Fashion Rant

Once there was a time when you could buy blue jeans from LLBean and they were tough and would wear for a couple of years of what I do every day. My jeans have been pee’d on by a turtle, jumped into a swamp to rescue my elderly dog, collected seven pick-up truck loads of stones from a local quarry, built several buildings and they’ve been in messes that required a respirator for their occupant. They get scraped by hay bales, garden dirt gets ground into them, stove-wood tears them, sparks occasionally burn holes in them. They are on a first-name basis with horse manure, and they play with a four-year-old. You could accurately say that all of my clothes are “distressed.”

These days – if you are a woman - you try to buy a pair of LLBean jeans, and they want to know what kind of "wash" you want: stone wash, acid rinse, steep for twelve years in goat urine, or just given a gentle dragging behind an environmentally friendly hybrid car for six weeks. Needless to say, these damned things don't last hole-free for more than two turns in the wash. It seems that consumers want to look like they do actual physical WORK!

What’s a wizard to do? Well, maybe I’ll go over to Doris’ Fashion Nook in Amish country just outside of Rennselaer Falls. That’s where the lumberjacks shop, because that’s where you can get Carhartts and work boots. But do they have size 6 petite? I repeat: what’s a wizard to do?

You Are Here...

It's usually good to know where you're at, and we wizards always like to be helpful.

Fall Discovery

Well, for heaven's snakes! Look what's in the woodpile!

Git 'R Done

I don’t know how that saying caught on, much less why it annoys me. Possibly it is just so redneck that I associate it with the hordes of bible-thumpin’, NASCAR-lovin’ fools who (with the help of their bosom buddies the Very Very Rich and Greedy) put Bush in office and – with flag waving – also want to Git ‘Raq Done. It’s emblazened on T-shirts and caps and demolition derby cars, not so subtly implying that the rest of us couldn’t possibly Git ‘R Done even if we knew what ‘R is and why it needs to be.

Last week I saw another saying that essentially means the same thing: You can’t leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps. Now that one I like. It puts the hay down where the goats can get it, and it doesn’t smack of stupid.