Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/111814
Urban Druids and Horses��� Patoots by PITT DICKEY Derangement is in the eye of the beholder. Let us ponder which group is more rationale, Urban Druids or people who buy a $950,000 wrist watch. I went on a fact-���nding trip to answer this question by reading two curious magazines. The ���rst is Marginally Magic Magazine, which bills itself as the magazine of ���contemporary paganism, Wiccan traditions, Shamanism and Goddess Spirituality.��� The second is Obscenely Expensive Watches, which has page after page of watch porn ���for people with time on their hands and more money than sense.��� Consider ���rst the problems of today���s Urban Druids. The chief issue facing Urban Druids ���involves questing for natural spaces amidst human creations.��� We all know how hard it can be to ���nd a tree to worship in an asphalt jungle. The cover promises insightful articles about ���Ecstatic urban rituals, tree rites and sacred city symbols.��� When was the last time you practiced tree rites? I thought so. It has been too long hasn���t it? You have become Faunacentric and Floraphobic haven���t you? Haven���t hugged a tree in weeks? Aren���t you ashamed? You have lost touch with our brother trees��� roots. Get in touch with your inner Druid, hug a hemlock. There have been big doings recently at the of���ces of MMM. Sister Moon Feather who has been the manager of the Pagan Spirit Gathering is now also doing part-time of���ce work. A column by a shamanic practioner reports things are picking up in Urban Paganismland. She has been hired ���to do programs in schools about multicultural rituals for solstices and equinoxes. I have been leading drumming at bridal showers, space clearing for real estate agents and performing jinx breaking spells for construction crews.��� Most intriguingly, her latest gigs have included ���offering blessings at newly constructed cemetery crypts.��� Finally, a career path for liberal arts majors that does not require asking ���Do you want fries with that?��� As Baby Boomers die off in increasingly large herds, there will be a growing need for blessings at newly constructed crypts for those who came to full ���ower during the Age of Asparagus. Now let us turn to the Obscenely Expensive Watches, which turns out to be even more bizarre than MMM. The ads are fascinating. Watches have morphed into something called either a chronograph or a horograph. Apparently the target audience of this magazine is the hyper-rich who have bought into the theory that the one who dies with the most toys wins. The ���rst ad is for a Piguet watch (pronounced Pig Gut). The Pig Gut is the watch ���that broke all the rules and treats steel as a precious metal. It has a body of steel and a heart of gold.��� The goal of expensive watches is to show the little gears spinning around inside and make it as dif���cult as possible to tell what time it is. These watches are ���a racing machine for the wrist,��� featuring ���declutchable rotors, free sprung balance with variable inertia, titanium balance cocks, running equations, retrograde and spherical moon phases and ���oating lugs.��� One watch declares it is the most beautiful of all horological complications developed more than 210 years ago to compensate for the effects of gravity.��� Defying gravity is expensive. Another watch ���pushes back the boundaries of horology,��� which sounds like the study of prostitutes. Another ad shows a watch with a black face being worn on what appears to be a cadaver arm bone featuring visible nerves resembling the exhibition of dead Chinese prisoners��� bodies that appears periodically at Myrtle Beach. This sales pitch seems a bit odd to me. A watch selling for $950,000 looks like a little steel crab with little crabby arms that rise up on each side of the face as if praising the sun or money. Another watch has actual ���elements of the Apollo 11 spacecraft and real moondust��� built into the watch. Its ad shows an astronaut in a space suit wearing the watch. Another watch, which allows you to watch its peripheral rotor and big date switching mechanism, provides ���eloquent proof that this watch is the perfect time piece for aesthetes and lovers of complex technology alike.��� Finally, a watch aesthetes and complex technology lovers can both worship. Isn���t that what we have all been waiting for? I can now die happy in the knowledge of horological unity. After reading these two magazines, if I had to be stuck in an elevator with a reader of one of these magazines, I PITT DICKEY, Contributing would chose the Urban Druid. The Obscene Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@ Watch people are far more objectionable. upandcomingweekly.com. Serving Fayetteville & Surrounding Areas for Over 25 years... has 2 announcements for 2013 NEW PHYSICIAN Duy Lam, O.D. Now a c new pa cepting tien all age ts of s. Doctor of Optometry Degree from Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University Special Interests: Comprehensive eye exam for all ages, contact lens ���tting, pre/postop LASIK & cataract surgery, Treatment & Management of Diabetic Retinopathy, Macular Degeneration, Glaucoma & Dry Eye Syndrome. 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