Hollywood, USA

Dear OT’s I Through XXVII (inclusive),

  You guys have had it rough lately.  People think your religion, and your Chosen One, are just a big joke.  Boy, that smarts, doesn’t it?  So, I thought I would drop you a note to tell you to keep plugging away.

  When My boys and I started Our business, people thought Our brand-loyalists were nuts, too.  The brand-loyalists of Zeus, Baal, Odin and even Tree Spirit #4 used to laugh unmercifully at them.  But now, the rulers of the most powerful nation in history can proudly stand before the world and say, “How you like me now, bitches!”  Even My toughest competitor, Allah, (who is a hack), only got as big as He is by selling a knock-off of My product.

  So, as you can see, no matter how crazy people think you are today, give it a thousand years or so and your brand will be just as sacred and untouchable as Mohammadism or Mormonism or even Protestantism, (“Now with 50% More Jesus!”).  Eventually you’ll have spin-off products and maybe Tom Cruise will bring His kids into the business, as I did.  There will be Holy Relics like bits of the One True Couch on which The Chosen One proved His heterosexuality to the Great & Powerful Oprah.  The possibilities are endless, really.

  Which brings Me to the main reason I’m writing.  While fame and power and fortune, (even more than you wield now), are almost certainly Scientology’s, eventually; the sad truth is none of you will be around to cash in on it.  No, like the early martyrs, your lot is to die, (figuratively), a gruesome death, (also figurative), in the figurative arena with the (mostly figurative) lions.  The best you can hope for in your lifetimes is a small tax-exemption, and you may not have that for long.  Therefore, purely out of the love of My heart, (For is it not written, “Gawd is Love,”?), I’d like to offer you a proposal that I think you’ll like.

  I want to put in a bid to make Scientology a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gawd, Inc.  From your perspective, it’s a win-win, home-run, slam-dunk of a deal.  From day one, you’ll have the protection of My unexamined Respect.  No one will dare make fun of you anymore for fear of offending My (admittedly touchy) brand-loyalists.  Folks guffaw at tales of Xenu torturing galactic citizens in space-faring DC-10’s?  Not once you explain that Xenu is now VP, Interstellar Acquisitions, at Hell, Ltd.  “Some people” say that Tom Cruise is a short, closeted fruitcake in every sense of the word?  They’ll shut their pie holes when you show them a copy of the Gawd, Inc. press release naming Him the latest in a long line of well-respected prophets.  Mess with one of My prophets and you’re likely to get mauled by bears.  That’s the sort of thing people sit up and take notice of.  And money?  Phrew!  Just ask Pope Ratzi what his cash-flow situation is like.

  On My end, all I ask is that you start turning over the tithes you already collect to My vacation fund.  You know, just to cover expenses and whatnot.  For what you’re now spending on lawyers and private eyes and street thugs, you can get the much more efficacious mantle of Gawd, Inc.

  I’ll have My lawyers send your lawyers a copy of the standard contract.  I can’t wait to have you in the family, so to speak.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

Underneath the Big Rock, PO Box 1115 Vista, CA  92085

Dear Poor, Poor, Shat-Upon Brand-Loyalists,

  It has come to My Divine Attention that you are being crushed like defenseless, thin-skinned tomatoes.  Boy, if I weren’t on vacation I’d give those mustachioed, assless-chap-wearing fags and their millions and millions of enablers such a smiting!  Well, actually, I couldn’t really afford to do that.  All of My angels, seraphim, cherubim, etc. are LGBT, and they have got one Hell of a union.  You wouldn’t believe the stink they raised when somebody leaked a memo on Gawd, Inc. policy about that.

  So let’s keep it on the QT that I’m backing your rally for the right to say anything you want about the gaybos.  On Monday, November 16, when you’re standing outside the Department of Justice, (Good one.), urging each other to do as Republican Jesus commands and revile sissy-boys, twinkies and bull-dykes, know that I will be there with you.  Not literally, of course.  As I say, I’m on vacation and the weather in Bali right now is not to be missed.  But, you know, figuratively.  Just be sure not to mention Me.  I can’t afford a slow-down or, Me forbid, a strike right now.  If Gawd, Inc. has to bus in demon scabs, it’s liable to get ugly.

  It’s odd how hard it is to find qualified angels, as opposed to demons, now that I think about it.  Dead brand-loyalists line up around the block when Hell is hiring; and not just to get off the receiving end.  There’s just something about torturing others that appeals to them.  Or maybe it’s the dental insurance, I don’t know.  I’m sure you’ll want to apply as soon as you kick the bucket.  Being members of the CADC will certainly look good on your resumé.  If you’ve also ever drowned little baby kittens or tied firecrackers to a dog’s tail, be sure to mention it.  Every little bit helps.

  Anyway, most of you won’t have to worry about getting your demon CV in order until the bus ride home, so let’s get back to the point.  The point here is not whether or not it’s alright to say that fags, ass-bandits, benders, queens, andro-dykes, aunties, back-ticklers, botty-burglars, buggerers, bumboys, catamites, chocolate chimney sweeps, colon commanders, donut punchers, dykes, exhaust-pipe engineers, fairies, freaks, fudge-packers, homos, inverts, knob jockies, left-handers, lezbos, lezzies, leztastics, longtime companions, mollies, nellies, on-the-other-bussers, pansies, queers, rear admirals, sodomites, twinks, uphill gardeners, vice anglaises and wind-jammers should die horrible, horrible deaths and then spend all of eternity in the vilest bit of Hell.  No, the point is to show the world how badly you are being oppressed.  If your right to castigate catamites is taken from you, what’s the point?  Am I right?  Really, I can think of few things worse than being told you can’t share with the world your disgust of those who, as far as anyone can prove, are not the same as you.  So you get out there and fight for your rights, and know that I’m with you 100%*.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

*  The phrase ”with you 100%” is not meant to convey agreement by Gawd, Gawd, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries, including Hell & Purgatory, LLC, with any position you may espouse, or to denote legal or ethical responsibility of aforesaid deities or corporations.  Wink, wink.

Secret Govt. Organ-Stealing Plant, Reagan Wing, Rm. 3A

Dear Glenn,

  I’m sorry to hear you’re under the weather.  I was going to send flowers, but a) they cost money I require for other purposes and 2) I was afraid you might be allergic to anything that isn’t white.

  This doesn’t come easily to Me, but… well, when I say that I’m sorry, I actually mean it this time.  I’m sorry because it’s My fault.  I didn’t mean to embolden your appendix to climb up your spinal column and try to throttle your brain.  In the past, with situations like burning Sodom & that other place, or drowning all the dinosaurs, I wasn’t the least bit sorry because I fully meant to wreak all that destruction.  You’d have agreed totally if you’d been there.  Sodom, (and I admit the name should have been a giveaway), turned out to be chock full of sodomites and the dinosaurs were agitating for Communist Health Care.  So, good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.

  However, in your case, it was simply a slip of the old omnipotence.  I was chatting up this girl in the bar of My hotel and she seemed really impressed when I told her that I’m omniscient and omnipotent.  In no time I was reading her mind, (“I wonder what’s on TV right now?”), and lighting the candles at the tables from across the room.  So, before I knew it, she was asking Me just how omnipotent I was.  “You mean,”, she said, “You could just snap Your fingers and make the world a better place?”

  You can probably see where this is going from here.  Without thinking about it, I said, “Sure, baby,”, snapped My fingers and Pow!  Your appendix went rogue.

  Really, when you think about it, I shouldn’t blame Myself.  It’s just as much that girl’s fault as mine.  More, actually.  I’m really more of an innocent bystander here.  Or, as I know you’d agree, it looks a lot like a conspiracy against Me.  I was just doing what I do.  Enjoying My vacation, having a drink or six in the hotel bar and picking up loose totty.  She took advantage of My nature in order to embarrass Me and get rid of you.

  If I were you, I’d get on the air immediately and tell the world about this socialist plot to kill you.  Presuming you survive their vicious attack.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

Where Women Glow and Men Chunder

Dear Chosen Ozians,

  Are you trying to make the Baby Jesii cry?  If you go through with your planned… er… plan of Divine Denial of Service, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.  I know you mean to put Me, personally, offline because of something one of My brand-loyalists did to you, which I can understand.  Believe Me, I know what it’s like to attack someone for something someone else did.  Been there; done that; designed the t-shirt.

  However, I’m not sure you understand how this prayer thing works.  That’s understandable, as you tend to think along the lines of reality-based actions, whereas My brand-loyalists fully grasp the ways of the meta-natural, super-physicality that is My domain.  It’s ineffable.  You wouldn’t get it.  My old pal Cthulhu’s minion, PZ Myers, almost has it right.

“[A]ll modern prayers are first funneled through a 110 baud modem, then passed further upstairs by telegraph, then pony express riders gallop it over to the Pearly Gates, and then a rewritten version is passed on to a team of long-dead Sumerian scribes for transcription into cuneiform on wax plates, and then and only then is it in a format that a bronze age patriarchal deity can understand.”

  But, the crucial bit of the chain he is missing is that those wax plates are then stored in a warehouse complex outside of Santa Fe, NM for safekeeping. I never actually look at them.  To be honest, I got a C- in Cuneiform in school.  If it hadn’t been for cheating off of Enki, I probably would have failed the class.   The only prayers that I actually receive are those which are handwritten on postcards and mailed to Me at whichever hotel I happen to be staying in at the time.  So all you’re going to do is make extra work for the telegraphers, riders, scribes and forklift operators.

  Normally, this wouldn’t bother Me, since I don’t pay those guys, anyway.  The problem here is with My boys, the Jesii.  That 110 baud modem is what They use to access the interwebs.  You can take it from Me that if Republican Jesus can’t get on to glennbeck.com and Hippy Jesus can’t download Peter, Paul & Mary mp3’s, there will be some weeping and gnashing of teeth.

  Actually, the real problem is that if the Jesii start calling Me up while I’m on vacation, whingeing away about no access to blogs, music and porn, I’m liable to start smiting.  As you are a subset of My Chosen People, the atheists, I know you understand the way I deal with problems.  I won’t take out My annoyance on the Jesii, who will actually be bothering Me, I’ll take it out on you by causing a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico next hurricane season.  I’ll take it out on you by smiting a telephone repairman in Sweden with lightning.  I’ll take it out on you by causing a statistically insignificant rise in the number of miscarriages in Alabama.  If I’m really cheesed off I’ll take it out on you by not helping some of My brand-loyalists find their missing car keys.

  By now, I know that you’re literally quaking in your cork-festooned hats.  You can thank your lucky stars, (and by “your lucky stars”, I mean “Me”), that you didn’t come up with a Divine Denial of Service that would have inconvenienced Me, personally.  In that case, you would have had a lawsuit from Fire, Brimstone & Wrath, LLC in your hands faster than you could say “G’day”.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

Big Hole in the Ground, Geneva, Switzerland

Dear Sciencers,

  This morning, when the hotel sent up My breakfast Filet Mignon avec Sauce Bernaise, they included a newspaper – which I don’t normally have any use for – and I nearly choked on the Chateau Rotschild.

  It seems My old nemesis, the Higgs boson, is up to his old tricks.  Oh, I hate that particle!  As two of your colleagues, Nielsen and Ninomiya, pointed out, I abhor a Gawd particle.  I mean, it just makes My teeth itch!  Why, you may ask, do I hate it so?  Well, far be it for a classy deity such as Myself to drag personal issues onto a public stage, so I’ll just say that the Higgs boson knows what it did.  I can take a joke as well as the next deity, but some things simply aren’t funny.

  Now it’s practicing its singularly un-funny brand of practical joking on you.

  Actually, just between you and Me, it does seem a bit funnier when it’s happening to someone else.  But that’s beside the point.  The point is that no one and nothing gets away with putting a whoopee cushion on My seat in the Deity Club dining room playing crass and tasteless “jokes” on an important and serious deity.  That will not stand.

  In fact, I’m often appalled at what passes for humor these days.  I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Higgs boson has been giving ideas to Sarah Silverman.  Her spectacularly not-at-all-funny proposal to sell off all of My bank’s assets just to buy lunch for a bunch of people who will only be hungry again later, leaves Me cold.  Well, I say “cold”, but “Fucking Flaming” might be a better description.  I mean, where does she get off trying to stick Me with the bill for feeding the world?  Like it’s somehow My responsibility.  If people are hungry, they can buy their own Filet Mignon avec Sauce Bernaise.  Jesii!  Peckish?  Let them eat steak, I say.  I’m not stopping them – but I’m not picking up the tab, either.

  So, look.  The best way to show Higgs boson that serious people like you and I don’t appreciate school-yard humour, is for you to get back to work finding it and for Me to go about My usual vacation activities as if no sophomoric pranks had reared their ugly heads.  As one of My favorite U.S. presidents said, “Something something something just keep shopping something something.”

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

Somewhere On the Front Lines of the Culture War

Dear True Americans,

  I am verklempt.  It’s so seldom that someone gets Me.  I mean, really gets Me.  I’ve been complaining about that frickin’ unauthorized biography for nearly 6,000 years.  Well before the advent of the written word in the Middle East, in fact.  And now, finally, someone is doing something about it.

  You have no idea how many times that namby-pamby, non-revenue-generating collection of crap has made Republican Jesus cry… and not just when He was a baby.  The problem, as I see you’ve noticed, is that the one of My two idiot much-beloved sons people are most familiar with is Hippy Jesus.  And Hippy Jesus, although I love Him, (I guess), He can come off as a bit of a weak sister.  Thankfully, you’ve addressed that in point number 2, or as I like to think of it, “Commandment The Second”.

2:  Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

  As well as Commandments The Fourth, The Seventh, The Eight and The Tenth.

4:  Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;^[4] defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.

7:  Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

8:  Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

10:  Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

  Especially Commandment The Fourth.  Boy, the stories I could tell you about how word meanings change.  You are so right about “peace”.  Most people today seem to think it means something about not fighting or, often, some drivel about finding non-violent solutions to problems.  If you look it up, (and usually I subscribe to your view that facts have a nasty, liberal bias), you’ll see that one of the definitions of the word is an absence of strife or hostility.  As far as that goes, it’s right.  But how do you arrive at that state?  By stomping the other guy into jelly.  By dashing the heads of [Fill In The Blank]ite women and children against any handy rocks.  By opening the old Windows of Heaven until the last gurgling screams of all those sinful, annoying people you created in your image are finally swallowed up by a world-spanning sea.  That’s how.

  At least, that’s what “peace” used to mean.  Now?  Tch.  I hardly recognize the word.

  Also, I’m glad to see that you’re taking logic back from scientists, skeptics, sane people, Aristotle and others of My New Chosen People, the atheists.

6:  Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

  Hear, hear.  What could be more logical, I often ask the other deities over drinks, than locking the people who piss Me off in My basement for eternity with a professional sadist?  I challenge anyone to assail the logic of that.

  Mostly, though, it’s Commandment The Seventh that makes Me think that this whole Earth Project has been worthwhile.  “Full, free-market meaning.”  I like the way that rolls off the Almighty Tongue.  As you may know, ever since the unauthorized biography came out, someone else has been making a killing off of My intellectual property.  Actually, if you want to get technical – and I do – since I made everything, everything belongs to Me.  So anything anyone doesn’t turn over to My banker/collection agency, (The Church), is just filthy, socialist, communist thievery.

  As I know you and I are on the same page when it comes to socialism and socialists, (you know, like the Nazi Party and the Democrat Party), I can’t wait for you to finish your translation and start selling copies of the new, authorized, Free-Market version of My biography.  Frankly, I could use the cash.  My vacation schedule is gruelling and it soaks up an astonishing amount of money.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

P.S. – I’m thinking a title change is in order, too.  “Bible” is so Bronze Age.  I’m thinking, Gawd Shrugged.  Catchy, eh?

Dear Yute,

  I hope you don’t mind the salutation.  I just like to have nicknames for everyone.  Easier to keep straight.  To be honest, though, I’m not sure I remember who you are.  Are you the one who gave half his cloak to a poor widow?  Or the patron saint of stomach aches?  Or just one of those tedious, “I got eaten by lions” type of saints?  I know you’re not the patron saint of beer brewers; that’s good old Boniface of Mainz.  One of only three I actually approved.

  Well, it doesn’t really matter.  I’ll just assume there was a perfectly valid reason to canonize you.  The Pope owed you money or you poked a hundred children without the church having to bail you out; whatever.

  I’ve dropped you this postcard not to find out who you are or what you did, but to congratulate you on an excellent bit of writing.  Your “Five Things That Would Make Atheists Seem Nicer” is a masterpiece of reasoned discourse and I couldn’t agree with you more.

  For starters, that bit about how smug they are?  Ha!  Don’t I know it.  For instance, I’ll be having a few drinks with some of My Chosen Atheists and it’ll be PZ’s roundand I’ll say, “Hey!  It’s your round.  Where’s My beer,” and he’ll be all, “You don’t exist.  People would think I was crazy if I spent money on a figment of someone else’s imagination.”  You know.  Then he’ll smirk in that smug, atheist way of his and I’ll end up paying not only for My own booze, but everyone else’s when My round comes up.  I try using their argument against them, but Dawkins always brings up Pascal and convinces me that, just in case I do exist, it wouldn’t be fair for Me to skip My round.  It’s almost like they’re taking the piss, you know?  It really chaps My Holy Fundament.

  And that second point of yours?  I’m always telling My Chosen People to relax and not be so paranoid.  Not every single bit of evangelism is about them.  Hell, some of it’s directed at different types of filthy, Gawdless sinners who are most probably going to spend all of eternity roasting in GitmoHell.  I mean, Hippy Jesus!  Get over yourselves, right?  You brand-loyalists have got plenty of other people to pester, like Druids and Muslims and fags.

  My favorite advice was your heartfelt urge for atheists to believe whatever you tell them, through the use of a subtle and complex argument about a hypothetical deity who meddles in people’s lives and communicates through a book of crazy stories and contradictory commandments.  Oh, snap!  That ought to shut ‘em up.  of course, I don’t know any deities like that and I’ve pretty much met them all, but that’s not the point, is it?  The point is, they haven’t met all the deities, so what the hell do they know?  If they just agree with everything you say, they’ll certainly seem nicer.

  Obviously, they won’t be nicer.  A leopard can’t change his shorts, am I right?  Well, evolutionarily he can, but you and I don’t believe in that hogwash, do we?  never seen a dog have kittens, eh?

  Which reminds Me, your advice about the so-called “scientific method” is sure to make those filthy commies My Chosen People seem nicer.  If they’d just admit that their proven method of looking at the universe is a) not what they say it is, but what you say it is and b) wrong, wrong, wrong, abused by them and wrong, then they’d be able to successfully wear the facade of niceness.

  And then there’s the way My very own Chosen Atheists are always making Me out to be some sort of simplistic, two-dimensional absentee-landlord who never heals amputees.  I can’t recall, right off the top of My head, why I don’t call people on the phone or heal amputated legs or any of that sort of thing, but if they’d just ask you, or any other of My brand-loyalists, then I’m sure accepting whatever answer they get would make them seem almost human.  Then they’d stop with all the straw man nonsense.  ‘Cause, boy, do I hate straw men.  Just ask ray Bolger.  I smote the hell out of his bladder after I saw The Wizard of Oz.

  So, keep up the good work and do whatever it is that saints do, and if you ever need Me… well, you’re shit out of luck, actually.  I’m on vacation.  But remember, I loooooove you more than anything in the entire universe and, um, “a sparrow doesn’t fall” and all that stuff… as far as you know.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

Dear Chosen People,

  I had a short layover in New York the other day and decided I’d pop over to Ground Zero and find out why it was still a hole in the ground.  It sometimes ruins My appreciation of the Filet Mignon avec Sauce Bernaise and champagne served in First Class to know that no one’s doing anything about that.  I mean, for My sake, who’s in charge over there?  It’s been eight years.  Get off the dime.

  So I thought it would be exciting to see it as if I were a regular person.  Just a slob like one of you.  With that in mind, I hopped on the A train and I was off.  Two minutes later I was tired of living like the poor people, but if you know anything about the A train from JFK to Manhattan you know that there is no stop on it from which you can reach anywhere in the world other than where the train is going.  let Me tell you, it made Me give predestination a long, hard re-think.

  But before I even reached Ground Zero I had the answer to why nothing is being built there.  You, (and when I’ve said “you” in this postcard so far, I’ve meant “mankind in general”), have got other things to worry about.

  Sitting across from me, the entire trip, was a tiny, old Asian woman wearing a surgical mask, probably stolen from a M*A*S*H unit during the Korean War, and worrying a rosary.  Even with the omniscience and the prayer line shut off, her fervent, fevered prayers bled through… for the entire trip.

  Now, I’d be the first to admit, (if these sorts of things worried Me), that swine flu, Hasidic men sitting next to you on the train and eternal damnation are all things one should fear.  Just not every moment of every day.  If nothing else, think of Me.  I don’t want to be cooped up on the A train, or anywhere else, with that.

  And just as I was about to smite her with a quiet little heart attack, it occurred to Me – Oh!  That’s what My Chosen People, the Atheists, have been doing.  You’ve obviously been worrying about Hell and trying to find a loop-hole to get out of it.  That’s why you keep insisting that you can have a conscience without following My well-thought-out rules.  That’s why you’ve been running around giving to charity and helping little old ladies across the street and whatever else it is that actual Good People do.

  That’s actually kind of cute, in a “dogs playing poker” kind of way.  But, look; that’s not how you fit into My plan.  I understand that you don’t get it – I mean, it’s My Ineffable Plan, not My F-able Plan.  Since I’ve always liked you and, frankly, prefer your company, I wanted to let you down easily.  So when I saw this postcard in the Helsinki airport I knew it was just the thing.  I assume jack Chick drew it, and you can’t let someone down easier than that.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd

Nordic Motel, Rm. 5, 11942 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland, OR 97220

Dear Cupid,

  You crafty bugger – and I mean that literally.  But I’m not writing to castigate You for Your filthy, filthy lifestyle this time.  I’m writing because someone told me about Your website and the sneaky, backdoor attempt to woo My Chosen People away.

  You fat fuck.  Just because You couldn’t muster up the balls to smite the opposition and Your followers went tits-up years ago, You think You’re justified in using this new intertubes craze to siphon off some of My Chosen People?  Well, think again, Chubbo.  Or… wait a minute.  Is this about Your mother?  Is this because I schtupped Venus in the cloakroom of the Deity Club and never called Her back?  Look, kid; I wouldn’t think I’d have to explain to You that what two consenting deities do in the privacy of Their own coat-check is no one else’s business.  For crying out loud, Your mother can take care of Herself… and 8 or 9 others, in my experience.

  So quit being such a cherub and leave the Chosen Atheists out of this.  You could inadvertently screw up My ineffable plan.  How are My Chosen People going to fully appreciate the upcoming persecutions and pogroms and reality TV shows if You’ve gone and made them fall in love?  Okay?  Are we cool now?

Wish You Were here,

~Gawd

P.S. – Tell Your mom I said, “Someone seems to have soiled Zeus’s overcoat.”  Inside joke.  She’ll know what I mean.

Dear Brand Loyalists and Chosen People,

  Gawd is out golfing for a bit and I, your friendly atheistical Postman, am doing some writing that might just bring in a buck or two.  So no deliveries for at least another week.  However, I can’t help but notice that many come, but few click.  So click on some of Gawd’s Chosen Few and drinking pals on the right.  While many of them, it goes without saying, eat babies and/or pole-dance for Satan, you should be safe as long as you don’t give them your home address.

TTFN,

~Postman