Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," a fanciful sightseeing tour through the known pantheon. Are you a celestial tourist, open-minded and tolerant? Then buckle your seatbelt, put your chair in the upright position, and turn off all electronic devices. We're right on schedule, and the pilot is sober!
Hello, folks. My name is Morpheus, and I am a bored god. Alas, I am so unappreciated these days. The ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped me as the giver of dreams. In statue and artwork form I frequently appeared slumbering amidst a bed of poppies.
You know about poppies, don't you? Look what they did to poor Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz! Poppies are those pretty flowers witches use to put people to sleep. Actually, it's the sap that does the trick. And you don't need a witch to get some, just a dope dealer or a dishonest doctor or a phantom pharmacist.
If you just blunder into poppy use without my guidance, you're gonna wind up floundering in guano. Sorry, but the ancient Greeks knew that, and you so-called moderns don't.
Yes, I, Morpheus, gave opium poppies to humans. The gift came with an instruction booklet that was lost during the Dark Ages and has never surfaced again. Hey, that's not my fault. I got laid off and wasn't allowed even to clean out my desk and take the remaining poppies with me.
You may be wondering why I'm here today. Perhaps to discuss Eminem's chances at kicking sleep aids? Wrong, sorry.
I'm here because I happened to catch about five minutes of Rush Limbaugh on the radio airwaves the other day. It was the first time in about 2,000 years that I was glad I have no control over opiate use among you moderns.
Rush is a good Christian man, which explains his difficulties with opiate derivatives. No guidance from ancient Greek deities to light the way through the OxyContin haze. He's had to rough it on his own, with the sorry assistance of the idiot medical community of your time.
In short, Rush is suffering like a dog every day. His jones will never go away.
Perhaps that's why he's so horrible.
I, Morpheus, could not believe my ears when I heard Rush bad-mouth a grieving mother whose son has been killed in war. He actually called the woman belittling names and berated her for holding an opinion counter to his own.
Not since the Visigoths sacked Rome have I seen such wanton disregard for the suffering of a mother, deprived of her son who was cut down in his prime. The Visigoths liked to make light of the suffering of mothers. Barbaric, that's what it is.
I've had many occasions to regret the loss to humanity of my publication, Morpheus's Guide to the Poppy and Its Pitfalls. But when I heard Rush, a person who has dipped freely into my products, spouting such hate and rage, I had a change of heart.
America, I decided, is a nation of the Visigoths, by the Visigoths, and for the Visigoths. You should rename your country Visigothia.
I'd like to offer one tidbit of solace to the few of you out there who don't belittle suffering moms whether they support a war or oppose it.
Rush will never be free of his opiate cravings. They will haunt him now and forever, and particularly if he gets a painful, wasting illness. He would know that if he'd read Morpheus's Guide to the Poppy and Its Pitfalls, but when was the last time you saw that in the bookstore?
I got pink-slipped in favor of school prayer, and I've watched generations of junkies pray fruitlessly to be free of their joneses. Rush is one of them. He may be clean as a whistle now, but he wants poppy. He'll always want poppy.
Will I ever lift a well-chiseled Greek finger to help him? Dream on.
MORPHEUS, GOD OF DREAMS
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