Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," praise and worship for everybody still on solid ground as of this hour next week! It's countdown to Rapture, after which we will deal with the remainders by providing warm blankets, bottled water, and counseling through Friends of the Bored Gods (501 C3).

This should be an interesting week.

Today's post, however, concerns two of my favorite topics: kept women and Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Well, they're not really my favorite topics, but the two posts I did about them got more viewings than anything else I've written.

Keeping the crowd happy, so to speak.

I live in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia called Snobville. It bears a scary resemblance to Stars Hollow in that t.v. show The Gilmore Girls, if you ever happened to see it. (This may not be a coincidence. One of the leading actors on that show grew up in Snobville.) Mr. J and I moved to Snobville in 1987, purchasing a fixer-upper where the only thing in top-notch condition was the poison ivy in the back yard.

Previously I had written about a doctor here in Snobville who kept his purebred Rhodesian Ridgeback hunting hounds at his home on the other side of town. I've been soundly excoriated in previous posts for bad-mouthing these pooches, but I stand by my view that dogs bred to chase lions might not make cuddly pets. In our local case, two dogs owned by this doctor (father and son dogs) bit a series of children and adults over about 10 years, one of them being the oldest daughter of my friend Wanda. Wanda's daughter will have scars all her life on her neck and shoulder.

Last week, so the local newspaper says, one of the dogs bit yet another kid. The doctor was under some kind of court order respecting the animal, and apparently this was enough. The dog was euthanized. But look how long it took. The dog's father, also a biter, was never put down, and this dog (I believe) might have sired some puppies -- who should be chasing friggin lions instead of pulling on leashes while being walked through the groomed precincts of Snobville.

I can say anything I want here about the pope, or the Book of Revelation, or snake-handlers, or Mormon missionaries, and I don't get a peep from the haters. But if I go thumbs-down on Rhodesian Ridgebacks, I get pounded.

Who cares? I'll say it again. Certain dog breeds are BRED to behave in certain ways. They're BRED for certain climates. Have you ever seen some poor Huskie suffering through a summer afternoon on the end of some leash? Breaks my heart.

Want a good dog? Go to the pet shelter, adopt a mixed breed (read: mutt), and you will find yourself with a lovely companion pet who is wired to think the world of you and not wired to wonder if an overly-affectionate toddler might perhaps be a lion.

Moral of this sermon: Send the Ridgebacks back to Rhodesia! Seriously, do not tell me these dogs make great pets. Mutts make great pets. You have that dog for a whole different reason. Status.

And it is that oh-so-Snobville word, status, that brings me to the kept women.

Mr. J doesn't like it when I tee off on the women here in Snobville whose spouses make so much money that they don't have to work. You see these females all over the place, and you can spot them a mile away. How? They're all thin, tan, and they all wander around in workout suits and high-end athletic shoes. A busy day includes a tennis lesson, mani-pedi, lunch, and shopping. A quiet day minimizes the shopping but might have a bit of yoga somewhere at a convenient hour.

Yesterday my daughter The Heir (newly home from college, yay!) found herself at Snobville's town center around noon. It was a lovely afternoon. Right in the middle of the town center, a small but significant group of kept women were having a yoga class outside. Sun Salutation, right between the Coldstone Creamery and the By Hand Art Gallery. Meanwhile, Heir told me, some construction workers were doing something in the street, and they were staring, pointing, and laughing at the women.

Now, don't go hating me on yoga! I love yoga! Can't do it, but I think it's great. But to me, yoga is rather like prayer. If you're going to do it outside, it would be better to find a quiet, leafy glen -- not the semi-bustling, concrete, bistro-heavy center of Snobville.

There's something about doing yoga in a public location of that nature that just invites you to be mocked by men who are working their butts off, presumably in relationships with women who also work their butts off.

Message to kept women: I know Mr. J says I'm jealous, but really I'm not. Because if Mr. J suddenly became a surgeon with a hankering to breed Rhodesian Ridgebacks, I would still work at something. Yoga in Snob Center? Never, not even the day before Spare marries Prince Harry!

It would really be swell if some of these kept women were Raptured, but I'm not very hopeful. I've read enough of the Bible to know that, no matter how hard they try to stay thin, they're still not going to get those buffed buns through the eye of a needle. Sadly, they will remain among us, bemoaning the loss of their favorite Vietnamese manicure artist.

Okay, haters. Off you go!