by God
5 ¼ cup heavy cream
6 1 package active dry yeast (Passover only)
7 1 ounce mayonnaise
DIRECTIONS
8 Slaughter the bird and the mammal by strangling them. Be sure there are no rabbis on premises.
9 Dice the ham, lobster, bird, and mammal using a cheese-knife.
10 Slowly mix in the cream (and yeast) while singing a hymn of thy choice.
11 Finish with dollop of mayonnaise.
12 Serve on dishes of unknown origin, with wine that does not taste like cough syrup, in front of a synagogue.
Cocktail
(“72 VIRGINS COLADA”)
INGREDIENTS
1 7 ounces pineapple juice
2 2 ounces coconut cream
3 1 Koran
4 9/11 cup crushed ice
DIRECTIONS
5 Mix juice, cream, and ice in blender.
6 Muddle Koran in brain.
7 Pour into Collins glass.
8 Garnish with car bomb.
9Allahu akbar!
Dessert
(“GENUINE ANGEL’S FOOD CAKE”)
INGREDIENTS
1 1¼ cups flour
2 1¾ cups confectioners’ sugar
3 1½ cups clouds
4 1½ cups egg whites
5 ¼ teaspoon sunshine
6 ¼ teaspoon salt
7 1 teaspoon cream of rainbow
8 ½ teaspoon starlight extract
9 ½ teaspoon moonlight extract
10 ½ teaspoon vanilla
DIRECTIONS
11 Beat egg whites and clouds until they form puffy cumulonimbi in the bowl; then add starlight, moonlight, rainbow, and vanilla.
12 Let sit at room temperature for 500 years.
13 Sift together flour, sugar, and salt with brisk fluttering motion of wings.
14 Sprinkle dry ingredients ¼ cup at a time into bowl, folding in until celestial harp music descends from on high.
15 Pour mix into an ungreased quarter-cubit halo mold.
16 Bake in the warmth of God’s love for one hour, or until cake appears redeemed.
17 Invert cake and allow it to cool in the pan.
18 When thoroughly cooled, pray it out.
ROMANCE
(“On Sex, Love, and Marriage”)
CHAPTER 1
1I am probably not the first God thou thinkest of when it comes to sex.
2 Thou art more likely to think of deities like Venus; or Cupid; or Ishtar; or Hef.
3 But they are myths, mere figments of the carnal imagination; whereas I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; and my knowledge of all things sexual is, like Adam before I created Steve, bottomless.
4 It was I who devised the human reproductive system; I who bequeathed unto the penis its dual nature as procreator and puppet; I who hid the secret of the female orgasm behind a dense thicket of overgrowth reachable to only the most intrepid and dedicated of explorers;
5 And it is I who watched over 60 Biblical generations beget one another using over 700 different begetting positions; including one called the “Judean Flamethrower,” which once sent King Solomon to the hospital with his testicles stuck in an oil lamp.
6 And yet people seeking guidance in matters of intimacy rarely turn to me; preferring the counsel of wise friends, or sage pills, or gifted vibrators.
7 People see me as “above all that”; and worse, as prudish and stuffy; contemptuous of all purely recreational sexual activity.
8 Certainly I disapprove of masturbation; but not because I view it as a moral weakness, or even a wasteful scattering of seed.
9 No; I disapprove of masturbation because I am God, and so when people do it, I have to watch.
10 Yea; this is when All-Seeingness really feels more like a burden than a blessing.
11 But as for extramarital sex, that is known in the Bible as “fornication”; and that word has over time taken on a negative connotation I did not intend.
12 For at the time of the Old and New Testaments, fornication meant nothing more or less than “fuckin.’”
13 (That’s “fuckin’,” with no g at the end; an intentional apocope meant to underscore my relaxed attitude toward the act.)
14 My views on fornication, and sex in general, are in fact quite nuanced; and I could herein outline in great detail my thoughts on foreplay, and oral sex, and tantric orgasms, and all manner of deviant variations;
15 And do so with such thoroughness, that during all future acts of intercourse thou wouldst picture me, the LORD thy God, King of the Universe, guiding thee; commanding thee, staring at thee as I do on the cover of this book, and in this way no doubt increasing thy sexual arousal.
16 But I will not.
17 I understand that thou desirest to leave me out of thy bedroom; at least when thou art not reverential and on thy knees; or at least most of those times.
18 But if that is the case, then I beseech thee, for the love of all that is holy, and the love of all that is not: if thou truly wouldst keep thy moments of intimacy secular,
19Stop shouting my name.
20 Verily, talk about a mixed message!
21 I witness sex acts over 1.5 billion times a day; I do it not because I am a voyeur; I do it because you summon me.
22 I do not do likewise when I regenerate; when I spew forth lava to create new land, I do not start shouting, “O Candice Hagerty of Bournemouth, England! O my Candice Hagerty of Bournemouth, England! Please keep doing exactly what you’re doing!”
23 Stop it; please; I already have TMI on every nonvirgin on earth.
24 (Note: by “Candice Hagerty of Bournemouth, England” I of course mean all of you, but I also specifically mean Candice Hagerty of Bourne-mouth, England.
25 Candice, lower thy voice; he’s not that good, and neither am I.)
CHAPTER 2
1Love is a far deeper and mysterious phenomenon than sex; one I only partially understand.
2 Thou hast a saying, “God is love”; false; I am everything; do not pigeonhole me.
3 From my perspective, when two people fall in love, it is as if some new physical constant has been added to the universe.
4 All my calculations must be readjusted; now, in addition to gravity, and electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, I have to factor in Tony and Peggy making goo-goo eyes on the Ferris wheel.
5 The closest I ever got to understanding the experience of human love came during a discussion I had one night with Abélard.
6 Thou mayest remember Abélard as the great medieval theologian and scholar who fell in love with his pupil Héloïse; they had a passionate affair, but when her uncle Fulbert found out he had impregnated her he forced her to become a nun, and hired thugs to castrate him.
7 Yea, that was a cruel fate; being forced to become a nun.
8 One night many years later, I visited Abélard one night in a dream.
9 I was curious: here was a man who had been a faithful and chaste servant of mine all his life; yet even he had found himself trapped in love’s sharp snares, and they wound up cutting his balls off.
10 “Abélard,” I said—we were sitting on big fluffy pillows in his childhood home, for I wanted him to feel at ease—“I deem thee uniquely qualified, as both a lover and a theologian, to answer a question;
11 This question from the LORD in heaven above:
12 What is this thing called love?”
13 He meditated for a long time, then spoke in a voice of solemn authority.
14 “Love,” he declaimed, “is a battlefield.”
15 I pondered.
16 “But how dost thou know if thou really lovest her?” I responded.
17 “LORD,” he replied, “it is when thou seest her and thinkest, ‘I love thee just the way thou art’;
18 Or when her friend approacheth and says, ‘She loves thee; yea, yea, yea’;
19 When she is thy Alpha, thy Omega, thy Everything.
20 Thereupon she become
s the meaning in thy life, and the inspiration; and thou wouldst die 4 her.
21 Years of meditation and solitude have passed since my affair with Héloïse, and I have long since come to realize the greatest love of all is inside of me;
22 Yet I confess that on occasion I do still reminisce about those heavenly days with my lover;
23 When we had mirth, mirth, mirth, ‘til her uncle took my testes away.”
CHAPTER 3
1Sex is physical, love is emotional, but marriage is practical; and marriage I completely understand.
2 Genesis may be revisionist when it comes to the sexual orientation of the first couple, but in this it quotes me accurately: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an helpmeet.”
3 It was true for Adam, and it is true now: human beings are fallible and fragile, and it is good that each share his or her days on earth with another, that they may both find support and consolation as they face the travails of life.
4 Those who debate whether I meant marriage to be a relationship only between a man and woman, or also between two men or two women, misseth the point.
5 I meant marriage to be a relationship between any two people, and the enormous amount of shit they have to deal with on a daily basis.
6 Marriage is difficult, and I myself, in my union with Ruth, have not always been the perfect husband.
7 For instance, I have forgotten our wedding anniversary every year for the last 843 years; and, as she correctly chides, I have no excuse.
8 But lately I have seen a proliferation of books and seminars with titles like How to Be a Good Jewish Husband and The Keys to a Christian Marriage and The Muslim Wife’s Guide to Not Being a Filthy Whore.
9 Be dubious of these, Reader; for not a single passage in any of my holy books was written as an aid to spouses with communication issues, or 40-something divorcees dipping their toes back in the dating pool, or couples looking to have more fun in the bedroom.
10 (Yea, Leviticus offers some explicit suggestions on the proper placement of quarantined menstruating women; but their eroticism is limited.)
11 I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; I am not thy gay best friend.
12 Yet to put an end to the bogus claims of such charlatans, I will now offer my true counsel concerning dating and marriage; for having extrapolated the lessons I have learned from my successful dealings with mankind, I will here apply them to the sphere of interpersonal relationships.
13Move very fast at the beginning.
14Never go to bed angry. Instead, punish thy partner immediately and eternally; and then never go to bed, period.
15If thou hast something negative to say, phrase it indirectly. “Verily, Noah looks awfully reverent today. I sure wish certain other cursed, sinkable profligates would act like that.”
16Sometimes a lack of communication can really benefit stability. I learned this from the Tower of Babel.
17Once thou hast “Chosen” someone, they are thine to tease, torment, and disappoint forever.
18Love requires sacrifice.
19 Therefore, love requires livestock and fire.
20If thou findest a little clay figurine of the Ugaritic mother goddess Ashirat under the bed, it is safe to assume he/she is cheating.
21Love means always having to say, “I’m sorry! Please don’t kill me!”
22Do not tell thy partner what thy needs are. He knows all thy thoughts anyway; and thus is already well aware of that fantasy wherein the sexy cop pulls thee over for “driving while hot.”
23Do not give thy partner his own space. Demand his constant attention through ritual, guilt, and fear.
24Long-distance relationships can work, but only with constant one-way communication.
25Do not be afraid to tell thy Partner “I love thee.” Consider setting aside several fixed times each day—five is a good number—to let him know there is no one but him; and that Muhammad is his messenger.
26Let thy Child get between the two of thee. I cannot stress this enough.
27Maintain the same unchanging practices and rituals for thousands of years. Habit is the highway to happiness!
28 And finally, because thou never knowest what the future holds, before committing to something permanent, sign a pre-nup.
29 I did; it’s called Revelation and I cannot tell thee how glad I am to have it in my back pocket.
REVELATION
CHAPTER 1
1As thou mayest have noticed, I have always had a bit of a people-crush on the Mayans.
2 Here was a society that had none of the traits I look for in a culture: they were polytheistic, based in the Western Hemisphere, had no alphabet, and built pyramids; and thou shalt remember I am not traditionally a fan of pyramid-builders.
3 Yet despite all that they lasted over 3,000 years; proved remarkable astronomers, architects, artists, and farmers; created an elaborate calendar which they used to chart time as fanatically as if they were the universe’s social secretaries;
4 And most impressive, remained so passionate about life that they were willing to safeguard it through its regular sacrifice.
5 (Understand that I am not by any means endorsing human sacrifice; but since they did it in service to a bunch of false gods it is not my responsibility, and thus I can look at their actions objectively and think, “Wow, the cojones on these guys!”)
6 So when it came to my attention, via myself, that many of you had come to see December 21, 2012—the completion of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan Long Count Calendar—as the likely date of the end of the world, I was intrigued.
7 For thousands of years mankind has fretted over, waited upon, but mostly gotten on its hands and knees begging me for, the Apocalypse.
8 It was thought I would send it when certain historical events had come to pass, and/or when thy species had attained the threshold level of evil needed to justify its extinction.
9 And each generation of fanatics has seen those historical events as coming to pass in its own time, and/or has flattered itself to be the lucky ones living in the age when thy species’ sin-o-meter finally rolled over back to all zeroes.
10 Yea; there has never been a time when mine ears were not regularly assaulted by the impatient cry of the self-righteously unfulfilled:
11 “I want my Judgment Day and I want it now!”
12 But hear me: I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; and the world shall end on my timetable, not thine.
13 And as it happens, when it came to the timetable of Armageddon I was always pretty flexible, schedule-wise.
14 I had no firm date in mind, or even an eon; to be honest I was too busy handling day-to-day affairs to worry about such macro-issues; when I thought about it at all, it seemed like one of those things where, when the time was right, I would know it.
15 After my recent return from a century on the cosmic bench, I had every intention of picking up my career where I left off, only with a healthier attitude; and spending at least a few more centuries godding with the confidence and devil-may-not-exist-yet attitude of my glory days.
16 But then, as I say, I became aware of the 2012 phenomenon, which tied in to my preexisting admiration for the Mayans; it seemed like a sign.
17 (Yea, it is silly to take such coincidences as signs; yet thou knowest how such things can seem to betoken some higher purpose.)
18 I started reflecting on all that had taken place over earth’s 6,000 years of existence—by the way, the Mayans had guessed 5,125; a little bit closer than 13.7 billion, wouldst thou not say?—
19 And then I started reflecting on my relationship with thee: what had gone wrong, who was at fault, why it was thy fault, and whether any of it even mattered anymore.