You're Really Dissing the Thrift Store, Country Magazine?

 It's President's Day weekend, and what does that mean? Everything's half off at the thrift store! And whoa, doggies. The place was packed.

Have you seen the average thrift store shopper these days? No you haven't, because all kinds of people shop at the thrift store now. Lots of artsy Gen Z, lots of handsome metrosexual men, and lots of school teachers. Tons of school teachers.

I have a favorite thrift store that I visit at least once a week for retail therapy. Over the years I have almost completely outfitted myself and my house from that store. I've gotten towels, bath rugs, sheets, bedspreads, throw pillows, small pieces of furniture, books, shoes, decorations, and small kitchen appliances there. Clothing? Almost all my clothing comes from the thrift store. The only clothing I buy retail is fairy attire!

Fact: Last week I went to Target to buy a Valentine's Day gift for Mr. J. I picked up the one thing I'm loath to buy at the thrift store (underwear) and saw a cute set of pajamas that I liked. With Mr. J's gift I spent ... get ready ... $70. My jaw dropped. That's three or four hefty hauls from the thrift store!

So you can imagine my surprise when Country Magazine, that chic bastion of finding cute stuff at the antique mall, came out with an article entitled "40 Things You Should Never Buy at the Thrift Store."

40, mind you. Should have titled it "Don't Shop at the Thrift Store, Buy Something Expensive Instead."

Needless to say, I was intrigued to see what Country Magazine deemed unworthy of purchase from a thrift store.

*Old furniture. Might have lead paint. As opposed to stuff at the antique mall, which is presumably pristine.

*Anything upholstered. Well, they don't sell such things at my thrift store, thank you very much.

*Bedding. Might have bedbugs. Except you can see the industrial-sized washing machines in the back room at the thrift store.

*Stuff for kids, as in, car seats, strollers, and toys. Excuse you, Country Magazine. While my local thrift store is chock-a-block with cutie pie young skinny guys, it's also always full of poor people. You know, the people the thrift store is supposed to serve. And those people might not be able to go out and buy a brand new car seat. Shit's expensive.

*Throw pillows. Again, bedbugs. The magazine's advice? Buy a throw pillow from Target, where it's $10 - $20. News flash: $20 will buy 10 pillows at the thrift store. It's a bedbug gamble, but so is staying at the Hilton.

*Clothes. Say that again? Yes, you heard me. Clothes! They might be torn or stained, and you can't return them! For the love of fruit flies. As if anyone goes into the thrift store, plucks something from the rack, flips it on the counter, and doesn't so much as glance at it to see if it's stained! I'll admit, I did buy a shirt two weeks ago that is missing the bottom button. But stains and tears? Everyone checks for stains and tears.

*Anything that smells bad. Duh. That's advice for trash-pickers, not Goodwill shoppers.

*Kitchen appliances. They might not work. Well, let's see. I got my crock pot there, and it works. I got my hand mixer there, and it works. Case closed.

In this slideshow article, the list goes on and on, and most of the stuff on it isn't stuff I see in the thrift store where I shop. Who buys old windowpanes at the thrift store?

I can't imagine that many readers of Country Magazine actually shop in thrift stores, but I guess maybe the sport is getting so trendy that even rich faux-chic snobs are going there now. I'm stretching it with this one, but do you think perhaps Target paid the magazine to run such a spurious slide show? Hmmm. 

One last powerful point to this sermon, and it's the kind of whopper of a point that would bring any new congregant to the altar call. Have you read that little tag on the brand new pair of blue jeans you bought at Target? WASH BEFORE WEARING. WASH SEPARATELY. You see this on everything new. Everything. So how is that different from bringing home thrift store garments and flinging them in the washing machine? Well, maybe all the poisonous dyes have been leeched from the thrift store attire already!

I'll bet you're wondering what I bought today at the thrift store. Oh, readers. I got an NFL brand zippered hoodie with the Eagles logo, in my size, for $2.50. Have you priced out official NFL merchandise in the retail sector? Don't. Go to the thrift store, especially after the team has had a bad year.

There will be more in this space about the thrift store in coming installments. But this sermon has run long, and I know you want to get on with your day.

 

I Survived National School Shooter Day 2021

 I blame Big Tobacco.

Despite their best efforts, Americans have finally turned up their noses, for the most part, at tobacco products. So Big Tobacco looked for a new market and found China. Yes, that China.

Chinese men are nuts for their cigarettes. I had to toss my exchange student because he was smoking in my house. He wouldn't hear of trying any cessation techniques. And all his exchange student pals smoked like smokestacks too. This is going to be a big public health problem for China in years to come.

You know that nation isn't going to take this lying down. And thus we got TikTok.

Tobacco is a scourge that affects the lungs. TikTok is a scourge that affects the brain. In case you didn't know it, TikTok is owned and run by the Chinese.

My students have the attention span of chipmunks. Instagram has helped, but TikTok reigns supreme in senseless distraction. 

But wait. There's more.

TikTok users have been issuing "challenges." As in, October was "Slap a Teacher Month." The idea was to assault a teacher and record it on video to show on TikTok. I feel like the hacking of my online Parent Night Google Meet was probably filmed for TikTok.

Each month has its own challenge.

Last week some TikTok shitbird posted that Friday, December 17 would be National School Shooter Day. This prompted my school district to send a message to all parents, staff, and students that there were no credible threats against our school. The district also promised an enhanced police presence on campus on December 17.

The result? Almost half the students at my school took a nice long weekend, skipping school on December 17.

I didn't see an enhanced police presence at my school on December 17. I can see the arrival of police cars and ambulances from the windows at my school. Shit happens occasionally, and our administration is tight-lipped about it. But I know that there are severe ramifications for any student who threatens the school. We also have an armed cop on campus at all times.

I also know that many of my students know someone who has been victimized by gun violence. It's not a game to them. When you have seen the ramifications of firearms, you're far less likely to play with them the way these troubled white boys do.

All this is my way of saying that I did not feel unsafe at school on December 17, and I understand why so many students stayed home. It was very quiet in the school.

As it happened, I sat in the faculty lunch room with the security guards and lunch ladies that day, which I haven't been doing due to Covid. I love the security guards and lunch ladies. They are by far my favorite people to hang with at school. We had a great time discussing local sports, cooking tips, and where they were going for happy hour. No one mentioned the school shooting business.

I survived the fiasco without a scratch. But I fear that the TikTok scourge has only just begun. Teenagers' brains aren't fully formed in the areas where judgment and reasoning are concerned. They are ripe for "challenges" and inspired by seeing others get away with stuff. TikTok gives them a blueprint for bad behavior.

China wins.

An Open Letter to the White Boomer Singers at the Farmer's Market

 Dear White Boomer Singers at the Haterfield Farmer's Market:

What in the name of red-eyed fruit flies are you thinking, daring to cover "What's Goin On?" For the love of all that's holy! Just because you're Boomers with guitars (acoustic), that sure doesn't make you worthy to sing Marvin Gaye! Sweet Jesus in the manger. Here I am, on my first maskless outing since March 13, 2020, and I have to hear some gray-bearded white guy mangle "What's Goin On?" What a buzz kill.

Music is an infrequent topic here at "The Gods Are Bored." I'm not a rock snob. But I do know a bit about music, having written for an American Music reference book for five years. Point of fact, one of the entries I did was on Marvin Gaye.

You can search far and wide through the canon of mid-century American music and not find a more soulful song than "What's Goin On." Or its sister "Mercy Mercy Me." Marvin Gaye went way out on a limb putting together that album. The people at Motown were against it, but he persisted. And thank all the bored Gods he did, because his velvety voice questioning war and brutality and pleading for brotherhood was unparalleled. That is some deeply moving music, there.

I remember when that song first came on the radio. It turned my head. I was always a Motown fan, but this was different. And what made it different in a groundbreaking way was the actual presentation of the song. Marvin owned that music. His voice was like a warm pool he had built himself, and he was swimming around in it.

Maybe he should have taken those songs to the grave with him.

The effrontery of two saggy white people covering that at a farmer's market in a damn near segregated suburb! You cannot sing that well, chumps. Even if you could sing, you couldn't sing that. You can't sing "What's Goin On." Stop. Stop. Stop.

One Saturday morning before the pandemic, I found myself at the Berlin Flea Market, which is quite a different vibe from Haterfield. That market had hired a similarly craggy Boomer dude to provide some music. He sat down on a stool and gave up some high quality Bob Seeger. It was sublime. Then he did a little Gordon Lightfoot, a little Chicago. The man was on safe turf. He was where he should be. No Motown! Dude had some respect.

White people singing at farmer's markets should stick to any damn country song about losing your girl, your dog, your pickup, and your gun. No white person has any business covering Marvin Gaye. Don't do it again, unless and until you wake up some morning and you actually are Marvin Gaye.

Brother brother brother.

Raining on My Parade

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," wishing we could sneak into Davos and eat the rich! Or at least eat what the rich are eating, which I bet are some exceptionally fine vittles.

Mr. J and I are just emerging from an epic grippe. He was hospitalized with it, and I coughed for three weeks straight. Today was the first time since the Mummers Parade that I was able to get out and even exercise a little bit.

And with everything else going on in the world, today's post is yet again about the Mummers Parade.

The city of Philadelphia is quite clearly sick of this parade. They have shortened the route and put a third of the performances indoors. But the worst enemy of the Mummers Parade are some of the participants themselves.

The use of blackface in the parade has been banned since the 1960s, and even entries with "tanned" or red skin have been called into question. All Mummers know that appearing in blackface gives the press and the city ammunition in denouncing the spectacle. It also provides reason for the city's majority population groups to hate the parade.

And yet there are always two or three pinhead cracker morons who insist on blacking their faces.

The difficulty arises in the size of some of the wench clubs. (If you think of the parade as a hierarchy, even the wenches will tell you that they are the bottom feeders.) When you have a club marching a thousand people, your leadership can't police everyone. Sadly, it appears that self-policing or group admonition is beyond these fools.

The largest and rowdiest wench brigade was disqualified this year from their division for having members in blackface. The leadership of the brigade said those offenders will not march with the group again. But the damage is done. The appearance of those two or three wannabe Nazi creepers was the only thing the various news outlets wanted to talk about in the wake of the parade. And of course this malfeasance has been seized upon by everyone who wants the parade to be seen as racist, lawless, and a blot on the spotless reputation of the City of Brotherly Love.

I know there are racist and homophobic people who march in the Mummers Parade. Those people are not in my comic club. Do I stand down and denounce the event, or do I participate?

Well, I look at it like this. You go to a party, and over in the corner there's a pinhead cracker moron with a t-shirt that shows Trump dressed like Rambo, holding a semi-automatic weapon. (No lie, I have seen such shirts. Not at the Mummers Parade.) Do I get a plate of food and sit as far away as I can from the offender, or do I leave? Do I offer myself and my friends as better examples of the average party-goer, or do I just decamp in a huff?

I have no plans to decamp from the Mummers Parade. It hurts my heart to see it showered with disrespect by groups that I like (aka Antifa), but the experience does remind me that the biggest story is always the ugliest story. "Nice Mummer Lady Poses with Crowds on Her Way Back to the El Train" would hardly be something that anyone would want to read.

For the record, my club (Comic, not Wench Division) finished third. We had over 200 members in our group. None in blackface. That. Would. Not. Fly.

Morons At Play

What can I say? It was a sunny day, and I had a few hours to spare while my daughter The Heir and her s.o. went canoeing. That's how I found myself on Main Street in Haterville in time to watch a Revolutionary War re-enactment.

 What was I thinking?

EXHIBIT A: BOYS AND BIGGER BOYS



The gaggle of colonials in the street had a cannon that they fired with reckless abandon at a small aggregate of Redcoats advancing on them. Lots of noise. But just like in Star Wars, no matter how much the two sides shot at each other, no one fell down.

I honestly wouldn't mind battle re-enactments if they were really authentic, as in people paying a good couple hundred bucks for movie-quality gaping wounds, which they would claw at in futility as they screamed for their mothers. Another compelling element always missing is the panic in the populace. There were lots of women standing around in colonial attire, just watching. Whereas, to be authentic, they should have been screaming and running, their few possessions or a child clutched in their arms.

All this is my way of saying there's nothing historical about re-enactments. They are a more expensive form of LARP with different rules and no dragons.

But, to make matters worse, this particular "skirmish" had a new loathsome attraction.

EXHIBIT B: UGLIEST "GODS ARE BORED" PHOTO SINCE THE END OF THE CHRIS CHRISTIE ERA

So they had a guy re-enacting an Iroquois Indian. He was on the British side.

See, if I didn't write this blog, I would have just uttered a few select expletives and walked away. But I wanted to get the reporting done, so I could bring this travesty to y'all.

This person said he has no Iroquois ancestry, he dresses like this "for the history." I asked what his gear cost, and he said around $1,000. I asked him about the red paint, and he said it's what the Iroquois wore into battle, so they could wash up afterwards and go about blithely, like blend in with the populace.

I couldn't resist. I have such a smart mouth. I said, "Well, you're lucky to be in a brand of entertainment that is more accepted than mine. I'm a Mummer, and if we came out looking like this, we would be fried on a spit." And I walked away.

Mind you, I know the difference between a battle re-enactment and a Mummers parade. In one, grown men dress up in weird costumes and make a lot of noise. In the other, grown men dress up in weird costumes and are silent.

The way I carry on with every deity from every kind of pantheon, both Old World and New World, you would think I would be okay with cultural appropriation. But for a Caucasian man to dress up like this, "for the history" or otherwise, is disrespectful beyond the pale.

I've never liked watching people shoot at each other. I think it shows bad taste. It minimizes the suffering that wars inflict upon an entire populace and the ecosystem as well. I doubt that you see many of them done in Syria or Afghanistan these days.

Well! Enough of the sermon! I know you need to have your palate cleansed, so feast your eyes on this short video clip of my Mummers club, the Two Street Stompers, covering the same material a few years back.

Palate cleanser found here.

Goodbye to Glen Onoko Falls Trail

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" How do you stand on the matter of waterfalls? As for me, I could qualify for Waterfalls Anonymous, if such a group existed. I just slobber over waterfalls. Best thing about that is, no one notices a little bit of Anne drool dripping into a cascade of clear, mountain water.

A few years ago, the combination of some weight loss and increased aerobic activity led me to attempt some daring and dangerous waterfall hikes that I might have sensibly avoided before. One of these was Glen Onoko Falls Trail near Jim Thorpe, PA.

The Glen Onoko Falls Trail is steep, slippery, rocky and perilous. But it's not like there's no warning.

And the sign doesn't lie. There have been about a dozen deaths along this trail (one of them a 3-year-old) over the years. The reason is that many people are totally lacking in sense. Maybe the sign should read

At the beginning of this trail there's a sign that clearly warns hikers that the trail is steep, slippery, and perilous, and warns people to wear sturdy hiking shoes with good tread. I had already done my due diligence about Glen Onoko before I arrived, so I had on my sturdy hiking shoes with good tread.

About ten minutes into our hike up the trail, my daughter The Heir and I met up with a family all clad in flip flops. There were parents and children. The hike had already begun to look challenging, and here these kids were in fucking flip flops.

Needless to say, Heir and I -- both clad in our sensible hiking shoes with good tread -- left the (presumably) illiterate family behind as we began to ascend toward the falls.

Glen Onoko Trail has three beautiful waterfalls. It's astonishingly gorgeous. But it is also steep, slippery, and perilous. As I was climbing (can't call it hiking when you have to use your hands too), I made a mental note that maybe I ought not try this ever again. It saddened me to think so, because...

This waterfall is so tall we couldn't get both me and the top of it in the picture. Nor can you see my sturdy hiking boots.

I've been on some rough trails in my time. The Appalachian Trail will always test you, and I've been tested. But I must say that inch for inch, Glen Onoko Falls Trail was the toughest hike I've ever taken over such a short distance. Oh, boy was it worth it, though!

This trail is the only place I ever saw a dog unwilling to follow its masters, as they tried to coax it onto rocks that should hold neither dog nor human.

The water table was low when Heir and I went, but at all times hikers could walk behind this cascade. It being August when we went, Heir was glad for the shower. I stayed behind, judging the rocks too slippery for a woman of a certain age.

I wish I had a better shot of Heir's grin as she came back from being behind the waterfall!

Long story short, the Pennsylvania Fish and Wildlife Commission, owners of this area, have declared that, effective May 1, the Glen Onoko Falls Trail will be closed.

Yes, closed. As in, not even people with sturdy hiking shoes will be allowed.

The rationale for this is the loss of life (all of it people who climbed to the top of the falls and then just had to go to the edge and look over), as well as the inevitable broken bones and sprains that can occur on such a challenging trail. You see, it takes a whole boatload of first responders to evacuate someone from Glen Onoko because the terrain doesn't accommodate stretchers, let alone vehicles. And people do get injured up in there. Apparently quite often.

So goodbye, Glen Onoko Trail! Nevermore will you end the existence of a drunken frat boy as he declares, "Hey guys! Watch this!" Nevermore will you host six-year-olds in flip flops or bridal parties in gowns and heels, looking for photo ops.

Nevermore will you host women of a certain age who, having ascended the challenging trail, feel a lingering sense of accomplishment ... heightened by the fact that everyone else at the top is a generation younger.

Nevermore will you host people who exercise monumental hubris, figuring the signs are for all the other people but not them. Oh, wait. Those morons will still rush in where angels fear to tread.

This Annie Doesn't Want a Gun

Hi there, buckaroos! It's me, Anne Johnson, back from being president and safely in civilian life again!

I could have stayed at the White House forever, since it's so much more lavish than my own humble home, but after this latest horrible school shooting, I decided I was needed more at the Vo Tech. What, really, is more important than caring for our vulnerable teenagers?

New Jersey has some hella strict gun laws (another reason to love the Garden State), so I'm pretty doggone sure my school administrators aren't going to hand me a pistol and send me to the firing range. And that's a good thing, because I will quit my job if they start bringing guns into my school.

LIST OF JOBS ANNE WOULD DO RATHER THAN HAVE A GUN IN HER CLASSROOM

*Taco Bell drive-thru window, graveyard shift
*Goat judge (wish this paid better, it's a great job)
*Shrimp boat
*Wal-Mart ... yes. Wal-Mart cart collector
*Busting rocks with a sledgehammer
*Fox News focus group
*All natural mosquito eradicator
*Flagpole sitter
*Janitor, turnpike restrooms

If I couldn't find one of those compelling jobs, I would do anything that provided a meager paycheck. ANYTHING rather than having a gun in my hand in a classroom!

I'm not pretending to speak for all public school teachers here, but as for me and my classroom, we will follow the path of peace. No. Damn. Gun.

Ever.

How Do I Stop a God Fight?

Help! Help! It's a deity smack-down in my living room! And one of them is a true expert at ruining furniture!

The bored God Huracan arrived here in New Jersey today, and Cloacina, my dear Goddess, greeted him with the cold fury of a Roman statue!

There's a lot to be said for resting bitch face.

Cloacina was recently charged with keeping our nation's waterways clean, having been given my spare bedroom as Her personal sanctum. She taught herself how to turn on the t.v. with the remote (something I have never been capable of doing). Cloacina, therefore, has watched both Harvey and Irma, nonstop, clicking from Fox News to MSNBC, to CNN and the nightly networks. OMBG, is she pissed!

And here comes Huracan, winded and worn out after a double booking.

Hey, you two, can you take it outside? Cloacina, remember that you shouldn't shoot a gun at a hurricane!

For the love of fruit flies. How can I mediate this thing?

Okay. Okay. Both of you. Take a deep breath and handle this like deities, not roller derby contestants. Thank you.

Huracan, you really outdid yourself. I mean, really really outdid yourself. However (please listen, Goddess Cloacina), You are not responsible for Your ascendant power. Yes, You've gotten larger, and greedier, and more destructive -- which is Your duty and prerogative as a hurricane God. But that level of destruction You're so proud of? How much of it is the product of humankind? Look: they built on barrier islands, low-lying keys, floodplains and in swamps. Places Your original praise and worship team never populated in numbers, out of respect for You. You can't take credit for all this devastation. It's hubris.

Cloacina, I'll bet you know enough Greek to recognize the word hubris.

Now, Cloacina, I know Huracan doesn't want to hear this (especially in His severely weakened state ... just a little mist over Jersey). But those same humans who had their shoreline properties, their boats and their businesses reduced to splinters, will go right back and fix everything up again! Yes, no matter how foolish it is to live in a part of the world that can be leveled by a bored god, people are going to do it. Which means that yes, they will have to boil their water for awhile. (I know, I know how angry that makes you, Goddess!) But they'll fix it. Until the next time. They will. And it won't take long, either. Our government will pay for everything, even though the people asking for the money generally don't want to pay taxes or regulate polluters.

What we have here is a failure to communicate between two fundamentally opposed deities. Huracan was once worshiped as a destroyer, His praise-and-worship team truly fearful of Him, and justifiably so. Cloacina, at the other end of the spectrum, drew all of Her respect from Her willingness to help clean up the human world. Add to that the fact that these two deities are from completely different pantheons from different continents, and you've got a whole lot of area for dissent.

Huracan, you cannot take complete credit for this. Humans are stupid.

Cloacina, calm down. Humans will fix this so they can go on being stupid.

Which means, Huracan, that You'll get many more shots at the same target.

But Cloacina, let Huracan do the shooting! Don't You shoot Him.

Can we just settle down and get along? Tell You what: I'll go get some Chinese carryout and confuse both of You utterly. While I'm gone, don't You dare stain my upholstery!

Bucket List Cross-Out

I just love the Chesapeake Bay! It's beautiful and nearby.

EXHIBIT A: WOWSA, LA CHESAPEAKE!

The only part of the Chesapeake Bay I haven't visited at length is the very bottom of it (geographically), where it spreads out and flows into the briny Atlantic. There are two islands, Smith and Tangier, that I always wanted to see. Lately I've changed my mind about that. I've crossed these two intriguing communities off my bucket list, thank you very much.

EXHIBIT B: LOWER CHESAPEAKE WITH TANGIER ISLAND NEAR THE TOP

Turns out that Tangier Island has two problems. First, it's disappearing at the rate of 15 feet a year. Second, it's voters went for Donald Trump by 87 percent. Apparently none of the residents of Tangier Island believe in climate change. What's happening to their island is simply erosion, and they're looking to our current commander-in-chief to build them a Wall (yes, that again) around their whole island.

After being on CNN and saying that he loved Donald Trump like family, the mayor of Tangier Island got a call from the president. Does this surprise you? El presidente loves him some filial devotion!

You might think I am making this up, but honestly DT called the mayor of Tangier Island (who was out crabbing) and said to him, "Don't worry about your island. It's been around for hundreds of years, and it will be around for hundreds of years to come."

Of course that's as much truth as our fearless leader usually offers, so what's new?

My friends, delightful Tangier Island is in the damn bull's eye. With erosion (yes, it happens) and sea level rise, this is a place where you soon won't need a boat to catch crabs, they'll be skittering across your front porch. One Cat 5 hurricane will destroy it completely. A wall might slow the whole thing down, but forget about it. Done deal.

Might have been a nice place to go for a long weekend before the deluge, but I'll pass. Anyone who can live on a small island and not pay attention to science is just too blithe for me.

PS - Our president is a moron.

SNBN

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," swirling in the Moronic Inferno since 2005! My name is Anne Johnson, and I work with young people in a society setting.

Last night I dreamed that I was getting my score back on the life-altering examination that my young people just sat through. I looked at my results, and it was just enough to proceed. Right on the money. But I was red-hot furious. "Look at this result!" I shouted. "I went to Johns Hopkins and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and this is the best I can do on this thing? What about my young people?"

Pardon me for being so oblique in my vocabulary. But you see, the creators of a certain widespread examination for young people is actively mining social media for peoples' opinions of said exam. Any person who works with young people who says anything about the examination will be investigated for possible discipline. This is an attempt to silence dissenters who feel this examination makes young people sick, not better.

With a respectful nod to Voldemort, I will call this t  and  e  and  s  and  t "The Examination That Shall Not Be Named." And then, as this is a certain sector of society known for copious acronyms, I'll call it SNBN, for Shall Not Be Named.

There are some hallmarks of SNBN that boggle the mind.

One is that it's so hard that young people will be forced to learn more to meet its demands. This is backwards thinking to me. I feel like all the excitement and interest can be sucked out of something if it's too difficult to understand. Young people tend to give up easily on stuff they think they will never get, stuff that they see no point to. Of course, if they do give up and cry "uncle," the burden and blame will fall upon the folks like me who are working with the young people to help them proceed in life.

Two is that every young person who takes SNBN becomes part of a pool of information to be stored by the federal and state governments. We don't know who will be able to swim in that pool; namely, whether or not future employers will be able to see the Score! s. We don't know who the government will sell the information to, either. We do know that the government will use it to ... how can I say this to sneak it past Older Male Sibling? ... map the navigation and chart the course of our striplings.

Last, but to my mind the most pernicious, is that SNBN is being administered and Score! d by computers. Basically where SNBN is concerned, it's not what you have to say that counts, it's whether or not it's said according to arbitrary, hidebound, and confusing vernacular. Although one part of SNBN asks young people to create fiction, it is Judge ing for skills that used to be inculcated using diagrams and smart slaps with the ruler across the hand if not completed properly.

To me, all of this runs counter to the kind of  imagination and spontaneous thinking that has been a hallmark of this nation. Suddenly, young people are no longer individuals, they are d plus a plus t plus a. And what they have to say, no matter how creative, will not matter, because how can you entertain a computer?

Our society is becoming a vicious place where your numbers will drive everything you achieve. If your numbers go down, you will be sacked. A world of mercy and understanding will be washed away as pre-Christmas Scrooges rule the day.

I weep for my young people. I really do. And since it's International Water Day, I'll add that all of this will reach critical mass when that most essential of commodities -- water -- becomes scarce. Hope I'm wrong, but could a day come when your SCORE! on SNBN will determine how many gallons of essential fluids you receive?

Hoping I have foiled attempts to divine my purpose I remain,

Anne Johnson

Keeping the Hallowed in Halloween: Weak War on Witches

What do you do if you can't beat them or join them? This is the dilemma facing modern Christian fundamentalists when they come face-to-face with Wicca.

I've been building fires with reading a slight little tome called Halloween: What's a Christian To Do? I picked it up at the Friends of the Snobville Library book sale back in September.

The gist of the book is that Halloween can lead your kid down the dark road to doom. Unfortunately it's hard to make a case when presented with the basic tenets of "witches."

Witches are the main topic of Chapter Two: "Witches, Ghosts, and Things That Go Bump in the Night." Hard-hitting evangelist Steve Russo uses the flawless scholarship of Sassy magazine to define, and quote, Wiccans.

"Even though for some people the feminist and environmental aspects of witchcraft are enticing," Russo writes thoughtfully, "the big draw is power." Then he quotes Laurie Cabot, the witch who was interviewed in Sassy: "Witchcraft is a connectedness to everything, so you can center yourself and feel as if you can control some of your environment a little more. I think teenagers today need their own power. They need to feel that they can help shape the future."

So, is teenage empowerment a bad thing? Is it not practiced in Christianity? Did they cancel that show called Hour of Power? I don't recall any witches on that.

It gets better.

If you're anti-Wiccan, which you must be if you're Christian (Russo 29), you basically have to come out against caring for the environment.

This is worth quoting at length, because it basically reminds us that good Christians are indifferent to the planet:

"Another popular avenue for witchcraft today is the environmental movement. There has never been a generation so environmentally conscious as the generation of today. And witches are at the forefront of encouraging us to 'be nice to Mother Earth.' While we certainly need to do our part in being environmentally sensitive, we need to be careful not to get things out of balance.

"As Christians God has called us to be caretakers of the planet [author offers requisite Bible verse]. But the Bible also teaches us to worship the Creator, not the creation. In Exodus 20:3, God says, 'You shall have no other gods before me.' Don't be deceived: While witchcraft may appear to be cool and helping the environment, it goes about it in all the wrong ways."

What are the "right ways?"

"Don't be confused by Laurie Cabot and other witches who sprinkle bits of truth in their concern about the environment, equal treatment of the sexes, and other problems that plague our society. We all need to do our part in making positive changes to society, but we also need to take our direction from the absolute truth of God's word and let Him help us solve the difficult issues of life."

Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Is he saying, "Do as witches do, just give God the credit, because he's God?" I thought so.

This chapter also contains the same tired, old strictures against soothsaying and fortune-telling that always get thrown into Christian tracts about witches. Yes indeed, the Bible is very strict about fortune-telling. You are not supposed to do it.

I've been thinking about the Bible. I've read it. Seems to me, it basically contains four elements:

1. Stories
2. Spiritual guidance
3. Songs
4. Prophecies

How are prophecies different from fortune-telling? Damn if I know. I guess fortune-telling is okay if you're Daniel or the Apostle John. But not okay otherwise. Why the exception to the rule? Shouldn't a rule be ... well ... a rule?

Thus ends another weak attempt to discredit a vibrant religion that seeks to empower people to enact positive social change and sound environmental policies. Just because we want to give credit to the Goddess and not a god who is indifferent at best, and hostile at worst, to the notion that humankind is of the Earth, and not in charge of the Earth, we're going about it "the wrong way."

This book is a trade paperback, which means the paper is better stock. It will recycle nicely.

Say WHAAAAT? Keeping the Hallowed in Halloween

The nights are growing dark and cold. There are evil spirits in the air, everywhere! Quick! Let's sacrifice little Jimmy, kill him and roast him to appease these evil spirits! The more grisly the killing, the more the spirits will be pleased.

Oh, please.

Welcome to the world of Steve Russo, my friends. Without citing a single source, his book (pictured above) gives the following description of pre-Christian Samhain rites:

"As the power of the sun waned with the onset of winter, people were afraid that life itself, and not just the year, was coming to an end. They imagined that the night was haunted by ghosts and witches, and more particularly by the spirits of the dead who were revisiting their earthly homes. With the supernatural rampant, the night was full of danger and omens. Concerned for their survival, people employed every possible means to fortify the flames of the dying sun and to chase away, or at least pacify, the evil spirits. For this purpose they lit bonfires and sometimes offered gruesome sacrifices."

Well, how the Hell do I know it wasn't that way?

Okay, well, em. Doesn't take a rocket scientist, does it?

Any "holy day" that features gruesome sacrifices and dread of evil would surely be wiped from the face of the calendar the minute some benign missionary wandered onto the scene and said, "Jesus will love you better if you don't sacrifice the virgin."

Even Steve Russo has to begrudgingly admit that early Christian missionaries co-opted Halloween. The Christian religion would never have taken hold in the British Isles if its first converts had said, "Oh, by the way ... That harvest-home festival you have every year? You know, the one at which you welcome your departed granny and give her some food and build her a fire? That's got to go. Jesus didn't do that."

I don't know. I wasn't there. (Neither was Steve Russo.) But I think that Halloween has always been a time of the thinning of the Veil, a time in which to commune with Spirit. The difference is in the absolutes. It makes sense to welcome departed Granny with open arms while doing some charm work against the criminal who killed your dog ... whose spirit is also roaming the night. Basically, Chapter 1 of Halloween: What's a Christian To Do?  falls into that favorite dogmatic rut; namely, optimizing the negative while ignoring the positive.

The above comic, saying this ironically, of course, is a Chick tract that brings visuals to the worldview of Halloween as a savage enterprise steeped in blood and gore. Only trouble is, when you don't half do your homework, you get a half-score, which is an F.

Good and evil exist side-by-side at Samhain, just as they do any other time of the year. Balance is the key. My non-educated guess is that Samhain was a very important day and evening of Thanksgiving, with fires and feasts meant to be shared with the Ancestors.

And whether or not it was that way in pre-Christian Celtic countries, that's the way it is now for modern Pagans. Do not paint this with the brush of demons, Steve Russo. This is the hour when we assess what we've reaped and share it with our friends and our Ancestors.

Oh, and don't you love Chick tracts? Pumpkins are a New World plant. They did not exist in Celtic countries prior to the voyages of Columbus et. al. It's a minor quibble, but if you can't get the small stuff right, why should we trust you with the big ideas?

Let's keep the Hallowed in Halloween, my friends. Can I get an Awen?

Public School Education Prior to 1975

Wow, this one sounds dull as dirt, doesn't it? But hold tight, because don't I always offer you some laughs?

I am in a unique position to evaluate this premise. My public school education began in 1964 and ended in 1977. Spoiler alert: I didn't learn diddly squat about guns.

I did learn stuff, though.

I learned how to turn chicken eggs in an incubator so that the chicks would develop properly. By doing this, I learned that birds turn their eggs. This stuck with me. That was kindergarten.

Grade 1 I learned to love snowfall. The teacher let me stay in the hallway and watch a snow storm, all by myself, while the other kids had recess in the classroom.

Second grade I learned that being left-handed sucks. Cursive writing was a horror.

Third grade I memorized all my times tables. I understand they do it differently now. Rote worked for me. We had flash cards and practiced at home.

Fourth grade I learned that there was an author named Laura Ingalls Wilder, and that she wrote fabulous books about growing up on the prairie in the 19th century. Literally, I think all I did in fourth grade was read "Little House" books and solve long division problems.  Oh yeah! The teacher was so furious that none of us knew the words to the National Anthem that she gave us one night to memorize it and then made all 31 of us sing it, solo, the next day.

In fifth grade I learned that if you can't play kickball very well, you can earn props from the more athletic kids by being a fair umpire.

In sixth grade *spoiler alert kinda gross* I learned in health class that I had been putting certain feminine items on backwards. My mother never showed me.

In seventh grade I didn't learn much of anything, because my mother had a major nervous breakdown, and that made me irritable, distracted, and prone to acting out in school. I would have been keenly interested in gun use classes at this moment in my life, but I didn't get them. There was no gun in my home, at any stage of my life, and that's why I'm sitting here writing this today. I might be dead otherwise.

Eighth grade I remember looking in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature about a movie star and then getting magazine articles from the school library to write a report. It's funny how things work. I wound up making a decent living doing exactly that task, from 1984 until 2005.

In ninth grade biology class, I learned that eating a balanced diet every day makes multivitamins unnecessary.

When I was in tenth grade I learned that it's possible to fall head-over-heels, deeply in love with someone that modern society would bar me from pursuing.

Again in 11th grade, life was chaos at home, so I didn't learn anything. As with seventh grade, I would have remembered vividly having gun lessons.

In my senior year of high school, I learned a little bit of Latin. I wish I had studied it from freshman year forward. It's really great, and not just because of the bored gods.


So there, not terribly abridged, is my public school education! It did not include gun safety or gun use.

You know what? I'm going to tag this post with a "moron" label. Think about that quote above. In order to teach gun safety, there would have to be a gun or guns in school. That gun would have to be a common enough model to have readily available ammunition. For the love of fruit flies! What an explosive situation!

So, now addressing the moron who said I had gun safety classes in school, I reply most forcibly: Oh HELL no, I did not! The closest I got to a safety lesson upon which my life depended was in geology class, where we learned protective measures for exploring wild caves. Bite me, Mr. Gun Owner. There was a war being fought almost throughout the entirety of my public schooling. Three major political figures were assassinated. People thought differently about firearms in those days. Trust me on that, reader.

I'm Liking Penguin Santa

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Fa la la la la ... la la la LOL. It's the most wonderful time of the year ... for morons.

There's something about this seasonal holiday, name it what you will, that saturates the atmosphere with extra crazy juice. It makes even the clearest-headed amongst us wacky. That being the case, you can imagine what it does to people who are already walking in a weirder wonderland.

Below I have taken the time and the trouble (unusual for this blogger) to load a viral interview in which Fox News moron par excellence commentator Megyn Kelly assures all young viewers out there that both Santa Claus and Jesus are white. This need to calm the nerves of the Caucasian population came about because some blogger (alas, not me) complained that, growing up, she had felt excluded from Christmas because she is black and Santa Claus is white.

One or the other of those fellow morons talking heads on the panel suggests that maybe we should have a penguin Santa, since penguins are both black and white. Tra la la! What an excellent idea! My three readers know how I feel about birds! Penguin Santa, take a bow!

Now, the sugar plum faeries, who are of no particular racial hue, have composed this little holiday carol for all you boys and girls who either think Santa Claus is a spirit who lives within your heart, or think Santa Claus ought to be a penguin!

Up on the house top, just because
Here comes Penguin Santa Claus,
Down through the chimney with lots of toys
All for inclusion, girls and boys!

Ho ho ho! Fox oughta go,
Ho ho ho! Fox oughta go...

Up on the house top, quick quick quick,
Santa's a penguin, that's the trick!

You know, even as a little kid I found it hard to buy the notion that Santa Claus was a fat old man who covered the whole earth and had toys for everyone out of a sled pulled by a few deer. But gosh ... a happy penguin flying here and there, dropping stuff down chimneys ... that's plausible.

Better yet ... now that Santa is a penguin, Spare can get a job at the mall as one of its "helpers!" Tout va bien.

Clothes for the Fool Kids

Have you ever shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch? If so, I have some great free advice for you. Go to the nearest Goodwill, find the sloppiest Size Small clothes, take them home and beat them with a rake, and you can claim they're Abercrombie & Fitch while saving enough to treat yourself to dinner!

And enjoy that dinner, knowing that A&F only wants to attract the "cool kids."

These are the exact words of A&F's CEO, Michael "Beanpole" Jeffries:

"We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes]. And they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."

The largest size A&F carries is a 10. If you need a larger size, you aren't welcome. "Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. You don't alienate anybody, but you don't excite anybody, either." (Again the gallant Jeffries)

You know what alienates us here at "The Gods Are Bored?" Seeing a bunch of spoiled, rich, skinny girls, all attired nearly (but not completely) identically from Abercrombie's shelves. I've gone into that store once or twice to gawk. The price tags for carefully destroyed-looking clothing are ridiculous. And the stuff is about as exciting as organic paper towels.

People are making much of the exclusion of fat kids in this Abercrombie equation. It's despicable. But I find it even more despicable that this CEO says his company is going after "the attractive all-American kid with a lot of friends." A&F is going after nothing of the sort. They're going after insecure young people who want others to make decisions for them. At a very high ticket price. Where he sees "a lot of friends," I see "a herd of sheep."

The growing hipster movement is a backlash against this kind of overpriced, uniform slopwear. More and more I see young, artsy-looking people shopping at the Goodwill, trying to find a look that is unique and affordable.

My daughters The Heir and The Spare have been way ahead of the curve when it comes to fashion choice. No Abercrombie for them! Urban Outfitters? You kidding me? My daughters can't afford to look like everybody else! And they like a little color in their lives. A little lace. A Size 14 top with a great pattern, belted! A nautical hoodie from who-knows-where with cute flags on it! You know where they get their stuff? Goodwill!

No one has more friends than Spare, and a favored girls' night out in her posse is a trip to ... yes, indeed ... Goodwill.

Abercrombie & Fitch sells clothing to kids who are afraid of themselves and others. They want to be thin, because that's what they see in the fashion magazines. They want to be young, because old people are gross. They want to be frumpy, because their friends are all frumpy, and if they can't afford to pay for frumpiness, they'll be unpopular, unattractive ... un-all-American.

Who are you attracting, Abercrombie? The cool kids or the fool kids? MORONS.

On Parenting Princesses

Well, my lieblings, I am off tomorrow to the May Day Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm! Won't you join me? I'll be easy enough to find. Everyone else dresses up like a faerie, or a steampunk, or a Ren Faire. Me, I'm the gal in the neon tie-dye, neck to ankle. I'll be hard to miss, even in such colorful, glittering surroundings. Look for me! Come say howdy! I'll even have a little gift for you, if you tell me you read "The Gods Are Bored" and think it stinks up the joint is uncommonly witty and par excellence!

The other day an article was circulating on Facebook about women who are making a goodly pile of ducats by dressing like princesses and going to little girls' birthday parties. Of course, not everyone likes the idea of little girls dressing up like princesses. Princesses, in seems, are needy and greedy and helpless hand-wringers in the face of danger.

Tell it to Elizabeth I of England.

I suppose these same princess-haters would feel that little girls dressed up like faeries isn't a good idea, either. To which I say, "pish tosh." In exactly that order.

Have you ever seen a team of soccer players take to the field? Are they routinely dressed in drab gray? Are they never needy (even when injured), or greedy (when pursuing a victory), or helpless hand-wringers (when losing)? Have you ever seen a kid's eyes light up when they are handed a varsity jacket all decked out with embroidered school lettering and mascot?

People like to dress up. You choose a tribe, or a team, or a social set, and you dress to the nines for that group of people. If there are numerous little girls who want to dress like princesses, or faeries, what does that determine about their futures? Maybe that they'll have some imagination? Maybe that they'll shop at Nordstrom's? I think the former and not the latter.

It might just be me, but I am up-to-the-brim irritated with the more rugged type of parent who bemoans the "bad influence" of princess parties on their rugged little offspring. I have outfitted female offspring for hiking and biking, and let me tell you, it's expensive. One of the most costly clothing items I ever acquired for either of my daughters was a pair of hiking boots. I got them for Heir, and thank goodness they fit me, because she grew out of them!

Speaking of Heir, she dressed like a princess when she was a tot. It didn't last. Two summers ago she found herself ascending the craggy peaks of Norway, like some ancient and fearsome Viking. She lugs her bike onto the El train so she can ride through downtown Philly to get to her job. She considers herself dressed up if she puts on a clean pair of jeans.

Spare dressed up like a princess too. It stuck. She's a thrift store fashion plate, the sartorial envy of her peers. And she will be at the Fairie Festival in a radiant, gooey faerie gown with iridescent wings. She is 19.  But a word to the wise. This gal is no helpless hand-wringer. She takes charge. Like a boss. Like a princess.

The moral of this sermon is, don't be so quick to disrespect a princess party. You go right ahead and buy state-of-the-art scuba gear for your tot instead of sequins and toille. She may yet grow up to be a princess, having cut her teeth on the brave and exhilarating notion that she is a living Ariel.

Boxing without Referee: Promised Land

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," proudly replacing Roger Ebert as the premiere film reviewer of modern America! Why, yes, film-goer! About twice a year you can come to this site and find a fabulous movie to attend. Or not.

A few weeks ago I went to see "Lincoln." The theater was crowded, and the sound was so low I was worried that I was losing my hearing. But I digress. Before the showing of "Lincoln," one of the eight previews was for a film called "Promised Land." If Hal Holbrook and that cute guy from "Office" are in it, and it's filmed in Pennsylvania, and it's about fracking, I'll suffer through Matt Damon.

Last night Mr. J and I went to see "Promised Land." And take it from someone who despises the entire idea of hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus Shale in rural areas of Pennsylvania: This film stinks.

They say that the documentary "Gas Land" is slanted. Well, there's slanted, and there's horizontal. I don't think I have ever sat through a more poorly-acted, completely unbalanced, and shamelessly overdone piece of propaganda -- and I vividly remember Mel Gibson in "The River."

Mr. J and I would have been better served to stay home and watch the "Pawn Stars" marathon.

I'm going to spoil this movie rotten so you won't waste your precious ducats on it. Matt Damon and Frances McDormand are two egg-sucking corporate scoundrels sent into a bucolic hamlet somewhere in a part of Pennsylvania that looks absolutely nothing like the many parts of Pennsylvania I've seen. Must be in the north somewhere. It's their job to sign up dumb yokels (if it's rural, there have to be yokels, right?) for rights to frack the land.

Enter the noble Hal Holbrook who, in this film, has all kinds of fancy engineering degrees from places like Columbia and Yale. Except now, doddering though he is, he's teaching science at the run-down high school. Noble Hal leads a group of stalwart farmers who cleave to the land ... and urges some kind of "vote" on the issue.

Then enters the young cutie from "The Office." As befits a blogger, I know that his name is John Krazinski because I just asked Spare, but she couldn't spell it off the top of her head, so. Okay. This is a blog. Spelling doesn't count.

John is an environmentalist who has a small little outfit called "Athena." (Readers, trust me on this. Athena did not sign off on this use of Her name.) He takes some hush money from ravenous Matt and Frances, and then he uses it to make signs with dead cows. "Say No to Global."

Ah, "Global." The New World Order come to wreck the Pennsylvania hinterlands.

Spoiler non-alert. John the environmentalist turns out to be yet another pawn in the game of life, sent by Global Gas Galacticus, LL.C. to support clueless Matt and Frances in a sneaky way. In the end, Matt turns hero and tells the town to vote down gas drilling. Exit into sunset with a local gal who came home to her beloved family farm.

For my money, even this gal's farm vista didn't do Pennsylvania proud. Where was this turkey filmed?

Fracking is very controversial, and there are plenty of Pennsylvanians already who gladly go to hearings and lectures to show pictures of their wasteland properties and tell stories of their personal woes. There are also economists who use their economist smartness to show that all the jobs being promised to rural areas are temporary in nature: Once the wells are drilled, the drillers move on. Evidence is abundant and growing to prove that the process is faulty and extremely poisonous even on its good days.

(When a couple of gas company geeks tried to hold a Town Hall meeting in the township where my dear former farm was located, they drew a standing-room, well-informed crowd who promptly booed their PowerPoint presentation and told them to toddle. There will be no fracking in or near Artemas, PA 17211.)

So, why would presumably smart actors like Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, and Hal Holbrook sign up for such a piss-poor two hours of treacle? How can you make a film about fracking without a single shot of a gas pipeline or drilling rig? There are plenty in Pennsy just now.

I dunno. But viewer, if you drop your ducats on this flop, be forewarned. It's you that's the chump, not the poor yokels of Who-Knows-Where, PA.

The proof is in the producing. "Promised Land" was financed by Imagenation Abu Dhabi. Like, seriously. I am not making this up. Even the Joker and the Penguin aren't this duplicitous.

So a movie bashing fracking, and doing so with a monumental propagandizing stupidity, was financed by our finest supplier of overseas crude oil. Priceless.

I'm surprised Massey Coal didn't send in a stipend.

Long sermon short, it's always refreshing to see one despoiler of the environment try to knock off another despoiler of the environment. Free advice? Use less energy, beginning with saving the gas it would take you to drive to the theater to see "Promised Land."

When One Day Isn't Enough

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Gosh, it's good to see you! We should plan some get-togethers, don't you think? How about fifty? Oh shucks, let's shoot for 100! And let's give ourselves a time table. One hundred get-togethers in a year. Sound good? Roll up your sleeves, and we'll start planning!

With little else to do Friday afternoon after returning home from work, I glanced at the Snobville Weekly Tattler, which doesn't really tattle -- and if it did, whoa baby, it could tattle like Decibel in a snit.

Anyway, the puffy little Tattler had a long story about the sorry fact that Snobville will turn 300 next year. (For those of your living in other parts of the world, we people on the East Coast of America often get socked with tricentennials like this.)

The people who don't have a life and never will civic-minded citizens of Snobville are planning events to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the borough. To say they are going overboard only works if you think of the Titanic.

Snobville wants to have 100 commemorative events in 2013. Yes, one hundred. That's almost one every three days! This is overkill so stunning that even a vulture couldn't clean it up.

Funny thing is, anyone, even the most dedicated huckster civic booster, would have trouble drumming up that many celebrations for a town of 11,000 people.

I think I should help. Here are some rock-solid suggestions.

1. Hold the Philadelphia Mummers Parade in Snobville! Wowsa! Nothing like starting off the year with fleets of school buses transporting drunken revelers and/or sequined and be-feathered musicians by the thousands, into the charming Main Street! This would not only put Snobville on the map for all time, it would create a huge mess, snarl traffic even on a holiday, and spread mayhem far and wide, rather than concentrating it in a few homes of wealthy parents who are away skiing while their kids party like rock stars.

2. Allow the teenagers to party like rock stars. This would please a significant portion of the populace, including many parents. This event could be held three times a month, more often in football season. Which brings me to suggestion three,

3. Enough with the "dry town!" Start issuing liquor licenses to the moribund restaurants! We should have at least two big sports bars on Main Street, considering that we're a town of 11,000 people -- with at least 1,000 fake ID cards floating about.

4. Dinosaur day. And day. And day. Snobville is famous for the discovery of a dinosaur, Snobovaurus rex. So, let's have a dino day! But wait. There are 100 event slots to be filled! Therefore, let's do:
     A. S. rex day, as above
     B. Tyrannosaurus rex day
     C. Megalodon day (Spare, you'll handle this one, right?)
     D. Flintstones day (with go-kart race)
     E. Land of the Lost day ... mmmm ... one could argue that every day in Snobville is this day.
     F. Asteroid day -- we all act like it's the end of a geological epoch, which is more or less what this extreme festivity sounds like

Gosh, I'm out of breath, and I only got five dino themes! Help me out, people!

If I can rip my tongue out of my cheek with both hands for a moment, I would like to say that I wonder what kind of religious events are planned for this overdone shindig? The foundress of Snobville, Hortitia Louise Snobbe, was a Quaker. Are the religious events going to be restricted to the Society of Friends? If yes, I'm fine with that. If no, then the wretches who run things City Council should make this clear, in order for multiple Pagan groups to participate in borough-strengthening Rituals.

I am not being funny about that. If 100 events are planned, at least some of them should satisfy some of the people, some of the time.
    

Put It to the Test

Good morning from "The Gods Are Bored!" I just read the most depressing article about county fairs in the New York Times. The drought in the heartland has wreaked havoc on prize-winning zucchinis and 200+ pound pumpkins.

For those of us who grew up eagerly anticipating the county fair, this is a sad story that illustrates the scary commencement of a new Dust Bowl in our primary food-producing regions.

But, hey! Let's all be distracted by silly stuff!

Just in on Yahoo News:

Johan Huibers, a Dutch contractor and millionaire has reproduced a copy of Noah's Ark, built the proportions laid out in The Bible.

Here it is:

EXHIBIT A: NOAH'S ARK REBUILT
 
Now, recall that we here at "The Gods Are Bored" believe in "production for use." This is why we abhor firearms and even those bottle rockets that take off peoples' fingers on the Fourth of July.

In this case, though, I think "production for use" applies.

Considering that the world could be headed into a new era of catastrophic flooding, I think we should pack up that ark with two of every living creature on the Earth. Of course we need also to leave room for the dinosaurs. We can calculate that space by using the existing dinosaur fossil skeletons for measurement purposes.

Rounding up insects will be difficult and, at times, perilous. However, it is not fair to exclude them, since they are the largest family of creatures on the planet. I volunteer a stink bug, gender unknown, and a pair of silverfish I found mating in one of Mr. J's boxes of newspaper clippings. Mosquitoes can fly, and there are too many in my yard to catch, so I'm going to leave that chore for someone else.

We also need to make comfortable space for eight people. And a storehouse for food supplies, 40 days' worth, including all the vast variety of foodstuffs animals nosh on. I have a shrubbery that could keep a pair of leaf miners going for 40 days. They can have it if they dig it up and take it away.

There you have it. Production for use. Load up that ark, set it adrift in the Sargasso Sea, and look for the snow-white dove bearing an olive branch. A sodden olive branch bearing no fruit, because it was submerged and drowned.

Hmmm. Problem there. All the plants drowned! How are we going to feed the leaf miners until new shrubbery can be nursed to maturity? 

Every Happy Dictator Should have a Mommy and a Daddy

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," and welcome to Anniebolic Steroid Anne! GrrrrrRRRRRrrrrr!

How angry am I? I've been blackballed from Anger Management classes!

Just kidding. But I am just. a. bit. out. of. the. sweetness. and. light. place.

I am an absolute sucker for people sticking their hands out for money. I have finally controlled the urge to give to the Knights of Columbus and the Salvation Army, but quite often I'll drop a dollar into a jar for a cause I know nothing about.


Thus Spare and I were at the local grocery emporium the other day, in a big ol' hurry, and there was a guy asking for change and handing out orange bookmarks. Never saw the guy, never heard of his outfit --New Jersey Council for Children's Rights. Children's rights? Well, everyone's in favor of children's rights ... oh ... except for genocidal dictators, those kind of vermin. So I dropped 27 cents into the jar.

The guy gave Spare a bookmark, saying, "You might need this." (Nope. Graduating on Tuesday.)

We got into the car, and Spare said, "Oh, crap! Look at this thing!"

There was a graphic of a little kid, with each hand being held by an unseen adult. "Because every child needs a mommy and a daddy."

Time to call Anniebolic Steroid Anne!

Last night when I ran into the store to get a bottle of olive oil, the dude wasn't around. So I scattered the change on the sidewalk. Hey, a kid has a right to a candy bar ... wasn't much more money in there than that.

Today I sat down with a little challenge. The kind of thing a school teacher can do in the summertime.

Here are some folks who grew up in traditional two-parent families (that being a mommy and daddy):

Adolf Hitler
Josef Stalin
Mao Zedong
Pol Pot
Mussolini
Emperor Hirohito

Fidel Castro did grow up in a single-parent household. Small potatoes compared to our nice, stable list above.

Granted, I did use Wikipedia, which I usually don't. But even if one or two of those dudes didn't deserve their Wiki press, that's still a pretty jaw-dropping load of genocidal maniacs.

I didn't even start on the serial killers, your basic Jeffrey Dahmers and Ted Bundys.

Suffice it to say that many children who got in the way of the group above had their rights (and their lives) snatched from them in an untimely and unsavory manner.

So, Anniebolic Anne made up a little list of these heartless dictators and went back to the store. First, she asked for her 27 cents back (even though she spilled more than that on the pavement yesterday). Then she informed the dude (same guy) that oftentimes children are far better served if one parent removes them from the daily battering and abuse of the other (personal experience).

I gave him back the book mark and said, "You are basically slapping the faces of a third of the people who walk into this store."

He asked if he could keep the list. I graciously allowed him to do so.

Then he asked if I had ever read the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Good news! I didn't punch him.