’s impossible to tell what they’re reading.  The Kindle needs to take on the coloration and some graphic elements of the book it is mimicking at that moment.  Protective coloration, or some kind of display.  That would be pretty sexy.

The other thing I saw lots of today were cops, everywhere, all day.  From the troopers pouncing on people abusing the diamond lane at 8:15 on a Saturday morning, to the one who had a teenager out of his car and sitting on the curb in the grocery store parking lot this evening around 11 p.m., I saw stuff like this happening all day.  A guy at a bus stop in Kent, stepping off the curb to signalling a passing patrol car, which immediately rounded the corner and pulled over a white truck that had been at the bus stop seconds before…two cop cars speeding Seattle-wards across the Lake Washington floating bridge with sirens and lights going, these two sightings separated by about 20 minutes and several miles…I don’t usually notice this much cop activity in one day.  John Shirley would have a theory about this.