by God
14 “Boys,” I said, “spare me this talk of atomic bombs and civil rights and pollution and Vietnam and Iraq; for when it comes to America there is only one question that matters, only one issue that will determine my attitude toward that frustrating, lovable himbo of a superpower:
15 Have they, at long last, inserted ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance?”
16 And the angels nodded, and smiled; and I nodded, and smiled; and all of us nodded, and smiled;
17 For in this bellwether of all signs regarding thy fitness to lead the world, thou hadst done right.
18 Yea; call me sentimental, but I am a sucker for nations that give me a shout-out in their voluntary oaths to magical pole-cloths.
FACTS
(“On Unsolved Mysteries”)
CHAPTER 1
1Mystery is the lot of man.
2 Mystery enfoldeth thy coming into the world; mystery enshroudeth thy departure from it;
3 And in between, mystery is the preferred literary genre of millions of you, particularly those seeking a light beach read.
4 Now, thou mayest believe that to God nothing is a mystery; that for me all is foreseen, and even the most mundane occurrence known beforetime.
5 And verily, as I said before, the simultaneous containment of all information in the universe is well within my powers.
6 I am the Supreme Database; my processing speed is ∞ GHz; the range of my knowledge mocks thy most powerful search engines;
7 Although once in a while I break down and Google myself; last time I checked I had over 600 million results; not too shabby.
8 But I have learned over time, that true omniscience is knowing enough to know what things are better off not knowing.
9 For example: clearly do I recall the long summer of 1980, when millions were nigh unto madness desirous of discovering, “Who shot J. R.?”
10 Now, I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe.
11 I could easily have found out who shot J. R.
12 I could have attended the producers’ meetings; I could have read the script; I could have sat in on one of the table reads; thou gettest the idea.
13 But I did none of these; I stayed deliberately uninformed of the culprit’s identity until the night of the airing, when it turned out to be Kristin, J. R.’s mistress/sister-in-law.
14 A decent resolution, I thought, but a bit of a letdown.
15 (On the other hand, the ending of The Sixth Sense blew me away.
16 I had no idea it was coming; which is amazing, for remember, I actually do see dead people.)
17 Yet despite my efforts at self-nondisclosure, I am in the end the repository of all knowledge hidden and arcane; the possessor of the answers to all the great mysteries that have haunted the generations of men.
18 In me the unfathomable is made fathomable, and the anonymous nonymous; all whodunits become he-dunits, and all what’s-his-names become right!- that’s-his-names.
19 My publisher has asked if I would be willing to divulge some of these secrets to my readers, and I am happy to oblige; but I would not have the solutions to these timeless riddles fall into the hands of those too impious to fork over the cover price.
20 So, bookbuyer, I ask that thou sharest none of the information I am about to reveal with anyone who hath not purchased this book;
21 Especially those craven, fiendish souls who borrowed it from a library.
CHAPTER 2
SPOILER ALERT! ******** SPOILER ALERT! *************
1I will start with a big one: the identity of the most notorious serial killer of all time, Jack the Ripper.
2 It was Neville Hopkins.
3 He was an itinerant pickpocket squatting in Whitechapel; a quiet man; kept to himself; bit of a loner; few close friends.
4 Flew completely under the radar.
5 Right after the final murder he boarded a boat bound for New York and was never heard from again.
6 Anyway, Neville Hopkins: Jack the Ripper.
7 Now thou knowest.
8 Sticking with unsolved murders, the Zodiac Killer was famous astrologer Jeane Dixon.
9 Yea: embarrassed after an epic public misreading of the moon in Scorpio, she worked through her anger with a horrific murder spree through Northern California.
10 She got away with it, too; for on her next birthday she cast her own horoscope and found that it read, “You born today are passionate, strong-willed, and capable of getting away with a horrific murder spree through Northern California... if you stop the killing right now.”
11 Los Angeles’s infamous Black Dahlia murder of 1947 was committed by folk singer Woody Guthrie.
12 In fact, he confessed to the crime in the sixth verse of his most famous song:
13 “As I was strolling South Norton Avenue, I met a woman, the Black Dahlia. I killed her slowly and bashed her face in. This land was made for you and me.”
14 But he was never caught; for no one ever makes it to the sixth verse of “This Land Is Your Land.”
15 As for Lizzie Borden, she, with an axe, neither gave her mother 40 whacks, nor, having seen what she had done, gave her father 41.
16 No; that August morning, the Bordens fell victim to a serial killer who broke into their house at random, chopped them both to bits, and fled the scene, never to be heard from again.
17 His name?
18 Neville Hopkins.
CHAPTER 3
1The Shroud of Turin was a forgery produced in 1287 by the Turin Shroudmakers’ Guild to promote the local shroud-making industry; it succeeded spectacularly.
2 Grand Duchess Anastasia died at the hands of the thugs who killed the rest of her family; the woman who later claimed to be her was in reality her chief assassin; the whole thing was a Single White Female situation that got way out of hand.
3 The works of William Shakespeare were written by none other than legendary British playwright William Shakespeare.
4 The Lindbergh baby was indeed kidnapped and killed by the man executed for the crime, German immigrant Bruno Hauptmann, in 1932.
5 (Fortunately, Lindbergh was big enough not to let one bad apple cloud his overall view of either German leadership, or the many exciting things it was doing in the 1930s.)
6 Jimmy Hoffa is buried in Grant’s Tomb.
7 D. B. Cooper parachuted safely into the forests of southwestern Washington, where he was eaten by Bigfoot.
8 Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
9 Actually, he did it twice: once in 1960, for his one-man Mark Twain show, The Sage from Hannibal; and again in October 1963, in an experimental production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.
10 It was during the run of this latter show that he met gangster Sam Giancana, who paid him $50,000 in Cuban money to kill JFK.
11 Turning now to cryptozoology: the yeti does not exist; he is but a bogeyman Sherpas scare their children with whenever they whine about the lack of oxygen.
12 The Loch Ness Monster does exist; but he is not a monster of flesh and blood, rather the monster of bigotry and intolerance dwelling inside the human heart, which for some reason is then externalized as an imaginary Scottish plesiosaur.
13 On the other hand, El Chupacabra is real; he is a monstrous goatlike creature who poses an actual threat to Mexicans, and an even bigger one to Americans;
14 For soon he plans to cross the border, where he will take away jobs from hardworking American mythical creatures like the Jersey Devil and Mothman.
15 On to a few legendary places: Atlantis was a real city on the Aegean island of Santorini that was destroyed by a massive volcano 3,600 years ago.
16 It is lost forever; but I must tell thee that even were it not, it would not be worth finding.
17 For Atlantis was a Bronze Age backwater whose imbecilic citizenry passed its time burping, farting, and raping sheep.
18 Their demise was a boon for civilization, but it is with cities as it is with people: dying young and mysteriously can turn any idiot into a
legend.
19 (Yea, it was the only half-intelligent thing Jim Morrison ever did in his life.)
20 On the other hand, the Lost City of Gold, El Dorado, never existed, and it is just as well; for even I shudder to think of the “missionary work” men like Cortez or Pizarro would have practiced on its people once they caught sight of it.
21 My guess is it would have started with flaying, then gone downhill from there.
22 Area 51 is a regular US military base; and though classified operations do occur there, they have nothing to do with aliens, UFOs, time travel, or anything out of the ordinary.
23 Those ops all happen in Area 63.
24 And finally, Stonehenge.
25 I have no idea what the hell Stonehenge is.
CHAPTER 4
1But I can shed light on a few questions I am guessing none of you thought ever would—or could—be answered.
2 For example: which came first, the chicken or the egg?
3 Neither. The rooster came first.
4 Where does the time go?
5 Nowhere; it is thou who art moving through it.
6 What is the sound of one hand clapping?
7 Very disappointing, for a performer.
8 What is to be done?
9 It depends.
10 When will they ever learn?
11 Eventually.
12 Are we there yet?
13 No.
14 Is the glass half empty or half full?
15 Neither. It is filthy.
16 Why do fools falls in love?
17 Because everyone falls in love, and “fools” are a subgroup of “everyone.”
18 If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
19 Thy premise is false; there is Someone there to hear it.
20 Why are all the good men either married or gay?
21 Thy premise is also false; there are many good men, but thou scarest them off with thy stink of desperation.
22 Finally, will wonders never cease?
23 No; they’ll cease.
CHAPTER 5
1Many other mysteries am I keen to divulge; but my shrewd publisher has asked that I withhold some, in the event of a sequel.
2 I will mention in passing that the likelihood of such a sequel is contingent upon two factors: first, whether the current volume meets with reasonable success in the marketplace; and second, whether the world still exists in two years.
3 And frankly I must tell thee, humanity, that these two factors are not unrelated.
4 For while my eschatological plans—which I will be discussing at the end of this book—are preordained, unalterable, and irrevocable through the pith and marrow of time;
5 Having said that, if this book were to sell a sufficient number of copies to warrant a follow-up, there is nothing in my apocalyptic schedule that could not be pushed back a year or two.
6 It is thy call, humanity.
7 What is the meaning of life?
8 Find out, in The Last Testament 2: The Final Conclusion.
9 On sale everywhere 2014...if there is a 2014.
GAMES
(“On Sports”)
CHAPTER 1
1Every so often I like to call in to sports radio shows.
2 I tell the screener I am “Mike from Massapequa” or “Sam from Santa Clara,” and he talks to me a minute to make sure I am worthy enough, not only to discuss the foibles of the area’s athletic teams, but to freight that conversation with enough entertainment value to warrant its being broadcast to 35,000 other people in the greater, say, St. Louis area.
3 Then I am put on hold; then I hear, “You’re on the air!”; and then I launch into a passionate monologue—in the pitch-perfect accent of the local ethnic lower-middle-class—about the value of switch-hitting outfielders, and dogfighting; the eternal beauty of the pick-and-roll, and steroids; the day the Red Sox won the World Series, and the day O. J. Simpson murdered two people;
4 All things sports.
5 For a few pleasant minutes the hosts and I talk and complain and commiserate and argue with each other; then I am thanked for calling, and the hosts move on, never realizing that the unseen voice with which they just talked pucks was not in fact Mike from Massapequa, but God from the Great Beyond.
6 But I do not mind, for I do not call in to be recognized; I call because I love talking sports.
7 Sport is mythic; sport is epic; sport is a condensation of all human activity; it is often said sport is a metaphor for life; it would be more accurate to say life is a metaphor for sport.
8 U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren once wrote, “I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures.”
9 A few moments’ reflection reveals how utterly wrong these words are; yet they are in keeping with the kind of mindless distraction that sports provide.
10 They are also the greatest substitute for armed conflict ever devised; they are like unto Diet War, a zero-casualty alternative to Regular War, with all the great fighting and suffering and action thou demandest in a conflict, but almost none of the adverse health effects.
11 Especially do I love the Olympics: the pageantry of all the nations of the world joining together in peaceful competition as a million armed security personnel hover just off-camera; mythmaking at its finest.
12 The opening ceremony in Beijing in 2008 was one of the most extraordinary events I have ever seen, transcendent and thrilling; it made me again recall the greatness thy species is capable of, at least when one-fifth of it bites on the same repressive yoke.
13 (The gauntlet has been thrown, London; thou wilt need to do something spectacular in 2012 to top the Chinese.
14 May I suggest Duchess Kate giving birth in the middle of Olympic Stadium just as the torch is lit?
15 If thou likest the idea, I can help with the timing.)
16 But it is not just the Olympics; I love all sports; athletic competition of every type and size and description enthralls and delights me; except tennis, which is dullsville.
17 In sports I see the finest specimens of my finest creation operating at the highest level of their physical abilities.
18 And as a sports fan, I understand how much the games mean to both other fans and the athletes: the passions they stir, the tempests they roil, the loyalties they build, and above all the rivalry, violence, and rioting they so justifiably evoke.
19 And so that is why I have never, ever, ever influenced the outcome of a sporting event to determine the winner.
20 I have only, on extremely rare occasions, influenced the outcome of a sporting event to affect the spread.
CHAPTER 2
1Many times have I heard athletes pray for victory before the contest; and many times have I heard them thank me for victory afterward.
2 Many times have I heard partisans beseech me to aid their side; and many times have I heard them beseech me to afflict the other side.
3 And many times have I heard reasonable-minded commentators denounce those athletes and fans for believing I would care about something as frivolous as the Raiders-Broncos game.
4 Lo, as a matter of fact, I do care about something as frivolous as the Raiders-Broncos game, Bob Friggin’ Costas.
5 For dozens of human beings are putting their hearts and souls and passion and sweat into that game.
6 And while it is true that, simultaneous to that game unfolding, hundreds of millions of other human beings are putting just as much heart and soul and passion and sweat into far more vital human activities, like manufacturing, or child-rearing, or staying alive;
7 Unlike the Raiders-Broncos game, those activities are all very boring to watch.
8 Understand me: it is not that I do not care about those people; it is that I do not care about what they are doing.
9 I will more thoroughly address the general phenomenon of prayer later in this memoir, but I must mention here h
ow much Junior and I appreciate hearing our names invoked on the field, gridiron, court, rink, course, peloton, or (very rarely) sumo mat.
10 When a fan begs me to keep the puck away from the goalie’s five-hole, I am touched by his commitment.