Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

East Coast Vulture Festival Children's Fair is Returning to Wenonah in 2011

I've got a case of Crazy Luke blues. Hoping Imbolc will shake them out of me.

 

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we got a little over a foot of snow in five hours last night. We're talking thunder snow. It was nuts.

Before we got the snow, we had about an hour of sleet. Needless to say, today is a snow day...

Only one more snow day before the Fairie Festival is impacted....

Anyway, I'm a sucker for a snow day. Here's what I like about them.

*All of the neighbors I never get to see come out to shovel. It's an impromptu block party without the pasta salad. And since so many of us who were shoveling this morning are secondary earners in the education field, we had a great gabfest about Governor Fat Ass and his assault on the public school teachers who are the second best in the nation.

*I have a neighbor named Mr. F who is a gadget junkie. He can be really annoying with his leaf blower in the fall. But when a heavy snow falls, and the plow double-buries the cars, Mr. F is a Gods send. He has a heavy duty snow blower, and he loves to use it. He cleared my driveway. Now I'm making him brownies.

*Other than the plowed-in driveway, the rest of the shoveling fell to me. Mr. J is ill, and Spare is a wee little thing. She opted to clean up the kitchen and make lunch. So out I went to ply the snow shovel.

When I first moved to Snobville,  I was so dismayed about the tiny little property. I can sit at my dining room table and see my neighbor making her supper next door. If the windows are open, we can converse. Tight quarters.

But when a foot of heavy snow falls, how much sidewalk and driveway do you want to be responsible for? I'll tell you: not much more than I have.

I'm a Cailleach of a certain age, not in very good shape, and I cleared the front porch, sidewalk, and cars (and around the cars) all by myself. Without Mr. F's help I would still be out there, wrestling with the heaviest piles. But as it was, I got my little section of sidewalk all done in about two hours. Came in and took the Advil right away.

And oh, is it lovely this morning on my street! The thick snow is coating all the branches and shrouding everything on the ground. Kids are strutting by with their sleds, all dressed in bright winter wear. The sun has come out, and everything looks so shiny and clean!

When my Fairie Festival plans become impacted by this unusually snowy weather pattern, I will look back on mornings like this one and remember that big snowstorms have their special sweetness. The bright sheen of snow against sky, the kindness of neighbors, the joy of two hours' extra sleep.

We take what we can out of life. Snow days are gifts. Blessed be to Beautiful Sedna for sending them!

Staunton, Virginia is one of the portals to the Skyline Drive. It is also a Washington, DC exurb full of museum quality morons.

The residents of Staunton are being visited by a winter flock of vultures. Staunton's response to the visitation is to try to scare off -- or kill -- the buzzards.

And the reporter at the Washington Post who wrote about Staunton's big, ugly problem was too lazy to Google and try to find other towns with similar winter vulture roosts.

If the Washington Post reporter of record, Darryl Spears, had done his proper research, he would have discovered the enlightened borough of Wenonah, NJ, which inherited a winter vulture population and has since made a clear profit of $10,000 on an annual Vulture Festival.

Speaking of the ever-popular East Coast Vulture Festival, it will be held on the first Saturday in March, 2011. At this festival, the children of the region will learn the following Religious Truths:

*Just because someone's droppings stink, that doesn't make them bad.
*Vultures do not kill kittens, puppies, or anything that isn't already almost dead.
*Vulture roosts are a WINTER season event only. As in winter, when it's cold. In the spring, they disperse.
*Vultures do not kill pine trees.
*Vultures only throw up on people who try to shoot them with paintballs. (LOL, that was in the Washington Post story. Someone had it coming!)
*Vultures are a protected species. If you kill one, be prepared. You're gonna pay.

On many occasions I have mused about the possibility of moving back into the Blue Ridge Mountains, to some bucolic McMansion-laden, Walmart-saturated bedroom suburb like Staunton, Virginia. But then I look around me at New Jersey ... sagging old New Jersey, with its refineries and its Snookies and its fat Republican governors, and I say, "Wait. This is Jersey. We treat vultures with respect."

Home sweet home.

Staunton, next time I go to the Skyline Drive, you won't even smell the exhaust from my car!

 

 

 







 

 

 






Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we delightfully dally with deities daily! If you need a bored god (or goddess), just check the sidebar, where we feature a new one every day.

Today, however, we put aside our deity devotions for more worldly matters.

As I drove to work this morning, I learned that Jesse Ventura is suing the federal government for the pat-downs he receives at airports.

Probably very few of you have the fond feelings I hold for Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Back in the 1980s, after he had been a Navy Seal -- but before he became governor of Minnesota -- Jesse was a professional wrestler with the World Wrestling Federation. And he was funny as the day is long. The guy was inspiring. My kind of humor, too. Witty put-downs, oversized boasts, flamboyant boas and statements and strutting. I started every Saturday morning with Jesse "The Body" and even went to live events at the Joe Louis Arena (much to Mr. Johnson's chagrin).

Everyone else must have forgotten Jesse "The Body's" antics, because he was the last dude on the planet I ever thought would be elected to government. (Oh well, not necessarily. We've got Arnold in Cali after all.) From time to time I have wondered how "The Body" would do in national politics. He's got the gift of gab, big time.

Let's put all of that aside, though. Here's an ex-Navy Seal who served as a state governor, and when he flies he has to be patted down. Why? Because he has a titanium hip.

I too have a titanium hip.

I don't fly much in the apparent world. The last time I was on a plane, I had a real hip with no problems in it whatsoever. It's rather disconcerting to know, however, that when I do get ready to board a plane, chances are good that I'm going to be frisked like a caught crook. If Jesse "The Body" gets patted down, what will Anne "The Druid" get? Full cavity exploration?

The automobile is looking better and better.

Jesse "The Body" was a wrestler in the 1980s, so he must be quite a bit diminished by now in terms of physical prowess. Nevertheless, I would not like to be the one who had to say, "Okay, Mr. Ventura. Hands on the wall, spread your legs." Jesse didn't get a titanium hip because he got arthritis. He must have busted every joint in that wrestling ring. Or in the Seals ... the friggin Seals! We are frisking Navy Seals!

Go Greyhound. The energy saver.

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" You know what fascinates bored deities? Television! They can't get over it. And they all say that if they'd had it as a praise and worship tool, they wouldn't be bored today.

When I hear this, I turn on some televangelist, or Glenn Beck, or another hater of that ilk, and I ask the bored deity, "Is this who you would want drumming up business for you?"

Some of them are fine with it. Others are dismayed. You're gonna get a mixed bag of answers from deities of multiple pantheons.

Television is definitely a powerful tool for molding peoples' sentiments. (The computer is not far behind it just now and probably will overtake it.) It doesn't matter what political views you hold, chances are you can find some hater on the air who will stoke your inner fire and make you want to drag a sign to some rally.

I'm reflecting on this topic tonight because of Keith Olbermann's abrupt departure from his television show -- a program of left-wing ire that put MSNBC on the map.

Like him or hate him (or his politics), you have to admit that Keith took a page from the Rush Limbaugh playbook and doled out strong opinions with a "progressive" zeal.

As for this "progressive" crap, when did we stop being liberals? The new name feels so 1984-ish somehow, like we were hoodwinked into it by the vilification of our original name.

Anyway, back to Keith. I've been watching his show for at least two years, every night but Friday.

To be perfectly truthful, I've been falling asleep to his show for two years. That would be the amount of time I've been teaching. Before that, I watched him. Not with rose colored glasses, either. "Worst person in the world?" Hater. Funny hater, but a hater all the same.

The reason I supported Keith with my viewing habits was that, to me, he offered a counterbalance to all the hate from the other side of the political spectrum, which I will, from now on, be calling the "regressives." Rush, Glenn, Bill, Sean -- they needed someone to blow Bronx cheers across their bows. Someone similar in temperament and completely opposite in point of view.

New ownership has arrived at MSNBC, and rumors about Mr. Olbermann's big ego and head-butting against management are rampant. So the hater isn't well-liked. I imagine Mr. Beck's not always on the best of terms with his handlers, either.

I'll miss Keith because he was a righteous hater, a counterbalance to the vile fumes across the divide. Now that he's gone, I think I'll read more. Should have been doing that long ago. Oh yeah, and I'll get a laugh out of watching MSNBC fade back into the obscurity it tried so hard to overcome. Sorry, dudes. You fired your matinee idol. Or he quit. Either way, ciao, baby, from someone who didn't much care for Keith but who actually watched MSNBC every night.

Are you reading this, you who buy commercial time on MSNBC? The progressives are progressing elsewhere.

Sheesh. Progressives. When was the last time that was used? Maybe in the era of William Jennings Bryan?