Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" If you were with us yesterday, you'll recall that an extremely ancient (and therefore presumably bored) Goddess has dropped by for a visit. This Goddess is from so far back in the mists of time that nothing remains of her praise and worship team except one 400,000-year-old Homo sapiens skull found by fossil collectors in Africa. She brings a whole new meaning to "older than dirt," because she is literally older than the dirt as deep as you can dig.

There's an incredible cultural divide between me and this Goddess. She keeps looking at me like I'm a moron. Which, as you know, it's usually me looking at other people as if they're morons. I'm tempted to turn on Fox News and point to it, in hopes She'll find a bigger moron than me to scowl at.  But I don't think that would work. She seems to regard the lot of us as lesser mortals.

There could be something to this. The African Homo sapiens skull from so long ago actually had a bigger brain than the brains we have now. We have devolved.

(Before I proceed, please understand that this Goddess, like so many who come here to "The Gods Are Bored" for interviews, is part of a distinct pantheon, attached to a culture and an era. She's not a universal Goddess, nor has she indicated that she was ever as busy as Yahweh is today.)

The most recent science traces the whole human race back to a single female ancestor who lived 140,000 years ago. This Goddess, so far as I can tell, came from a different, and far more ancient, gene pool.

Let me tell ya, this snobby Goddess is making me think that the best of Homo sapiens is dead and gone.

She has sneered at my house and everything in it. Not surprisingly, she aimed an absolutely withering glare at the television while The Spare was watching iCarly. Her deepest disdain, however, seems to focus on our domestic pets. She hissed at Alpha. Which was enough for me, because no one hisses at my Alpha!

That hiss was the only sound she has made. Considering that my ears ring every time I get close to her, I'm going to postulate that her praise and worship team communicated by reading each other's minds. Whoa, trippy, I know. But I'm not going to argue that evolution always moves in a progressive fashion. They say there's Tyrannosaurus rex DNA in canaries. If you were to put the two creatures on a timeline, which one would you say was oldest?

Well, excuuuuuse me if I happen to be inferior to some bunch of big-brained lugs way, way, way back in the day! I have to work with what I have at my disposal! Tonight I'll put my fiber-optic light-up lawn gnome on the Shrine of the Mists and set it on High Glow. Hopefully that will send Goddess Superior packing. If She's that superior, she must lack the capacity for boredom anyway.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to clean the coop in which I keep the foster kittens, then clean Alpha and Beta's cat box, then go to the store for cat food, and then fix dinner. I won't have a moment to think!