Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Every year on January 1, the city of Philadelphia throws all decorum aside and has a day-long revel. It's called the Mummers Parade.

Where I grew up (Hagerstown, MD, basically), there was a big Mummers Parade on Halloween every year. In both cases, Philadelphia and Hagerstown, I think the original idea was to give all the crazies some goal beyond drunken rioting.

Turns out that the sheer energy and good will of these events can sweep away even the most dire black magic heaped on a city. This is why I, Anne Johnson of "The Gods Are Bored," sought membership in a Mummers comic brigade.

And found it. Early on New Year's Day -- like, really really early, before the well-oiled string bands and fancies -- I will be stepping out with the Two Street Stompers.

Like every other Mummer unit, this one is a conglomerate of family and friends, some of whom are third and fourth generation Mummers. They bring their kids and their grandparents. I'm invited to bring Spare, if she wants. These are the good God people, and they will cleanse the city with their cheer.

We will have a bountiful three practices in the alley behind the captain's house in Gloucester City, New Jersey. Then it will be off to the parade!

This will be the 25th anniversary of the first time I ever watched a Mummers Parade. For a quarter century I've been sitting by a warm fire on New Year's Day, sipping hot tea and saying to myself, "Why am I not out there in the cold rain, dressed like a wench and pumping a parasol?" Well, no more. This year, I have been moved by great karmic events to restore good will to Philadelphia. Here at "The Gods Are Bored," I will tell you all about it.

Video below of the brigade I have joined. They're even providing a costume!

I am officially a Mummer. I have been accepted into the 2 Street Stompers New Year's Brigade. I am unspeakably happy.

I feel some grippe coming on. I'm going to bed early.

Between now and January 1, every time I don't have the energy to blog, I am going to post the lovely tribute to the Goddess Columbia seen below. It's beautiful, moving, and it reminds us that Liberty is a Lady. She carries the torch for us all.

Så har ännu en månad passerat och som vanligt har vi finkammat bloggvärlden på jakt efter exceptionella kort. Och som vanligt har vi också funnit massor av underbara alster. Det är alltid lika svårt att välja ut några enstaka av dessa, men här är i alla fall de kort som valts ut till september månads Walk of Fame:


Yet another month has passed and as usual we have "scanned" your blogs for marvellous creations. And as usual we have found lots and lots of fantastic cards and other projects. As always it is difficult to pick out just a few of them, but here are the cards we finally chose for September month´s Walk of Fame:

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Have you heard anything about the protests on Wall Street? Me neither. Gonna be a big, fat black eye for the mainstream media if they don't get down there and cover this. I want to get this post done in time to catch ABC News and see if they are with us or agin us.

On to today's sermon: the corruption of fine young minds with evil reading material known as books!

Every year in September, the Friends of the Snobville Library hold a big used book sale. People line up like ... hmmm ... like ... hmmmm ... maybe like ... vultures? Yeah, that would be it. Vultures. People line up to get the "good stuff" cheap, so they can re-sell it on Ebay.

This year there was a good deal of kvetching from the customers. The Friends of Snobville had set the price of a hardcover at $3.00, a quality paperback at $2.00, and a "pocket paperback" at $1.00.

You do the math. Seven books, and you're out $20.00. That's a lot of cash for someone else's books.

In years past, I used to go to this sale to buy books for my classroom. But at those prices I couldn't afford it. My salary has dropped $150 per paycheck with all the new deductions for health care and pension, and losses of occasional coverage that paid $30 per class period.

You could say I was fuming. Snobville at its snobbiest!

But wait, dear readers. I was determined. It paid off. It just goes to show that if you really are hell-bent on corrupting minors, it can always be done.

The sale ran on Saturday and Sunday. Same prices on Sunday. So on Sunday I showed a Friend of the SL my Vo-Tech teacher ID and asked for a discount. Lo and behold, they let me take any book I wanted for free!

Trust me, readers, I went over those tables of books with one thought in mind: Is this book banned, or could it be banned, or was the ban recently lifted, soon to be returned? If the answer was "yes," I grabbed that puppy. I think I got about 60 books, all first-rate filth. Tuesdays with Morrie? I'll bet there's a swearword or sexual innuendo in there somewhere. Da Vinci Code? Blasphemy! (I got three copies.)

I did wait until late on Sunday afternoon to do this gleaning. I thought it was kind enough of the FotSL to let me have free books -- I wanted to wait until they had sold as much as they could at those inflated prices.

Maybe you've been to a used book sale? Generally in the last hour, they shout, "Fill a bag for five bucks!" After which new scurrying ensues.

The Snobville answer to this was, "Fill a bag for thirty bucks!" Pinky swear. I've paid that for a bag of hard shell crabs, nicely steamed and seasoned ... but used books? For the love of fruit flies!

I guess that idea didn't fly too well, because only a few minutes later, the same Friend shouted, "Fill a bag for ten bucks!" Which seemed slightly more reasonable but still steep, since all the good, banned stuff was gone.

And then the funniest exchange occurred. It was classic. Apparently some woman had picked out a bunch of books earlier in the afternoon and then had plopped down on a bench, waiting for the buck-a-bag call. (Probably has read so many banned books that she used her life as a bookmark and misplaced the book.)

Here was the conversation, so far as I eavesdropped:

Friend: I'm sorry. We can't sell you these at that price. We have watched you sitting there waiting for us to drop the price.

Crazy woman: You just said, "Ten dollars a bag." You have to honor that!

Friend: No, we won't honor it with you. It's not fair for you to get good books and sit around until the price drops.

Crazy woman: It doesn't matter how long I've been here. You just said, "Ten dollars a bag." Is that what you're charging, or not? It's not fair if you have one price for me and one price for everyone else.

Friend: You're trying to cheat.

Crazy woman: No, you're being unfair!

At this time I sauntered past, lugging my huge cart of freebies, nodding gratefully at the gent and noting the crazy woman's quick appraisal of my haul (nothing valuable, all banned and banged up).

It was lovely for the Friends of the Snobville Library to give me books for my classroom. As for the crazy lady who spent her Sunday afternoon waiting for a discount on books she'd picked out five hours earlier, wow. Not sure how to call that one. I'll leave it up to you.

Off I go to pollute my students' minds with Bella and her vampire!

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" It's "Banned Books Week," so throw out that lascivious copy of the Bible under your desk and read something that isn't smutty! In this sermon, we at "The Gods Are Bored" will offer you safe and secure suggestions for eliminating banned books from your life. As you know, reading banned books has caused many of the social ills plaguing humankind. We have to do something about it, pronto.

You know what great, safe, and improving literature is regularly overlooked? Instruction manuals! Don't believe me? Go find the manual that came with your IPod or your microwave. Better yet, read that fascinating sheet that came with your Ikea book case. You won't find swear words, sexual situations, or violent content in there. And it just gets better, because instructional manuals fold up so nice and cozy -- you won't need the book case you just bought. Take it back!

I'm a school teacher, so it's very important for me to be aware of all these banned books. Such evil works as To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men can be found all over my school! But worry not, dear reader. I'm tossing that smut and replacing it with helpful and instructional literature. This week I made copies of my Verizon monthly statement for my entire class. Of course I blacked out HBO first, because we all know what kind of filth runs on HBO.

You might think cookbooks are safe. And I agree, so long as they don't have any recipes that are high in fat, salt, or sugar. The trouble is that a smart student, when given a Weight Watchers cookbook, will figure out how to re-introduce the salt, sugar, and fat into an otherwise slimmed-down recipe. So be warned. Cookbooks are not acceptable.

I'll tell you something else that should be banned. Used book sales. There's no oversight in these things! Kids can wander around and just choose whatever they want to read. Chances are that Mom is over looking at the tennis or yoga paperbacks. She won't even notice her susceptible youngster poking a curious eyeball into Leaves of Grass.

The very best way to protect innocent children from banned books is to not teach them to read in the first place. How many times have I had to remind you people that the entire Captain Underpants series is banned, banned, banned! And it's written for third graders. You can't have third graders reading about a character named Professor Pippy P. Poopypants! This will warp them for life. Better not to read at all than to be tempted to read a banned book.

Further banning: the bestseller list. Have you read  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or any of its sequels? Horrific! (I actually mean it. Turned my stomach.) And yet ... and yet ... that book is in my school's library! Heck, let's ban bestsellers and the library. Purity of mind, purity of mind.

I have been trying to decide what core curriculum I should teach my sophomores next, after they're through with the Verizon bill. Aha! Here's my high school yearbook! (*Anne blacks out the ribald comments by her classmates*) What a relief! My students will love this.

This is at least the tenth post I've written about banned books. Lately I've been wondering why I get all riled up about them. I hardly ever see anyone reading a book anymore, unless it's a student who's been told they have to read. So we stop teaching students to read, and then no one will read, and there will be no reason to ban books.

I say, give everyone a Droid and burn all the books. A modest proposal.

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored" as the days become even with the nights, and the long descent into darkness begins. Autumn and winter are my favorite seasons, but the dwindling hours of sunshine can really take a toll. Oh well. On we roll.

I think I mentioned that Mr. J will have a book coming out in a store near you next spring. The last time I mentioned it here on this site, I used Mr. J's real name, and I got all kinds of weird email from people who are Googling that name. Mr. J, you see, had a famous father in the sportswriting biz. So for now, I'll just stick with calling a K a J.

Mr. J's book was received with vast enthusiasm at the publishing house. He had the lightest edit I've ever seen on a full-length manuscript. The press is going to put photographs at the head of each chapter. Okay, I know the guy is my husband, but I think this book is going to sell.

While Mr. J was visiting with the editor in New York, he mentioned that I had written a novel.

Yes, I did do this, about a hundred years ago. I even had a small press willing to print it, until the economic downturn put an end to small presses everywhere.

Long story short, Mr. J's editor said he'd pass it along to the editors of my sort of fiction at the publishing house. The publishing house is St. Martin's Press.

It is extremely difficult to get a novel into print these days, unless you're James Patterson or a good friend of Oprah's. Apparently two editors will be looking at mine, weighing it in the profit-vs.-loss balance, and getting back to me.

At this equinox, I would like to think my chances are 50-50. Or maybe there's a bored goddess of writing out there who wants to give me a boost.

Beam me some luck. It's a good book, and writing it was one of the highlights of my life.

Have you ever had to live in a foreign country for an extended period of time? Have you ever gone to a school where the language spoken is not the one you know? I haven't had to do either. In fact, being in a country where I don't know the language is a phobia of mine. I'm a woman of a certain age, and I've never traveled abroad.

Many of my students are from the Dominican Republic, but most of them can speak and write pretty good English. (Reading is difficult for them -- it's like translating. No fun.)

This year I have a young man who does not speak very good English. He is struggling mightily. And we have no Foreign Language specialists on our staff.

I gave all of my 150 students a questionnaire to fill out about themselves. Struggling Student had so many heart-wrenching answers that I got teary-eyed.

Apparently the only enjoyment this kid has in his life is baseball. Every other answer had something to do with baseball. Finally came the clincher:

Question: If I could have anything I wanted, it would be .......

His answer: "A good baseball glove."

Do any of my three readers have a good baseball glove sitting around in a box, unloved and unwanted? What a simple request! I would buy him one myself if I hadn't gotten a hefty pay cut.

It's against the rules for a teacher to give a student a gift. However, there is a tenured teacher working in the building, and she could (and would) give him the glove if I did (and would) give it to her.

Send me an email (through my profile) if your diamond days are in the past, but the equipment remains.

PS - Tenure is a wonderful thing.

Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate's life for me! It be "Talk Like a Pirate Day," matey! Wait a pinch while I get Decibel the parrot on my shoulder, and then ...

Wave yer cutlass if you've ever worked for someone who ought to walk the plank!

I just found out this morning that a swabbie who bossed me around last year and saw to it I'd have too many  students this year will be jumping ship. This former first mate third class, who I'll give the earned monnicker "Rat Face," will be a-leavin my ship and heading for the Great Sloop Snobville High! Arrrghhgh! I kid you not! The worst pirate that ever sailed the briny deep just got hired at Snobville High! I'd love to be a fly on the wall when Rat Face meets Mr. G. The incompetent leading the arrogant. Yar, won't take more than a stiff breeze to sink 'em like a stone!

Pieces of hate! Pieces of hate!

All this pirate talk puts me in the mood to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster! A prayer to the Great Plate commences now:

Oh gracious Noodly Master,
Pasta perfection for pirates,
Promise through thy gracious tendrils
That all incompetent and arrogant sons of sea-slugs
Will be cursed with having to deal with each other.
Which, through Thy grace
Will lead to duels with pistols or cutlasses, or just plain ugly sneers.
Cast down the mighty, arrghghgh, like so much slop over the starboard bow!
In the name of All Noodles, ramen.