The first batch of Car Cruise Photos are now up- more will be added over the next few days. Photos can be downloaded for free; if you would like to donate for photos use the Donate via Paypal link on the left side of this blog.

Buena Vista Car Cruise 2008

Susanne Slavick, Pittsburgh Arts artist of the year’s exhibit R&R&R is on display from 12-Sept - 2 November.  Ms. Slavick uses military wreckage photographs to create uniquely beautiful images which she ‘recognizes, rues or reconstitutes’ things which have been ‘decimated’.  A very unique and worthwhile look.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of accompanying my two chaperones to the Buena Vista Car Cruise 2008 in Elizabeth Township, PA. This is myself and my pals Alan and Richie digging into the huge burgers they had at the concession stand. At any rate, I took about 350 photos of some beautiful classic cars and you can access those below. You can also download or purchase prints from this location.

**Coming Soon**

Alan took his red Charger and took home a trophy for the 2nd year.

When you checkout with a product from our merchandise tabs here on the blog, anything on one of our Squidoo lenses or straight from the home site, you can take 15% off a $40 or more order. Just type in this code at checkout. This sale is ongoing til 11/3/08:
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If you hurry you can also get $3 off mugs and $5 off shoes (who doesn’t love shoes?!) by entreing the code below at checkout. HURRY- this offer only good til 9/27, midnight PST.
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Well the CERN large hadron collider test went on and despite some fears and naysayers, we’re all still here (though we hear there’s some delays now in proceeding with experiments). Then again, they’ve got a while to play around with matter so be on your toes and make nice with your family.  J/k.  Have a look at these photos of the day before CERN’s big test- the collider itself sure is pretty.

How cute are these?  In the recent popularity of pre-fab housing these would fit right into a study or studio (we think they look like luminous Legos :)  ). Glide LED lamps twist around to make your own glowing sculpture or an innovative child’s light.  Lights come in primary colours or chocolate shades- by Velocity Art and Design.

As we may have mentioned before, we’re all about candy, possibly even before art.  Nyah- but candy really is important to the SeyrWeyr team.  On our travels we’ve met up with some odd choices that turned out to be hidden gems and some whose names just left it right there. Would you eat a…?

Kinder Hippo -a hippo shaped biscuit with either choclate or white chocolate covering and filling and happy little eyes.  Our rating:  A+ eating a hippo is somehow really satisfying.

Mars Pods -Uh uh. Sounds good- chocolate covered biscuits w/mars filling) but we’re leary about any candy setting up colonies in our insides.

Violet Crumble-  which is nothing like it sounds.  Honeycomb (spun sugar) inside with chocolate coating. These are actually a SeyrWeyr favourite but have chipped teeth. It was worth it- A-

PollyWaffle (Nestle) -Uh uh. Waffle tube w/marshmallow filling and chocolate coating.  Millions may swear by it but we eat waffles for breakfast, not as candy bars.

Milko- uh uh. Anyone who’s not real keen on milk is not going to be keen on thinking about this one.

Cadbury Furry Friends- What?!  but really it’s just Cadbury’s milk chocolate (not american) in animal wrappers.  Sigh of relief- we give the milk chocolate A+

Cadbury’s Cherry Ripe- if we had a list of names which could never cross over the atlantic this would be top at the list.  Cherry filling rolled in coconut and coated with chocolate. We’re pretty sure there’s a US version it’s called something else.

Frys Turkish Delight/ Nestle Big Turk- yes, America was once familiar with turkish delight but somewhere lost its taste for it.  Fry’s is a hunk covered in chocolate and yes, you have to have a taste for it. If not, it tastes just like a bar of Dove. Not that we’d know.  We give it a: B

Cadbury’s Mighty Perky Nana-  this just sounds like someone’s Gran gone all wrong and we say uh-uh to it.  Supposedly like a banana-flavoured milky way.

Clodhoppers- Yeah we’re not exactly sure what clodhoppers are (shoes?) but we’d rather not eat them.  Chocolate fudge wafers w/walnuts.

Hershey’s Eat More-  well, sure! Nothing like direct advertising!  Dark toffee w/peanuts.

Malaco Jungle Scream- it’s not so much the name as the ingredients that have us shying away.  Salty licorice with extra salt.

Cricket Lik-it Sucker-  you can figure this out.  Uh-uh.

Glico Chocolate Puff Collon- yet another one of those engrish mysteries that will never make it to the US. These are little round biscuits almost like Bugles filled with chocolate. And yes, we have eaten Collon. they’re yum!  A

So if you’re feeling brave, you can buy all of these products from Cybercandy, Amazon or take a trip to the strip and have a look in MonAmi Chocolate or Lotus Foods.

We strumbled across IkeaHacker from In a Montreal state of Mind. The former blog is a sort of community for everyday designers- you! who have taken their ikea goods to the next level. Because let’s face it, though we absolutely drool over the yearly ikea mag (er, catalogue), the stuff is a bit austere and never looks like the picture once we get cracking with the hammer and nails…er pegs.   The latter blog has all the good design stuff you want to find in Montreal, and is just another reason why we love blogs!

Two things I’m completely in love with are music and vintage stuff- and though it’ll set you back $600, the Phonophone II is sleek, preeeeeeeeeety and combines the best of your ipod’s playlist with the best of vintage style.  The black (or white) oldtime phonograph is a speaker base for your ipod and is at a limited edition of 200 from Charles and Marie.

While I wasn’t aware of the before-hand marketing of this stunt, I’ve now seen the photos of 2 girls supposedly naked and showering in Market Square. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for public art statements. However, from what I can see on the photos, the point is a little vague. Yes, we know PETA wants us all to stop eating animals, stop wearing animals, whatever. But the girls’ tender parts were obscured by a PETA banner around the shower proclaiming “1 lb of meat =6 months of showers.”  Allright, my husband looks at me and goes, “How you figure?”

So this is where I say, not a good campaign PETA. Unless they were handing out leaflets explaining how the heck 1 lb of meat = 6 months of showers, I can see you have two camps paying attention to this intsallment: the pro-PETA people who already know this and the pro-let’s-see-some-nakedness that turned out just for that. Seriously PETA, this is market square and there are kids around. Bigger point, unless its really understandable right up front (I’ll go into the actual figures in a sec), 90% of the people looking at any article about this stunt are looking for as much skin as they can, not the cause of PETA.  As PittGirl says on The Burgh Blog: “OMG.  Look!  There’s Sonni Abatta on TV.  She’s naked!  Totally naked underneath her clothes!”

We did find on GoVeg the explanation for all this water going into meat: “Between watering the crops that farmed animals eat, providing drinking water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning away the filth in factory farms, transport trucks, and slaughterhouses, the farmed animal industry places a serious strain on our water supply. Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food.²²

It takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons.²³ A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day.^24,25 You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year.²⁶”

Okay then, that’s pretty much what we needed to know to make an informed choise to go vegetarian, not 2 ‘not-naked’ girls in a box with some figures.