|now candy|

Yet another fabulous point of glory from the UK, 'Tis the Season. Not only is the site **beautiful**, it's got the sense of humor so badly needed come December.

Badly needed like you need the paper cuts from fast & crappy gift wrapping episodes. The humor you seem to lose when you can't find the tape and step on it in the process of looking for it, in your socks, so now you are bleeding all over the place from the handy little serrated part that makes the tape break so perfectly.

Or like the humor needed when you actually coax yourself into thinking that going into any store with a name you recognize from every town you've live in (because it's a freaking mega-conglomerate) is a good idea. You even make it inside only to realize that you never want children if _any_ of them are like _any_ of the horrible spoiled and useless mini-queens and -kings under ten years old that won't fucking shut up about how they can't live with this new piece of plastic crap on the end cap display shelf.

Don't get me wrong, I actually love Christmas. And egg nog. Almost as much as the above mentioned site.

OK, I don't understand global (or local) economics enough to say if steel tariffs help the US steel industry (and the rest of the economy) enough to make it worth it.

However, I find it odd that Bush will bend to the global community's treats against the tariffs, but he wouldn't (won't) bend to the global community's upheaval over Iraq.

He has to benefit from this somehow. Did the WTO threaten to cut specific contracts with Bush's cronies' companies?

A little nip of eggnog then of to bed.

Sorry, no real post tonight. Been e-mailing and catching up.

It's Thursday, though. And that means...

It's almost the WEEKEND!!! I see a museum visit and gallery opening in the big plans for the weekend. (Well, Saturday at least.)

On a happy note...

It's egg nog season!!!

I'm not even going to begin to post on the news and politics, I need to go to bed. But let me, again, say that the Guardian (UK) is worth checking out.

OK, one quick comment. I heard on the news today that Bush raised almost one million dollars today during his trip to Pittsburgh.

What a fucking load of bullshit. Do you know what this city could do with a million dollars? I wish all the duped fucks who gave money to him (fundraising lunch with plates on the order of $1000 a head) would (a) stand in front of the mirror and repeat one thousand times "I am an idiot and I will correct my ways," and (b) would now go out and give one thousand dollars to something that's worth a damn. Anything. I don't care if it's the Save the Kittens fund, the last person/institution that needs money right now is the GW Machine.

Suggestion to the National Weather Service: just admit when you have no idea what the weather will be. We can handle it.

Or, just say:

Wintery. Some snow possible. Cold today and colder tonight.

I've been thinking. Quite a bit over the past few weeks (well, for longer than that, but especially so lately).

What makes it? What is important? What is _this_?

Clearly, there are infinite answers to this. The shear multitude oppresses and confuses.

But, at this point, there is an aperture of clarity. Even if only for now.

Communication.

There are so many forms and venues for it, we get numb. There is a constant murmur of images, sounds, color, coaxings, and messages.

Woos. Marketers try to woo us. In trying to filter down, we end up filtering out.

Communication through art is strong. Even the images you think you don't "get," in trying to make the connection, something is communicating inside. Photography is poignant. Everyone has taken a picture. People get it.

Communication through sound is strong. Music. Artists lay tracks with sounds that you hear. You lay your own self onto the tracks and feel them communicate, to you. It doesn't matter if you hear what the singer meant or the bassest slapped into the strings, you have your own conversation. And it's just as important, or even more so, than what the originators intended.

Communication through touch excites. You _know_ when someone bumps you. You tingle when someone, dear to you, touches you. Traces on you. Your own emotion travels back through their skin as they feel. Touch and feel. Linked.

Communication through words is, sometimes, art. Especially typing. Backspace backspace pause clickity click click click clickity clickie tap tap tap space pause backspace copy paste clickity tip tappity send. And it's away. Flipping through the words in your mind trying to say what you are feeling, impossibly. Sometimes you just delete the whole thing. Sometimes you hit send. Or print. Or post. Or save.

Speaking, talking, is tougher but more exciting. Real time. Once it's out, it's out. No backspace. Pauses take so much longer with a straining ear. Good conversation is two way. Otherwise, it's just a speech. People get paid money to write speeches. People get excited in good conversation. For hours. Communication in conversation can be elusive. You can hear, most of the time. But listening, observing how the words come out, means you have to be quiet inside. Our insides are used to being loud. They have to be to overcome the constant din of this modernity. If you whisper to yourself, you can hear.

Communication through being is sublime. "Do as I say and not as I do" is horse shit. Thankfully, I haven't heard that from anyone in years. What people do overrides anything they can say. Not even explicit actions, but just the way one goes about things, is a continuous conversation. A conversation with self and world. And people.

I think this is what gets me excited about people. The communication. It doesn't have to be words, but something is always there. An exchange.

An exchange of currency in uncountable denominations.

I suppose this happens every week, but for the few of you returning from vacation and looking for posts previous to Sunday, go here.

Blogger auto archived.

OK. I thought the cropped pictures would display very large.

They look very cool very large.

This, however, is not the case. And I cannot figure out how to make it the case.

So, we'll just have to suffer with _small_ cropped images.

Wow. I had three weeks of pics I had not posted. Well, there went November...

And it was a good month. Pics are here with PGH #10 through PGH #12b being the latest editions.

(As always, this link is in the sidebar, listed under the "now::|now candy|" header.)

I was planing on posting with links &etc. highlighting what's in the pics, but it's almost midnight, you'll just have to go back through the blog post (or look it up your own damn self).

Even so, here's two notes:

::::::::NOTE 1::::::::
I'm so excited over the PGH #12a pictures of fucking dots that I should be shot. The photography police, I am sure, are on their way here right now, sticks drawn, ready to beat me. I took them from the window seat of Beehive Coffee house over on E. Carson.

It was an accident to start with, the camera focused on a scratch in the window, and all the lights outside became dots. So, obviously, I flipped it over to manual focus and took 245 more pictures, of dots. On purpose.

The real beauty, which you cannot see because I have not taken the time to learn how to do this on my sweet mac, is when all the images (of which I've only posted a few) are strung together and viewed as a movie.

It rivals genius.

Or complete retard.

Hard to tell.

Hope it doesn't drive you nuts, though. (If it does, maybe you should back off the caffeine a tad.) Actually, if it drives you nuts, go surf some other website.

::::::::NOTE 2::::::::
Random thing happened today. OK, random things happen every day, but this is nice.

I was driving to the grocery store, camera on front seat, and the sun was low and blinding. I looked in the rearview mirror at eyes (because I'm vain) and thought "Oh, goddamn! how I love the late-day sun in Winter! My eyes look fucking hot!" And, truth is, all eyes look best in this late-day blinding winter sun. Then I remembered I had the camera.

So, with that, I took pictures of myself at the rest of the one-million stoplights between where I was and the bottom of the giant West Mifflin hill (where, of course, there was no sunlight).

Extremely self-indulgent, I know.

But, hey, it's my camera. And my website.

(And, believe it or not, only about a quarter of the 50 pics turned out to be worth a damn.)

::::::::BONUS NOTE::::::::
Please come back here and comment on the pictures. Or e-mail me. I need some critical/constructive/destructive feedback.

Thanks.

And,
enjoy.

Studio 360's show this week aired a piece featuring Kia Simon and her tribute to her step father, Dan Skarry. He died doing what he loves, sky diving.

He landed feet away from an EMT. The Emergency Medical Technician couldn't revive him.

Her video is hauntingly beautiful.

Enjoy.

They looked so delicious. Balls of meat about the size of my fist, sitting in gravy, and wrapped in _bacon_.

I walked along the counter, seeing what other tasty selections were available.

I came back to the bacon wrapped, gravy-covered, celebrations of ground meat. The little sign read "Mini-Meatloaf!" The little kid in my mind made a frownie I-don't-like-it face. Given the choice of meatloaf or just about anything else, I'll often chose the anything else (save broccoli, meatloaf wins over broccoli any day).

But just look at that yummie bacon!!! It's cooked right on!
And wrapped all the way around! Maybe this is _really_ good meatloaf.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

It's still meatloaf, though.

OK. I hear that Internet Explorer displays |now candy| with the sidebar at the bottom of the page.

This is not as it should be.

If you see my lovely sidebar as a big glob of pink at the bottom of the page, please let me know.

(Perhaps the current hack isn't cutting it.)

The wash is almost done.
Socks have their mates,
sheets are fresh,
windows open,
airing out the house.
Fanning out the house.
One fan blows in
the other blows out
to freshen up the house.
Good Sunday.
Sunny Sunday.
New week to a
new month.
The last month.
Four weeks until
two-thousand and four.

How to Get Along With Your Fellow Apartment Dwellers, Tip #5: Once finished, don't leave your damn clothes in the washer/dryer.