May 26
...serving up your daily dish.
What kind of town do we live in when the criminal element is out swiping ornamental gazing balls? News on the Watercooler yesterday that some brazen thief stole one of these, with pedestal, right out of a Montclair front yard!
Anyway, I just wanted others to be aware. Can you believe that there are people so bold these days that even your lawn ornaments aren't safe?
[Cue to Humphrey Bogart] "Of all the gazing balls in all the the towns in the all the world, they had to pick this one ..."
Hey MEWsies out there, the Barista puts dibs on this one for her next novel. No cheating.
May 26, 2005 in Karma Violation, Sirens | Permalink
In Glen Ridge someone stole Baby Jesus and Mary from our Nativity set on the front lawn one year.How desperate can they be? They have also stolen (and destroyed) Halloween and Easter decorations on my street.
Posted by: ridger | May 26, 2005 8:48:36 AM
In Glen Ridge someone stole Baby Jesus and Mary from our Nativity set on the front lawn one year.How desperate can they be? They have also stolen (and destroyed) Halloween and Easter decorations on my street.
Posted by: ridger | May 26, 2005 9:14:39 AM
When I was a teenaged miscreant in central NJ, lawn ornaments were a frequent target of late-night scavenger hunts that involved up to 30 groups of kids in cars competing for a prize (usually the collected entry fees from all the teams, minus a generous fee for the "organizer").
Posted by: David P. Powell | May 26, 2005 9:48:29 AM
When you called it a "gazing ball," does that mean it's supposed to be used for scrying? Like Dr. John Dee did? I always wondered what those things were called, the punks I knew who "liberated" them (most of whom went to the local vo-tech, interestingly) referred to them as "glass bowling balls." They'd smash them against also-heisted garden gnomes for fun. Perhaps their offspring are still about, appallingly.
Posted by: cathar | May 26, 2005 5:55:56 PM
Scrying means what? It's not in the dictionary. I'm not ashamed to admit that, whatever Dr. John Dee did, it is an unusual and unfamiliar activity to me. Is it something kinky?
Posted by: JTF | May 26, 2005 8:40:02 PM
from the American Heritage online edition:
srky
PRONUNCIATION: skr
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: scried ( skrd), scry·ing, scries ( skrz)
To see or predict the future by means of a crystal ball.
ETYMOLOGY: Short for descry.
Posted by: google addict | May 26, 2005 9:22:14 PM
So it's only kinky if you believe that fooling with the occult is too. (But it can also be done with mirrors, window panes, crystals, etc.) Dr. John Dee was an Elizabethan mage-bounder-conman. Sort of a precursor of someone like either Deepak Chopra or Werner Erhard. And I still wonder if scrying is the origin of those garden balls.
Posted by: cathar | May 26, 2005 10:12:05 PM
Now that I think about it, JTF, did you somehow think those garden orbs were, well, uh, sorta, kinda, large versions of what I believe they call "ben-wa balls" in sex shops? (Please, please, don't ask me to explain this one, because when I finally learned what it was I still had a problem visualizing the entire process.)
Posted by: cathar | May 26, 2005 10:27:36 PM
Actually, at first, cathar, I didn't. But, now that the suggestion was made, maybe benwa balls did make a subliminal connection. I remember EST. A former friend of mine followed his teachings, back in the '70's. I won't go any further with that. I don't believe scrying has much to do with those reflective garden orbs.
Posted by: JTF | May 27, 2005 9:36:02 PM
