Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," hippie-dippy edition! Just stop by here for all the sex, drugs, and rock n roll you can handle. We'll fly the astral plane, take a trip around the Bay, bring you back the same day... da da da dum dum!

I'm just barely old enough to remember hippies. What I remember about hippies is what most people remember, if they think about it -- there weren't many true hippies. If you want to know what it was like to be a true hippie, read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe.

True hippies did the Timothy Leary thing: They turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. If they were political at all, they didn't live any one place long enough to vote.

When we think of "hippie," we think of draft protesters and flag-burners, and young people taking over college campuses (and getting shot for it). These people looked like hippies, but they were intensely engaged in the political process. And their influence was out-sized. Politicians courted them and listened to their demands. Thanks to these political "hippies," we no longer have a draft, people can vote at age 18, abortions are legal, and it's ok to burn the flag.

The counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s was led by a small group of loud people and was given big-time press coverage. It sent shock waves of fear through Mainstream America. The Summer of Love spawned the Moral Majority. It gave us Richard Nixon as a president. Ordinary folks were just shocked to the core by all this protesting ... and sex ... and drugs ... and long hair.

The backlash to hippies was the conservative resurgence.

Now we are faced with a new group of loud, politically active, outsider freaks who are getting a great deal of press time. They are the Tea Party movement, the Dominionists, the "Pray Away the Gay" morons like Rick Santorum. These people are a tiny minority of Americans, just as the hippies were. And just like the hippies, they're getting some political traction.

Fear not, gentle reader! The same ordinary, run-of-the-mill Americans who were shocked by the hippies will be equally shocked by the Tea Party and by people who want to re-name Washington, DC the "District of Christ." Fringe groups make a lot of noise, and sometimes they change national policy, but inevitably there will be a backlash against them. Illogical as it may sound, the Tea Party may usher in a prolonged period of liberal politics.


We at "The Gods Are Bored" feel pretty certain that the conservative fringe will get loud enough, and belligerent enough, to nauseate the mainstream. Eventually their traction will fail, and they'll all go limping off to the Elks Club, and Bible Study, and minor league baseball games. Their only legacy may be reducing the amount of health care Americans can get. Vote at 18 vs. reduced or eliminated Medicare. Well, I know which one of those options is better for our nation!

"District of Christ?" Meet "Summer of Love." We all wanna change the world.

Tomorrow I go back to school. It's freshmen orientation, and I will be teaching three sections of freshmen this year. I will also have three sections of sophomores. I will not have the freshmen Honors section.

I have a new teacher coach. Last year he was the department supervisor, but he somehow got knocked down a peg. He is 29 or 30, young enough to be my son. It is due to his change in status that my schedule got re-arranged, that I got sophomores, that I lost Honors.

Remember last year when so many of you fine readers sent copies of The Great Gatsby for use in my classroom? I want to thank you again for that. I'm hoping I get Honors again some day. I'm not considering teaching Gatsby to the regular College Prep kids. But I have the books! And last year's Honors class really liked the story.

This year I'm not asking y'all for any hand-outs ... except ... I'm sure my Patience Extender is getting worn out. It was almost completely broken in June. It won't possibly last another ten months. So, if you could please send me a Patience Extender, I would appreciate it.

Peace,
Anne

For the past two weeks, every free minute I had was spent reading notes and taking practice exams, but it was all worth it when I passed my registration exam yesterday. Nothing like a hurricane to force you to study all weekend! After 4 years of undergrad, a 10 month dietetic internship, weeks of studying and one examination later, I am officially a Registered Dietitian. It is truly a relief and a great feeling, knowing that for the time being all school related things are behind me.

In my free time I also went to two great DC spots, Policy for Brunch and Urbana for happy hour. Policy was one of the best brunches I have been to, granted it was following a long training run so I was extra hungry, but the atmosphere and food choices really hit the spot! One of my favorite dishes was the short rib and eggs, this is something I wouldn't usually order, but it turned out to be the best of the ones we tried.

Urbana was also a place I have been meaning to try for a while. The design of the restaurant includes big open spaces, and it was a great setting for drinks with girlfriends. We ordered their $5 special house red and shared two pizzas which are half price during happy hour. I would highly recommend this spot!

Back soon with training updates!

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" My, what a mighty wind we had here! And six inches of rain! There are trees down, and power outages, and limbs in the streets, and every waterway is flooded. All up and down the East Coast, everything's a mess. Poor Asbury Park! I looked at some YouTubes, but none of them were good enough to post here. Suffice it to say that tourist season is over for that boardwalk.

Guess who is to blame for this hurricane? God!

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/bachmann-claims-hurricane-earthquake-were-god-messages-politicians-155051199.html

Busy God, sending messages to the politicians in Washington, DC. The message? Politicians spend too much taxpayer money. Except now the politicians will have to spend even more taxpayer money to clean up after the hurricane! Who is the dummy here: God, or Michele Bachmann?

The smart money's on Michele. What a moron!

The good news out of Chateau Johnson is that all of our trees survived and we only lost power sporadically, like any old thunderstorm.

Now, mind you, I didn't leave the protection of my household and its residents up to pure chance and the vagaries of weather patterns. Oh no! I petitioned safety of a whole slew of bored deities: Chac (see below), Hurracan, Oya, Oshun, and Triton. And because They weren't busy sending a message to Washington, DC, They put up a celestial wall of safety around my house and loved ones!

If you are visiting this site because of all my dissing of Cindy Jacobs and other Christian warriors (of which Michele Bachmann is clearly one), please ponder this a moment.

A leading politician claims that the God of Cindy Jacobs caused an earthquake and a hurricane -- serious, deadly stuff. My bored gods, on the other hand, quietly and efficiently saved my family from harm, while feeling no particular need to send a political message to Washington.

Busy deities get blamed for everything. Bored deities aren't burdened with such baggage. So, why go with the god who feels the need to send messages in a showy, destructive way? Seek ye the bored gods and goddesses who have the time to care for you, and the gentility not to use major weather systems to make a point.

The word of the bored gods, for the people of the bored gods, thanks be to the bored gods! Yep.

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" About an hour ago it was raining cats and dogs. Now it's raining farm animals. And by the time Hurricane Irene gets fired up, we'll be seeing elephants and giraffes falling on the house!

I'm a weather geek, and usually I don't worry about meteorological conditions. This hurricane has me scared. My house is surrounded by mature trees, the ground is already saturated, and every time we get a fairly windy thunderstorm our power goes out. As soon as I'm through interviewing our "Gods Are Bored" guest, I'm going to turn the computer off and unplug it.

Before I introduce today's guest, I want to respond to the commenter who wanted to know how our modern Tea Partiers and Dominionists, etc. are like the hippies of 1968. I wrote a lot about that back when I first started TGAB in 2005, but I'll gladly cover that ground again next week.

But that will have to wait, because I've got a visitor. You might think it would be Hurracan, but no. Today we have Chac the Rain God, sacred to the Aztec peoples. Please give him an extraordinarily warm, wonderful "Gods Are Bored" welcome!

Anne: Chac, I'm on my knees to you. Please, please don't let us get washed away! Why are you doing this?

Chac: Mortals. So annoying! If it's dry, they pray for rain. If it rains too much, they pray for the sun to come out.

Anne: We've had a lot of rain around here this summer, Chac. Whoa! It's getting harder by the minute, even as I write! Must you?

Chac: This deluge will re-stock every aquifer and every reservoir on the Eastern Seaboard. Try to look at the bright side!

Anne: Hard to look on the bright side when it's also getting cloudier and dimmer by the moment. And the mosquitoes! Have mercy!

Chac: I show no mercy. If you want mercy, reduce your carbon emissions. You think nothing of driving your car 200 miles to Polish Mountain, and 200 miles back. Look at all the cars! The factories! Warms up the ocean. Gives me power. And when I get super-charged, I just go hog wild.

Anne: You've got a point, Great Rain God. I am partly to blame for this. But truthfully, these atmospheric conditions have occurred throughout history ... so it pretty much would happen anyway, from time to time -- just like the earthquake last week.

Chac: Yeah, well, I gotta do what I gotta do. It's my job. And with your modern forecasting techniques, any fool who doesn't get out of my way deserves what he gets.

Anne: That's true. You are a wise God. So I will petition you for just two simple things.

Chac: Making no promises, but I'll listen.

Anne: Please go easy on the trees, insofar as having them fall. Remember, trees are a line of defense against global warming.

Chac: Some trees will fall. I'm a Rain God, not a Tree God. You're interviewing the wrong deity.

Anne: Okay, forget the trees. Please spare the Silver Ball Pinball Museum in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Chac: Done. Pinky swear. I love that place!

Anne: You go there?

Chac: Sometimes when money is short I sell hot dogs there. The owner is a great guy.

Anne: I'm gonna let you go now. Clearly you're having a busy day.

Chac: Yes. When it rains, it pours.

Anne: In this case, when it pours, it deluges.

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," East Coast earthquake edition! I'm your host, Anne Johnson: shaken and stirred.

Murphy's Law: If there's a measurable earthquake in my neighborhood, where do you think I'll be? Taking a shower, of course! And that's what I was doing when the whole house started to rumble and grumble, the bathroom door began banging, and all the slippery surfaces under my wet feet began to sway. When I determined that no one was actually rattling the bathroom door, I knew it was an earthquake. I experienced one once, in Detroit. So I just grabbed the shower bar, and -- voila! -- in a few seconds it was over.

On the other hand, Heir, Spare, Mr. J, and most of my neighbors hadn't ever felt a quake. The street filled with panicked suburbanites. Heir immediately began to fret about aftershocks, and when she turned on the news and heard about all the building evacuations in Philly, Baltimore, and DC, she was just sure we should all lay flat on the ground out in a field somewhere!

Pish, tosh, said I. Mr. J and I went forward with our plans -- a short honeymoon getaway in New Castle, Delaware. It was very romantic, peering across the murky Delaware Bay as big barges motored by, at the vista of smokestack-cluttered Jersey on the far shore.

Ah, well, it appears that the flatlands will be my home for the rest of my sorry life.

The earth did indeed move on August 23. My highly motivated cousins found a buyer for the family farm on Polish Mountain. Out of nine people with a vested interest in the property, I am the only one who didn't want to sell it. My ancestors lived in that area as early as 1720. They were the first non-native residents of that rocky region. I am the first generation to have sought my fortunes in the big city. Even my dad taught school in Appalachia.

By the time the government takes taxes from my share of the sale, I'll be left with enough money to cover one semester of college tuition for one of my daughters. One set of useless textbooks, one cluster of pompous scholars in return for all of this beautiful land.

With the sale of the property, I don't believe (in our culture) that I can call myself "Appalachian." I can say I'm "from Appalachia," but if I don't own a chunk of it, I can't claim citizenship.

At a crucial turning point in my life, I chose to go to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to study writing, instead of going to Frostburg University to study forestry. Needless to say, my parents were thrilled by this decision. Mom had a new mantra: "You'll marry a doctor!"

I moved to the city. I've lived in cities ever since. But I always had the farm to "go home to." Honestly, I was hoping no one would step up to buy it, especially in this economy. And from the sketchy report sent by my cousin, I fear that the buyer is a developer. He owns other properties in the area. But I certainly can't meet his price, and if I did he might up the ante.

On August 23, I felt an earthquake that lasted 15 seconds. And an earthquake that will last forever. An inner San Francisco that has crushed my heart.

"The Gods Are Bored" will not be publishing today, as it is the author's 27th wedding anniversary.

Ain't love grand?