What Happened to God?

Not the God that everyone takes His/Her name in vain, but the God who wrote the great blog God's Blog. God has been mysteriously silent for almost a year. What's up?

Judging from the spelling and general quality of writing, I'm guessing "God" lives in the UK. I'm not offended by the sudden cessation of the blog, I just wished there was at least a goodbye. Perhaps things were just too much and He needed some down time. Or perhaps He's been abducted by aliens. Or perhaps God is the same guy who does this blog. Hopefully, the author is still on Earth and has Internet access. If not, I hope God gets well soon.

You Know You're Getting Old When...

• The cake & ice cream gives you a hangover.


• You get presents that you can't identify. What is this?


• You get a rejection slip from Poetry magazine


• You get a call from the giver of the unidenitfied gift and have to say, "Thanks for the prezzie. It's gorgeous. What is it?" and then have the gift giver say "I don't know. I was hoping you could figure it out. You're unemployed."


• Oh yeah--I'm now a year older and still unemployed.


• Your Mom's gift is a trip to the Zoo :-)(On Lemur Day, no less)While pushing your Mom in a wheelchair, you force your Mom to go to the Children's Zoo, despite her rather loud protests, only to discover it's under construction. So you wind up holding a Which Animal Has the Cutest Butt contest. The winner was the agouti (pictured), a relative of the guinea pig, which is world renowned for it's cute butt-age.


• You forgive Peter Gabriel for not sending a B-day gift THIS year, either.


• You suddenly realize, through the pain of the cake hangover and yet another rejection notice, that Peter Gabriel now looks remarkably like a hamster

I'll Be 37. What the Hell Happened?

On Saturday, I'll be 37. Yikes! How did that happen? Seems like only yesterday I was 12. If I was a horse, I'd most likey be dead. If I was Jesus, I'd DEFINATELY be dead.

I am, of course, reminded about the Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who's been the coach since before I my older brother was concived (EEEWWW!)and is still driving everyone nuts at age 500, or whatever it really is. In September, he was knocked down by a player at practice, snapped three ribs, but told nobody about it. No one would EVER have known if not for this injury. It's kinda hard not to reminded of JoPa, as he's known, when you live in the Philly area. JoPa even has a STATUE at Penn State even though he's still hard at work. American football is definatley a religion over here, so perhaps praying to Joe can help give me strength....or perhaps I should just shut up and get back to collecting rejection slips. My Dad has hinted he'd get me a couple of the Peter Gabriel (pictured) CDs that went up in the August 2005 fire. So maybe I'll just dwell on that.

Happy Chaos Never Dies Day

If you're anything like me, you dread this time of year. The only good international holiday--Halloween--has come and gone, but those damn others are in the way before Beltane (May Day) the OTHER great international holiday. There is a desperate need for decent holidays. I discovered on several sights the "unofficial" holiday on Nov 9 of Chaos Never Dies Day. (Usually, that's known as Christmas Eve, but there's no cruel and unusual shopping involved). Choas, is of course, (besides the baddies in Get Smart)the original state of the Universe from which all things come--it just didn't have any of those boring laws of time, space or comphrehension. I like to think of the universe before this one as being Tiamat, the essence of Chaos that seems to but is not really tamed.

I'm not sure how official Chaos Never Dies Day is, but I've got a feeling that's the point. So what can one do on Choas Never Dies Day? Glad you asked:

• Check out your horroscope--Chaos style


• Chant as much of you can of The Principia Discordia There's even a Swedish translation, to there's no excuse.


• Send off a couple of manuscripts of short stories (always good for a laugh)


• Turn on all the electrical appliances in your home so there can be a power outage(another guaranteed hoot)


• Watch Get Smart

That's is from me. Get Chaos-ing.

Oh Me of Little Faith...

In the world of me, I have received two more rejection slips, one for the aforementioned short story and another about the perils of bacon butties with mustard. But Sunday, I went to a writing workshop by the Poet Laureate of Lansdowne (the town next to mine), Dan Simpson (no relation). Dan is blind and needs a guide dog. (So, what's YOUR excuse, Rena???) This is the second workshop I've attended led by Dan. The first one kept me in the habit of trying to write nearly every day--this one generated a lot of story ideas! I was also congratulated for the three rejection slips.

In one exercise, we drew a small weird object out of a baggie and had to write a story on that. Objects included a pack of tissues, a bandanna, and a broken radio. Mine was a wedding photo. Everyone--even the shy folks--did very well. As Dan was congratulating us, the room was suddenly rocked by a thunderous

SNORE!

Chandler, Dan's guide dog, was snoozing under the tables. I said, "Everyone's a critic."

This is not the only time I took a workshop from a town's official poet. In 2004 and 2005, I enjoyed workshops by Kevan Manwaring, the Bard of Bath. I see he got that book published! Well done, Kevan. I'd love to see Dan and Kevan in a room together. No snoozing then.

Laurie Cabot's Back on the Caffeine

For those Wicca-challenged, Laurie Cabot is one of America's most respected Witches (and yes, she is the Official Witch of Salem). She writes a few books, reads a few palms, has a website, generally your basic Witch. Once, she was into civil rights for Witches, spurred on by "The Witches of Eastwick", which she couldn't stand because it made Witches look "silly". Then:

After that burst of activism, she returned to her main passion -- her witchcraft and her shop. "I handed over the work, the letter writing, to another group, but all these years they have done nothing, so we are starting over this month."

"I'd like to canvass the whole of the United States, city by city, and give every official this law memorandum," she said, producing a white four-page pamphlet on the constitutional rights of witches.

OUCH! The "other group" she is referring to is the Witch's League for Public Awareness, a group she founded in 1986. This is a pretty good group, in my opinion. They run a nice website, give out free info when asked and don't stick burning pentagrams on anyone's lawn...even if they REALLY deserve it. To say they've done "nothing" is a little...spiteful, quite frankly. I know we don't have a Witch in the White House, but would a Witch be DUMB enough to want to run for President (or First Lady?) I think not.

I do call myself a Witch (I think Wiccan is a wimpy word), but I'm not into the bells, books and candles as I was seven years ago. I can sense that Witches may be getting a bit uppit about how they are percieved by others...which is preceisely the oppposite reason I became a Witch. I wanted to NOT gove a damn about what anyone thought of me...except ME. The day Wicca becomes an organized religion is the day I start hiding my pentacle under the mattress. Witches have a great sense of humor, and I'm afraid High Preistess Cabot makes us look like stiffs.