Volume 2, Issue 14 June 22 - July 5, 2000

Well, friends, there weren't any good questions to answer this week, so please send some my way. AskMrAdvice@aol.com. Who knows, it may change your life. Anyway, I'll just quickly gloss the two illiterate souls who sent some gibberish to me: Clyde, if you really want to cure your hemorrhoids, you need to quit the circus as soon as possible, and Frankxyz, stop sending me nursery rhymes, you're making me crave Gerber.

Since there's no Q&A this time, I'll just do what all lazy columnists do when they're out of ideas : reprint a stupid forward that landed in my inbox. Before you all groan and turn the page, though, you should know that this is not your run-of-the-mill forward. There's no sick kids who will get a buck for every person you send it on to, no witty observations on the difference between men and women, no shitty poetry about how nice it is to have friends, and no flowers drawn using the ^ and * keys by a person with way too much time on their hands.

No, this forward came directly from God. I'm not sure which God, and I don't remember signing up to be on His mailing list, but it must have happened that night I went crazy with a stolen credit card and signed up for every conceivable porn site I could find. Put your e-mail address in enough forms, and eventually you'll get e-mail from everyone in the universe, even the Big Guy (or Gal, but if he's connected to porn on the 'net I'm inclined to think Guy).

Here it is:

From: VengflGD@god.hv

To: Archangels-n-sluts listserv

Re: Recent votes over heavenly policy

Wussup my fluttering friends?? Things are going well here in Valhalla and I'm having a great vacation É thanks for the forbidden fruit basket, Aries, very funny.

I wrote to y'all at this address because this is the only e-mail you guys check anymore. I won't interfere, but I think you're taking the pleasures of the afterworld to the extreme, eh guys? You girls, too. Just make sure those pictures don't make it to Earth : you angels have a hard enough time keeping a good reputation with that Victoria's Secret nonsense and The X-Files. Let's not give them any more ammunition.

So last week's convention in Butte went really well, and we finally put some important stuff to vote. The resolution that pertains to you is the one about inflicting annoyances (acne, hair loss, unfavorable bank errors, etc.) upon humans that bash gay people in the name of religion, which passed unanimously. Remember to keep to annoyances. We won't escalate to tortures except on a case-by-case basis. Trophies and t-shirts will be given to the angel or otherworldly messenger who comes up with the most creative annoyance! That's probably the only one you need to know about, but I'm going to share another resolution we passed just for fun.

After the alien squad finished their presentation on ethical abduction, the whole congress was pretty bored, so I decreed that we should vote on Our Favorite Burial Ritual. It was a tight race, but the winner was "flushing goldfish down the toilet" which got high marks for irony and crude imagination. It was a nice little diversion, and would have stopped there, but somewhere along the line Buddha busted out with a couple cases of Molson and, well, remember the creation of the platypus? Let's just say it's a good thing we didn't get that out of hand this time.

What happened was we sent a few messengers around the world to start a new cult which disposes of all carcasses in a manner reminiscent of the "burial by commode" fate for pet goldfish. I don't remember it too well, but I believe we instructed a few hundred people in the Carribean to sacrifice their dead parrots to the gods by placing the dead bird on the windowsill of a third story apartment and blowing its body off the side with a hair dryer. Also, don't be surprised if a few pigs get stuffed full of mud and rolled down a hill in Iowa.

I did some checking and it seems that the souls of such departed pets arrive in healthy condition, and are in fact in good spirits, as if they just got out of an amusement park. We may have figured out why all the fish up here are so euphoric upon arrival.

So heads up, and say hi to Satan if you see him in Atlanta. I think he's pitching for the BravesÉ

Alpha Omega Pi É The Original G