Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Fresh off the wire: The war in Iraq has ended. The American flag has been lowered. Our troops are coming home.

And in all of these nine years, no one has been able to explain to me why the soldiers went there in the first place. Did you believe all that crapola about the WMD? Me neither.

I've been watching the Occupy movement from the sideline, principally because, in order to be effective, groups need to have a plan of action along with a reason for protesting. For awhile I wondered why the big labor unions didn't get behind Occupy. The cynical part of me says that unions have their money invested at the big banks. (But in Wisconsin, the teacher's union pulled their money from the bank that had Koch money behind it.) Realistically, though, the organized labor movement, for all its flaws, has an agenda, backs candidates, and seeks to make social changes through conventional means.

Occupy sort of reminds me of the student protesters in Les Miserables. Which is worrisome, because they may meet the same fate.

As for living outdoors in a tent, well, I could make a suggestion to Occupy.

There's a top 1% and a bottom 1%. Some of that bottom 1% live in tents already.

In a wooded area of Camden, about 50 yards from the Admiral Wilson Boulevard, there's a tent city of homeless people (if you don't count their tents) who have chosen to remove themselves from society. They have leadership and a set of rules. And they live in their tents all year around, year after year. They have no social agenda beyond being allowed to stay in their tent city, because that's where they want to be.

Occupy would do well to meet with these veteran tent-dwellers, both for handy tips on winter survival and for public relations purposes. Seems to me that a country that can send soldiers to multiple nations to fight counter-productive wars could also create suitable living conditions for even its most dedicated outsiders, the bottom of the bottom of the pile.

Camden has been Occupied for years. Think of the jobs that would be created if we spent less on soldiers and more on carpenters who could fix up row houses. Then maybe no one would be tempted to live in a tent for any reason other than back country hiking.