Dear God,

I have been going through some difficult times in my life, and I have tried to turn to you for help. So far, though, you have not helped me. I have refused to be discouraged, and I keep on searching. My quest has been to understand, as I suffer, what God really wants from me, and why he has made me endure such suffering.

Then, yesterday, I came across some writings by the Reverend Earnest Anderson. Reverend Anderson writes, “God wants us to have a spiritual growth spurt. He wants us more mature like His Son so that we can play a bigger part in His eternal purposes.”

Well, that told me all I needed to know. But, now I’m angry at you, God. It seems that you only value us human beings as some kind of livestock, so that you can fatten us up for the slaughter.

You feed us hope, so that we can have a “spiritual growth spurt”, but in the end, you intend to treat us just like you treated Jesus. You’re going to kill all your followers, in one form or another, through automobile accidents, or cancer, or alzheimer’s, and you’re going to get your spiritual nutrition from our suffering as we parish.

God, you are like a vampire. I’m on to your schemes. So now, I want you to tell me what I have to do to fend off your sadistic sacrificial plans. Tell me, or I’ll spill the beans.

- Andrew

Andrew,

Well, it’s the same thing as with vampires, really. Garlic.

If you want to be free from the curse of suffering and death, you must wear a clove of fresh garlic around your neck at all times. Never let yourself be free of that clove of garlic, however - not even for a second, even to take a shower. The minute you let your guard down, you will be subject to my curse again.

I’ll be watching and waiting, Andrew, for you to let that garlic slip out of your grasp. I’m going to get you, Andrew, and then your spiritual growth spurt will be mine to feast upon, slowly, savoring every last morsel.

- God

Dear God,

Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have introduced the ideas of theology into the 2008 presidential election, as Mike Huckabee has questioned whether Mormons like Mitt Romney believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers.

I thought that the question should be settled with you. So, is it true? Is Jesus the brother of Satan?

- Ruben

Ruben,

Of course it’s not true. Jesus is the Devil’s father. Any fool could see that this relationship makes it impossible for Jesus to be the Devil’s brother as well.

Jesus was in his twenties when he wandered up the Rhine and encountered a young woman named Bertha. They fell in love, and had a son.

Jesus tried to establish himself professionally in the area, but could only find employment as a circus performer, doing tricks with a unicycle and frozen fish in an act he did under the stage name of Otto the Ridiculous. One day, when Jesus was flipping a herring into the air, he felt the earth rumble, and saw that a freak avalanche was coming down the mountainside right toward the little house where he and Bertha lived.

Even with his unicycle, Jesus couldn’t make it in time to rescue Bertha. As for his baby son, he was never found…

… at least not by human hands. The son of Jesus and Bertha was swept by the avalanche into a cave inhabited by ice demons, who raised him as best they could, granting him magical powers that eventually allowed him to become the Devil.

That is the true story of the family relationship between Jesus and the Devil. I hope that helps you make your decision about who to vote for in the 2008 presidential election.

- God

Dear God,

I’m confused. Who are God’s chosen people? It seems that almost every ethnic group has some kind of belief that it is the special, divinely chosen, and authentic.

So, which group is it? Who are God’s chosen people?

- Dan

Dan,

Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. They were my chosen people.

Never heard of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus? That’s because they’re extinct.

They were the biggest meat eaters ever to walk the land on planet Earth, huge dinosaurs 55 feet long. They were bigger than Tyrannosaurus Rex.

A few of them were left, still living in peace in Egypt a few thousand years ago, until they were enslaved. Moses was the last of the Spinosaurus aegyptiacus people, and he had to flee after he ate the high priest in the temple of Isis, to die in the desert.

The Jews played a trick on the rulers of Egypt by saying that they were dinosaurs too, and would eat the Pharaoh and his family. That’s why the Pharaoh let the Jews go. Locusts had nothing to do with it.

- God

Dear God,

My parents have said that I can’t have any free time after school until I finish raking all the leaves. The trouble is that some of the leaves are still on the trees, and in two days, we’re supposed to get a big snowstorm. After that, I may never have the chance to rake those leaves - at least not until the snow melts in March.

I’m worried that I can’t possibly get all those leaves raked, and then I’ll have to spend the whole winter without any free time. What can I possibly do?

- Lucy

Lucy,

Clearly, you have been cursed by a demon. In the book of Psalms, it says of the blessed man, “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he does shall prosper.”

Take a look at your situation. Your leaves are withering, and your chore of raking the leaves is definitely not prosperous work. You’ve got a diabolical possession on your hands. It’s in your rake, I suspect. The demon’s name is Chauncey, and he’s a pesky little gremlin, loving to make a mess as fast as you can clean it up.

Not all is lost. There is a reason for everything, even for Britney Spears dropping her baby on its head.

Did you know that the Hindus wrote their sacred texts on the backs of palm leaves?

There’s an opportunity for you in this curse. You could become a prophet. Forget about free time. Start living in sacred time. Start writing on the backs of those leaves now, and by springtime, you will have your very own genuine sacred text.

I’ll give you a good opening line to start with: “It has been said of the universe that a cat in a tree is no stranger to the temptations of the ground.”

You take it from there.

- God

Dear God,

I am in my first year of college, and already I’m confused. I’m taking a biology class, in which we are discussing the classification of animals. The professor tells us that we can distinguish insects from other arthropods because all insects have six feet. However, I grew up believing that locusts have four feet. I quote Leviticus, Chapter 11:

“Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind, but all other flying creeping things which have four feet shall be an abomination unto you.”

Here is the word of God, telling me that we can distinguish the locust from other kinds of flying things that have four feet. Clearly, that means to me that the locust has four feet.

My professor did a most unholy thing, which was to place a six-legged locust in front of me, for dissection. It is as if he was saying that my God is a big liar, and that I should just go spit on my church. The affrontery!

I didn’t know what to say, though. How can I confront this agent of evil, who just so happens to have power over my academic career?

- Linda

Linda,

Your biology professor is not just an agent of evil. He is an agent of the Devil himself. He probably doesn’t know that he is possessed by the Devil, however. He probably believes, as most people who are possessed do, that he is eating too many hot wings.

What you must do is avoid the Devil’s conversation, which may lead you into damnation. If you start to debate your professor about whether locusts have six feet or four feet, you shall enter the realm of the World, which is the dominion of Satan. The locust has four feet, clearly, but you cannot convince this professor from Hell differently.

Instead, I suggest that you confront your professor in the middle of class, speaking the language of Heaven. Speak to him in tongues. The secret speech of the angels shall come to you, only when you clear your conscious mind of all facts and logic. That is what a biology class in college should be, though your professor, demonically manipulated as he is, cannot understand that obvious truth.

While speaking to him in tongues, stand up on your desk, point your fingers at the professor, and utter the sacred command, huremtoballvearationates, in as loud a voice as you can. You must perform this task three times before Satanic forces, which often come in the form of security guards, are able to eject you from the room. Only after you accomplish this will divine truth shine into that classroom. Only then will all the other students agree with you, that yes, locusts have four feet.

- God

Dear God,

The preacher at the church my parents make me go to says that Halloween is Satan’s holiday, and that if I go trick or treating, I will go to Hell when I die if I am lucky, and may well be possessed by a demon or other evil spirit before then.

I don’t believe him. I think he’s just putting Halloween down so that he can get us kids to come to the boring Harvest Party that he holds in the church basement, with sing-a-longs of What a Friend We Have In Jesus and bobbing for apples.

Please, God, I don’t want to spend Halloween night sticking my head into a bucket filled with dirty water and fruit, where a bunch of snot nosed kids have gone before. How can I convince my parents to disobey the preacher and let me go trick or treating?

- Montana

Montana,

Don’t try to reason with your parents, or with the preacher. That’s not the way that they operate. You’re going to have to speak their own language. I suggest that you take one of two paths.

First, you could pick up on the half-truths that your preacher already believes. Tell him that you can’t come to the church Harvest Party because you’ve already been possessed by a demon just for thinking about Halloween.

Second, you could overrule the preacher, and say that you have spoken to God yourself, and that God has commanded you to go trick or treating. This is less fun than the demon option, but more truthful, as you actually have communicated with me through this advice column.

If you choose the second option, I can send down a few lightning bolts at the proper moments, just to back up the truth of your prophecy. But then, what kind of preacher could deny the word of me? I’m sure he’ll see things your way when you explain that you’ve been having a chat with me.

- God

Dear God,

They say that all answers lie with you. So, I thought I’d just ask: Do you ever have body odor, and if so, what do you do about the problem?

I have body odor something awful. My sister says that it’s all the turkey sandwiches that I eat, on Wonder Bread with mustard. I’m not so sure.

Please help.

- Beauregard

Beauregard,

Your sister is incorrect. Your body odor is not caused by the turkey sandwiches. Every now and then, people do get an unpleasant body odor from eating too many fruit flavored Mentos. However, most of the time, body odor is caused by an infestation of foul demons that live in the skin and clog the pores.

Most people don’t know this, but I have this problem all the time. The bigger the body, after all, the more room for infestation by body odor demons. Ever wondered where all those nebulas came from out in the dark reaches of outer space? Think about it.

Forget the deodorants. They just make you smell like dead fish and flowers. I have found, in my eternal experience, that there are two good solutions to body odor.

1. Use an exfoliant scrub to encourage the smelly demons to leave your skin and go infest someone else.
2. Bathe yourself in a shower of radiation emitted from a neutron star.

Personally, I have had the best luck with the neutron star showers. I’ll leave the choice up to you, though.

- God

Dear God,

I have been following the career of Mike Gravel ever since he was a Senator from Alaska during the Vietnam War, and he read the Pentagon Papers into the public record, faced down President Nixon, and forced an end to the funding of the Vietnam War.

I support Mike Gravel’s campaign, but I can’t help noticing that Senator Gravel is not close to becoming the Democratic Party frontrunner.

I’m wondering what I can do to help Senator Gravel win the Democratic nomination, and the general presidential election in 2008. Do you have any advice?

- Nadia

Nadia,

I do have advice on this subject. As God, I am not only omnipresent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. I am also omniadvisorial.

A more interesting question is whether I am willing to share my advice for how to help Mike Gravel get elected as President. Lucky for you, I am in just such a mood.

It is very observant of you to notice that Mike Gravel’s campaign seems to be having a great deal of trouble. You should not feel bad for not being able to see what the problem is. You see, the problem is invisible.

Mike Gravel is cursed by an invisible demon named Deratianoo. Deratianoo is a mischevious demon who dedicates himself to the political destruction of political candidates. Whenever Mike Gravel gives a speech, Deratianoo runs around the room and whispers nasty things in the ears of the people, like “Mike Gravel smells” or “Mike Gravel has been caught eating human flesh”. People who hear these whispers do not remember them on a conscious level, but are nonetheless turned off, without knowing exactly why.

What you must do is break the curse of Deratianoo. Use a puppet.

Make a puppet that looks like Mike Gravel and hold a puppet news conference at which the puppet Mike Gravel announces to an assembly of puppet journalists that he is ending his presidential campaign. With any luck, Deratinoo will stop haunting Mike Gravel, and he will stand a chance of gaining the Democratic nomination.

- God

Dear God,

My faith has been shaken. I’ve been eating pretzels at the Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop at my local mall for years now. I love the way that they manage to make the pretzels taste bready and fatty and salty and sweet, all at the same time.

Well, I went there yesterday, and I enjoyed my pretzel so much that I asked to see Auntie Anne and thank her myself. That’s when the bottom dropped out of my world. The person at the cash register told me that there is no Auntie Anne.

I said, “That’s impossible! Look at the blue neon sign above you. It says ‘Auntie Anne’s’ This place is hers. It’s there in writing. It has to be true.”

The clerk refused to accept the logic of my argument. He just said to me, “Whatever is written up there, there is no Auntie Anne. Would you like to talk to the manager?”

Well, I talked to the manager, and she denied her personal relationship with Aunti Anne, who had created all the pretzels sitting there right in front of us.

“How can you manage one of Auntie Anne’s restaurants and not know Auntie Anne, or at least have her telephone number?” I asked.

“There is no Auntie Anne,” she said.

“Prove it to me,” I demanded. “Prove to me that Auntie Anne does not exist.”

“I can’t prove a negative,” said the manager, obviously clutching at straws. “I can’t prove that there is no Auntie Anne any more than I can prove to you that there is no invisible pretzel demon, standing behind you, waiting to lick your pretzel.”

This was too much for me to handle. At that moment, I realized what I was up against. I was dealing with a denier of Auntie Anne and a pretzel demon at the same time. I dropped my pretzel and ran away. I haven’t been back to Auntie Anne’s since.

I don’t know what to do. I need Auntie Anne, but I’m afraid to go back and face the licking pretzel demon. What should I do?

- Anita

Anita,

Clearly, what you need to do is to start lobbying Congress. Get the words “and Auntie Anne” inserted in the Pledge of Allegiance. Have the words “On Pretzels We Chew” printed on the dollar bill. Have school children bow their heads and eat a pretzel before class begins each day. Force your local school district to start teaching high school biology students that all living things are descended from pretzels.

Only then will Auntie Anne’s power become evident to you once more.

- God

Dear God,

I keep on hearing about organic food. My friends say that I should “go organic”, and when I go to the store, I see organic strawberries, organic bananas, organic breakfast cereal, even organic tea.

I have to admit that I just don’t get it. What’s so wrong with food grown the old-fashioned way, with lots of pesticides and herbicides sprayed on them by conscientious farmers?

- Larry

Larry,

You obviously never went to catechism. The Book of Job tells the story of the fallen angel, Miraklogro. The archangel Miraklogro made the mistake long ago of criticizing the way that I had designed the plants of the earth. The grass didn’t grow thick and uniform enough, and it got brown in dry weather, he said. The flowers I designed weren’t big enough. The tomato plant only gave fist-sized fruit, he complained, when it could really be much, much bigger.

One day, I was listening to Miraklogro complain that the leaves of a certain species of ivy were too prone to unsightly spots, and he actually said that I ought to give up the job of being god for the plant world over to him. That was too much for me to bear, so I condemned him to walk the Earth forever, able only to eat processed foods.

What I didn’t anticipate is that Miraklogro actually liked his new assignment. He joined the forces of Satan and invented pesticides and herbicides that he said would make my creation better. He never forgave me for slapping him down when he got uppity, though. So, uttered a curse that whenever food is grown without pesticides or herbicides, people will be tempted to make it into unappealing dishes like tabouli, and take it to dinner parties to place on the buffet next to the chocolate brownies.

Will you eat organic food, and side with me, or that prepackaged conventional food, and side with the fallen angel Miraklogro? Actually, those powdered doughnuts do look pretty good.

- God

Dear God,

I walked out my front door to find a swarm of dying mayflies on the sidewalk. Why is it that you designed mayflies to live only for one day and then die? It seems awfully cruel to me.

- Rosemarie

Rosemarie,

It is a common misconception that mayflies live only for one day. The truth is that they live in their adult form for one day, but they live in their larval form for much longer - a few weeks.

There’s a clear reason for this arrangement that might just help you feel better about the whole thing. What you don’t know about mayflies is that they’re born terrorists.

Mayflies possess an unrivaled mental aptitude that makes their inherent terroristic nature particularly dangerous. You may think that human beings are the most intelligent species on the planet, but you’re wrong. It’s mayflies. They’re geniuses beyond human comprehension.

If mayflies were able to live more than one day, they would, in their malice, design, construct and explode a bomb capable of creating a crater the size of New Zealand.

Mayflies have a harsh political agenda which they seek to achieve by any means necessary. Their manifesto: Liberate the Omaha Seventeen! Nobody, not even I, know who the Omaha Seventeen are, much less how to liberate them, and that makes the mayflies such a terrible threat. You see, mayflies do not accept that ignorance is an excuse for inaction.

Every morning, during mayfly season, millions upon millions of mayflies emerge from their larval state, have group sex while flying in the air, and then set upon their dastardly mission of designing the ultimate superweapon. By nightfall, their plans are complete, and they go to bed with the agreement that they’ll build the weapon and detonate it before breakfast. Then, they all die.

You should be grateful, very grateful, to see your sidewalk littered with their carcases, the little buggers.

- God

Dear God,

The professor for my Interpretation of Music course has given me the assignment of doing a symbolic examination of the song I Ran So Far Away by A Flock of Seagulls. I’ve looked at the lyrics, and read the biographies of the band members, but I can’t figure out the central issue of the song.

What were they running so far to get away from, and in the end, what happened when they couldn’t get away?

- Frank

Frank,

Some musical historians have speculated that the members of the Flock of Seagulls were writing about their efforts to get away from the Curse of the One Hit Wonders which hit so many New Wave bands. Of course, the lyrics of I Ran So Far Away clearly refer to the inability to escape the pursuer. As you surely know, A Flock of Seagulls had another well known hit, Space Age Love Song.

No, what A Flock of Seagulls was trying so unsuccessfully to run away from was a demon named Hairy Herman. Hairy Herman specializes in the possession of the larynxes of pop singers, causing them to hiccup in the middle of recording sessions.

There is no known exorcism procedure for getting rid of Harry Herman. The only thing that causes Hairy Herman to leave is the bankruptcy of a band due to skyrocketing studio costs that never bear fruit, or the breakup of a band as the result of the arguments that often result from a hiccuping singer.

A Flock of Seagulls lasted longer than most. I Ran So Far Away was recorded over 5 days in the studio, with the good parts spliced together. Hairy Herman finally left A Flock of Seagulls when the band went bankrupt, but members made their second fortune playing at state fairs.

- God