An Old Acquaintance Heads to Washington

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," emitting sardonic snorts since 2005! I'm Anne Johnson - it's my real name. Honest, I wouldn't make that up.

Wow, it's been a long time since I got bombarded with fire and brimstone and the sulfurous odor of foul Hell itself. But here it is, wafting in the wake of Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, The Beast, aka The Devil. Get this: He wants to be called "Mr. Applegate." He's a fan of old Broadway shows.

I guess I'd better intervene before he sits down. No getting that stink out of a well-upholstered sofa.

EXHIBIT A: MR. APPLEGATE, UNVARNISHED

Anne: What are you doing here? I thought I'd seen the last of you. You're so 2005.

Applegate: Ha ha! Joke's on you. I was down, but not out. I was wounded, but not killed. I was battered, but not broken. I was ...

Anne: Jesus! I get the picture! Enough with the tired cliches!

Applegate: I just stopped by on my way to Washington, DC.

Anne: Of course. Why did this not occur to me? I suppose you've found gainful employment.

Applegate: And how! It's like a candy store. Whatever I want, in whatever portion I choose, for however long I want it. Times have changed, thank goodness. I was really getting bored.

Anne: I don't even need to ask for whom you will be working in the nation's capital. In fact, don't even say his name. It's like Voldemort; I can't bring myself to utter it.

Applegate (rubbing his hands together): Just doesn't get better. You're in for a treat, Anne! Watch as I transform into my newest incarnation! I've been working hard on it.

EXHIBIT B: MR. APPLEGATE, BELTWAY BOUND

Anne: You'll fit right in.

Applegate: About time, too. I thought I'd get America back when they ditched the whole e pluribus unum thing back in the 1950s. Oh well, if you look at the course of history the way I can, a half century isn't any time at all.

Anne: I'm not even curious about what you're going to do in DC, so don't tell me.

Applegate: So glad you asked! So many tasks, where do I start? Do I ramp up the steam on climate change first and take charge of women's bodies second, or should it be the other way around? Build the Wall, or bomb Iran? Maybe I could multi-task and do it all at once! Why not? I'm a deity, after all.

Anne: You won't get away with it. Most Americans don't want your boss, and they sure don't want to lose their Medicare.

Applegate: Medicare is done! Hey, if you can't afford a hospital, don't get sick! It's a very simple game.

Anne: Applegate, I always figured you for an equal opportunity kind of guy. Like, I never thought you cared more about one race than another, or more about one religion than another. You just liked bad people of all stripes.

Applegate: And I still do! But I know some first-class haters when I see them, and the folks who voted in the regime change are going to be excellent ... brilliant ... at inflaming the masses. I haven't seen this quality since ...

Anne: Don't even say it. Just. Don't. In fact, get your Aryan ass out of my house! This property has been a No Republican Zone since 1987.

Applegate: What a pity, Anne! You could get a nice, plum assignment down there in DC right now. There are staffing opportunities aplenty. And look at you. Teaching inner city kids. You could do so much better.

Anne: Get the FUCK off my LAND you VILLAIN!

Applegate: Tsk tsk. Such rudeness! Just for that, my first priority as part of the new regime will be to end all free and reduced lunches for those loser poor kids that you teach. Yes, that will be a brilliant beginning. Brilliant! Are those tears I see in your eyes, Anne?

Anne: Go away.

Applegate: Oh, yes. Absolutely. Bon voyage! My years of self-pity are behind me! It's time to get to work.


And there he goes, off toward the Amtrak with his suit and his briefcase. You know what the worst part is? Everything he'll be doing down there, he'll give all the credit to Jesus. What a fucking world.

Visitor, Hiding out on Easter Sunday, Whining As Usual

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Dole out those chocolate bunnies, those awesome peeps, the plastic grass that is impossible to pick up! It's Easter, yet another holiday brought to us by the ancient Romans!

But, like so many other holidays, Easter has been co-opted, and not even Sunday School teachers know why it is named "Easter." I never thought to ask that one when I was a kid.

This is the day when many C&E's come out of the woodwork. (C&E stands for "Christmas and Easter," as in the number of times most people attend church in a year.) Needless to say, the fleeting renewed interest in righteous behavior has sent the slacking whiner, Mr. Applegate, into my living room, where he threatens to leave sulfuric residue on the rattan. So I'm yanking him out of there by agreeing to yet another interview. This guy never gets tired of hearing his own voice.

Anne: So what's it today, Applegate?

Applegate: I'm so worried about future generations of Americans! Your children and grandchildren, Anne!

Anne: Why? Are future generations of Americans going to dump you as a worthless relic of a medieval mindset?

Applegate: Of course not! It's that government debt. This huge government debt that your children will have to pay some day. It will take them broke!

Anne: Excuse me, you fire-breathing idiot. My daughters are already broke! One already has enough college loans to pay back that she'll never own a car. The other one is still racking them up by the fistful. Four years of college, honor roll, and The Heir doesn't earn enough to rent an apartment. Tell me when, exactly, I should worry about her being broke. I think it's now.

Applegate: It's going to get worse, I tell you. Worse! Big government spending ... curb it!

Anne: Have you been dining with Dick Cheney again?

Applegate: Every Friday night. He has an excellent chef. And he is deeply worried about future generations of Americans.

Anne: I'll bet he is. *cough*

Applegate: Well, take this minimum wage thing, for instance.

Anne: Don't go there.

Applegate: It should be reduced! How can businesses flourish when they have to pay their employees such high wages?

Anne: Oh, I don't know. Cut hours? Don't offer benefits?

Applegate: Excellent stop-gap measures, but they don't go far enough. Can't you understand? Rich people have worked hard to get where they are! Why should they help the people who don't work hard? It just creates an entitlement society, where the government rubs your feet even when you haven't been standing on them.

Anne: I'll bet Dick Cheney's chef is cooking up a nice Easter feast. Why don't you biff off...

Applegate: Going to. It starts at 7:00. Until then I just want to lay low, if you know what I mean.

Anne: I'm whistling in the wind when I tell you that Dick Cheney and his big-business buddies are greedy villains...

Applegate: Tee hee! That's why I love them so much!

Anne: They want to grab the last dime out of the fossil fuel industry, even though we could be getting our power from green energy sources. You want to worry about the future generations of Americans? Try this one. They will have to deal with global climate change. And genetically engineered food with such a soup of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides in it that even sturdy honeybees keel when they eat it.

(Editorial pause while Anne awkwardly links. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html

Applegate: Well, now, we don't want famine, do we?

Anne: Famine! So it can only be one of two things -- carcinogenic tomatoes or starvation? How about sensible farming practices? How about an apple that tastes good, worm and all, instead of one that looks good and ships without bruising?

Applegate: Fuss all you like. Genetically engineered food is a done deal, and President Obama signed into law a measure that sees to it that you can't sue if you get cancer.

(Editor pause while Anne awkwardly links. http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/how_the_monsanto_protection_act_snuck_into_law/

Anne: Oh, I see the whole thing now! You were behind this, you evil Devil! While everyone was distracted by the Supreme Court debating something that should be a given, you got a sneaky farm bill passed that protects Big Ag as they fix to kill us softly!

Applegate: *studies fingernails happily* The timing was impeccable.

Anne: Well, guess what, Mr. Bad? You've got a new enemy out there. It's called Facebook. Know how I learned of the "Monsanto Protection Act?" I got it in my feed, from a friend. Go ahead. Shut Facebook down. Double dog dare ya.

Applegate: My hackers are working on it. Any day now.

Anne: Oh, look! Easter Mass has just ended at the Catholic church down the block! Yo! Children of the One God! Come and get your damn Devil and banish him back from whence he came!

Applegate: They don't scare me. I dine with their leadership every Tuesday.


Anne: All right, then. Yo! Thor! Mars! Bel! Valkyries! Escort this Devil to the perimeter, and don't be gentle about it!

Applegate: Oh, no no no! Not necessary! There's your neighbor, the lawyer who works for Exxon. I'll go chill with him for awhile!


Anne: "Chill." Oh, brother. Anyway, good riddance of bad rubbish! Someone should lock the door so that Mr. Applegate has to rot in Hell. As for my neighbor -- he's wearing his church clothes. A guy who won't even buy a box of Girl Scout cookies probably spent the morning pretending to pray for the poor. What. A. World.

Mr. Applegate Shoulders the Blame -- Again

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" It's just a beautiful day in this neighborhood today, although I hear to my chagrin that many parts of the nation are being scorched. Why, it's as if Satan Himself sat down on the nation's bread basket for a nice long session of suntanning!

But Satan has better things to do. Like causing the murders in Aurora, Colorado.

Just out of prurient interest, I belong to several conservative Christian online magazines. There's one for women, and another called "Fire in My Bones" that seems to be for men, but not exclusively.

Today's "Fire in My Bones" cover story? You guessed it. Those killings in the movie theater? Work of Satan.

Here's what we in the writing biz call the "nut graph" from the story, author J. Lee Grady:

I’m not a crime sleuth. But if you ask me, the devil’s fingerprints are all over this tragedy.

This got me wondering if anyone has ever fingerprinted the devil. How would I know? So, reluctantly, I put in a text to one of my oldest "Gods Are Bored" interviewees, Satan. (Just like Floppy, Satan is sensitive about His name. With that in mind, I have agreed to call him "Mr. Applegate.")  Please give a tepid and/or mildly hostile "Gods Are Bored" welcome to Mr. Applegate.

Anne: Please extinguish all smoking devices, Applegate. This is a smoke-free work place.

Applegate: No can do, Anne. Get your netbook, and we'll go outdoors.

................. *done, and no one harmed in the process*

Anne: Well, you knew it was coming, didn't you?

Applegate: Yep. More predictable than the weather.

Anne: We all know that guns don't kill people. People kill people. So, is that young man in Your back pocket?

Applegate: Swear on my forked tail, I have never had a petition or even a casual nod from that kid. He's not one of Mine. Let's be logical for a minute. If I were to decide to initiate the killing of innocent people, I could start a World War, just by choosing the right human leadership for the job.

Anne: Have you ever done this?

Applegate: Last time was the Walls of Jericho. Pinky swear. As you point out, people kill people. Then they blame me, after the fact. I'm a convenient whipping boy, a useful target, a "round-up-the-usual-suspect" mark ... *weeps*

Anne: I've never seen anyone wallow in self-pity the way you do. Then again, you do get a lot of bad press, much of it undeserved. Not all of it undeserved, but some of it. In this particular case, I think it's undeserved.

Applegate: It was not my praise and worship team that created gunpowder. It was my praise and worship team that started using it to kill people ... but the humans always credited God for their use of firearms. Like it was okay with Him, He even supported the slaughter.

Anne: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." Hmmm mmm mmmm.

Applegate: Exactly.

Anne: "Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war..."

Applegate: You made your point. You're going to bore your readership.

Anne: Mr. Applegate, I'm sorry to say that at this juncture of my life, I tend to look for hidden messages and motives in many things. Today's place-the-blame on You just reeks. I can just imagine that many readers of J. Lee Grady's "Fire in My Bones" probably own firearms ... strictly for hunting and protecting their families from hoodie-wearing thugs, of course. These Christian readers don't like to think that guns are dangerous things, and that gun users can kill people completely free of Your guidance. I'd be willing to bet that, for many "Fire in My Bones" readers, guns are considered a good thing. So, used wrongly, guns become Your weapons of choice.

Applegate: Yes. The logic breaks down. Either all guns that can kill people are evil, or none of them are evil. No such thing as a good gun, if you ask me.

Anne: This killer in question planned his rampage very carefully and amassed $15,000 worth of firearms. And You say You had nothing to do with the carnage? You never whispered in his ear?

Applegate: He was a neuroscience major, for God's sake. Try finding a neuroscience major who believes in Me. There are some, of course ... but the data skews to atheism or agnosticism, not to Satanic Panic.

Anne: So, what do you think actually did motivate that shooter?

Applegate: Misplaced rage. White-hot fury that years of boring book learning, studying for amazingly difficult exams, and living the poverty-level student life could afford him neither a job with a decent wage in his chosen field nor the prospect of studying further, because neuroscience gets so damned hard at the graduate level that you have to be a titanic genius to make a dent in the work load. I'm no psychiatrist, but I don't even think the kid is crazy. He just blew his stack at The Man ... and he couldn't find The Man.

Anne: However, he could find $15,000 worth of weaponry on the Internet and in stores. He purchased everything legally.

Applegate: Now just remember, Anne. Guns don't kill people. People kill people.

Anne: Actually, Mr. Applegate, I don't believe that. My philosophy is "production for use." Guns are produced to be used -- to kill people.

Applegate: Well, you can also shoot locks off things, like safes and doors.

Anne: Splitting hairs, Applegate. People don't buy Glocks to shoot the locks off safes.

Applegate: Just playing devil's advocate for a moment. *knocks head on wall* I hate that term!

Anne: I'm going to go on record absolving You of any credit for the Aurora shootings, Mr. Applegate.

Applegate: Thank you.

Anne: On the other hand, I see Your work abundantly in the messy paws of pedophile priests. ... ... Applegate? Applegate? Where did He go? He was here one minute, gone the next! Gosh, look at the singed hostas! Why didn't I remember that He's hell on flower beds and upholstery?

On the Causes of Earthquakes

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," always glad to be of service when you have pressing questions to be answered!

At 4:00 a.m. on January 14, my daughter The Spare woke me up, and her dad too. She said, "Can't you smell that strange odor in the house?"

I can't smell anything much anymore. I have cat allergies, and two felines in the home. At 4:00 a.m. the nasal passages are totally clogged, sometimes to the point of headache.

Mr. Johnson does not suffer from the same, and he acknowledged that he smelled something weird. He got up (prince among men) and checked all over the house. Spare told him to be careful when he went into the basement.

By this time I realized that I wasn't going to get any more sleep, so I got up too. And I remembered where I live -- New Jersey. So I opened the window a crack, and it was immediately apparent that the odor was coming into the house from outside. Oh, those pesky chemical spills!

The stink had just a tad of brimstone mixed in, and I realized that my former playmate who calls himself "Mr. Applegate" was lingering outside, enjoying the toxic breeze.

For those of you just joining TGAB, "Mr. Applegate" is a fallen angel of the Judeo-Christian pantheon who rules the place where bad Judeo-Christian people go when they die.

Who are you going to talk to at 4:00 a.m. when the house smells like rotten eggs from outer space, and outside it's worse? So I invited Applegate in for a chat.

As usual he was wallowing in self-pity. This time because he has been blamed in certain quarters for the earthquake in Haiti. (Sorry. I don't link. It was Pat Robertson who said the devil caused the quake. Take my word for it, or Google it.)

I don't have much tolerance for Applegate's whining. In previous blog posts he has woven a long, sorry tale of being new to the god business and signing onto a pantheon without reading the fine print. Fine print, indeed! Excuses are for losers.

On this particular morning, I was able to pacify Applegate with a cup of coffee and a granola bar. We got to talking about what really causes earthquakes; namely, plate tectonics.

I learned all about plate tectonics at Johns Hopkins University, in a geology-for-nonscience-majors course called "Structure of the Earth." (The course was better known as "Rocks for Jocks," since all the lacrosse players took it.) Strange as it might sound, there's hot liquid inside the earth, and big plates of rock slide around on the liquid, and sometimes these plates collide. This causes earthquakes.

Applegate has read up on this topic. He's quite an expert. He predicts that some time in the next 32,000 years there's going to be a whopper of an explosion where Yellowstone Park is now.

What he can't predict, he says, is whether or not he'll be blamed for it if humans evolve to the point that they have sense in their heads.

I gave Applegate a box of Pop Tarts and sent him on his way. When he was halfway across the back yard, he turned around and admitted causing the industrial accident that blanketed Philadelphia and points east with stench. He said no one was at fault, he just felt like pulling a prank.

Would someone shove that whiner into a Subduction Zone? Please?

Guest Blogger Explains Halloween

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Anne and her daughters are toddling around doing errands and shopping for Halloween costumes. And I just happened to be in the neighborhood. And she left her computer running.

Bad girl, Anne! Wasting energy!

I am best known as Satan, Prince of Darkness, Lucifer the fallen Angel, Beelzebub, and about another dozen atrocious monikers. All of them embarrassing to someone trying to pad his resume for work as a deity. So please, will you call me "Mr. Applegate?" Thank you ever so much.

There's a considerable amount of confusion over the upcoming holiday, Halloween. More and more Christians out on the fringe are teaching their tots that this night of enjoyment and imagination is all about me, and nothing but me.

These are the same kind of Christians who arrive at my gates wailing and gnashing their teeth because once, just once, in their lives they got drunk and cheated on the old spouse, and then were too embarrassed to tell anyone and they died before they could spill it out and get it forgiven.

See what I have to put up with? Talk about a thankless job.

So today, I, Mr. Applegate, will explain to you how I got drawn into this Halloween business. It's not a pretty story.

It starts when I signed a contract to work for a small-time deity working a lightly-populated planet. This deity's praise and worship team at the time consisted mostly of a group of sheep-herding people in the Middle East, related to each other through tribe and clan. The gig seemed to have a nice enough deity, and a nice enough praise and worship team.

I signed without reading the fine print.

Big mistake. I had been hired to be the bad guy, the enforcer, the evil dude that kept all the people toeing the line. I got sent to the satellite office, charged with torturing dead folks for eternity.

That's when I sent the contract to my cousin who's a Fire Spirit for a pretty little planet in the Crab Nebula. He showed me a clause that gets me out of the job after a 10,000-year stint. I can either shutter the contract or negotiate better terms. And you can best bet what I'm gonna do. I'm outta here, even if I have to become mortal!

The deity I signed with turned out to be very ambitious. He set out on a course of world domination, sending the conflicting messages that such deities tend to do when they work the monotheism pathway. He became even more successful than he expected. But some places he met with resistance. Inevitably.

One of these places was the British Isles, where for thousands of years the praise and worship teams had practiced a faith that considered October 31 the last day of the year because it marked the end of the harvest. The October 31 harvest holiday included equal measures of serious worship and frivolous play and was so ingrained in the people that they simply would not give it up. It became a divisive issue between the priests of my boss's religion and the priests of the older religions (which, I might add, have some lovely deities in them).

The boss called me to the corporate headquarters and told me he planned to have his priests link me to the harvest holiday. He said emphatically that he wanted me to put on my formal attire and stroll around visibly during that period of time. He said further that he wanted me to urge all my followers to use that night for evil mischief. (Yeah, go figure, I've got followers. And yes indeed, they are rank morons.)

I've got a contract, I've got a supervisor. If I get fired ... there's that damn word again, fire ... I'll be considered insubordinate. It's a short gig, 10,000 years. So I went with the program.

Out comes the red devil duds, and off I go, inciting troubled youths to murder kittens and paint 666 on the sides of churches. All on a Halloween night. All in the name of a matching 401K plan.

Please don't tell my mother about this, she'll be too humiliated to attend her rainbow-painting classes -- and she loves to make rainbows!

One of the lowest moments in this job for me was the day the ancient deities who were really responsible for Halloween came to me and asked me kindly to cease and desist. I had to pull out my contract and show it to them. I had to admit I'd signed it before reading the fine print. I could see Their opinion of me go plummeting into the pit of .... oh hell.

Can I be completely candid? I have nothing to do with Halloween. I got grafted onto it to make it evil in the sight of my boss's praise and worship team.

I've only got a little less than 4,000 years to go on this contract, and I'm a free agent again. What makes me think that by that time, educated folks will call my boss a "myth," and he'll be losing at shuffleboard to some of the very deities he displaced?

Have a truly happy Halloween!

MR. APPLEGATE

Wanted: One Good Satan

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we ... emm, excuse me.

(sniff sniff)

The cats are running for the crawlspace, and the sulfurous odors are multiplying by the second. That can only mean one thing...


Oh, yes. Here he is, my old ancestor Satan. Looking quite the picture in his evening attire.

Satan: Please call me "Mr. Applegate," Anne. You know I hate all those devil names.

Anne: And I hate you. So there! How about if I call you Stinky? It's more precise.

Applegate: Go ahead. Hurt my feelings. Where's your compassion? How would you like to have my job?



Anne: Not much, Stinky. (For my newer readers out there, I'd like to note that I allow Satan to vent on my blog because I'm not afraid of him. I've got my afterlife booked with a different carrier.)


Applegate: I heard that. Actually I applaud it. The waiting lines in the One God terminal get longer every day.


Anne: Actually, Stinky, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.


Applegate: Fire away ... pardon the pun.


Anne: I just read an article by Los Angeles Times writer Geoff Boucher about an entrepreneur who is planning to issue an audio performance of the entire Revised King James Bible on CDs. That's 70 in all.


Applegate: That's correct. It's called "The Word of Promise," and the first 20 CDs, New Testament, will be out in October ... hopefully.


Anne: It's that "hopefully" part that intrigues me, Stinky. Apparently the director, Carl Amari, has cast all the characters in the NT except you. He's got Jim Caviezel doing Jesus (talk about a typecast you'd want to avoid), Luke Perry as Judas, and Marisa Tomei as Mary Magdalene. But no one wants to be the devil.


Applegate: Even though I've got the best lines.


Anne: I had nothing better to do today than think this over, and I came up with some actors who might fit the bill. I've never quite been able to shake Alec Baldwin's performance in Glengarry Glen Ross. What do you think of Alec Baldwin?


Applegate: I saw that movie too! Yikes! Chilling.


Anne: Aren't you going to help me here? Steve Tyler came to mind until I saw the YouTube posted at Jesus' General.


Applegate: That's worse than chilling. I'd call that performance "The Taming of the Shrill." Please, no Steve Tyler. Dream on.


Anne: Why should it be up to me? You're Satan. You must have some idea who sounds the most like you.


Applegate: Sarah Vaughan.


Anne: Yeah, right. Right. I can believe that. Okay, I'm ready to buy the Brooklyn Bridge now.


Applegate: No, I'm serious. See, you earthlings don't know about me. In my prior post, on a beautiful little planet in the Crab Nebula, I was the god of singing for a perfectly adorable praise and worship team. Oh, the music we made! (wipes tears)


Anne: Some of my more recent readers won't know the backstory. Fill them in.


Applegate: Meteor the size of Pluto smashed into the planet. My pantheon had to tighten its belt since it wasn't getting any new angels into its afterlife. I was let go.


Anne: So you can sing like Sarah Vaughan. Prove it.


Applegate: "Whatever Lola wants ... Lola gets ... and little man, Lola wants you..."


Anne: By damn, you weren't kidding! You sound just like The Divine One!


Applegate: Duhhhhh. I am divine!


Anne: I don't think they'll find any musical divas of that high quality willing to be Satan on a 20-CD rendering of the New Testament. But maybe that Sanjay guy is available.


Applegate: That's it. I'm leaving. I'm not standing around here to be insulted anymore!


Anne: Said it before, say it again. Don't let the door bump your tail as you go. And stay away from my sofa!


FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS


PS - No one will believe me, but I wrote this entry before hearing the Baldwin rant on Countdown with Keith Friday night.