Voices

Are you there, God? It’s me, Nathaniel

By the

January 22, 2004


Boy, there sure are a lot of Starbucks around! It seems like everywhere you go there’s another Starbucks! I mean, how many Starbuc …

“Damn it!” I yell as I slam my fist down in anger and frustration, accidentally hitting a cactus that just happened to be there. “This article sucks. Why can’t I think of something clever, instead of just this obvious humor that anyone could come up with?”

After a few more vain attempts to stretch one weak joke into 800 words, I decide to take out my frustration in a positive way. So I pick up my gun and fire randomly into the basket of puppies and bunny rabbits I keep next to my desk. This usually cheers me up, but today I can’t seem to shake the suffocating cloud of inadequacy that’s choking me, so I decide to look for some solace from my good friend Jack Daniels. Unfortunately, when I called his house he wasn’t in, and his life-partner, Bruce, didn’t know when he’d be back, so I decided to call my friend God instead. You see, God and I have been tight since Vietnam (we fought for the North), and have kept in touch through e-mail and burning bushes and whatnot over the years.

“You’re studying abroad in Japan,” said God as he flipped through my CDs, “There’s got to be something interesting to write about there.”

“Yeah, there is, but I’m afraid that if I write something funny I’ll get a lot of overblown, self-righteous hate mail from people too stupid to realize that every culture has its own peculiarities and quirks that can be parodied, and that doing so in no way entails a disrespect for the culture at large. I mean, they might even go so far as to accuse me of ridiculous things like, I don’t know, propagating Orientalism or attempting to white out an entire language and its concomitant culture with jokes.”

“No one’s that stupid, Scott.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

“Scott, I’m omniscient, I think I would know.”

“Yeah, but have you ever been to Georgetown?”

“Well, not really, no. That place kind of creeps me out.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Well, why don’t you write about personal experiences and opinions and such?” God suggested. “I thought that was the whole point of the column.”

“Nah, I can’t do that. I can’t take myself seriously enough to think that any of my experiences or opinions are worth telling other people about, and I’m afraid that whatever I ended up writing would be too trite or masturbatory to be insightful. So instead I just kind of take the easy way out and write these empty-headed humor pieces in order to avoid the dissatisfaction of trying to say something substantive and failing.”

“I see; so, all your personal experiences, opinions and sentiments are first run through the filter of your offbeat, yet hilarious, sense of humor so they stay shallow. This way you can wrap yourself in a protective layer of detachment and sarcasm so that when criticized, you can always hide behind your own stated lack of purpose, seeing as how you can’t possibly fail to live up to expectations when you’ve set the bar abysmally low to begin with.”

“Exactly.”

“Damn, that’s pretty fucked up.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, then I don’t know what to tell you. If humor is your only option, then make sure you do it well, and no more of these half-assed attempts at being clever.” God lifts the lid of the puppy basket and peers inside, “Hey you missed some of these, you know.”

“Yeah, I’ll get them later.”

“Good. But back to your problem: unless you square your shit away soon, the few people that read your drivel are going to be turned off and lose interest, leaving you with no reason at all to keep writing. I mean, if a clown gets crushed by a tree in the forest and no one’s around to see it, is it still funny?”

“Yeah, you’re right, as usual.”

“I know. I’m good, aren’t I? Sometimes I almost have to praise myself.”

“But what about the columns I wrote earlier this year? Some of those were funny, right?”

“Uh, sure, they were good … um, grammatically.”

“Well, whatever, at least they were occasionally punctual. Hey, sorry to bother you about this, but I have another favor to ask.”

“Remember, you only get three wishes.”

“I know, but do you think if it’s possible, you could maybe do something about, you know, the length? Wink wink.”

“Sorry Scott, but 11 inches is more than enough, you should be happy.”

“No, I mean the column, 800 words is a lot of writing. Wait, what were you talking about?”

“Nothing. Look, it’s getting late, I should go.”

“OK, well, thanks for your help God. I promise I’ll start believing in you more.”

“Scott do you even know which religion I’m a part of?”

“Not really, no. But you work great as a device for personifying this internal debate and fleshing it out into article form.”

“Right, great, thanks, Scott. See you in Hell.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just talking to myself.”

“Well, close the door on your way out. Oh, and God? Do you remember when there was only one set of footprints?”

God blinks and stares blankly at me for a few seconds.

“That’s when I was carrying you,” I say with a snicker.

“Good Scott, that one gets funnier every time I hear it.”

“Shut up, God.”

Scott Matthews is a junior in the College and an Associate Editor of The Georgetown Voice. He is feeling fat and sassy.



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