Nothing to write? asks self. No great cosmic revelations to impart? Just another late in the day Friday: nothing to say, nothing to sell?

Maybe so, maybe so.

The San Francisco Veteran's Day parade is Sunday. Starts at 1:00 at the San Francisco 2nd Street BART station, so I'll read the paper and have breakfast, pack the gear and drive to BART. A simple under the bay train ride. I've not shot the Veteran's Day parade before, half the time because it was raining, most of the time because I don't remember the time of the Vietnam War fondly and all of the time because they all wear those same hats and costumes. Maybe I'm wrong. I shoot people's faces, what do I care about costumes?

There have been military marching units in some of the other local parades, ROTC units mostly, youngsters, but they mill around before it starts straight as sticks with somber faces (not unlike someone I once knew), so I seek out the clowns and the ladies in fish net stockings. Maybe older vets are more interesting. I say "they". I'm a "they" too. A former member of the San Miguel de Allende chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Except I let my membership lapse. So I'm going to photograph the parade tomorrow because it's convenient and I need the pictures and I want to see if I can do it thirty years later without flinching.

Saturday morning. Back to politics. How ugly could things get over these next four years if this election embroglio gets out of hand? All of it will probably be determined this next week or so with the Florida recount, and, I suspect, if the losing candidate doesn't then graciously retire, the shit is in the fan.

What's driving this? The talk of trust and morality, of abortion rights and schools, of taxes and racial preference, of medical care and prescription drugs, of gays and marriage? What's putting the heat behind these issues? I wonder how much might rest in a deep seated unease with our accelerating world, the old farm to city Industrial Revolution that took well over a century now supplanted by a Communications Revolution that is taking a couple of decades. The experience and skills you need to earn a living flip flopping before you're much into your 30's, the further atomization of the family, jobs that come and go, neighborhoods that aren't neighborhoods anymore, marriages that aren't marriages, kids that grow up almost totally in the company of their peers, all of it, I don't know, since the sixties. Then again, it could be the water. They always warned us about the water.

Prop. Give it a break. You're a computer nerd. You can always get a job scrubbing motherboards in a restaurant.

Yeah, yeah, but nothing else comes to mind. I can't just erase it all and start over. Besides, maybe I can use this in a book, small talk made by a windy character who gets himself strangled in the Marple family manor. Under suspicious circumstances. It's Saturday night and I'm tired. I designed that page with the swell roll overs for the company site this afternoon and I'm burned out.