And now, by moonlit tryst, an ominous Revelation of the Divine and Damned, for your enlightenment:
a guest post by Morbid Misanthrope: I love to doubt as well as know
In these troubled times—with rampant war, disease, trans fat, and daytime talk shows—people need something to believe in: something better, brighter, and beyond the grim realities of daily life in the modern world. Everyone except atheists, of course. Those people tend to get all the fulfillment and meaning they need from life by acting like total stuck-up buzzkills and proverbially pissing on everyone else’s afterlife parade.
There’s nothing wrong with a little healthy skepticism—even I don’t believe every Bigfoot sighting I read. But I have incontrovertible proof that heaven, hell, God, and the devil exist (for realsies). I think unicorns exist, too, but I’m still waiting for the lab results to come in on that one. In the meantime, allow me to blow your minds with the amazing story of my trip to the afterlife.
One night, I was flipping through basic cable channels, trying to find something decent to watch. I happened upon an episode of TLC’s Miami Ink. In this particular episode, one of their customers was this little, gimped-out midget with some weird disease. The guy looked like a misshapen basketball with tiny limbs sitting in a motorized wheelchair. I think he was some kind of record producer. It was as if someone had run over Simon Birch with a cement truck, and to make amends, had given him a really half-assed hip-hop makeover. At about the time they started showing pictures of the little fellow as a sickly child and he asked for a tattoo of three birds on his arm, I literally died laughing.
Suddenly, I was standing next to my own corpse, wondering just what the fuck had happened. I’m usually pretty calm when strange things happen, but when I tried to change the channel and my hand went right through the remote, I’ll admit I was a bit concerned. Before I had time to contemplate the situation further, I heard a voice from the corner of my room.
“Be not afraid, Morbid. You have been chosen to relay an important message to all of humanity. This night you will witness existence after life—its rewards and punishments, heaven and hell.”
As the voice prattled on about fruity crap like spirits and clouds, I turned around to see who was talking to me. The person standing there was a pasty guy with a really bad comb-over, wearing a cheap-looking suit. It looked like he stole his outfit off of one of the bodies at a Mariachi funeral.
Me: “I’m sorry, who are you?”
Guy: “Well, I was explaining that to you before … what are you laughing about?”
Me: “Nothing, dude. Really. Continue.”
Guy: “You’re laughing at my suit, aren’t you?”
Me: “No. I’m not. Just finish what you were saying.”
Guy: “Listen, it’s not my fault you have to spend eternity in the clothes you were wearing when you died.”
Me: “You were wearing that when you died?”
Guy: “Oh, like you’re doing so much better. Let’s see, if you were permanently dead right now you’d be forever wearing, what, a dirty pair of jeans and a Darkthrone shirt that smells like malt liquor? Way to go, dick. I’m sure God would appreciate seeing the pentagram on your shirt every day for eternity. Anyway, I died at my nephew’s Southwestern-themed Jr. Prom. I was a chaperone. They served fajitas.”
Me: “You know, some Christians used to use the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Christ. And couldn’t God just change my shirt if it bothered Him so much?”
Guy: “Yeah, like no one’s ever asked that question before, college boy. One of my coworkers in heaven is wearing a toga full of holes from where the lions devoured him. You think he never asked for a pair of pants?”
Me: “Are you trying to make me hit you? Seriously, dude, keep pissing me off and see what happens.”
This conversation went on for a while, but he basically told me I had been chosen, for some reason he didn’t know and couldn’t tell me even if he did, to witness the horrors of hell and the wonders of heaven. Then, he said, I would be returned to my body, charged with the task of telling everyone what I had seen. Something about cosmic importance, souls in the balance, feline AIDS spreading to dogs and human babies, blah, blah, blah.
Guy: “Follow me, for I will be your guide on this journey.”
Me: “What’s your name?”
Guy: “My name? Does it matter?”
Me: “No. Not at all. I’m going to follow someone into the depths of hell without getting his name first.”
Guy: “Ralph.”
Me: “Your name’s Ralph? Seriously? That’s all?”
Ralph: “What do you mean by that?”
Me: “What did you do in life, then?”
Ralph: “I was a telemarketer. Why?”
Me: “I can’t help but feel a little unimpressed.”
Ralph: “Then you’ll get along great with the guardian angel assigned to me when I was alive. I get that enough from him at all the office mixers. Can we just go, please?”
Me: “That’s just great. Dante had Virgil, author of the Roman Empire’s national epic, and I get Ralph, a guy who made people’s phones ring when they were trying to eat dinner.”
Ralph: “You are aware that The Divine Comedy was fiction, right? Asshole. Let’s just get this over with. And do me a favor: try not to reference any other famous books about hell while we’re there. If I have to stand in front of Lucifer while some idiot I’m guiding through hell quotes that “better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” line from Paradise Lost again, I’m seriously going to lose it. It’s so embarrassing. I can’t even look at Lucifer anymore.”
Ralph then waved his hands in a circular motion and chanted some magic words. Suddenly, we were standing in line at what looked like a dumpy Blockbuster video. Our new surroundings were really quite unremarkable except for the length of the line we were standing in. The line seemed to stretch into the distance as far as the eye could see; and as far back as the line went, televisions hung from the ceiling running noisy looped trailers for the latest garbage coming out of Hollywood. In the distance, I could hear one tormented soul screaming, “How many Stomp the Yard sequels are there in this terrible place?”
“There’s only one Stomp the Yard movie, thank God” I thought to myself. Confused, I quickly looked to the front of the endless line, where an old lady with a single movie held up the only open register. She had some kind of coupon that the employee was having a hard time getting the computer to read. Every time the employee scanned the coupon, the computer gave her some kind of error message and she made a phone call. This went on repeatedly as the old woman constantly said things like “I know the coupon is valid because my son printed it for me off of that internet site you have” and “it’s a perfectly good coupon, just try it again, I never waste a coupon.” Then it hit me like a wrecking ball full of explosive sledgehammers.
Me: “We’re in hell, aren’t we?”
Ralph: “Considering how often you bitch about this situation on earth, I’m surprised it took you so long to figure that out.”
Me: “So hell is the Blockbuster down the street from my house?”
Ralph: “Well, mostly just the checkout line. This is only one small part of hell. By the way, Purgatory is around here, too, but you don’t really need to see it, do you?”
Me: “You’re the guide, you tell me.”
Ralph: “Purgatory’s not bad, but it’s not all that good, either. It’s just so-so—kind of like a Will Ferrell movie.”
Me: “Oh. Well, in that case, let’s just skip it.”
Ralph then guided me through several other sections of hell. One of them was a dingy hospital waiting room where prisoners of hell sat, amidst coughing foreigners getting free medical care on the citizens’ tax money, eternally filling out paperwork while Rachael Ray’s daytime talk show played non-stop on the TV. Another section looked like the parking lot outside of a fancy nightclub. I stood there looking around trying to figure out what was so bad about it, when I noticed several people pacing around anxiously. I asked Ralph what was going on, and he told me in that section of hell, people were eternally trying to bum cigarettes off of other people, but everyone who had cigarettes only had menthols—hence, the anxious pacing.
In addition to the areas of hell I witnessed, I was also taken down a long hallway with doors on both sides. Here, I was allowed to read the names on the doors but not actually witness the horrors behind them. Ralph explained that I wouldn’t be able to live a normal, sane life again if I actually saw what was behind the doors, but I should take note of them for when I told the living what I had seen in hell. Here are a few of the room names I remember: “Feminist poetry reading room (now with female-empowering tampon commercials),” “Knock-knock jokes told by an Austin Powers impersonator,” and “The films of M. Night Shyamalan as musicals.”
Me: “Hell isn’t as scary as I thought it would be.”
Ralph: “What? Are you kidding? Didn’t you see the M. Night Shyamalan room?”
Me: “That was terrifying, but I thought there would have been horrific torture or something—jagged metal catheters, broken glass enemas, boner demon rape squads, Rosie O’Donnell giving birth to a puss-oozing hippopotamus, gut-ripping hellfire ogres, and shit like that.”
Ralph: “Wow. Boner demon rape squads? You’re a sick bastard.
Me: “Well, I thought hell was supposed to be home to the most horrific tortures imaginable. The kind of shit you see in old Catholic paintings.”
Ralph: “To be honest with you, hell used to be a lot more like that; although, those paintings were always a bit over the top. The higher-ups decided that irritating every-day situations repeated over and over again for the rest of time without change are far more torturous than getting ripped apart by demons in a bonfire. Hell is all about stagnation and frustration.”
Me: “I find that a little hard to believe.”
Ralph: “People can get used to pain or even learn to enjoy it, but no one ever learns to enjoy being bored and annoyed all the time. It’s maddening.”
Me: “That is pretty fucking twisted.”
Ralph: “That’s hell for you.”
Ralph then took me to a small room at the end of the hallway, where I met Lucifer, the devil. Lucifer was a normal looking guy, sitting behind a small desk and typing furiously at a small computer. His office looked more like a large cubicle than the boardroom of the prince of darkness. When we walked in, Lucifer hardly looked away from his computer long enough to acknowledge our presence.
Ralph: “Morb, this is Lucifer. Lucifer, this is Morbid Misanthrope. Morb’s another mortal the Boss wanted brought here for the grand tour.”
Lucifer: “Mm-hmm. Hey, that’s great. Douchebag is one word, right?”
Ralph: “Yeah, one word.”
Me: “What, exactly, is he working on?”
Lucifer: “Totally ruining God’s day, that’s what I’m working on.”
Ralph: “Lucifer here spends all of his time flaming God’s message boards, sending Him spam, leaving rude comments on God’s MySpace page, and maintaining
http://www.godisadick.com/.”
Lucifer: Hey, Morb, you’re pretty good at this ranting shit. What do you think sounds better, ass-licking dildo monkey or dildo-licking ass monkey?
Me: “I’m not really comfortable helping you talk shit about God.”
Lucifer: “Whatevs. Would you guys get out of here, I’m totally on a roll. Oh, by the way, Morb, keep up all that drinking and smoking. Cheers!”
Me: “Great. If I learn nothing else on this trip, at least I know the devil approves of my self-destructive lifestyle. I don’t quite know how that should make me feel, though.”
Ralph: “We need to get going. You still have to see heaven. And I am not working free overtime for you.”
Me: “You don’t get paid overtime in heaven?”
Ralph: “No, and we don’t have a health plan, either.”
Me: “Do you need one?”
Ralph: “That isn’t the point.”
Ralph snapped his fingers and suddenly we were standing in heaven. Much like hell, heaven was visually unimpressive. We were standing in an open field beneath a cloudless sky. It was sunny but not too bright, warm but not too hot. Everything was a little hazy, but Ralph explained that was just because my human eyes weren’t capable of viewing the glories of heaven in their entire magnificent splendor. If I were to see heaven as it really was, I’d never be able to leave. Ralph also told me that seeing God in person would make my skeleton explode and then reassemble just so it could melt. I was rather upset that I wouldn’t be able to speak to God in person, but Ralph said God never answers the questions of mortals without being really cryptic, and I wouldn’t understand His answers until I was seconds away from death anyway.
We hurriedly walked the grounds of heaven—the parts of heaven I was allowed to see—and Ralph recited some memorized information about peace, comfort, and eternal contentment. I noticed everyone in heaven was either just strolling around smiling or playing puzzle games.
Me: “I haven’t seen such dopey grins since the retard down the street learned how to play pocket pool. Why is everyone fucking around with Rubik’s Cubes and shit?”
Ralph: “Thanks for watching the swearing, I really appreciate that. You know, it’s not like we’re in heaven or anything. Anyway, people here are at perfect peace. They no longer experience frustration or boredom. In life, most people don’t have the time, patience, or capacity to truly enjoy using their brains. In heaven, everyone appreciates the value of an unclouded mind. Contemplation and learning never end or get old here. When people in heaven want a short break from pondering all of the mysteries of the universe, they unwind with simple puzzle games. The Rubik’s Cube is sort of an inside joke here, because, aside from being a fun, simple puzzle, it holds the mathematical formula necessary to convert simple matter—trash, for example—into an endless supply of clean energy. It’s one of the basic formulas God used to create the universe.”
Me: “Dude, you have to explain that one to me.”
Ralph: “Sorry, that’s classified. Someone on earth is scheduled to figure it out in the next decade or so. Besides, you suck at math. The guy that cleans up after the dogs on puppy heaven has a better understanding of numbers than you.”
Me: “That would be insulting if it weren’t so true.”
Ralph: “I’m not trying to sell you on anything here, but if you do end up coming here when you die, you’ll finally understand algebra.”
Me: “And all of life’s other secrets that have baffled mankind throughout history?”
Ralph: “Pretty much. There are some things only God can know.”
Me: “Right. That makes sense. Hey, will I know the meaning of life in heaven?”
Ralph: “Sort of. Knowing the meaning of life is how you get into heaven in the first place.”
Me: “What?”
Ralph: “Of course, if you don’t figure that out in time, you’ll either end up working here, only enjoying heaven on the weekends, or you’ll end up in hell. Good luck.”
Then, as suddenly as I had been whisked away to the afterlife by a smartass in a cheap suit, I was back on the bed in my room, watching TV. It was a strange and surreal experience, and the responsibility of telling the world what I had seen weighed heavily on my shoulders. As I started mentally planning how best to spread the word, I noticed they were playing a Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern marathon on the Travel Channel. I figured my mission could wait for a few hours. That was, like, three years ago. Don’t judge me; I got busy. Better late than never, right?
Warning: These rantings of a crazy man do not reflect the views of this blog or its owner--in fact, I don't know why I'm posting this... ^_^
