Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Can you repeat the past? Of course you can, old sport!

So speaketh the Great Jay Gatsby, and quite a few religions make a tidy living supporting that outrageous proposition.

But not here at "The Gods Are Bored!" We operate volunteer services that help ancient deities become computer-literate and environmentally aware. Don't believe me? You should have seen the shock and disdain on Cernunnos's face when I first used silk/plastic mistletoe in a Ritual. Then I explained to Him that silk/plastic can be used over and over, it causes no harm to living mistletoe, and in fact it ought to be kept out of the landfill because a buzzard can't tell the difference between a plastic berry and a real one until the berry is consumed. Cernunnos got on board in a jiffy, and He even donated a wonderful thrift-store silk piece to my Yule altar!

That's what I call keeping up with the times.

I'm off-topic, though. Let's talk about Gatsby in the hood.

There's always somebody slinking into my classroom with a clipboard in hand, evaluating me according to the latest educational philosophy, which currently is something called Marzano. Today I got yet another visitor, without a clipboard, smack in the midst of one of my un-structured Great Gatsby lessons.

At most American high schools, teachers fling a copy of GG into their students' hands, assign them a certain number of chapters a week, lob on the symbolism and vocabulary, and generally create a massive hatred for a novel that I consider emblematic of the American experience.

With my class, we have read almost all of the story out loud, acting out parts in turn, and stopping frequently to comment upon these crazy rich people and their skewed values system. I have done zero vocabulary and nearly zero "language arts" lessons. We've just been reveling in the story.

My students love it. Even the ones who can hardly read at grade level love it. You know why? Because buried within all that lofty (and beautiful and difficult) prose is a fantastic story.

Today we were acting out Chapter 7 under the watchful eye of an administrative spy. I suggested we skip a few paragraphs of lofty prose, and you know what? My students would have none of it! "We want to read every word!" One of them said, and the rest seconded the motion.

(I was not reading it to them. They were round-robin reading it, randomly selected.)

Even the macho boys who hated the very idea that they might be forced to read something mushy are solid with this tale. And why not? Is it not about a clash between Alpha Males (among other themes)?

Long story short, the administrative type asked me after class if my students were enjoying the book. As if he had to ask! They would have stayed another 40 minutes, busily engaged with it.

Then the admin told me that the students at our sister school hated GG.

I write this because on Monday next, the Superintendent of my school district will be observing me as I teach The Great Gatsby. (We are almost finished the book.) My future employment is entirely in his hands, but I'm not changing my strategy one bit.

Great literature is only great if it says something about what we value. And readers who aren't terribly sophisticated can lose their grip on this book if they get bogged down in the prose. How terrible is that? Gatsby is a classic! The "American Dream" dissolves before your very eyes! This story makes you question all the answers ... so long as you don't have to dissect every other paragraph for vocab and crap that proves you aren't using Spark Notes.

For the record, I actually Googled Spark Notes so my students could see that they have a tool they can use to help them understand the story better. I told them that we would skip any word we didn't know, and if they needed to know it, I would just tell them what it is. Because my aim should be to increase their vocabulary skills, but my intention is to make them think.

They like it! Hey, Mikey!

When I get the pink slip, I will still feel that I have accomplished something ... great.

Her tar vi frem en gammel teknikk som var veldig populær for noen år tilbake, og som det er på tide å ta frem igjen. Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel er riktig nok embossing pulver, men har større "korn" som gjør at det er lettere å dekke større flater og forme den som vi har gjort under. Du kan bruke den alene, eller sammen med vanlig embossing pulver.

Teknikkurset er laget av Silje på ARTsy-teamet, og vi håper at dette enten er bra lærdom eller en oppfriskning av kjente teknikker :-) Håper kurset inspirerer mange til UTEE-lek.

This time we will show you an old technique, that maybe some of us has forgotten and others didn't know about. Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel is a thicker embossing powder, that are easier to cover larger areas with and easier to form. You can use it seperately or together with thin embossing powder.

Silje has made this technique in pictures for us, and we hope that it's giving all of you inspiration to play with UTEE.


Silje har laget teknikken på en bit av en CD plate, men en bit tykk papp fugerer også kjempe fint! Eller annet som tåler litt varme uten å endre fasong.

Silje made this with a piece of CD, but you can also use a piece of very thick cardboard or something else that can withstand the heat of a heatgun.



Ta UTEE på en bit ved hjelp av passende blekk, smelt ... og gjenta prosessen noen ganger.
På min ble det vel en 5-6 lag...

Cover the piece totally with UTEE after you have applied clear ink on your item. Make this step approx. 4-6 times, until your piece is covered up with a thick layer of UTEE.




Strø på Perfect pearls, perler, glitter - hva du måtte ønske! Smelt det ned i UTEE'n.

You can add perfect pearls, beads, glitter, thin embossing or what you wish for, as long as it is some enought to "stick" into the UTEE.


Ha på pigment blekk på stempelet ditt. Bruk kun rødgummi stempler til dette! Trykk så stempelet ned i god/varm smeltet UTEE.

Use pigment ink on your stamp; it's important that you only use red rubberstamps. Push the stamp onto the item while it is warm.


La det ligge litt, til det blir litt kjøligere. Fjerne biten forsiktig fra stempelet.

Let the item get cold before you remove it from the rubberstamp.












Please leave a comment, if you have any questions to our technique or you want to link back to your blog with your own UTEE-project. We love to see what you have done :-)

Welcome to ... pant pant pant ... "The Gods Are Bored!" pant .. pant. I'm your scorched hostess, Anne Johnson. Hot! Hot! Hot!

The school building I work in is 80 years old and counting. It has an old-fashioned boiler room.

When I arrived in my classroom after Christmas break on Monday morning, the temperature hovered ... I kid you not ... at least in the 80s if not nearing 90. It was like walking into a sauna.

Our New Jersey governor is all for firing teachers and busting our union, but I wonder how much moolah the state could save if it upgraded old boiler rooms.

In an effort to lower the output of hot air (in my classroom, not from the governor's mouth -- latter being impossible), I took a hike downstairs to the boiler room to see what was up.

And here's just the problem that arises when there are bored gods around with no meaningful employment. Lounging in the boiler room I found Vulcan. He was staring vacantly at the furnace, occasionally adjusting the intake valves.

Granted, there are some bored gods who we can live without, and Vulcan certainly is one of them. Who needs a volcano erupting all over the place? Just ask those poor folks in Pompeii what they think of Vulcan. All the same, this Dude is out of place in a public school.

I'm frankly afraid to do a praise and worship for Vulcan, to get him out of the boiler room and on to bigger, better things. I didn't even say howdy to him. For all I know, I could offer him an interview here at TGAB, and he would respond by blowing my house sky-high so my humble belongings will make the lunar eclipses red. On the other hand, I have to spend 10 hours a day, sometimes more, in a room where it's becoming impossible not to sweat the small stuff.

I guess I'll have to approach Vulcan and, picking my words carefully, offer Him some sort of olive branch. Somehow I feel like He won't be any more enthusiastic about turning down the heat than the school janitor. More capable, yes. More willing, no.

Perhaps I'll send Vulcan an anonymous note gently suggesting He may wish to visit the Mid-Atlantic Trench until March or April. I could even pass myself off as one of the World Cultures teachers, in case Vulcan gets pissed. Something's gotta change, though. In this era of energy conservation, I hate having to open windows on the coldest day of the year.

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we tackle tough questions every day! Here's a tough question that I'd like to sack for a 20-yard loss:

What's the best way to handle the "chosen ones" amongst us?

The question came up one day over this holiday when I was discussing Harry Potter with my daughters. My feeling was that the Harry Potter series comes apart on about Page 50 when it becomes clear that Harry is a "chosen one." Special as he is, all of his superiors hide essential information from him ... constantly. If I was a chosen one, I would like to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could. It was supremely frustrating for me, reading that series, because just once I would have liked Harry to say, "Damn it, quit beating around the bush!" And then Dumbledore should have spoken up about everything, including being gay. But then it wouldn't have been a very exciting story, huh?

This is why King Arthur works -- after a thousand years. As a kid his life was in danger (like Harry), so he was hidden in a forest and not told who he was (unlike Harry), all the while being groomed in martial arts (better than Harry) and the attainment of wisdom (more systematically than Harry). When he finally discovered he was a king, he was ready to go whoop ass and rule, without ever having had to deal with the angst of nagging doubts about the quality of his teachers and what they might or might not be telling him.

One last fictitious chosen one: Luke Skywalker. Again, better than Harry. As a kid his life was in danger (like Harry and Arthur) so he was hidden away on a planet (like Arthur) watched over by a benign hermit (more Dumbledore than Merlin). Thrust into the fray, Luke had to learn by doing (unlike Arthur but somewhat like Harry). The difference? Luke's dad was a bad guy. (In some versions of the Arthur tale, Uther's no gem either, but he's never a Darth Vader.)

On to the chosen ones in the real world. It has never made sense to me that Jesus got visited by wise men and angels as a child, and then spent 30 years doing carpentry with his dad. I wonder if the historians got that part right? Actually, if you read the New Testament closely, you see that Jesus was rather confused at age 30 about who he was and what he was expected to do. I blame the parents in this situation. Every Christmas, at the very least, they should have reminded Jesus of the circumstances of his birth. Maybe he would have gotten started on his mission earlier, and lasted a little longer.

Another chosen one: The Dalai Lama. Heads up, fiction writers! If you want to see how it's done, watch this process. The dude was deemed a chosen one at a time of life when about all he could choose for himself was whatever he could grab. And yet, have been deemed the chosen one, he was carefully brought up and tutored by the finest minds of the generation. End result: an extremely intelligent, humble, practical man. I doubt if there's one Dumbledore in the Dalai Lama's past.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty doggoned skeptical of people who get "chosen one" status as adults. Look at your popes. A mixed bag at best. Seems to me that if you're a chosen one, something major should happen at your birth, or soon thereafter. In this, our real world could borrow from fiction -- assuming King Arthur is fictitious (which I don't, I think He's a bored god).

If someone tells you he or she is a chosen one, do a background check. An improperly-trained chosen one is a rather dangerous entity. Behind every chosen one should be a good teacher or two. I'm not just saying that because I'm a teacher. I'm saying it because the vast majority of humans don't operate purely on instinct, so they'd better have learned something before they begin issuing orders and battling evil.

Før vi offisielt åpner døren for 2011, så vil vi bare få minne dere på vår DT call for ARTsy-teamet.

Vi søker deg som har en lidenskap for den artsy-stilen og som liker å leke med teknikker. Er du den vi søker? Ta en titt nedenfor...

...we would like to remind you of the DT call for the ARTsy-team!

We are searching for you that love the artsy-style and that like playing with techniques! Are you the one that we are searching for? Take a look here...

I woke up this morning all snuggled against the cold night air, and I got to thinking about the fact that my life is maybe two-thirds over. So what sort of resolutions should I make, given that fact?

I began thinking about some of the things I've dreamed of doing that I've never gotten around to doing. We all have a list of those, don't we?

My list doesn't include climbing Mt. Everest or hiking to Maccu Picchu. Never was very intrepid.

However, there is one thing I've always wanted to do. At least since 1987. I want to march in the Philadelphia Mummers Parade.

The tradition of Mumming belongs to the bored gods: to Saturn and to the Celtic deities who brought you Wren Day. By joining a comic brigade, I will be proving my devotion to the bored gods. And proof it will be indeed. Even the sorriest brigade of Mummers practices for months, sewing or purchasing expensive costumes in the process.

This is resolved. I want to Mum. So might it be.