March 1997 net worth by Leslie Harpold |
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Are you there God?
I've always considered myself a spiritual person, but there are times when
I am left a little cold. While trying to put the finishing touches on this
month's SMUG I found myself invoking the name of the Lord several times,
not always in a way that was pure and reverential, and eventually, as
writers missed deadlines or bailed out altogether, I was making silent
pleas to strike a bargain with the dark underlord and ruler of the
internet, Satan.
Catching myself before I fell wholly from grace I decided to seek spiritual
guidance on the web. I searched "God" on all the major search engines, and
as luck would have it God has a homepage - well,
several of them, and after reading text like:
Resume:
Omnipotent being of all creation (then and now): My responsibilities are,
maintaining the general order of the universe,
managing a workforce of 5.4 billion souls on planet earth.
Hardees Restaurant Preparation of food, sales representative. (1990-1991)
Responsibilities: Operating a deep fat fryer, and
a Casio 11-b3 cash register/adder. At one point, organized the damnation of
the soul of the manager, and two co-workers.
I decided I would have a hard time bowing down to a God that sought a
couple extra bucks by taking a gig at Hardee's. There were a bunch of
other entries for God's Homepage, but I kept getting "Error 404 File Not
Found" messages, and I couldn't decide if God was just dodging my calls or
if he, like Elvis, had left the building. I was too paranoid to think he
had merely struck his impersonators dead.
Rather than take the existential challenge and decide whether or not God
was dead, I decided to look to the mystical East for Wisdom. Buddha
doesn't have a web presence, but many kids that like Stone Temple Pilots or
IRC seem to like to call themselves "buddha," probably due to some physical
resemblance, and so all I got was a bunch of links to the now defunct
lyrics server.
What I did find was the random Zen Generator, and I
kept getting this exact koan:
Warm oils coax us into a dream;
Well, as much as I liked Buddha before, it seemed that he too was sleeping
on the job. I found a big Krishna web site, but without the time to learn
to speak German by deadline, I figured I would have to choose a different
path to enlightenment, since I was a little pressed for time, and the
thought of cutting my hair for God or Country is a scary prospect for me.
The Church of Satan's Homepage had gone off-line too, and I was starting to
formulate a holy conspiracy theory - fearing the rapture had come some time
earlier that day and I would be forced to soullessly roam the earth in a
state of perpetual flux, not ascending into heaven or falling into hell,
and like most Capricorns, I'm just not happy if I think I'm underachieving.
I like to either be all the way at the top or writhing around at the
bottom, and after remembering all the bad things I had done in high school
alone - not to mention the 13 years after - were enough to lock up a hot seat
for me in hell.
Calling Me Home
After an hour or so of perusing the ideologies of numerous "New Age" sects,
and deciding that immersing myself in crystal light or talking to people in
pajamas claiming to channel voices - I decided to try one more thing -
seeking spiritual satisfaction from the God I had been raised with, the
first boy picture to ever grace my dresser, Jesus. My deadlines were
getting too close to question the whole immaculate conception issue, or the
needing a conduit to talk to God - (I've been disappointed that Santa has
left my requests for a 900 number to the godhead for Christmas unfulfilled
year after year) - I just wanted a little band aid on my heart to remedy me
from my laziness, a chemical free pick me up and an alternative to selling
out part and parcel to Beelzebub. If I sold all the way out, after all,
all you'd find in SMUG would be articles about Hootie and few links to
Spin Online like those other nice internet magazines.
Jesus has a
homepage, and much to my surprise, Jesus is on AOL. Now, my first
reaction was mortification, you'd think if anyone, Jesus would have a
direct T3 connection. Then I remembered the whole "of the people" thing
and I realized there was no place more logical for him to set up shop. The
gullible masses are right there on AOL, plus, he'd have access to all his
favorite chat rooms like "Jesus Saves" where he can dispense with all his
best shopping tips and "Find Jesus" the celestial answer to "Where's Waldo?"
The page is hysterical, and provides the most effortless road to salvation
I've ever been presented with. A few clicks in, and Jesus was reminding me
to "click on the praying hands to send me email, because this page is
interactive, baby." A messiah who calls me baby? Alright! I feel perfectly
comfortable with that.
Also present are the standard homepage elements - pictures of his family,
wacky links, hobbies, autobiographical information, and stuff about his
friends. By the time I had gone all the way through his site, my soul was
saved, I had been presented with a certificate (suitable for framing)
confirming my place in the afterlife, and a fierce pain in my sides from
laughing so hard.
back to the junk drawer
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