God and Me

The other night I had a dream about dying. It fell into the realm of a fantasy dream, because I went to Heaven and had a conversation with God.

Where: Heaven
When: Seven Years From Now

Heaven isn't the way it's depicted in the movies. It's not all white. "Too hard to keep clean," an angel tells me as I'm led to God's corner office. It has an ultralounge vibe. A few of the more nubile angels are dancing on tables. There's bottle service in VIP.

"God, your four o'clock's here."

God looks up from a pile of paperwork. "Send him in."

I'm a little nervous. "God, I'm Todd Smith."

"No shit. I'm God. I don't have to google search every dumb s.o.b. who stumbles in."

"What happened to me?" I ask hesitantly.

"You died of a heart attack," God replies. "Age 46. Nice goin', lardass. I created vegetables, you know."

"Why didn't you make them taste better?" This question is a mistake.

God stands up. You don't want to make the Lord of Heaven and Earth stand up.

"I put your ungrateful ass in one of the few countries on earth with an abundant supply of food and you dare complain about the taste? Does God have to smite a bitch?"

"Of course not," I say apologetically. "Uh, do I get to stay up here?"

God thinks for a moment. "Well, I saw you eyeballin' VIP; you can forget that. It depends on my mood in the next few minutes whether you get in...general admission, of course; or I cast you down to Hell and you get to be Satan's dingleberry harvester."

"General admission will be fine," I say. "Why should this be any different than earth?"

"Let's take a look at your file," God states, ignoring my comment. "Wow, from 1997 till 2002, lots of strip clubs."

"I can explain..."

"It's okay," God interrupts. "If I didn't want men to look at breasts I wouldn't have made them so beautiful. I would have made them horribly unpleasant to gaze upon, like I did with the scrotum."

"Yeah. Mission accomplished there." I add, "Can I ask you a question?"

"I swear to Myself," God says, frowning, "if you ask 'Why do the good suffer?' I'll cover your whiny ass in boils the size of half-dollars."

"No, I just want to know why you'd send someone to hell if they weren't really evil?"

God sits back down and buries His head in His hands. "You liberal Christians, always with the 'God loves you no matter what' horseshit. There's something called the Old Testament, you know. If you would have bothered to read it you'd know that I'm not afraid to fill streets with the blood of non-believers and choke rivers with the dead."

"Yeah, but didn't Jesus say..."

"SILENCE!!" God commands. "Jesus isn't even a blood relative; he's my second wife's kid from a previous marriage. I just didn't think Step-Son of God would have cut it. He had enough problems down there."

"I never voted Republican," I say out of left field, trying to get on His good side.

"That's the only reason I'm even considering letting you in," God states. "I can't stand those pious fucks using my name to scare people into voting for them; like that miserable George Bush. That's why I gave him a hare-lip in '07."

"That was a good one."

"Okay," God says, smiling. "You can come in, but I'm putting you on a diet. And you have to wear a training halo for the first ten thousand years."

With that, I woke up. I immediately decided to do whatever it takes to avoid dying young and having to face a slightly perturbed and surprisingly foul-mouthed God.

The diet starts Monday.