random thoughts and thoroughbred selections

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

The Good News

I read today that the car that I drive, the venerable Buick LeSabre, is at the very bottom of the list of cars thieves want to steal.

I don�t know whether to be thrilled that I have one less thing to be worried about, or worried that I�m driving something that isn�t exactly thrilling.

Whatever, I could give a crap. In my too-often used phrase describing my car, �It�s like driving a La-Z-Boy.�

I�ve always found it interesting that the New Testament is sometimes referred to as, �The Good News.� �News,� by definition, is:

1 � a report of recent events
2 � previously unknown information

Since this all happened somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 years ago, I think we can consider this somewhere on the other side of �news.�

This, of course, got me thinking about God and the afterlife. If you haven�t figured out, I consider myself a tolerant atheist, which means I don�t believe in any sort of higher power, heaven, or hell. Kirk Cameron believes I�ll burn, but I�ll take my chances. Anyway, if there were a God, I think that it�s likely he�d be supremely tolerant and would embrace all his �children� the same way in the afterlife regardless of their religious affiliation here on earth.

However, if I were God? I�d probably line everyone up at the gates, segregating one group (let�s say the Catholics), and letting them get in on an express line with VIP credentials while everyone else watched. Then, as the Catholics are spinning the turnstile, getting into the joint unobstructed, I�d have a bunch of hoops for everyone else to jump through that would be completely pointless for any reason save my amusement. Of course, they wouldn�t get the VIP credentials, which really wouldn�t mean anything different for the Catholics, but would simply serve to cause everyone else to stop and think about their choices here on earth a little bit.

Maybe not the Catholics. Maybe I�d pick a stranger group like the Seventh Day Adventists. Who the hell even knows what they�re all about.

I would actually be a pretty lousy God all things considered. First of all, I�d have too much fun with it. Most of my sense of humor is derived from the absurd, so I�d get off on the little things. For example, I�d rig ATMs to push the withdrawal money out just enough, but still have the machine grip it tightly so it can�t be taken without a struggle and possibly a crowbar. I�d change all the glue on the backs of postage stamps (just for a day) to dissolve completely when licked, and then make the post office send all the letters with taped on stamps back to sender. These are the things that make me laugh.

I�d also want to do the �smiting� thing more often than happens now, but find unique ways to send messages of my displeasure to those who deserve it. Mostly I�d wan to do low-level smiting. Of course, those who would bring significant pain and suffering to others would be dealt with severely, but what about the guy who�s weaving in and out of traffic in an effort to beat everyone to the next stoplight? I�d give him two flat tires. One at first, then he�d blow his second a quarter mile from changing the first. The woman who knocks a guy�s sweatshirt into a puddle on the bottle room floor and doesn�t apologize? She�s going to accidentally topple over a molasses display in aisle four and get sticky. Britney Spears? I�m going to make her fall in love with some doofus who has a kid, get severe acne, and have to flee to Bali to escape the constant torment the paparazzi is willing to inflict upon her�

�What? Oh, he is listening!

I�d be a terrible God because I wouldn�t want to deal with the prayers and incessant whining of my people. There is just more I�d want to do than help some family bless their Salisbury steak dinner, and don�t get me started about how annoying white people singing hymns is to me. If it�s not Al Green or Aretha exalting my greatness, I�m not listening. I�d pay too much attention to those in society who are inflicting inconvenience and small pockets of anger, making sure those me-first assholes are getting their just desserts. The important stuff would just fall by the wayside. No one would luck into a cure for cancer, there�d be no improvement to global warming and the environment, and people would just begin to understand that the set of footprints they saw on the beach weren�t mine after all. They were just the prints of some dude with a metal detector looking for nickels.

I might end up as a terrible God, but I do know this� I�d be the best shot the Lions have of winning the Super Bowl anytime soon.

[>>]posted at 5:54 PM by BG - click to email
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