A lot of people assume that God doesn’t have to worry about weight gain, but God is omnipresent, and as physicists teach us, the universe is constantly expanding. So, God has to work extra hard to keep his figure.

That’s why God uses artificial sweetener instead of sugar. But which one?

Saccharine has been shown to cause cancer in rats, and given that God is everywhere, he is in rats, and so would probably get cancer if he used saccharine.

Aspartame has been shown to cause seizures when it is consumed at the same time as carbohydrates. Because God is omnipresent, he is always consuming carbohydrates, so aspartame is not an option.

Splenda is not unhealthy, but Splenda reminds God of his old girlfriend Glenda. Being omniscient, it’s very difficult for God to forget about anything. It would be impossible if God weren’t also omnipotent. So, in order to help him forget Glenda, God never uses Splenda.

The only artificial sweetener that is left for God to use is fish tank gravel. He prefers the kind that glows green in the dark. Most people don’t know that fish tank gravel tastes like sugar, but that’s just because they haven’t tried it. You’ve heard of rock salt, right? Well, fish tank gravel is like rock sugar, only with no calories and no bitter aftertaste.

It’s true that the gravel is a bit crunchy, but every artificial sweetener has its drawbacks. Now that Starbucks is closing many of its stores, God sees a business opportunity: A new coffeeshop brand called God’s Best Fish Tank Gravel Coffee. The featured drink will be the half caff, no fat latte with whipped topping and blue gravel syrup infused with the essential oil of guppy.

God never drinks coffee after lunch because coffee late in the day makes him feel jittery. God worries that if he were ever to set foot on solid ground after having an afternoon cup of Joe, he could cause a series of earthquakes so powerful that they would threaten the destruction of human civilization. Such a thing has never happened, mind you, but that doesn’t stop God from worrying about it. Besides, God doesn’t feel like himself if he fails to get a good night’s sleep.

A little-known fact about God:

God has decided to allow the human species to survive. However, this decision was not made out of compassion, but because God realizes that humans might one day be the source of a new generation of medications that could cure diseases like avian flu. God hates to see chickens with the sniffles.

A lot of people wonder: Does God get health care along with his line of work?

Sadly, no. God has to pay for all his own medical expenses, including vision and dental.

The reason is plain. Deities are very independent spirits, and have refused to come together to organize for better working conditions.

A lot of divine beings think that they can do it all on their own. As Zeus once said, “I gave birth to my daughter from my head, and I didn’t take an aspirin. What do I need health care for?”

However, Prometheus shouted back, “Collective action gets the goods!” Hiawatha accused Prometheus of just trying to get a liver transplant without having to pay for it himself.

God stayed on the sidelines, and would not sign the list of divine rulers of the universe seeking unionization. That’s why, to this day, he does not have health care.

God’s favorite color is triangle. However, God hates triangle-colored sweaters. He believes that they make him look fat.

God also does not enjoy off-triangle, or triangle mixed with yellow. Those colors are an abomination to him.

Dear God,

They say that you are omnipotent, that you can do anything. I don’t believe it.

There’s got to be at least one thing that you can’t do, or you wouldn’t be able to be powerless, and therefore you wouldn’t be all powerful.

So, what’s one thing you can’t do?

- Horatio

Horatio,

You caught me. There is one thing that I can’t do: Drive legally in the state of Florida. Go ahead and look it up in the official records: I’ve never been issued a driver’s license there.

Just let the Florida State Police try to pull me over, though. Just let them try.

- God

A fun little fact about God: God’s real name is not God. Rather, God is his stage name.

God’s birth name is Nihazaid the Terrible. He was named after his father, so he is formally known as Nihazaid the Terrible Junior.

In the early years of his career, Nihazaid the Terrible continued using his real name. He struggled, doing little miracles in neighborhood bars. No one seemed to want to worship him for long after he stopped buying them drinks.

It was his agent who suggested the use of a stage name, when an opportunity to perform at children’s birthday parties came up. The agent pointed out that the children’s prayer of gratitude, “Nihazaid the Terrible is good. Nihazaid the Terrible is great. Let us thank him for our food,” would have a better flow if it didn’t have so many syllables.

Dear God,

I just can’t wait for the movie The Golden Compass to come out next week. I’ve already read the book five times this year, I’m getting so excited.

When I visited the Golden Compass movie web site, I found out that my daemon is a mouse. That got me wondering - what’s your daemon, God?

- Luther

Luther,

I am like a child in that I can have a daemon of any form that I want. Sometimes it’s a human being, like Krishna or Jesus. Sometimes it’s a monkey, like Hanuman. Once, it was a winged serpent, in Central America. In the Pacific islands, my daemon has sometimes been a giant eel, or a big coconut. On the Great Plains of North America, my daemon was a buffalo for a while, though further north it was a raven, and in some of the rivers of the West, it was a salmon. In Africa, my daemon has been a spider, a monkey, a jackal, and all sorts of other things.

You think about it, and my daemon can be that shape… or, it can have no shape at all.

- God

A little known fact about God: God was the inspiration for the title character of the hit 1980s video game, Donkey Kong. Go never has received financial compensation for the use of his likeness, however. In 1987, God tried to release his own version of the game. It was called God Kong, but it never caught on, due to the lack of adequate distribution.

563 B.C.E. is known as God’s lost year. In 564 B.C.E., God was experimenting with the creation of a new kind of mushroom, and that’s the last thing that he remembers until about 15 months later, when he found himself on an island in the Seychelles, wearing nothing but a pair of purple sandals, sitting next to a hippopotamus, with a rash on his elbow.

God has only been to the Academy Awards once, when he walked the red carpet in a poofy sleeveless green silk dress with a yellow chenille hooded cape, accessorized with a charm bracelet that featured a locust in memory of a trip to Egypt, a silver bush in memory of his favorite presidential candidate of all time, and a unicorn, in memory of his first daughter Eloise, who died at the age of five in a tragic licorice accident.

The fashion critics said that the outfit made God’s butt look big, and he has never been able to summon up the courage to return to the event, although he has twice been nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Editor’s Note:

Here’s our first installment in these little facts about God:

How God Likes His Coffee

God likes his coffee with a shot of hazelnut syrup, two tablespoons of whole, organic milk, and a packet of Splenda (he’s trying to watch out for that expanding universe which is often the consequence of being lord of all you survey). God prefers to drink his coffee in a special ceramic mug he picked up as a tourist in Peru, shaped like a pyramid, with a narrow top and a wide base that keeps the coffee nice and hot.

As the inventor of the original instant coffee (As soon as he wants it, poof! It’s there.) God harbors a deep resentment of Taster’s Choice.