My Conversation with God (Part 2)

So there I am, sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's office.

"Nigel?"

I look around, assuming that the person has appeared to call me back to see the dentist. I see no one except for the two ladies and older gentleman on the other side of the waiting room.

You're hearing things, old boy, I think to myself.

"Oh Nigel?"

I look around again. Still no one.

"Nigel, it's God."

On no, I think. Not again.

"Now is not a good time," I whisper, trying my best to avoid attracting attention. One of the older ladies glances up at me from her magazine.

"I don't care," God says. "I'm God. I do what I want."

"Wow," I say. "That sounds a bit antisocial. Have you ever seen a therapist? A good therapist might be able to help you with that."

Both of the older ladies are looking at me now. I smile and put my cell phone to my ear. Maybe I can pretend I'm talking to someone on the phone since, apparently, God isn't about to take no for an answer.

"Fine," I whisper into my cell phone. "We can talk until I get called back to see the dentist."

"I want to talk to you about Rod Blag....Blogg...Bogolo....the Illinois Governor."

"Bloody hell," I say. "What do you want to talk about that wanker for?"

"Because he's a wanker."

"Well that much is clear," I say, thinking that it really must be insulting to have God call you a wanker. Assuming that you believe in such things. Which I don't. And assuming that such things can happen in the first place. Which they can't.

"Here's the deal," God begins. "It is narcissistic, materialistic criminals like him who make me think that I maybe should have given the world to the monkeys."

"That's a line from an Elvis Costello song," I say.

"What is?"

"That you should have given the world to the monkeys."

"It is?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Now who's the one asking a lot of questions?"

"Ah," the big guy replies. "Touche."

"So Gov. Blogg....Bligil....Bigoll....G-Rod bothers you more than, say, George W. Bush? You didn't use such stern language when you were discussing him the other day."

"No, no," God replied. "W. is a one of a kind piece of work. He's not very bright and clearly has caused a great deal of trouble, but I don't think he's intentionally evil. G-Rod, I think, is."

"Do tell," I said.

"I put you people on this planet to be nice to each other."

"Point of order. You didn't put people on this planet. We evolved from simpler life forms over a very long period of time."

"Semantics," God said with a dismissive wave of his hand. What was particularly odd about this was that a.) since I can't see him, I didn't see him make a dismissive wave of his hand; and b.) given his absence of hands (or anything else, for that matter) waving his hand in a dismissive fashion is a tricky endeavor.

"No it isn't semantics," I argued. "What you said is patently wrong. There is no evidence to suggest your existence, while at the same time there is an increasingly large mountain of evidence to the contrary."

"You're talking to me, aren't you?" he said smugly.

With a roll of my eyes, I conceded the point. For the moment. A dentist's waiting room isn't the place to engage in a protracted debate with a deity over whether or not they exist in the first place. A doctor's waiting room, sure. The dining room in an MCL Cafeteria, you bet. A dentist's waiting room? That's just silly talk.

"My point is that you are supposed to be nice to each other," he continued.

"I guess I'd agree with that," I said with a shrug.

"It is in the Ten Commandments, you know."

"There's a commandment to be nice?"

"Well, not as such, no. The first three commandments, I freely admit, are a bit of self-congratulatory chest pounding on my part. But numbers 4 through 10 all boil down to 'be nice.' Is that so hard?"

"Apparently for some people, it is. Faulty programming I guess. Seems as though that could be seen as an error on the part of the programmer."

"Absolutely. There's no other explanatio--oh wait. I see where you're going. But you see, I created these rules to instill structure and order. Without these rules, there is disorder and chaos."

"So you're suggesting that prior to your handing down of these commandments that people thought that it was acceptable to kill, steal, lie, an covet their neighbor's ass?"

"I see no need for a potty mouth," he said.

"Did you have a point you were trying to make?" I asked. Now the older gentleman was looking at me too, and the older ladies were moving slowly toward the door.

"Yes. I'm tired of you people screwing each other over to get ahead or make a buck. Selling a U.S. Senate seat? That's simply offensive. I said it before and I'll say it again: wanker. Perhaps the commandments are too wordy."

"You'll get no argument from me. Perhaps a rewrite is in order."

"Yes," God said. "Commandments v2.0. With these new commandments, I will hand down to you, Nigel St. James, the meaning of life."

"Life, the Universe, and Everything?"

"No, just life."

"Fair enough. Lay it on me."

Thus the Lord spake to me. Well, actually he emailed them to me. So, without further ado, Commandments v2.0.

# $Header: Commandments,v 2.0 2008/12/10 13:17:54 god Exp $
#
# $Changelog:    Commandments,v $
# Revision 2.0  2008/12/10  13:17:54  13:17:54  god (God)
# Major rewrite of previous version. Emailed to Nigel.
#
# Revision 1.4  2008/11/05  16:32:36  16:32:36  god (God)
# Rolled back to previous version. Failed to pass QA review.
#
# Revision 1.3  1099/12/31  02:44:12  02:44:12  god (God)
# Fixed typo. Updated with info gathered from first Crusade.
#
# Revision 1.2  0712/10/24  14:30:13  14:30:13  god (God)
# *** empty log message ***
#
# Revision 1.1  0033/04/03  15:00:01  15:00:01  god (God)
# Still PO'd at Pontius Pilate. And at Judas. Don't get me
# started on Judas. Added 11th commandment in response to
# crucifixion. (Note to self: bake JC a cake.)
#    - 11th Commandment: Don't crucify my son, you jerks.
#
# Revision 1.0  0000/00/00  09:36:55  09:36:55  god (God)
# Initial draft, presented to Moses. Next time, use something
# other than burning bush. Took forever to get the smell of
# smoke out of my clothes.

1. Don't be a Jerk.
2. Don't be Stupid.
3. Be nice.

So, there you have it. Don't be a jerk. Don't be stupid. And be nice. G-Rod, not only are you an embarrassment to your political party, you are an embarrassment to your state, and to your species.