Chance the Gardener Lives.

I cannot stand group-think and the selling of mass market crap. One of the people who pretty much embodies everything that I hate about politics, religion, and propaganda is the man everyone knows as "the Dalai Lama". His very existence as a person of so-called 'importance' grinds on my every last nerve. He says nothing of lasting value, and each of those things are obvious and to varying degrees of either practicality or of nonsense. The Hoi polloi eat that crap with a ladle.

At any rate, whenever anyone mentions him or presents me with one of his quotes or asks me to watch a snippet of video of him droning, this is what I see and hear. He is, in effect, the Chauncey Gardener of philosophy. The absolute worst.

(I got yer Dalai Lama right here!)

Evolution of Ideas in Mythology

I know a woman who is mildly obsessed with the concept of "angels". She believes that such actually exist. To her, angels are sweet, mild, good creatures. Some of them are beautiful women. Some are beautiful men. Some are beautiful children. They wear robes, and dresses, and they have wings, and they have wonderful smiling, Aryan features and are Nordic in appearance. God sends them to help people, apparently.

Recently I had to tell someone how to pronounce "cherub", which is a word they had never encountered. Then I had to explain what a cherub was, including both its modern definition and its older, Biblical and mythological definition, which are far removed from one another. (I long ago learned that my tendency to expound on such subjects often makes me a target, but I have a short temper and the added tendency to kick ass which protects me from the worst effects, so I continue to do it.)

And as I explained this definition it occurred to me how such a change could take place over the course of human civilization to become something completely different from its origin. How are concepts altered in this weird type of evolution?

For instance, here is one actual quote from a version of the Old Testament describing the appearance of the cherubim:

"...and before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. The first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME."


This is nothing like the tiny, pudgy, harmless, childlike winged beings that the modern word 'cherub' brings to mind. When you compare the images from original to modern you have a genuine WTF? moment. How could it evolve from something terrible and awe-inspiring into something comical and benign?

Then there's the original term I mentioned: angel. Technically speaking, cherubim are consdidered angels, but are monstrous and fearsome. But the other angels are called seraphim and there are, according to Biblical scripture, at least one million of them. They are, in fact, God's soldiers. Yes, sometimes they are described as protecting people, but the implication is that they are doing so in an almost military way. Apparently, they are not described as necessarily having wings, or as being sweet, benefactors whose jobs it is to watch over every person on Earth. But that's the way they are perceived today. Angels are referred to as God's supernatural soldiers and obeying his commands as such. If they watch over any mortal, it was because of an order to do so and not from a sense of independent good will. Mainly, they are sent to give warnings and hand out punishment.

"He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility— a band of destroying angels."

People are strange. They choose to ignore or alter things as they see fit. Whatever sells is the constant.

From this:

To this.

And from this armored destroyer...

To this saccharine guardian.

TV

My wife has been ill lately and so I haven't been able to go hiking as I normally would do. Needing to be closer to home I have turned to reading and watching TV and movies for leisure activities. Thus, I have been able to buy some new books and sit in front of the television and watch some shows.

One TV series that I watched was the AMERICAN GODS show on streaming video. I watched all of the episodes and what held me was not so much the premise or the scripts or any deep characterization or messages, but a few bits of good acting and casting choices.

The series (as was the novel) is based upon the idea of the fading away of the old gods (Nordic, Greek, various African, Asian, etc.), and the rising of newer deities based on the obsessions that modern humans have with technology (TV, computers, iphones, etc.). It's not a terribly clever premise and to tell you the truth I was not impressed with it either in prose or television format.

One of the big reveals in the series is the person of one of the major characters, Mr. Wednesday. We know he is a supernatural being, that he is a very big deal, but the average person is supposed to not know who he really is. Great Jove, I hope that people are not that simple-minded and stupid, but I suppose this is true. Ian McShane portrays Odin/Wotan about as he should be portrayed. It's rather a predictable performance...but you know what? I kind of enjoyed watching him do it.

The main protagonist is a man named "Shadow Moon" played by an actor named Ricky Whittle. He's an atypical liberal wet-dream kind of a cypher and I was not impressed by either that character or the actor doing the role. He's a decent enough performer, but there is nothing inspired in said performance. It's all very workmanlike. I also wearied of Shadow Moon constantly being amazed and bewildered by the things he was seeing when it had already become obvious for anyone else that he was walking amidst various gods and demons and their metaphysical hangers-on.

And this is what bugged me most about the series, and about Gaiman's writing in general (ever since his days penning perfectly precious comic books for goths and liberal goofs): there's nothing original there. It's all a reflection on things that have gone before, created by civilizations great and minor and being hauled out and fluffed up for modern viewing. Nothing new. All kind of tired and pathetic, really.

After a few episodes of this ceaseless copping of various cultures, all while being used to hammer us ceaselessly with the idea that conservative thought is bad and liberal speak is good, I began to grow very, very weary of it. But I kept going, more out of curiosity of how the actors might perform than by being hammered over the skull with one bleeding heart opinion after another couched in the language of the holier-than-thou smirk.

One episode which seemed at first to go completely off-rail--almost like something David Lynch would do--was a flashback to the 1700s wherein we are given some really waaaaay back back-story for Laura Moon (Shadow Moon's wife), featuring her great-great-grandmother hailing from Ireland and ending up in the New World. What this episode was revealed was nothing more than a condensed retelling of The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders penned, it is said, by Daniel Dafoe. Again...this is the kind of thing about Gaiman's work that grates on my every last nerve. The dredging up of classic mythology and classic literature to use as substrate for his modern fiction. There's something there that I find rather dishonest in it all.

Still, that episode did obliquely co-star the character of Mad Sweeney who is actually a leprechaun who features prominently in almost all of the episodes. We see him a couple of hundred years ago and understand a little of perhaps why he keeps showing some amount of guilty attention toward Laura Moon. Still...it shouldn't have taken the hijacking of Dafoe's work to do that. Pablo Schreiber (half brother of the more popular and well known Liev Schreiber) regularly turns in the best acting in the show as Mad Sweeney. So there was that.

Later in the season--and I was waiting for it--there was an episode that reveled in its debasement of Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ. While I am not myself a Christian, I am always irked to see how the liberal set like Gaiman and company rarely sidestep a chance to make light of Christianity as rudely as they can. I could almost understand it if it was coming from the pen of an adolescent recently freeing himself from the yoke of tradition and the pedestrian. But this is all supposed to have been written by adults. Well...maybe emotionally stunted adults, or folk with a specific agenda to sell.

As I said, I kept watching because the series does have some good actors putting in some fine work. I never get tired of seeing what Peter Stormare brings to the screen, and his portrayal of Thor is good, with a helping of the humor he generally brings with him. Chloris Leachman is strange and vulnerable as an aging goddess. Crispin Glover is his usual, creepy, demented self as Mr. World, the top of the pyramid of neo-gods. And Gillian Anderson does some good scenes as Media, a kind of Hera to Mr. World's Zeus. Some scenes she does amazingly well, and others she shoots for the stars and falls back to low Earth orbit. But that's better than most actors.

All in all, it kept me from being totally bored when I wasn't reading, writing, or working my part-time job. But given the choice, I'd much rather go hiking or discover a new author to keep my mind busy. I doubt I'll bother to stream the series next season. (I will assume there will be a next season.)

"Mr. Wednesday." Oh my! Who could he really be?!

Matter of Comparison

To put you and your concepts into perspective:

God is an Elephant

My religious friends sometimes claim enormous "miracles" when they see Jesus or Mother Mary or Scrolls in things like toast and pizzas and window reflections and bathroom stains and such.

To this I say that God must have been an elephant, or else She would never have left so many geological clues as to Her true form.

Following is but a taste that either there is a God and She is an elephant, or that an ancient race of rock-carving elephants once ruled the Earth, or that a space-faring race of elephants visited this planet and left behind inescapable evidence of their passing. (Or--could it be?--maybe humans just imagine that shit!)

Observe:

Various elephant rocks from around the world...everywhere from California to Australia to Africa to...well, the Mother Elephant has left evidence of her Existence across the globe. Praise be her Holy Trunk!!!

I drop turds bigger than you, human!

Are You Smarter Than An Eight-year-old?

a repost
Imagine
By
James Robert Smith

Imagine being raised in a religious void.

There’s nothing there, in the past, no religion at all. Your parents have never said anything. You’ve never been to church or temple or mosque, that you can recall. And you’ve never been indoctrinated into any religion, at all.

You sing religious songs at school, from time to time. But “Jesus Loves Me” is just a song, because you don’t know who “Jesus” is. “Jesus Loves Me” might as well be “Don Gato” for all you know. Or care.

And then one day, in the third grade, you get a teacher who insists on someone in class getting up in front of the other kids before the day really begins, and reading a quote from the Holy Bible. This is the mid-60s, the days before anyone actually pushed a separation of Church and State. You don’t know what the Holy Bible is. It’s just another book, but with a black cover. Not as big as the dictionary, and surely not as interesting. But one day it’s your turn, and some of the other kids keep telling you to look for short verses. Something curt. Like, “Jesus wept”. But you can’t find “Jesus wept”, so you find something a couple of lines long and you read it.

No one discusses the verse. For Pete’s sake, we’re all eight years old! The teacher, this Miss Goody, she just wants us reading a verse from The Book. For our own sakes. This is the same teacher who, when we’re singing religious songs with “Hellelujah” in it, won’t let us pronounce that final syllable, that “YAH” sound. ‘It’s a vulgar sound,’ she tells us. Just say “Hallelu”. So we drop the “YAH” and end with “Lou”, but we have to drag it out “looooooouuuuuuuuuu”. (And in my mind, I always added that “YAH”!) She’s a real hoot, this woman.

So now I begin to realize that there’s something out there called “religion”. And I realize there’s this thing people call “God”. And there’s this guy people call “Jesus”. And there are these nebulous jerks people call “The Twelve Apostles”. Like a group of some kind. Maybe like “The Dave Clark Five”. One kid in class walks around all puffed up with pride because he can name all twelve of them. I can’t name those twelve damned apostles, but I know the Beatles, and I know the seven original astronauts. I tell the other kids the seven original astronauts whenever they bring up the twelve apostles. This always succeeds in changing the subject pretty darned fast. Only one other kid in the class knows even six of the astronauts’ names. John Glenn and Gus Grissom are a lot more important to me than Paul and Peter.

However, the damage done, I start to ask about religion. The teacher explains to me about “God” and “Heaven” and, by golly, it all sounds pretty good to this eight-year-old. Then, a few days later, someone talks about “being saved”. I file that away, not wishing to display my ignorance. For, you see, I’ve been raised in a religious void. It’s amazing that my parents were able to do this. Just amazing.

This “being saved” stuff: it’s bothering me. What is it? I decide to ask my mom.

After school, I go into the kitchen. We have a sandwich bar in the kitchen, with tall metal stools with vinyl padded seats just like in a diner. I nab me one of these stools and sit down at the bar. Behind me are windows that look out on the playground of my school where my third-grade teacher has begun to tell me about “God” and “Heaven” and “being saved”. (My parents are lucky, to live right next door to Oakhurst Elementary School and this son just has to walk out the door and about thirty yards and he’s in school each weekday morning.)

I’m sitting there at the bar. My mom’s just on the other side, where she usually is this time of day getting ready to make supper (“dinner”, we call it there in Atlanta). My head, as I say, is full of these cool thoughts of this loving “God” and this absolutely perfect placed called “Heaven” where you get to go when you die.

“What’s ‘being saved’ mean?” I ask my mom.

“Saved?” she asks, repeating me.

“Yeah. ‘Saved’. I heard it at school today.” She doesn’t ask me who told me about this, and I’ve always assumed she just automatically knew. I don’t volunteer it.

“Well, you have to be saved before you can get to Heaven.”

I sit there for a second. This doesn’t make sense. What about the unconditional love and all that stuff? Finally, I say, “You mean, you have to be saved before God will let you into Heaven?”

“Yes.” She goes on about her business of getting dinner ready.

“So, not just anyone can go to Heaven? Not everyone is allowed in?”

“That’s right. Not unless you’re saved.”

‘Damn! There are strings attached,’ I think. This is not right! At that moment, then and there, all the tumblers fell into place. All the circuits closed. All the switches flipped. That mother of all cornerstones, weighing as much as all of Logic, it went down with a solid and immovable thud.

“Then I don’t believe in God,” I told her. “I don’t believe in Heaven. It’s all a big lie, isn’t it?”

My mom stopped what she was doing (pouring water onto lentils in an enormous pressure cooker, as I recall). She wiped her hands dry on a blue towel, some green lentils clinging to her hands pink from hot water. “That’s right,” she said. “There’s no such thing as God or Heaven. Good for you.”

And that was that.

The next day, in class, the teacher asks whose turn it is to read from the Bible. I raise my hand. She points to me.

“I don’t want to read from the Bible any more,” I tell her.

“Why not,” she asks.

“Because I don’t believe in God,” I tell her.

Some of the kids gasp (some girls, smarter than most of us boys and realizing the implication). Most of the children don’t give a damn, because they’re only eight years old, for Pete’s sake. My teacher looks at me, then down at whatever workbook she’s perusing. And she says, “Well, Mr. Smith, you can be an atheist if you want to be.”

‘Atheist’. That’s a new one on me. I don’t ask her what it means, but I think I know. And there’s that dictionary sitting at the back of the room, by golly, and I plan to look it up as soon as I have a free moment.

Pride of the Yankees

This is what remains of the Altar of the Twelve Gods. At one time, this was the most important place in Athens. From this point all distances to Athens were measured. It might as well have been the middle of all that was important to Mankind on the face of the Earth.

This was also the center of worship for the people who believed in the religion that began there. Today, it’s all in ruins. A railroad runs nearby.

I like to show this to idiots who think their nation is “number one”. Who think their religion will “last forever”, that their god is "the only god". Who believe that the government under which they labor is “all powerful”.

I laugh

When In Rome

I don’t understand religion and the appeal of it. To tell you the truth, it has always scared the crap out of me. The dogma, the mindlessness of it, the attraction of it, the automatic responses it engenders in those to whom it does appeal. For most of my life, I would go around in a mild state of fear whenever I’d encounter anything approaching a religious service. “When in Rome, do as the Romans,” my mom used to wisely say. And so I would do the minimum to escape the notice of religionists. When they’d pray, I’d bow my head, or (preferably) get out of the line of sight so that I could watch them in this most bizarre exhibition of ritual.

A few years ago, when I delivered mail in a very impoverished area of the city, I would stop daily at a storefront church. I couldn’t say what denomination it could possibly have been, and if truth be told, I’d have to say it was not connected to any denomination at all, and was, in fact, likely created out of some strain or another of the Protestant faith (which excels at spawning all manner of poisonous thought).

I don’t know what purpose the building served before it was transformed into a storefront church, but it was solidly constructed of old brick and mortar, with barred windows, a steel-shuttered front door, and was about 4,000 square feet in size (I estimated, from my experience in my days as a retailer). I rarely saw anyone there, other than the self-appointed minister who drove a rather flashy sedan, who dressed in rather loud (and expensive) hand-tailored suits, and who never spoke (to me). On the rare moments when I’d see him, I would say hello and hand him the mail, and he’d accept the envelopes (some of them obviously heavy with cash or checks), but he never replied to my greetings. Never.

As the US mail is not delivered on Sunday, I didn't have occasion to see what kind of congregation gathered there for services. From the look of the minister’s automobile and of his dress, and of the gold and diamond-encrusted rings I’d seen on his fingers, I assumed the place was drawing them in fairly well. He must have been a decent speaker, for there certainly was no paucity of established churches in the neighborhood. So he was able to pull in his own flock against the tide of various Baptist, Catholic, and AME Zion churches that littered the landscape.

Generally, I never saw anyone at all when I’d deliver the mail to this church. Nineteen times out of twenty the place would be padlocked and I’d just shove the mail through a steel slot in the armored front door. In all kinds of weather I would walk along this mainly warehouse district and when I’d come to the storefront church I’d just cram their allotment of mail through the slot and go about my routine.

However, one day I arrived and the minister’s flashy car was parked in front of the church. The door was standing open and so I walked in. There was an office door also standing open with a desk. Behind the desk was the minister. He was counting money. Lots of it. More cash than I’ve ever seen outside of a bank. He had stacks of bills banded to his right and his left and he was counting money as I walked in. “Hello,” I said to him as I always did, never expecting (by now) a response. True to form, he said nothing, tamped down a stack of bills, and pushed the letters aside as I turned and walked back out of the ersatz church building.

I heard the steel doors slam shut behind me as I walked to my vehicle.

A few days later I got to the storefront location of this minister’s project to find a couple of elderly women standing outside of it. They were trying to look inside, but the windows were barred and shuttered (as they always were), and the door was stoutly locked (as it almost always was) and the only place they could possibly steal a glance would have been through the mail slot. As I dropped the mail in, one of the ladies approached me.

“Do you know where he went?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Minister F-----. Where is he? He didn’t open the church on Sunday and no one knows where he is.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know.”

“He didn’t leave a forwarding address?”

“No.” I thought of the huge stacks of cash. Of the bastard counting it and banding it. Sitting there in the dark, his diamond rings, his tailored suits, his flashy car waiting to take him away with the loot.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

Alas. No forwarding address. No recourse.

I stand out of sight and observe you strange folk and your bizarre rituals. I will not be in Rome.

Gee!Thanks!

My parents were certainly not the best. But one thing that I always appreciated about them is that they did not expose me to religion. So that by the time I had to face that stuff at the age of eight, I immediately concluded that it was a pack of lies. And the fact that so many around me accepted these fantasies as reality—Good grief! Give me a break!

In the forty-two years since, I have never wavered.

Thanks, folks!

Maybe I Should Make an Offering?

Oh!

Bad karma?

First, the washing machine went kablooey. Our repair lady came out and looked at it and pronounced it mortally wounded. We ordered a new one and it took a week to come in. The delivery fellows set it up, turned it on, and left before fully checking it out. Seems it’s missing a pump! Water goes in, but can’t drain. More phone calls. Manufacturer is sending a new one, but can’t be delivered for at least three days. More trips to the laundromat. Joy.

Four days ago my neighbor’s cable goes out. He calls the repairman. Repairman tells my wife that our cable will be out for a little while as he works on the neighbor’s system. Repairman buries neighbor’s new cable and he leaves without checking to see how our system is doing. Seems he cut right through our cable. I phone the service (Time-Warner) using my wife’s cell phone since we have all of our service bundled and as the cable is cut clean through we can’t use the land line. They tell me that they can’t come back to fix things for three days. I couldn’t care less about the TV, but I need the phone and the internet service. I do without for three days. Jolly good.

In the meantime, the gods are not happy with us here and we continue to suffer under triple-digit temperatures. As I work as a laborer in the sun, this is not good.

I must make obeisance to Helios at the earliest opportunity.

BY HELIOS!

It's hot. That's all there is to it. 101 today, and we may hit 103 tomorrow. Southern heat, too. None of that pansy western no-humidity heat.

You don't know what hot is unless you're a laborer and have to work out in that miasma all day long.

If I hear one more asshole say that there's no such thing as man-made global warming, I'm going to kick his ass.



Mill Creek Falls. Where I went swimming in June, three years ago. I dreamed of it today.

Strike Me Down, Big Man: A White Trash Vignette

Strike Me Down, Big Man

by

James Robert Smith

There were seven of us: Scot, Robert, Brayboy, Tina; and Brayboy's sister, Reddog. And there was Phil, a garbage scow of a guy we all called Fat Bastard when he wasn't around to hear. At nineteen, I was the oldest, so I had dropped into the liquor store and bought the rum. The rest had brought coke; and me and the other braves were gulping the cheap, shitty rum and chasing it with Coca Cola. It tasted truly awful, but we were feeling good and drunk. I wasn't as high as the rest of the boys, since I weighed in at better than two-fifty, so I held my rum pretty good, and Phil didn't drink (the pussy). But Brayboy weighed one hundred thirty pounds, and even though he was only sixteen years old he was already a boozer who loved the stuff. He was going to make a sloppy drunk. Some of his teeth were rotting from too much booze and not enough food. He was drunk enough that I think he'd forgotten how much bigger I was than he, so I'd already had to tell him to shut up a couple times.
The girls weren't drunk, at all. Maybe a little. They were fifteen year olds, but they had plenty of experience when it came to males chasing after them. They well knew we were hoping to get them drunk enough so that we could talk them into lying down for us. Reddog wasn't a problem. She loved dick and everyone but her brother and me had had a taste, and I really wasn't so sure Brayboy hadn't had a go at her. But I just didn't think she was attractive with that pale skin and all that red hair. No thanks. Tina, though, was another matter. She was short, maybe not even five feet, but she was well built. She had great tits, and her hips flared out from a narrow waist and her legs weren't bad, either. If you bothered to look, she had a cute face framed with short, brown hair. All of us wanted to fuck her.
Earlier that day, I had stopped by the Brayboy house, and Reddog and Tina had been in the back yard. I went back to talk to them, and noticed Brayboy's barbells sitting in the dirt. Sandspurs had started to sprout around the concrete-filled plates; it had been so long since the little guy had used them. I bent down and picked them up, figuring he had about one-twenty on the bar. I was wearing a tank top and began to curl the weight easily, pumping up my biceps.
"My gosh," Reddog said. "Look at his muscles!"
I smiled and curled the bar a few more times, getting the desired result. But Tina looked up for a minute and said nothing. Shit.. I tossed the bar back to the weedy ground.
"How did you get so strong," Reddog asked.
"Heck. I'm not that strong," I lied. I was as strong as a fucking bull. I was so strong that nothing less than a gun scared me. Truly, I loved beating the shit out of other men. I had the lackonooky disease, so I walked around pissed off all the time. Tina was standing there wearing a halter-top and very short cutoffs so my dick was hard just looking at her. I did my best to hide my erection. I’m a gentleman.
"Where's Steve," I said. I rarely called her brother by his first name, but since I was on Brayboy property, I figured I should show some respect. I liked Mr. Brayboy, the father. Too bad his daughter was a slut and his oldest son was a rummy in training. He had four other kids stuffed into that five-room house, but they were all young ones and I didn't even know their names. Didn't give a damn, either.
"Him and Scot are off doing something," Tina said. I knew she really liked Scot. If any of us was going to get any action from Tina, I figured it would be Scot. She seemed to perk up a little at the mention of his name. Damn.
"Well, when they get back, tell them that I want to get up a bunch and go to the cemetery tonight. We can all smoke weed and get drunk and raise hell. You tell em for me, okay?" And I vaulted the chain link and trotted to my pickup.
So. We had all ended up in the Port City Cemetery, right in the middle of it at eleven at night. The rest of the boys were too drunk to notice the mosquitoes eating us alive, and I was too intent on trying to figure out how to get Tina alone and on her back to worry about the little bloodsuckers. We had come to the cemetery in a brand new 1978 Chevy pickup, just purchased by Scot and Robert's dad. It was a beauty: shiny white with four wheel drive and lots of polished chrome. I hadn't asked them how the hell they had talked their dad into letting them drive off with it. He must be out of town, I figured. Right then, it was parked out on Mane's Bluff Road, in a little turnaround area shrouded in by a couple of old live oaks and a line of scrub. The cops hardly ever came down there because the washboard road was hell on your suspension. Cops do love a smooth ride.
"Let's go look at that mausoleum Brad keeps sayin he gonna bust into," Scot said.
"God, that's one crazy fucker."
"He scares me."
"He scares you? You mean you ain't fucked him yet, Red?"
Reddog made a savage grunting sound and clawed at Scot. But he was too quick and danced away from her, bounding lightly over half a dozen graves. I could see his blond hair, even in the dark.
"You shouldn't do that, Scot." It was big, fat Phil. He stood, as usual, behind the group, watching us.
"Shouldn't do what?"
"Walk over the graves like that." Phil pointed, his fat paw kind of pasty looking in the half moonlight.
"Why the fuck not," I asked him.
"You should have more respect for the dead. You should fear God, man."
I laughed. Scot laughed. "Fuck that!" Both of us.
Scot hopped to a granite slab all polished and carved with the names of some family. We couldn't read it in the dark. He began to do a jig. "I'm dancin' man! I'm dancin'." He hopped about while I laughed. No one else was laughing. "Strike me down, Big Man. Strike me down!" Nothing happened, except that Scot and I began to laugh: big belly laughs while we made fun of everyone's religious beliefs.
"Hell," I said, pointing to the starry sky. "He ain't even got a cloud to pop some lightning out of." Scot looked up, thought that was especially funny, and laughed some more.