UFO, and your momma, too.

I am an atheist, and yet I have this fantasy that come judgment day God is going to send all the born-again-s and Catholic fanatics (like our current Pope) straight to hell, and, of course, they will go quietly because that is God’s will. And then he will send all other religious believers (Islam, Hindu, Jew and Methodist) one after the other, straight to Hades as well. And they, too, will go obediently because that is God’s will. And then, toward the end of the day, God will dispatch all the atheists to hell and we too will go quietly because we will have to admit that we were wrong.
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And then God finally gets to the agnostics and he pauses for a moment. The agnostics smile, thinking God will respect their respect for his greatest gift, the human mind, and how like Mother Theresa they are, since she too doubted. But then God simply orders them, “Go to hell.” The agnostics are outraged. “You can’t do that. It isn’t logical!” they shout. God ignores them and repeats his order; “Go to hell.” The agnostics shout even louder. “We lived good lives not because we feared you, but because we believed in the values of honesty and morality for themselves. And didn’t that make us more honest than all those simpering Christian and Islamic hypocrites?” And God says, “Go to hell.” The agnostics are shocked. “But we were good people”, they wail. “We were good for the right reasons.” And God asks, “Who told you that reason had anything to do with anything?” The agnostics whine, “But we thought…” and God shouts them down, one last time; “Go to hell.”
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Okay, it’s not a pleasant fantasy, and it betrays my core Midwestern pessimism more than anything else, and my firm belief that no matter what I do right I’m going to get screwed in the end. But I’m getting better. In this fantasy everybody else gets screwed, too. Still, I think that most of the anger in this world (including my own) is because people never receive what they truly think they deserve to receive; i.e., this lunatic blogger, Black Velvet Buce Li, who is actually the dopey looking white dude on the right named Greg Letiecq. The guy on the left who looks like a night manager at Dennys is the Republican Governor of Virginia. Now Greg, or Bruce, thinks illegal Hispanic ice cream vendors are spreading leprosy across Northern Virginia and that five illegal Hispanics in Manassas gang-raped a white woman - I guess because Hispanic men are no different than black man – all they dream about is having forced sex with skinny whinny no-butt white women. I tell you, it seems to me at times that most southern white idiots aren’t just bigots; they are also obsessed with rape fantasies. These guys should see a psychiatrist, by court order if that’s what it takes.
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According to the Washington Post, a noted “liberal biased” newspaper, Bruce used to be an insurance salesman but now he works as a “computer programmer’ for the defense industry – a programmer being the modern day catch all description that could mean a multi-millionaire genius or a keyboard drone. And I just don’t think Bruce has the time to be a genius, he’s too busy trying to scare everybody within earshot. Of course, he thinks he’s a genius – which is usually the first sign that he is not. Says Bruce; “We’re inspiring people. A lot of people felt like there was nothing they could do.” Do about what, you may ask. I did. It turns out that what Bruce – or Greg – is worried about are illegal aliens. But the truth is Bruce has no idea what true aliens are. .
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Alfred Webre has an idea. It’s the wrong idea, but he’s still closer to reality than Bruce. On Monday of last week Alfred held a media event at the National Press Club and called for a “truth amnesty” for illegal aliens; extraterrestrial illegal aliens, that is. Alfred is talking little green men. He wants E.T. to phone home and use the federal government’s phone card. It is an idea, says Alfred, “…recommended by the extraterrestrials themselves.” Great; now we’re taking policy planning suggestions about the aliens from the aliens? Who the hell do these E.Ts think they are, Rupert Murdoch?!
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But, as I said, I don’t think even Alfred knows what a true alien is. The peasants in the little village of Carancas, near Lake Titicaca, along the spine of the Andes in Peru: now, they have an idea. A meteor landed in their laps over the weekend, and this “alien”, this extraterrestrial invader, left a crater 65 feet wide and 22 feet deep. And everybody who looked into the crater and breathed in the strange smells coming out of the hole got sick - and not the good sick, but the bad sick, with headaches, projectile vomiting and diarrhea. Okay the story didn’t mention diarrhea, but how often do national news stories discuss diarrhea? I’m sure it’s a lot more common than the national news media would have you believe.
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Aliens from outer space making people sick sounds a bit far fetched. But it seems the bureaucratic scientists at NASA are also worried. They shipped some Salmonella into space last September on the Shuttle, and when the little buggies got back they killed 90% of the mice who ate them, compared with a 60% death rate in the mice control group. That’s right; a short stint in micro-gravity makes the Salmonella bugs twice as deadly to mice. This is not good news for mice. As for humans, well Salmonella is never good news for us. It’s that old diarrhea problem again. And in the techno-babble of NASA induced talk, changes in 167 of the buggies’ genes were not directly caused by the micro-gravity of orbit, but they were indirectly caused by the micro-gravity of orbit - what ever the hell that distinction means.
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I swear to God, you can always find something to be afraid of, if that’s what you are looking for. Super Salmonella can still be stopped with proper cooking procedures and a little common sense. Just follow this basic rule; before you put something in your mouth, stop, look and smell it first. And when in doubt, don’t eat it. And the villagers in Peru are probably not suffering from a space virus, but mass hysteria, which can kill you just as dead as a real disease. But you don’t suffer from hysteria unless you want to. And with the unemployment rate among “legals” at 4.8%, it seems that every illegal in this country that wants a job has a job – sometimes two. What the hell are we worried about, Judgment Day?
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Hey, I’m an atheist and even I worry about Judgment Day. It’s not logical, and I don’t believe in it, but I still worry about it. Whereas Bruce is the one who ought to be worried about it.
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