Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we are relentlessly dedicated to fun! "O gentlemen, the time of life is short. To spend that shortness basely is too long."

Shut up, Shakespeare, before I hit you with a water balloon!

On the count of three, everyone's going to salute William Shakespeare with a Bronx cheer! Ready? One ... two ... three ...


PFFFFTTTTTTFFFTTTTTTT!!!

I am seriously thinking of starting my own religion. Rule number one would be not to take anything seriously except the sanctity of human life. Beyond that, anything goes!

This musing is brought about by a change in leadership for the May Day Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm.

I got an email yesterday from someone who has taken up some slack left by the departure of Bard Andrew (see sidebar). The new arrival found numerous grammatical errors in the Spoutwood site, particularly in the area of its Tribes. This same scholar had plenty to say about Bard Andrew's take on Celtic spirituality -- from spelling errors to major quibbles about the British Isles and some such.

This same editor suggested that we in the Mountain Tribe should strike the "Meka leka hi, meka hiney ho" from our Mountain Tribe chant, because -- get this, readers -- it must be an "inside joke."

Gauntlet thrown, "Gods Are Bored" takes arms.

If you were thinking of coming to the Spoutwood Fairie Festival and becoming part of the Mountain Tribe, please take heed of the following scholarly arrangements:

1. Be very, very well-versed in "Pee Wee's Playhouse." All hillbillies love it. Don't try to join our tribe without knowing the exact upholstery pattern on Cherry.

2. New this year: You must also have watched every episode of "Dr. Who," Doctors 10 and 11 ... and you'd better be pretty well-versed in Eccleston as well. There will be a quiz. And the Mountain Tribe MAY have a Tardis. If you question the authenticity of hillbillies in a Tardis, you are a HERETIC.

3. DFTBA. Don't know what that means? You are inauthentic. Go and spend 15 years researching archaic Celtic lore (and another six months on the latest internet banter), or you don't qualify for Mountain Tribe.

Bamp! Just kidding.

Ha ha, la di dah! Whoever edited the tribal page for Spoutwood doesn't get faeries at all! Faeries want to be up on the latest, greatest, most amazing, and -- most importantly -- FUN innovations! Do they care if you spell "faerie" as "fairy?" Oh HELL no! Every morning, every evening, ain't we got fun!?!

Spare and I are the leaders of the Mountain Tribe. No one can dispute my authenticity. My ancestors marched to the Whiskey Rebellion from the mountains of Western Maryland. And as a card-carrying hillbilly, I make the decisions for the Mountain Tribe.

We will say "Meka leka hi, meka hiney ho." That is not an inside joke. Pee Wee is a friend to Faerie.

We will wear fezzes, because Dr. Who likes fezzes. Since when is a British science fiction creation a hillbilly? Oh, since never -- but in Cumberland, Maryland there's a fraternity called the Ali Ghan Shrine ... and those dudes wear fezzes!

We at "The Gods Are Bored" are serious in our support for scholarship. We proudly count a few college professors among our readership. But those professors would immediately recognize the difference between innovative sweet fun and strict adherence to some sort of rule of propriety. The former belongs at Fairie Festivals. The latter belongs in books, papers, and in serious stuff.

We are not serious here. A faerie named Puck lives in our midst, and he has told us point-blank that Shakespeare never wrote a word for anything but money or sex. Did you really believe otherwise?