Dear God,

I’ve got a couple of business colleagues who always like to go out for a beer after work on Fridays. I go with them, but when we get to the bar, they start having a conversation about about the qualities of beer and the different kinds of beer, and I have no idea what they’re talking about. I end up feeling intimidated, and staying quiet for most of the time, and it’s not working out well. I’m always worried I’ll end up ordering the wrong beer.

God, can you tell me how to tell the difference between a good beer and a bad beer?

- Paul

Paul,

Here are some tips. If the beer has the letters sch together in the name, it’s not considered a good beer. If the beer name has two vowels next to each other in more than one place, as in Hoegaarden, that’s a plus.

Next, look at the label. Is a silver color prominent on the label? If so, avoid it. Now, look at the font. Does it have interesting hooks and twists to it? That’s a good sign. Is it smooth, and at a diagonal tilt, with a 3-D effect on the lettering? That’s a bad sign.

Here are some things you can say about your beer to get you through the conversation:

It has a mild horse aroma to it, but I like it.
There’s a dampness to the grain.
The quality of the head is rather unexpected.
I prefer more a fine bead to my carbonation.
When I saw the lacing, I presumed that there would be more of a chocolate finish.

Also, you can look at any food item on the menu, and say that the beer has a hint of that item in its aftertaste, and then wait for a response.

- God

Dear God,

Last year, my husband and I moved into our neighborhood because it seemed like such a friendly place. What we didn’t know is that the neighbors would be so friendly that we couldn’t have a social life of our own.

Every evening, one of our neighbors stops in to say hi. Usually, it’s just around the time that we’re about to eat, or to go to sleep, or just sit down and watch the television. They knock on the door and then come right in, as if they’re welcome.

Now I wish that we had never moved here. How can we avoid our friendly neighbors so that we can finally have some peace?

- Etta

Etta,

There are many options available to you.

1. Lay tacks on the sidewalk leading to your door.

2. Don’t talk when your neighbors visit. Just put your hand to your throat, and then shrug, and just look at your neighbors while they talk, until their leave.

3. Put a sign on your door reading “Emergency sewage problem”.

4. Make sure that your husband calls every female neighbor who visits “pretty lady”, while he smiles at you knowingly.

5. Don’t mow the lawn. Ever.

6. Whenever you see your neighbors coming toward your door, get out your cell phone, and put it up next to your ear. Whenever your neighbor tries to say anything, put your finger up in the air.

7. When talking with your neighbors, end every sentence with the phrase, “In a manner of speaking”.

8. Institute a mandatory visitor water balloon fight policy.

9. Offer your neighbors something to drink, and then hand them a glass full of tabouli.

10. Every five minutes, interrupt the conversation by holding up your hand, cocking your ear to the side, and saying “Hold on a minute”.

11. Whenever your neighbors ask you a question, get out an Eight Ball and shake it for a response.

12. Tell your neighbors, “I’m just going to check my email,” then go get in your car and have a drink at the local bar.

You get the idea

- God

- God

Dear God,

My husband I had our first baby about a year ago, and only now has she finally got enough hair for it to need to be washed on its own. So, my husband went out and got a bottle of baby shampoo.

I was a little bit bothered to discover that baby shampoo calls itself “tear-free”. I understand the compassionate motivation behind taking tears away from the shampooing experience, isn’t it against the inherent nature of shampoo to cause tears? If shampoo were meant to be painless, then why wouldn’t it be so for adults as well?

Isn’t there something inherent in the nature of cleansing that should be just a little rough? How will a baby ever learn to close its eyes in the bath if it never feels bad to get shampoo in them?

Is tear-free shampoo morally sound?

- Beatrix

Beatrix,

You are speaking nonsense. How could anyone ever rip shampoo? How could shampoo ever cause a rip in anything else? If you are implying that ordinary shampoo would cause breaks in your baby’s skin, you’d better be able to back up that claim, or be sued for libel by Johnson and Johnson.

If, on the other hand, you believe that it’s the shampoo that cannot retain its consistency in the shower, then I suspect that you are the victim of a marketing campaign to convince you that one shampoo is less likely to rip apart than another.

You and your baby have no need for special tear-free shampoo, because the issue of tearing shampoo is blatantly frivolous.

- God

Dear God,

For an omniscient being, you’re really dense. I want to heat my home efficiently without destroying it.

How can I do that?

- Fern

Fern,

I am all powerful as well as all knowing. I can be infinitely dense as well as infinitely sparse. In fact, I can be both at the same time. Don’t blame your problems in asking good questions on me.

Your problem is that you want two things that are mutually inconsistent. I don’t think that you can argue with me that burning your home down is a very efficient way to heat it. The process actually converts the latent energy in your home into heat. I think that fits nicely into the motto, “reduce, reuse, recycle”.

I could tell you to get double pane windows, or to install a new heating system that relies on worm composting in your basement with thermostats in every room, but the truth is that, compared to burning your house down, these really are very inefficient forms of heating. I would feel dishonest in telling you otherwise.

Sometimes, when you ask God a question, the answer is: “What a stupid question!”

- God

Dear God,

You still don’t get it. I want to heat my home efficiently without losing all the memories I have it in in a big fire. I don’t think that your current plan allows for that.

- Fern

Fern,

Okay. I see what you mean. What you need to do, then, is to get a video camera, and walk through your house recording everything that you don’t want to forget.

Then, put the video camera in the car, put the cardboard boxes soaked in gasoline in the basement, and light them on fire.

Problem solved.

God

Dear God,

I think you misunderstood me when I asked you about how to heat my home efficiently. You suggested that I light my home on fire with gasoline and cardboard boxes in the basement.

The thing is, I want home heating that’s sustainable. I don’t think that the method of heating you proposed can really be sustained.

- Fern

Fern,

Nonsense, Fern. If you want this method of home heating to be sustainable, all you need to do is to pour more gasoline on the fire every time that you see it dying down.

- God

Dear God,

What is the most efficient way to heat my home?

- Fern

Fern,

Gather as many cardboard boxes as you can and pile them into your basement, near the center of your house. Douse them in gasoline, and light them on fire. Soon, your entire home will be very efficiently heated.

- God

Dear God,

I have a neighbor whose entire house was decorated according to the dictates of Feng Shui. She calls herself Christian, yet talks about the “energies” of her house according to this Japanese mumbo jumbo. I regard it all as simple blasphemy.

I want to present a true alternative example in Christian decorating skills, and I’m starting with the pillows.

So, God, how can I select pillows for my house in a manner that will be the most Christian?

- Marsha

Marsha,

As the Fundamentalists have proven, it’s important to regard every single decision in life according to what has been written about it in the Bible. So, what pillow would Jesus use?

There is only one actual pillow mentioned in the Bible: A pillow upon which Jesus fell asleep while riding in a boat. Therefore, every pillow in your house should come from a boat. To choose any other kind of pillow would be sinful, and would doom you to Hell.

- 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’ve got company coming over for dinner in 45 minutes, and I just realized that I forgot to take the steak out of the freezer this morning.

What’s the fastest way to defrost a steak?

- Ida

Ida,

I can sympathize with you. I’ve had that very problem myself.

One time, I invited two couples over to my place for a nice steak dinner. There was Zeus and Hera, who were not getting along very well at the time, and Odin with his new girlfriend Julia, who was a lot younger than anyone else there.

Anyway, I had them all over to my place in the Falklands Islands, a nice little cottage with a view of the penguins, and I had the oven going nice and hot, but then I realized I had left the steaks halfway between here and the Andromeda galaxy, at near absolute zero.

What was I to do? I had to think fast, but then I remembered what my grandmother always told me: When in doubt, try the supernova.

Sure enough, it worked. I brought those steaks over to the nearest star, and provoked it into a supernova explosion. Five billion sentient beings on a nearby planet died almost instantly, but it worked! The heat defrosted the steaks so that they were ready to go into the oven. I put them in just as Odin pulled up on his eight-legged horse, and he had no idea that there had been a problem.

Best of luck to you with your steaks.

- God

Dear God,

I used to think of myself as just frugal, and maybe a bit of an eccentric pack rat. Now, I have to admit that I have a real problem. I am a compulsive hoarder. I just can’t help myself from keeping everything that I think I might eventually have to use, if there was an emergency, or some other sort of unanticipated need.

I have one room in the back of my house that is full of things, all the way from the floor to the ceiling. They’re in loose piles, in Rubbermaid tubs, in boxes, and in bags. The whole thing looks like it could fall over at any moment.

The worst part is that it’s my office. That’s where I’m supposed to get things done.

God, help me. How can I get rid of the clutter?

- Gertie

Gertie,

You’re not the only one who has this problem. I’m a compulsive hoarder too. Just go out at night and look up. I could have just had one star, or maybe a dozen, but no, not me. For me, as my friend Carl Sagan once told me, it’s got to be billions and billions. I’ve got billions of galaxies, billions of nebulas, billions of neutron stars, and even more planets and sentient beings on those planets, and closets that those sentient beings have filled up with things.

Every now and then, when I can’t take it any more, I have to wipe one of my planets clean. I did that a while ago on Earth, actually.

You should do what I did. Take just two of every item that you can’t bear to live without, and put them in a box. Put that box up on a top shelf. You just get one box, so be selective.

Then, bring a hose inside and turn it on. Leave it for a while. With the Earth, it took about 40 days and 40 nights for the water to get high enough. For your office, 40 hours should do the trick.

When the water is almost up to the shelf where you put that box, go outside and open a window. All the junk you don’t want will come flooding out, and then you’ll be able to repopulate your room with what you put in the box.

- God

Dear God,

Why are you called the Lord of Hosts?

- Dierdre

Dierdre,

I once had a show on the Food Network. It was called God’s Hors D’oeuvres Half Hour, and was one of the top ten most popular shows in its time slot (3:30 AM every Saturday). My signature item was the simple and easy, yet delicious, salted, uncooked oyster with dill weed on a rye cracker. It was the hit of Los Angeles cocktail parties for about a week, until word got around that a few people (or, to be precise, a lot of people) were complaining of food-borne illnesses after eating it.

Still, everyone who didn’t got the hospital remembers it fondly.

- God