January 14, 2002
AN ANGEL APPEARS AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
This morning, an angel - yes, that's right, an angel - appeared to a gathering of reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. The stunningly beautiful creature with satiny white wings and glowing pink skin announced that it was appearing on behalf of the Creator for a brief, informal press conference.
The Almighty wants people to understand that He is getting mighty tired of being asked ten million times a day to bless America. It is beginning to grate on His nerves. Twenty-four hours a day from truck stops, pool halls, jumbo television screens, and shag-carpeted basement rec-rooms, the noise just never lets up.
The angel said that it was widely recognized that few other people have enjoyed so many blessings - heaps of them, whole mountains and rivers and seas of them - and He has mighty little sympathy with folks who ask for more. The Creator regards it as impertinent to be stuffing your face with whole fried chickens, French fries, biscuits, gravy, and beer while praying for an extra slice of pecan pie.
He wants other people to understand that America has no special standing with Him, despite having received enough material stuff to choke every horse on the planet several times over. Throwing blessings at America was just one of His thousands of experiments with life forms, and it has not been a particularly happy one.
As to taking sides in America's idiotic wars, Jehovah suspects it's only because the President is from Texas that he's so addled on this point. The Eternal One has been mildly diverted once in a while by scantily-clad cheerleaders and armored hominids bowing in prayer before stadiums full of Texans yelling for blood. God does have a sense of humor. But He always credited this lunatic behavior to something in the water - perhaps too much arsenic or runoff of bovine growth hormone - or to eating pork rinds. Now He is concerned that it appears to be national trend.
And that "no special standing" goes double for the Demander in Chief. Talk about a guy who has received more than his share and still asks for more! Without a heavy dose of unearned blessings, this guy would be selling popcorn in a Cineplex.
God never does endorsements. But if He did, He sincerely hopes everyone on the planet recognizes that the Maker and Destroyer of Universes could do a whole lot better than that.
He would like to remind people that Heaven is not a gold-plated trailer park with sequined loud-speakers and fields of tent-meetings. He actually hates country and western music. He is sick of people who claim they've found God when all they've found is that they're burnt out at forty. He can't imagine anyone thinking for a moment that heaven resembles a baton-twirling finale with acres of big hair and mascara and preachers blubbering for quadrillions of years about the Clintons, gays, and the need to send larger donations.
In fact, no one who makes a buck holding tent-meetings or speaking in tongues or selling self-help books and tapes ever gets past the Pearly Gate. St. Peter is under strict orders.
On a more serious note, God was more than a little upset about that name Infinite Justice, suggesting as it did that He would ever confuse vengeance with justice. And He would like it noted that B-52s at thirty-thousand feet versus peasants with muskets is not His idea of a fair fight, much less justice.
God had strongly considered suggesting that this stupid war be ended with just two champions fighting it out - Osama and Dubya, mano a mano.
But with Dubya felled by a pretzel while watching football from his couch, He has decided to postpone the proposal at least until there's a full recovery.
