I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.
Steve Almond
At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound. This was revolutionary. Here were entire stalls of candy, naked as the day they were born, piled up two feet high and God knows how deep. What it was beauty.
age beauty naked school deep day summer born clothes god candy aware
Nothing on Earth (is) so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.
earth beautiful night halloween
If I had been the kind of kid who kept a diary, the entries from the years 12 to say, 16, would have to read: Got high, ate candy.
kind diary read candy
It isn't the flavor of coconut that troubles me, but the texture I feel as if I'm chewing on a sweetened cuticle.
troubles feel flavor
thetimes time children hard candy
The first half of the twentieth century was Boston's freak zenith. The city was home to 140 candy companies by 1950, with sales of 00 million per year. The beginning of the end for Boston came with the rise of the national candy conglomerates: Hershey's and Mars.
home city mars end beginning sales rise candy freak
I was saddled with this strange name, which meant that I was constantly, constantly, being serenaded with the Sometimes you feel like a nut Almond Joy/Mounds jingle.
feel strange
The craziest Peep-related candy I've ever gotten is a chocolate egg with a Peep inside it. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make that, which strikes me as both beautiful and pathetic.
trouble beautiful chocolate inside candy
Art arises from loss. I wish this weren't the case. I wish that every time I met a new woman and she rocked my world, I was inspired to write my ass off. But that is not what happens. What happens is we lie around in bed eating chocolate and screwing. Art is what happens when things don't work out, when you're licking your wounds. Art is, to a larger extent than people would like to think, a productive licking of the wounds.
people work time art world loss woman write wounds lie eating things chocolate bed
We need books.. Because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.
friendship hearts true wise desperate company friend lonliness books
It's like this when you fall hard for a musician. It's a crush with religious overtones. You listen to the songs and you memorize the words and the notes and this is a form of prayer. You attend the shows and this is the liturgy. You're interested in relics -- guitar picks, set lists, the sweaty napkin applied to His brow. You set up shrines in your room. It's not just about the music. It's about who you are when you listen to the music and who you wish to be and the way a particular song can bridge that gap, can make you feel the abrupt thrill of absolute faith.
music adoration
Music has become more pervasive and portable than ever. But it feels less previous in the bargain. I don't want to confuse artistic and commercial value, but it's just a fact that some kid who rips an album for free isn't going to give it the same attention he would if it cost him ten bucks. At what point does convenience become spiritual indolence? I realize this makes me sound like an old fart, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when the universe of recorded sound wasn't at our fingertips, when we had to hunt and wait and - horror of horrors - do without, when our longing for a particular record or song made it feel sacred.
music
Every now and then, I'll run into someone who claims not to like chocolate, and while we live in a country where everyone has the right to eat what they want, I want to say for the record that I don't trust these people, that I think something is wrong with them, and that they're probably - and this must be said - total duds in bed.
food people chocolate
The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.
first-sentence freaks
This was one of those mid-thirties moments when you take a look at the stale, half-chewed bagel your life has become and kiss jealousy on its smokey mouth.
jealousy
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