A letter to the Almighty

Hey, Big Fella,

I realize that for whatever mysterious and inscrutable reasons You may have, You are apparently not into doing any big stuff right now. So I won't trouble you with requests for world peace, or an end to poverty, or getting rid of racial injustice, or wiping out the international slave trade, or any of that big abstract stuff. Hopefully, You are working on all of that and we can expect good things from You over the coming millenia in these regards.

However, there are some smaller, more minor issues and problem areas down here that, if You have a few minutes, I was wondering if You could look into for me:

10. Somewhere, somebody has let things slip pretty badly down here as regards pro football. Now, I'm not talking about the Patriots, although if a whole batch of videotapes and/or other irrefutable evidence showing the true perfidy of that vile and wretched franchise could show up somewhere soon, that would be cool and I would certainly praise You extravagantly for it. But what I'm really requesting here is if You could put a word in the right ears to get the football season re-adjusted back to where it belongs, so we get exhibition games in August, the real season starts first week of September, we have playoffs throughout December, and the Super Bowl is the first or second weekend in January. Football playoffs used to be a wonderful little garnish to the holidays, and having them in January just isn't working for me. Do what you can, big guy, and I won't even add in any requests as regards, you know, keeping the Patriots out of the playoffs for the next twenty years. I figure if somebody can just make Belichick and Brady stop cheating and play fair, that will take care of itself. Nobody is that good, dammit. Not in the salary cap era.

9. Pop music in commercials, especially, pop music that I really like, is getting really really annoying, O Lord. If You could crush a few ad executives with a big celestial Thumb as a punitive example, I think we could clear this whole unpleasant situation up pretty quickly. Also, kind of on that subject, when whoever it is in the control booths hit those little buttons that send the little animated ads out into the lower right corner of the screen during an actual broadcast -- yeah. Again with the Big Celestial Thumb, please. I think You'd really only need to crush half a dozen of those little creeps into guano, tops, before the rest of them would get the message and stop hitting us with screen clutter. Thanks.

8. You know that thing You did to the Jim Carey character in LIAR, LIAR? Well, if You could kinda throw that 'cannot lie, must tell the truth no matter what' whammy on all the Presidential candidates and every other elected or appointed government official, that would be sweet. Also, everyone working for the media. Also, everyone in a management or ownership position in the business world. Also, anyone who inherits more than, say, $500,000, or has material possessions worth more than, oh, $2 million. Lying should be an exclusive privilege of the poor and the powerless. You know we have few enough of those.

7. If You could kinda-sorta send Britney Spears, Jamie Spears, their mom, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan off to some planet in another galaxy where altruistic aliens would provide them with some sort of advanced brain therapy that would resolve all their deep mental and emotional issues, and in the process, they experienced some kind of faster-than-light warp time dilation effect so that although they themselves did not age more than a few weeks, when they got back to Earth they discovered that thousands of years had gone by and they were the last humans alive on a global surface covered with irradiated ruins otherwise inhabited only by mutant cannibal vampire rat-beings, well, that would be cool. And if You could videotape what happens after that and send the tapes back in time several thousand years, that would probably be the best reality show ever broadcast, too.

As an after thought, if they could find Will Smith in a suspended animation chamber somewhere and wake him up, too, right before the mutant cannibal vampire rat-being armies attack en masse, that would be even better.

6. How about switching things around a little bit down here for a few centuries? Make pizza, ice cream, cheese, garlic bread, mashed potatoes, pasta, fried foods in general, and pretty much all pastries low-cal diet food that we can eat a ton of and still lose weight, while salad, raw veggies, and everything else in the produce section becomes very, very fattening. Also, if You could throw something in to the fried food and pastries that converts existing fat directly into muscle, redistributes it to the appropriate anatomical area, and tones it nicely, too, that would be great. Thanks.

5. If You really want me to play GUITAR HERO, Lord, You should talk to some executive somewhere about them releasing Blue Oyster Cult and Who expansion packs. I would learn to play that game if I could do it while buzzing through ME-262 or SUBSTITUTE, I promise.

4. It's pretty clear that the people in charge down here don't want me to have my flying car, so if You could have someone up there throw something together, I'd appreciate it. If You could have whoever You put in charge of the project lean heavily on design elements from the '59 Cadillac El Dorado, that would be perfect.

3. If You could do something so that the dirty dishes in the sink, the overflowing garbage cans, and the dirty clothes in their room are no longer invisible to my children, that would be wonderful. If I could humbly make a suggestion, disabling the Wii, the TVs, and the computer until such matters are appropriately addressed would probably work wonders.

2. If You could somehow arrange it so that whenever I have to go somewhere and do something, everybody else (who would otherwise be out clogging the streets, taking up parking spaces, or standing in line ahead of me) is, at that moment, busy doing something else, hopefully in their homes or at least some other county I'm not in right then, that would be great.

1. Last, and certainly not least, if You could make my phone number into a kind of 900 number for anyone I didn't personally give the number to? I don't mean actually change the number itself, I just mean, make it work so that when somebody I didn't give the number to calls me, it costs them, like, 99 cents every time they make my phone ring, and then $3.99 a minute to leave a message on my machine or actually talk to me? Just take the money directly out of their account and deposit it into mine, if that's okay. This isn't purely selfish on my part, either; if You could make things work this way, I would actually answer the phone and talk to telemarketers and people doing surveys and polls and like that. For hours and hours, if they'd let me. So, you know, everyone would win. Sort of.

If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to let You know, but in the meantime, this list of minor requests should do to be going on with.

Your Fan,

D.