Monday, July 18, 2005

Applegate Clears up a Tiny Issue

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" When last I could locate Anne, she was sitting in the warm spillway at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia with a grin so goofy her children didn't want to be seen with her. Majorly embarrassing for the old teenagers, to have Mom babbling about fairies and sacred springs and stuff to anyone passing by. And then, when the teens were just about to go to the courthouse and get their surnames changed, along came a fiddle player, and next thing they knew, Mom was clogging in the water, barefoot, to "Sally Goodin." Even the crayfish ran for cover.

In my last post, I was asking all you sinners out there to help me get together a good outfit for a performance evaluation by the boss. If you missed the costume I chose, scroll down to the previous entry. The boss will be here day after tomorrow, and we've got everything spit-shined to the max. We've stoked up the Lake of Fire (usually I only turn it on in the winter months), heated the brimstone to a cheery crimson, and recruited twenty generations of bitter Methodists to leap in and burn, burn, burn when the time is right.

If you're just joining us, I'm pleased to meet you. Call me "Mr. Applegate." Well ... umm ... for the next day or so, you'd best call me Satan, or Mephistopheles, or Beelzebub, or Azrael (forgot that one last time), or just plainly The Devil. As in the guy who makes you do all the bad things you do. Like you have no control over your stupid aggressive driving, it's all my fault.

And then when you do something right for a change, like dropping a ten-spot in the Breast Cancer Awareness fund-raiser box, you give my boss, The Big Guy, all the credit for that. Oh sure, it's never Satan's idea to help find a cure for bird flu or AIDS or anything. Satan would rather you spent that money on chocolate, dirty magazines, or drugs.

I'm getting as bitter as those Methodists.

And I don't have time for bitterness just now. Have to make sure everyone's suffering, putting on a good entertainment for the boss.

Anyway, in my last post, I mentioned creating a New Jersey Turnpike down here in the satellite office, and filling it bumper-to-bumper with cars driven by all the greedy, Type-A rape-and-pillagers (in ancient times, sackers of villages - in modern times, raiders of pension funds). It was also my idea to fill the passenger seats of the cars with Buddhists. Because, of course, Buddhists wouldn't give two hoots about sitting in a traffic jam for a thousand years. It's sitting, isn't it?

Lest I offend you living Buddhists out there, please be advised that Buddhists are not on the payroll at my plant. They volunteer their time, because the Big Guy likes to think that they all wind up here because they didn't worship him. Of course they don't wind up here, not even the bad ones. They're just an obliging lot. And quiet. Once I used Krishnas, and they made too much noise. I was glad to see them go back to their happy hunting ground.

Okay, are we clear on that? Big boss coming to visit, Buddhists helping out on a volunteer basis, Methodists mad because they aren't "God's chosen people," only too happy to create the illusion of eternal agony for a day or two.

When all the smoke has cleared (pardon the pun), I'll post a picture of what I really look like. Suffice it to say that a Jersey Devil I am not. Nor do I have horns or a tail. I did have wings, but I had to pawn them during a period of unemployment. I'm saving up to retrieve them, so that when my contract expires in 10,000 A.D. I can fly off into a Black Hole and mend my tarnished reputation.

Wish me luck. I have a feeling the boss has been watching the American way of doing business and will be in a mood to wrench give-backs from me. He'll want my personal days, I'm sure of it.

MR. APPLEGATE

PS - If you're thinking of doing something sinful, please wait until Wednesday.

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