The Friday Shopping Channel: Magna cum Updates

It’s a rainy day here in the Carolina foothills, and I have been out in the driveway washing the dog. What possesses a person to wash a dog in the rain? Well, I think “possesses” is the key word here, because having just finished washing a dog in the rain, I can’t really explain why I did it. He did kind of stink, and I’d noticed he was scratching a little, and I do have a horror of fleas in the house, but all that isn’t really sufficient to explain why I find myself suddenly wet to the knees and keeping company with two thoroughly soaked short people, not to mention a wet dog who now smells like Pine-Sol — the flea shampoo was marked “Mountain Fresh,” or something like that.

Can’t very well go to Wal-Mart looking like this, so let’s do some virtual shopping instead.

The Jewish High Holy Days are upon us — well, not upon me personally, because I’m not Jewish, but they’re certainly upon Ebay. Here’s a sampling:

Eight story puzzles for Rosh Hashanah

Apple Motif Honey Set for Rosh Hashanah

Another honey bowl, in glass this time. I like this one very much.

I’ve been banging on lately about Mass kits for Catholic children; this looks lovely and timely for a Jewish child.

A nifty vintage Rosh Hashanah greeting card from Israel.

Meanwhile, in a crunching, grinding, not to say shrieking change of gears, here’s an Ebay historical factoid for you: on August 12, 2005, someone scored this item with a winning bid of $255.

I mean, I dunno. I guess if you wish hard enough for something that looks like Mother Teresa, then you’ll find something that looks like Mother Teresa. Whether you pay 255 of your hard-earned smackerolies for it is another question altogether.

What do you see? Image of Mother Mary? Woman? Alien? Uh . . . Elvis? A howler monkey? Something else worth $9.99 to you? Anyone? Anyone?

I don’t know what’s more interesting: that somebody out there is actually selling nothing on Ebay, or that somebody else out there has bid on it.

WWJD? Well, He wouldn’t lose His marbles . . . da dum ching.

Been a while since you bought a tie, hasn’t it?

The Hymns You Treasure. The Great Hammond Organ Sound You Love. As Never Before on this two-CD set.

All right, this wet dog lurking under my desk is starting to make my feet cold. Time to get up and do something real for a while.

UPDATE: My reader Sarah Johnson notes that bidding has ended on nothing, but that the site is suggesting some interesting alternatives. There’s this, for instance. You’d think that what with putting the words “image” and “God” on the same t-shirt, they’d manage some reference to being made in the image of God, but I guess even in the XXL sizes there’s just no room for pushing an idea even halfway to its natural limits.

I’m with Sarah in wanting to get my hands on a copy of Wanda Gag’s Nothing at All. We have an old school-library copy of her ABC Bunny which has been much loved by all our children. Her illustrations, with those of other 1930s-era children’s writer/artists Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire and Virginia Lee Burton, are among the most dazzlingly imaginative in all children’s literature.